Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts #2)(9)

Mom chuckles. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

“The bodies in the Catacombs were transferred here from other graves,” explains Pauline.

Transferred.

Meaning dug up.

“Oh, I do not like this,” says Jacob. “I do not like this at all.”

“Today,” says Dad, “the Catacombs are home to more than six million bodies.”

I nearly trip on the steps. I must have heard him wrong.

“That’s three times the living population of Paris,” adds Mom cheerfully.

I feel a little queasy. Jacob glowers at me as if to say, This is your fault.

We finally reach the bottom of the stairs, and the Veil washes up around me like a tide, dragging at my limbs. I push back, trying to keep my footing as Jacob draws closer.

“We are not crossing here,” he says, all the humor gone from his voice. “Do you hear me, Cass? We are not. Crossing. Here.”

He doesn’t have to tell me.

I have no desire to find out what’s on the other side of this particular Veil.

Especially when I see what’s ahead of us.

I’d been hoping for a large space, like one of those giant caves with stalactites—stalagmites? I can never remember which is which—but instead there is only a tunnel.

The ground is a mix of rough stone and packed dirt, and the walls look dug by hand. Here and there, water drips from the low ceiling. Electric lights have been spaced out, casting dim yellow pools among patches of shadow.

“Well, this is cozy,” says Mom.

I swallow hard as we start walking. The only way out is through, I tell myself.

“Or, you know, back up those stairs,” says Jacob.

Come on, I think. Where’s your sense of adventure?

“I must have left it up on street level,” he mutters.

Mom and Dad walk on ahead, narrating for the cameras. I glance over at Pauline, who’s focused on where she’s stepping, careful to avoid the shallow pools of water, the muddy dirt patches between stones.

I lean toward her and whisper, “I expected more bones.”

“We haven’t made it to the tombs yet,” she explains, her voice echoing off the low ceiling. “These are only the galleries. Relics from the days when these tunnels served less grim purposes.”

The tunnel twists and turns, sometimes wide enough for two people, and sometimes so narrow we have to walk single file. The Veil presses against my back like a hand, urging me forward.

“You know the only thing worse than a haunted place?” asks Jacob.

What?

“One you can’t easily leave.”

You don’t know it’s haunted, I think, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

“How can it not be?” he counters. “Have you forgotten George Mackenzie?”

George Mackenzie was one of the ghosts in a cemetery back in Scotland. He didn’t start haunting the graveyard until some vandals disturbed his bones.

That was one man.

But maybe the stories are wrong. Maybe he was already restless.

“And maybe they’re all friendly ghosts down here,” says Jacob, “just having a grand old time.”

Mom pulls out a small box, its surface studded with lights. An EMF meter—a tool meant to register disturbances in the electromagnetic force. Also known as ghosts. She switches it on, but the meter only registers a muffled static as she lets it trail over the wall.

We reach the end of the galleries, and the tunnel opens into a chamber, the walls lined with glass cases, like in a museum. The glass cases hold text and pictures, explaining how the Catacombs came to be. But the thing that catches my eye is the doorway on the other side.

A stone mantel looms over it, the words carved in bold French type.

ARRèTE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT.



“Stop!” recites Dad, his voice bouncing off the close stone walls. “This here is the Empire of the Dead.”

“Not ominous,” mutters Jacob. “Not ominous at all.”

“In the 1700s,” continues Dad, addressing Annette’s camera, “Paris had a problem. The dead outnumbered the living, and the living had no place to put them. The graveyards were overflowing, sometimes literally, and something had to be done. And so the conversion of the Catacombs began.”

“It would take two whole years,” says Mom, “to move the bodies of the dead. Imagine, a nightly procession of corpse-filled wagons rattling through the streets, as six million dead were ferried from their resting places into the tunnels beneath Paris.”

It’s so weird, watching them like this. The way they transform in front of the camera. They don’t become different people, they just become sharper, louder, more colorful. The same song with the volume turned up. Dad, the image of a scholar. Mom, the picture of a dreamer. Together, “the Inspecters” look larger than life. I snap a photo of them being filmed as Dad goes on.

“For decades,” he says, “the bones of the dead littered these tunnel floors, the remains piled haphazardly throughout the vast tomb. It wasn’t until an engineer by the name of Louis-étienne Héricart decided to convert the grave into a place for visitors that the real transformation began and the Empire of the Dead was formed.”

Mom gestures, like a showman pulling back a curtain. “Shall we go in?”