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The Catacombs

(part 1)

A rumbling sound was making its way down the tunnels. Muffled, distorted, it echoed on each passageway, on each chamber, on each crevice and rock column, and multiplied by dozens, hundreds, on the humid walls, it multiplied until the words that had given rise to it were little more than bursts of meaningless sound.

One such echo calling Meg's attention away from the path she walked and to a dark crevice on the rock just to her left, she stopped for a moment. The narrow tunnel where she stood was flooded, a mass of cold greenish water pressed around her waist and the white shirt and black trousers she had elected to jump back on, still she stopped and stood there listening, teeth sank into her lower lip, gaze never leaving that opening on the tunnel's wall.

The echoes around her bummed, louder and louder, and seeming to come from right beyond that large scar on the otherwise mostly smooth tunnel. That alone should have been enough to keep her moving, but it took the yellowish light around her threatening to leave her behind for Meg to force herself to look away and follow the man who had been the Opera Populaire's ghost.

Now looking down the tunnel, Meg didn't have to search that far to find him. Her companion stood some four meters in front of her, right at an intersection between the narrow tunnel she was in and four others. Frowning at the walls, seemingly not so much searching for something as confirming it was there, he stepped right into the one in front.

Wait! I'm going with you! Meg remembered tossing at him back on his kitchen, only to see him turn, eyes round with surprise and what had definitely been a deep sense of incredulity.

Forcing her way through the cold, greenish water, walking under the low ceiling of the tunnel and the droplets hanging from there, new echoes exploding around her, Meg feared she understood why.

Wanting to brave the labyrinth of tunnels under Paris, actually stepping into the hidden stairway in the pantry and doing just that, had been a horrible, horrible idea. As much as she had hated this place the last time, Meg truly had thought it was the blanket of darkness that made it unbearable, that had left her chest so tight it felt like a giant hand had closed over it. Now, she knew she had been wrong.

The tunnels, the water, the sounds, all of that was worse in the dancing torch light. In fact, right now, the torch her companion carried had sent darkness scurrying away from what seemed to be an extremely narrow squeeze or even just a hole on the wall. The hole stood high enough to be untouched by the water, but it made Meg go back to biting her lower lip. There was something in there. Something kind of round. Something whose empty eyes sockets were staring right at her.

"Are there bones in here?"

Her question came unbound, so much so it was too loud in the silence, loud enough Meg feared its ongoing echo was going down the same path as the ones reaching her. Glancing over his shoulder, however, her companion, a man who was not a ghost, but a very solid person, simply gazed at her and tilted his head.

"Bones?" he repeated in that hoarse rasp that was now his voice, his slowing pace telling enough as to the fact Meg might have fallen a little too farther behind. "There are pits brimming with them. There are walls and columns and chambers. This is the reign of the dead, Little Giry. Only the dead dwell in here."

Meg's eyes went round, a look back, to that crevice with the skull she had just walked passed, and she picked up her pace, forcing her way to the water with such determination rippling waves were crashing ferociously against the rocky formations on the walls, against a so-called Ghost, and making their way back to slap against her. That scramble took a pair of seconds. It lasted right until she caught a pair of grayish-green eyes glancing at her yet again and their expression made her slow down, eyebrows immediately pinching.

"Are you trying to scare me?"

This time he stopped, he turned, the eyebrow that wasn't covered by the mask slightly arched. If that was meant to be an innocent expression, it failed even before his words sent it crashing down.

"It depends," Christine's angel said, the tunnel so narrow around him the flames from the torch licked the rock over his head. "Is it working?"

Walls pressing around her, a water drop falling from the ceiling precisely at the right time to dive into her shirt and ran down her back, Meg still found it in herself to lie.

"No."

Her answer was a bemused smile.

"Such a pity," he then voiced, and again turned his back on her, the water going to slap against his stomach as a clear drop on the floor made him sink several centimetres.

