A/N: Thanks to those who took the time to review! :) And thanks to Emmy6 for favouriting! This is the biggest chapter out of the remaining ones. I do hope you enjoy it and please let me know your thoughts!
Chapter 34: The Netherworld
1883
He was standing in the wings the night of the famous accident, reports of which were soon to be distributed all over Europe. He was standing as close to the stage as he could without making himself seen, leaning heavily upon the cane on whose stability he now relied. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming, and how could it not have been when only a day prior he'd stood at this very same spot watching a diva ridiculed and a corpse tossed carelessly in front of the audience?
He had told Christine that this was not a good idea, that the manipulative mind of the man called Erik – the man he'd taken to mockingly call "the angel" – was behind the managers' sudden desperation to see her in the role of Aida. Had she had been naïve, it would have stung far less. But although unspoken, he knew that she had been aware of the risks.
"I must sing for him one last time, Raoul, I must!" she had entreated him.
And although he had not understood the urgency or logic behind the plea, he could not have forced her to do otherwise. She was not his wife, not yet, had asked for his time and understanding there too, and he wished to do nothing to upset her. Still, if he saw anything suspicious, he was fully prepared to drag her off the stage and away from the opera house, away from the entire country if necessary for her to come to her senses again. The Christine he had spoken to recently was nothing like the Christine he remembered.
But although he was watching closely, Raoul could do nothing to stop the inevitable. When the foreign sound assaulted his ears, he initially felt disoriented. He knew, of course, that something was mightily wrong, but could not see what was happening until the shrieks of the audience compelled him to take a step out of the wings. He knew within an instant that the chandelier was about to fall.
"Run!" he shouted at no-one in particular, for he could not predict the exact path of the crash.
Anyone and everyone was currently at risk of being crushed.
His eyes fell on Christine twice in quick succession. First, to clumsily measure the distance between her and the falling object, and then again when he realised that her body itself had gone into motion, dropping down somewhere he could not see. That did not mean that he didn't know who was awaiting her on the other side.
"This way, Monsieur," Meg Giry called who seemingly manifested next to him out of thin air. "I know another way."
The luxury of time was no longer on his side and so he followed her as she guided him into a dark corridor which ended in a large space beneath the stage. To his dismay, however, the space was also deserted save for the ominous figure of Madame Giry.
How curious that from this spot the screams of the audience and the thunderous crash of the chandelier sounded muffled and phoney. Still, he knew that they couldn't underestimate the speed of the fall and the consequent distance it might travel which could place them in harm's way.
"Mama, did you see Christine? Where did she go?" the little ballerina demanded breathlessly.
"She is beyond our reach now," the older woman answered soberly, directing much of her words as well as her gaze towards him, "he has taken her and we'd do better not to enter his realm."
The respect this man commanded despite everything he had seemingly done was beginning to grind on his nerves. At this rate, it was really rather difficult to understand why anyone should pity let alone care for him.
"Madame," he uttered sharply before her daughter had the chance to respond, "this is not the time for cordiality or fear. Christine has been taken against her will and I cannot turn my back on it and pretend it did not happen."
"I have tried everything I could, Monsieur," she answered just as exasperatedly, "from the very moment she set foot in this opera house. He has always shown kindness to those in need of support, those who looked alone or disadvantaged. I knew it was only a matter of time before he'd come to care for her. So I treated her stricter than the rest of the girls. I discouraged her wandering around in the dark, I kept watch over her…I knew with a heart so soft it would only be a matter of time before…" She sighed and covered her mouth. "I cannot go there, Monsieur. I cannot link the kindness he has shown me and my daughter to these atrocious accidents."
"Accidents, Madame Giry?" Raoul demanded in outrage. "These are no accidents!"
But there was no use, she wouldn't be convinced and if anything he was only wasting precious time.
"Come along now, Meg, it's time to leave."
The older woman's artificial eye nervously flickered upwards and then back to the door.
