Chapter Two
Fugitive
A loud knock on the door startled me and my Mother.
Who could it be at this hour?
We had just sat down to eat some breakfast. I glanced over to my Mother who looked as confused as I was.
"Who do you—." Another loud knock on the door interrupted me.
"Helene Giry!? It is the police, please open up!"
My Mother looked over at me with her eyes wide. It seems that Raoul did say something to the police about our involvement with Erik.
"Coming!" My mother exclaimed. She quickly got up and looked for her white robe to put over her nightie and I quickly did the same. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
"Good Morning, Officer, how may I help you?"
"Madame Giry?"
"Yes, that is me."
"Excuse us for disturbing your breakfast, Madame Giry. We have a very important issue to discuss with you. Just answer a few of our questions and we will leave you in peace, Signora."
"Your badge?" My Mother cleverly asked and the Officer easily got out his badge and showed it to her. She inspected it closely then got out of the way and let them in. It wasn't just one officer, but three which entered our living room, heavily armed. Of the three, only two of them nodded their heads and acknowledged me while their Captain, with his stern look, kept glaring at my Mother.
"Madame Giry, we have been told by the Vicomte de Chagny that you knew the mysterious persona called "The Phantom of the Opera" is that true?"
"I knew little of him… not much."
"The Vicomte informed us that you practically raised him?"
My Mother glanced over at me and I simply lowered my head to the floor. That bastard Raoul was about to get my Mother incarcerated.
"He was misinformed. I found him once and helped him but after that I—"
"He also said that you brought him to the Opera House."
"I did! But after that I knew nothing more of him!" My Mother raised her voice. I knew that voice… it was the one she used when she was stern with me.
"Did you not have contact with him while he was in the Opera House?"
"No, I merely found some letters that he would leave me in my dressing room but that is it." She was lying, of course. I and my Mother would visit Erik almost every night. I would sometimes even stay with him and listen to him compose new songs, except when he was in a mood. Then we would just leave and go.
"Do you know where he is now?"
"No."
"Madame Giry, if I find any evidence that you are lying to me, I have every right to arrest you." My mother glared at him her famous "Giry stare". At least, that's what I and the dancers would call it.
"I have told you all that you needed to know, Officer." A few seconds of the Officer staring at my Mother trying to intimidate her, to no avail, and then he stood up and signaled the officers behind him to follow.
"Thank you for your time, Madame Giry."
"My pleasure, Officer—
"Laurent, Madame. Claude Laurent."
"Officer Laurent, but I must ask… is the investigation still pending?"
"Yes, the Vicomte has made it his duty to find him, Madame. He is a murderer that must be brought to justice." I glanced at my Mother and she simply glared at Officer Laurent with a cold stare. We knew what "justice" meant; they would hang Erik, for sure.
"Even his wife will not sleep peacefully until he is dead." That is a lie. Christine's words still echoed in my head. She would never want Erik dead, she loved him.
"Well… I hope you find him." My mother answered coldly and shut the door in his face.
As soon as the door shut my Mother's composure completely changed. Her eyes widened and she was soon pacing the floor.
"That bastard! He has made me a prime suspect in the investigation! I thought he would remain silent."
"We knew what to expect of him Mother, but I refuse to believe what they said of Christine. I know her... she would not want Erik dead."
"I agree, how much are you willing to bet that she knows nothing of the "impending investigation"? Those men were too heavily armed to simply be detectives."
"What do you mean?" I asked her.
"I think Raoul hired them as hitmen." I gasped softly.
"Mother, we must warn Erik."
We took Erik last night to a secret hideout underground about three blocks from here. Erik knew the tunnels by memory since it had been his home for such a long time. He was waiting impatiently for an answer to his telegram to his friend in Persia, we all were. But now, with Raoul still searching for him, apparently breaking his promise to Erik then he cannot be in Paris much longer.
"Yes, go tonight, Meg. Make sure no one is following you. Tell him of Raoul's treachery and he must leave his hiding place."
