Spectacle(76)

Nathalie ran to the door the way dreams forced you to run—hardly moving, never quick enough, too sluggish to escape whatever it was you were fleeing.

Finally she reached the door. With great effort she pushed it open and ran through the door only to find herself holding a lamp and standing in the maze of the Catacombs. It was silent, so silent that she heard only her heartbeat and nothing more. She took lefts and rights and went straight but couldn’t get anywhere; everything looked the same.

Footsteps behind her.

Nathalie started to run but it didn’t matter, couldn’t matter. She didn’t know how to leave. When she turned around, all she saw was darkness. The footsteps got closer.

She couldn’t see anything but blackness.

Then she stopped.

She extended her right arm to the side. Through the dim light she saw an orderly stack of bones—skulls, leg bones, arm bones—several meters back. She extinguished the lamp and curled up next to the dismembered skeletons, resting her head on the dirt.

The footsteps got closer and closer. She shut her eyes tightly but soon a glow shone through her eyelids.

She opened her eyes but was no longer in the Catacombs. Again she was on her back, this time staring at the sky. Maman and Papa came into view. Maman held a withered yellow bouquet and Papa clasped her vial of catacomb dirt in his hand. She sat up.

“I’m not dead!” she yelled. This time it wasn’t mute.

She woke up screaming.





35


The scent of cooked cherries drifted into Nathalie’s bedroom the next morning, an airy counterpoint to the horrors of the previous day.

Nathalie took her time getting ready, then opted for one more task before joining Maman in the kitchen.

The catacomb dirt. The stupid, meaningless soil that had cost a man his life and nearly cost her own.

Nathalie didn’t care to carry it around anymore, yet she didn’t want to get rid of it, either. She took the small box from her satchel and put it on her bookshelf, next to the bird skeleton. It could stay there.

She took the little jar with the sand and the shells from Agnès and put it on her nightstand. Her most treasured possession deserved its own place.

Maman had a baguette and a bowl of fresh fruit waiting for her. “I have some good news,” she said with a tentative smile. “We received a telegram. Papa is coming home much sooner than expected! Sometime this week.”

“He is?” Nathalie grinned on a day when she didn’t expect to smile or laugh. “This is the happiest news all summer. I need happy news. So do you.” She gave Maman a kiss on the cheek and sat down to eat.

As much as her mother tried to be cheerful, she couldn’t hide her weariness. And Nathalie didn’t blame her. Maman was calmer than Nathalie expected, both last night and as they talked about it again now, but it was obvious she hadn’t slept. Nathalie hadn’t, either.

“I haven’t read the newspaper in days,” Nathalie said as she cleaned the table after breakfast. “Do we still have the old ones?”

Maman spooned jam into one of the jars. “Ma bichette, are you sure that’s a good idea? Monsieur Patenaude said you needn’t worry about doing the morgue report until you’re ready to return. If you’re ready.”

“I will be ready, maybe in a few days.” Nathalie’s tone was muted, resigned. “I can pretend to think of something else, but we both know that won’t work.”

Maman sealed a jar, then sighed. “They’re in the rack beside Papa’s chair.”

Nathalie retrieved the newspapers and settled down at the kitchen table. She unfolded an edition from earlier in the week.

The one about Agnès.

Splashed across the front page was an artist’s depiction of Agnès’s grieving mother with the headline:

Heartrending Scene Inside Morgue



Her own heart shattered before she read another word.

Beside the illustration was a letter from the Dark Artist.

Dear Paris,

My work continues to improve, and the crowds continue to show their support for my exhibits. I couldn’t be more pleased.

I do believe I’m just getting started.

Yours,

The Dark Artist



His written words crawled on her skin like insects.

Agnès, an exhibit.

No. She was her friend.

Why, hello there.

It was both good and not good that she’d forgotten most of what had happened with the Dark Artist in the Catacombs. She remembered the words she’d used to describe it all, but they rang hollow in her memory, as if she’d recited someone else’s story. And what if she’d left something out? Now her imagination would fill in the blanks.

Did he touch me?

She let go of the uninvited question with a shudder. Her fingers climbed to a miniscule cut on her cheek. From the tip of the Dark Artist’s blade, as she recalled telling Christophe. She’d had worse scratches from an overly frisky Stanley when he was a kitten. Yet she’d somehow escaped a murderer who sliced women.

Sliced Agnès.

Was it the same knife?

He’d sliced Agnès from cheek to collarbone. But all Nathalie had was a cut on her cheek and a rip in her satchel.

Despite him wanting her blood.

She exhaled loudly, inviting a concerned glance from Maman. “I’m reading the article about Agnès,” she said, smoothing out the paper. She resumed reading.