"I'm with the Vicomte," the blonde contradicted stubbornly however, "Christine is my friend. If I don't try to help her, I won't be able to live with myself."
"Oh don't be stupid, girl!" Madame Giry hissed angrily. "This is not the time to prove yourself. Christine knew that. She told me to leave the opera house with you. Now come!"
For a moment it looked as if the young girl was pondering her mother's words, but then she reached out and snatched something out of the old wrinkled hands.
"Where did you get this?" she demanded heatedly.
Impatiently, Raoul stole a glance at the offending object, confused as to why it was worth creating such a fuss over.
"Christine was wearing it around her neck. She threw it at me, I don't know why."
"She would not part with it lightly," Meg murmured, turning the strange h-shaped pendant over in her hands, "it must be a clue."
"Now where did they go, Madame?" Raoul questioned firmly, frustrated at all the time that had already been lost.
"This way, Monsieur," the box keeper at last answered weakly, pointing to a wall in a far corner. "Please Meg. You must come with me."
Raoul turned his back to both of them at this point, not caring to hear another round of the frantic exchange. Instead, he used his hands to feel the stone wall. If the angel had abducted Christine through a trapdoor it was likely that there was just another hidden mechanism here he'd have to find. Fingers slipped over unyielding stone, felt its cracks frantically until his nailbeds started to bleed.
Above him, footsteps thundered now and shouts of the Sûreté resounded who were looking for survivors as well as for the one man responsible. The chandelier, it seemed, had at last come to a standstill, though what it had left in its wake remained yet to be seen.
In the meantime, frustration and helplessness welled up in his chest as he failed to find a lever, find anything that would explain Christine's disappearance. Both emotions manifested themselves in the end in an angry smack of cane against stone, except that the sound that followed alerted Raoul to the cleverly crafted illusion. Sitting cosily between layers of stone was one large panel of wood, painted and crafted to resemble the other material perfectly.
"Stand back, please," he commanded the two women who stopped arguing at once and watched as he unsheathed a pistol from the shaft of his cane.
With it, he tapped the wooden panel one last time to ensure he knew the precise location, before he aimed and shot a hole in it. With angry hands, he then put the weapon away and began tearing down the rest of the panel.
He'd only set a foot inside the hidden passageway, when a small hand caught him around the arm.
"I am coming with you, Monsieur," Meg Giry whispered and even in the half-lit hallway he could see the determination that shone in her brown eyes.
His friend the baron would have his hands full with her, his old, humorous mind supplied good-naturedly.
"Very well," he agreed and began wandering deeper into the corridor. Whatever feud mother and daughter seemed to have had, appeared to have been settled once and for all.
The journey the ballerina and the vicomte undertook was laborious and slow thanks to the darkness that prevailed all around them. The former of which struggled more with it, however, because the unpredictability of the ground made it harder for her prosthetic leg to find its footing. The air around them grew increasingly quiet until eventually only their footsteps echoed around them.
"I am certain that this is a clue," Meg whispered to herself, fingering the pendant with one hand while she used the other to steady herself on the wall. "Christine hid this under her mattress. She confided as much in me. I always assumed it was a gift from her late father, but if that were true she would not have parted with it now."
Raoul hummed absent-mindedly in agreement and squinted into the dark. The passageway had parted and split several times already and he was getting the sinking feeling that they were wandering terribly off-course.
"I've seen a symbol like this somewhere else before," Meg murmured anew, "if only I could remember where."
The wall they were holding on to was beginning to grow moist now, and it wasn't long before both of them thought to perceive the sound of rushing of water.
"The Seine, Monsieur? Perhaps he has a boat there."
The notion itself was logical which was why it filled him with such dread. If that were true, Christine could be anywhere by now. But then he remembered that she had described the angel as a recluse and as such he could not imagine that he owned a boat, let alone used it to take a route that would put them prominently on display.
Shrugging off the thought, he continued down the passageway they had last entered. Something brushed up against his leg, something thin and wiry but he dismissed it as nothing more than vermin when he heard the scurrying of little feet across the ground.