"But can't I go now?"
"No! It is better at night, easier to know if you are being followed."
...
The cold Paris night chilled me to my bones as I walked through the somber streets of Paris. I had a black cloak on that covered my head and held a small, unlit lantern for when I arrived to Erik's hideout. I looked over my shoulder every few minutes making sure that I was not being followed. The streets seemed pretty empty, save for a few tramps in their assigned corners and a few bars that were still open. It was a few more minutes to Erik's location and I was hoping to pass by unnoticed.
I turned a street corner and finally entered the alleyway to where one of the entrances to a tunnel could be seen on the ground. I was about to light my lantern when I heard someone's footsteps behind me. I froze. It couldn't be... did someone follow me? But I was so careful!
I turned around quickly and saw the shadow of a figure before me.
"What do you want?" The figure before me came into the moonlight and I could see his face. It was Officer Laurent from this morning with a gun in his hand.
"Miss Giry, not another word. Take us to him!"
"I don't know who you're talking about!"
"It seems she needs a little more persuading." A second figure appeared from behind him and then another. My heart started beating so fast I could hear it in my ear. I saw light reflect from one of the men's knives and I found myself surrounded pretty quickly. I didn't dare even look at the tunnel's entrance, since they apparently didn't even have an idea of where I was going. Before I knew it, I started to run and I tried to get past them but an arm slammed against my stomach.
"Where do you think you're going, Princess?" I heard one of them say.
"Hold her still, by her arms." The Officer Laurent said.
They took one of my arms but I slapped the other man across the face and kicked him hard between his legs. I felt my arm go free from the other man's grip, the lantern falling on the ground, but Officer Laurent took me by the waist and slammed me against the wall. I let out a scream as I felt my body ricochet and fall on the floor.
"Where is he, Miss Giry?! Where is the Phantom!?" Officer Laurent exclaimed as he looked down on me. It started to rain and I felt small drops start to hit my legs.
"I told you... I don't know." I whispered.
"Very well, then. Take her... do what you want with her. Don't stop until she begs you to and tells us where he is." Laurent smirked at me and started walking backwards letting the other two men shadow me.
"NO! DON'T TOUCH ME! I DON'T KNOW!" I exclaimed as they took my arms and started to pick me off the ground. I kicked and tried to punch anything I could feel. I was able to get one of them but an even harder fist landed on my face making me almost lose consciousness. They turned me around and slammed my cheek against the wall and I heard the sound of a belt unbuckling. I couldn't really see anything because of the rain and I think my eye was starting to swell.
"What the-" I heard behind me.
Suddenly I didn't feel any hands holding me from behind and I fell to my knees. I heard a gunshot fire and I slammed my body against the ground with my hands over my head. I didn't feel any pain, thankfully, so the bullet didn't hit me. I turned around on the floor and all I could see were two blurry, black figures fighting in the rain with a third figure. A body was lying a few inches away from me; I am guessing that was the victim of the gunshot.
"AAAH!" I screamed as another gunshot sounded and another black figure fell to the ground. I blinked and I saw that Officer Laurent was fighting with the other figure... a man, apparently... a masked man. I recognized that long, black cape.
Erik!
They were struggling for possession of the gun. In the struggle, in some way Laurent knocked Erik's mask off revealing his deformity making the man trip out of fright. I couldn't believe the scene before me. Erik stood over him, towering him, like a demon in the night. The rain had started falling down harder making the ground all muddy. Erik pointed the gun at Laurent, his eyes fierce and blood spattered on his face and arms. He looked... scary. For the first time in my life, I was truly scared of him. But not because of his appearance, I've simply never seen Erik truly kill before.
"Here I am monsieur. Take a good look at me... because it will be the last thing you see!" Erik exclaimed and pulled the trigger making me flinch.
