Black Holiday

A Phantom of the Opera story

By Legendarypanda

Chapter three

Holidays of the Heart

When Christine woke the next morning Er we wereik was still asleep, his eyes heavy and shut as he breathed in and out gently through his nose. Well slits but all the same. Christine smiled and lifted him as though he weighed little more than a baby and carried him, sound asleep into the master bedroom where the lumpy double bed looked soft enough to sink into. He was heavy when he was dead-weight like this, not too heavy for her to carry but difficult all the same due to his height. His feet scraping the bottom of the floor, hands dangling limp over her arms so that she had to be careful not to scrape his fragile skin on the walls. Erik moaned, twisting in her arms as a nightmare, coupled with his fever began to wake him up. Christine shook her head, knowing he needed a good rest. He was so sick, he was struggling to breathe and it made her feel ill to see him like this when all he had ever done was love her.

All he had ever done was give her the world and now his body would not give him a moment's peace. The world was a harsh cruel place for him and she had only seemed to make it so much worse for the poor man on the whole. He had the right to be loved, to be wanted as did any man and it wasn't his fault that he had chosen her to be the object of his affections. He had spent literally ten years giving her the world, come to think of it Raoul probably would never have noticed her to begin with if Erik had not gotten her on stage in the first place. She probably would have been consigned to the chorus and told forever that she sung like a crane in a pack of screeching gulls. Never to have reached her full potential and her soul locked away forever in the depths of a deafening shadowed hell.

Shadows. That one word seemed to hit Christine hard right in the heart as she thought about Erik being stuck in his own hell. That cold dark hole in which he dwelled was not fit for any human being to live in and what was worse; was that he was too much in love with her to care. Erik would never leave the opera because that meant being away from her and that was just unbearable to him. Even if it meant he got sick. even if it cost his life, her Erik would always, always be there for her. Come hell or high water he would be there to give her his music; to dry her eyes and make all the bad things that went bump in the night go away with a lullaby and a single, tentative kiss on the forehead.

She owed this man the world and yet he asked for nothing more than a smile and a kiss. and a face was little reason not to love him back. Yes, he was ugly as sin, yes he was a very unstable and somewhat dangerous man but she knew who he was at heart and deep down he was just lonesome and broken inside to the soul. His mind was as tortured as a hell hound in heaven and she was the only one who could save him. An unhealthy thought process and a dangerous train of thought to say the least for many a young girl had fallen into such a trap; to fall in love with a violent man thinking one could change him only to meet with an untimely end. But her Erik, he was not like that. He would sooner kill himself than hurt her and she knew that as surely as she knew her own name and as she sat there on his lap she knew the only thing she could focus on was making him better.

She hushed his moaning with a single whisper, marveling at how easily he responded to her commands; that just the sound of her voice would soothe his darkness. A lullaby perhaps to help him sleep better for surely the world owed him that much in the end of it all. He was tired, she knew that but beyond that the man was also crazy as anything but she knew she had to get him into bed. She never understood why laying down always helped sick people but it did and though she was young she could put two and two together and knew that sick people in hospital or otherwise always laid in bed. Christine briefly wondered if Erik had ever slept in a bed before and shuddered to think of the poor and abused child and what he might have endured as she dragged him, half-dead with sleep into the bedroom and toward the bed which lay mercifully intact and unrotten in the center of the room.

At last she made it to the bed and when she let him lay down she discovered that it was in fact one of those waterbeds which were relatively new. Created some three decades or so ago to help those who were invalid with the prevention of bed-boils. She smiled, this would be perfect for Erik's poor back, and found his reaction to being laid down very good indeed. He laid down and then he...smiled in his sleep and adjusted himself to a cozier position before his snoring resumed. Christine put an extra pillow under his aching, crackling spine for he had no flesh or fat on him to give him any sort of reliable cushion for his aches and pains. Christine laid him on the bed which did not even sag beneath his weight and listened as the water sloshed inside it. She watched him sleep for a minute or two before going into the kitchen and deciding that it needed a good scrubbing down.

There seemed to be a layer of grime across all of the furniture and the old dishes which appeared to be wooden and china had such a thick coating of dust on them that to take one out made her sneeze and she was happy she always kept her handkins up her sleeves as her eyes began to water. Christine hated dust, she was very allergic and always had been, choking and coughing her way through the ballet lessons as the dancing chalk wafted in great white clouds She wiped her eyes from the tears and set about her work, rolling up her sleeves as she became soaked to her elbows in the sudsy water before putting the dishes away. Next thing on order was to mop up the table and maybe put some flowers on it, something cheerful and bright. To put some color into this cozy if dreary little place where she and Erik would be staying together. No more grime and darkness and mold in the walls. He'd been through enough of that. Once she had cleaned the kitchen, the washroom was next and by the time she was done she was simply exhausted and there was still so much to do.

