CHAPTER 4
Only a few feet down the tunnel was a door with small bars at eye level in the wood. Gerry and Christine cautiously opened it, only to be disappointed when it only led to more tunnel.
"Do you have any idea where this goes?" Gerry asked Christine, deciding to go left.
"Of course not. I've only been to Erik's home once before, and never here."
Sighing, the actor kept walking. Their feet splashed in little pools of water, and every so often, Christine's soft gasp echoed down into the darkness when she heard the squeak of a rat. Finally, Gerry noticed the light from the candelabra illuminated a door. He was about to open it when he saw there was a door beside that one, and one behind him, and on and on they went across the walls of the dank corridor, all the way forward into the depths and all the way back from whence they came.
"Which one do we go through?" he asked, even though he knew she couldn't have an answer.
"He has traps set around the lair. We should be careful," he continued. Christine looked confused.
"How do you know this?"
"Because we just filmed the scene where Patrick—Raoul—gets caught in a water trap, and we're going to do one later with a mirror trap. So far everything that happens in the movie is true here."
"Then shouldn't you know about this tunnel?" Christine questioned suspiciously. He rolled his eyes.
"This part was never in it. I smash open the mirror and disappear after I let you and Raoul go."
"Erik was going to let me go?" Christine whispered in disbelief. Gerry looked at her with a small amount of empathy.
"Yeah. He wanted you to be happy so he let you go with your fiancé. Even after all he did to get you. The Angel of Music trick, tormenting Carlotta, the murder, Don Juan, the chandelier…Piangi was part of the plan too, I guess, but personally, I would have just knocked him out or thrown him in a closet…"
"He killed Piangi?" Christine gasped. Blinking, Gerry stared at her annoyedly.
"You really don't know much about Erik, do you?"
The young woman exhaled sadly and turned away, inspecting the door closest to her.
"No, I suppose not. No one really knows anything about him, aside from Madame Giry, but she won't tell anyone a thing, so we just rely on rumors…it's kind of silly, but ghost stories pass the time-Ah! I found something, Gerry! Look here!"
Rushing to her, Gerry followed the invisible line from where her finger was pointing to the floor. Etched into the stone was a crude drawing of a stick person with a spike driven through its body. Simultaneously shifting away from the door, the two looked at each other incredulously. Christine swallowed.
"Let's not go in there."
"Hold on…it could be just a trick to scare intruders away," Gerry pointed out, pushing open the door quickly then jumping back with the candelabra held in front of him and Christine, as if some giant hairy beast would leap out at them. But he could see nothing in the room but blackness, so he stepped forward. The candles illuminated a damp floor with one stone sunken in, about where someone would step if they entered the room. Gerry took another step forward, and almost jumped out of his skin when his eyes gazed upon the body of the person who stepped on that stone. A huge metal spike protruded from the back of the corpse, apparently coming from the opposite side of the room.
"H-holy…SHIT!"
Gerry stumbled back, heart pounding out of his chest as he tried to catch his breath and senses. Christine clapped a hand over her mouth to prevent a scream while she slammed the door shut with her free hand. Gerry started shaking his head spastically.
"I can't do this, ok, this is too damn crazy…I want to get back, I want to go home, I want to get out of here…."
"Get a hold of yourself, you're a grown man!" Christine snapped, though still very shaky herself.
"Yeah, just some guy who got impaled by a guy who's supposed to be fictional, that's not shocking at all!"
Taking a deep breath, Christine rationalized the situation. "Erik didn't murder him himself, he had to set up traps to keep out people who potentially wanted to hurt or kill him. The man went at his own risk."
"…are you insane?"
"Shh! We have to keep calm. We don't even know that man. Now let's not open anymore doors unless the drawing looks promising."
She led the way down the dark stone hallway, and as they checked more and more drawings of stick people drowning, hanging, falling into a pit, etc, Gerry noticed Christine was humming to herself.
More disturbed than before, he turned back to the floor.
Who's more crazy, the Phantom or Christine?
/
"Ok, tomorrow we're going to be filming the final lair scene again. In your, uh…dimension, is it normal to…sing outside of opera? Like instead of casually talking?" Emmy asked awkwardly, fiddling with a script.
"Our operas have musical dialogue…"
"No, I mean, do YOU sing? Like instead of telling Christine to choose, you sing it?"
Erik raised an eyebrow and looked at Emmy as if she had lobsters crawling out of her hair. "Why on earth would I do such an absurd thing?"
Emmy sighed. "Because your story is now the 'opera' itself. We call it a musical though, since the songs aren't technically opera music. Characters mostly sing instead of speaking."
"So playing the role of myself won't be so easy then…I have to learn the words to my life," Erik mused, clearly not thrilled. "And sing to strange people from the future."
