Title from Owl City's song Plant Life.
Gerard had laughed when Erik made the request, thinking it was a joke. He still didn't believe it when he'd finally yielded, handing over seeds and turning a blind eye to the potted plants vanishing from his office. He thought it was ridiculous, and maybe it was. But that wasn't enough reason for Erik to not try.
He'd often wondered what a picnic was like. He knew his parents had gone on picnics, and he could almost remember his mother singing a song about it, beautiful enough that he could imagine birds in the air and grass under their feet and trees all around. Perhaps her voice was borrowed from the sopranos who sang upstairs, and perhaps the words were chosen from a well paged storybook, but for somebody who had so few memories of her he couldn't afford to let it go. So he clung to those descriptions and dreamed up more, until one day he began to wonder if this dream could become at least a little real.
He'd prepared various pots, and cleared a space in one of the storage rooms that was close enough to the furnaces to be heated. He hung carpets on the wall, shades of blue and green and brown to keep the warmth in. The water from the lake was cold and clear, and he could stand to ferry it through a couple of rooms. The only thing left was to add the light.
Erik had spent years observing the stagehands manning the spotlights, and knew how to carefully measure out the lime and tend to the gas as it burned. But he also knew that such a process was too expensive for Gerard to allow lime going missing, and too dangerous to be left alone. Limelight would not be an option. But he'd stood atop the roof and seen the electric streetlights, stars lining the streets with their beautiful golden light, he'd then begged Gerard to upgrade the theatre and add electricity.
"We can't afford to waste money on your frivolities," he'd said, and Erik had promised that it would just be one room. Most of his domain would remain lit with candles or gas lamps; truthfully he didn't mind the darkness most of the time. It kept him safe, hid him from view, and softened the edges of the world around him until it matched a dream. But he knew that plants would need more. An artificial sun, and perhaps he too might enjoy basking in its rays.
Eventually Erik had managed to convince Gerard of the benefits for the entire theatre, of the safety and convenience of electricity for their stage, and the opera had been shut down for the installation. Erik spent a few weeks holed up in the furthest corner of the cellars, listening to the footsteps of the workers and wondering if they'd ever leave, counting his food and debating the dangers of sneaking out to get more if construction didn't finish soon enough. But then the wiring was complete, and he was free to wander the theatre again, familiar with all the patterns and ways of the people who lived there. As promised his domain remained dark, and most of the cast and crew were far less obliged to visit now that the rest of the theatre was so much brighter. It only took a little bit of work to study the wiring and replicate it, fetching spare wire the workers had left behind and stringing it out to cover his room, and he began to install the electric lights.
There had been a few shocks. Literal ones, as lightning had jumped from the wire into his fingertips, as he'd been unsure if a lightbulb was screwed in properly and had touched it, and these incidents were more than enough to keep him wary. Erik checked and rechecked and finally was ready to test his wiring, setting his lamp next to a fern that had found its way here from Gerard's office. He watered it every day from the lake, and by the end of the week it had already grown a foot.
His garden grew well. The plants had no weather to compete with, were watered well, and had no animals to hinder their growth. Their pots were no longer big enough, and Erik set to work making a jardinière, a planter large enough to fit a small forest. Yet he had mostly ferns, nothing like the trees he'd seen in the sets of various operas and the pictures of books. He mentioned this to Gerard during one of the rare visits when he'd asked to see the garden, and that Christmas Erik was delighted to receive a bundle of acorns.
The oak trees didn't take as well to the soil as he'd hoped. He added more lamps to no avail, and after a week of using limelight to simulate a bright sun for a couple of hours he had to give up. More water wasn't enough either, and he began to despair. At least, until he came across an answer in an unassuming book.
Most of his books were from Gerard, either borrowed from his office or given as gifts. There were a few children's books left from his mother, and he also had a large collection from the opera's library, mainly librettos and scores and instructional manuals for instruments. But every now and then some unlucky soul would lose a book of their own, and Erik would be the one to find it after the evening performance. It was one of these nights, walking through the aisles and sweeping up to help the morning caretakers, that he'd found the almanac. Wedged behind the seat of one of the furthest back seats in the house, it was clearly owned by some farmer who'd had an expensive night out. And there was no way to return it to him, so Erik decided the best thing he could do was appreciate it.
The almanac was a working book. It spoke of seasons and planting and stars overhead, of weather that Erik could only imagine. And it spoke of gardening, a section he read with great interest. He learned about mulch and attempted to make it with his own food scraps. He learned how to trim dead leaves and watch for signs of overgrowth. And most importantly, he learned about the importance of insects.
The cellars rarely had anything other than spiders. And while this meant there were no locusts or wasps, nothing to harm his plants or himself, it also meant that there were no worms. Worms, the almanac advised, were a sign of a healthy garden. They made the soil rich and helped plants grow. If Erik was going to have a healthy garden he needed worms.