The other bedrooms needed to be covered and dusted, the floors needed sweeping and not to mention the outside. The garden was beautiful but needed weeding desperately and she could have sworn she needed to do a number of other things too complicated to name. The work on this abandoned house was both a blessing and a curse, because yes, Erik had his safe place but now she had to clean it so that it would remain safe. A dirty home would lead to more health problems and he was already frail as it was and dirt and dust would not help him as she choked on the smell of the dust in the other rooms, as she pulled sheets off the windows and let in the glorious pearling winter morning. Christine yawned, dreading the work ahead which seemed endless and backbreaking. The ivy and vines covering the windows and walls needed yanking, the garden needed weeding, dinner needed cooking and she...really needed a nap.

Stumbling into the bedroom she collapsed beside Erik who was grunting and rolling over to drag her close to him, finding she liked the feeling of his firm, bony arms around her tight and secure. It was strange to think that she found his arms so pleasing, so comfortable, and the bed beneath them was warm and safe. The water sloshing under her cradling her hips as if she were lying on the ocean on a warm summer day. Her eyes fluttered closed as Erik's open mouth blasted a gust of hot air into her curls on an exhale and she giggled as the hot air tickled her earlobe. He was such a...such an...an ordinary man when she thought about it that it was almost comical. The infamous Opera Ghost was little more than normal, rather ordinary human being. Little more than a man. A man with an obnoxious snore, and a taste for stealing kisses just like any other lover in France, he just needed someone to show it to.

He was alone and broken and no one gave a damn about the poor man, and it was high time somebody minded his needs; she thought as she lay there beside him in the bed, noticing that his icy embrace was warming up nicely and his fever, while not broken had lessened a considerable amount. Most likely due to the warmth of the house and the heat of the fire, something his cavern did not have she was sure. She settled down in the bed beside him, her eyes growing heavy despite the noise and wondered if it was possible for a man to soothe his partner to sleep with such a heavy and raucous noise. Still it had the desired effect and she was soon fast asleep. Not even moving. Just curling up into a ball and cocooning herself in the blankets so she would stay warm beside her man as he slept on; close enough for her to touch but far enough so that they weren't.

Her head nestled on the same pillow as his. so very close that if she were to move she might very well have bonked their heads together. To all the outside world a loving couple exhausted after some prespring housework, albeit a rather annoyed one because of the noise he was making. But thankfully she was so tired that she didn't so much as twitch till the itchy feeling in her throat became unbearable several hours her up abruptly Christine coughed, her throat and eyes stinging with the dust and smell of moth-dirt which lingered in her nose as Erik's snore reverberated throughout the room and he woke suddenly when he felt her hair brush his skin. Yellow eyes wide like some sort of frightened cat, his skeletal hands groping blindly in the darkness only to feel her hair as his hand and discover that she had curled up against his shoulder.

"Erik is dreaming, Christine is not beside him in bed."he murmured pathetically.

Moaning, Christine rolled over and snuggled Erik, not wanting to move from his arms where she had drifted off into sweet dreams of some long ago country-side with Papa listening to another one of his Little Lotte stories. He had just gotten to her favorite part in fact when an agonized groan caused him to pack up his violin and tell her that he must be on his way; much to her sadness. She had called out for him to come back to her, only to realize in dismay that she was waking up and argued against it in her mind. She was tired and floating on a dream-cloud with her daddy when the moan of a broken tortured creature startled her out of her dreams and back into the world of the living.

"Erik has a nasty fever and is going to die soon. Yes that's it! Erik is dying!" he sobbed.

Christine shook her head, wanting to go back to sleep, feeling tired and achy as she opened one eye and peeked at him. He was in fact awake, and in a turbulent mess of emotions. Tossing and twisting about as he did so. Effectively kicking her out of the bed in the literal sense and as she rolled off the bed she had the misfortune of giving herself a dizzying conk on the nose. Groaning she got up and felt the throbbing bridge of her nose which was now bleeding and sore and discovered it thankfully intact before turning her attention to the man in the bed who was at present in a panic and thrashing about as he did so. Raving and ranting to himself as his arms flailed all about and smacked her when she tried to sit on the bed.

Knocking her down again to where she was sure she had now bruised her face and would really have some explaining to do when she got back to the opera house. Running away in the middle of the night with a strange man known as the opera ghost was one thing; causing an entire show to be shut down and hundreds of francs to be lost in revenue eventually forgivable. But bruising on her face was going to provoke the most uncomfortable, and awkward questions that Christine was sure she did not wish to answer when she got back on Monday night. She need not look in the blurred reflection of the dusty mirror to know that she was going to be marred in the morning as, hot, sticky blood ran down from her nose, passed her upper lip and trickled into her mouth.

