"L'Ecoute (the look)" ~ for Vive la France!

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Beyond its primary function, the famous Romantic-inspired necropolis of Pere Lachaise, had become an open-air museum and pantheon garden attracting many both living and dead to pass through its gates.

The Parisian cemetery was filled with the most diverse or perhaps exotic statuary and tombs for the dead that Napoleon Solo and his partner, the Russian, Illya Kuryakin had ever seen.

The agents had been in many of the legendary cemeteries in New Orleans where possibly the French tradition of over the over-the- top monuments had been continued, but even those seemed not to hold a candle to this purportedly haunted ‘aux morte de la commune.’ (the community of the dead)

Located in the 20th arrondissement;  it housed the remains of a number of famous people, reading like a who’s who of the dead... Oscar Wilde, Honoré de Balzac, Proust , Molière , Frédéric Chopin- though his heart was entombed in a pillar in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. Isadora Duncan, and the recently deceased Édith Piaf, France's most famous singer, were entombed there with countless writers, artists and entertainers, alongside the everyday people, the workers of the city, from the brilliant to the banal.

At the moment it wasn’t the dead that concerned the two agents, but the living, as intelligence said there was a supposed entrance to a THRUSH satrap in here somewhere.  Their presence, possibly using the long standing urban legends of ghosts walking, or rather floating around the cemetery at night were a usefully eerie tool for keeping prying eyes from their nefarious doings.

Not that there weren’t the curious who would seek out these apparitions, looking to see statues turning and moving, those were the same sort of haunting claims back in the graveyards of New Orleans.

But here, the some of the curious seemed to disappear and a fair number of missing persons reports had been filed with the Gendarmes, though nothing had come of their investigations.

The UNCLE agents knew better, as THRUSH was known for ridding themselves of the meddlesome by either killing them or using them as guinea pigs in one of their heinous experiments.

Solo and Kuryakin had already encountered THRUSH using a cemetery as one of their hiding places;  the statues eyes served both as surveillance and weapons, as lasers had been installed to deal with unwanted visitors.  There the lab was secreted within a large mausoleum, but here it was anyone’s guess as where it lay hidden.

Napoleon and Illya walked cautiously among the many statues depicting mourning women, guardian angels, gargoyles and manifestations of death itself. They found themselves filled with a sense of urgency, though looking at the two men, they appeared calm and cool as the other side of the pillow while they tried to blend in,  joining a  procession as a pair of mourners who were in attendance for a funeral.

Illya carried a small scanning device, searching with it for power spikes. It’s range was only a hundred yards, but that was enough to help them pinpoint anything at a relatively safe distance. The Russian kept the scanner hidden as much as possible, though it was daylight; he and Napoleon had to assume they were being watched.

It was surmised there was no danger of any sort of from weapon’s fire, not during the day when legitimate mourners would be in the cemetery. That danger would most likely exist during the cemetery’s nocturnal hours,  when THRUSH wanted it’s privacy to defend whatever it was they were doing..

The American and Russian hid themselves among the next funeral cortege, but Illya shook his head to his partner, as so far there were no readings to indicate the location of the THRUSH hide away.

It wasn’t until they wandered into one of the oldest parts of the cemetery where there were little or no visitors to the aged graves and mausoleums; there something finally happened.

Illya whispered to the American, as he had detected a slight blip on the scanner’s dial. “This way,” he said, nodding with his head.

Napoleon grabbed a bouquet of flowers from a nearby vase, and headed in the direction his partner who was now slowly walking, holding the scanner out in the open in front of himself.

The signal led them to to a tall Egyptian Obelisk, a monument to Jean-Baptiste Apollinaire Lebas, the French engineer who was responsible for bringing and erecting the Obelisk of Luxor from Egypt at the Place de la Concorde in 1836.

Beside the stone pillar was a statue of a maiden, watching carefully over the graves that surrounded her.

