Chapter 3: Little Meg
Walking home in the dark had never bothered Meg. She'd worked late at the pub, trying to avoid the lewd and lecherous stares from the drunken bastards that populated the place. They disgusted her. Many tried to win her favour, or at least her favours. Occasionally they would offer her money in exchange for what they called a "small service," which Meg was happy to vehemently decline. Her mother had worked hard to protect her daughter's virtue, and Meg saw no reason to throw that all away for a few francs.
Her shortcut home went through an alley or two, wide and decently well-lit, not a terrible danger for an unarmed teenage girl, and the walk was not long. Meg was slightly uneasy, however, for there was a murderer on the loose. She'd been finishing up her duties when it had happened, when she'd heard the screaming, the crash, the fight. She'd rushed up the stairs, but been detained by someone who had gotten there first.
"Paolo, let me through," she'd insisted, fighting against the landlord's thick arms, "Is everyone all right?"
"Mam'selle Giry, please," the brawny Spaniard had insisted, forcing the young girl back down the stairs, along with several other curious waitresses, "Mam'selles Harbois, Renchant, please go back down stairs. It is no sight for such young girls."
"But what has happened?" one asked. This was picked up in a chorus of female assent, until Paolo was forced to wave his hands in defeat.
"It is..." he sighed, reticent to reveal the terrible news to them, "Murder. Young Genvieve has been killed, her neck broken."
A collective gasp had emitted from the waitstaff, and Meg had actually screamed, her hand rising to her mouth in alarm. Fear immediately filled the eyes of the impressionable and even the more seasoned serving-women, and Paolo put his hands on his hips.
"There," he said, "Now perhaps you wish you had not asked. All of you go home, in pairs, if you can. Be very careful, the perpetrator has not been caught. All we know is that he is wearing a black cloak. You will not see his face."
No one was going the same way as Meg. Gabrielle had come with her as far as she could, but then the two of them had to go their separate ways. And so it was with trepidation that Meg walked her normal path home. The path that had gotten her mother's approval in safety, the path that was the reason Mme. Giry no longer came to walk her daughter home.
Little Meg tried not to shiver, and began to hum a little part from one of the old operas, gently to herself, to keep her courage strong (insofar as it was).
The darkness enveloped the pitiable figure leaning against the wall. It was not visible in the pitch, but his gloved hand clutched at the velvet fabric of his vest, just above his heart. The most unhappy sobs echoed in the cobbled alleyway, and a shushing noise was heard as the figure slumped to the ground in a pool of miserable velvet, silk, and tears.
Fingers clutched at the black wig atop his head, and he threw it to the ground in fury, pounding it with his fists repeatedly as if trying to beat the life out of an all ready lifeless thing.
The Phantom's heart was rent, his hopes shattered. He had been wrong to trust again, to trust in the first place. He had allowed himself to be pulled into the deception that anyone could ever understand, could ever accept, could ever love. He'd fooled himself into believing that Genvieve loved him, indeed, that he loved her. But why?
...Because he didn't want to die. It had hit him with sickening accuracy. He didn't want to live, not without love...but he didn't want to die without it, either. All the night had been an exersize, to try and find love, of a sort, as quickly as possible, to ensure that he could not commit the stupidity he longed for. It had all been an attempt to stay alive. To gain some happiness that might make his life liveable.
But the vacant look in Genvieve's eyes as her head twisted violently to the left, her precious cheeks held between his uncaring hands, would haunt him for some time. The mask was gone - shattered in the back alley behind the pub. He'd run, jumped out of the second-storey window and flown, figuratively, to safety, before the door had been broken open. Before anyone could discover his great shame.
How could he bear to take the life of a comparatively innocent girl barely half his age, when he hadn't the courage to end his own? To end the life of a murderer, a monster, a horror that should not even have been born? He did not deserve to live, and yet...and yet...He could not bring himself to die. His heart ached with the guilt, the shame, the anguish...but he could not put an end to it. He was useless, a failure.
As he half-lay in that alley, still drunk with the champagne and with the terrible, fearful adrenaline of the kill, he was surprised to find his thoughts straying to the Giry girl. He'd been prepared to let her keep the mask, being sure that he would have no need of it. After all, he had another, and by the end of the night, he'd intended not to need a mask, what-so-ever, ever again. But now that he had come to terms with his own reluctant vitality, and that his spare mask had been smashed, he would need another. He would need it back.
His head, lolling against the ancient brick of the wall behind him, perked up at the unmistakeable sound of Marguerite's part in Faust, in the second act. Hidden safely in the shadows, the Phantom peered out into the alleyway. To his ironic surprise, he saw a blonde head walking past, uneasy on white shoulders, glancing shiftily around and humming to herself.