"Mmmm...Erik do hush... your voice needs a rest. It's hoarse enough without your unnecessary screaming." she groaned, massaging her aching temples and nose.

"OH WOE TO ERIK!" he screamed, "WOE! WOE! WOE!"

Christine rolled her eyes an sighed,pinching the skin between her eyebrows and counting back from three to try and smother her rousing irritation. Erik could really be a lot sometimes, she knew but this was getting ridiculous. He really did have the most over the top reactions sometimes and she was not here for them. Instead she kept her eyes closed tight, waiting for him to settle down and thinking of anything else by way of distraction. She began counting the tiles in the cobblestone ceiling one by one. There were exactly, one-hundred and twenty-two speckled squares in the cobblestone ceiling which divided into quadrants of four and... oh for Pity's sake! Erik had rolled off the bed and was thrashing wildly about; making enough noise to wake the whole of France.

"Yes Erik yes, woe, alack and so on now enough." she said firmly.

The tone of her voice caused those golden eyes to cease there frantic blind search of the room and settled on her face, calming instantly. Still trembling, Erik raised a hand and placed his cold palm on her cheek. Long skeletal fingers stroking her face in reverent disbelief as he stared feverishly into her eyes and turned away from her touch as if she went to strike him rather than cup his chin in return as she helped the poor wheezing fellow to his feet and sat him down on he bed next to him nestling her head on his left shoulder. His hand tentatively going through her hair as he seemed at last stunned into merciful silence at the realization that she was there in his arms; quieting his tears and soothing him.

"Christine... is here...with Erik in his bed." he stammered, shocked as he felt the fabricy warmth beneath his fingers.

"I am and I do wish you would settle down," she told him. "Erik, you are sick and you need to rest your voice or you will develop permanent laryngitis and we cannot have you ruin your voice."

"Erik is always sick Christine." he told her, "Erik lives in a wet blackish dungeon with no light." the tone of his voice made her raise her eyebrows, it was almost sarcastic in a way, sardonic. "Erik has grown used to being ill."

"Not anymore." she told him. "Look." she said as she opened the window.

The whiteness of the crisp winter morning poured in causing him to recoil in pain with a whimper so pathetic that she actually cringed as he clamped his yellow hands over his eyes to shield them. Christine, shocked and not knowing what to do, closed the drapes and sit beside him on the bed. Stroking his head as he moaned and whimpered in apparent pain rubbing his eyes and looking at her with wide-eyed teary orbs which twisted something inside her into a massive sailor-knot which would have needed cutting open. Her fingers trailed through his hair and he let out a damn-near-orgasmic sigh a her caresses as he finally removed his trembling fingers from his eyes and looked at her; the skin of his missing lip wrinkling and quivered as if he were a child about to burst into tears.

"The light hurts Erik's eyes Christine." he sobbed, "it burns them, makes them sting."

Christine slapped her own forehead cursing that she had not seen something so obvious before. Of course Erik's eyes were sensitive to the light after so many years in his dungeon. She kissed him, tasting the salt of his tears on her lips as she eased him back onto the water-mat and wrapped her slender arms around his waist. His crying slowly beginning to settle itself as she eased herself up onto her elbows and inspected the man she loved to see if his fever had gone down. He was still warm, very warm but not burning as he had been before which had encouraged her just enough to ease the throbbing in her head as he lay passive and helpless in her arms. Like a little lost lamb finally at home with their shepherd.

"I'm sorry Erik dear." she said, "I didn't realize I will keep the drapes closed till you are well."

Erik began to wail again, the sound like an angel who was having the feathers plucked from his wings one by one till he was nothing more than a mass of pink flesh, sore and raw from the sudden nudity of it all. It was a sound so horrible that Christine had to clamp her hands over her ears and squeeze her eyes shut to lessen the pain. Curse his mood-swings! He sat on the edge of the bed sobbing and shaking as though he were little more than a small child caught in the remnants of a nightmare, his head resting on his knees and snot oozing slimily down his face and all over the knee of his dress-pants as he mashed his snout into his trousers and tried to get hold of himself to no avail.

"Erik," she sobbed, frustrated to the point of tears, "what on EARTH is the matter now!"

"Erik...Erik is...Erik is just-so happy...he doesn't want his fever to go away because then Christine will be gone too." he moaned and she had to smile.

"Well I am pleased that me being here makes you happy," she said, "But please Erik do settle down...I am not going anywhere and you will wake the neighbors and-

"Neighbors?"he asked darkly. "Erik has neighbors?"

"Yes Erik," she said, "There is a very nice man named Mr. Lamont down the road who thinks you are my husband and if you continue to scream then he will come up here thinking something is wrong."

