The day that it happened hadn't started off as any other day. My late return from the date from hell and my subsequent visit with the angel of music had caused mom to file a missing persons report with the police, especially after Forrest came to the house empty-handed. Granddad had half a mind to ground me over that stunt until Forrest had made his brother explain why I left that date in tears.
Once that situation had been cleared up, with threat of being grounded until I was 40 no longer hanging over my head, I was content to spend a lazy Sunday at home watching TV and reading until I got a call from Mr. Firmin and Mr. Gladly.
It seemed that the actress who was supposed to be playing the non-speaking role of the pageboy in Il Muto had woken up with an acute case of veisalgia this morning and now wouldn't be in a fit state to play the role. Even though I was on probation with Winslow's theater department over the letters, I was still taking drama classes and thus knew all the blocking and choreography for the show. And as the pageboy was a silent part, I wouldn't be able to upstage Her Royal Highness of the Winslow Theater Lady Emma Barnes, Baronet of Brockton Bay.
"Hey zaydee can I get a ride to the school today?" I asked.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's Sunday little lady, and they don't have school on Sundays." my grandfather asked.
"It's for the play. They want me to be the understudy for the pageboy."
"Does that mean we get to hear your singing voice?" he asked.
"No." I said. "It's a silent role. Mr. Firmin and Mr. Gladly said that I was lucky to even get that right now."
"Oh that's a shame." Grandpa said, sounding disappointed. "Shall we?"
I grabbed my purse and backpack and headed out the door, shrugging off an odd premonition that something bad was going to happen tonight.
"I see the toad has managed to squirm her way back into the show." Said Emma Barnes to one of her new friends that had started showing up, Cassie something or other.
I said nothing. No point in giving Barnes more ammo against me.
"Listen Daaé, don't fuck this up for me. Got it?" Emma practically snarled at me.
"Sheesh alright, don't need to get all hot and bothered." I snarked back.
"Fuck off ki-" That new girl Cassie had started to speak and then stopped herself. I guess implying I'm part of some huge conspiracy is fine but actually throwing slurs around is too far.
"Just remember your lines Emma." I replied. "Or is this gonna be another Scottish Play?" I knew I was twisting the knife here, reminding Emma of her fuckups when she got cast as one of the three witches in Macbeth and couldn't remember her lines for the life of her.
With that, I saw Mr. Gladly coming over, which meant that he was liable to 'break us up' by taking Emma's side again. So I just barreled my way through Emma's group and marched over to my dressing room.
Once there, I took a deep breath and started to get in-character for my role as the mute pageboy Serafimo. I had to shove down all my frustration and annoyance at Emma and for the next few hours, convince myself that I was madly in love with her, or rather with Emma's character, The Countess of Attilio.
Il Muto, or The Mute, was an opera from the early 1800's by Ubaldo Albrizzio, that was written as a kind of gender-swapped version of Mozart's Don Giovanni. The Premise is that the countess had fallen out of love with her husband, and after having her life saved by the mute pageboy Serafimo, quickly developing strong feelings for him. Soon the affair becomes obvious to everyone but the Count himself. So he hatches a scheme to catch his unfaithful wife cheating on him.
Serafimo was traditionally played by a woman cross-dressing as a man, who then crossdresses as a woman for part of the play. And in this sense, I would be doing the same thing, I would be playing a breeches role of Serafimo, and then further adding a 'disguise' to appear as a girl pretending to be a guy pretending to be a girl. 19th century Operas were weird like that.
As I finished changing into my costume for my first scene and went over to the makeup areas where hair and makeup people were busy getting everyone ready for the show and grabbed the empty seat next to Megan.
"I'm telling you. His face was sunken and almost an ashen gray in pallor, waxy like a corpse." Greg Veder said. "And where a nose should be was a black void like a skull." I listened more to his descriptions of the Winslow Theater Ghost, and he wasn't exactly wrong per se in the descriptions, but having met her, I knew that wasn't all there was to her.
"Veder!" Yelled Megan's mom, Mrs. Giry. "You're needed in the booth to go over follow-spot cues."
Greg sighed and trundled away.
"I swear that boy wouldn't know when to hold his tongue if his life depended on it." Mrs. Giry grumbled.
"Two minute warning everyone, two minutes." Said our stage manager into her headset. I got over to my mark in the wings of the stage, waiting for my cue.
As we all got into position for the curtain to open, my heart was racing. The odd feeling that something bad was going to happen hadn't abated, it had only grown worse since arriving. I pushed that feeling down; for now I was no longer Charlotte Daaé, but Serafimo Giudicelli, a mute pageboy in 18th Century Italy.
As the curtain opened, I looked out and saw a packed house. Even box number 5, the one that we don't normally sell, had people in it.
We made it most of the way through the first act when it happened. Scene 5 was the penultimate scene of Act I, The Countess inspects Serafimo's, inspects my, disguise as her newest chamber maid. The Count Attilio then pretends to leave the room, The Countess removes my disguise and asks me to kiss her while her husband is away. He then comes back and catches her in the act, ending the scene and the first act. That wasn't what happened that night.
The stagehands rolled the bed onto the stage while the bedroom backdrop was flown in behind us. Emma took her mark on the bed, and I went to my mark behind her.
