CHAPTER 1: The Escape February 6, 1871
Inky blackness surrounded him as the curtain fell across the hidden doorway, concealing it again from his pursuers. Like the phantom he was believed to be, he descended the narrow path quietly through winding tunnels; moving quickly and eagerly to outrun the hunters should they discover his escape route through the shattered mirror.
The phantom stopped only to collect one of the two satchels he had deposited along the passage. He looked at the other briefly, thinking of the feminine items he'd packed for her comfort while they traveled. Now there was no need so he left the small bag there in the darkness. Everything else would have to be abandoned. He knew that the authorities and theatre employees would be violating his lair at this very moment. All his possessions would be pilfered or destroyed. His precious compositions were all lost.
"I should have burned them." He whispered to himself as he maneuvered through the gloom, but there hadn't been time. Every note he had written for his muse was destined to be eradicated. There would be no final seduction and sweet surrender. Every effort would be made to wipe out even the memory of him, so that they all could forget the horror.
She would also want to forget, but she never would. Christine would always wonder in her deepest heart what life would have been like had she accepted her angel and run off with him. He would haunt her dreams forever, as she would his. Questions would never be answered, mysteries never revealed, and wonderment never satiated.
For the rest of them he would become a dark legend. It might have comforted him in a deviant kind of way, but instead regret filled him. The phantom knew now that there was no salvation for him, and this heinous face would never allow him any happiness. Often he wondered what crime he'd committed in his previous lives to warrant such a wretched existence, but it didn't matter anymore. He'd sinned enough in this life to justify all his misery.
The tempest of emotion within him was churning and driving him onward, and the only conscious thoughts he could focus on was "to run" and "to escape". It had been planned out carefully so that if and when the time came he could be far away from this place and this city as quickly as possible, although he had expected to have his new bride in tow.
After trekking in the pitch black for nearly an hour, feeling the way along the walls and counting turns, the phantom could hear the rush of water. He paused briefly to wrap the cloak around him and pull the hood over his head to conceal his face. He considered briefly pulling out the back up mask he had wrapped in velvet and placed in the bag, but the thought felt reprehensible to him.
For all his life keeping his face covered had been paramount to his identity even when he was alone. Now it seemed a fruitless endeavor. Whether he wore the mask or not, if he was found he would be ruthlessly dispatched. He contemplated for the first time that he'd worn the mask for his own benefit more than that of others. It was his way of hiding, but now there was no place in this Babylon where he could find refuge and no time to dwell on such thoughts.
The river and freedom were near, freedom from those seeking revenge for the atrocities he'd committed, but never from the demons and guilt that walked within him. The roar of crashing water was quickly approaching, and soon a shaft of light broke into the gloom to lead the way.
Beneath Paris the labyrinth of sewers and ancient catacombs all ended at one destination, the river Seine. During strong storms rainfall would wash away the excrement and flotsam from the city and direct it into the churning waters. Just as at this moment the water from the fire brigades was delivering bits of charred wood into the murky depths. Dreams and memories were being washed away. Some were sweet and others bitter, but all were painful.
The phantom emerged upon a short bank far to the south of the city. After walking a few feet he found the small boat deposited there, guarded by a dark figure that had hunkered down on the ground with a grimy cape tucked around him as protection from the chill air. Winter had been unwilling to relinquish its grip on the city and give way to an early spring, so the bracing cold crept under ones clothes and clung to the skin. He approached quietly, gaining a small amount of satisfaction as the startled figure leapt skyward when he announced himself.
"Any trouble?" asked the phantom. The unsettled man squinted up at the dark shadow that emerged from the smog before answering in a raspy voice, made heavy by ample amounts of gin.