"He thinks Erik is your what?" Erik asked in utter disbelief. "Why would he think a stupid thing like that?"

Christine looked down, hurting at his apparent rejection, "because that's what I thought you wanted so that's what I told him." she told him sheepishly.

Erik was so overcome with emotion at this that he grabbed Christine and pulled her close to him where she choked on the pressure of his embrace as he smothered her nose into his shoulder. She turned her head, not because she hated the smell of his clothes but because with his bony shoulder there was no padding and it was rough on the bridge to the point of being painful. Still, she had to admit, his embrace while cold was not the least bit unpleasant. He was sobbing, kissing all over her head, golden eyes bright with tears as he squeezed her so tightly that her back popped. Groaning she wrapped her arms around him and let him weep, good lord the man did love a good cry it seemed. He wept enough to create a third section of the channel perhaps connecting Ireland to England and France.

The thought made Christine laugh and she giggled the thought of the three countries suddenly being joined by her lover's emotions. The thought made her smile as she rubbed Erik's back and eased him straight down so that he was again reclining on the bed. He was looking up at her with a tender devotion that broke her heart. Like a helpless child so broken and tormented and desperate for someone, anyone to make it all better. Christine yawned, realizing then that it was nine o'clock on Christmas morning! A slow smile curving her lips as Erik found himself falling back to sleep. Christine stroking his hair as he looked up at her with those beautiful golden eyes of his, wide and round with childlike helplessness. Fixated and hardly moving on her hand as her fingertips stroked his sparse hair back from his forehead.

"I told him you were my husband Erik Delaney and that we were just back from our honeymoon." she laughed a little awkwardly, "Didn't want him asking awkward questions..."

"Erik will do whatever Christine wishes. If she says his name is Delaney than that is what he will call himself." he said yawning, "Erik will be her husband, Erik will name himself whatever she want...but he must ask her to forgive him just one more time."

"I can't. In order to forgive you, you have to have done something wrong."

"Erik is just so sleepy... he wants to talk to Christine but he cannot keep his eyes open..."

"Hush love..." she smiled, pulling the blankets up to his chin. "I am not going anywhere.

Erik did not protest any further and, after tucking him in she headed down the street, unsure of her surroundings but not frightened. She headed down the way to where Mr. Lamont was, intending to wish him good morning only to see him dragging an enormous fir tree out from behind the back of his house. He looked to be struggling quite a bit and Christine went over to help, eliciting a smile from the man as she did so.

"Morning Missus. How's your old man?" he asked cheerfully.

"Better thank you, you appear to be struggling under the weight of this tree."

"Aye Miss, the snow knocked it down, shame really more fodder for the saw and firewood I suppose."

Suddenly Christine had an idea, it was Christmas morning and she was sure Erik had never had a proper one before. She felt another pain in her heart at the thought of Erik as an unloved little boy all alone on Christmas morning while his mother pretended he did not exist. She saw the tree and her eyes lit up imagining it dressed in baubles and shiny things, all a-twinkle and bright in the house. Erik's very first Christmas.

"I could buy it from you." she said, "We don't have one yet being just home from our honeymoon and all."

Mr. Lamont smiled and shook his head, "Jesus Mary and Holy St. Joseph, cuppa newlyweds and you don't have a tree for your Christmas morning?" she shook her head and he looked appalled. "Take this one, heaven knows I'm not going to use it."

"How much?" she asked reaching for her purse.

"No charge, it's a bloody disgrace that a beautiful young bride doesn't have a tree for their first Christmas. Hell I will haul it for you missus right down the road to your house."

"You don't have to..." she said blushing.

"Oh nonsense missus. Come on." He said as he loaded the tree into his cart and tugged it down the way. Christine followed him, her hands shaking from the cold of the biting winter air. Realizing too late that the moment Mr. Lamont walked into the room she was going to have a lot of explaining to do. But it couldn't be helped. He trudged the tree down to her doorstep and set it down in front of the house for her with a tobacco-stained smile. "Here we are missus D do you need help getting it in."

"Oh no... I will manage but if it's not too much trouble would you mind finding a priest.." He looked curious and so she answered quickly," I would like to have our home blessed, seeing as we just moved here and all." she said, not a lie although she had something else in mind as well. "of course you don't have to do it today but-"

"Say no more Missus, I'm a good Catholic, just come over from Ireland me-self and I completely understand I'll run right down the way and get the man. You just keep hold of the tree and I will run right down the way to the church and you go right ahead and get your Christmas started."

"Thank you!" she called out, as he had already headed down the lane.

"Sure thing I'll be right back..." he said and she took the trée inside, plotting the perfect gift for Erik as she did so...