Ballerinas have a talent for spotting monsters at the opera. Perhaps this is because they also have a talent for misbehaving.
Adele was new to the corps de ballet at the Paris Opera, and very curious. Between practices, she would explore every dressing room, every corridor, every gilded statue and staircase. And that was just a fraction of what there was to explore at the Paris Opera. She kept detailed notes in her diary, so that even when she was married and no longer dancing, she could still explore the architectural wonder in her mind.
In her explorations, she overheard many things from the stagehands. One of these was that there was a body of water in the deepest cellar of the opera house. What she did not know was that the men from whom she had heard this knew she was listening, knew that she scampered about when she wasn't being kept in line by Madame du Maurier, the ballet mistress.
"Maybe we can trap her down there," one of the men said when they had heard her clumsily (especially for a ballerina) slip away.
So Adele descended into the cellars, her heart beating harder than it ever had. Her steps got slower as she got lower, and the silence surrounded her. She did not want to make any noise, as there was no noise to mask it.
Finally she reached the landing that overlooked a vast body of water. From what light there was that penetrated as deep as she had, she could tell where the landing ended and the pool began, and she walked to the edge. The water was so calm. There was a faint glow in the distance that, combined with the light that had followed down, gave shape to the ceiling of the place, hinted at the arches and tunnels all around that were mostly obscured by the darkness.
Then she heard a faint splash just below her, and her feet were suddenly wet. She looked down and her first thought was that there was a dead body in the water. As it quickly passed her by, with apparently deliberate movement, she knew it must be alive.
She turned her head to follow its progress, her eyes widening, more to try to see better in the dark than from fear. Adele was afraid, to be sure, but still curious. Whatever it was turned over in the water as it glided away, nearly out of the range of what little light there was, and she saw what seemed to be jagged armor. Then the body peaked what must have been its head out of the water and looked at her. She screamed and ran.
Up the many stairs to the main level, out onto the stage where, she realized, she was late for rehearsal. Madame du Maruier looked less pleased than usual, which was an accomplishment.
"There's a monster down there!" Adele screamed as explanation for her tardiness. A few stagehands chuckled as they worked to raise a backdrop.
"Hush child," Madame scolded. "There's no monster there anymore."
"I saw a…what do you mean anymore?"
Madame took a deep breath. "I thought we were done with this madness. Some years ago, when I was a dancer like you and none of you had even thought to put on ballet slippers, there was a monster. Well, in any case there was a series of murders and kidnappings that were never fully explained, as well as all sorts of strange happenings around the opera house, particularly back stage. Maybe it was a monster, maybe it was a man, maybe it was a magician. Something was happening. People saw all sorts of things, but the people who saw whatever caused them never shared any details with the rest of us. Christine Daaé…she was a dancer, like me, and a chorus girl before she…yes, I see you recognize the name. She became a great star of the opera, but she doesn't sing here anymore. Of all of the strange things that were happening, most of them happened to her. All she ever said publically about the events and the person, the monster, responsible, was that it, he, had died. Then she left us. Married the opera's primary patron, and went to perform anywhere in Europe except Paris. Nothing has happened since she left. There is no monster."
"I saw a monster."
"Silence. Get in line, and be silent. I shouldn't have even humored you with the story."
Adele got in line, and was silent, if distracted, for the rest of the rehearsal.
It so happened that the afore mentioned primary patron, Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, was in the opera house that day, in fact on the stage with the new managers, whom he had come to meet, when the story was recounted, though Madame had not been aware of his presence, and wouldn't have invited further distraction anyway. He had been discussing business with Monsieurs Cotillard and Dreyfus, who were taking over from the men who had been in charge when Raoul first became a patron, to whom he did not care to give much thought to.
But thoughts of those men, and of all that had happened back then, came flooding back when the young girl came screaming onto the stage, insisting she had seen a monster. Raoul had known that being in the opera house would trigger memories, but it was part of his position to make this visit, his first in seven years. He had not anticipated the trigger would be so visceral.
Christine had said the phantom was dead. She had also loved him and protected him. Raoul knew this.
When business was through, Raoul told the managers he wanted to take in the opera house on his own for a while, not having seen the old place in years. They went up to their offices. He put his hand on his side, feeling for his pistol. He had not thought he would run into the old opera ghost, but he had brought protection just in case. And it seemed he would be using it.
Remembering how he and Christine had left that last night, he made his way down to the cellars, just as the girl had, until he reached the landing by the water. He saw the distant glow, just as the girl had, just where he remembered it. The flickering of a full and lit candelabra. Christine had lied to him and to the world.
The water was not deep at the moment, so Raoul took off his overcoat and his shoes, and slid in, holding the pistol high above his head so as to keep the powder dry and the gun in working order. The cold of the water, which came up to his ribs, did not bother him. He had been just bold enough to pursue Christine's kidnapper seven years ago, with the help of a strange companion, but would have been useless had it come to a confrontation. If the phantom had not simply let them go, he would not have been able to defend either of them against the man monster. Now he would do what he should have done in the first place. He would save Christine and his opera house once and for all from the fiend.
The water rippled around him, but he assumed it was just from his own body passing through. He moved slowly and deliberately, graceful in a way that only water allows a body to move. The glow got brighter as he got closer, and he began to hear movement on the far landing. Eventually, he saw the crouched, cloaked figure of the phantom, apparently busy with some device.
Raoul slowly lifted himself out of the water, but this was not a process that could be done entirely silently, so he quickly righted himself and before he had stood up straight, cocked the hammer of his pistol. The phantom, who had started to turn at the sound of water dripping off of Raoul, froze at the click of the gun.
