Page 50

CHAPTER FIFTY

BURIED UNALIVE

T here was nowhere to go. There wasn’t an inch of space Percy could back himself into to get away from the thing he had awoken.

To keep still? To lie there trying not to breathe in the flakes of its rotting and aged skin? To will his pulse to stop lest it felt that beat of a living being next to it, that it would undoubtedly want to snuff out?

Or… to get it over with. To let it strangle him, pulverise him, tear him apart—whatever it wanted to do—and be carried swiftly to that savage and ignoble death, thus putting an end to the horror once and for all.

But Joe would be on his way. Percy was sure of that. And so he had little choice but to try to survive this. Because he’d be damned if he’d let Joe find him like that.

Percy took in shallow breaths, the kind that made him feel lightheaded with the lack of oxygen, and he kept still. Very, very still. But he felt a rise in the chest of the thing beneath him, and he wondered at it. It had no lungs to expand, but he knew it was breathing, because he could smell it. He could feel it. It was cold and vile and it ran across his cheek and down his neck like a spider.

The thing shifted. It placed its one free hand against the wall of the coffin. Percy heard it. Rough bone on old satin, the threads tugging at the pull of the movement.

Was it realising? Did it understand?

The other hand, the hand he lay upon, tried to reach out. The shoulder hitched up, softly, then more violently. Should he move? Was it better to give it two hands—let it explore its fate and see what it might do? Perhaps it might think him nothing more than another corpse thrown on top, or an old blanket?

A strange grunt came from the thing, and with it, Percy began to feel an odd affinity with the creature. A sympathy. Percy considered, if he died there, now, he might not come back to life. But this thing… How long was it to spend there beneath the ground, having been so cruelly roused from its eternal slumber? How aware was it of this atrocious fate?

He decided to move, just a little. To brace his feet against the bottom of the casket and arch his back, rolling his shoulder to the outer edge, allowing the thing the opportunity to slip its arm free to explore its confinement.

That was a mistake.

Skeletal fingers clamped down on his neck just as quickly and easily as if the thing had been able to see him lying there. The power of it surprised him, as did the bold and firm intent to kill in a thing that had been dead so long.

Percy had very little to work with. His chest was almost pressed against the lid as it was. Just as if his attacker were human, he went for the face, not the hand, as experience told him a jab to the eyes or throat would disable that hand faster than his yanking at it. But of course, it had no eyes. Percy’s desperate fingers dug into holes and dusty, ragged, leather-like remnants of skin. He sunk his fingers where he could, grasping for anything that might inflict pain, but how do you hurt a dead thing with no nerves?

A strangled cough sounded in Percy’s throat, the noise of his own voice strange in the dark and claustrophobic heat his body gave off in the small cavity. He groaned again, as a subconscious reminder he could even hear anything—that he wasn’t already dead and in Hell.

The bony hand tightened, and he felt the face turn in his grasp, felt the bumps on the surface against his forehead. He flattened his palm and jabbed up, trying to hit a jaw, trying to knock the head off. He heard the teeth smash together, felt a shower of small hard lumps fall onto his shoulder, and heard the thing seethe out an angry breath. The arm beneath him shoved its way to the outer edge of the coffin and wrapped itself around him. The other shoulder came across, its left leg curled over his own, and that toothless mouth chomped at his ear as it gathered all of whatever supernatural strength it possessed, and pressed the lot down on Percy’s neck.

His air was gone—completely cut off—whatever little bit of it had been left in the coffin. His body arched violently as he tried to find some escape, as it begged for oxygen. He ripped at the thing’s wrist, which seemed held to the hand by nothing at all, but it would not give. His chest burned for a breath, as though his lungs must collapse in on themselves.

His other hand pulled at the fingers, too strong, too tight, and he rammed his shoulder up at the creature’s chin. Lifting his chest flat against the lid, he slammed down hard, intent on breaking the ribs of the thing. His adrenaline made the black space scream with movement and white noise, and in the horrifying commotion, he didn’t feel the coffin slip.

The bones cracked beneath him when he came down, just as he’d wanted, but those that broke away left six sharp and jagged points cutting into his back. He wondered, if he did it again, would he pierce his own lung? And what the fuck kind of state would he be in when Joe found him?

Percy tried to turn away from the creature, but his shoulders were too large to turn in the coffin. He slammed his body back down again and cursed the scream that couldn’t escape—the stuck cry that was somehow even worse than the pain that ripped through his back when the old bones sliced into his skin.

He grasped for the hand again, putting all his ebbing strength behind it, but his sweating fingers couldn’t take hold, slipped free, smashing his elbow painfully into the side of the coffin.

And it slid.

And this time, over the agony and terror, he felt it.