Laurent's body went still and I saw the small river of blood run down from his head. I looked up at Erik who simply passed his hand over his face, cleaning off the blood. I kept replaying over and over in my head; Erik pulling the trigger and Laurent's body falling back. All my time at the Opera House, seeing the dead bodies of Piangi and Buquet, I always saw them as being killed by the "Phantom" not by Erik. I never assimilated them as being killed by the same person...until now.
Erik walked over to me and for a second, I couldn't separate the Phantom from Erik. I forgot that the man standing in front of me I had known since childhood and I started crawling backward, afraid. Erik froze, noticing the look on my face and quickly covered the right side of his face and looked for his white mask and put it on. If only he knew that I was never afraid of what he looked like physically. Right now, I'm afraid of what is inside not out.
"Are you all right?" Erik asked me but kept his distance, the droplets falling from the side of his mask. I simply shook my head.
"Come inside then, you'll catch pneumonia out here."
...
I flinched as he put the cold swath of clothing on my eye. I was sitting on the edge of his cot as he sat down in his small, wooden chair. Erik had made a small home here in such a short time; Of course it is nothing compared to his dwellings under the Opera House but that had taken years to accomplish. In the midst of darkness and cold, solid brick walls he was able to fit in a cot, a small, wooden table where I would guess he composed his songs, a stack of books in the corner and the bags where we packed his clothing. Everything else the fire that he had caused destroyed.
He had a small bucket filled with cold water that he got out from one of the pipes that were running down here. How he could live so easily down here, I will never know. I flinched again as he tried to put the cold binding against my eye again.
"Be careful, Erik!" He sighed in annoyance.
"Maybe if you were still…"
"I can do it on my own." I tried to take it away from him but he moved my hand away.
"Meg, would you let someone take care of you for once?" I scoffed.
"That is quite ironic coming from you." He ignored me and started to close in on my eye while I moved my face away again. He grunted in annoyance and threw the swath at my lap angrily, his famous temper rising.
"Fine, then you do it!" He walked away towards the bags of his clothing and started taking out garments.
"You have to change out of those clothes, they're soaking wet. I'll have to give you some of mine." Any other moment, I would have blushed at the possibility of wearing Erik's clothes. But right now all I could think of was Laurent's body falling back and the pool of blood running down from his head. Erik's stare after he had pulled the trigger of no remorse at all. For the first time, I saw the monster in him and what he was capable of. I just… I didn't know what to think or believe anymore of the man before me. I thought I knew him so well.
Erik pulled out a white cotton shirt of his bags and some black trousers and laid them on the bed beside me. I couldn't take it anymore. I had to voice my feelings.
"You seem pretty calm for someone who just murdered three men." Erik froze and slowly turned his head towards me and stood over me.
"They would have raped and killed you if I hadn't."
"Are you expecting me to believe you killed them to protect me?! You did it to protect yourself and your identity!" I stood up from the bed and he still towered over me but I didn't care.
"I was not about to stand by and see them ravage you again and again! If you believe that that is the type of man that I am, mademoiselle, then you are mistaken!"
"That is the problem, isn't it Erik!? I don't know what kind of man you are, if you are one, at all!" He was furious now and took off his mask in front of me, throwing it to the ground, and taking me by my arms.
"Are you afraid of me, Meg!?" He glared at me with half of his deformed face exposed; his right eye almost bulging out of his skin.
"Should I be?!" I screamed, not out of fear but rage, disappointment, sadness and… I didn't even know what I was screaming at him for or what I was feeling. I felt so confused. It's that feeling of in between, where you love someone but know that they're doing something wrong and you are torn between loving them or hating them, although you know you'd never be able to hate them at all.
Erik slowly let me go and stared at me, tears started to run down my face and I started to wipe them away quickly, not wanting him to see me cry. His brown eyes looked me deep in the eyes as if trying to reach into my soul and find out what I was feeling. Then he said something I think I will never forget:
"Of all the people in the world, Meg, you are the only person who can say they don't have to be afraid of me." I was speechless. He took his mask and put it back on and those, cold, brown "Phantom" eyes stared back at me again.