"No sir, no one 'ere abouts at this late hour 'cept the rats and the puss' that chase'm." Unwilling to search for the face that had addressed him, the guard made his comments to the broken cobbles and mud between them. When the shadow moved forward, he immediately scrambled aside to make way. Soundlessly the phantom stepped onto the boat and pushed away from the landing with a long pole. Just when the guard realized he was being left without the agreed upon payment he meant to scream out, but the clatter of coins hitting the ground before him quickly redirected his attention. He did not watch while the small boat with its loathsome occupant disappeared down the fast moving river.
After having been roused from his drunkenness by his employer and having collected his final pay, the guard turned north and headed back into the city. He counted his money, hid it in his dingy pocket and made way up broken steps, emerging upon a boulevard. He was alarmed by the sudden acrid stench of burning wood and paint. The man raised his eyes to find its source and saw a large column of smoke rising from a bright flickering light amidst the buildings to his left. Feeling the sudden anxious drop of his stomach, the man hurried along the road and turning down the avenue found the source.
A great ball of fire blazed in the middle of the courtyard before him. None other than the grand Garnier, home to the Opera Populaire was being devoured by flames. Dozens of men from the fire brigade and militia were scurrying before it raising hoses from their trucks and launching buckets of water, fruitlessly trying to fight the blaze. Interspersed among those battling the inferno were well dressed and obviously frightened people. As he stumbled through the crowd the guard saw some of them injured with blood staining their fine clothes.
"These people must be trapped here, seeing as the stables and the lane where carriages would park are all to the rear and blocked by the fire." He muttered to himself as he moved through the mob to an alley on the other side. "Isn't this a god awful tragedy? Looks like I'm out of a job and a warm night's sleep."
Having lived and worked at the Opera Populaire carriage house for the last 24 years, the guard was left with nowhere to go given the current state of things. He continued to stumble forward through the dark lanes and alleys of the city until he came upon the light of an inn with open doors. It was as good as a sign from heaven to him, and he moved to enter the building's inviting warmth.
Inside he found a rather large group of people huddled within. As he made his way to a bar fitted along the back of the bottom floor he heard snippets of conversation. The lightened feeling he had achieved by the promise of a stiff drink, melted away as if caught by the same firestorm licking the stones of the theatre.
"It came right down on top of me and I barely made it over the chairs before….." said a woman
"…couldn't have pulled her with me, so I left her there. Oh my god, what if…" came from a man.
"Monster, that's what it was. The phantom finally got his due and the diva…" said another.
"…dead, and Piangi too. Miss Daae and the Viscount disappeared before the chandelier and the roof came down. Who knows…."
"The police are combing the streets looking for him, and if they find him or his accomplices they'll be dead by…"
"…there with guns, doors bolted, but he had a secret escape underneath the stage it seems…"
"If he's still in Paris, he won't be breathing for long, once the coppers get their hands on him."
"…out alone, must've had help. I'm sure the police will be investigating everyone…"
Having made it to the bar, the old man found himself even thirstier, but without the stomach for hanging around the inn.
He never paid much attention to the dealings of the theatre folk, and was content with the small stipend from the master who had departed this very night. A master, he just realized, he didn't even know his name. He'd never thought it important, as long as he was paid enough for food, drink, and even the company of a lady know and then. Than given lodging too boot. The guard never thought what the master did at the Opera, maybe an actor given his fancy clothes, fine boots and never wanting to be seen. Maybe even part of the management, although management didn't usually live in the Opera House.
"Perhaps he's with the band?" he thought out loud, but the more he considered it the more anxious he became. So much he practically had a fit when someone came up behind him, clasping him roughly on the shoulder and turning him round to face them. The drink he had somehow managed to order tumbled from his hand to clatter and spill to the floor.
"JULES, WHERE'VE YOU BEEN? Do you know what's happened?" said the young man now standing nose to nose with him. The old man was even more stunned to see that the man's jacket was covered in soot, and even singed in places. The old man swallowed hard into his dry throat as he stared back at the young lad who'd grabbed him.
"The Opera, it's been burned up Jerry." Jules stammered.
