"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow."
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Sonnet VI"
"What?"
I had managed to get Erik to say that he might consider going to the Dance in Disguise but hadn't said anything about us going together. And now it was too late. Rod was telling me how he had found the perfect costume, a copy of a World War I uniform with a gas mask, and how we were going to wow the other students.
"We'll be the most popular and most beautiful couple there--Uh, did you say something?"
I sighed. "No...." Guess my night is already decided for me.... I had already discovered my costume. With a bit of money I had saved up, I had gone to a nearby thrift store and bought an old-fashioned but still elegant wedding dress complete with a thick veil that should hide my face appropriately.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" I exclaimed after bumping into someone after school. I looked closer and gasped. "It's you!" Pez sniffed then kneeled to collect the papers and books I had knocked to from his arms. I bent and joined him.
"I've been meaning to talk to you again, but I haven't seen you around..." I began, handing him what I had gathered. "What did you mean... when you warned me about Erik?"
Pez pushed his glasses further up on his nose. "Not here," he answered furtively, "He might hear us. Come on, follow me..." Brimming with curiosity, I followed Pez to the parking lot where students, laughing and gunning their engines, were leaving. He opened the door to a small, rusty, piece of junk. Calling it a car would have been a compliment.
Once settled into the uncomfortable seats that smelled like stale french fries, Pez began his tale. "I know Erik from my freshman year at a different school in Pennsylvania, it was his sophomore year. I had been there my whole life but Erik had just moved. He... well, he stood up for me a lot..." He wheezed and pulled out his inhaler. "You can see why, look up 'nerd' in the dictionary and there's a picture of me there.... Anyway, he stood up for me even when he was getting the brunt of the attacks. One day, I practically saved his life by turning in some thugs who ganged up on him day after day but really getting into it right before Christmas vacation. It was hard to say who was hurt worse, they were all pretty beat up..."
I paled.
"But in turn, he saved my life after a particularly bad day when the friends of those thugs decided to see if there was any muscle to my skinny arms...." Pez turned his arm over and pointed to a long jagged scar running from his wrist to his elbow. "If it wasn't for him I might have bled to death. But that's not what I'm getting too... I've never been real musically inclined but I know talent when I hear it and Erik definitely has talent. Around the time for the school musical, I heard Erik had been rejected for the lead role and any other part... he was pretty mad but it blew over... or so I thought. During the last performance of the musical, the leading man was found backstage... dead." I gasped, hand flying to my mouth.
Pez nodded gravely. "His death was pronounced a suicide. But no note was ever found... I didn't want to believe what my mind told me but Erik has a... well, an almost murderous temper when provoked. I tried to question him but almost found that same temper turned on me... I also found out later that the guy who had been playing the leading man, had also taken Erik's mask off during gym one day in front of the whole class. It's my guess that Erik never forgave him for that and," Pez shrugged, "That the leading part was given to that guy was just another slap in the face."
"You think he's TG, the Theater Ghost," I whispered, throat dry.
He shrugged again. "It's very possible. I know of no one else that is so adapt at acting like a phantom...." He held up his hands, as if to push back some of the terrible things he had just said. "Now, I'm not saying that he'd kill you or anything... but you know, just be careful around him."
Erik slammed his fist against the top of the piano, the thud reverberating ominously throughout the instrument. I jumped, startled, from my standing position beside the piano bench. "No, no, NO! You aren't concentrating, Christine! What's wrong with you today?"
I lowered my eyes, uncomfortable under his harsh gaze. "I'm sorry...." I whispered, twisting a curl around my finger. "I-I don't know what's wrong with me... I'm just distracted, I guess...."
*The leading man was found backstage... dead...*
"By what?" snapped Erik irritably and abruptly grabbed my right wrist... where Rod's ring glittered cruelly on my finger. I had managed to keep it hidden safely away in my pocket until today, the first time I forgot. I flinched without thinking but he saw my reaction and let go, staring down at the ivory keys.
"Don't you know yet that I will never hurt you?" His voice was so soft that for a moment I thought I had imagined it. "That I would rather die than see you in pain?"
*Dead...*
"Y-yes, Erik but..." I was trembling but I couldn't hide what I had learned any longer. "Someone told me that... that at a school you used to go to... that guy..." I couldn't finish my sentence.
Erik didn't look up but his hands clenched themselves into angry fists. "You believe the word of someone you barely know, to me...?" Sorrow tinged with anger flooded his voice. "I gave you your voice, Christine! I taught your soul how to fly with the wings of an angel...! And you betray me by selling yourself for a--a little trinket for your finger..." This time he looked at me with the beginnings of contempt in those penetrating eyes that knew me to the depths of my very being.
I found my voice, cheeks warm from his cruel implication and lifted my chin. "Even if that were true, Erik, I'm almost eighteen, an adult... I'm old enough to make my own choices... it's my life." An annoying little voice inside reminded me as I spoke that I had already made my choice concerning Rod and physical intimacy.
"Then why don't you do what you've been wanting to do since you saw me?" he asked quietly, staring up at me with empty eyes. "Go ahead... rip my mask off! No? Don't you want to see me? Don't you wish to see my hideous face? No... you just don't want to touch me, you're afraid of me... like everyone else... why are you crying? I haven't hurt you! It's you who have hurt me!" He turned sharply back to the piano, clenching his fists tighter. "Leave me alone. If you don't want to see me.... then... I don't want to see you!" His voice broke. "LEAVE!" He shouted that last word with a mixture of bitterness and grief and I hurriedly ran out of the theater, the melodic but anguished music of Mozart following after me and tearing into my heart.