Darkness surrounded all in the chamber that they had so blindly walked into. The door had just slammed behind them like a bullet in the stale air, the sound shot through them, the horror of what was to come. There was a sound of a deathlike silence. Christine's breath was the only thing audible in this darkness. Everyone stood still as statues afraid that their next move might be their last. Suddenly, a single candle was struck from a corner of the room. Like dancing devils on the walls, the ember cast an almost friendly light across the room. There seemed to be no master holding the candle. Just a floating candle held by nothing but an invisible presence. A phantom of sorts. This mysterious occurrence caused everyone in the room to feel a sort of panic.
"Why did I do this Raoul, why?" Christine whispers softly halfway under her heavy breath. Her eyes shut tight as she wished away all that she had done. Her guilt trip, her return to the Opera Populaire, and her return to a life she thought she left behind.
The beginning started as the Phantom disappeared into the depths of the Opera Populaire. This occurred after Christine Daae turned to Raoul to be her husband, and lover, and to spend all of eternity with him. With this decision, the Phantom of the Opera disappeared from sight and was never seen again due to the heartbreak of his undying love for Christine. Well, at least not seen for a long time.
"Darkness! All around me Raoul! Darkness, again! My vision is black! I am plagued Raoul!" Christine screamed from the peak of the stairwell where her bedchamber resides. Raoul was downstairs reading his midnight book by firelight.
"Again?" He jumped almost violently out of his chair to run to her rescue. "This makes the third time within this past fortnight, what is it that is bothering your innocent mind my love? You have spent many a night awake within your chamber and your sleep has been lost a great many a times?"
"Raoul, do you recall," she exclaimed as she started to descend in her long flowing black nightgown, "when we left that dreaded Opera Populaire?"
"Yes?"
"Well, I had another dream in which we were back there, and that the Phantom took me within his arms and at first, it was as if he was seducing me, and then, he thrashed a knife to my throat, and killed me, but instead of dying, I found myself amongst a darkness filled with pure black and death…it was as if…I hadn't died, but instead got caught in the pure silk sheets of despair and fear…it scared me Raoul!"
"Well, here, come and sit with me, and I can read you more of the dark stories of the north my love, and we can share the rest of our night together, and you can be in the comfort that I will be here all of tonight, okay?" A slight smile crept upon his face. He almost seemed, to have grown accustomed to these nightly terrors. She almost had thought of it as a nuisance that he did not react more than a slight, gesture of his hand. She felt comforted, on the other hand, by his presence being by her side, keeping her safe from any fear of that dreaded history.
This comfort of fear lasted but for a very brief time. Christine Daae had become a woman filled with remorse. Her soul became consumed with the overwhelming memories of that, lost in the past, Opera Populaire. Her feelings, although, had suddenly dashed away from fear, but leapt forth into guilt. She had left that dreaded place in search of a better life. But what about the Phantom of the Opera. The man who at one point in her life had filled her soul with music and tender love. She had left him alone, without another soul to care if he was living or dead. She begins to obsess over this thought. Nothing could cure it except a visit to the opera house is what she would repeatedly think. But she could not do that, for Raoul would have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
"I am going back to the Opera Populaire," Christine said blatantly over the grand breakfast the morning after.
