As darkness fell, Martin made his move. The entrance to the Ossuary Archways, an undertaker’s postern, lay behind the disused funeral home. He made a gesture of respect as he hopped the fence and entered the graveyard. The graves remained motionless save for a flicker of grass in the evening breeze. Martin didn’t stay to observe as he made his way behind the ruined building. He quickly located the gate a short distance away.

  The undertaker’s postern was a narrow iron gate, embedded at a forty-five degree angle into a stonework entrance. The original brickwork and much of the gate were scarcely visible under the thick growth of ivy. The once sturdy lock had long since rusted over and broken—by the years or miscreants no one could say—and the hinges were black with centuries of soot.

  Martin took another look around to ensure he wasn’t observed and cleared some space on the brickwork. He reached out and knocked a few times in rhythm on the brick. The rhythm was that of a long out-of-fashion chant known as The Funeral Hymn of the Third Age. Jacques had taught it to him just before as a customary greeting before entering through the postern. Even Jacques wasn’t sure if it was baseless superstition or a true pacifying gesture to a spirit lurking below. Martin paused for a moment to observe any changes. After a moment of nothing but his breathing, he reached out and gripped the gate firmly. The hinges screeched horribly as he pulled it open, slipping inside before letting it return to rest as gently as he could. Even with his focused effort, the gate settled with a crash. He peered out over the graveyard like some ghost haunting the field. A cat rushed out from behind the bush at the noise, quickly scaling the low graveyard wall and escaping to safety. Satisfied at last that no one was observing him, he turned and descended into the dark.

  A short distance in, he stopped to light his lantern. The light cast strange shadows off the unevenly hewn walls of the tunnel. Jacques had said that some had likened the tunnel to the throat of a devil, and others to cruder body parts still. Martin could see the resemblance in the crude rock, punctuated by occasional wooden support beams. The beams had been worn down by years of abuse. Martin could only imagine the number of bodies that had been carried down by undertakers over the years. He could only hope he wouldn’t be joining them.

  The tunnel descended at a steady slope and began to gradually curve. As he got deeper in, he became aware of a certain motion in the air. It seemed to brush past him very softly and, after a moment, push back the other way towards the entrance. Martin was all too familiar with that kind of pattern—he called it breathing. Some said it was simply the flow of air from the surface. Others said it was the tunnel itself brought half to life all the souls it had absorbed over the centuries. And others still said it was the breath of some demon lurking in the catacombs and that its breath would become more excited when it smelled its next prey, delivering itself onto it. Martin kept his lantern steady and his eyes alert, right hand free to reach for his revolver or summon his dagger as needed.

  At last, Martin reached the end of the tunnel. It ended at a fork in the road, marked off by a small chapel. The smell of myrrh lingered in the air, though no incense had been burned here in generations. Following the tunnel to the left would lead him to the eastern curve, where monuments bearing names like the Chapel of Fingers and the Mute Choir awaited him. Taking a right would bring him to the western curve, where Rafe’s lair lay. Martin went right.

  The path continued to slope downward. As he walked past the chapel, he had entered the Ossuary proper, and he began to see the true scope of the place. The crudely carved walls he had seen in the undertaker’s tunnel were now hidden behind stacks of bones. In some places, they were embedded in the wall in arcane patterns or in uniform rows, but in others, they were simply stacked from floor to ceiling. The odd skull stuck out from piles of femurs and tibias, leading Martin to wonder what journey that poor soul had taken to find its rest in such circumstances.