No smile graced the mouth of the unmasked Phantom, as he slowly gathered his wits about himself. No doubt she would not have the mask on her, why would she? But he could make her bring it to him. He stood, brushed some dirt from his velvet cloak, and pulled his hood up once more to hide his deformity. Then he stepped out into the blinding light of the street lamp.
Meg screamed as the Phantom stepped out before her, and she turned to run, before finding that there was nowhere to go. She turned back to the figure in fear, cowering and with tears threatening to fall without warning. He was tall, she remembered, and very dark, and though it was surely just his cloak, all of him seemed to billow like some terrible Gothic angel, his face hidden in shadow.
"Give it back." His voice was deep and gruff, with a hint of impatience, as of a man who has been woken too early.
"G-give what back?" she asked tremulously, her voice crackling with fear, "Who are you?"
"You took my mask from me," he boomed, taking an authoritative step forward, causing Meg to squeak in terror and back up further. "You must give it back!"
"I don't have it," she managed to choke out, tears running down either side of her round face.
"Give it back!" he demanded again, his tone heightening in his ire. His arm seemed to be reaching for his hip, and in Meg's mind, he grasped the hilt of a sword with a skull motif.
"It's not here!" Meg insisted, her voice breaking, and a sob escaping her mouth as her hands groped furiously at the brick wall behind her for some avenue of escape, "Please! I don't have it with me!"
A black hand shot forth, and she heard the creak of the leather gloves as his fingers tightened around her throat. Her own hands came up to beseech him to let go, but he wasn't exactly choking her...not yet. "You will bring it to me, then," the Phantom hissed, and Meg was immobilized beyond speech, or even a simple nod. But that would not be a problem. He knew she would deliver. He released her, and as she took a step away from her assaultor, she bumped into a trash bin. She turned behind her, startled, emitting a small scream of surprise and fear. When she looked back up, he was gone.
Meg ran the rest of the way home, in tears, and did not even begin to relax until she was underneath the quilt on her bed.
All that had been nearly a week ago. Since then, Meg had gathered rather more courage, and had finally felt ready to return the mask to its rightful owner. She'd snuck out the back of her house, without a word to her mother. In retrospect, she realised, she ought to have mentioned her excursion. For now, no one knew where she was. If the Phantom decided her existence no longer pleased him, no one would know where to look for her. And no one could hear her scream, beneath the Opera House.
The staircase seemed to go on forever, down here. Through the corridors in the distance, Meg could almost make out the shape of the Opera's mighty furnaces, now dormant and cold. There was a discomfiting breeze that caused the hangings on the wall to flap, threatening to strike Meg and knock her over the edge of the crumbling bannister, which would surely mean her death.
Reaching a platform, Meg was forced to rapidly avoid an open trap-door that she'd almost not seen in time. Beneath it was an iron grate, and beneath that, some murky green water than looked uncomfortably deep. Meg shivered slightly and side-stepped the hole carefully. From then on, she chose to walk to the side of the staircase, by the wall, all the while remembering to keep her hand at the level of her eyes, as if holding a pistol, ready to fire.
Where was she? It had been nearly a week, and the Phantom was beginning to get impatient. There was no way she could disobey him, he knew this. He was not fond of the fact, but being so long with the gypsies, with his horrible "manager," Javert, had taught him how to command respect and obedience from any human being, as though they were no more than a trained dog. And of course, he had no doubt in his skills...
But it had been nearly a week. He scoffed, irritably, and lit another candle atop his organ. He hated the necessity of the light, but he couldn't write without it. He'd immersed himself in impregnable blackness for nearly the whole week, and had preferred it that way. Christine's face, echoed in his many sketches, could not beseech him in the darkness; could not beg him not to forget her, not to stop loving her.
The light only served to remind him of the life he would never have, of the sun he would never see. It depressed him, just as his beloved darkness depressed that majority of life that lived above the surface of the earth.
But while he could see in the dark and play in the dark, he found it impossible to write in the dark, and because of this, he lit a few candles. But then he thought; the girl will not be able to see. She could do considerable damage to the valuable clutter that lay strewn about his working rooms. So he lit a few more. And then he thought, damn it to hell, I'll light them all.
The sound of a startled scream roused the Phantom from his work. She must be just outside, he thought. He wandered over to pull the lever that would open the secret door to his lair, before seating himself again at his instrument, as if he were not expecting the girl.
A portcullis in front of Meg raised before she even had a moment to wonder how to circumvent this dead end. Slighty alarmed, she used her staff to punt herself forward, through the sudden opening, and the first thought that ran through her head was how bright it was, down here. There were hundreds of candles, all about her, illuminating all but the farthest walls. There was a grandiose organ, she thought she saw, and even as she gazed, an incredibly loud chord emenated from it. She cried out, and her flinch rocked the boat to and fro. She was forced to steady the boat with her hands and dancer's thighs before continuing.
