Revenant

A French time-traveler in 1943 being chased by a German soldier through the Parisian catacombs finds herself faced with the ghosts of 2008. Bizarre, but please do read, perhaps you'll like it!

This is an incredibly odd story that presented itself to my mind and I wrote over just a few hours. Totally unedited, but I don't make any excuses because of that. Please do review and tell me what you think, even if it's anything but complimentary! I really do want to know what you really think.

*

Only one Nazi was brave enough to follow her into the catacombs, and below the 1943 Parisian streets, Selene could have sworn she was still in 2008. It most certainly was not 2008, however, and while up above the signs were much clearer, there were still little ways to tell; some graffiti Selene had got used to was absent, for instance.

She knew she could run into problems if she wasn't careful and didn't keep in mind that this was before many entrances had been blocked off, ones she knew of and didn't know, and she was still in considerable danger—and could still run into problems if she kept both of these things well in mind—but so far, she had gained a steadily increasing distance between herself and her pursuer.

Who knew how he had learned the catacombs, or perhaps he was just desperately following her to an exit, or intended to pounce when he felt himself clear of the danger of losing his way, but Selene was also aware of some strange and frightening German bunkers below here, and so she doubted he felt very much fear that he was forever lost or that he was completely alone in his pursuit.

She was grateful for having lost that several inches off her waist as she shimmied through a slender hole in the wall and dropped down with a semi-graceful slump into a corridor whose cross-section she would describe as “mushroom-shaped.” It had a domed ceiling and a square channel cut into the bottom, big enough that she could trot along knee-deep in murky water, bent over.

Selene's heart pounded; she was fairly deep into the catacombs and in a critical point: she rarely came this far, except without her guide-friend Jean or one of the people who roamed the catacombs and rarely surfaced, the sort that made you think there really was a gate to Hell down here, the selfsame people to whom she owed gratitude for bringing her back to the surface.

She stopped and looked over her shoulder as she turned a corner and flashed her torch down the ways she had come. Despite herself, she felt a momentary pang of worry. She wouldn't wish being stuck down here on her worst enemy.

She heard the distant—it sounded not-so-distant—thud thud thud of footsteps. He was still there. How was he able to follow her so well?

Selene bolted, and at a place where she could make a choice, took the left-handed route. She was working on instinct, trusting herself as a cataphile to know the way.

One would think this chase would put Selene off forever the idea of ever straying from her own time, especially straying to one that was so dangerous, but it was a matter of her insatiable curiosity and her current situation was a matter of bad luck, and she knew it. She had simply gotten caught breaking curfew after wandering innocently and unnoticed around Paris all day.

The technology had been made available to her by her uncle—God knew where he got it—and she put it to “good use.” The only problem now was how to get back to the transfer point without leading the Boches back to the 21st century.

She intended now to get him lost in the very spidery section of the catacombs she associated with her own near-death experience, and disorient him just enough that her final escape would be easiest—there were also exits available here, so in the relatively very likely event he found one, he could leave.

Selene tried not to second-guess herself as she slipped down corridors and doubled back multiple times, incrementally giving herself five exits from which she could flee the area, so deep so quickly in such a small, tangled area that the German would have a great deal of difficulty in choosing the right path to follow her even if he knew every inch of the catacombs.

She stopped again, to catch her breath and listen for sounds of pursuit.

A minute passed and she remained utterly alone and in complete silence. She noticed that her flashlight was just a little dimmer and swore under her breath; luckily she was close to the exit she preferred for her purposes and in less than five minutes she would be out under the moon and night air again.

“Good luck,” she murmured, and meant it; she intimately knew the panicked despair of being lost, alone, in these tunnels—

Yes, it was this area, wasn't it? The body reduced to bones, and the dark. She remembered it too well, her skin prickled and the hair stood up on the back of her head—

Selene turned away quickly and tried not to think about that, but choked on a blood-curdling shriek when her light fell across another human being. She froze, and the person moved quickly to silence her—he shoved her against the wall and held his hand against her mouth.

“Who are you!”

