Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts） - Victoria Schwab Page 0,10

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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?”

“I think I’ll wait here,” says Jacob, suddenly fascinated by the glass cases.

Suit yourself, I think.

I follow the crew forward without looking back. And even though I can’t hear Jacob’s steps, I know he’s there, on my heels, close as a shadow as we step through into a world of bones.

The bones are everywhere.

They line the dirt walls, a sea of skeletons rising almost to the ceiling. They form patterns, rippling designs—a wave of skulls set on a backdrop of femurs, the morbid decorations stacked as high as I can see. Empty eye sockets stare out, and jaws hang open. Some of the bones are broken, crumbling, and others look startlingly fresh. If you squint hard enough, the pieces disappear, and you’re left with a pattern of wavering grays that could be stone instead of bone.

Our shadows dance on the walls, and I take photo after photo, knowing the camera will only capture what’s here, only see the real. But right now, the real is strange enough. Strange, and chilling, and almost—beautiful.

“And horrifying,” says Jacob. “Don’t forget horrifying.”

We round a corner, and as if on cue, the EMF meter in Mom’s hand erupts from static into a high-pitched whine that echoes through the tunnels like a scream.

Mom jumps, and quickly switches the unit back off.

“Well,” she says, her voice a little shaky. “I think that says enough.”

I shiver, unsettled.

Even Pauline is looking tense.

“Gee, what could possibly be making her nervous?” muses Jacob. “Is it the fact we’re five stories underground? Or that this tunnel is roughly the size of a coffin? Or could it be the fact we’re surrounded by six million bodies?”

Six million—it’s a number so big it doesn’t seem real.

Two hundred and seventy—that’s a better number. Still a lot, but countable. Two hundred and seventy is the number of bones you have when you’re born. Some of them fuse together as you grow, so by the time you’re an adult, you have two hundred and six (thanks, Science class).

So, if the Catacombs are home to more than six million bodies, how many bones?

Six million times two hundred and six is—a lot. Too many to capture in a photo. But picture this: It’s enough bones to stack five feet high throughout every one of the tunnels under Paris. An Empire of the Dead as large as the city, the bodies unmarked and unknown.

Jacob begins to sing, and it takes me a solid thirty seconds to realize what he’s singing.

“… the foot bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone …”

“Are you serious?” I whisper.

He throws up his hands. “Just trying to have a sense of humor about this.”

We wind our way through the tunnels, the locked iron gates converting the maze around us into a clear path. I wonder how easy it would be to get lost without those doors.

“Do you see this line overhead?” asks Dad, the question directed at the cameras as much as us.

I stare up and see a thick black mark