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Chapter 3

It was getting progressively colder, if that were even possible, Hero decided as she made her way across the grand vestibule, pulling her thick woollen shawl tighter around her shoulders. It was also getting late and she was eager to ensconce herself into the relative warmth of her room. A trio of dancers walked past her, dressed in their tulle dancing skirts, and she felt a pang of pity as she watched them. The poor things had to be numb with cold, she decided. The managers had opted to keep heating expenses on the opera down to a minimum and had advised everyone to invest in thick scarves.

Under pressure from Moncharmin and Richard, who were desperate for the opera season to begin and the money to begin flowing in, practices had resumed as soon as the corps de ballet and the chorus were assembled. The opera house was teeming with activity more than ever before.

Madame Dubois was subjecting her dancers to an impressively rigorous training schedule, claiming that they had all lost what skill they had in their break from the opera. Hero had just approached Germaine and Vivienne, where they stood huddling under cloaks and waiting for Jammes to catch up to them, when a loud knock could be hear on the locked doors. The sound echoed in the marble entrance hall, and a few people had appeared to see what was going on. Jammes was among them, still in the process of wrapping herself in her blue shawl.

"Who do you think would arrive at this hour?" Germaine asked Vivienne, who just shrugged and continued to watch the door that led to the ticket foyer, which in turn led to the front doors. Hero was silently wondering the same thing. Her pocket watch showed it to be nearing eleven at night, and most people had gone home.

A stage hand hurried past them and into the ticket foyer with the keys, which had been missing as usual, and unlocked the doors, which were summarily flung open and there was a muted conversation, followed by a tall man stepping forward into the grand vestibule.

"La Sorelli has arrived," he announced, and stepped aside, making room for a slight woman to enter. She wore a heavy black travelling cloak over a full-skirted dress in black silk and a dainty navy blue hat.

"She has a lackey now, too?" Jammes whispered, her voice laced with disgust and a little jealousy.

"Why not? She can afford one," Vivienne answered. The other dancers nodded solemnly at this – it was the ambition of every dancer in the corps to one day rise to prima ballerina.

"Is that the missing prima ballerina?" Hero asked the others.

"It is. She's been away for months, and I heard Moncharmin say to Remy that she wasn't too pleased about returning," said Germaine.

"Why not?"

"Oh, it's a dreadfully sad story. Her lover was Philippe, the Comte de Chagny, the current Comte de Chagny, Raoul's, brother. You remember, Meg told you about him? Philippe was always so polite, you know, and very handsome with his tall build and fine features. And he always brought Sorelli the finest roses and the most expensive little boxes of chocolates, tied with sating ribbons. He was always so very particular in his attentions to her, you know, though he didn't seem at all the sort for violent passions. Well, they found the comte drowned in the cellars under the opera soon after the fire."

"They said 'drowned', but everyone knows it was the Ghost that killed him," Vivienne supplied.

"So, you see why it's so very sad," Meg added softly. "Everyone thought they would get married."

"That would have been a social triumph of note," muttered Jammes in quiet admiration.

Hero looked gravely at the small woman who, having dismissed her footman, had begun to move purposefully towards the staircase and probably her dressing room. The foyer started to empty as people went back to their tasks, or made their way to one of the other exits to go home.

"Should we go say 'hello'?" Germaine asked, looking anxiously at the others.

"Now? Don't be absurd," said Jammes, "You saw how distraught she looked. I shall make it my business to steer clear of her for at least the next two days. You might have forgotten how sharply she slaps, but I have not."

"It's a good thing they've fixed her dressing room, else all Hell would surely descend upon us," Vivienne quipped. "That demon from Faust has nothing Sorelli."

Hero and the ballerinas made their way back to their own rooms, talking softly amongst themselves.

OOO

Erik was bored. And irritated. It was a deadly combination. He had taken to letting his vicious temper out on the managers and the staff. Richard had likely never received such a vindictive note in all his years in the world of business. Even Nadir, who had come over to visit him just the previous day had found himself subjected to an impressively loud rant on the common courtesy of waiting until one was invited before making a nuisance of oneself. Not that he had been particularly bothered. Nadir had known Erik for far too many years to be affected by every fit of pique Erik chose to express.