The other way now, desperately, Percy rammed his arm back, and he and the skeleton were jostled to the left.

It was precious little hope, but it was hope.

He did it again, back the other way, and there was definite movement. More movement than he could ever have dreamed of. Enough movement to tell him maybe he wasn’t underground at all. Maybe he was still lying on the grass of the cemetery. Of Montmartre Cemetery, only metres from his own home. Only metres, perhaps, from Joe, searching grave to grave for him or for Molly. Within shouting distance, if only he could shout.

Percy kicked his knees up into the lid. Smashed his feet down at the base, trying to knock the old wood through. He slammed two hands up on the lid, and with the last gasp of energy in his dying frame, he turned as much to his left as he could, then rolled his arms and his legs and his entire body against the other side of the coffin with enormous force.

Everything veered away from him in a dizzying tumult that brought his stomach to the clamp at his throat, and he was upside down, over and around, and a sharp pain ripped through his right arm as he smashed down upon it, the coffin and the skeleton and all of it on top of him, then a bang back down onto his back. His hands formed a battering ram, and both forearms came with his fist up against the lid and it flew back.

Frigid air, dank and thick, swept over his skin. It was still dark, still pitch black, but he sensed he was in some sort of room. The excitement of it—of anything but being in that coffin—revived him. He hauled himself over and the full body movement was enough to rip the arm upwards and force the hand to slide. Painfully, ripping into his flesh, it moved around his throat. Percy pushed himself back and flung his body over the edge of the coffin, his back smashing hard into a stone wall. The arm came, still holding on, but it felt light. Not the weight of an entire skeleton. It was but an arm and a head and it disappeared into nothing somewhere about the smashed ribs.

He scrambled to his feet and threw the skeleton and himself into the wall. The bones began to break apart. He felt them fall onto his shoes, heard them clatter across the floor. He did it again and again until the wrist cracked open. Then he sank to his knees, dug both hands under the fingers, and, finally, forced them free.

He smashed them to the floor as he doubled over, holding them there, writhing against the cold ground, as he gasped deep lungfuls of air into his chest. A virulent weakness ran through his body, and he almost let go of the searching fingers in the whole-body relief of being able to breathe again. He collapsed onto the floor, rolled onto his side, his back hitting the coffin. With this came the reminder, something was still inside, maybe soon to reach a second hand for him, and he clambered back up and against the wall, holding those wriggling finger bones all the while, eyes closed against the nothingness, not hearing a sound but the clacking movement of the dead hand.

“Why does this keep happening to me?” he whined.

A few moments longer he stood there, fear and duty fighting exhaustion, then he shoved his own hand down deep in his pocket, relieved to feel the cool steel of his lighter. He flicked it open and held it high, taking in what little there was to see.

He stood upon a stone floor next to the coffin, with its lid hanging open, in a small and rectangular room. There was little space between him and the casket, for the centre of the room was taken up by a large stone plinth, upon which the coffin had rested before he knocked it to the floor in his death throes.

There was nothing more, except a stone ceiling and stone walls, and one black door at the far end.

He was in a tomb. A small tomb, designed to hold a single body.

He made for the door, still gripping the bony appendage in his hand. He searched around for a handle, but there was none. He slammed into the door with his shoulder and hit cold steel. He almost smacked a hand down on it, called out for help, but then realised… What if Molly were just outside? Waiting right there with Tareq and Waleed?

It went against his nature to do nothing, but he knew it was wiser to take the time to think his options through.

Percy threw the hand down and snapped the coffin lid shut on it. He took a seat on top to keep it closed, as he could easily see the latches that would have kept it sealed had been broken in the fall. He lit a cigarette and deeply replenished his lungs with unsavoury air.

He wondered briefly at the necessity of being able to lock a coffin from the outside. At the person who had designed that coffin and what their train of thought had been when they screwed the latch on there. Presumably they’d known it was going into a tomb, to sit here on its plinth forever, all alone.

And that idea drove one further moment’s reflection.

A tomb of their own. Right in the centre of Paris. Who might have been able to afford that?

Just whose tomb was he in?

He set to studying the grey edge of the stone podium behind him, holding his lighter close. He slid to the end of the coffin, keeping the lid down always, but running his eyes all along the expanse, searching. At the end, he was forced to stand and stretch, keeping one foot on top, but from there he found the front of the plinth and moved the light of his flame close.

He saw it written there, but still his fingers traced the etched lines in disbelief, as though he needed to prove to himself that it was real and solid.

He stared at the words.

His eyes flitted back to the coffin.

He read the words over again.

Edgar Degas .

His eyes latched onto the coffin.

He whispered, “Oh, no. What have I done?”

Percy fell to his knees and wrenched the lid of the casket back open.