Page 1 of Vacation with the Vampire
Chapter 1
Susie
By the time I reached the entrance to the Paris Catacombs, my feet already ached, and my patience had been worn thin by three different street vendors trying to sell me identical Eiffel Tower keychains. Still, I stood there anyway, clutching my ticket like proof that I belonged in this city. Proof that I hadn’t crossed an ocean just to sulk in a hotel room with bad croissants and worse memories.
The entrance yawned in the middle of a quiet park, a dark mouth rimmed with stone. Above it, tourists crowded in uneven lines. A restless herd armed with cameras, backpacks, and the faint desperation of people determined to have a good time as they were about to visit death.
The sky over Paris was pale and uncertain, clouds drifting like indecisive thoughts, and the wind tugged at my coat as if trying to push me back toward daylight. I straightened my shoulders. I hadn’t come all this way to hesitate, and I was being a bittoofanciful, thinking the clouds mimicked my own confused brain.
The trip was supposed to be romantic. Candlelit dinners. Long walks. My boyfriend’s arm warm around my waist while Paris whispered promises just beyond our range of hearing. I’d dreamed we’d visit that famous bridge where lovers placed locks as vows and wishes for the future. Instead, I’d found out two weeks before departure that he’d been sleeping with his secretary. In our apartment. On my couch.
The tickets were non-refundable, and the hotel he’d picked out was already paid for. So I swallowed the humiliation, packed my suitcase alone, and came anyway. Because if heartbreak was expensive, I was at least going to get my money’s worth. I should have seen the red flags months earlier and kicked him out, but hindsight was twenty-twenty, wasn’t it?
Inside the gate, the noise thickened as voices echoed off stone. Sneakers scuffed on rock worn smooth by countless feet, and someone laughed too loudly, the sound bouncing in nervous ways. There were only guided tours for this, and I’d splurged on the ticketafterthe breakup. A little part of Paris I’d see that was untainted by the jerk’s memory, at least, that’s what I hoped. It had also, perhaps, been a choice inspired by a particularly melancholy mood. Visiting an ossuary was not my usual choice of entertainment.
The group was mostly Americans, and we were guided by a charming French man with a lovely accent. Down and down we went on stairs not exactly made for easy walking, as if we were being gently fed into the earth. There was no elevator, not even a ramp, so only those more able-bodied were making it down, and some of the visitors were loudly complaining about it.
The air cooled fast, brushing against my skin like damp fingers. Aboveground smells—coffee, perfume, car exhaust—faded into something mineral and ancient. It was a bit like musk and the smell of petrichor combined, and surprisingly pleasant. I learned almost right away that bones this ancient didn’t have a smell of their own, which was… well, bizarre to think about, but also kind of a relief.
Stone steps spiraled down beneath my boots. Every turn carried us farther from Paris and closer to something quieter. The tour guide’s voice floated back in that charming English with a heavy French accent, explaining history, death, and architecture. He talked of the millions of bones moved here from various cemeteries all over Paris, the most notable being the one called Les Innocents.
A thousand years’ worth of bones from a massive city, all brought here by carts and deposited in tunnels that once belonged to a limestone quarry. I listened, but my attention snagged on the walls, how close they felt, how the ceiling lowered just enough to make tall people duck. The city pressed inward the deeper we went, like it wanted to remember us.
When we reached the tunnels, the temperature dropped again. My breath ghosted faintly in front of me, and then there were the bones. I almost wanted to turn back on my heels right then and there, confronted with that many ancient remains. It was creepy, terrifying, and not at all what I’d dreamed this Paris trip would be like before the jerk made his extra-jerk move. That instantly firmed my resolve, and a gothic mood struck me. Yes, let’s celebrate this stupid breakup with some death.
The skulls had been stacked into careful patterns, while the femurs had been built into walls. They were stacked but not secured, and the guide warned multiple times not to touch anything, and definitely not to take anything. I couldn't possibly imagine that anyone would be so disrespectful as to do that, but you never knew.
Someone, long ago, had taken chaos and organized it into art. It should have been horrifying, but the longer I stared, the more itfelt oddly… respectful. Like the dead were still participating in the city, holding Paris up from underneath. Their bones, their legacy, carrying the future. I kind of liked that, and it made me think of what support I needed to create my own future, the oneIwanted. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, to really analyze much, and it appeared I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
The crowd packed close, shoulder to shoulder, the same way airports did when flights were delayed and everyone pretended not to be angry. It reminded me of the plane ride over, except this crowd was silent and that one had been noisy.