The cause of Erik's latest bout of irritation was leisurely sharpening her claws on one of the hangings on the wall. Ayesha was going through a phase where she happily annihilated anything in her way. Including the miniature pipe organ. And the piano. Even Erik himself was not exempt from this unexplained malice. Narrowing his eyes, he glided over to the cat, and scooped her up. She instantly attached her claws to the sleeve of his coat and his silk cravat, squirming in displeasure at being pulled away from the hanging. Erik hurriedly made for one of his more harmless passages, unwilling to have to disarm his own traps with an angry cat clutched in his arms. He carefully extended a gloved hand as far as possible, to press a hidden panel in the wall of the fifth basement, which opened into a narrow passage that rose steadily into darkness. Erik felt somewhat glad that he had excellent night vision as he pushed open another hidden doorway and came out into a wide hallway, not far from the ballet dormitories.

He deposited Ayesha on the floor, and she stalked off in a huff. Erik spitefully hoped that she would make her way into the managers' office. He knew that before long she would return to his basement dwelling, as she always did, but he hoped she would exhaust her destructiveness before she got there.

He looked around the deserted hallway, paused a moment in thought, and decided that he might as well find someone on whom to vent some of his own foul temper. He set off down the passage and felt a surge of unholy delight as he happened across the ideal target almost immediately.

One of the ballet rats had been out later than the rest of her friends, and was making her way back to her room alone. His eyes narrowed at the happy, tuneless way she was humming. He took her cheerful demeanour as a personal slight – on his opinion the rats had grown much too relaxed in the past few months. As the girl walked past the shadowed alcove where he stood, without noticing him, he intentionally creaked a floorboard behind her, making her jump and turn quickly around to glance behind her.

Rosalina froze in place. Barely daring to breathe, she scanned the dimly lit hallway behind her. She could see nothing except a few slivers of shadow here and there. As a member of the corps de ballet, she knew many chilling stories about malicious shadows. None of them scared her, just then, so much as a ghost story she knew to be true. She peered into the shadows, shivering, certain that any one of them could hold her death. For a brief moment, she was sure she heard an indecipherable whisper and the sound of a lasso cutting the air on its way to strangle the life out of her, or snap her neck.

Joseph Buquet, the late chief scene shifter, used to tell all sorts of stories about the Ghost. He had always been a well-respected, serious man and not at all the sort to make things up. Rosalina had listened in horrified fascination as Buquet described the lasso the Ghost sometimes used, how it could bring instant death. Once the lasso was around your neck, he would tell them, there was no escape. Buquet himself had been proof of these tales. He had certainly found no escape from a swift, impersonal, death in the shadows. He had been found hanging in the third cellar, and though the matter had been ruled a 'suicide' by the inquest, everyone at the opera knew it was the Ghost that killed him.

As Rosalina spun frantically this way and that, trying to make out any sign of danger, Erik glided closer to her frightened form. He barely touched her shoulder with a deathly-cold hand, and threw his voice to her left, laughing coldly.

Rosalina did not waste any more time in the face of such an irrefutable sign of danger. She lifted her hand to the level of her eyes, as she had often been told she must do in just such a circumstance, and took off running towards her dormitory.

Erik watched her terrified flight from his alcove, feeling a strange mixture of satisfaction and bitterness. Under his mask, he wore a rather ghastly parody of a smile. Eager to watch the little seed of terror he had planted grow into a full-scale panic, Erik followed the girl and slipped into another passage, which would lead him to a convenient ventilation shaft in the rooms that were used as the ballet dormitories and the passageway outside. He usually avoided this passage. It irritated him to listen to the ridiculous chatter and silly histrionics that were the staple fare of the ballet girls' conversation but, occasionally, there was enjoyment to be had from their tendency to exaggerate.

The Phantom's yellow eyes glowed in the gloom as he listened to the chaos unfold.

OOO

Rosalina did not hesitate to wake up her fellow dancers, gasping and sputtering, and almost-fainting all the way through her story. She had soon woken up the entire dormitory as more people came to see what was causing the commotion. Hero came out into the passage just in time to see Rosalina burst into loud, theatrical tears mid-way through a very elaborate, if highly exaggerated, description of a chilling laugh she swore followed her all the way to the dormitories.

