Hello, readers! To those of you who are reading my work for the first time, welcome! To anyone who still remembers me from The Phantom and the Rose, here is The Secret Door-finally! :) It has been a long journey with this story. 6 months! But it was a labor of love, and it is finally done. I hope you love it as much as I do! I plan to post a chapter every day-so the story should go much more quickly for you than it did for me. :) As always, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts, so PLEASE review!

I would like to take a moment to recognize 2 people who were very pivotal to this story. My PHantastic Beta, FantomPhan33-who has offered insights, advice, and a whole lotta of laughter through the whole process-and my dear friend, EMCLucky13-who has offered loads of encouragement and brilliant ideas. Without the support of these 2 ladies, I never would have made it all the way through this story! Thanks, both of you! Special thanks also to my husband, who has put up with my distraction for the past 6 months, and who has offered insights, and support all along the way!

Now, I'm going to shut up and let the story speak for itself. The first chapter is short, but, believe me, they get longer as we go. :)

1. 1884

Erik ghosted through the secret tunnels of the opera house, his cloak billowing behind him. He had just gathered supplies at the kitchens, and was making his way back to his home beneath the world when he heard the sound. It was a low wail, a keening bellow, and Erik found that he had to move toward the pitiable moan to ascertain if perhaps some innocent, wounded animal had made its way into the Palais Garnier in search of kindness. He knew, if that were the case, the creature was unlikely to find benevolence above, and while he was truly not in the market for a damaged pet, he had never been the type to allow mistreated innocence to go unaided.

He walked in the direction from which the sound was issuing, and as he got closer, he realized that this was no poor animal yowling in pain, but a girl. . . Erik almost turned back upon his way once the realization had been made. He would attend to abused innocence, but rarely had he been able to find any such blamelessness in the realm of men. And yet, the cries were full of such. . .anguish-an emotion with which he was very familiar. He had almost reached the source, and so concluded that he might as well investigate the origin of such a bitter dirge.

When he was certain he had reached the point of the cry's provenance, he determined that he was behind the walls of the chapel, and he stealthily slid to the tiny crevice between the stones through which he could peer into the room unobserved. There, on the cold stone floor, hunched over on her knees before a glowing candle, was sorrow itself. Clad simply, in a white dressing gown, her long dark curls fell forward to shield whatever face she possessed from his view. She was still weeping, and her heaving back showed tangible evidence of each sob that escaped her tiny frame. As she shuddered to draw in a shaky breath, she lifted her head to look upward, and he could tell that she clutched a framed photograph to her chest. Her face, though tear stained and red from her wailing lamentation, still possessed a delicate beauty, and it seemed entirely wrong to Erik for tears to ever fall from those eyes-which were now such an iridescent blue from her crying.

"Papa, I miss you," she entreated to the air around her, in a voice thick with tears, "Why did you have to go? Why did you leave me here all alone, in this place that is not my home?" She looked down again, her hair once more obscuring her face. "I have no home." Her body shook anew with excruciating sobs.

Erik was consumed by the scene before him. As he gazed at the girl in her sorrow, he was certain that he was witnessing not just a girl, but a tragic angel fallen from the celestial heights. Surely there could be no other explanation for her boundless misery, which pierced through his very heart with its sharpness. He ached to reach out to her, to offer her some measure of comfort, and indeed he felt his hand reach yearningly toward the switch which would open the chapel wall. He longed to let her know she was not alone-that she could live in his home, if she would only agree to share it with him. But he knew that he could do nothing to ease her pain. An angel could not be comforted by a monster. Any attempt he could make to console her, would only grieve her further.

And so, his fingers curled and his hand fell to his side. And though it seemed as if his feet had transformed into stone, and were locked to the very spot on the floor where he stood watching, Erik somehow managed to turn from this tragically beautiful fallen angel, and make his way home, once more, into the abyss.

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2014

Jenna retrieved her purse and slammed the door of her locker shut, wincing once she did so, as it made the pounding in her head even worse. She had been scheduled to work a 16 hour shift, but she felt the beginnings of the flu coming on, and luckily her charge nurse was able to find her coverage. So after clocking her first 8 hours feeling miserable and grumpy, she was definitely ready to go home.

It was raining when she put her old Chevy in gear and pulled out onto the road. Even at this late hour-after eleven at night on a Tuesday-New York didn't sleep, so there was more traffic than she really wanted to maneuver through to get to her little apartment. She comforted herself with thoughts of peeling off her scrubs and crawling into bed beside Jake and just drifting off to sleep. She would shower in the morning-although if she still felt like this tomorrow, she was calling out sick.

