Page 126 of The Light Within

The drive was over half an hour of intense silence, against the backdrop of classical piano playing on the stereo. More than enough time for Julien to second-guess, third-guess, fourth-guess this ludicrous plan.

But it’s working!

Is it, though? Is it really?

When it came down to it, Julien was banking on his father being egotistical enough to believe that,of course,his son had come to his senses and seen that partnering up with him was the logical thing to do.

They arrived at the cemetery, the car dropping them off before speeding away to park elsewhere.

Julien studied the enclosed perimeter of the cemetery, with its high walls and metal gate. When he’d dragged everyone here to dig up Béatrice’s rib, they’d blasted the lock on the front gate. Now, he half expected his father to march up to it with a key. Instead, they walked on to where the tall stone wall descended into a line of bushes lining the pavement. With one glance around him, his father pulled a branch to one side. “After you.”

Julien dove through the bush, battling the prickly branches that snagged in his hair. Through the darkness, a small hole in the brick wallrevealed itself. He had to crouch down so low that it wasn’t clear how his aged father was going to pass through it, but by the time he’d turned around, there he was.

The man brushed down his suit, glaring at a loose thread now present on his overcoat. “I seldom make this journey myself.” His father sounded rather put out by the trouble.

“I can see why.” Julien surveyed the rows of grave markers. “This… wasn’t where I expected to find myself this evening.”

“There are at least three access points to where we’re going. This cemetery is but one of them. It is the most suitable for us on this occasion, however.” His father chose a winding path. “It’s not too far.”

Although Julien didn’t have the map of this place memorised, he had been here enough times to know they were heading towards his mother’s and sister’s resting places. They’d entered through a western edge, and so first passed Oscar Wilde’s grave, with its modernist tomb and sizeable angel. When his mother died, Julien had been too young to grasp the vanity of his father securing plots in this exclusive cemetery. Now, he could laugh at the pretentiousness.

Cloaked in a twilight hush, they walked on through the pathways lined with weathered tombstones and creeping ivy. Shadows danced among the elaborate mausoleums and ornate graves. The whole place felt more solemn than last time, as if the graveyard knew the weight that rested on the visit that night.

They reached Division Twelve, and the spot where Béatrice’s gravestone lay next to his mother’s smaller one. Julien had never visited either grave with his father, and this was certainly an odd time to do so. For a while, the pair stood there, in cool, still air, accompanied only by the faint scent of damp earth mingling with that of the flowers that littered many of the graves.

“I know that we’re not here to seeMèreand Béatrice. I can only guess you built an ‘access point’ here, so that if you were seen, it would be viewed as thoughyou were visiting her.” Julien delivered the statements in a monotone.

“You’re as perceptive as ever.”

Gazing at the pair of headstones, he prepared for his father to have built some sort of contraption into his mother’s grave—it could slide to one side to reveal a staircase or something. Then his father turned away, taking brisk strides to continue on the path.

The graves were a detour, not the destination.

After many more minutes of traversing the cemetery’s extensive pathways, they reached the entrance to the cemetery’s columbarium. Julien paused. Taller than the sea of graves, the building’s imposing stone facade loomed like a sentinel above them. Shadows from the overhanging trees draped the structure in an eerie gloom, and its arched windows were dark, obscuring the cremated remains that were housed within.

“Seems like a fun place to hang out,” murmured Julien.

From his pocket, his father pulled out an unlocking bar, not dissimilar to the one Malik had used yesterday to access the corner shop’s basement. Thankfully, Julien was visiting a much more highbrow establishment this evening, swapping boxes of biscuits for rows of urns resting in the stone walls.

His father approached one of the columbarium’s niches, seemingly indistinguishable from the others. With a swift motion, he pressed a hidden latch behind the urn, causing a section of the wall to shift. The stone slid aside with a muted rumble, revealing a narrow staircase spiralling down into darkness.

This is more like it.

“This way,” his father said quietly, as the passage to the underground chamber opened before them.

Impressive.Julien restrained his excitement to ask, “What is this?”

His father glanced back at him with a glimmer of satisfaction. “This, my son, is a true Parisian secret,” he replied as they began theirdescent. What little light they had vanished. His father bent down for a moment, fumbling around in the dark until he found a disk-like object. He tapped it, activating the lumenmotes and providing a modest amount of light.

Julien almost offered to amplify the light, or even to produce the light balls he was fond of making—he had a lighter in his pocket—then caught himself. His father didn’t know he was channelling again.

The stone steps were narrow and worn, spiralling down infinitely. His father’s voice filled the cool, musty air. “The catacombs beneath this city are vast, a labyrinth connecting countless underground chambers. But after the World War Two bombings, it was assumed that the passages to this particular area were destroyed. That assumption has allowed us to operate something here, undisturbed, and away from any prying eyes at Auri.”

Julien’s breath caught in his throat. This unexpected turn of events was as twisty as the staircase they were walking down. As they descended deeper, the walls seemed to close in, and the echoes of their footsteps grew fainter. The pace they’d set had turned almost into a death march to hell. However, turning back was becoming a less and less likely possibility.

Deeper and deeper they went, the air growing chillier. Julien tightened his scarf around him, running his fingers through the threads for comfort.This is all almost over,he told himself for the umpteenth time. But as they navigated through the maze of ancient tunnels, he found that sentiment harder and harder to believe.

Flickering light from his father’s lumenmote disk cast eerie shadows on the limestone walls. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the distant drip of water and their footsteps, muffled by the damp earth beneath. After what felt like an eternity, the narrow passage widened, revealing a medium-sized chamber, with many dark tunnels leading out from it. Julien avoided looking at the walls lined with carefully stackedbones, remnants of the countless souls who had been laid to rest here centuries ago.

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