Baguette Rhymes with Dead || ONC 2024 | ✔

Chapter 2: Necropolis Night

I'd always intended to visit the Père-Lachaise cemetery during the five days of my trip dedicated to Paris. I'd just thought I'd end up doing it on the final one, when I'd had plenty of time to get over my irrational fear of being perceived as a weird little freak unusually eager to hang out at a graveyard. I'd also thought I'd be visiting during the day.

Now, I found myself walking the cemetery grounds in the dead of night, accompanied by a weird little freak unusually eager to hang out at a graveyard. One who didn't feel self-conscious about that in the slightest.

The more I thought about it all, the more surreal it seemed.

Luc had done his homework. He'd made sure to locate his ancestor's grave in daylight and had scouted the route we should take to it from his carefully chosen breaking-and-entering point, jotting everything down on a map he'd printed off the Internet. He knew that some four security guards roamed the massive cemetery at night, guards we'd need to avoid at all costs if we wanted to return to our hostel without running into any trouble. The thought of us getting caught still haunted me, nerves making me nauseous as we crept through the necropolis in the dark, but I couldn't deny part of me craved that sense of danger to the whole ordeal.

On our way to division fifty-seven, we took precautions so we wouldn't attract attention: Luc held a handkerchief against his phone's flashlight, dimming its overall brightness. I shivered in the breeze, treading as lightly as I could, as if the dead would rise if too many autumn leaves crunched beneath my feet.

At this hour, the cemetery around us had an eerie vibe rather than a peaceful one: trees with orange-yellow foliage that looked nothing but black now cast long shadows over the cobblestone paths and the forlorn headstones, tombs and mausolea lining them. Some graves looked new, clean, well-maintained; others proved to be ancient markers of staunch neglect, time-worn stone crumbling and mosses sneaking along walls like unstoppable parasites.

An owl hooted somewhere up above in the trees, but Luc and I remained quiet, speaking only in hushed whispers if it couldn't be avoided. Sometimes I swore it wasn't only Luc's whispering I could hear, but someone else's, too, the wind carrying sounds that could've been either words or imaginings to my ears. We hadn't caught glimpses of night guards or presences other than our own, but I still felt as watched as I had on the subway before.

The paranoia ate at me more than I cared to admit, though Luc seemed a lot more relaxed next to me, unbothered by angel statues with prying eyes and the thought of millions of bones decaying all around us. I supposed horror was in the eye of the beholder, indeed.

To take my mind off the horror I most certainly beheld, I tried to steer my thoughts in a different direction. I contemplated the many famous people buried in Père-Lachaise and which of their tombs I wanted to see when I was a regular tourist visiting during the day like everyone else. Oscar Wilde's tomb topped my list.

Because Oscar Wilde was simply a legend, and I wouldn't be taking constructive criticism on that opinion.

Back home in Dublin, I'd passed by Oscar Wilde's childhood home and his statue in Merrion Square almost daily on my way to school for years. I'd known he was an author and, one day, when I'd been looking for a book to read, I'd picked up the only novel he'd ever written.

The Picture of Dorian Gray.

I'd read it cover to cover in a single day. The work had instantly solidified its status as my favourite book, a status it still held now, two years after I'd read it first. The story of that devilish portrait and Dorian Gray's twisted descent into depravity reached far into my soul somehow, touched me on some deeper level, though I always failed to put the sensation into words.