Walking what wasn't a meter behind him, herself sinking up to her chest upon going down the very same point in the tunnel, Meg was frowning, attention on the white shirt and the way it stick to her companion's back. Maybe it was suspicion, perhaps she was just curious, more probably than not she would rather replace those menacing echoes with something else, whatever it was it didn't matter, because somehow he had managed to draw her in.

"Was that serious?" Meg now probed, pressing her lips when he again looked back. "What you said about the pits. Are there really walls of bones down here?"

A slight narrowing of the one eye she could see and he was leaning to walk under a lower part of the ceiling.

"Surely that was my idea of lighthearted joke, Marguerite."

Meg twisted her nose at the note to those words. No, not at the exhaustion to them, or the cough that seemed to ruin his voice further, that wasn't at all what she meant. What made her frown at his back was the sarcasm. She should perhaps chose to stay quiet now—but no. Instead, she again focused on the hard line of his shoulders and spoke.

"I would hardly know if that was a joke, Monsieur," she remarked, now going under the lower section of ceiling without the need to even lower her head. "I was there for some of your notes. I never could quite guess their tone."

Distant as his gaze was, something akin to amusement found its way there.

"No?" Stopping at a new intersection, taking a quick glance at something on the walls, he took the path to the left. "I meant every word I ever wrote."

"Every word?" Meg repeated with the slightest hesitation. "Your humble servant?"

Coughing might have just covered a mirthful snort or a painful groan. Or possibly both for he had just hugged his ribs. In the end, however, it mattered not. The answer was clear and a new echo had reached them, shivering on the walls and the broken stalactites over their heads.

Meg frowned and looked back down the narrow tunnel, towards where the echoing seemed to be coming from. Not stopping to do that was her first mistake. One more step and Meg's feet landed right over something round, she slipped, she let out a small gasp, sending her hands flying for the wall at her side. Now, regaining her footing, again walking, her attention stayed firmly on the water bobbing against her chest and the green depths she could not see.

"That is much wiser, Little Giry," came her companion singed whisper. "Who knows what is that you tread on. A rock or a bone. There might be hands just beneath. Fingers that are ready to swept—"

The song was interrupted by coughing at about the same time Meg pressed her lips, attention on the water slapping against her chest. That wasn't funny. That really wasn't funny! And to make everything worse a whisper had just risen right next to her ear.

"Do I scare you now?"

Meg had to slap her hands over her lips not to shriek. She turned, the empty space at her side — the damp, blackish wall right to her side! — making her eyes dart to that space just a few steps in front of her where the Opera's Ghost had stopped and turned, leaving the exit of the tunnel right behind him.

Water up to her chest or not, Meg would have slapped every inch she could against him if he was Christine, or Sorelli or virtually anyone in the Opera House's dormitory. But he wasn't. Unfortunately. And since that was the case, Meg stood there, arms crossed and glaring.

What had just happened? Well, he had done that thing with his voice. That thing he had done at the Opera House before sending Il Muto to hell and that had made his words fill the auditorium in the most threatening way there was. The very same thing he had done in the living room some time ago. Not that he had sounded threatening back then! Not that he sounded threatening now! He didn't. But he was doing it again! The thing where is voice seemed to come from everywhere except from him!

"Do I scare you now?"

"No!"

A smirk was tossed over his shoulder as he turned — what Meg was certain would have been outright laughter if he didn't look so defeated, if there was humour in his eyes rather than that dull expression of hopelessness — and her companion stopped just one step into the cave. There, torch held at his side, he closed his eyes, he pressed them, something akin to—

" Pathetic."

—escaping his lips as he rested his right shoulder against the wall at his side.

Forcing her way to him, Meg stopped. Between the hand covering his eyes and the mask hiding half of his face, there was little she could make of his expression other than what she already knew. He looked tired. Tired and not at all pleased by the hand she had just put over his arm. The wintry gaze meeting her through the gap between his fingers, wasn't, however, the reason Meg had just let her hand slip away, less so the reason why she had just stepped under his arm and into the waiting cave.

