Nightbreed: CHAPTER 6 - Death Wish
NIGHTBREED
CHAPTER 6 - Death Wish
2007, October 9th, 4.30 am, Catacombs, Paris
„The Ossuary of Denfert-Rochereaux…“ Mana chants dreamily, his fingers tiptoeing over the wood, longing to be let in, yet unable to touch the handle. The words he has spoken sound like a mysterious mantra. The massive door under his palm is slightly wet, having collected some of the water that keeps dripping from the ceiling, and the ancient wood seems to be whispering… eager to tell him all the secrets of the world behind, if only he pressed his ear on the door and listened. But for that, there is no time. Étienne is already working on the lock. Mana knows they have just arrived at the very place that made parisian catacombs so famous - just inside this door rest the bones of millions of people.
He had been here once - in the official section of the catacombs - with Közi, in the times when Malice Mizer was at its best. Of course, the two boys who used to hang out at graveyards were immensely attracted by this underground macabre, sacred world, but despite of its undeniable exquisitness, one could not let the magic work to its full potential while in a tourist group. Artificial light instead of candles and torches, tourists in modern clothing clashing with their surroundings, the feeling of safety in the herd, people flashing photos, screaming kids, teenagers attempting to overcome the chilly sensation the grave had awoken in them by giggling... And so many doors locked, so many tunnels blocked, so many entrances forbidden!
It would be different now, that much he is certain about.
Beyond that door lays another world - one of the creepiest on one hand and the most beautiful ones on the other Mana could ever imagine. What at first appears to be walls built of small stones are in fact huge, orderly piles of human bones. Tibias and femurs by the thousands stacked neatly, interspersed with rows of skulls, which are sometimes arranged very artistically in a cross or other pattern. There are no intact skeletons; the goal of the arrangement had clearly been maximum compactness. One can only assume that the ribs, spines, and other bones are filled in the spaces behind the walls of large leg bones. Most of the stacks of bones rise to a height of one or two meters, and while some are just a couple of yards deep, there is at least one area where the bones stretch back for a good twenty meters, as Mana assumes from the narrow gap left on top.
The tunnels of bones stretch on and on; many side passages are blocked with locked gates, but even the path designated for tourists is about a mile long. Étienne, once again, plays the perfect guide. He reminds Mana of what he told him earlier about the cemeteries overflowing with bodies, and explains how the bones were moved to empty quarries, whose tunnels were at that time mainly on the outskirts of town. „The process of disinterring the bones from the cemeteries, moving them solemnly into the quarries, and arranging them there took several decades. No attempt was made to identify or separate individual bodies, but each set of bones was marked with a plaque signifying the cemetery they came from and the year in which they were moved. By the time the relocation was finished in 1860, an estimated six to seven million skeletons had been moved to the catacombs.“
The catacombs are eerie, quiet, except for the sounds of water dripping from the ceiling in what seems to be almost regular intervals. It´s unbelieavable how such a little sound can fill the entire place, Mana thinks, uncertain if there is some reversed logic - the tiniest droplets of water resonate like music in a gothic cathedral, whilst screams and steps dissolve in the darkness - or if the echo exists only in his own head. The torchlight seems to be exceptionally dim here, as if the bones had a different density than stone and soaked all the light into themselves… and perhaps… Perhaps some savage cells inside of all the skulls, femurs and ulnas are capable of transforming the light into energy, invigorating them. At day, they absorb all they can of the weak artificial light provided by the museum. At night, they leave their place in the piles and rise to haunt the corridors, feetless legs dancing, armless hands clapping and detached skulls altering the rhytm with their insane laughter.
Mana finds himself carried away by the fantasy and almost gives a jump when something rustles in the corridor behind him. Both men simultaneously turn around to see a skull rolling several inches across the floor, wobbling once or twice before it stops. The air has frozen in Mana´s lungs, but he succeeds in supressing a scream. Étienne bends down, picks up the skull and lifts it to the level of his eyes in order to glare into its empty eye sockets. „To be, or not to be… That´s the question!“ he exclaims with a pathetic tone, before throwing it casually onto the heap of other bones. "Probably a rat", he smiles, and Mana´s anxiety magically disappears, outshined with the boy´s cheery face.
