Catacombs Read online

  CATACOMBS

  By John Farris

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2008 Penny Dreadful, LLC

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

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  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  John Lee Farris (born 1936) is an American writer, known largely for his work in the southern Gothic genre. He was born 1936 in Jefferson City, Missouri, to parents John Linder Farris (1909–1982) and Eleanor Carter Farris (1905–1984). Raised in Tennessee, he graduated from Central High School in Memphis and attended Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis . His first wife, Kathleen, was the mother of Julie Marie, John, and Jeff Farris; his second wife, Mary Ann Pasante, was the mother of Peter John ("P.J.") Farris.

  Apart from his vast body of fiction, his work on motion picture screenplays includes adaptations of his own books (i.e., The Fury), original scripts, and adaptations of the works of others (such as Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man). He wrote and directed the film Dear Dead Delilah in 1973. He has had several plays produced off-Broadway, and also paints and writes poetry. At various times he has made his home in New York, southern California and Puerto Rico; he now lives near Atlanta, Georgia.Book List

  Author's Website – Furies & Fiends

  Other John Farris books currently available or coming soon from Crossroad Press:

  All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By

  Catacombs

  Dragonfly

  Fiends

  King Windom

  Minotaur

  Nightfall

  Phantom Nights

  Sacrifice

  Sharp Practice

  Shatter

  Solar Eclipse

  Son of the Endless Night

  Soon She Will Be Gone

  The Axeman Cometh

  The Captors

  The Fury

  The Fury and the Power

  The Fury and the Terror

  The Ransome Women

  Unearthly (formerly titled The Unwanted)

  When Michael Calls

  Wildwood

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  Dedication

  Catacombs is dedicated to

  Mary Ann,

  Julie,

  John,

  Jeff,

  and Peter.

  My friends, partners, and fellow explorers

  of adventures unknown,

  lives not yet lived.

  The pictographs in this book have been adapted from drawings made by Jonathan Kingdon and published in East African Mammals: An Atlas of Evolution in Africa, Volume 3, Part A (Carnivores) by Academic Press, Inc.

  THE DIARY OF ERIKA WELLER

  March 19/0930 hours

  Day 173

  For the first time since we arrived nearly six months ago, I feel afraid of the Catacombs: this enormous burial ground of an elite society, carved into our familiar rock of Earth. Yet they are as distant from what we regard as human as the alien life forms of a planet a million light years across the galaxy.

  The Priests of Zan are not dead: I believe they will never die. We have just begun, after exhausting exploration, to grasp the idea of their continuing power, a mastery of eternity. They stand mute but dreaming in a reliquary of their fabulous civilization. All has been revealed to us; too little we understand. They have not been waiting for us. We don't matter. We are transient, vulnerable, inferior, possessed by the smoke of their dreams, helpless to divine the meaning of their continuing existence.

  Of one thing I am certain: They live on through the power of the bloodstones. And the bloodstones should never have been disturbed, despite their accessibility and immeasurable value. We should have approached them with the care and caution of anthropologists studying a new species, not as a group of intoxicated treasure-hunters.

  Jack Portline is dead, the back of his head shattered by repeated blows from a mattock.

  He had been missing for five days. We found his body in a previously uninvestigated chamber on the seventh level of the Catacombs, near the Repository. He was dragged there in a clumsy attempt to hide the remains, but the trail of blood, still fresh after several days, wasn't difficult to follow even in the available light from the central core. (It is worth noting again, despite the horrible circumstances, that nothing seems to spoil in the Catacombs. Fresh milk remains fresh after weeks without refrigeration. Growth–hair, fingernails–is severely retarded.)

  We concluded that Jack had surprised his assailant at work, looting the Repository. There was a small pool of blood on the stone floor near one of the crystal vaults, and more spots on the vault itself. From this vault as many as fifty bloodstones have been removed: Chips and I didn't take the time to count all of the empty sockets. One man could carry, without difficulty, that many stones down the mountain in a rucksack. They would weigh only about seventeen ounces. In what passes for civilization in our time, the red diamonds would have a value well in excess of one hundred million dollars. So much for motive.

  One of our friends and associates is demented, a murderer. Which one? There was nothing to do but summon all the members of the Chapman/Weller expedition, by beeper, from the depths where they have been working in numerous chambers of the Catacombs, and from the base camp on the mountain. It will be hours before we are sure who else is missing; and that man will have Jack Portline's blood on his hands.

  We are in the expedition's "common room," if indeed you can describe space the size of a zeppelin hangar, hewn from solid rock, as a room. Level One, Sector One (our destination) of the Catacombs, which we chose because there are no tombs here, no open feline eyes to study our every move from deep within their flawless crystal sarcophagi. In a lonely area of Sector One that takes up as much space as a tablecloth on a football field are the Mylar mushrooms that comprise our home in the Catacombs: privacy for work, study, recuperation. The costly paraphernalia of expeditions on spaceship Earth. Cadmium fuel cells, fluid recyclers, field-grade microelectronics for every type of data processing.

