Erik internally sighed as he took in his dank and dark surroundings. The fifth cellar was, of course, his own secret handiwork, but he couldn't help the hopelessness rising in his chest at its current state. It was utterly barren. There wasn't even lighting other than the small lantern he had brought with him. He tried to envision living out the rest of his life in this hole, but he couldn't.
But then, that was the problem, wasn't it? What other choice did he have? Live above and be ignored, ridiculed, mocked, displayed? No. Never again. He had spent two decades on this poor excuse for a planet, and he'd traveled it extensively. Kindness, compassion, love, all good things worth living for were denied him. He had begun to believe that they didn't exist at all, that they were merely beautiful ideas that people had created to hide their own selfish and vain motivations. Yes, it was better to live alone forever than to be forced to face the awful truth and horror of humanity, and this was the ideal space. He'd fashioned it specifically for that very purpose, after all.
He looked around again and tried to envision what his home would look like when it was finally finished. A large, well-lit, and warm house in the spaces carved out of the earth. With a lake in front, like a moat. Yes, a moat for the king of the underworld. If he was to be forced to live apart from all others, he would live like a king. His home would have the best furniture, the most modern conveniences, a pipe organ! He would build the most beautiful instrument on the face of the earth!
He took a deep breath and sang a pentatonic scale so that he could hear the acoustical properties of his future home.
Flawless. He closed his eyes in fleeting victory. His calculations had been perfect. The space would serve his music well. A small smirk of a smile appeared on his wasted face as his mood began to change. He would make this grave into a home, as pleasant a one as was possible, and he would rule the opera house above like the most fearsome emperor who ever lived.
Living alone needn't be lonely. He could be quite happy here, with his music and his books and all the comfort his ill-earned fortune could buy. If he grew desperate enough, he could always entertain himself with the dramas of the thespians and musicians above. There were sure to be plenty. He could even manipulate himself into their stories if he found he needed to keep one tenuous string attached to society.
He glanced around once more, making calculations and mental blueprints as he did so. Surely, there was much work to be done, and he would have to do it all himself, but it was possible. It wasn't as if he had any other plans eating up his time. He grinned in an imperfect joy at the vision of his future life of absolute solitude. The hopelessness in his chest was gone and was replaced with a manic sense of determination and urgency. So, swiftly and silently, he began to build.
Erik paced the halls of the now fully-functioning opera house, thinking. It was long past midnight, and everyone else had either left altogether or gone to their dormitories on the other end of the building. Erik mused over his new life as the opera's resident ghost with a surprising lack of bitterness. He had a daily routine now; working on schemes and plans for the opera itself in the morning, working on his own music and other various projects in the afternoon, and stealing what he needed from above while patrolling the corridors at night. It all had a strange sense of, dare he think it, normalcy. Not that he or his life were in any way normal, of course, but that he had secured a steady rhythm, a pleasant beat for his day-to-day living that allowed him to find, while not happiness, at least something akin to contentment.
He controlled the opera's season and casting choices from behind the scenes. He had grown, not attached certainly, but fond of a few players. There was one Gustave Daae, the first violinist, who played very well, even by Erik's exacting standards. He was a gentle young man of Scandinavian origin, only a few years older than Erik, and he loved music almost as much, so Erik couldn't help but feel a sort of kinship with the man. In fact, Erik had decided to be benevolent one day when he heard that Gustave was newly married and forced the managers to give him three days off to be with his new wife, along with 500 francs for a wedding gift. If it had been any other man, or perhaps any other week, Erik would have been pushed into a minor depression with the reminder of what happinesses could never be his, but it was Gustave, and the opera had just given a rather good run of The Magic Flute, so Erik was feeling generous.
Then there was a woman, also a few years older than Erik, by the name of Antoinette Giry whom he had accidently let see him one night. He couldn't believe his own carelessness at being caught in box five, humming along of all the ridiculous nonsense, but he was lucky. Antoinette happened to be just the right combination of superstitious and ambitious in order for Erik to manipulate her into being his delivery woman. All he had to do was appear before her in his mask, throw his voice around a bit, and promise her that she would be the new ballet mistress. It was painfully easy, and Erik didn't give a damn about the ballet, so this arrangement worked well. Madame Giry proved to be more than capable as a ballet mistress and Erik's methods of delivering his commands and retributions became much more efficient than before. The woman was strict, but fair, and she was loyal, which moved Erik to feel a sort of fondness for her. He left her chocolates or other small tokens in box five occasionally. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, and a soul like Erik's simply couldn't go forever without giving something to someone as a demonstration of feeling. He had a ridiculous and sick inner drive to make the people he was fond of happy, though he tried to suppress it as often as he could.