"I know you're not my friend," came the voice of Raoul's nightmares from right in front of him. "He hates guns."
"Turn around, Erik," Raoul said, straightening up. "And stand up."
The cloaked figure rose, and Raoul remembered how tall he was. It turned, and Raoul remembered how ugly. Uglier, in fact, than Raoul remembered, though maybe that was just because his mind had tried to relieve some of his terror by making the monster less frightening. If what covered the front of the phantom's skull could be called skin, it resembled the last stage of decomposition skin goes through in the grave before completely falling off of the dead body. The absence of a nose Raoul remembered too well, but the tininess of the sunken eyes disturbed him afresh, as did the absence of lips. The mouth seemed just a hole full of yellow teeth that disappeared when closed. What little hair there had been on the top of the head was gone.
"Would you like me to put on my mask, Vicomte?" Raoul stood completely still, apparently still not ready to face his enemy. "Little Raoul, all grown up, and yet just as scared as ever. Not as strong of spirit as his blessed wife."
At the mention of Christine, Raoul regained some of his composure. "I knew she was protecting you. I didn't want to believe it, but I knew."
"Would she do the same for you?" the phantom asked. "Would she be able to look at you if you looked half as bad as I do. Do you offer her anything beyond what any man offers any woman? I gave her her voice. My voice. I gave her her education, everything that made her what she is now, a star. Even I get news of her exploits, around Europe, around the world. All because of me. All in spite of you."
Raoul fired his gun at the floor in front of the phantom, who looked down at the smoking hole in front of him. "Go ahead and kill me. All it will do is end my suffering. It won't do anything to alleviate yours."
As he lifted his gun to point it right at the heart of the man in front of him, Raoul heard a huge splash behind him, as if something had exploded out of the water. He heard the loud slap of whatever it was landing right behind him, and before he could turn around, he was being held by two enormous arms lined with what seemed to be jagged bluish green plates. He had dropped his gun, and it had been kicked into the water by what seemed to be a giant, clawed flipper.
"I told you my friend doesn't like guns," the phantom said, turning and walking toward his candelabra. "Too many people have shot at him. You see, he frightens people. Like I do. Superstitious native people, mostly, but they leave him alone, even bring him offerings sometimes so he will leave them alone. Europeans, Americans, they're the ones who try to kill him, take him as one of their trophies."
Raoul struggled against his captor at first, but eventually gave up. He was not, nor could he be, the hero he imagined himself in the rage that followed the revelation that a monster still inhabited the Paris Opera house.
"If you could see his face," the phantom said, turning back to Raoul, "which you won't, except perhaps right before you die, you would see that we resemble each other somewhat. When he saw me, he knew I was not like the humans he had encountered before. For my part, I had some idea what to expect when I saw him. After I let you go, I didn't stay here and die. I stowed away on a ship bound for South America, knowing it was far from here with an ocean in between, knowing there was a vast jungle where I would never have to see another person for the rest of my life. When I arrived in Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River, I started to hear rumors of what were called fish people, that they looked like human beings covered with giant scales. None had ever been captured, but the natives stayed away from a particular lagoon off the river, except to bring tributes, which always seemed to disappear. I know better than to believe stories about monsters hidden in lakes, but it gave me some direction in my quest for solitude. And what do you know, there he was."
The phantom walked up to Raoul and the fish person, and Raoul saw the device he had been working on, a toy monkey with tiny cymbals in its hands. The phantom put his free hand on the fish person's arm. "He cannot speak, but we understand each other. Both outcasts, feared and attacked. I believe he is the last of his kind, which in a way is something we have in common, as I am the only one of mine. And we both wanted to hide. We stayed some years in the jungle, but more and more people came looking for him. I brought him here, which was not easy, because I knew no one would come looking for him, since they had stopped looking for me." The phantom smiled. "I don't know why Christine said I was dead, but it was helpful for moving back here. He swims in our lake, occasionally brings food from the outside world. And I stay here, planning the best way to reclaim my opera house. I hadn't thought to start with getting rid of you. I thought you'd never come to Paris again, from what I've read of your wife. Is….is she here?"
Raoul's eyes widened with fear. He had fallen into a trap that had not even been conceived, and fed Christine, who was waiting for him at their never used Paris home, right into the clutches of the monster. He had to escape to warn her.
"I will take your silence as a yes. Perhaps she can help me. Perhaps she'll be willing to. You didn't have to come here. You didn't have to come to kill me. If you hadn't, you could have lived a long, happy life in that vast wonderful world you have complete access to but which I can never fully enjoy. You can never be satisfied because you don't know what limits are." By now, the phantom was spitting these words at Raoul, once again the bitter, angry creature who had nearly killed him seven years ago, now reminded by Raoul's assumption of triumph over him that the world was out to get him, that he was ultimately alone in all of humanity. "Goodbye forever, Vicomte. And flights of demons sing thee to thy rest."
The phantom looked up into what Raoul assumed were the eyes of the creature that held him. Raoul could sense the understanding between them. A large, greenish blue hand with claws and webbing between the fingers reached up and grabbed Raoul's face. With a sudden jerk, the creature pulled it around so that the neck snapped. In his last instant of life, Raoul saw the creature's face, enough to terrify him even just before he died: huge, as greenish blue as the other parts of him, an enormous fish mouth with large lips and no teeth, gills flaring out from where a human's ears would be and all down his neck, a ridge where a human's nose would be leading up to a sharp and intense brow, and finally giant black eyes with thin gold rings around the pupils. Then, Raoul saw no more.