He should have heeded his instincts.
Where just a moment ago they'd been standing on solid ground, they were now suddenly plunging sickeningly downwards. Where to, neither of them could make out. Their fall was eventually broken by something hard and unrelenting. Small but sharp, pointy stones that dug into his flesh around his tailbone, the place where he was most sensitive because of the difficult operation he'd undergone. The pain was so acute that it knocked the air out of his lungs for a second. Then the rushing of water came again and a second later they were soaked to the skin and freezing, the only positive side effect of which was that it made him more alert again.
"Are you unhurt?" he asked Meg, squinting through the dark to spot her.
"Yes, but I've lost the pendant, I can't find it anymore."
She sounded frantic and a moment later he could hear the sloshing of water as she supposedly searched the ground for it. He left her to it and instead tried to figure out a way to escape this hole they had fallen into. For that's what it was as he discovered when he felt the walls around them. A hole, large enough to fit a handful of people, the height of which remained yet to be discovered, but judging by the fall it would be difficult to climb out. The walls had now also become slick with water, yet ironically that was what gave him hope.
"There has to be an alternative way out," he told the ballerina, "the water had to come from somewhere and if we can figure out its path, we'll manage to escape."
His confidence was only short-lived, because it was not only impossible to see anything in the dark, but the chamber they found themselves in suddenly began to spin. Music, which otherwise might have been deemed beautiful, welled up around them in a threatening, albeit subtle refrain that whispered all around them. Together with the slow spin it evoked a sense of foreboding so strong that he was very nearly tempted to succumb to his inevitable fate.
Beside him, Meg seemed to be pushing her head underneath the water's surface time and time again, still in frantic search for the pendant she had lost. Whenever she came back up for air, he could hear her teeth chattering or a groan of pain.
"I can feel it. It's caught on a rock!"
The temperature of the water was getting to him too, seeping through his trousers and straight into his skin. How she managed to submerge her head in it was quite beyond him. In between the heavy sound of the water as it washed up against the surfaces that surrounded it and the terrible music, he continued to perceive another one. It was much fainter, subtler even and yet perhaps because of it even more threatening.
There was a hum in the air that transformed into a buzz or a high-pitched ringing when he shifted closer to a wall, and all at once he realised why the sound was so terrifying. It was that of an electric current. Any second now, it could come in contact with the water that was licking at their knees. Any second now the deadly jolt could come.
"Meg!" he hissed urgently, throwing all propriety to the wind in light of this disturbing discovery. "Meg, we have to find a way out now. The maniac is trying to electrocute us! Can you see where the water is coming from?"
Wildly and with frantic hands he began searching the walls anew, jumping up from time to time in an effort to reach a higher ledge, but it was impossible. No small tunnel was discovered, no niche that they could have pulled themselves onto.
Next to him, he heard the ballerina push her head beneath the water. He opened his mouth to press upon her the urgency of the situation once more - for that blasted pendant was of no use to them now - when she emerged again breathlessly and whispered, "Down there, Monsieur. The chamber did not just flood from above. There is water seeping in from below as well. I can feel it!"
"Thank God," Raoul muttered, "that's our only chance now. You have to help me break it. It will flood the chamber, hopefully enough so that we can reach the surface and pull ourselves out."
It was a risky endeavour –especially for Raoul who knew that the metal rods inserted in his back were likely to weigh him down- but since they were in danger of electrocution, it was a risk they had to take. If he had trusted water as a boy, he needed to trust it now.
Following the ballerina's lead, he began feeling around for his cane which had to be somewhere, his movements growing more and more panicked the longer it took to find it.
"Come here, Monsieur," Meg suddenly ordered in a tone that much resembled that of her mother, "stand behind me and support me."