No longer conscripted to the narrow tunnel, the light of the torch had expanded trying to illuminate what, in the tenuous light, could only be described as a lake, a huge underground lake, the walls surrounding it distant enough the darkness still hide them. That wasn't to say there was nothing to see, though. Rock columns fell from the ceiling and disappeared inside the water. Stalactites, their formations making them look like white waterfalls or curtains hanging from the ceiling, were everywhere. If there was some beauty to this nightmarish realm under Paris, Meg saw it now, she saw it even if her attention was on this golden halo floating over the lake. A halo cast by a candle encased in glass and attached to—

"I think there is a boat there," Meg said, looking back. "Is it yours?"

Maybe she should have never pointed that out. The same moment her companion opened his eyes, the very same moment he found that dot of light amid the dark lake, his eyes widened then fled, focusing instead on the rough walls the torch was illuminating and on this very distinct line between the wet rock and the permanently dry one high over their heads.

"You were right with your warning, Marguerite, this place is being drained."

Meg tilted her head, she looked up, squinting as she tried to catch a glimpse of a hooded statue looking down from above, of anything that might resemble a man-made structure. There was nothing though, not that she could see. The cave looked natural, untouched. It made her frown.

"This is the cistern?" she queried, her attention abandoning her search in favour of the man at her side. "It doesn't look anything like it."

Still with his shoulder resting against the tunnel's exit, the torch's light falling mostly on him, her companion met her comment with a tired gaze.

"This is not the cistern," came the confirmation, his attention slipping back to her before returning to the cave and those waterfall-like formations of the rock. "This is a different, less direct path to Opera. One less—"

His eyes had found the boat again, vacant they watched it bob silently in the distance. Then, his expression turned harsh.

"Glamorous," he spat.

The word felt like a curse, something out of a sour memory he wished to purge. Something he couldn't. And watching him under the dancing torch light, hearing that single world bounce off the walls and die in smaller and smaller echoes as it disappeared into the blackness in the distance, Meg could almost see as it pulled him away with it.

"The cistern is at this very same level," she now heard him say, his voice low, exhausted, unfeeling. "It must be mostly empty by now."

"Mostly?" Meg dared asking.

"You will know by the stench when they finish."

A new rumble went through the tunnels, one that was so clearly made of words, Meg squinted at the dark lake and took a single step back. She was back at the entrance to the tunnel now, looking up that path and then at the man who was yet to walk passed its exit—who was pretty much still steadying himself against the wall.

"Should we head back?"

A remarkably empty expression met her, a remarkably dead gaze was directed to the tunnel, and just like the Opera's phantom took a step into the sprawling underground lake.

"Perhaps," he told her, his movement sending slow, sluggish ripples towards the distant boat as he forced his way forward.

Watching him for a moment, watching as the circle of light that had surrounded them both moved away, Meg shook her head, then followed, forcing her way through the water to walk not behind, but at her companion's side.

"If this place is being drained, Monsieur, the police is already here," she tried to reason. " What if—?"

Whatever Meg had been about to say, whatever the person behind those distant greenish eyes was about to remark slipped from both their minds. In a second, they were both looking around. The cave was about as dark as it had always been. The water was still there, greenish and freezing and disappearing beyond the bright circle formed by the light. The rock formations in the middle of the lake remained unaltered. And so none of that was what had caught their attention. Their attention was in the only thing around here that changed.

The echoes.

Those loud echoing voices they had been hearing for what felt like hours were now so close they were almost possible to understand. And attention having just became stuck on a large tunnel near the ceiling, Meg swallowed.

There was light moving in that tunnel, there was someone in that tunnel, and it was definitely not her imagination for the torch had just been shoved into her hands and her companion was stepping right towards the lake.

"Keep to the wall," he said.

"What are you doing?"

