Author's Note: Written for the PFN morbidity writing contest. Whether Christine has actually gone bonkers or not is left purely to the reader's speculation. :)
-They sat together in the sun-strewn parlor of the Chagny mansion, and they talked of music. There was an old piano in the corner of the room, the same piano Raoul had taken lessons on as a boy, in desperate need of a tuning, its keys slightly yellowed with age. He sat on the bench, she in a chair beside it; she had never played the piano, only sung. He asked her to sing for him.
She blushed; he reassured her; she refused; he insisted. After much pleading he finally convinced her, and as she stood and nervously trilled a few scales, he rifled through a stack of sheet music for a book of arias he knew was there. Though unable to find it, he chanced upon an arrangement of Juliet's waltz from Romeo et Juliette, and clumsily picked out the first measure. She recognized it and laughed, and told him to go on. While he stumbled through the introduction, her mind flitted back to music lessons. The best thing you can do to a song, one of her teachers at the Conservatory had told her, is to know who sings it and make the character your own. So she tried in vain to put herself in the mind of poor Juliet, who wanted only to live forever in her intoxicating dreams before love stole her away.
When she sang, the sound emerged from her throat automatically, as charming and mechanical as a Viennese waltz. She forgot Juliet; all she knew was un deux trois, un deux trois, je--veux--vivre dans--ce--rêve qui--m'enivre ce jour encore... The words lost their meaning, and she was back at the Conservatory, nothing but a soulless little singing machine with the voice that had brought Paris to its knees now displaying no more emotion than a music box. The light-heartedness of their conversation up until then dissolved; desperately, she tried to recapture the sublime emotion that had overtaken her the last time she had sung, but the only result was an over-affected melodrama, vulgar in its falsehood.
The tears slipped from her eyes before she was even aware of being upset. She stopped singing, a few bars of his endearingly terrible accompaniment hanging awkwardly in the air alone, and he stared at her in confusion. Unable to meet his eyes, she fled from the room.
The Chagny mansion was large enough to get lost in, and she was still unfamiliar with its halls. She took one random turn after the next, rattling doorknobs that were all locked, until one gave under her fingers and she wrenched it open to find herself in the library. She collapsed onto a leather sofa and let the tears flow, let the sobs wrack her body, and the treacherous thoughts invaded her mind.
It wasn't her, the treacherous thoughts whispered. It had never been her, singing her shallow little soul out on the stage of the Opera. It had been him all along, his angel's voice and his demon's spirit driving her to heights and passions she would never have dreamed of and still couldn't fathom. She hadn't been the one baring the most intimate depths of herself before all Paris; he had sung through her. Played her like an instrument. And now he was gone, and the instrument was left to tarnish in the clutches of an inferior musician. He was gone, and soon she would be as dusty and out-of-tune as the piano in the parlor.
Raoul found her, eventually. She cried into his shoulder until the tears were gone, and of course he didn't understand. But that evening, at supper, when her composure had returned to her and the tearstains had been wiped away, she reflected that there were far more things in life than music. She could give the old instrument a try someday, when the wounds weren't fresh anymore and her mediocrity didn't sting, but in the meantime there were parties, and sunshine, and books, and a man who loved her. And, she thought as she and Raoul smiled at each other over supper, there was plenty of happiness to be found in that.
-
They were married in secret, in a little church in a little town several miles outside Paris, four weeks after they had stumbled out of the cellars of the Opera together. The morning after the wedding, Raoul awoke as the happiest man in the world. His bride lay beside him, her hair unbound and tousled and all over both of their faces, one arm thrown loosely around his shoulders, her mouth curled into a smile as she slept. He kissed her, gently, and rearranged the covers over the both of them and watched her lips move unintelligibly in her sleep.
After a few minutes her eyes fluttered open, and she stared at him without seeming to see him. "Good morning," he said.
"Where am I?"
He frowned, confused, but thought it might just be the dazedness of half-sleep. "You're here with me, Christine. We... we were married yesterday."
"No, that's not right," she murmured. "That's not it at all--it--Raoul?" Her eyes flew all the way open, and recognition finally entered her face.
"Yes, Christine."
"Oh... oh." She snuggled up against him. "I'm sorry. I was dreaming."
"Of everything, little Lotte?"
"And nothing. And the Angel of Music sang songs in my head."
"Well, that sounds like a pleasant dream."
"It was. I think it was, anyway." She pulled away and smiled at him, but the smile was forced. He didn't notice, drunk on her presence and her nearness. "Do you want to get up now?"
