A/N: Back by the demand of my muse...seriously, he wouldn't shut up until I wrote this! To all old readers, welcome back, and to new scum, welcome. I hope that everyone has taken their reviewing classes!

STORY RATED M FOR VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CONTENT. LATER.

The True Opera Ghost: Prelude

Chapter 1—Void

"Oh, my God, what happened here?"

Such were the words of the policeman when he opened the door of the silent house that fateful night. The woman that most knew lay on the floor, covered in blood. In her hand, she held a crimson knife, and her throat had been slit.

"Suicide," the policeman's partner replied. "Look—there is a note."

The first man picked it up gingerly and read, "'I cannot stand the sight of my child any longer. I am taking my own life because of it. She is to be given to Monsieur and Madame Garnier. You will find her in the second room at the top of the stairs. Do not let her remove her mask. She is a child of the devil.'" There was a key in the envelope as well. The two policemen shook their heads and went to discover this so-called 'child of the devil.'

As he approached the correct door, the first man—Pierre was his name—heard soft violin music, and an inhumanly rich alto voice singing.

"Shamed into solitude, shunned by the multitude,

I learned to listen! In the dark, my heart hears music!

I long to teach the world, rise up and reach the world—

No one will listen. I alone can hear the music…"

The soaring violin solo brought Pierre's breath short to his throat. He turned the key quietly in the lock and opened the door.

She had to be no more than seven or eight years old. Her back, which was all he could see, had bones that stuck out through the worn-out fabric of the dress she wore. Her thin shoulders were erect, however, and curved in slightly to support the violin. She swayed back and forth with the rhythm of her playing.

"No one will listen!

No one but I hears as the outcast hears…"

Pierre took a step forward, and the playing stopped. The girl did not turn, but said, "She killed herself, did she not?"

He was still entranced by her voice, but forced himself out of it. "Yes," he replied.

"It is my fault." Her tone was calm, as though she hardly realized the integrity of the thought she'd spoken. "That is why she locked me in here."

Pierre walked all the way up to her and laid a gentle hand on one emaciated shoulder. "There was a note. It told us where to put you. I am sorry for your loss."

"I am not."

It startled him so much that he stepped back. She rose and began putting the violin she carried back into its tattered case. "I have nowhere to go, so I may as well follow you." It was as though she felt nothing, and when she turned to face him, he thought he knew why. The right side of her face was covered by a black cloth mask, and her eyes stared out at him from deep within it. "Unless you would rather give me up, as she did, so lovingly—exactly as a mother should." She did not smile—no emotion at all showed on her face at this morose joke. She seemed to accept the fact that she was doomed for eternity. What was he to do? Surely he couldn't just leave her here…

So he took her. She clutched the handle of her violin case and followed him, a tattered, black scrap of cloth as a shawl around her skeletal shoulders. She went quietly to the police station and answered all questions asked impassively. All, except one.

When asked the reason for her mask, she looked up, distant hatred burning far, far within her eyes. "I am a monster," she said, "and no one shall ever see my face." They left the tender question there.

The woman was given a simple funeral. Her coffin was plain wood—planks nailed together roughly and quickly by the undertaker. Few attended, and fewer still noticed the small, black figure that stood far back from the grave. Until the end of the funeral, no one knew even who she was. But the local priest, who had been called to say a few words over the grave, beckoned her forward at the very end.

"We share our sorrow with her young daughter, Christine," he said. At that time, heads turned in the direction that he looked, and the girl seemed to glide hauntingly forth to stand at the head of the grave. She held a single, blood red rose, around which was tied a black ribbon, and a beaten violin case. She said nothing, but dropped the flower onto the coffin, then turned and glided out of the cemetery silently, leaving in her wake confusion and pity.

Christine moved quickly, to get away from the mourners as soon as she could. She kept going until she reached a nearby park, where normal children romped in the snow while young lovers held hands. She glared at them all, knowing that she could never be a part of their happy society, then drew her shawl tightly around her and moved to the remotest section of the wintry park.

Her hands were very cold, but they were often that, and though it took some blowing on them to be able to work the fastener of her case, she eventually brought out her violin. It took a very long time, in the bitterness, to keep the pegs from slipping as she tuned the instrument, but once she did, she brought it to her shoulder with practiced ease and began to play.

She played nothing in particular, but invented a sad, minor melody as she went along. Her small, thin fingers pressed the strings down in the perfect places as her bow moved almost sullenly, reflecting her open wound of a heart.

It was not that Christine had loved her mother—far from it. The woman had had Christine from a mistake, a slip-up in her duties at the Moulin Rouge. When the child had been born with her hideous face, the woman could do nothing but despise her—the woman being quite beautiful herself. She immediately made the poor cloth mask that the girl wore, to cover up her shame. She kept Christine inside during the day, and only allowed her to wander at night.

It was at night that Christine had found her instrument. She had been walking an alleyway, and had seen, in a refuse bin, the old case. She had taken it out and found the perfectly good violin inside, out of tune but quite usable, and taught herself to use it, with a good amount of help from a knowledgeable minister in the nearby church.

Her mother had made barely enough money to buy necessities. She gave herself the majority of these, her logic being that if she were very thin or poorly dressed, her customers would be far from satisfied. Christine got only a small amount of food, and her clothes were thin and ragged, not at all a match for the drafts that penetrated the house that had been abandoned by its original owners and taken advantage of by the prostitute. Christine had grown quite used to the cold, and to the constant pang of hunger in the depths of her stomach. The lightly-falling snow did not interrupt her playing in the slightest.

