Free The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) by Jeremy Bates

from ahead.
“Deep here. Over my boots.”
    He was right. Soon the water was shin-high,
then knee-high, wetting the tapered folds of my pants. It swirled
around my legs like miso soup.
    “How much farther?” Danièle called.
    “Almost there,” Rob shouted back. Then:
“Holy shit!”
    The panic in his voice made me freeze
mid-step.
    “What is it?” I said.
    “Something just brushed my leg!”
    “Fuck off.”
    “Swear to God! It was long and slimy.”
    A chill shot down my spine as I thought of
fanged eel-like creatures and poisonous snakes.
    Rob was maybe thirty feet in front of us,
little more than a silhouette. I couldn’t see Pascal.
    “Arg!” Rob cried. “It touched me again!”
    He began running, splashing madly.
    “Go!” Danièle said, pushing me forward.
    I took her hand and ran, or at least I tried
to; it was more of a pigs-on-ice madcap dash. The water dragged at
my legs, my helmet chafed the ceiling, the knuckles of my free hand
skinned the wall. I kept waiting for a prehistoric monstrosity to
latch onto my calf or snip off a toe.
    Then the water was back to shin-level. Rob
and Pascal were shouting, urging us on. My eyes darted between the
frothing water and Danièle, my headlamp jerking every which way,
until we stumbled onto the mushy ground. I keeled over, as if I’d
been poleaxed in the gut. Danièle fell to her knees, a light patina
of sweat on her forehead.
    Rob and Pascal tittered like loons.
    It clicked for me, then Danièle as well. Her
eyes flared. “ Ta Gueule! ” she shouted, scrambling to her
feet. She smashed into Rob, pounding him on the head with her fist.
Pascal attempted to pull her away unsuccessfully.
    I might have laughed at this absurd theater,
but my feet were in too much pain. I’d stubbed my left big toe on a
rock, and it was already swelling and bruising. I’d broken the same
one a few years back in New York, catching it on a door frame,
making me wonder if I’d re-broken it. I’d also sliced the pad of my
right heel. I couldn’t tell how deep the cut was, but it was
bleeding freely and stung like a son of a bitch.
    Nevertheless, I hadn’t brought a first-aid
kit, and I didn’t want to ask the others if they had one, so I
pulled on my socks and shoes, then stood, wincing. Danièle had
stopped her assault and was now chewing Rob and Pascal out.
    “Loosen up, Danny,” Rob told her. He’d moved
a safe distance away and was dumping water from his boots. “Can’t
you take a joke?”
    “You do not think! What if we fell and
cracked our heads open?”
    “Gimme a break.”
    “It could happen!”
    “And so could getting locked in a sauna and
getting lobstered alive. Or rolling your ride-on mower and getting
chewed like summer turf. Or walking past a construction site
and—”
    “Oh, shut up!”
    “If you think like that—”
    “Really, Rosbif. Shut your mouth. I do not
want to hear your talk.”
    “My talk?”
    She was turning red.
    “ Allons-y ,” Pascal said quietly,
putting his arm around Rob’s waist and leading him down the
passageway.
    “I will kill him,” Danièle stated when they
were gone.
    “He’s not that bad,” I said.
    “He is such a loser.”
    “He’s sort of funny.”
    She glared at me.
    I held up my hands. “I said ‘sort of.’”
    “Because you only have to see him for a few
hours. You know, he is married to my sister? I have to know him my
entire life.”
    “Yeah, I heard.”
    “He told you?”
    “In passing.”
    “I will kill him,” she repeated, shaking her
head. She picked up her backpack and shrugged it on. “We should go.
We are almost there.”
    I frowned. “Almost where?” We had been in
the catacombs less than an hour. Based on what I’d been told, there
was no way we could be anywhere near the video camera with the
mysterious footage.
    Before I could ask for clarification,
however, Danièle started away, leaving me to bring up the rear.
     
     

Chapter 14
    Our destination, it turned out, was called