"Right now," he said, cupping her face in his hands, "all I want to do is roll you over and kiss you until our lips are too swollen to kiss anymore. And then I'd like to make love to you again." His thumb stroked the side of her cheek. "But you're right, we should probably get up instead."
She relaxed into his affections, the dreamy sleepiness fading from her face and the stiffness fading from her smile. Her blue eyes were as wide and trusting as a little girl in love. "I think," she said shyly, "we can stay in bed a while longer."
-
They took breakfast at one in the afternoon that day, not having left the bedroom all morning. Christine had become noticeably more withdrawn after they emerged, and they ate in silence--a comfortable silence, but silence nonetheless, with Christine lost in thought and Raoul too infatuated to notice. Midway through the meal, the butler interrupted with the mail; conversation being lacking, Raoul picked up the copy of the Epoque that had been deposited on the table. For the first since they had entered the room, Christine spoke.
"Erik is dead," she said.
"What?"
"Read the obituaries. I'll be quite surprised if he's not there."
He turned to the appropriate page, and just as she had told him, the words Erik is dead appeared halfway down. "Christine," he said, "how did you know?"
"Remember I told you I had been dreaming earlier?" He nodded slowly. "It was him. He... talked to me, in my dream, and told me... many things. That he had died, and could follow me from the other side. That if anyone could find a trick to cheat death, it would be him. And he sang to me as he'd never sung before." She shivered. "I could dismiss it as only a dream, if he hadn't sung to me. I could never mistake that, or come up with it on my own."
He put the paper down to look her in the eye. "Christine," he began carefully, "it's possible you're underestimating your own mind when it's asleep. Surely some memory of him being dredged up is more likely than anyone coming back from the dead."
"I suppose," she answered dubiously, and said no more. Her face took on the blank look it always did when she became lost in thought, and neither of them said any more for the remainder of the meal.
That evening Raoul took a walk on the grounds alone. As he passed the parlor, he heard the faint strains of a song from within, though the windows were closed; looking through them, he saw Christine standing by the piano. She was singing Juliet's Waltz, with her eyes closed and tears running down her face. He could feel the emotion that had returned to her, even through the walls and the windows, and he knew that the tears were tears of ecstasy.
-
The next morning, Christine slept until noon, despite having gone early to bed the previous night. Raoul didn't press her for the details of why she seemed so distracted over breakfast, but he suspected that she had been dreaming of Erik again. The same curious mixture of elation and dread that she had always shown at the Opera had crept back into her eyes, and she hummed absentmindedly during lulls in the conversation. When they were finished he took her hand to lead her from the room. Her fingers were trembling.
"Christine," he said, hoping to bring her thoughts back to reality, "have you ever seen this estate's gardens?" She shook her head. "I'll show them to you, then. They're beautiful."
Once out in the fresh air and sunshine, she seemed to recover her usual good cheer, and chattered aimlessly as they wandered through the rose garden. They sat down on a stone bench, and she kissed him affectionately on the cheek.
"Are you feeling better?" he said. "You seemed out of sorts this morning."
"Oh yes," she answered. "I was a bit troubled earlier, since I'd been dreaming again, but this is just what I needed to clear my head."
"Are you happy?" he said softly.
"So happy I could just... sing." As if to prove her point, she sang a few notes to the empty air, echoed dimly by a mockingbird in the hedges.
He laughed. "I thought you'd still be upset from when you sang last week, but if it makes you happier... I love to hear you. You know that. Your voice is divine."
"Last week was an eternity ago," she murmured in his ear.
That night, unable to keep her eyes open, she went to bed at eight o'clock.
-
Over the next few days, Christine slowly became a shadow of her former self. She slept more and more--twelve, sixteen, twenty hours a day--and more and more she would just wander around the house singing when she woke up. At first, she would sing from operas, but as the days wore on the arias were replaced by a strange and new sort of music. It was not opera, though it burned with the emotions of a thousand tragic heroines; it was not sacred music, though there was something strangely devotional about it; it was not the traditional folk songs she had learned as a girl in the Swedish countryside, though sometimes hints of them would show through, twisted almost beyond recognition.
In her occasional moments of lucidity, she would hold Raoul tight and whisper that she was frightened, that she never wanted to sleep again, that Erik's fingers were tightening their possessive grip and that she would never escape. He called on the family doctor to brew something to keep her awake, but it had no effect; he put her once into a drugged sleep of laudanum, but all it made her do was talk of angels and requiems in her sleep. He asked her where the music came from, and all she said was, "Him." He asked her (hating himself for even saying it) to stop singing, but the joy it gave her was more addictive than the most potent narcotic, and she continued to burst spontaneously and uncontrollably into song in the short hours that she was awake. When she sang she was as dreamy and unreachable as when she slept.