I can't answer you with my mouth held shut, Selene thought, but allowed her torch to be stolen as she passively acquiesced to being taken prisoner by this man and—there was a woman standing behind him. This corridor was narrow and tall.

“If I let you go to answer, will you scream?”

Selene shook her head, or rather, wiggled her head back and forth underneath the pressure of the man's hand. He let go.

“I'm Selene, and there's a German following me—”

“You led them here?!” the man snarled quietly, and Selene gasped when she felt a gun pressed into her gut.

“Hell, no!” she hissed. “He's chasing me. I'm trying to escape—”

“Why is he chasing you?”

“Uh—no, I just broke curfew and figured I could lose him in the catacombs—”

“Can we trust you to be telling the truth?” the man asked.

“Yes; who are you people?”

“We're with the Resistance,” the woman said. “I am Cecile and this is Luc.”

Luc threw Cecile a dirty look that read very clearly don't tell her our names!

Selene was quiet; she had heard of the French Resistance using the catacombs, and a lot of other people before and after, so she wasn't surprised. This, unfortunately, complicated her plans. How could she get them to let her go? They didn't trust her, naturally. For all they knew, she was a Nazi infiltrator. She didn't begrudge them their behavior.

“We can't have that German find this place,” Cecile said to Luc, who threw a last suspicious glance at Selene as he let her go. “What are we going to do?”

“We could lead him off another way,” Selene replied. “I mean, I don't think he has much of a chance of following me, anyway, I—”

“We can't risk it. We'll shoot the bastard,” Luc interrupted, clearly ignoring the time-traveler.

Selene started. She hated Nazis, they were the scum of history past, present, and future, but she was against killing on principle, and wasn't that a little over-the-top? It wasn't guaranteed the man was going to find them at all. Why kill him if he was on a route that completely bypassed whatever these two were trying to protect?

If she thought about it, their behavior was justified, but still...

“What is this place?” Selene asked Cecile—for all purposes this corridor looked completely like any other corridor, just as it was in 2008—Luc grabbed her by the arm, and lifted his gun.

“Don't trouble yourself with that. Say something loud.”

“What?” she asked.

“Scream; draw him this way,” Luc clarified bluntly.

Selene looked up at Luc trepidously, and he put the gun to her chest.

“Please scream? I do not want to force you to do it.”

She swallowed, and slowly took in a deep breath. Her scream, long, shrill, slightly artificial and yet nervous, reverberated through the catacombs. It echoed.

“He has a gun,” Selene pointed out, as Cecile and Luc pushed her in front of them and began to march her back the way she had come, quietly.

Selene had almost come to a point where she believed the Nazi had become lost in some far-flung region of the catacombs to wander around blindly, or given up the chase and went back to exit, when she heard the hobnailed thudding of jackboots on the catacomb floors. He was stuck in the tight snarl of passages, and from the way his footsteps were thumping erratically, first slow, then fast—then nothing, then fast, etc., he was disoriented, knew it, and was beginning to panic. The closer they got, the more they could hear his labored breathing. Then there was a dim flash of light and its disappearance.

“Got you,” Luc muttered. “Cecile, watch her. I'll go ahead.”

“Be careful,” Cecile murmured, and put a gun at Selene's back.

Selene was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this. Not just a bad feeling; a wretched twisting in her stomach, a little like having seen the bad ending to a movie, but was just now getting to watch the horrific middle.

She said nothing and went along with the two Resistance fighters; the German was in a full-blown panic by now, and they could hear him swearing in a faint, thin, wavering voice.

Selene had taken a little German and was a quick study: he was talking to God a lot and cursing her (well, can you blame him?).

“Scream again,” Luc murmured. “I want to get him to come to us.”

“Quit it!” Selene snapped loudly, turning on Cecile, who glared and prodded her with the gun again.

The result was that the German fell silent and apparently froze physically, too, because all his footsteps ended.

“Well, he heard me,” Selene sulked.

“Shh! He's close.”

A game of cat-and-mouse ensued, with both parties sneaking around and hoping that they got the jump on their enemy. Even Selene, who was terribly unnerved, still prayed that he didn't come upon them turned in the wrong direction, and loose bullets into their backs.

