Wuh, I got a review! Thanks for that:)
Here comes the second chapter:
Chapter Two – Dreaming
When Carla awakes again, she can't move. Expecting to find herself bound, she opens her eyes. But what keeps her from moving is only a blanket, wound tightly around her. Under it she still wears her wet clothes, but she isn't cold. Hastily she checks the room where she is situated, but she seems to be alone.
"Now that darn blanket..." she mumbles, struggling to free her arms. When it doesn't work, she starts to roll over the bed, what results in her falling to the floor, but being rid of her restraints as well.
Insecure of what to do or even think, she sits down on the bed again and pulls the blanket over her shoulders. Looking around she notices a black bath robe hanging on the door of a huge wardrobe. A sheet of paper is attached to the robe.
Carla walks over to read it.
Bloodred letters that look like a child had smeared them because someone forced it to.
'I'll do you no harm. Change into the gown. Wash you clothes in the bathroom. They can dry at the fireplace. -E.'
"Surreal." Carla mumbles. "This letter is absolutely surreal. Surely you're dreaming all this. It's the night before the Opera and you're dreaming all this!"
"Damned be Leah and her phantomania. I'll break her some bones when I wake up, I swear it!" she growls while she rinses the dirty lake water out of her clothes. "Damned be my imaginative mind." Suddenly she remembers striking a noseless face. "And if that's not the absolute proof that you are dreaming, I don't know what is! Carla and the Phantom. Leah will die of envy when you tell her this dream tomorrow."
When her clothes are clean again, she leaves the bathroom, heading for what appears to be the outer door of the bedroom. Then she hesitates.
"This dream is going on for quite some time. You should wake up now, Carla. I bet your alarm clock will ring in five seconds. Or you need to go to the toilet... Wake up... Wake up!" She pinches her arm a few times until red spots appear on her skin, but the scenery before her eyes still doesn't change into the well known hotel room.
"Then I've fallen into a coma, have I not? They've made quite some movies and series and all where they explain surreal things with the main charakter being comatose... I've fallen into the lake, lost consciousness, and now I'm lying in a hospital, connected to loads of infusions and monitors, and in my throat is a slit where they pump me up like an airbed because I can't breathe on my own... Anyone hear me? Don't transplant my organs yet!" She stops and lets herself fall onto the floor, cursing a little. "This is all too surreal. I can't cope with it... Someone take me out of here!" But none has the power or is willing to spare her from what is to come.
"Ok." she mumbles after a while. "This is no dream and surely it is no coma, too. But don't freak out. Some nice guy with an E has saved you from drowning, that's all. He can't write well and has a house with a room without windows. That's not surreal, that's just... a little strange, you now... Pick up your clothes and leave this room. Get them to dry, get something to eat and then get someone to bring you back to your cozy hotel chamber with your nice, harmless phreak friend Leah." Having said that as calm as possible, she struggles up, and leaves the room with all the determination she can find, before she can change her mind and lose herself to a fit of mindless panic.
Behind the door lies a dark corridor. It takes some seconds for Carla's eyes to adjust to the darkness, but finally she can percept a shimmer of light coming out of an open door some yards from where she stands.
With a busy expression on her face she walks towards that door, forcing up some anger about the neckerchief that she now realizes is missing.
But on the threshold she stops, dumbstruck.
There is a huge armchair in front of a fireplace. And in that chair sits a man who now turns his head slowly into her direction, so that she can observe the light of the fire playing over the anatomy of the smooth, white mask that covers his whole face.
Her first impulse is to think something condescending about freaks who have delusions about being fictional characters. But then the power of the man's presence hits her like a shock wave and there is no more room for doubts about his identity.
Still, somehow, Carla's senses refuse to accept that rude shift of fact and fiction.
"Oh come on, you're kidding, right?" she whimpers, throwing her wet clothes to the floor.
When Erik doesn't answer, she slams her fist against the doorframe.
"Now forgive me for I'm about to run a few rounds around this room screaming and then roast my head in that darn fireplace or run on till I find the kitchen and stab myself with the first knife I can get my hands on!"
Within a second, Erik stands in front of of her and grabs her upper arms to shake her roughly.
"Don't!" he commands.
"Don't?" Carla retorts. "What would be an appropriate rection then, hah? What do other down-to-earth, reasonable girls do when they find themselfs in the company of someone they have known to be fiction? I don't believe in you!"
"Regarding the evidence that is clinging to your arms this is the most stupid thing to do." Erik counters.
"Oh, really! But you are fiction, dammit! Fiction!"
"I'm not. I am as real as you are. (author's comment: Muha:D) And now calm yourself. I don't want to bruise your arms any furter."
Carla closes her eyes.
