Chapter 14

Erik's hand reached feebly for his lasso.

"There's someone here."

Christian glanced across the water, then to his father, reaching for the phantom's delicate wrist. Someone here? Nobody had ever been here, not once in Christian's whole life. It would have been more logical to claim the instruments had come alive than that a third person was at their home.

"A rat, probably."

"It's not a rat, boy, I know what a rat sounds like." The hand tightened around the noose. It mattered little whether he was right as this was his method of rat-catching too, where the infestation became excessive. He had tried to teach the boy this method but, finding he lacked the finesse for it, instead encouraged his son to use a dagger instead. Eventually, the boy had learned to tolerate the sight of blood, though it was a task he avoided at all costs, to Erik's annoyance and relief. "A petit rat, maybe. Did you make an invitation?"

"No! Never. Here, let me go and check the corridor, Father. You need to rest."

"I've rested for days, haven't I?"

"Hours, I think," Christian whispered. Without the rising and the setting sun, much of their time was guesswork. Christian in particular understood beats rather than seconds and minuets rather than minutes; he would have been hard pressed even to say how old he was. It was not their habit to rise at noon and go to bed as those above were rising for their day, but it was not unusual either. "Please, papa, it is better I do it. If I come across danger, I swear I will call you."

The phantom observed the boy for a moment, examining the scraggly young face for any hint of intrigue. Finding none, he relented.

"Take the lasso with you. You may yet learn it," he replied, considering that the boy would be less upset should he need to kill someone if there was a minimal amount of blood. As for the girl (for he was sure that the ballerina in those sketches had both the power and the inclination to snatch Christian from his father), Erik could easily find her in a corridor or a dressing room or on her way to church. Suspecting none of this, the boy lifted the lasso as if handling a venomous asp, kissed his father's (cold, wet, salty) forehead, and strode to the gondola, which slipped across the water.

The corridor stank less in the cold months, to Christian's relief. Around the walls every whisper in the theatre above collected and bristled against each other in an incoherent buzz. The familiar darkness gathered in the middle of the corridor in an unfamiliar shape which – being too large and too loud – was certainly not a rat. As he moved towards it, a voice reached out of the chorus of conversations. The voice was screeching. The shape became larger. Its edged revealed an arm, pounding upon the wall with a thud. So there was a person here. But why did they not simply unhook the mirror if they wanted to get out. He slipped his hand through the lasso, knowing that his father would be angry if he lost it.

He stopped a few feet away from the figure, trying to focus upon her voice. Evidently, she was a mezzo-soprano, dressed not like a ballerina but in a skirt that almost reached the floor. She was a little taller than him, helped by the hair piled on top of her head. By that point, the voice was wheezy like his father's – rasping, gasping, frightened. Why did she not simply lift the hook?

He began to speak to her but she did not turn her head. He tapped her shoulder and regretted it quickly; the figure turned and, with a shriek, lifted one hand up to her eyes and flung her other hand at him wildly, followed quickly by the other. A blunt pain swelled through his skull as he flung up his hands and lasso, hoping in the moment to catch the woman's hands. As he did, her shrieks pierced him; his skin rolling away in strips under her fingernails. The lasso dropped in the corner, impotent as its wielder wriggled beneath his frightened attacker.

"Papa – help me, Father!"

He shoved the woman; the wall let out an echo as her head smacked it. Yanking himself to his feet, he braced himself for another strike. Nothing. Silent, the woman slumped against the wall, very still but for a faint movement in her chest. The young man felt his own breath leave him. The world sharpened, the edges of the tomb too. Her skirt was wet. She'd be uncomfortable in a wet skirt. With his little bit of strength, he tried to lift her arm around him. They slipped back; he would have to hold them. The lasso. He retrieved it from the floor and fastened her wrists. Looping her arms over his head, he held her around the torso and moved her along – no easy task for she was very heavy and he was not strong. Sometimes, she opened her eyes and was able to walk a little; sometimes, she woke and tried to strike at him again. Eventually, she simply slumped and either shuffled or was dragged, and her next memory would be of bright, burning light.

"Father!" Christian pulled the woman into the boat, crouching so as to set her down without knocking her head again. Unfastening his shirt with trembling fingers and nudging it between her head and the gondola floor. Wasn't this the ballet mistress? "Father, she's hurt!"

Erik rose unsteadily from the bed and, as he caught sight of the woman in the boat, a line formed between his fine, thin eyebrows as they clamoured together. The woman laid out in the boat was not the girl from Christian's pictures; this was a relief, at least. But she did seem familiar. He pressed his mask to his face and knelt down over her. As he did so, he caught a whiff of English peppermint.

"This is Madame Giry's child," he whispered.

"Who, Papa?"

"Never mind!" Erik yanked the lasso from her wrists and folded the woman to lifted her. "Help me carry her upstairs. We will put her near the stage props."

Christian moved as obediently as if he was Erik's own body. Between them, they managed to lift her along the staircase. Christian remained silent as they lifted her, focusing on her twitching eyelids. Thank God he was not stronger or he might have killed her. They set her down between two sets: the Venetian docks and the church interior. Groaning, she rolled onto her side.

"Should we really leave her like this?" Christian fretted.

"No," Erik replied, pacing the area. Having found what he sought – a bottle of liquor – he emptied it beside the woman and lodged the bottle in her hand, whispering to her, "It is for your mother that you are alive, Little Meg – be careful in future!" Before Christian could catch this, he rose and yanked the boy away. "There – someone will find her soon enough, but she is not our problem."

It was in this fashion that, later that evening, as the stagehands cleared up the props for the evening, they found Meg Giry laid out with an empty bottle, stinking of cheap booze they had been saving for that evening. With no sympathy for the men's ruined evening, she staggered away, insisting that she was not drunk but that she simply wasn't sure how she got there. Flimsy memories waved in her mind of a figure, of being trapped, of water and a strange but beautiful voice in her ear talking about her mother. Her wrists oozed with soreness from being tugged about. She began to remember – yes, she had been in the corridor – a man – of course! He had found her. Lifting her skirts, she rushed, stumbling over herself, to Monsieur Simon's office, babbling as she did to anyone who would listen that she had – she swore she had! – come face-to-face once more with the Opera Ghost.