Luc suddenly turned off his torch, and looked at Cecile with a meaningful stare, and quickly motioned at her to kill it, kill it!

Selene peeked around the corner; the German had his own torch and was creeping down the hallway, not covering the dark behind him. They could see his form outlined in black shadow-relief.

Cecile's gun dug furiously into Selene's side, but Selene was rendered silent for another reason. She recognized this sandy, rectangular passageway. Realization hit her hard, like getting punched in the gut, but she was stunned to the spot and unable to cry out—

Why the hell should she cry out?

In the dark, Luc pulled out a Tommy Gun—what, from where? When?—and click-click—the German spun around and the firefight started; Luc got off a shot first, and the German fell back, startled, but apparently unhurt. He slumped against the wall, and with a snarl that meant something along the lines of goddamn fucking French bastards, or something of similar vulgarity, he shot back. Luc gave a low gurgle and fell over, shot through the neck and peppered through the chest.

“No!” Cecile shouted, and fell to Luc.

Selene dove for Luc's gun, and with blind intent—I DO NOT WANT TO DIE—shot at the Nazi, miraculously not getting shot herself. He staggered once, and then fell to the ground. He dropped his torch, it rolled, and illuminated his body leaned up against the wall.

Selene's grip on the gun was iron as she watched to make sure he wasn't getting up. She could hear nothing but her breath, and she felt like retching; oh my God, she had killed a man—somewhere in the background was Cecile cursing the man for shooting Luc.

“Oh...oh, God...”

She recognized...yes, she recognized this scene. The memory broke through with stinging clarity. The urge to throw up flooded her, and all at once she was back in 2007 in these catacombs, surprisingly calm in the face of the realization she didn't know how to get back out.

She threw the gun down and ran down the catacomb corridor, and fell to her knees before the man. The rank was the same. The helmet was the same—it was all—all the same, except he wasn't a skeleton—

He was still alive, and his gray eyes (he had gray eyes?), dilated and unfocused, seemed to realize she was there and tried to come to bear. His face—she thought he was as good-looking as she imagined him being, down here, stuck in this hellish place—

There was one thing left, and she forced the words out. Selene rocked forward on her knees.

“Wie—wie heißen Sie?”

“...Bitte?” he asked, sounding incredulous and irritated. “Hei—warum?”

“Bitte, sag mir bitte...” Please tell me, I have to know, Selene thought. This has to be some awful coincidence.

“...Unteroffizier Heinz Bau—Baumann,” he muttered, scathingly. Who knew what he thought she wanted to know for.

Selene didn't know what to say.

“Heinz Wilhelm Friedrich Baumann?” she asked, feeling more with every passing instant she might just collapse. She remembered his faded papers from the misty future; he was a Wehrmacht officer, born in Kiel...

This was the man whose body beside whom she had sat and waited to die of dehydration? It was her fault? It didn't really matter then that he had been trying to shoot her; she had always felt this: that her luck was his that night, and that without some grace from beyond she would never have been rescued. In the meantime "he" kept her company. She had shot him?

“Ja,” he said, looking at her with as much clarity as he could muster. He was surprised.

“Es—es tut mir Leid,” she said brokenly.

His face contorted in confusion. Then he died.

Selene gasped, feeling her heart break, and sat there, staring.

“Is the pig dead?” Cecile asked, coldly, behind Selene's shoulder. It didn't matter to Selene that Cecile felt perfectly validated in her vitriol: Heinz had shot Luc, after all, besides being a German occupier.

“He is not a—a pig,” Selene snapped suddenly, and grabbed Heinz's gun and his torch for her own self-protection (aha, that explained the absence!), against Cecile's gun and Luc's, both of which Cecile carried. “But yes..he's dead.”

“Are you a Nazi spy?” Cecile demanded, and the two women threatened each other with an indication that they were both well-armed.

“I am not a fucking Nazi spy, I hate Nazis,” Selene hissed. “Get over it! Let's just get the fuck out of here.”

“Help me carry Luc,” Cecile said.

“What about Heinz?”

“You knew that man?” Cecile snapped, suspiciously.