"This is so surreal." she mumbles to herself. "Surreal. Surreal."
But as she seems to remain peacful after that, Erik lets go of her arms and picks up her clothes to drape them over a rack in front of the fire.
"If you are real..." Carla starts again after some minutes of silence and motionlessness "If you are real, how comes that you are not dead? You were born in 1831."
Erik doesn't answer at first, but when Carla takes breath to repeat her question, he says unwillingly: "I don't know why I still live."
"I don't think I... I can accept that answer." Carla states, much more cautiously and friendly than all she said before. The permanent threat emanating from Erik's presence has finally broken through the wall of her refusal to accept the reality of her situation.
Without moving, he growls: "You will have to accept it as I will not give you another."
"Ok." Carla suddenly gives in. "I'll be quiet and nice and all until my clothes have dried." And with that she crosses her arms in front of her chest and stays where she is, on the threshold of Erik's library.
Some time floats away, undisturbed by any sound exept the soft crackling of the fire, until Carla suddenly sighs.
"I'm sorry..." she hesitates to call him by his name "Erik, I'm sorry. I am an idiot. I haven't thanked you for saving me from drowning."
Another silence follows, in which Carla walks to the empty stool standing close to Erik's armchair.
When she's arrived, he turns his masked face to her.
"If you hadn't fallen I would have dragged you off that railing."
Slowly, unbelievingly, she shakes her head.
"No! Don't tell me you kidnapped me!"
Erik says nothing, the look in his yellow eyes like stone. Hard, cold, unfeeling.
"Why didn't you take Leah? She's a phan, she'd kiss your feet!" Carla sobs, finally having reached the end of what she can swallow and digest. "I can't even sing! I don't look like Christine! I'm not..."
"Carla..." The expression in Erik's eyes has changed, and his voice seems to touch her like a soothing hand. "Please, don't cry. I'll explain why you are here. Be calm, child. Be calm."
One part of her wants to protest that she is no child and will not be treated like one, but the other part is just exhausted and overextended and wants to give in to the voice, the will, the presence.
She sighs.
Without making a sound, Erik gets to his feet and fetches a thick blanket from a dark corner of the room. Placing it in front of the fireside, good two steps away from his armchair, he orders Carla: "Lie down here. It's more comfortable than the stool and you can fall asleep when you feel to."
There is nothing insincere about the friendliness and concern in his voice, so Carla follows without hesitation.
"What a change in him." she thinks to herself as she curls up on the blanket like an embryo.
"I followed the guided tour since it entered the cellars." Erik begins after a while. "I do that nearly every day. I've been utterly alone for quite some time and this... guarding my domain and observing life creeping carefully over it's borders, staring, marveling, asking... I guess it keeps me from losing my faculties - although I must confess that I don't like schoolchildren and the acoustical pollution they do to my kingdom.
I was about to cancel my trip today. But then I saw you, following the wild hordes with such an inner tranquility. I could nearly feel how you let yourself get absorbed by the atmosphere. I saw in your eyes that you could see much more than your talkative, preoccupied phan friend ever could. I saw your smile while you admired the light playing over the lake. I heard your words through the water. 'And other people need diamonds to impress them.'
You are the most beautiful thing I've seen down here in a long while. So I stole you..."
Silence.
"What do you want from me?" Carla finally manages to ask, fear edging her voice.
Erik gives an elegant little shrug.
"I want your company. Honour me with fifteen days of your lifetime. I'll let you go after that, I promise."
"They'll be searching for me by now." she whispers, staring blindly into the fire.
"Even if they did, they would never find my house."
"That you were certain of in many versions of your story." Carla grates.
"Not a single one of these stories tells the truth."
"Not even Leroux'?"
"Especially not his."
It takes a moment for Carla to gather her strength, but then she pushes herself into an upright position.
"You read Leroux' and Kay's version and all?"
"You could say I wrote Leroux' version." Erik answers "And I sell copies of the first printing on ebay."
"Wait..." suddenly Carla is wide awake. "You... have internet down here...?"
"If all Kay wrote is just a good guess, her statement that I belong to the future hits the point."
"So... you know all the talk about you?"
He sighs.
"I know all the talk about what people think I am."
"Gosh." Carla slowly shakes her head. " You're totally crashing my world with every word you say."
"I'm sorry about that. Perhaps I should leave you alone now and we continue our conversation when you have recovered from this evening." He gets ready to leave the room.
"No, wait, Erik. I... I can't stay here. I have to go to university in half a week and I can't leave Leah all alone, I have to..." she stops and sighs. "I want to go back to the world I know. Please. Send me back, Erik."
She can feel him breathe somewhere above her.
Then blackness hits her.
