Chapter 9: The Kingdom of Death
The house was empty one Sunday afternoon, and Alice could finally execute her plan. Her father had paperwork at the prefecture, and her mother was attending an invitation. Only Heloise the housekeeper remained, and she minded no one's business but her own. Alice filled a traveling bag with tools and supplies, and packed flasks of water and tin canisters of bread and cheese, in case she became lost in the catacombs' unfamiliar tunnels and needed the food to survive. When everything was ready, she wrapped herself in a coarse, woolen cloak, took up the traveling bag and a hurricane lamp, and left the house.
She paid a hansom cab to take her a few blocks from the Place Denfert-Rochereau, walking the rest of the way in order to conceal her destination from the driver. At this hour, most people were resting at home, and the weather had turned bitter cold, sending idle ramblers indoors.
The air at the cave-like entrance to the tomb was still, as it had been when she'd arrived with her father the morning after the murder. She could not forget the mysterious singing that had emanated from the crypt, and tilted her head to listen. No sound came from the grave but the gentle pulsing of air, like what one hears when putting one's ear to a conch shell. Glancing over her shoulder to be sure she wasn't seen, she slipped unnoticed into the Kingdom of Death.
First there were an unremarkable set of stairs that took her beneath the city. The icy wind blowing in the street immediately subsided, and the silence of the tomb settled like a thick blanket around her. Her footsteps were the only sound, echoing with a slow rhythm like dripping water as she descended the staircase. The stairs were so dark that she had to light her lamp before even reaching the bottom. At last the steep steps gave way to a long, straight corridor, although Alice couldn't see very far into the darkness ahead of her. Her own heartbeat roared in her ears in the deadly silence. She followed the narrow tunnel for a long time, pausing only to read her compass, which gave her direction as due west. When she reached an intersection, she stopped and set her bag and lantern on the earthen floor to carefully consider her choice. Which path should she take? One plate at the Bibliothèque had shown a narrow tunnel winding from the ossuary due north under the Seine. She again consulted her compass and finally chose a path.
The corridor continued for at least a mile without any intersections, but it did not take a straight path either. When Alice examined her compass again, she was surprised to find that she had been completely turned around from the direction in which she had set out. Should she go back? Where was she?
The General Inspector of Quarries, an administration founded to make sense of this underground maze, had placed plaques at intervals along the walls to provide some direction for the IGC engineers. Alice's eyes traveled slowly along those walls in search of such a marker, and this is how she realized the full horror of where she was.
She was in a grave.
What she had presumed to be smooth, round stones protruding from the walls were actually human skulls, set in a mosaic of neatly piled bones—stacks of them, from the floor to the ceiling, and she did not know how far back the masses extended before meeting the true wall of the tomb. Their flesh had long since been eaten by worms, leaving nothing but yellowed bone. The dreadful skeletons lined the sides of the tunnel for as far as she could see in either direction.
The victims of the plague.
Some things are tolerable when by themselves, but inflict upon the mind an extraordinary horror when they appear in hordes. Such was the disturbing effect of these mile-long piles of corpses. Alice Mifroid, who prided herself on her background in human biology, was terribly sickened by the scene. Gradually she became aware of an ancient odor pervading the crypt—the sweet but nauseating smell of festering death. It suffocated her, invading her nostrils like a filthy cockroach.
Stifling the urge to retch, she continued with cautious steps.
"Need directions, Ma'm'sell?" laughed a man's voice from the shadows.
Her fear turned to panic, and she swung the lantern frantically, straining in the darkness to find the source of his drunken laughter. "Who's there?" she called, terrified even more by the uneven waver in her voice echoing in the tomb.
When there was no answer, she lifted the severed Punjab lasso from her bag. It was her only defense; foresight had not inspired her to bring a weapon. Until this critical moment, she had forgotten her father's caution about dangerous "vagabonds" hiding in the catacombs.
Suddenly a ragged beast reached for her from a side passage that she hadn't seen. The man had her in his grasp before her mind even registered the attack, and her bag and lantern were thrown to the floor.
"Aha! What's this?" The man laughed as he brought her closer. His wild eyes were red and watery from intoxication, and the spidery, crimson veins of an alcoholic were spread across his face. His breath stank of liquor and human filth.
Alice struggled not to faint from fear or disgust.
"Oh, what a lovely girl. Are you virginal? Never mind, I'll find out!" He laughed again, gassing poor Alice with his putrid breath.
She fought weakly and managed to free her arm. "Let me go, or I'll… kill you!" she demanded, brandishing the lasso.
It was, of course, a pathetic threat. She didn't know what to do with the small piece of rope besides wave it menacingly over her head like a driver cracking his whip. But the drunkard's eyes grew very wide, and his features contorted in actual terror. He all but dropped her onto the floor and slowly backed away. "You… know him!" He turned and fled, running wildly in the opposite direction and shouting madly, "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"
But Alice heard nothing he said, for as soon as she found herself free from his grip, she seized her belongings and raced down the hallway, away from her captor.
After so many turns and corners among the stacks of mortal remains, she grew tired and slowed her pace, estimating that she had put a considerable distance between herself and her attacker. The hallway behind her was dark and deadly silent.