He remained silent as she guided his arms around her middle. Then, she pushed herself off the ground, relied on his strength to hold her and used her sharp prosthetic leg to slam into the ground beneath them. Once or twice they heard a chink as her leg encountered what sounded like glass, somewhat muffled by the weight of the water and the music. Other times she groaned and winced in pain, as she collided with solid wall instantly, the impact, no doubt, ricocheting through the rest of her body.
They repeated the process again and again until finally something audibly shattered and the water they'd been standing in began to rise faster.
"We'll have to be prepared," Raoul instructed her firmly, "don't underestimate the water. Be ready to swim at any moment. Keep pushing up until you see something or can reach something to pull yourself out of here. If you go under, try to stay calm, breathe, then preserve air and push on."
His warning came just in time for the water level rose and rose, filling the chamber rapidly. As soon as it had risen to torso height, they began to swim, casting their arms and legs about as the icy cold bit into their every limb.
Raoul did not speak, not even to ensure her well-being but sought comfort in the frantic splashing that echoed around him. She was frightened, yes, but at least she was alive.
The task was as hard as he'd imagined, and harder still. Not only was his body no longer used to such physical exertion, it also did not react well to the cold which seemed to paralyse him. Soon, his arms grew weary from the weight they had to drag ever upwards. Then, thankfully, he started to make out the contour of something else. A differently shaped chamber, likely to be the tunnel they had come from. With the final strength he had left, he pushed on, driven forward by the sound of electricity that seemed to grow in intensity by the second.
"Get out," he panted towards Meg, splashing around in the dark until he found her and hoisted her upwards to give her the boost she needed to escape.
This last ditch effort sent him beneath the water's surface where death's icy kiss welcomed him. Then something hard collided with him and caused him to emerge again, amidst a splutter of cold air and water.
"Quickly now, before it's too late!" Meg's urgent voice reached him and somehow he found her hands which she had bravely stuck out, and with her help managed to push himself out of the drowning pit as well.
Together, they lay coughing and panting on the cold stone floor, their lungs burning angrily, their limbs sluggish and heavy. Then more water seeped out of the hole and blubbered over them, drenching their upper bodies once more. Along with it emerged – a shriek of happiness later - the pendant Meg had so desperately been searching for.
But the moment of triumph was short-lived as a terrifying display of lightning suddenly illuminated the tunnel and a jolt of pure agony went spiralling through Raoul's back. He turned around quickly and stared into the water pit they had emerged from on whose surface now danced and crackled electricity. A panel on one side of the chamber had been removed to allow a large rod which had been invested with the current to come into contact with the water.
Almost in tandem, Meg and Raoul lunged away from the part of the tunnel that had been infiltrated by the water, but Raoul could feel his back burning nonetheless. The gold that constituted his spine had carried the current to singe his skin. It was likely that Meg had been burned as well. But when his eyes found her, illuminated every now and again by the flashes of light coming from the pit further down the tunnel, he could only see focus and determination.
The white slave's dress she had worn for her role in the ensemble hung pitifully from her shoulders and stuck like a slick and icy blanket to her shivering body, the base of her prosthetic leg was broken or uneven from her effort to rescue them from electrocution, but her eyes were alive with curiosity. In her hand rested the blasted pendant which miraculously seemed to have grown to more than twice its original size.
Noticing his gaze, Meg explained, "I think the electricity must have done it."
Once more Raoul studied the curious pendant. The h shape of red material was still intact, but the strands of differently coloured material that had been following the same shape on either side had twisted and were now forming pathways above and beyond the letter in red.
"It must have contained a hidden mechanism," he voiced out loud, "which short-circuited when it came in touch with water and electricity."
Meg nodded slowly, her eyes gliding over the curious contraption in her hand.
"It's a map," she then breathed in awe, "it's a map of all these passageways."
She appeared to be right, and yet he failed to see how they could possibly use it to their advantage now. Granted, it seemed likely that the angel had taken Christine to a place which was located at the junction at the very top of the letter where the vertical met the horizontal line, for upon closer inspection it really seemed as if the pendant was an amalgamation of the letters t and h. Even so, it was unlikely that they would figure out where in this vast web they currently stood.