Gerard would not be pleased with this request. He already saw the garden as a frivolity, and would frequently reprimand Erik for the cost of the electric lamps. Erik checked and rechecked the books every time Gerard did the accounting, confirming that the opera was still making money, and swore to himself that if they began to show losses his garden would be the first to go. This had yet to pass, so he kept the guilt from festering and convinced himself that the garden was harmless. But Gerard would not take kindly to another request, especially one related to acquiring insects. He was too busy for that, and truthfully Erik had a hard time picturing Gerard amidst a forest. Perhaps he was different in his youth, but the Gerard that Erik knew was too well mannered and composed to spend his time amidst dirt and muck. So Erik would need another source.
Jean-Claude was a common face at the opera, and the only one who'd been here longer than Gerard. He was kind to all of the stagehands and tipped his hat to the ballet girls, and kept his watch faithfully. To any who'd listen he had plenty of stories, about a wife at home and their daughter, of falling in love and raising a family, and of the quiet years that he lived now with his wife passed on and his daughter married abroad. To Erik such stories had all the charm of fairy tales, giving him a glimpse of a world entirely unlike his own. He treasured them all and often wished that he could speak to the old man, and perhaps request a story or two.
Most importantly Jean-Claude had great respect for the Opera Ghost. While others would scream or whisper amongst themselves or attempt to trap him, Jean-Claude accepted the Opera Ghost as calmly as he accepted every other quirk of the opera house. These lamps needed to be lit, and this door was apt to swing open unless locked, and this passage to the cellar was where the ghost lived and was not to be disturbed. It was a welcome relief to be just there, a part of the theatre like any other, instead of being something that was feared or ignored. Perhaps Erik was risking all of that by revealing himself, but when he imagined what the rustle of oak leaves might sound like, and then remembered the warm timbre of Jean-Claude's voice describing the fishing trip he'd taken with his daughter, Erik was certain that it would turn out for the better.
A letter was left in Jean-Claude's pocket, one that he noticed when pulling his coat on at the start of his night shift, and he read it and carefully folded it back into his pocket, a raised eyebrow the only sign of any surprise he might have felt. Two days later there was a bucket sitting in Box Five, and inside was a pile of worms and a note.
Good Monsieur Fantome, I thank you kindly for your assistance, was all the note said, and it was as treasured as the worms inside the box. For somebody to notice Erik's little efforts, all of the time he spent finding keys and securing doors and delivering mail gone astray, was unprecedented. It was the first time he'd ever been thanked, and it found a place of pride on the shelf by his bed, tucked up beside his mother's jewelry box so Gerard wouldn't look too closely and spot it. And Erik's heart felt as though it were already spring, flowers growing and blooming in his lungs and warmth spreading through his chest, as he released the worms into his garden and continued to tend to it.
The first oak trees began to grow and spread their leaves, small but growing taller every day, and Erik was able to sit in his garden and see it as more of a forest. A place built out of his dreams, and so he called it the Dreamery. A reminder that even here, in the depths of these dark cellars, there was still light and growth and life.
The door had been cemented over, a common characteristic of these old buildings. Renovations always uncovered odd rooms, usually storage that had been walled off or defunct stairs, but today it uncovered something stranger.
The cement crumbled to reveal a cavern, stretching deep underneath the theatre. A trickle of water could be heard, and the scent of dust was choking. It took specialists to complete the destruction of the door and begin to move in, inspecting the space for safety hazards and exclaiming at how something like this could have gone unnoticed for so many years.
The area was characterized by many small clay pots, broken and dirty beyond repair, and some pieces of rotting wood and piles of dirt. Old wiring lay about in corners, glued to the floor by centuries of dust and cobwebs. And most surprising of all was the cement they'd just broken through, and the patterns left on the walls.
There were holes dug into the dirt, tiny ones no larger than a finger, and twisting patterns in the concrete. They would have come when it was freshly laid, when an overworked crew had sealed off this space without examining it, and wouldn't have bothered to keep anything from disturbing the concrete on this side.
Worms was the verdict. The imprints of ancient worms that must have once lived here, in this dirt and these pots, before tunneling away when their home was abandoned. An ancient garden under the opera house.
It didn't create much of an uproar, not until the news had reached the ears of a prominent actor in the area. He'd grown fond of the theatre, of the many stories told and the roles played, and he did whatever he could to see the garden. Despite being closed off to the public he'd managed to find his way in, supervised by a safety crew, and within a week the renovation had been halted and new barriers erected around the theatre. A new excavation was taking place, permitted by the appropriate authorities and bankrolled by the actor, a Mr Jeremy Stolle. When asked about what he was looking for, he elaborated on there being an element of truth in all stories told about the theatre, about the lives that had passed within it, and about this recent discovery being essential to uncovering some of that history.
As fantastic as it might have seemed, the worms indicated that there was a garden, which Mr Stolle insisted was proof of an inhabitant. Through this excavation he was determined to find the truth, and prove the conclusion he was already certain of.
The Opera Ghost really existed.
For those who are wondering why this took such a turn at the end, this is dedicated to the anonymous person who keeps sending unhinged tumblr asks ranting about Jeremy Stolle tearing down a theatre in search for prehistoric worms. I love them so much and had to write this as a tribute. I'm simultaneously very sorry while also having no regrets.