Then there were the children of the opera house. There weren't many, and none lived there, but some of the costume seamstresses and cleaning women brought their children to work with them during the day. Erik didn't mind so long as the children didn't interrupt rehearsal or utterly destroy anything. Erik rather liked children, actually. Some of them had an innocence about them that most of humanity lacked. They hadn't all learned to be vain, pretentious, and cruel yet, though some had certainly learned those lessons well. There was one boy, Denis, big for his age, that Erik particularly disdained. He was absolutely terrible, for no good reason, to one of the smaller boys, young Remy. Remy happened to have eyes of two different colors, and naturally that doomed him to a childhood of ridicule from the Denis-es of the world. Erik thought often of frightening the bully into decent behavior, but he always decided against it. It was better for Remy to learn young that the world could and would be cruel to him if he was different. This way, he could learn to compensate for his genetics and find a way to fit into society early. It would be more cruel than his current situation if he was fooled into believing humanity was fair and then doused with the icy water of disappointment later. As long as there was no physical assault, Erik vowed not to intervene. He didn't see any harm, however, in occasionally leaving interesting toys or pieces of candy for the small boy to discover in one of his many "hide-from-Denis" places.
Erik also enjoyed the playful fear he inspired in some of the ballet rats and the younger chorus mice. He took an easy pleasure in playing small tricks on them or indulging them with some harmless thumps and ghostly moans when they ventured into the first cellar in an attempt to "meet" the ghost. None of them ever made it anywhere near the fifth cellar, of course. That was imperative. But he didn't begrudge them their fun as long as they did their jobs fairly well and didn't go making up silly romances to fill in the "ghost's" backstory. Which they did. Often.
"I heard that he was a contractor who begged to be buried alive when his lady left him!" as if any builder would willingly bury a contractor alive.
"Well I heard that he jumped from the roof after his wife discovered that his mistress was pregnant!" Erik was a bit of a Don Juan, after all. Of course. Having two women to love in one lifetime would certainly be grounds for jumping from the roof. Naturally. Needless to say, Erik did not find these tales amusing. The first few times, he left little notes on the beds of the perpetrators calling them liars in blood red ink. That shut them up for a while, but even Erik could not stop the gossip hounds of the theatre. He eventually just accepted it as the one downside to his life arrangement and went back to switching their hair ribbons or shoes around when no one was paying attention. It wasn't noble or high-brow entertainment, but it made a fun break for his restless mind when he could no longer focus on whatever particular grindstone his nose was to at the moment. Well, his metaphorical nose anyway.
Erik continued down the corridor as his thoughts wandered to his plans for the coming day. He would need to remind the managers to keep the diva in check. She enjoyed "embellishing" the music where she clearly wasn't supposed to, and when she clearly wasn't any good at it. He would have to take her down a peg or two if she didn't find her proper place soon enough. And then there were the new chorus members starting tomorrow. Erik allowed the managers to hire whatever chorus members they pleased as long as none of them proved to be absolutely unbearable, and so he had skipped watching the auditions last week. He would have to listen to the entire rehearsal tomorrow to make sure they were all at least competent singers. It would be boring, but it was - suddenly, Erik's thoughts were interrupted by a strange noise coming from one of the boxes. Coming from his box!
He crept closer to the noises and was able to discern exactly what they were. There were two people, and they sounded for all the world like they were...copulating. What was this?! Erik couldn't believe they would have the nerve! In his box! He peaked his head around to look at the couple, to confirm that they were doing what he thought they were doing, and sure enough he was correct. There was one of the older ballerinas with one of the tenors, against a wall, making absurd motions and even more absurd noises. He was running kisses along her neck and shoulder while she clutched at his hair. Obviously, Erik turned away immediately.
How could they?! Erik wrestled with the urge to strangle both of them, his punjab lasso gripped tightly in his left hand. How dare they! He wasn't sure what fueled his rage more: the debasement of his box, the sting of witnessing what he could never know firsthand, or the perverse reaction a part of him had to said witnessing. He tried to stamp out these urges at all costs, and yet here these people were, out in the open, in his box! But he couldn't strangle them. Murder would be bad for business. Instead, he hid himself behind a wall and threw his voice into a menacing roar: "GET OUT!" and, well, they did. With the tenor even forgetting to button his trousers in his hurry. Erik pulled some minor satisfaction from this, but his evening was nevertheless completely ruined. He returned to his house on the lake to compose a particularly dark fugue and furtively attempt to forget the ideas that ran through his mind and why he would never be allowed to experience any of them.