But Meg was not someone to easily give up and he watched her time and time again, move the pendant closer to her face, tilt it, turn it over until at last she gave a small cry of triumph.
"I knew this symbol looked familiar, Monsieur! It is the sign of the Roman God Saturn."
Quickly, she pushed the pendant in front of his nose and pointed at a finely engraved line that read Carpe Ceres.
"Latin for Seize the Harvest. My mother insisted on giving me as good an education as possible," she remarked dismissively when she noticed his confused look. "Do you remember the evening you asked me to lure Christine out of the opera house? We met at the Eiffel Tower, and Pierre and I went to the fair while you whisked her away? There was a fortune teller there who laid the cards for us. Upon one of them I noticed this very same symbol and when I asked what it meant, he said it spelled doom, for it was that of the God of the Underworld, the God of Death, Saturn. The curve here," she paused to trace it, "is meant to represent his scythe."
Once more, she seemed to notice Raoul's wide-eyed look of shock, for she added quickly,"I think he merely tried to frighten us. Pierre later on explained that Saturn had also been the God of Agriculture which made the scythe far less scary."
Raoul drew his brows together and breathed out heavily through his nostrils. The burn at the nape of his neck was making his head hurt.
"How does this help us?" he, therefore, asked with some impatience.
"Well, it tells us something about the Opera Ghost. Perhaps he sees himself banished to the Underworld and so he gave Christine this map to find him. If we assume he has taken her here," she paused once more to tap the very junction Raoul had considered as well, "and we are here now," another pause followed by a tap elsewhere, "then we merely have to figure out which strand takes us there."
"But we don't know where we are!" Raoul exclaimed in exasperation which did not seem to affect the ballerina in the slightest.
"Look here," she answered calmly, pushing the pendant closer to his eyes once more, "can you see the marker?"
Raoul blinked against the swimming vision before him and then finally noticed it. A small silver bolt engraved finely into one strand of the pendant.
"There is a pair of masks higher up to symbolise the auditorium and other markings I cannot yet interpret, nor do I wish to. I fear they might be further traps."
He was at a loss for words and momentarily wondered if she had artificially altered her eyesight just as her mother had done, for he could never have spotted all these minuscule engravings in the flashing light.
"Can you find a way that avoids those traps and still leads us to his hideout?"
"Of course, Monsieur," she answered with a brilliant smile and soon after they set off.
As they walked, he leaning heavily against the walls for support, her limping even more so than previously, Raoul came to admire her greatly. Not only had she figured out the secret of a pendant which he had dismissed as meaningless, she had also spotted a route and memorised it, for the darkness that fell over them once they moved away from the pit made seeing impossible.
Thanks to her help, they made it to the belly of the scythe without further incident when the dancing light of a torch stopped them in their tracks. Pressing themselves to either side of the wall, they watched as a man emerged out of thin air who hurried, albeit with great care, down the ramp before them.
"Monsieur!" Raoul demanded angrily, as he suddenly recognised the dark skin and exotic clothes in the warm glow of the torch. "You know where he has taken her!"
It was the Persian who was often seen making his rounds through the opera house. His presence here now could not be a coincidence and his surprise was instantly apparent.
"Monsieur le Vicomte?" The woven threads of gold on his frock glistened and twinkled as he turned fully to face them. "Mademoiselle Giry? You cannot be here. It is not safe here for you now."
Slowly, he took in their drenched and battered appearance and swallowed visibly.
"You are lucky to be alive, I see."
"You know Erik then?" Raoul asked sharply, stepping closer.
"Monsieur, you do well to heed my advice not to utter his name, for he sees and hears all here in his realm."
"I'm beginning to think you are his ally! Did you know he would take Christine today?"
"I have been a great fool," the Persian admitted freely, "I should not have offered such respect to the man who saved my life. I thought I could sway him, but I was mistaken. This, however, is not the time for blame. You must return where you came from and trust me to rescue Mademoiselle Daaé."
