Chapter 21 #2
We arrived in a small chamber that led to a larger tunnel, which we followed until Noor got her bearings.
“I am sorry,” she said as we retraced our steps for the second time.
“I do not have maps. I know where things are in general, but this will take time. I am very sure we will have to turn around several times.” She frowned at a street marker over our heads.
It didn’t seem to be the one she expected.
I shrugged. “I don’t have anyplace else to be.
” She huffed out something like a laugh, and we continued until we came to a branching tunnel, which we took.
We walked through a grayscale world that reminded me of being out at night when the moon is new.
It was as though the darkness had levels of darkness I’d never been able to discern before, and everything—every pebble, every wall, every chisel mark—was high-def.
I’d expected to grope my way through the catacombs, but instead I saw more, and more clearly, than I’d seen with Nick when we were all wearing headlamps. V mode had some advantages.
“What was it like?” Noor said. We’d been walking for a while, and I’d fallen into an ambulatory trance. It took me a minute to understand what she meant. “If you would rather not say,” she continued, “I will understand.”
“No, it’s okay.” Nothing I said would shock her.
That was comforting. “It kind of felt great, actually. Which is awful but true. Right before I bit him, this amazing power just surged through me. I felt like I was in control for the first time in ever. I felt—” I paused, struggling to convey the enormity of the feeling.
“I could feel myself taking up all the space, instead of being small and fitting in, like I usually do. I felt consequential.”
She stopped. “I envy that. I always feel small. Well, when I finish a piece, I feel big for a few minutes. When I step back and look at the whole thing and see what I saw in my head has come out through my hands. It never lasts long enough, though. I want it to go on forever, but it fades so fast. And then I am just me again. Le Bec took that feeling of bigness from me. He made me to be always small now.”
“To be honest, if I could get that feeling all the time without, you know, killing people, I’d totally sign up for v mode.
It was so amazing. But it came from me ripping someone’s neck open.
And liking it.” I shivered at the memory.
“And then later, I tried to talk to my mom, and she didn’t answer.
She always answers.” I told her about Mom and lighting candles and her voice in my head when I needed her.
“She was gone, Noor. I did something she can’t forgive. ”
She didn’t tell me it was okay. Instead, she said, “I chased that guy. I thought, You are not getting away; I am hungry. I would have sucked him dry if I had caught him. I do not think that I can be forgiven, either.” We walked on.
The catas were full of scents: the rock, of course, but also water.
I was sure we were close to a spring or an underground stream; the air smelled wet.
There were other smells. The scent of chocolate, which hovered everywhere, along with beer, wine, tobacco, and weed, told me what fueled the explorations of most cataphiles.
I also smelled laundry soap and shampoo and, fainter still, clothing: the bland vegetal scent of cotton, the chemical sharpness of polyester and nylon, and the earthy, animal whiff of leather and wool.
It was disorienting and wonderful. And horrifying.
I realized, as I sniffed the air, that I was tracking.
Like a predator. Noor pointed to the tunnel on the left, and we started down it.
“This section has at least one cat-hole, probably more.” She sighed. “I do not like cat-holes.”
There were two, and each one took maybe twenty minutes of wriggling on our bellies through a tunnel only inches larger in diameter than we were.
About halfway through the second one, as I dug the toes of my shoes into the floor and wriggled a couple of centimeters forward, I had a sudden, sick understanding that there were tons of rock above me.
Tons of rock, and then buildings on top of that, with their own terrifying weight.
Parts of the catas had collapsed before, and I was seized by the fear that this tunnel would give way, burying us.
My breath came out in staccato huffs. I started counting to calm myself: Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq.
By the time I’d counted to cinquante, my breathing had evened out.
By the time I’d counted to mille trois cent quarante-deux, I could feel the cat-hole widening.
I alligator-crawled out and stood up, panting and sweaty, and stretched, my fingers brushing the ceiling overhead.
Then I noticed Noor sitting on the floor, huddled into herself, her head down on her knees. I sat next to her. “Are you okay?”
“I hate cat-holes.” She didn’t lift her head. I scooted closer, until our shoulders touched.
“Yeah.” I remembered how quickly the claustrophobia overtook me. “I thought I was okay in small spaces, but halfway through…” I shivered.
“I know that if I go into a cat-hole and it gets too small, I can back out. It is not fun, but it is possible. I have done it. But always when I am in one I begin to believe that I will be stuck. The worst thing is to panic in a cat-hole, but that is what I want to do—to shout for help and to drag myself out fast, even though I can only move a centimeter at a time. It is terrible.”
We were both silent, considering the particular hell of cat-holes.
I felt ragged, and Noor was shaking. “Can we just stay here for a while?” I said.
Abrasions from my chin to my knees throbbed and stung, and I wished that I’d grabbed my pack when I ran away from Nick. My trail first aid kit was in it.
“What if we fail?” she whispered.
I wanted to say we wouldn’t, but I felt small and raw and scared. I leaned my head onto her shoulder. “If we fail, we fail. And then we try something else. As long as we keep trying, he doesn’t win.”