Hero was thoroughly exasperated at being woken in the middle of the night when she had to be up early the following morning to help Mme Collot do a second fitting for the chorus. Her head felt foggy as she made her way into the crowded hallway, where ballet girls were milling. Every now and then someone squealed and threatened to faint, which only served to irritate Hero further. Having caught the tail-end of Rosalina's story, she unceremoniously pushed her way to the centre of the commotion and asked what all the excitement was about.

"It's the Ghost," a girl next to her hissed, with almost impossibly wide eyes. Her mussed brown hair, coupled with her wide-eyed expression made her look almost comically distressed.

"Ghost?" asked Hero, attempting to wake up her brain. She knew she was not fully awake yet, because the girl's reply had almost made sense.

"Of course! The Opera Ghost! We've told you all about him," Germaine replied, as she looked around at the bare walls surrounding them, as though expecting to see the Opera Ghost standing amidst the ballerinas. That would certainly have been amusing, Hero thought idly, before returning her attention to the others.

"Sssh! Don't say his name, Germaine, or you will bring him upon us!" Vivienne's attempt at cautioning her fellow dancer came out more as an alarmed squeal.

Blinking, Hero moved her hair behind her ears as she tried to process what she had just heard. Somehow, she didn't think 'Opera Ghost' could be considered anybody's name.

"Rosalina was walking just over there," Suzanne pointed into the shadows further down the passage, "when she heard the floor creak behind her. She felt chill fingers grab her shoulder – "

"They were like icicles! I felt the chill all the way to my bones!" interjected the victim, looking extremely flushed.

" – and then she ran over here in a desperate attempt to escape with her life, while demonic laughter followed her!" finished Suzanne, but Rosalina did not seem satisfied, as she felt the need to elaborate yet again.

"Oh, it was ghastly! I felt little fiendish fingers pull at my hair and clothes as I ran, as if trying to drag me down to Hell with them!"

Hero watched as Josephine tried to comfort Rosalina by putting a comforting arm around her shoulders but the ballerina would not be deterred in continuing her story.

"It was horrible! I thought, surely, my end had come. I swear I heard the lasso! And think I might have even seen him! H…He was just as Joseph Buquet used to describe him! He was wearing dress-clothes and an opera cloak!" She attempted to wipe at her tear-stained cheeks, but the effort was futile.

Hero thought that the last thing Rosalina needed was so much attention and fuss but she diplomatically kept this opinion to herself.

"Did you see the death's head?" Jammes asked with a tremble in her voice, her fear almost giving way to excitement.

"Jammes!" Germaine glared at her friend and threw another cautionary glance at their surroundings.

"I'm only asking because – "

There might have been an argument to add to the drama already happening around them, had footsteps not sounded around the corner.

"It's him! He's come to finish what he started!" gasped someone in the crowd. Hero heard a soft thump as the speaker carefully fainted on the thin carpet.

"Don't be a ridiculous! You know his footsteps make no sound," Suzanne retorted.

Suzanne was right. They watched Madame Dubois round the corner, dressed in a warm robe over her nightdress and carrying a candlestick. Her blonde hair hung down her shoulders in two plaits, and framed her displeased expression. She had la Sorelli and two ballet girls in tow.

Mme Dubois, as the ballet mistress, had agreed to reside on premises as a great favour to the management because none of the junior instructors, who would usually reside near the dormitory of the ballet school with the younger girls, were presently at the opera. She often made a point of reminding the managers of this, especially when they tried to make well-meant suggestions concerning her choreography. In the midst of the chaos, two of the girls had dashed off to fetch the ballet mistress. Sorelli had heard them hurry past her dressing room, where she had elected to stay the night, and had come out to investigate, armed with the little dagger she always kept about her person.

"What is this I hear about ghosts and fiends? Why are you all milling about? Have you no rehearsals tomorrow?" demanded the ballet mistress. Germaine quickly summarised Rosalina's story for the new arrivals. Hero supposed Germaine had decided Mme Dubois would not have appreciated the unabridged version. Looking at the woman's displeased countenance, she was inclined to agree.