Only then, with the lake expanding in front of him, one of the waterfall-like structures a few meters in front, did he look at her. It was an incredibly mistrustful look, an almost feral one, and yet, for all the distance he kept himself at, she must have done something right, for, as careful as ever to keep the other side of his face out of view, he took of the mask.

"I assume you would rather climb."

Wait.

"What—?"

He was gone already, diving into the lake, disappearing under its murky surface, all that was left of him the ripples formed when the water closed over his head. To Meg it felt like her heart had just stopped.

"Wait! Where are you going?!"

Fear. It flooded her mind like a tidal wave. And right at that moment, Meg would have run after him and yanked him back to the surface, she would have done just that was it not for this sudden drop she found just beyond the place where he had stood. She dared not step forward and that meant she could do little but reach the torch forward and watch as a silhouette moved underwater, which she did until it moved beyond the light's reach and she lost it from sight. Alone in the cave, Meg now strained her eyes, trying to see passed the many rock structures, waiting for him to reaper.

The answer to what her companion had meant by "climb," however, appeared before he did. Some five, perhaps ten meters ahead, lost amid the dark, half hidden by a group of columns, was a gate. There was a tall, barred gate peeking from the darkness. It went all the way up to the ceiling effectively locking the lake away from from—Meg couldn't tell what that was. There was some kind of structure to the other side of the barred gate, but it was to dark and too distant and—

Meg heart had just jumped. She might be leaning over the limit of that underwater drop, barely avoiding falling right into the lake, and barely able to see anything, but she could hear the sound of something breaking the water and a cough, she even thought she saw a head near the grates, an arm grabbing at them. She thought for a second she saw both those things and then they disappeared. Still, they surely weren't wishful thinking for a few seconds more she could hear a metallic clang, the sound of a chain being rolled up, there were even ripples in the water and they were crashing against her legs.

The gate was going down, she was sure of it, it was sinking into the water, diagonal bar after diagonal bar disappearing until a large space formed up top.

A nod being give at that, Meg looked at the water around her, then at the wall a few steps behind.

Keep to the wall, that's what he had said. Right. She would do that.

A step back, towards where the water barely reached her waist and, one hand always touching the wall, Meg was on her way. It took longer than it should to reach the grates she was sure. She would rather think, however, that upon reaching the grates and grabbing onto them — all the while trying not to think about how deep the water underneath was — her tardiness wasn't the reason why she found the torch light falling on a head of damp, brown hair and an arm firmly anchored to the grates — on a man whose breathing was coming in fast and harsh gulps.

"Are you alright?"

If that dismissive gesture he had just given her was meant to be reassuring, it wasn't convincing at all. Not when he was breathing that harshly. Less so when he didn't seem to be able to catch his breathe enough to tell her to pass him the torch. Which, all things considered, didn't seem like that great an idea.

"I can take it, you know?"

Definitely not that great an idea if he gave up that easily on relieving her of said burden and instead released the grate, letting himself sink back into the water. Or, at least, that was what he meant to do because Meg had just put one hand through the grates and sent it after him. Fingers closing over his shoulder, she yanked him straight back up.

"Should you be doing that?"

Her answer was a snort. A very eloquent snort. And just like that he was gone, the grate left to rock as if he had kicked it to move away. It took a pair of seconds for Meg to see a head break through the surface, to see him pull himself to this half submerged path and sit, hands running over his hair, mask being put back in place, and it took a few moments more for Meg to remember she was supposed to be climbing the grate.

She would reach the very top at about the same time her companion stopped at the top of the pier, hand outstretched to receive the torch. Which he did, before Meg jumped, before she landed safely and easily over the large, squared stone slabs that made the pier's floor, and turned to find a wide-eyed man staring at her, hand held towards the vacuum she had crossed.