Nevertheless, their surroundings are downright depressing in very many ways. And despite his well-meant joke and his familiarity with these bone-filled passages, even Étienne acknowledges the nature of this place… letting it work on both of them. They walk in silence, not intruding anymore, not even with raised voices. Observers.
It’s hard not to notice that the bones of these millions of people are all pretty much the same. The skull of a revolutionary may be resting on the leg of an aristocrat; noble and corrupt, young and old, wealthy and poor, all are indistinguishable now. „It can give you an entirely new perspective on the concept of human equality“, Étienne whispers. For some reason, Mana doesn´t get startled. It seems almost natural that in a place like this, another person could penetrate into your thoughts and expand on them, without you having actually voiced said thoughts.
It also, needless to say, gives visitors a very keen sense of their own mortality. Some bone heaps are more orderly than others. Many skulls are missing all bone below the cranium, and all, it seems, are missing their teeth and lower jaw bones. Yet once, all of them were living, breathing beings, warm on the touch and filled with their own fears, passion and feelings. And, because it´s natural for the human mind, all of them must have wondered at least once in their lives about the big „what“.
What will come after death?
Surely neither of them expected to end up discarded amongst millions of other deceased, displayed for public every once a while, loosing even the last bit of dignity. The morbidity of it is breathtaking. And what about those, whose job was to pile all the bones and create these walls? What did they think, what motivation did they have for creating these patterns out of skulls, more specifically - Mana´s eyes stop at a particularly stunning sight - the pattern of a HEART? Was it crude humor, known only to the lowest casts of society, the need to diversify their horrible job somehow, or did sympathy drive them? Is there a chance that behind this bone-art stood a fellow-feeling, that the workers knew this wasn´t the place where all those unfortunate dead people would have wanted to find their final rest, and so the macabre pictures were built as an attempt to create something beautiful, something that could supply a tomb adorned with statues or an ornate crypt?
Perhaps one day, Mana thinks, my bones will also be removed from my grave and thrown into some sewer in Tokyo or Hiroshima, because after a few centuries - maybe just decades - who I have been will not matter anymore. The world will have forgotten about me, about the existence of my music, my fashion, maybe about the existence of visual kei altogether, because such music is not a subject to be written down in encyclopedies or taught at schools. My family will have been long dead, and as I won´t have any children, there will be no relatives left to prevent it.
With these thoughts come other contemplations. Would he mind? Generally, would one care about what happens to their body several centuries after death? Because body and mind cease to exist in unity with the last breath. And the last, most alarming question: Is there a soul? Does this invisible entity exist at all, or is this all the univers offers, a heap of bones? And if that was the case, what point would there be to living...?
These queries are no longer unsettling for Mana, he is well used to being plagued by them. In the past, he had been often attempting to find the answers together with his friends from Malice Mizer. They would spend entire nights walking through the empty streets or along the coastline, sitting curled up in a coach in front of the TV with frightening movies full of blood spraying of every part of human bodies, hiding in churches or at cemeteries, or simply debating in the faraway corner of an otherwise deserted tea-house… bringing out new ideas and reminding each other of the old ones.
It had all began with a simple question: What is human? The undeniable answer to this question was… mortality. The only thing that all humans alike, regardless of their nationality, character of social status have in common, the only thing not a single one can avoid. Deep inside, Mana know that this is the key to a truly gothic personality… The willingness to submit oneself to thoughts that others attempt to push away, the eagerness to solve the mystery of death instead of blindly believing someone´s preaching or ignoring the fact that one will not be on this Earth forever. And only through attempting to understand death, one could fully understand life and its meaning.
Those who created this mass tomb were apparently troubled with similar thoughts. Mana´s eyes briefly stop on a stone plate, one of many they have passed, and reads the words aloud: „Man, like a flower of the field, flourishes while the breath is in him, and does not remain nor know longer his own place.“ The truth of that statement doesn´t even have time to settle in, when something absolutely unexpected happens: the electrical bulbs light up and illuminate the place. It is like a flash of lightening for the eyes, adjusted to cave-like darkness and torchlight, but the pain is only the secondary problem, because there are cries to be heard not far away: "Arrete! Stay where you are! This is the catacomb police!"
