AN: Err..um...please review. Just not too harshly.

Chapter 1

"What life do I live? Curse my existence, my very being!" Erik sputtered in an angry sob. "Ah' he inhaled sharply, "one cannot condemn what has already died. Left bleeding in despair!" Erik collapsed upon the divan. "Oh Christine...' He moaned. "The torment you've left me in." Erik's voice, full of pain and choked sobs.

He lay there, in wretched agony, listening to his own sobbing. His tears darkening the fabric against his bare face; wallowing in self-pity and grief he trembled, drawing his knees to his chest. And finally, his mind numbed, his face relaxed, and he drifted off to sleep no longer tormented by his thoughts.

This day had been the five-year anniversary of when Christine had left him. Five long years, and it had never gotten easier for Erik to bare. Instead the torment had only grown with each passing year, sending him deeper into the abyss that had beckoned him with all its intensity.

There is a creature in that abyss, Erik knows. And every year he fights it, leaving him bruised and cut. But the creature had been growing, and with a crashing blow of tentacles had caught Erik in its grasp, dragging him down, cutting his heart and mind with searing insanity. And, finally, in the throes of agony, his body had gone limp. The creature had won the battle.

--

The next day had found Erik the same as the afore mentioned night; curled up and shivering, clutching his cloak in tight fists. Perhaps if Erik had been in his right mind, he would have hid from what could be heard from across the lake. But as he was he could not, and he did not.

____________

(Across the lake)

"Well, how the devil do we get across?" Asked a red-faced policeman, who was all to tired of searching for what obviously did not exist.

"Oh, and like I bloody know!" Asked the second, and equally exasperated policeman.

Behind them, Andrea and Firmin were bickering about the idiocy of the policemen. While the third policeman was standing idly, twiddling his mustache, in a vain attempt at thinking.

"Hmm."

The two turned to face him. "What are you hmming about?"

The third policeman shook his head; "there is a boat over there." He gestured to a boat sitting flipped over on the edge of the shore.

"Over where?" The two policemen asked in unison.

"There."

"Oh, there. Its this blasted darkness, cant see a damned thing." Said the first policeman somewhat bemusedly.

"Right, shall we go then?"

"Lets. Then we'll have this burdensome affair done with."

The three of them got into the old boat, and rowed until they had reached the opposite shore. Without knocking they kicked the door in, and stared in bemused wonderment at what lay before them. Chairs were kicked over, lamps lay shattered on the floor, paintings, thrown across the room. And Erik. Erik, known to them only as, opera ghost, or phantom, lay curled upon a divan, trembling and mumbling incoherent things.

They had prepared for the worst, but instead had found a broken man, devoid of his former passion, but still, somehow, exuded a presence, that seemed to seethe from his very being.

That is how they found the ghost of the opera on June, 27 1885.