Meg had to blink. The torch now rested on the sconce on the wall, its light drawing an almost perfect circle around them and offering no cover at all when the hand that had been offered to her retreated, going to rub the back of her companion's neck. Wasn't it for the soot still clinging to her nails reminding her of the Opera House and the fire and Christine, Meg might have thought that as endearing. Perhaps, it was even so. And if it wasn't, at the very least, it made her smile.

"You thought I couldn't make that jump," Meg said, her voice subdued despite her clear teasing. "You know I'm a ballerina."

As for him, out of breathe as he was, that comment made him narrow his eyes.

"I live down here," he spoke through harsh breaths. "You thought I might drown?"

"Hardly the—"

Same thing, Meg would have finished. Those few words of his, however, seemed to have so winded him that rather than pressing her with that ill-humored eyebrow raised look he was giving her, he swayed, he reached to grab her shoulder, eyes losing all focus, head hanging. A second was all it took for him to shake that off and release her, going to sit on the stair at the very top of the pier, just at the boundary draw by the light, head resting against one hand.

Her feet feeling like they were diving into a poll of water every time she took a new step, Meg was right behind. That wasn't to say, however, that she knew what to do. No. She didn't know what to do at all. She was here looking at this long set of stairs on top of which he sat, she was glancing at the vacuum to the side of the pier and a rope diving towards the water at the bottom, she was looking back, passed the grate and towards the underground lake and the light that was there, she was—She was staring at companion's back, watching his shoulders rise and fall and asking herself if she should sit or wait or reach for his shoulder. The last one might be her go to but for the memory of having her hand slapped away or grabbed by his efforts to keep her at bay.

Wait, then.

Wait was the answer.

And Meg waited. With, for once, real walls with real blocks of stone around her, the torch being held by a metal ring to her back and the sound of water running passed the pier, she knelled and sat on her legs. She did so and watched the shoulders under that white shirt of his move up and down, she heard those gasps for air break into cough. When her words found a way back to her, she was leaning forward, head low so she could see up to his face, and what she said was no longer a suggestion.

"We have to go back."

A head shake. Hand falling away from his eyes, forcing himself to go straight, the Opera's Ghost looked down the stairway and the brick tunnel leading away.

"That—"

He had to stop to cough and breathe.

"That leads to the Opera," he forced himself to say, his voice visibly struggling. Not even the hand he had raised to point at the raised path leading away from the pier seemed all that stable. "Take the torch, follow the canal."

A pause. A long one this time while he focused on breathing, hand running along the marks on his neck.

"There will be a musical note marking a corridor to the side," he finally managed to struggle out. "Follow it. Your mother should be somewhere along that path. She knows the rest of the way."

Meg's eyes had gone round, for the first time her attention rushed towards the tunnel and the path going away from the pier rather than following the forceful movement of his shoulders. Then, something in his words hit her and that something made her turn back.

"You are staying here?" she probed, disbelieving, and leaning forward again. "Maman—"

She didn't have time to finish, not before her companion dropped his hand and looked her way.

"I'm staying, Little Giry," he now told her, a hint of irritation to his tone. "Because I don't wish to face Antoinette at all."

Meg's expression fell. Watching his attention slid back to the tunnel, however, her lips parted.

"But—"

She wouldn't move passed that. She wouldn't have a chance to. Her companion had just gone straight. Teeth bared, a pinched expression that brought back this memory of a terrified Christine's telling her of his temper, and the man her best friend had taken for an angel turned her way. What happened next—What happened next was a flash.

Meg being rushed down the stairs to the pier, pulled by a hand locked around her wrist. She watched the torch sizzle out as it was shoved flame-first into the canal she had just entered. She was being lead towards the now rising grate in what should have been complete darkness and wasn't.

Meg felt her stomach drop as she looked back, towards the risen path she should have followed, suddenly certain that absolutely frightening expression she had just witnessed had absolutely nothing to do with her.

There was light coming from the path that was meant to lead to the Opera House.

There were voices that were no longer echoes.

Whoever had been on that tunnel over the lake was coming straight at them.