Eryk sat down at his keyboard and started to compose. This would be his hit to end all hits, a real Top 40 chart buster! Just the night before he'd been at an underground rave in Paris, playing to a booked-out-for-months audience, but the new DJ era just wasn't cutting it for him anymore. He wanted to make real music, not this rehashed techno people seemed to spew out these days, taking 60s hits and misses and re-animating them. He had been there a good hour before a ringing phone pulled him from his reverie. "Hello? Eryk?" The voice on the other end was not unfamiliar to him, "Kristi?" His sister sounded groggy, like she'd been crying. "Eryk, mum's died." This came as no surprise, Eryk had known before he sat to his keyboard, the knowledge being imparted to him from a prophetic dream, which he had every now and then. "Eryk, I was going through her papers, it seemed she had correspondents in Paris…"
So here he was now, standing at the gate of a huge house which looked hundreds of years old, right in the center of Paris. He had walked here as if in a trance, everything suddenly seemed very surreal since he had hung up the phone. Leaving the paper with the hastily scribbled address he headed out, the address etched on his mind since the moment he heard it. He stared at the formidable gates, and then at the smaller com system on the side post. After a few minutes conversation with the disembodied voice at the old gate, it swung open and he walked on in. A black car sat in the driveway, looking very neat, but casual, and smoking slightly into the chill air. The tall wooden door loomed over him, the gargoyles on either side turned to watch him as he lifted the giant door knocker. The knocker didn't take kindly to being rammed into the door, and let Eryk know so by baring it's fangs at him. Then the door opened. "Hurry up and get inside, downstairs!" cried the same disembodied voice, which echoed around the stone staircase within. The stairs were old and the stones were worn, the air was cool and smelled of earth. Eryk entered to see the flickering of candles, the shadows they threw looming like giants against the far wall. Other than these few specks there was no other light. Then he saw him, for behind the candles sat an elderly gentleman, a cloak pulled over his face. A leather clad hand beckoned him closer, the air in the room shifted, and Eryk felt his feet moving closer, as if he was being pushed by the very air. "Eryk," the figure said in a deep melodic voice, "As a child you were told that you were named after your grandfather, a man who was lost long before your birth." The figure was now not 10 steps away, but Eryk could still not make out the face underneath the cloak. "You know however that your grandfather's name was not Erik, but Raoul. Why then, you wonder, was I named after this man?"
"How do you know all of this?" demanded a very confused Eryk.
The figure rose, and within the blink of an eyelid was standing in front of Eryk, hood fallen back from the face, the glint of a white mask now fully visible, casting dark and menacing shadows across the remaining half of the face. Eryk was frightened.
"I am the true Erik!" And with that the figure lifted his mask. Eryk, startled, fell backwards, his head hitting the stone floor with a loud crack.