"I will do no such thing!" Raoul bristled and angrily strode past him, ignoring the pain this caused his body.
But he did not get very far, for the minute he rounded the last bend of the scythe and turned right towards the junction, he saw that it wasn't a house or a place, but only a dock that sat on the edge of an ominously glistening lake. And there, only in the distance, could he see the flicker of light.
"His house floats on water," came the calm voice of the Persian who, together with Meg, had caught up with him. "Without a boat it is impossible to reach. You will freeze, Monsieur, before you get close to it."
"I have to try," he ground out through gritted teeth, even though he knew it was futile.
The depth of the lake seemed endless and his tired arms could not possibly carry him that far. With a howl of anguish he began pacing up and down the edge of the water.
"You monster!" he screamed at last. "You damnable monster!"
As if in response something crackled nearby and then a magnificent, booming voice spoke to them.
"It appears we have some guests, Christine. Now, I am not a cruel man. I really am rather hospitable. Shall we let them in?"
They could barely make out a whimper and Christine's desperate plea before the voice spoke again.
"Your suitor is handicapped, my dear, we must be understanding. And who else might be there with him? The Persian? Are you there, Daroga? If you are, then that is really rather disappointing. I'd thought you wiser by now. But perhaps you have come to fulfil your promise? Come to lead the Sûreté to my doorstep? I shall make it easy for you, my friend."
Silence fell around them again and for a moment or two it seemed that neither of them dared to speak. Then, suddenly, the water before them began to part, receding further and further onto either side of the lake.
It did not take long for Raoul to make up his mind and he shrugged off the shouts of warning that echoed from behind him. Carefully, he eased himself down into the now drained lakebed and began the walk towards the light.
Soon, footsteps echoed behind him, indicating that his two companions had elected to follow him, after all.
"This is a trap, Monsieur!" the Persian whispered urgently, grasping him by his arm in an effort to detain him. "Why would he let you endure that treacherous walk through his passageways, only to welcome you with open arms?"
"I am not an imbecile," Raoul answered curtly, "but I have to try. Christine is within reaching distance. What else do you expect me to do? Turn my back? I am not a coward!"
With nothing further to say the trio continued in silence, the light of the Persian's torch throwing eerie shadows against the cavernous walls and ceiling.
The first time they heard the melody it came faint and soft, passing over them like a warm breeze that was felt but that did not prompt action. Then it grew and transformed around them, irrevocably taking on the voice of a woman and a rather familiar voice at that.
"Christine?" Raoul muttered, his head whipping around in the direction the voice seemed to emanate from.
Oh, how the melody swelled and expanded, magnificent yet desperate in its sadness.
"That's Christine!" Raoul pointed out once again, changing the direction of his stride.
"No, Monsieur, please," Meg tried to restrain him now, "I know it sounds like her, but you mustn't go there!"
Fear was written plainly on her pretty face.
"I don't have a good feeling about this."
But the vicomte seemed entirely too bewitched by the voice of his love to pay her any heed. Shouting her name over and over again, he proceeded to walk further away from the house he'd been trying to reach.
"Save yourself, Mademoiselle," the Persian urged her, who seemed just as frightened as she felt, and reluctantly she left them to their own devices while she hobblled at a brisker pace towards the house.
The water emerged all around them just as quickly as it had receded, crashing down upon the lakebed from what looked like large tubes that fed into the outer walls. As much as the Persian tried to help his companion, it was in vain, for the voice of the soprano had successfully led them far enough away from the dock and the house to make a return impossible.
"I heard her, Monsieur, I heard her! I am certain it was her voice!" Raoul insisted, even as the lake swallowed them up.
Then all became iciness, darkness and pain, yet before he lost consciousness and succumbed to the dull ache that resided in his head, the vicomte thought to have seen the figure of a woman with long braided hair that slipped effortlessly through the water, her voice that of Christine.