"So you did come. I wondered if you might," the Phantom's voice carried across the lake as majestically as his organ music did. Though his voice was elegant and collected, now, as opposed to the breaking mess it had been during the confrontation in the alley, Meg was not reassured.
She couldn't see him, didn't know where he was, but she fought her hand's impulse to rise to her forehead, and struggled with her fear. As her boat nudged the rocky shore like an affectionate pet, she unsteadily stood and deboarded.
"I came, yes," she answered, and pulled the requested item from a fold in her skirt, "I brought it."
"Very good," and now the hint of a moving figure, slipping from shadow to shadow without ever quite emerging into the light, "Bring it to me, Meg."
Meg did not ask how he knew her name. After all, she knew his, which made her one of a very few. She doubted even beautiful, perfect Christine knew his name. She stepped forward, her blonde hair glinting dully in the dancing, multifaceted lightsource. She approached the Phantom's shadow and, fearful but unblinking, held forth the pearly-white accessory. A hand, clad in a colour as dark as the pitch it hid in, moved forward with the alacrity of a snake striking, and snatched the mask from her. She resisted the impulse to shriek. You are not afraid, she told herself.
"That is all I require. Now leave me."
Perhaps a little afraid. This was what Meg had been dreading. She feared turning her back on him more than she feared facing him...She imagined what it would be like to turn, begin to walk away, and suddenly feel hempen death tighten around your neck, as you suddenly realised why it was so important to keep your hand at eye level...
"I said leave me. Let me alone!" This time, his voice was almost pleading, threatening to break in its anger and sincerity. Slowly, and with the certainty that she would regret doing so, she turned away from the shadowy Phantom, and took a hesitant few steps toward the boat.
Her every muscle was strung more tightly than violin strings on opening night, and as her feet absently turned outward while she walked, keeping her inner thigh muscles taut, as she'd been taught to do all her years in the opera, she tensed herself to fight for her life. One step, then another, slowly inching closer to the boat...to her freedom. Hopefully. A sudden voice out of what seemed an immeasurable silence starled Meg to a scream.
"Tell no one what you have seen!"
"Never!" she replied, too quickly, "I...wouldn't dream of it," she said to the empty air before her. And she wouldn't. People were all ready saying that the Opera Ghost was little more than superstition, that there was no candlelit cavern beneath the ruined Opera Populaire. She'd been shocked; less than four months ago she had come down here with almost fifteen men, and now every single one of them was denying what they'd seen with their own eyes. It was unbelievable, but then again...so was the Opera Ghost. If she told anyone what had happened, they would call her mad.
Her feet suddenly found the edge of the outcrop where the boat was resting, untied but seemingly unwilling to move unless someone made it. Well, Meg was definitely prepared to make it. She lowered herself gently into its rocking interior, clutching at the sides as it regained equillibrium in the water. Then, with a slowness that almost gave an air of reluctance, she lifted the punting staff and placed the end in the water. One push, and the boat sailed easily toward the opened portcullis. The candles drifted past as Meg continued her journey toward the exit, her mind refusing to think about the situation at hand. If she let herself think, she might become too terrified to move.
A clank, and a horrible grinding, metallic noise was suddenly heard, and Meg screamed in sobbing terror as the portcullis, with its fetid garlands of dead or dying seaweed, came crashing, splashing down barely a foot from the bow of her dinghy. She turned around in the boat, her flexible form twisting with ease at the waist, her hand seeming to pull off a sloppy salute as it flew instinctively to eye level.
On the igneous beach, a creature, lit now by the sickly light of a thousand miniature torches, but still dark as the black hole he employed as a heart, stepped forward. His white mask - that gleamed like porcelain but was stronger than iron - now occupied the right half of his face, and Meg was struck not by the fear that she had come to know, but by his regal bearing. Behind him, crimson curtains lifted up to the ceiling, harboring small shards of broken mirror, and the effect was such that he appeared to have great, feathered wings, dyed red with the blood of his victims, and glittering with the stars collected from his admirer's eyes. Something inside Meg moved, and suddenly she was acutely aware that immediately assuming this man was going to kill her might be deemed offensive. Her hand quickly fetched to her hair, patting it back into place as if that was its intention, all along.
A low chuckle echoed about the place, throwing itself off of stalactites, off of the volcanic-seeming stalagmites that rose unabashedly from the murky water, rattling inside Meg's ears. And then, the voice again, with its cool composure, its pleasing tenor.
"Do you sing, young Giry?"