  Chips is asleep on the pneumatic mattress next to mine, a hand flung out against my side for companionship, and reassurance. I know I should sleep now, before the next ordeal, but I can't. In the beginning, months ago, was the agony of acclimatization: The Catacombs lie many thousands of feet above the migraine level for all but the most seasoned and hardy alpinists, and few of our middle-aged scientists qualified as such despite rigorous preconditioning before the expedition was assembled. After we adjusted to the altitude, sleep was still a fitful experience at best, disturbed by the nervous excitement from our continuing, phenomenal discoveries. In a place where there is no day or night, only an unvarying level of illumination several foot candles brighter than the light of the full moon, we've all wanted to work beyond our capacities to make the most of the available time. Sleep and food too often seem to be expendable, and we've suffered from this neglect ourselves.

  Now, after weeks of the eerie silence of tombs, there are earthshocks, occurring more frequently duri
ng the past few days. We are, after all, in the Great Rift Valley, an area of ongoing seismic activity, of irresistible forces slowly splitting a continent apart. It's as if the bloodstones are the heart of this mountain, a heart which has been severely damaged by the transgressions of a greedy maniac. I think it may be too late already, but we must try to get the stones back to where they belong. . .

  Continued:

  By 1400 hours we were all assembled. All but two: Jack Portline and his murderer. I must say Chips did not seem surprised. But he was deeply shaken by guilt and rage at himself for having twice placed his trust in a man whose essential faithlessness is well known to the world. Privately I reminded him that we'd never had a choice. Yet I too feel guilty. Is a unique discovery like the Catacombs worth the bargain we are forced to make, the senseless death of a colleague?

  After only six months our work here is drastically incomplete, but clearly none of us has the heart, or the stamina, to continue for now. Our sensors and computers now predict the likelihood of a major volcanic eruption; temperatures have been rising slowly inside the Catacombs, from a previously consistent 62.8 degrees. The decision was made to pack it in. Chips has gone down to the base camp to signal for helicopters. He feels it is best not to say anything about the murder, or the theft of the bloodstones, until he can speak to Kinyati.

  Jumbe Kinyati will see to it that justice is done. And quickly.

  Day 174

  Time for only a few notes; but the habit dies hard. And I'm concerned that these tapes of mine might be the only surviving evidence of the Chapman/Weller expedition.

  The helicopters, both personnel carriers, came early, just after sunrise. One landed at the base camp and another in the cul-de-sac outside. We had removed our equipment and computerized data from the chambers–and Jack Portline's body, sewn into a sleeping blanket and weighing more than the rest of our gear put together. Now there is virtually no trace of our months-long sojourn in the Catacombs.

  The Tanzanian Air Force in charge of the airlift, a bearded man named Timbaroo, ignored Chips' protests and loaded all of our data into a single helicopter. He and his soldiers obviously came equipped to make short work of the evacuation. They carried portable oxygen with them to nullify the effects of the extremely thin, cold air. And they had guns, for which there was no necessity. None of us were allowed aboard; the helicopter took off almost immediately. It's a valuable find, of course, unprecedented, and the government is jealous of its prerogatives, but this amounts to confiscation–or outright theft.

  When Chips continued to argue, too vehemently, with the general, he was placed under arrest, at gunpoint, and taken away to the base camp. It was as if they had intended from the beginning to make us prisoners.

  I was only a few yards from the entrance to the Catacombs. They weren't watching me. I slipped back inside. By now I've been missed. Will they search the Catacombs? I don't think so. It is measurable in square miles, and I could evade them easily. But without food or the means to recycle urine, I have no chance of surviving.

  If they leave without me I might try to escape down the mountain. Difficult, even if I were strong, at a peak of conditioning. But anything could kill me out there–a misstep, a rockslide, the biting cold of night. Oh, God!

  . . . Later. The earth was shaking so strongly I found it difficult to stand, let alone walk. I vomited, and have a severe headache.

  Fireballs are more in evidence. They're clustered around the core of the Catacombs, each as bright as a miniature sun. They are frightening, but harmless.

  So I hope is the transformation, quite unlike any I've experienced here.

  I made the mistake of making eye contact with one of the entombed creatures–and abruptly I was striding across the storm-darkened Serengeti Plain, solitary, like most of my kind, in search of a morning kill: wildebeest, Tommy. The transformation was astonishing. I knew who I really was, yet I felt the smooth power of another body, of unsheathed claws and spotted coat, of hunger burning in a lean belly. I had the ability, unique among animals of the world, to sprint at an incredible speed in pursuit of game. I spotted my prey, accelerated, overtook the gazelle, and slowly strangled it with the bite of claws that were too weak for dealing quick deaths. I feasted, then returned miles across the plain to the hiding place of my cubs. I found nothing left but hanks of black birth-hair: While I had eaten, they were eaten. By hyenas.