"Too right, they'll never get it good again. The phantom did it, just like he said he would." Jerry proceeded to give him a play by play account of the night's proceedings. "The inspectors are on the case though. They've found his lair beneath the building, deep down where there's a lake and tunnels an' everything. The police have ordered everyone working in the Opera rounded up and questioned, but I'm not going to take the fall for anyone. You know it's always us piss-on's that get strung up for these things. Me and a couple of the boys are skipping out now. You want in?" he rattled off.
It didn't take too much more to persuade Jules. He nodded quickly and followed the boy out into the street, barely keeping up as they made their way to the western edge of town nearest to the great cemetery. Soon they reached a shrouded place where 2 other men waited with horses. Jules immediately recognized Faust, the black gelding often used by his master and abandoned by him this night.
Jules hadn't ridden much, especially on such a fine animal. But with the others in such haste, he didn't hesitate to hoist himself clumsily onto the horses back. In minutes the four ex-employees of the Opera Populaire disappeared thru the west gate of Paris into the night without interruption. The soldiers normally there had been called to fight the fire, so the group slipped thru easily.
The lone man sat in the boat as it floated down the river, moving with the current fast enough that he didn't have to row, just steer and keep a watchful eye for obstructions and white water. It was a difficult task on the nearly moonless night, with only the stars to light his way, but he'd always been able to see in the darkness much better than the average man so he didn't fret about the situation.
The phantom couldn't allow himself to think, or he would go mad. There was a clash of emotions that collided with in him. Memories of all that had happened and visions of murdered dreams created a dance of images in his mind's eye. He saw Christine singing the music he'd written for her, Christine pulling the mask from his face and betraying him to the audience and authorities.
Going down, down into the depths of the theatre to his home. Christine with fear in her eyes, Christine with anger in her eyes, Christine with hate in her eyes, hating him and pleading for Raoul's life. He was so angry. There was no remorse, no compassion or guilt, just blind hate and contempt for everyone and everything. then she kissed him, a kiss whose power he could never have anticipated.
In the few seconds that their lips were connected the flood of a lifetime worth of longing, desire, passion, need and unrequited love had erupted inside him. Because it wasn't a kiss solely given out of desperation, in that moment she had truly accepted him and relinquished her fear. She loved Raoul, he knew. But she had also loved him, despite all he had done, for all the things he'd given her. The tenderness and ardor they'd shared in that kiss had overturned his soul and sent him careening. He'd expected her to fight and that he'd end up killing Raoul, thereby crushing her as she had destroyed him by her rejection. But the power of that one unforeseeable act had changed him, having both saved and damned him.
Most people could never understand what a simple gesture like a kiss meant to a creature such as him. It was like the first breath of a new born babe, music to the deaf, color to the blind, laughter to the mute. Christine had given all that in the same moment that he'd threatened to take it from her.
He thought back over their history together. How she'd come to him in a time when life was losing its value, and even his adored music held less and less of its illustrious appeal. They'd rescued each other through the loneliness of her father's death, and the despair of his seclusion. He'd guided her from the shy child singing hymns to heaven, to the burgeoning diva she'd become.
More than just teacher and pupil, they were intimate friends, sharing their dreams and fears. He'd poured into her all his illusions about life, spouting the high minded ideals of love, romance and desire that only someone long denied could transmute. When they'd sung together, they were singing to each other, and their energies would soar and merge into one beautiful being.
Long before she became the object of his desire, she was the center of his entire existence. They'd been everything to each other for years, until Raoul came to shatter their bond. His angel had rejected him, but in that moment when she embraced him, Christine had allowed their love to be a living, breathing thing between them. He decided then, though it cost him everything, that he would not let it die. He'd given her to Raoul and let them go. He could still see them disappear from under the cover of the candle light across the vast glassy lake. Though he would never see her again she would torment him, just as she did now, as long as he lived.
