Where Were You, Strange
Angel?
Christine hung on every rapidly spoken word, and was wracked with sorrow upon
hearing Meg's tale concluded.
Yet, somehow, the guilt had subsided slightly. Erik had lived after she'd
forsaken him for another, and seemingly in relative peace. Meg had assured her
there had been no notes, no demands, no strange occurrences, nothing at all to
suggest that the phantom was up to his old tricks or that he held anyone
accountable for what had happened.
Everything had signified that perhaps speculation was closer to fact
than they'd dared believe. People had
really started to question the existence of ghosts!
Christine gave a half-hearted
smile; she knew Erik was nothing more than a man. The most incredible, majestic, powerful, overwhelming man she had
ever met, but a man nonetheless.
She wondered how he'd managed to escape that livid mob, and survive undetected
for two years before the cruel twist of fate had finally taken him. She
wondered how he'd spent his time, whether his love of music remained, or
whether she'd taken his inspiration as mercilessly as she'd taken his heart. She couldn't bear to think of Erik
surrounded by empty silence, no solace in the music he needed as much as she
herself needed fresh air to breathe.
Over and over she reminded herself that had she arrived only two days earlier
she might have had chance to see Erik, to make her peace with him, and to
finally admit the truth, both to him and to herself. To put an end to the
sleepless nights and days half-lived once and for all.
Now she would never find release from her self inflicted prison of torment;
every day she would be forced to live with the realisation that the man she had
betrayed so blindly had probably died cursing her name and her very existence,
oblivious to the feelings that, until this moment, she too had left
unacknowledged. He held her future in
his hands in death as he had done in life, and the thought that she was being
punished with this pseudo-existence mortified her.
Christine yearned to return to Erik's underworld and witness firsthand how much
damage they'd done, the ravaging mob. She needed to know what destruction she'd
caused and cowardly left behind in her wake.
Resolutely she took a candle and went in search of Meg, who had answered to the
shrill calls of her mother just after concluding her story.
This was one journey that she didn't feel capable of making alone.