"Oh no, we recorded the songs already. You just have to mouth the words and act," Emmy assured him. It didn't work to calm his nerves.
"You recorded the music…?"
"Yeah, we can record sound here, that's how you can hear it on my iPod. So we'll listen to the songs and lip sync. When it is pre-recorded in a sound studio rather than a set, it has a clearer, more powerful sound. And a higher chance that we'll play the part better if we don't have to focus on singing at the same time."
"So people basically have more technology but are less talented," Erik scoffed, taking the script from her and reading over the final scene. "It is true that we said all of this, but I'm rather sure that we didn't rhyme. It was a very intense moment…"
"We know. That's what we're trying to portray. Here, listen to the music and read over the lyrics until you know it," Emmy said, finding the burned CD among the stack of papers on the recording studio desk. She adjusted the volume and found the track, and when Erik was ready, she let it play.
How wonderful it is that music can make such an ugly scene beautiful, he thought, reading along and still trying to wrap his brain around the fact that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart could portray his every thought through music when they never knew the man even existed. Slowly, he started to learn the words to his life.
"Tomorrow when you come in, a makeup artist is going to take a pretty long time putting on the prosthetic…" Emmy reminded him.
"You mean that horrible mass of flesh that I was so happy to be rid of?"
"Yeah. You get to take it off at the end of the day and everyone knows it's fake, so no one will treat you badly or anything. Actually, everyone kind of loves you here," she said. "And remember that all of the actors are in fact, ACTORS. So don't get too into the role and try to kill Patrick."
"He's playing the fop, correct?" Erik asked irritably.
"Yes. But you're in luck because we've already done the majority of my romantic scenes with him. Tomorrow, you get your fantasy of Christine kissing you—probably multiple times until the director likes it. Then, you let her go."
"But it's you, not her," Erik reminded her sarcastically, imitating what she said before. Emmy just shrugged.
"You might get excited."
"How DO you people know that I end up letting her go anyway? It's very unlike myself. I was only barely thinking of it in the back of my mind before I was transported here," Erik said, looking both annoyed and confused.
"I have no clue. Ask Andrew. Wait—don't do that. He'll think you're crazy."
"Any more advise, Mam'selle Rossum?"
"Actually, yes," she said, pointing to a camera placed in the recording studio. "Don't look at those when acting. No matter what."
"Why? Will they burn my eyes?" Erik asked seriously. Emmy held back a laugh and ended up snorting. She tried to pretend that didn't just happen.
"No, it'll just look stupid if an experienced actor is looking at cameras that have been there the entire time," she said. "It would be like watching a play where the actors keep looking at you in the audience rather than the other actors, or whatever they need to look at."
"Oh, I see…the cameras of today record moving pictures!"
Emmy resisted the urge to start a slow clap for him. Looking over him, she narrowed her eyes. "You need to be Gerry-fied…can you do a Scottish accent?"
Erik just gave her a dull look. "Do I appear as if I know how to do that?"
"Okay, you can say you're trying to get rid of it…for the role. Oh, and Gerry is really friendly, so if someone talks to you, act that way—"
Erik cringed as if in pain and he groaned a little.
"What's wrong?" Emmy asked, concerned.
"What is this sick feeling coming from…it's unlike anything I've felt before," he hissed. He clenched his fists and released them over and over.
"What feeling?"
"It's jittery, and…" he trailed off before describing it with a shudder and a sound of disgust. "It's been gradually increasing all day. I thought it was just from the shock earlier."
It took Emmy a moment before she gasped.
"I know what that is! Gerry smokes. His body is craving nicotine and you're in his body."
"Ugh!" Erik groaned. "Firmin and the elder patrons of the opera always have those blasted pipes in their mouths too. It smells awful."
"Well, Gerry smoked cigarettes, but it's basically the same as pipes, I guess. I don't know where he has them stashed though.." she said regretfully.
"Don't trouble yourself, I shall get over it in time."
"But Erik—"
"I am not taking back a nasty habit like that if I ever get back to Paris. Smoking does get rather expensive over time."
"Well, that and it kills you," Emmy muttered.
"It does? I knew it!"
"But it's not so easy to just 'get over' smoking. Withdrawal is a slow process and it might interfere with your acting, and you might be too irritable to deal with," she said. After a second, she looked hopeful. "We can go pick up some nicotine patches for you. Or gum!"
"Excuse me?"
"They help people quit by gradually decreasing their nicotine intake," she explained quickly, digging in her pocket to retrieve her car keys. "Come on."
"Where are we going?" Erik whined.
"My car."
"Car…?
"Explaining everything to you is getting really boring, you know."
"Well excuse me for not being born in the bloody 21st century!"
"You would be a toddler if that were the case."
"Silence, clone of Christine!"