“...Yes, I knew him. Sort of. He wasn't a Nazi.” She knew that because had contacted his family after bringing his papers with her out of the catacombs.

“But he is a German,” Cecile spat. “Will you help me carry Luc?”

“If you help me carry Heinz afterwards,” Selene retorted.

“Other Resistance members will be along and I'll put the word out that he should be removed from the catacombs,” Cecile said impatiently, eying Selene with vivid distaste. “He'll be taken care of.”

Selene would have liked to have believed her; in fact she did believe Cecile for that instant.

“...Alright, if you promise,” Selene said. “I'll help you carry Luc.”

They weren't very far from an exit, and as they emerged into nighttime Paris, Selene looked up at the moon and thought that it was exceptionally pretty at that moment. She and Cecile dragged Luc's body along as quietly as possible.

“Bring him in here,” Cecile whispered. “Here” turned out to be a shop storage room a few streets down, where an elderly man appeared and cried over the body of his son. It was there that Selene learned that Cecile and Luc had been engaged to be married, but Selene had been a little less than fond of Luc and found it hard to be that distressed.

“Now let's go get Heinz,” Selene insisted, but Cecile threw an angry glower in Selene's direction and slapped her across the face.

“I told you I'd take care of it,” Cecile snapped. “Or are you going to go run to the Nazis yourself and tell them what happened and what you've seen?”

Selene was frustrated, and rubbed her cheek.

“No, I—”

“You're a traitor to France!”

“What? Oh, for—look, you promised to at least get him out of the catacombs—”

That was the end of it; Selene had worn out her welcome and she was shown the door with a cold assurance that people would be informed, and for a minute, Selene wondered what on Earth she could possibly do. She was no traitor to France, and would never have gone running to the Nazis who currently ran Paris under any circumstances, but she owed that man.

She couldn't go down herself and drag him topside; first of all, she, of course, had been chased by Nazis and they would immediately arrest her. Plus she simply wasn't strong enough to make that feasible.

Curfew lifted at around six in the morning, but that was still several hours away. Selene considered going back down into the catacombs and waiting there, but that idea revolted her and she swallowed back bile and shame.

Still, it was the only viable option she had, because she was still too far from the transfer point in another back alley to risk traveling where she would just have to run from more Nazis.

She crawled back underground, and sat down not too far from the exit to think and try to get a little sleep.

She had always felt sorry for the body deep in the belly of Paris, and when she had brought his identification papers aboveground with her managed to locate his family. She sent his papers to them, in Kiel, and in return received a thank-you letter from his sister that she had yet to read the whole way through, since it kept making her cry.

There had been a recovery operation and she supposed he was at least on his way to a proper burial.

She yawned, and stretched out her legs. Without the urgency of flight, thirty-two hours of sleeplessness caught up with her. Selene rolled over onto her side and was asleep within minutes.

*

She woke to the sound of her cell phone blaring the English “cat I'm a kitty cat and I dance dance dance and I dance dance dance,” etc., but it startled her, and she jerked upright with the abrupt realization that she was not anywhere near her own bed, let alone her own time. It was really a miracle that she had heard it at all, considering how tired she still was.

Selene checked the clock on her cell phone and realized that it was about eight in the morning; the curfew should have been lifted by now. She dragged herself up and out of the catacombs, emerging as a young couple passed by. They glanced at her and must have seen something that frightened them because they immediately hurried on their way.

Her mother had always told her to sleep on any painful thoughts, and consider them in the morning. Well, it was the morning, and Selene had more questions than she had answers, and more misery than she knew how to handle. What did she feel about shooting Heinz Baumann? She felt awful, even if he were a German occupier; the strange coincidence weighed upon her heavily, and all she could think was that she was sorry—sorry for the whole sorry mess.

She walked the half-mile under the weak morning light, completely drained, and went up the abandoned stairwell, into the equally abandoned room above the fountain, in 1943, which looked down upon a memorial in 2008.

*

Questions, comments, concerns, complaints?

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EDIT: Epic fail, vizzini. Sorry, If fixed the names. That's what failure to properly edit does to you, let that be a lesson!