When she opened her front door, after climbing two flights of stairs, since the elevator was out, she was greeted by the welcoming "Mreooows" of her cat Red.

"Hey, Buddy," she said, gently, scratching his soft head as he began to purr. It was odd that he was out here. Jake was surely asleep by this time, since he had the early shift tomorrow, and since Red was the most spoiled cat in the entire universe, he always slept in bed with them. Maybe he had simply sensed her coming, and wanted to greet her at the door, like the human child he thought he was. Jenna picked him up, and nuzzled him close to her face as she made her way to the bedroom.

As she got closer, she heard muffled noises coming from her room. Had Jake fallen asleep with the TV on again? She noticed the door closed, and once again thought it odd, since they always left their door open at night. She quickly shoved it open and then wished she hadn't.

There, in the middle of her bed, was her boyfriend with some blond. And they were. . . and he was. . .

Jenna turned her head away in disgust. "Oh God," she groaned, tossing Red down to the carpeted floor. She shielded her eyes with her hand and staggered from the room, feeling as if she would throw up.

"Jenna. . ." she heard Jake call after her, and then, apparently to his date for the evening, "Get dressed, will you?" His voice raised, as he called after her again, "JENNA!"

Jenna shook her head. There was a pit in her stomach and her head pounded a thousand times worse than it had earlier. No, she could not deal with this right now. Not the way she was already feeling.

She grabbed her keys and purse, just as Jake made it out of the bedroom, jeans unbuttoned, no shirt. "Jenna," He reached out toward her, but she backed away before his hand could touch her arm. "Please, let me explain. . ."

"NO!" She held up her hand to cut him off, fighting back the tears that were threatening to break loose. "I'm a big girl, Jake. No explanations necessary." She put her hand on the doorknob.

"Jenna, please. . ." he continued. "Where are you going to go at this time of night anyway?"

"Goodbye, Jake." She pulled open the door and stepped out of her apartment, "I'll be back for Red." And for the second time that night, she slammed the door.

She bolted down the stairs which led to the garage for their building and hopped back into her car. She didn't know where she was going as she turned the key in the ignition, and she didn't care. She knew she just had to get away. Away from Jake. Away from the string of disastrous relationships that had plagued her life since. . .well. . . forever. "You're so smart, Jenna," people had always told her. "You'll do great things in life." She snorted in self derision. Wow, if they could just see me now! she thought. Supreme idiot, capable of doing nothing but picking loser after loser.

She turned on the radio in frustration. The loud guitars which immediately started blaring out of the speakers matched her state of mind nicely, even if they did nothing for the screaming pain in her head. She thought Jake would be different. She guessed not. He was intelligent, and sexy, and funny. They had seemed to bond instantly-a whirlwind romance that had taken her breath away, and had her moving into his apartment much sooner than she had initially thought was prudent. But hey, love was love, right? Apparently not.

The tears were flowing freely now, as she thought of how sure she had been that she had finally found the right guy. They were around the same age, had about the same level of education, worked in the same field-those things were supposed to matter, right? It was no big deal that he sometimes scoffed at her interests and never seemed to want to spend time with her friends. They were good together, and that was all that really mattered, right?

Wrong.

Jenna's head had had enough of the guitars, and the pounding beat was really more than she could take. She changed the station to something she hoped would be a little more relaxing, trying to calm the storm in her mind. The music now on the radio was from one of her favorite Broadway musicals-the one about the deformed madman who lived under the opera house. Even though they lived in midtown Manhattan, Jake had refused to take her to see a performance-just another one of those interests of hers that he'd always scoffed at. As she listened to the swell of the strings in the soothing song, she remembered how she had seen scenes of the heroine fainting into a dead sleep at the end of this song. Oh, how Jenna wished she could do the same. Her eyelids were heavy, her head was still pounding, and she ached all over. Sleep would be so comforting-and for awhile she could forget what had just happened. But like the poor heroine in the play, she knew that in the morning, she would awaken to an unmasked horror, and she would have to deal with the shards of another broken relationship.

She looked out her side window. She was down by the river, which looked rough and choppy in the rain. How had she already driven this far? She was going to have to look for an exit soon, so that she could find a place where she could stay for the night. She was so incredibly exhausted. . .

The oncoming headlights and blare of the horn startled her to consciousness-but too late. Jenna swerved to avoid the oncoming vehicle, and in her panic, stepped hard on the gas. She heard a scream as her Chevy left the road and headed straight toward the river below. Right before the sickening splash, when blackness of the night water took her-Jenna realized that the scream was her own.

So please tell me what you think! I'm literally dying to know!