Her thoughts, as she played, were disconnected and fragmented, as though her mind were trying to focus and failing. Her music grew wilder and louder as the time passed, until with a hideous scratch, her E string slipped and slackened. She gave up, falling to her knees in the freezing dampness, her body quaking with a repressed scream.

She heard footsteps crunching behind her, and heard a timid voice.

"Excuse me, are you all right?"

"Please go away," she whispered, her throat clenched.

She remained there, silently shuddering, until those behind her moved away. Only then did she slip the violin back into its case and arise. She had to go somewhere.

But there was nowhere to go.

"Miss?" someone called, and Christine recognized the voice of Pierre, the policeman. She did not want to meet him. Her legs began to move at a blinding speed, carrying her away from the park, away from all the normal folk. She ran and ran, clutching her violin to her chest and letting her shawl and her hair stream out behind her like the tails of the wind. Her feet took her to the only place she knew she would be welcome.

She opened the back door of the chapel with silent ease, her body quaking even more from the run. She could hear the chanting song of the monks in the church itself, but directed her steps up a set of stairs to the office of her mentor, Father Coleman. He was there, sitting at his desk, and looked up when she entered.

"I heard," he said quietly before Christine could speak. She nodded, and he said, "Sit down, my child."

Christine sat, watching him get up and go to the fireplace. She watched his hands—they were quite something to see. The right hand was wrinkled and lightly brown, with delicate blue veins tracing paths beneath the skin. The left hand was what had drawn Christine to Father Coleman in the first place. That hand was twisted and gnarled, rendering it nearly useless. There was little, in fact, that the father could do with it, but before the accident that had caused this deformity, Father had told Christine, his hand had been whole, and quite adept at the creation of music, and thus was he able to teach her.

He poured her a cup of hot tea, added sugar, and handed it to her without a word. She accepted it in the same way—such was their custom when Christine came. She held the cup in her hands tightly to warm them before she said anything.

"Father Coleman," she began, "I shall be leaving this place soon."

He nodded, watching her but saying nothing. She took a sip of the hot liquid and let it soothe her clenched throat before she spoke again.

"I will be sorry to miss you, Father."

He smiled gently. "Christine, child, thou art far too young to experience such a horrible thing as a death. Thee should never—indeed, no one should ever have to come through life with such a horrid curse as thou hast. But, my child, I am very old." He leaned back in his hard wooden chair, observing her through his spectacles. "In the Far East, they believe that wisdom comes with age," he said. "But I declare, many men my own age have less wisdom than thou, little one. At six years only, thou art quite an old woman in the knowledge of thy heart."

Christine set down her cup, listening intently to this more reverent form of speaking than he had yet used with her. She had the feeling that something was coming of it.

"My heart grows weak and fails me, dear child. I am dying."

The young girl was suddenly scared. She saw the increased tremor of the holy man's hand as he raised his teacup to his lips. She saw the glaze in his eyes, heard the shortness of his breath, saw the blue tinge to his lips. He, the only one who had consoled her in her hell of a life, was dying.

The teacup smashed to the floor.

"Father!" she cried, hastening to crouch by his side and to take his withered hand in hers. "Father, do not die, please!"

"I have eighty-nine years behind me, Christine," he said weakly. "But thou—thou shalt live. Thou shalt not die for many, many years, and thou shalt remember me, I know it. But, child," he said, suddenly fierce, "thee must never give up thy music. Keep it dear to thy strong heart, for Music shall be thy salvation."

His eyes fell closed, and his hand went limp. He was dead.

Christine let out a harsh wail of despair. He was truly gone.

But her music lived.

Her breath catching in her throat, she ran, crying, to the nearby organ console, and sat. As loudly as she could, she began to play her own composition of the Dies Irae. She sang the words with a wondrous passion, not caring who heard, who saw her tears.

It might have been minutes, hours, days, before two men came hurriedly up the stairs. She finished the piece and broke down sobbing as they came into view.

"He is gone!" she cried aloud. "He is dead!"

--

Nothing could console Christine. She clenched her precious violin to her chest while the kindly monks led her back downstairs and into the vestry, where her agonized cries would not disturb the church's peace. She was made tea and food, but she refused it all. Her life, were it not for her music, would not have mattered. As it was, she was being propelled only by the echoes of the requiem that filled her person.

Her music lived.

It was, the monks informed her, two and a half hours before she fell into silence. At that time, she had bled herself of all feeling, all emotion, and she was spent, at least for the moment. She was curled up on a bench with her violin, and would speak to no one, look at nothing, only exist, empty of everything. Her world was destroyed.

But her music lived.

It did not even matter when the police came and took her away. One man gathered her useless body in his arms, instrument and all, and carried her into the carriage in which they had come. They brought her back to the dismal place—bare as a jail cell—where she would spend her last night in her hometown. She was empty, void, uncaring.

But her music lived.

She fell asleep eventually, on the hard cot in the corner of the room, and hardly even noticed. She dreamed of death, of shadows of her mother and teacher hovering about her. She dreamed of silence and void, nothingness. She dreamed of falling, falling, falling, into dead, dark, blackness. She dreamed of dying.

But her music lived.

--

Wow. Intense. Yous guys like it so far? It's Christine's life, all the way up until TTOG, so it's going to be about 50 chapters. Or so. Prepare for a long haul.

LOVE IT OR HATE IT, PRESS THE BUTTON DOWN THERE AND REVIEW!