  Soon, the path split off again. Branching to the right would continue the steady slope downward along the main hallway of bones. To the left lay an old iron staircase, leading much more sharply into the abyss. Following Jacques' directions, Martin descended the staircase. He moved slowly, keeping his footfalls light to avoid disturbing anything that may lie sleeping in the dark. A few stray bones and skulls were scattered about the iron steps. Whether they were left behind by some prankster or carried and abandoned by some creature of the dark, Martin couldn’t judge. He could simply do his best to avoid knocking into them and sending them careening into the void.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  At last, he reached the bottom. Once again, he was faced with a fork in the road. On his right was a path, ascending this time, that would eventually meet up with the path he had just left. On the left was a large pit, known simply as the Spiral Pit. The Spiral Pit was an ancient burial shaft, ringed by a narrow stone staircase and descending straight down into the deep. It was said that in the past, only the worst heretics had their bones cast into the pit. No one was sure how deep it went or who had carved it originally. The only thing accepted as truth was that no one who had descended had ever come back up.

  Around the Pit was a narrow walkway, leading to another tunnel on the other side. Martin turned his body and began to sidle along the wall. At one point, his foot nudged a small rock, which fell onto one of the steps below and then careened off into the abyss. The room echoed with the knock of stone on stone as it fell out of sight and soon out of hearing. Martin paused for a moment, fully shuttering his bull’s-eye lantern and waiting for the noise of anything stirring below. His heart pounded in his chest, drowning out any potential noise. He forced himself to breathe.

  Elisia. Elisia.

  His heart rate slowed, and so did his breath. There he stood, on the edge of the abyss, and found his courage. He carefully lifted the shutter on his lantern and continued on his way, crossing the remainder of the walkway without incident. Before him stood a narrow doorframe, the door it held having long since rotted away. Through that door lay one of the oldest mortuary vaults in the Ossuary, still holding the coffins of some of the first to die in the plagues and wars of the third age. It was somewhere amongst the coffins and urns held within that Rafe’s lair was hidden. Martin adjusted the lens of his lantern to let out as little light as possible. With one more check of his revolver and a final breath, he walked through the doorway.

  The change from the long hallways he had traversed so far was immediate. Here, he was met with endlessly branching corridors. Every wall was dug out to accommodate coffins in various states of decay or rows of urns, often broken with their contents spilling out onto the stone. Sconces were affixed at every intersection, but the torches they once held had long since burned out.

  Martin bent over to pick up a stone. He picked a spot at the end of the wall about a foot from the ground and scratched an arrow pointing back toward the entrance. As he moved further into the vault, he would do this on every wall, making sure he had a pathway back to the surface; otherwise, he feared he would be caught down here long after his lantern had expired.

  As he was methodically making his way through the vault, however, he began to hear something. As he drew nearer, the sound began to resolve itself into a voice. It was just the one voice, but Martin could hear its inflection rise and fall, and then pause, and then answer again quickly, as if it was engrossed in a conversation with a partner only it could hear.

  “No, no, no. Why are you always defending him?” the voice was saying. “It’s his fault and you know it.”

  It paused for a moment as if awaiting a response. Martin turned right at the next intersection and slowly crept forward.

  “Well, you’re a much kinder man than I am, you always have been, Robin.”

  Martin stopped moving. He remembered that name. Robin had been close friends with Rafe and had been in Lieutenant Bowen’s party on the ill-fated trip to the island. Surely, he had perished on that island. He reached into his jacket and silently drew his revolver from its holster. He took a breath to steady himself.

  Elisia.

  Martin stepped forward as the voice resumed again.

  “Still, I’m here and you’re not, which leaves his judgment to me. I can hear them. I hear them whispering. He’s coming. He’s coming, they're saying. He’s coming for vengeance, although vengeance by all rights should be mine. I’ll start with him, or maybe I’ll make him wait while I deal with his wife. Or those friends of his, scurrying around blissfully on the docks. Which one should I end first, Robin?”

  Martin turned left this time. He could tell that the speaker was close now. From the next intersection, he could see the light of a flame spilling out into the hallway. Silently as he could, he shuttered his lantern. He raised his revolver and crept forward.

  “Oh, you’ve grown silent, Robin. Why won’t you answer me? Oh well, I’ll hear you again tonight, I’m sure. For now, I suppose I’ll just ask the man himself. Who would you like me to kill first, Martin?”

  Martin turned the corner, and there was Rafe. Waiting.