As she walked, she thought she heard another voice, coming faintly through the walls. Hoping to avoid an encounter like the one she had just experienced, she turned down the flame of her lantern until she hardly saw her own shoes. This way, her light was less noticeable to anyone hiding in the shadows. She continued walking, and the voice became more audible in the encompassing silence. It was only one voice, though—not two—so she wondered to whom the man was speaking—or if this morbid labyrinth would drive her to insanity and she would talk to the dead, too. Far ahead, light spilled out from another hallway. As Alice approached the light, the voice grew more distinct.
It was reciting a Latin prayer.
She peeked into the hallway and was amazed to find—not another tunnel, but a large, circular room. Like the halls, it too was lined with human remains in some strange and ancient pattern. The bones shone eerily bright and white in the lamplight, and when Alice touched the wall experimentally, she found it to be glazed by a calcium fluid oozing from the geological formations above the catacombs. The glaze had hardened and fused the bones together, preserving their horrible shape through the centuries and giving them the appearance of glossy, translucent flesh.
Surrounded by these mummified corpses, a primeval altar stood in the center of the rotunda with a blackened grail perched in its center. Although the only light came from an opulent candelabrum atop the altar, the lustrous walls reflected the light from the flames and created the impression of daylight. Before the altar knelt a Carthusian monk, absorbed in his supplications. He rested his forehead on his clasped hands. The cowl over his head concealed his face from her view.
Alice quietly entered the room and set down her bag and lantern just inside. Not knowing what else to do, she knelt beside her traveling bag behind the monk and folded her hands in prayer, listening to the worshiper's beautiful incantation. The monk reminded her of calm evenings spent in the Church of Saint Louis d'Antin. Perhaps, at last, here was someone who could assist her to find her way safely!
Like a song, the heartfelt prayer lifted the souls of the two worshipers with its magnificent melody. The man's voice articulated the Latin with genuine emotion, sometimes beseeching with thunderous desperation, other times imploring sorrowfully in barely a whisper. His voice sometimes caught in his throat, and he would pause to swallow his tears. After a quarter of an hour, the monk grew quiet and made his last prayer nearly in silence. Although he whispered in French, Alice couldn't hear him well enough to know what he had requested from his Lord. Finally he raised his voice again with a sigh, to utter melodiously "Amen."
Harmonizing her voice with his, she reverently repeated the word.
But it was obvious that, until then, the monk had thought he was alone. With her voice still echoing in the chamber, he leapt in such startled excitement that his hood fell back, and he turned to face his intruder with a dramatic sweep of his robes. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" he snarled.
Alice could not speak, nor even scream, so extreme was her terror. What towered over her was not the gentle and aged countenance of a Carthusian monk. Rather, the beast before her better resembled one of the corpses rotting away in this horrifying tomb! She knew it was impossible, but her eyes did not deceive her: The face held no nose at all, and the eye sockets were as empty and as dark as night. The monk's cowl had fallen to reveal a bald scalp, with only a few locks of black hair shooting out of it like thin, limp strings. It was no trick of the light—the atrium's luminescence obliterated every shadow. The skeleton fisted its bony fingers in fury as Alice backed away, whimpering in fear. Reaching the entrance to the rotunda, she turned and escaped into the hallway from whence she came.
She ran, not knowing where she went, for she had left her traveling bag and lantern in the rotunda. In her haste to get away, she took many twists and turns and entered adjoining corridors when she found them. At last she came to a halt, desperately catching her breath in the crypt's stale air.
When she could think again, she realized the rashness of her flight. How would she find her way out? She would need her bag, especially her lantern. Perhaps the monk has gone, and she could get her things in safety. But which was the way back to the rotunda? She turned around and around. The darkness was now complete; she could not see even her own hands before her face! Panic again gripped her heart—she was lost in a dark grave!
She walked in a random direction, then realized that without a light, she wouldn't be able to find the intersecting passageways. She would have to… how repulsive!… she would have to keep one hand against the walls of bones, and feel them, so she would know when she came to an intersection. "They are just bones, like any that I've seen at the seminary laboratory," she said to calm herself, although this certainly was not like her studies at all. She reached out in the blackness and felt her fingers come in contact with something clammy… and extremely fragile. With extra pressure, the skull she was touching collapsed with a popping sound, and pieces of the remains scattered audibly to the floor. Alice exhaled slowly, waited for her jumping heart to steady itself. She continued walking, with her fingers lightly against the wall of bones. But when our vision is hampered by darkness, the tender fingerpads compensate by magnifying in equal measure the topography we touch. For Alice, it was horrible—a grotesque variety of surfaces. Her fingers lodged in a slippery eye socket, or between some other small, slimy joints, or were scratched by a toothy jaw. Every sickening detail was intensified by her loss of vision. Disgusted by the sensations of death, she could only control her racing heart and continue walking.
At last she thought she found an intersection. She probed with her fingers and found only empty space—no awful skulls or other remains. She stepped into the vacant space, then reached for the wall again to continue her exploration of the new hallway. Her hand brushed against something cold, and she began to walk.
But the bones tightened around her fingers, and more bones grabbed her wrist! Before she could react, they pulled her forwards into the darkness. She had no doubt that the Dead were reaching for her, trying to claim her as one of their own. A scream ripped from her throat as the chill of the skeleton's hands crept up her own arm, freezing her flesh. The hand on her wrist released her and covered her mouth—the fingers smelled of rotting flesh—and the disembodied limbs pulled her towards the wall as she fainted away.