Body Double

“Don’t!” she squealed.

“Meow!”

“Elijah!”

“Well, you did ask what it was.”

She stared at hollow eye sockets. “It’s a cat?”

He pulled a grocery sack out of his book bag and began placing the bones in the sack.

“What are you going to do with the skeleton?”

“It’s my science project. From kitty to skeleton in seven months.”

“Where did you get the cat?”

“Found it.”

“You just found a dead cat?”

He looked up. His blue eyes were smiling. But these were no longer Tony Curtis eyes anymore; these eyes scared her. “Who said it was dead?”

Her heart was suddenly pounding. She took a step back. “You know, I think I have to go home now.”

“Why?”

“Homework. I’ve got homework.”

He was on his feet now, had sprung there effortlessly. The smile was gone, replaced by a look of quiet expectation.

“I’ll… see you at school,” she said. She backed away, glancing left and right at woods that looked the same in every direction. Which way had they come from? Which way should she go?

“But you just got here, Alice,” he said. He was holding something in his hand. Only as he raised it over his head did she see what it was.

A rock.

The blow sent her to her knees. She crouched in the dirt, her vision almost black, her limbs numb. She felt no pain, just dumb disbelief that he had hit her. She started to crawl, but could not see where she was going. Then he grabbed her ankles and yanked her backward. Her face scraped against the ground as he dragged her by her feet. She tried to kick free, tried to scream, but her mouth filled with dirt and twigs as he pulled her toward the pit. Just as her feet dropped over the edge, she grabbed a sapling and held on, her legs dangling into the hole.

“Let go, Alice,” he said.

“Pull me up! Pull me up!”

“I said, let go.” He lifted a rock and brought it down on her hand.

She shrieked and lost her grip. Slid feetfirst into the hole, landing on a bed of dead leaves.

“ Alice. Alice.”

Stu

“Why are you doing this?” she sobbed. “Why?”

“It’s nothing personal. I just want to see how long it takes. Seven months for a kitty. How long do you think it’ll take you?”

“You can’t do this to me!”

“Bye-bye, Alice.”

“Elijah! Elijah!”

The wooden boards slid across the opening, eclipsing the circle of light. Her last glimpse of sky vanished. This isn’t real, she thought. This is a joke. He’s just trying to scare me. He’ll leave me down here for a few minutes, and then he’ll come back and let me out. Of course he’ll come back.

Then she heard something thud onto the well cover. Rocks. He’s piling rocks on top.

She stood up and tried to climb out of the hole. Found a dry wisp of vine that immediately disintegrated in her hands. She clawed at the dirt, but could not find a handhold, could not pull herself even a few inches without sliding back. Her screams pierced the darkness.

“Elijah!” she shrieked.

Her only answer was stones thudding onto wood.

ONE

Pesez le matin que vous n’irez peut-être pas jusqu’au soir,

Et au soir que vous n’irez peut-être pas jusqu’au matin.

Be aware every morning that you may not last the day,

And every evening that you may not last the night.

– ENGRAVED PLAQUE IN THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS

A ROW OF SKULLS glared from atop a wall of intricately stacked femurs and tibias. Though it was June, and she knew the sun was shining on the streets of Paris sixty feet above her, Dr. Maura Isles felt chilled as she walked down the dim passageway, its walls lined almost to the ceiling with human remains. She was familiar, even intimate, with death, and had confronted its face countless times on her autopsy table, but she was stu

That one day they would be on display, to be gawked at by hordes of tourists.

A century and a half ago, to make room for the steady influx of dead into Paris ’s overcrowded cemeteries, the bones had been disinterred and moved into the vast honeycomb of ancient limestone quarries that lay deep beneath the city. The workmen who’d transferred the bones had not carelessly tossed them into piles, but had performed their macabre task with flair, meticulously stacking them to form whimsical designs. Like fussy stonemasons, they had built high walls decorated with alternating layers of skulls and long bones, turning decay into an artistic statement. And they had hung plaques engraved with grim quotations, reminders to all who walked these passageways that Death spares no one.

One of the plaques caught Maura’s eye, and she paused among the flow of tourists to read it. As she struggled to translate the words using her shaky high school French, she heard the incongruous sound of children’s laughter echoing in the dim corridors, and the twang of a man’s Texas accent as he muttered to his wife. “Can you believe this place, Sherry? Gives me the goddamn creeps…”

The Texas couple moved on, their voices fading into silence. For a moment Maura was alone in the chamber, breathing in the dust of the centuries. Under the dim glow of the tu

I know how you died.

The chill of the tu

Happy is he who is forever faced with the hour of his death

And prepares himself for the end every day.

Suddenly she noticed the silence. No voices, no echoing footsteps. She turned and left that gloomy chamber. How had she fallen so far behind the other tourists? She was alone in this tu

We were once as alive as you are. Do you think you can escape the future you see here?

When at last she emerged from the catacombs and stepped into the sunshine on Rue Remy Dumoncel, she took in deep breaths of air. For once she welcomed the noise of traffic, the press of the crowd, as if she had just been granted a second chance at life. The colors seemed brighter, the faces friendlier. My last day in Paris, she thought, and only now do I really appreciate the beauty of this city. She had spent most of the past week trapped in meeting rooms, attending the International Conference of Forensic Pathology. There had been so little time for sightseeing, and even the tours arranged by the conference organizers had been related to death and illness: the medical museum, the old surgical theater.