  The transformation abruptly was reversed, as they all were, and I stood weeping in the chamber, unaware of how much time had passed.

  . . . Chips is calling me now, pleading with me to come out. General Timbaroo must have put him up to it but he does sound worried, for my sake. He knows what I'm capable of. Chips says that I am only making more trouble. He may be right; I only know I have no more time to think about it. I don't know why we're under arrest, why the data collected by the expedition was taken. But surely Chips will straighten everything out.

  In the meantime, it's unthinkable that any harm will come to us.

  PART ONE

  THE POWER

  OF THE STONES

  "The Lords of the Storm. They sound like gods. Think of that, Matthew. They have looked upon mankind and seen that we are assholes. From their infinite wisdom and compassion is distilled a drop of pity. A blood-red drop. Maybe FIREKILL is a gift from the gods."

  "On the other hand," Jade said, "they may have a godlike sense of humor we won't appreciate at all."

  Excerpted from the archival tapes of

  President Douglas Jaret Creighton,

  cross-file reference N640-1715,

  The Hondo series.

  Chapter 1

  KINGDOM MISSION

  Ivututu, Tanzania

  April 29

  In the late afternoon Erika awoke from exhausted sleep to find herself shivering, and for a few moments she was horrified, thinking that she too had come down with the fever.

  She sat up in her creaking bed, bagged in mosquito netting that had turned brown from the sun and was weighted with the dust of drought. Except for a violent pulse and heartbeat she discovered no other symptoms of a possible viral infection. The tremors were a reaction to a dream which, recurring, always found her vulnerable: a chilly bath of terror to purge the frustration and anxiety of her waking hours. In her dream magisterial men with the savage, flat-skulled heads and yellow faces of cheetahs came vividly to life in their crystal tombs, shattering barriers that had lasted ten thousand years. The cat people of the Catacombs–always they brought her back to the months of the expedition, and the bloodstones.

  In retrospect, as she sat huddled on the bed with her head close to her knees, coughing a bitter taste of unassimilated dust from the back of her throat, the Lords of the Storm were less threatening than concerned in their attitudes toward her; they reached out as she slow-stepped through the ritual of the dream as if to bestow power which she so sadly lacked in her present circumstances. But as they touched her with slender hands nearly doubled in length by hooked fingernails, their expressions became static, simplified: The faces vanished slowly, leaving just the bold strokes of pictographs, a dead language she could only partially read after weeks of study.

  The afternoon wind was blowing from the north, from the shrunken soda lake of Rukwa, across the miles of glazed savannah, and through the upland bush and acacia trees that surrounded the deteriorating old mission. Erika, in her misery, wrapped her arms around her thin knees to diminish the trembling; darkened by the sun, viewed through layers of netting, she was like the uneasy seed in a strange, transparent fruit.

  She heard footsteps in the bungalow and looked up.

  Alice Sinoyi filled the door space of the little bedroom; there had never been a door. Alice's cropped head was the color and texture of burnt sugar. The lower half of her face was covered with a surgical mask, a protection against dust aerosols which they all were observing. Beside her head, on the wall, was a stark, slightly askew pale shadow of a cross that had been removed when the mother superior of
the white sisters who had taught in the mission school departed for another assignment.

  "Erika?"

  "Oh, Alice. What time is it? How long have I slept?"

  "About four hours. You are coming with me? Bwana Chapman now is having the fever."

  There was no tone of urgency in her voice. She seemed fatalistic, unmoved.

  "Oh, my God."

  Erika tumbled from the bed, flinging the cumbersome net aside, and reached for her sandals. She thought she heard an airplane circling above them, the twice-weekly Beechcraft from Mbeya that carried supplies and, occasionally, more help from the district hospital to the quarantined mission and village. And she heard something else: a surge of orchestral horns, the scratchy but still-powerful voice of Maria Callas. The aria was in French, issuing from the hi-fi equipment of Father Varnhalt, the half-crazed old priest who presided over the largely defunct mission. He was a serious opera buff and was given to playing his records for hours, often in the middle of the night, and at full volume.

  Divinités du Styx, ministres de la mort!

  Je n'invoquerai point votre pitié cruelle.

  Gods of the Styx; ministers of death! I shall nevercall upon your cruel pity. . . Erika shuddered again; today his choice of Alceste seemed dismally appropriate. She took a fresh mask from a carton on top of the dresser, which was dark and ugly and typical of mission furniture, and airy from wormholes. As she followed Alice through shaded but stifling brick arcades, she tied the mask behind her head. Her fingers were a trifle clumsy; she felt dizzy and dreamlike, the world falling into soft focus at the edges of her vision.