Over and over again images replayed in his mind. Reality and fantasy blended and he saw the impossible. Christine overcome from his music, Christine running to him, embracing him, yielding to him, loving him, in his arms. NO! It's not real, and won't ever be real. One kiss, his first, and his last. He looked out over the black water stretching out before him, the stench of filth and refuse from the city had faded and now the air was filled with a fresh crisp smell. For a moment as the breeze brushed his face, his mind calmed and he was filled with a deep all-encompassing sorrow.
A single tear pooled in the corners of his eyes and spilled first down the left side of his cheek, and then down his right, ruined cheek. He remembered then that there was no mask there to hide him, and indeed since he'd left behind the city wreck he'd allowed the hood of his cape to fall back. For the first time in as long as he could recall he wasn't alarmed nor did he move to correct the situation. The dark of the night was enough to hide him, and were he to pass any wayward soul he would surely appear human enough. What more could a monster such as he ask for.
The only sounds along the river were of moving water and the occasional splashing of a fish. The silence that once infuriated him now gave him solace, or perhaps it was hearing the world in a pure state and without the contamination of people. Even the constant hum of music was absent from him mind, leaving behind only a hollow vacuum where his soul had once been. Not even the echo of his cries could fill him for his weeping was silent. The tears fell steadily, but he did not sob or moan as he did when he was a child and held prisoner by the gypsies. They flowed independently, and he hoped that when they were done, they will have washed away all the sympathy that remained inside him.
The wounds he'd suffered this night might finally be enough to purge him of his humanity and crush the warped heart within him, a heart as twisted and mutilated as his horrid face. Perhaps he would rise up to meet the frothing water around him, and drown his spirit and body in a final contemptible act against god and nature. He'd sinned in every way available to him, except in carnal pleasures. And he could've sinned there too. The opportunity presented itself often enough, from the tender ballerina's who twittered about the opera house, innocent and unassuming that predators lurked all around them, to the actresses with their coarse behavior and scheming ways, who would have done anything for the time and attention he awarded to his protégé. The whore's who waited at the docks and brothels everywhere would not scoff at his face, if they even were to look him in the eye.
So many opportunities, but he never considered himself low enough to succumb. No, she would love him when she came to his bed. Willingly, aching with desire for him and only him, forever; what a romantic fool. Not an angel, but a monstrous demon dreaming of romance, beauty and love, pitiful. Well, he was no longer suffering from such illusions. But before he joined the damned under those icy waters he would complete his fall from grace and satisfy his lust for flesh and revenge. He wasn't just aimlessly fleeing into the night. He'd known and planned for many years that should his tenure at the Garnier theatre be forcibly and abruptly ended, he would at that time pursue the secrets of his past.
He'd collected all the intelligence that he could about the foundling that had been on display in the gypsy circus and how he'd come to be there. Now he would follow the trail to find those who had condemned him to the fate of a tortured and tormented freak. Once he was awash in their blood as his final sacrament, he would join them in eternal damnation. Even his own parents would suffer, if he were lucky enough to trace his life back to the source of the curse. It would begin with the Gypsies.
These nomads of Europe followed a migration trail across the continent, very much like the wild herds of deer that roam the land in search of plentiful food and shelter from winter cold. Every year they would make a journey from Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia through the south east border of Hungary and Austria and dispersing into Russia, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Italy and Spain to sell their wares, their entertainment, and their women. Gypsies, Romani, Ursari, they were known by different nom de plumes in every land. Heartless, guileless and cruel, these Ursari do not always follow the same routes. Indeed, although a gypsy troop always came to Paris during festivals and there are even those who live within the city and call it their home, those which had held him fled the city soon after his escape and have never returned.
From his inquiries he'd learnt that upon leaving Paris the caravan headed east to Zurich, into the wilds of Austria on a path that he believed led them to Budapest. He would now follow that trail, tracking their wanderings across Europe without rest until he found his mark. All his memories before his escape were of evil things, beatings and berating, a people whose tongues were as sharp as their whips. He would educate them on how their presence poisoned the world, and perhaps save another twisted creature.