La Sorelli had moved to stand off to the right, out of the way next to Meg Giry. Neither of them said a word. Watching Sorelli, Hero remembered what she had been told about the prima ballerina's suitor. She could only imagine how terrible the poor woman must have felt just then. All the fuss seemed in very poor taste considering what the woman had been through. Moving closer, Hero saw that Sorelli was trembling and nervously playing with a wooden ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, and Meg had a look of stumped disbelief on her face. Neither of them seemed to be paying much attention to Germaine.

Sorelli started out of her stupor just as Hero spoke softly next to her. "I'm sure it wasn't really the Ghost," she said to the distraught prima ballerina. "Rosalina was tired, and it's so quiet and poorly lit down here. It takes little for the imagination to start playing tricks. Besides, she can be something of a peagoose sometimes." Hero wondered why anyone would put on a dress-coat and wait around empty hallways in the hope of finding someone to scare. It was such a silly notion that she would have had trouble taking it seriously, had Sorelli's expression not been testament to the gravity of the prank.

"Excuse me?" Sorelli stared at her, surprised. "Oh! No…of course not. I didn't think that it was. I was just…" She shook her head, letting her words trail off. Meg put her hand on Sorelli's arm in an effort to comfort her.

Hero found that she admired how close the women of the corps de ballet really were. Despite the petty squabbles and the competition over parts in the productions, despite Sorelli's reputed disdain for the other dancers, they still drew together when one of them was distraught.

Sorelli shook her head again, as though to clear it, and looked back at Hero.

"I suppose you've heard, then? You weren't here when it happened. I don't remember you. But I suppose everyone has heard."

"I can't speak for everyone but, yes, I'm afraid that I have," Hero answered.

"We do live in the ballet dormitories," Meg pointed out gently, earning a slight smile from Sorelli.

"I'm sorry you had to see this," Hero said with sympathy. "They mean no harm by it." Just at that moment, someone called for smelling salts for Roselina.

Sorelli sighed and shook her head. "It is my own fault. I didn't have to come when I heard what this was about, and yet I still did. I had to be certain. I had to know for Philippe. That monster can't still be here, whatever he may be, and yet I have the most chilling certainty that he is. Please, excuse me. I think I must return to my dressing room." With a weak smile, the prima ballerina made to walk back the way she had come.

"I shall walk with you," Meg said unexpectedly, moving in step with Sorelli.

Whatever he may be… Hero mulled over the woman's words. It was certainly a very interesting point.

By the time everyone had gone back to their beds, a story had spread that the Opera Ghost had summoned the every fiend from Hell to chase after the ballerina, cackling and flicking their flaming whips at her heels. Hero suspected that Rosalina indulged in the same Gothic novels as her sister, Lavenna.

As the girls finally returned to their rooms, Hero wondered about the strange incident. She did not believe Rosalina's silly tale for a moment, yet she was certain that the ballerina had seen or heard something. The detachment in Sorelli's expression had been the thing to convince her. She found that she could no longer dismiss the whole Opera Ghost business as so much fanciful nonsense.

She hadn't given either the Persian's story or Meg's much thought beyond a few idle thoughts when the Ghost happened to turn up in conversation. She had been much too busy with her own concerns and the duties she was expected to perform as Mme Collot's assistant, but suddenly she felt a strong urge to investigate. She wanted to know how much of what she'd been told was true, if any. She couldn't imagine why anyone would waste their time frightening ballet girls. She supposed if any of it was true, there had to be a 'someone' behind all the chaos, just as Sorelli's words had suggested, because she refused to credit ghost stories or demons.

As she drifted off to sleep, it occurred to her to wonder that Meg had not seemed particularly frightened of walking back to her room alone after she had accompanied Sorelli to her dressing room.

OOO

Responses:

The Adventures of: Yes, I'd forgotten the story too, to be honest, and when I looked at it again it was kind-of embarrassing, so I decided what it needed was a re-write.

LadyCavalier: I'm very pleased that you're enjoying the story so much! :) I hope this chapter will tide you over until the next bit? I'm not a big fan of angst either, so I'm certainly doing my best to keep it to a minimum.