"Change out of those clothes, I won't be long." He turned away and started walking away from the light into the deep darkness of the tunnel, his black cape making him almost invisible in the dusk.
"Wait! Where are you going?" He froze and looked at me over his shoulder.
"I am going to bury the bodies before they are found."
…
I woke up in Erik's cot in a start. I had a nightmare where Laurent and his men finished the job they started in the alleyway. My heartbeat was erratic and I could almost still feel their hands on my skin.
"Are you all right?" A deep voice sounded from the darkness. When I looked over to the wooden table I saw Erik's black figure, lit by candlelight, writing down something in a parchment of paper.
"I'm fine, just had a bad dream is all." I whispered trying not to let my voice shake. I stood up from the cot and walked over to the table and Erik stopped writing.
"How long have I been asleep?" After I changed, Erik had not arrived and I felt very anxious and uneasy (the constant darkness wasn't really helping) so I laid down in the cot and cried myself to sleep.
"A couple of hours, it is a little past midnight now."
"How can you tell?" I asked, looking around the tunnel which looked exactly as dark as when I fell asleep. He stood up and walked over to the cot and got out another candle from under it.
"After years of living down here, you tend to know the difference." He lit the candle and set it beside my bed.
"You should lay down Meg and keep resting, you will go back home in the morning. Paris is not safe at night, especially at this hour."
"To be honest, I am not really tired." He simply nodded and sat down again to keep writing. He seemed to be writing a telegram quite urgently.
"Have you heard from your friend in Persia?"
"No. I am still waiting. I need to know if he can offer me transport and some lodging. As soon as I know, I will be leaving Paris as quickly as I can." He finished writing and folded it.
"I want to come with you." I dared to say. I've wanted to say that since I knew that he was leaving. He looked up at me in surprise.
"No, Meg, absolutely not, out of the question. You will be safer here. Who will care for your Mother?"
"She can take care of herself! Who will care for you?"
"I don't need to be taken care of!" He stood up, towering over me.
"Says the man who has depended on me and my Mother for more than twenty-one years!"
"Meg-!" He exclaimed in impatience.
"I want to come with you, Erik! You can't be alone forever!" He looked down on me, his brown eyes turning soft and he took a deep sigh.
"I have realized… it is better to be alone, Meg. The people I love won't get hurt." He whispered to me and then I saw him. The man I know and love; the man torn between wanting to love and scared of it; the man wanting to feel but runs away from everything that makes him feel because he is afraid of losing it. Then I let the words sink in a little more. He didn't want the people he loved to get hurt… did he just say… he loved me?
"Erik—"
"I learned with Christine that I cannot love, Meg. I cannot love anyone…"
Of course, he meant Christine. Christine was whom he loved. I could almost laugh at my own ignorance.
"I only hurt them. And no one can love me. Who could?" He turned around and walked toward the sheets of paper on his table, his unfinished sheets of music, and I realized that now was my moment. He was leaving somewhere and I might never see him again. My fear of rejection was nothing compared to my love for him and how much I wanted him to know that someone did love him in this world.
"I could." I couldn't believe I just said it. He froze and I just kept talking, afraid the words would stop coming out of my mouth.
"That's where you're wrong, Erik. You've always believed that no one could ever love you, all of you, even with your deformity. And yet, I have loved you since I was seventeen years old. You hid yourself behind the "Phantom of the Opera" but I never saw a Phantom. I saw a man desperate to be loved, to be loved not only for his music but for himself. I thought Christine could be the one to finally show you that love since I was so afraid to do so. But not afraid of you but what I know you would say…" By the time I said this, Erik had turned around, his eyes on me looking at me a way I had never seen him look at me before. But he was finally seeing me, my heart, completely exposed to him. I tried to keep talking without letting my voice shake but it was too late, tears started running down my eyes.
"Christine chose wrong, Erik. I would've chosen you in a heartbeat… I do choose you."
I walked over to him, took off his mask and kissed him.