He was crawling through the dark tentacles of a tuberculotic nightmare, his ragged breathing echoing off the beating walls that surrounded him, suffocating him. He didn't know what he was reaching for, but kept straggling on, his hands slipping on the slimy floor that reeked of human blood, and the fear; he could taste the fear that must have been his own, and kept pulling further, guided only by a light that was the color of the veins of a demon's eyes.
A demon. There was a monster, swimming toward him, with outstretched arms that were only sinewy strings of deteriorating flesh. He stopped and watched as the creature snaked closer, eyes deep sockets and body black with the gore that surrounded it. It was rasping something to him… Whispering…
He was frozen in place, staring in horror at the approaching fiend whose voice was reverberating so terribly off the walls that he could not make out a word it was saying. The monster approached him and extended its arm to him. One bleeding hand on his face felt like freezing rubber, yet was so coarse as it scraped across his skin that it seemed like razors. The stench on its breath was swallowing him, the sick feeling he got from being touched by the creature was making the world spin, faster and faster…
The monster put its parched black lips against his ear and whispered with such passionate evil that it caused a tremor to run up his spine; "I'm…not…done…yet..."—
Raoul gasped feverishly and lurched forward roughly as if waking from a nightmare, wrenching his eyes open only to be greeted by a creature so close that he could feel it snorting rotten, humid breath on him from a clotted stretched-skin grinning face. He gave an insane cry and flew backwards only to stumble and fall over something onto the dusty stone floor.
Maniacal laughter rang throughout Raoul's head and evolved into a terrible headache that caused hundreds of unclear images to flash before his eyes that he couldn't understand, he couldn't make sense of, he couldn't…
Before he could collect himself or begin to wonder where he was, a figure appeared calmly above him that contradicted any belief he'd ever had about the nonexistence of supernatural beings, his perception boggled and hacked in two with the mere echo of a footstep off the lonely black-stained walls. This figure was solid and altogether horrifyingly real, and it straddled him playfully, looking down at his frozen face.
Its eyes were nearly entirely gone save for the sunken pupils that peeked out over the dry layers of blood-caked skin. Its head movements were sharp and halting as if it were a ventriloquist dummy, black lips pulled back to reveal pointed, pale brown teeth. It stood no taller than a five-year-old but bore down on the young man, as antique as time itself.
"I wondered when you would awaken," the figure said with a child's voice, warped by the decay of its throat and dirt collecting inside a paper thin pharynx. From his position on his back, Raoul seemed unable to do anything but gawk into the face of this puppet of a human being.
"Where am I?" Raoul whispered. "Please don't hurt me."
"You remember nothing," it laughed, pasty tongue lapsing in and out of the ugly hole of a mouth.
The memory of a voice…
The Angel of Music is not the only Angel whom I have seen… There are many others with different faces… and shadows… Darker shadows… lurking where the light may never touch…
"Niklas Daaé…" Raoul trailed off.
They will try to come for Christine… Protect her…
"Remember what you did for her," the creature said.
I need you to protect her...
"What happened to Christine?" Raoul shouted, voice cracking and hoarse. He struggled to stand but was pushed back down with wrenching ferocity. Another laugh escaped the fiend.
"Do not worry about her," it said with gravity, dropping its knees into Raoul's chest, leaning so close to him that he felt the itch of chilling breath against his face. "She is not the one who is in trouble, now."
"Oh, God!"
"He cannot save you here!"
Raoul squirmed in panic but the figure forced its chapped lips over his and dug its jagged tongue into the roof of his mouth. The young man uttered a terrified scream and his eyes grew large and white as the figure seemed to be seeping its tongue through every wrinkle and vulnerable crack of his brain, paralyzing him from struggling, only allowing him to tremble violently from fear; such fear that the creature could feed off of…
He choked and gagged as tremors ran through him, as if his soul were being sucked from him, and the whole time that tongue beat into him, his head felt water-logged, his mind was swirling, someone had pulled the plug inside of him and he was spinning in a whirlpool to collapse into the depths of darkness, of a darkness no human had ever seen that was consuming him, and that beating tongue worked inside his mouth, inside his mouth.
Mazenderan.
He got a sudden breath of Mazenderan; his veins were coursing with heat and he felt something cold and heavy against his wrists.
He felt hands on his face, hands more solid than the razor hands of the bloody demon, beautiful hands that should never lose their touch on him, caressing fingers that could pull him back into himself, away from it, the ancient child—
Real. What was real?
Everything but those hands was gone, gone in a heartbeat, never there, covered in mold and forgotten about, locked up in a chamber that would never again open to him, as long as those hands never left…
Open your eyes.
Open your eyes.
"Raoul, open your eyes."
All the gentleness of a butterfly and the authority of a king.
Raoul opened his eyes and rested them on what filled him with spectacular relief.
"Christine," he said, trying to touch her but only succeeding in being forced back by the cold iron manacles that held him.
"I have a key, don't struggle," Christine whispered, taking a hand away from his face. Raoul closed his eyes and felt himself being released from the prison of the chains, falling into Christine's arms. She leaned him heavily against the wall for support.
The images of the night flooded back into his head and he took a sharp intake of breath.
"You're safe! What happened? What happened to the Persian? Where are we?" Raoul asked, letting his words fly out of his mouth in a string of questions.
"Erik... he brought you here below the fifth cellar after you passed out," Christine replied. "You look terrible."
"He must have…" Raoul let his sentence twiddle away into silence. "Mazenderan…"
A noise made the both of them jump. Raoul put his arms around Christine protectively.
He took a deep breath and stole in the faint scent of her hair. "You are so real," he sighed.
"You're acting strangely," Christine answered. "We must leave here. Are you all right?"
"I'll live," Raoul assured her.
"Of course. No secluded dungeon could be worse than Erik's torture chamber," she ventured to add.
"You have no idea."
"Oh Raoul, we have to get out of here," Christine said, suddenly faltering from her emotionless charade and falling into the quivering vocals of fear and doubt.
Raoul clasped Christine reassuringly and led the way out of the Communists' dungeon.
The door was closed behind them with the noise of sucking air that a soundproof compartment makes when shut of the world; for, as everyone knew, the dungeon was the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, where no one ever comes… and where no one ever hears you.
A figure loomed inside, waiting patiently for the door to open once more. It would find Raoul the Vicomte de Chagny... and show him that the Mazenderan Child of his nightmares was not a figment of his imagination, but an abomination.
"You have been warned, Pet. You will come to the same premature end Miss Daaé's father did…" the monster prophesized, silently.
Where no one ever hears you…
A figure loomed inside.
Waiting patiently…