„Mérde… Retarded bastards, today of all days!“ Étienne mutters under his breath, already on the move, taking a quick turn into a side tunnel, away from the light. Mana follows, knowing they are in deep trouble, because the moment when he found out that sound isn´t carried too far down there is imprinted in his memory. „It is a dead end!“ he warns silently, although Étienne must obviously see himself that the tunnel he had chosen is blocked by another pile of bones. "I know…" the younger man hisses in reply, „they all are around here…“ And, shocking the living daylight out of the guitarist, he begins to climb over the heap.
If there was still time, Mana would have objected to this, but the voices are now in immediate approximity, accompanied by flashes of torchlight and stomping of many pairs of heavy shoes. And so he jumps up, grabs the hand Étienne is offering him, and begins to crawl over the pile, sculls under his body aimlessly rolling down as he places too much weight on them, trying hopelessly to forget that the non-solid ground underneath is built of human remains.
The floor, now paved, slopes gently upward now as they enter a long tunnel with many side-offs. Étienne randomly chooses one. And these tunnels are looking... different. They're not smooth. They're tight and there are signs of cave-ins. Mana suspects Étienne is taking them through an unsafe path in hopes that the police wouldn´t follow. However, another shout is to be heard very close on their right side. „They must have sent more patrols…“ Étienne grunts. A ray of light coming from a side tunnel very close. Too close. „Run!“
They are storming through the corridor, the stomping from behind forcing them to higher speed. "Let´s get rid of the light", Étienne decides, and before Mana can protest, he yanks the torch out of his hand and throws both of them away, into the path of their followers and pulls Mana into another side tunnel that leads to a small crossroad - there are three different tunnels leading forwards. They disappear into the middle one and darkness swallows them whole.
Étienne moves quickly and soundlessly, not stumbling once, as if he knew every stone on the ground, or as if he were wearing nightvision goggles. Mana, on the other hand, faces serious problems and stays behind. He has to be careful with his steps, and like a blind person, he touches the wall with his fingers all the time for security. „Hurry up“, Étienne whispers, turning around - which, of course, Mana doesn´t really see, but he can guess - "they might have sent people down each of the tunnels. Here. Put your hands on my waist." With that, the boy takes Mana´s small hands into his and places them on his hipbones, as if they were on a motorbike.
Surprisingly, it works, and Mana is being lead or dragged forwards without problems with drops and turns. They zig zag for a while then follow some ancient stone stairs down to another level. There, they hit water, about two feet deep. Here the catacombs are at their wettest; water drips steadily from the ceiling all around them, slowly forming stalactites on the ceiling, and cementing all the bones strewn around together with a shiny glaze of limestone rock. Mana tries and keeps in his predecessor's footsteps, almost like walking in snow, yet he slips and almost falls down anyway, painfully hitting his knee. „Slow down, I don't want to break an ankle!“ he pleads, the police is nowhere to be heard.
Étienne obliges, but he doesn´t speak. From what Mana can feel from his body - hands still clutching Étienne´s hips - he is somewhat upset by the whole ordeal. He also feels that the boy is slightly limping. "Have you hurt yourself?" he asks sympathetically and recievs an unfriendly „no“ in reply. „I thought there´s something wrong with your left leg…“ His leader turns around, obviously frustrated. „No… it´s… Well, it´s nothing, just an old injury. My leg was broken and not treated properly, usually this doesn´t happen, only when I´m tired or…“ There´s the faintest hint of a sigh. „I´m sorry this happened. The entrance is of course forbidden, but usually they only spot out bigger groups… foreign tourists or kids who want to party in the underground…“
Mana´s grip on Étienne´s hips tightens and cuts his words. He understands he has touched unsafe ground with accidentally discovering something that the boy sees as his weak side. „That´s not your fault...“ Usually, Mana isn´t one to comfort people, so he isn´t sure if it´s proper, but he adds: „Main thing is it doesn´t hurt anymore.“ He still cannot see anything, but he can FEEL Étienne is smiling at him. „No, it doesn´t…“