Napoleon couldn’t help stare at her lifeless eyes, wondering if there were human ones peering out from behind hers.  He placed the flowers at one of the more nondescript tombs, visually scanning for any signs they were being watched.  

Nothing seemed out of place, though Illya found the signal was strongest near Lebas’ monument.

Finding no other trace of electrical activity, they deemed it necessary to return that night, though the cemetery itself had created an uneasiness left unspoken between the two men.

It was well past midnight when they stepped through the main gate, with the streets surrounding the necropolis now empty of passersby.

Both men, clothed completely black, made their way carefully among the tombs, using an infrared flashlight as their only guide.  They arrived at the suspect tomb, finding it illuminated by a small spotlight at it’s base.

Illya encircled the tall monument, while Napoleon stood guard against possible attack, shivering as the hairs of the back of his neck stood up; a he swore they being watched, and he turned quickly with his weapon drawn.  There was nothing, except the odd sensation that a statue of a mourning woman had moved, but he questioned if it had just been his imagination.

Napoleon looked it over carefully but found nothing, no seams, or breaks in the grey lichen covered stone.

Not far from him, a strange glow appeared in the hands of a nearby statue of an angel, bowing its head in sadness. There was a flash of lightning, as a storm was rolling in, adding more shadows and faces staring out at him.

The glowing light in the statues hand faded away just as Illya came out from behind the Obelisk; his eyes filled with disappointment at finding no sign of the satrap.

“There is nothing here but the electrical cables for the spotlight.”

Napoleon stared for moment at the statue of the angel, but decided to say nothing about it. He guessed it might simply be St. Elmo’s fire occuring from the buildup of the electrical field in the atmosphere created by the lightning.

He chuckled at himself, as he realized his thoughts sounded very much like his partner.

“So it’s a bust then, just rumors for once. Let’s get out of here chum, this place is giving me the willies.”

“Apparently so,” Illya nodded as they walked off into the darkness. “Though the disappearances are still a mystery.”

Napoleon stopped, sitting down and removing a shoe, as there was a pebble lodged in it. He jumped up with a start, looking where he’d sat.  It was a sarcophagus of sorts with the bronze statue of a man draped supine on top of a stone casket.

”I swear that statue just grabbed me,” he yelped, not even bothering to see whose grave it was.

Illya uncharacteristically, did not challenge his partner and scanned it, but there were no readings at all.

Somehow, he too was having a sensation of discomfort. Perhaps he was picking up on some of the American’s nervous feelings.

The eyes of all these statues, gave him chills. There was no rational explanation for it, no electrical activity, save the lightning flashes to affect his body, yet l’ecoute...the look from each of them, he found inexplicably unsettling.

“There is nothing here Napoleon. Still, I think it is time we leave the dead to themselves before our imaginations get the better of us.”

“Amen to that. At least THRUSH isn’t disturbing them for once,” Napoleon nodded as they headed to the gate and back to the streets of Paris filled with light and the living.

Things seemed much better once they stepped out of the cemetery, that was until it started to rain...


                                                   
                                                                 

Comments

[lindafishes8.livejournal.com]

Your story gave me chills! Thanks for posting it here. A terrific if not frightening read.

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm sure the pics helped. There are soooo many scary monuments in this particular French cemetery. Same in some of the ones in New Orleans. Yikes.

Glad you liked it1

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

I never tire of reading cemetery stories. :) This is great! I like that apparently it isn't the THRUSH hide-out, but that also the weird goings-on aren't fully explained. Somehow it seems creepier to leave it that way than to even reveal supernatural problems. Poor Napoleon and Illya.

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much and glad you liked the story!

[jantojones.livejournal.com]

I love a good cemetery (as you can probably imagine), but eve I would think twice about hanging around one at night these days.

Great story :-)

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Yep all kinds of not so mysterious reasons for not being in a cemetery at night. We have one here that's full of ghost lights and idiots doing drugs...

Glad you liked the story.! Thank you!