We’d been deboarding when a woman grabbed my carry-on bag from the overhead bin like it belonged to her. We both froze, staring each other down like contestants in some ridiculous game show. “That’s mine,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” the woman had the gall to declare. She clutched my carry-on bag with her hands like they were claws, her gaze aimed at a sticker of the New Jersey Devil that my ex had stuck on it months before. “This is mine!” she insisted. She pointed to another one in the bin down the line that looked, granted, quite similar. “That’s yours.”
“It has my tax-free candy in it,” I said, frustrated. I knew she was wrong because I’d meant to peel that stupid sticker off before I left and hadn’t gotten the chance. No way would someone have both the same carry-on bag and the same obscure sticker stuck to it.
She blinked at me and finally released my bag, so surprised that I’d shocked her into letting go. “Your what?” she asked, mouth gaping open. She had blonde hair, a bit messy, with bangs thathung into her eyes, and a sallow tone to her skin. Frankly, she looked like a woman desperately in need of a vacation herself, so I found myself softening just a little. This was just an honest mistake from an overworked, exhausted, vacation-needing traveler.
“My candy,” I repeated, clutching the handle. I’d waited two hours in duty-free for that chocolate, well, perhaps not actually waited in line, but waiting to board the plane without opening the candy had sucked. I’d wanted to savor it and not instantly stuff myself because I was nervous, and that hadn’t helped.
The woman still hadn’t wanted to believe me, trying once again to insist the bag was hers. There had been something desperate and scared in her expression, but that was probably all just stress. I hadn’t let go until I checked inside and proved to her the candy was there, as well as my book of crosswords and spare clothes in case my suitcase got lost. Breakups stole enough from you already. Nobody was taking my sugar, too.
The memory made me smile faintly as the tour continued, glad that was over, and so glad I’d stood up for myself. Fuck my ex and his philandering, and good riddance to that stressed lady too. She wasn’t taking out her troubles on me.
We drifted through chamber after chamber, the guide’s voice fading in and out of my focus. There was a room with an artful centerpiece, all made up of browned bone, of course, and each tunnel had an inscription in Latin above it. My skin prickled with the strange sensation of being watched, though I knew logically it was just bones and history and my imagination misbehaving. Still… the catacombs felt alive in the quietest way.
Eventually, the guide announced we were nearing the exit. Relief rippled through the group. People shifted, eager for stairs, sunlight, oxygen that hadn’t brushed against centuries of death. I felt the same, relieved it was over rather than wanting to linger. Seeing that much death kind of made you indifferent, even bored. Which felt so wrong, so disrespectful, I wanted to leave.
The staircase appeared ahead, narrow and spiraling upward like a promise. That’s when the man behind me shoved. He was big, with brawny shoulders; his breath loud and his voice louder, impatience radiating off him. His elbow slammed into my back as he lunged for the stairs. “Move,” he muttered. I got it, buddy, but he didn’t need to manhandle me just to get ahead.
My boot slipped on smooth stone, and the world tilted. I collided with the wall, my palms scraping cold rock worn down by countless hands that had touched it before me. Pain flared through my wrist, sharp enough to steal my breath, and something felt like it had cracked. The group surged forward without noticing. Voices, footsteps, light—everything—climbed away from me in seconds.
I was suddenly at the back, and then I was alone. Footsteps faded in the distance, along with the bobbing light of the tour guide. It didn’t go dark because strips of industrial lights had been strategically installed, but to say it was pleasant… definitely not.
I pushed myself upright, heart hammering. “It’s fine,” I whispered, mostly to myself. “Just don’t touch anything.” Which, of course, meant I touched something. My elbow bumped into a section of stacked bones, and it moved. I instantly recalled that none of this was glued together or anything; theywere just lying piled together. The tour guide had explained that sections were regularly closed so the bones could be restacked before they started listing too much.
My skin crawled, and I shuffled away from the wall I’d touched. The stairs were just ahead; I only needed to follow the path and get out. Easy peasy, and surely that guide would realize he’d lost someone and come back for me if I didn’t make it out quickly enough. Surely...