The curtains opened on the scene and the chorus members came out singing "shame shame shame" perfectly. I started pantomiming kissing and fondling Emma The Countess as if we were in the heat of the moment, and Emma pantomimed The Countess reciprocating. On cue, the second set of curtains opened to reveal myself and Emma on the Countesses bed. I jumped up as if in shock that I had been caught in such an intimate moment with my lady.
"Serafimo, your disguise is perfect!" Emma said, complimenting me on my disguise as one of her maids. From the soundboard came a prerecorded door knocking sound; Megan, playing one of the chamber maids, crossed the stage to stage left and pantomimed opening a door in the curtains.
From the wing on stage left, Alec Piangi in his role as the Count Attilio entered the 'room' and sang that he had to leave for England on affairs of state, in the process trying to cop a feel on the countesses new 'maid,' who happened to be me, Serafimo.
"Though I would happily take the maid with me." The Count made an aside to the fourth wall.
With the house lights off, you couldn't see the audience that well, but I could hear their reaction, and that line killed. In the rafters I thought I sound see something moving around but I just assumed that was Greg or one of the other follow spot operators.
"The old fool is leaving!" Emma said to the fourth wall. Another laugh from the audience. We had a good house tonight.
Alec then made a big show of pretending to leave the 'room' but in fact just moved to the wings where the audience could still see him. But to us, it was as if the Count had left.
"Serafimo, away with this pretense!" Emma sang. "You cannot speak, but kiss me in my husband's absence." On that cue, I stripped away the maid disguise and revealed my regular breeches costume. Off to the side, Alec made big exaggerated motions as if to shame us now that the count had caught us having an affair behind his back.
"Pooor fool he makes me laugh, ha ha ha ha" Emma sang. The part of The Countess required a fairly large vocal range because you had to hit some serious high notes in it, and as much as I didn't like Emma, I had to admit that she could hit those high notes. "It's time I tried to get a better better half!"
"Pooor fool he doesn't know. Hohohoho." Joined in the chorus. "If he knew the truth he'd never ever go."
It was here that things started to go wrong.
"DID I NOT INSTRUCT THAT BOX FIVE WAS TO KEPT EMPTY FOR MY USES." Boomed a voice from out of nowhere.
"It's him." Said Megan, breaking character. "The Phantom."
"It's her." I whispered to myself more than anyone.
Emma turned around to look at me, her eyes full of anger. "Your part is silent, little toad." She said in a quiet voice that wasn't supposed to get picked up by the mics. Unfortunately, it was picked up by her mic and played loudly over the speakers to several gasps in the audience.
"A TOAD MADAM?" taunted the voice. "PERHAPS IT IS YOU WHO IS THE TOAD?"
I heard the stage manager clearing her throat in the wings as if to get the show back on track. Emma took the cue and started back up.
"Serafimo, away with this pretense." She sang again. "You cannot speak, but kiss me in my husband's ab-HURK!"
There was shock on Emma's face and shock on the faces of all the audience. Mr. Firmin and Mr. Gladly could not suppress an exclamation of horror. Everyone knew that this could not be natural, that there was some kind of parahuman power behind it.
The uproar in the house was indescribable. If it had happened to anyone but Emma, she would have been a laughing stock. But everybody knew how perfect an instrument her voice was; and there was no display of anger, but only of horror and dismay, the sort of dismay which someone would have felt if they had witnessed the catastrophe that broke the arms of the Venus de Milo.
But here that toad was incomprehensible! So much so that, after some seconds spent in asking herself if she had really heard that note, that sound, that infernal noise issue from her throat, she tried to persuade herself that it was not so, that she was the victim of an illusion, an illusion of the ear, and not of an act of treachery on the part of her voice.
Across the house floated a menacing, sinister, laughter.
Emma, for her part, simply picked right back up.
"Pooooor fool he makes me laugh." Emma sang. "Hahaha-HURK!" It happened again. "Hurk!" She croaked again.
"BEHOLD! SHE'S SINGING TO BRING DOWN THE CHANDELIER!" Boomed the voice again. At the moment, the house lights came up as the chandelier started to rock and drop slightly on its chain.
But what caught my eye wasn't the chandelier itself, but the shadow hanging from it.
Before I fully realized what was hanging from the chandelier, Megan screamed out in shock and I realized what it was we were seeing.
Greg Veder was hanging from the neck from the chandelier.
The theater erupted in pandemonium as people took in the sight.
"Everyone please remain calm!" Came the voice for Mr. Gladly over the speakers. "We've had an accident, please remain calm and walk outside the theater, the PRT has been called."
"Charlotte!" Came the voice of Forrest from the audience. "Come with me!"
It was at that moment, and I saw the Chandelier start to drop slightly again, with dust coming out of the hole where it was normally mounted to the ceiling. Was this all the work on my angel? What kind of person was she if that was the case?
"Follow me, we'll be safer on the roof." I said to Forrest, pulling him up onto the stage and leading him to the stairwell that led to the rooftop.
As I took one last look at the theater, I saw the enormous chandelier fully slip free of its mountings and plummet towards the ground.
The panicking crowd stampeded away from the falling chandelier, but many more couldn't make it away in time.
The chandelier slammed into the orchestral level seats, creating a shower of sparks at the moment of impact, and creating an explosion of broken glass that flew everywhere. Forrest instinctively threw himself in front of me to shield me from the glass shards but none came our way. Many others still in the theater though weren't so lucky.
I took one last look at the theater with the smashed chandelier seemingly out of place among the seats.
It was a disaster beyond imagination.