One day, as he led her through the gardens--the outside air seemed to help diffuse the spell over her--she bit her lip and said, quite out of the blue, "I must bury Erik."
"In this state?" he said.
"If I bury him," she responded, "maybe he will finally have peace. And maybe the dreams will stop."
"Christine, are you sure this isn't all your imagination? You've been... upset... by what happened that last night at the Opera, I know. It's possible you're... confused, overreacting, your mind is playing tricks on you."
"I'm not insane, Raoul!"
He flushed. "That's not what I was trying to say. Only that he's occupying so much of your thoughts already. Going to bury him would just fuel it even further."
"I'm not the one doing this, Raoul! It's him! If I ever had any doubt, it was erased when he started trying to keep me with him. And when he sang to me." She shivered, though it was a warm day. "He told me to come back to him last night. He said his bones were getting cold. I must bury him, Raoul."
"It can't be good for you, Christine."
"--for bonny sweet Robin is all my joy." She had started singing again, and he sighed. She might as well be dead to the world now.
-
Christine awoke at four in the morning with her mind clearer than it had been in weeks. The confusion, the sleepiness, and the spell of the music were gone; only one thought remained.
She had to bury Erik.
Raoul slept beside her, lines of worry creasing his forehead. She dressed silently, and kissed the top of his head before she left the room. There would be time to be in love once the nightmares were over, but for now she had a task before her. Careful not to wake the servants, she slipped out of the house and into the stables, saddling up her favorite white mare as quickly as she could before setting off at a gallop for Paris.
Somewhere along the road, it started to rain, and though the Chagny estate was not far outside the city, it took long enough to ride there that Christine was soaked by the time she found the Rue Scribe. She had made sure to bring the key to that entrance.
Erik had never bothered to show her the intricacies of the Opera's cellars, but he had made sure she knew two routes to the house by the lake: one from the Rue Scribe, the other from her dressing room. She didn't trust herself to try a shortcut, so she went all the way to the lake before doubling back along the dressing room path to find the well where he had first held her.
During this time, an odd voice hovered around the netherworld of her hearing. It was not the voice of the dreamscapes, lush and echoing and powerful, but a haunting singsong she was never sure was real. It could easily have been the echoes of the dripping water, or the whine of near-silence against her ears, but at times it almost seemed to form a tune. It faded in and out, sometimes disappearing, sometimes becoming almost loud enough to fully focus on, but never enough that she could be sure it was real.
It intensified as she approached the well. The louder it became, the more it eluded her, until she rounded a corner and it disappeared entirely. She squinted through the gloom and saw a body propped up against the well.
Erik.
He had dug his own grave already; it lay, deep and impossibly neat, in the dirt next to the well. All that remained was for her to put the ring on his finger, lower him in, and shovel the earth back on top of him, and the thing would be done.
She approached him more closely and saw that he had removed his mask in death. Somehow his face was less frightening now that it was the face of true death, not a living skull; she tentatively stroked the top of his head, as she might have done to give him comfort in life. He didn't move. He was truly dead. Christine gulped, half-expecting a clammy hand to grasp her wrist, or the siren's almost-voice to reappear, but nothing happened. With shaking hands, she removed his gold ring from her finger and placed it on his. And now the only thing left was to put him in his grave.
Christine quickly realized she would have to pick him up, though fortunately for her his body hadn't begun to decay yet. Steeling herself, she gathered him into her arms, much as he had done to her the first time they had traversed this path, and with some difficulty carried him to the grave he had dug. Unwilling to simply drop him, she realized she would have to climb down if she wanted to lay him gently in his grave.
She started shaking again, nervous more from the complete lack of anything dangerous or supernatural about this scene than anything else, put Erik down at the edge of the hole, and jumped down into the open grave. She crossed herself, thoroughly spooked for reasons she couldn't explain, reached up to the side to take Erik's body in her arms once again, and laid him on the soil.
She was unprepared when the sleepiness hit. Desperately terrified for one moment, she clawed at the edge of the hole, but only succeeded in getting dirt under her fingernails. But she never could resist the lure of the dreamscape, even when she wanted more than anything to stay awake, and collapsed, first to her knees, then lying prone, face down on top of Erik's body. As her eyes fluttered shut, the dreams encroached again. She thought that Erik was singing to her once more, about how he loved her and adored her and would never let her go--she thought she felt a pair of skeletal arms enclose her in an embrace--but she didn't care, because she was dreaming, and he made everything beautiful.
This time, she never woke up.