His knuckles were white from gripping to the bars of the port cullis as he watched them drift slowly away. Gravity wanted to pull his heart of lead to the floor but he knew that must hide. The mob were approaching quickly and there was no way for him to escape unless...
It was the only hidden tunnel he had never used. When he built the mechanism he had laughed at himself, it was more of an interesting challenge than anything that would ever be of any practical use.
And now it was his only salvation.
He heard footsteps clanging against metal...they were climbing down the port cullis. He was out of time.
Regretfully he let go of the veil that was clutched to his chest and saw it flutter, abandoned to the floor. He did not run to the throne...if he was caught, he was caught. Death seemed almost like the only friend he had ever had in this world and he realised how he started to welcome the thought of being taken out of it.
His survival instincts were too strong. He snatched up Don Juan's cloak and threw it over himself as he sat stiffly in the chair. A slight smile grazed his lips...he had thought himself such a genius when he designed the costume for Don Juan. The dark, hooded cloak allowed him to get on stage without being noticed by the stage hands, managers or the boy. Of course, he had not considered that Christine would reach up and feel the shape of his mask underneath the shroud. And that's when it all went wrong, in a moment of blind panic she had torn the hood from over his head and had revealed to the world that is was the dreaded Opera Ghost who was astounding them all with his mesmerising voice. He was struck dumb when the two of them reached the end of the song and she pulled his mask off his face. An early grand finale to a short lived masterpiece.
A flash of blonde hair snapped Erik back into his lair. The Giry girl was slowly approaching where he was now seated with the cloak covering his face. He did not think to harm her, she was one of the hardest working dancers in an otherwise useless corps de ballet, not to mention the fact that she was the only child of Madame Giry...well unless you counted Erik as a strange foster child. Even though Madame Giry could only have been 5 or 10 years older than Erik she cared for him like a son, he had been there the night her husband died and he had tried his best to save the man's life. However, there was nothing he could do and watched as Madame Giry- Anna- had cradled her dead husband in his arms. Guilt ridden, he allowed himself to drift away from the now widowed ballet mistress, feeling it was somehow his fault that she had lost the love of her life.
Ever since that tragic day she had dressed in black and her temper was somewhat colder, even with her own little daughter. That daughter was now tentatively reaching up to where he had hooked the cloak to the back of the thone and that's when he flipped the switch, which was concealed under one of the ornate arm rests. The back of the chair fell away and he tumbled through the gap, his skeletal frame easily disappearing into the dark chamber below. He had only a fraction of time, in which he noticed that he had been sitting on his mask...how funny. A week ago that mask was the only thing in the world that made him feel slightly more human and now he left it to the hands of the mob. A calling card of the opera ghost, it would be handed from company to company and used as a prop in the retelling of his- of their story.
He landed heavily on the stone floor; a clear sign that he did not think to ever put this exit into use. Erik went to lift himself up but found that his arms gave way beneath him. His exhaustion was not physical but emotional. The pain swelled from his stomach and lurched into his throat. His anger was at himself. She had been in the process of choosing to stay with him but instead he pushed her away. How stupid of him, after all she was everything he wanted and didn't he deserve her love after all the work he put into her voice and making sure she was noticed? No. He shook away any resentment he held toward her and knew that his love, however blackened by the betrayal of revealing him to the audience, was stronger than any thing he could ever feel. However, that did not stop the rage of burning self-hatred spill into his soul. If only he had introduced himself normally, if only he hadn't tormented her by letting her think that the angel of music had come to her. He knew how much that story had meant to Christine and how isolated she felt even though her father had died some years before. He had used it. Used her cherished memories of the time she had spent with her father to his own purposes. How did he know of these stories that were implanted in her head? His friend, Gustave, was their creator.