A/N: Sorry for the long wait! Firstly a few responses to my wonderful reviewers!
Ridel: Thanks! I'm trying to stick with the Leroux interpretation of Erik. I like the childish aspect of that particular 'interpretation' of the character.
awoman: Thanks. I'll try and have a look at your works when I get a chance.
Kaya DC Pandora: Ellisa is coming back – but at a later age. Thanks for the advice!
Moi: How is it that all my reviewers can read my mind!
NB: We are still PRE-Christine (at the moment).
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I own nothing. Now let's get on with the story!
Chapter Seven
It had been seven days – one whole week – since the dramatic appearance – and disappearance of the Phantom at the masked ball. The entire Opera house was ablaze with whispers of it, of rumours that he – the Phantom – was a mysterious child-snatcher, and that all should be on their guard. There were also whispers, these ones quieter and amongst only the darker-minded of the Opera, that Ellisa was in fact his child, and wasthe child of the devil himself.
There were also some, the optimists of the cast, who murmured that perhaps the Phantom was gone, that this final humiliation had sent him to wherever spectres go once they have been chased from haunting a place.
Sadly, this was not to be, for perhaps it would have been better were he dead. This was certainly the mindset of the unfortunate creature as he sat that night, despondent, mask in hands, staring endlessly into space, into memories he knew he could never recover.
And somewhere, far away from Paris, on the other side of France, a little girl sat in her room andgazedinto the pastsimilarly, tears trickling down her face. Somehow, despite all the logic a child might possess – has to possess to make sense of the world around him or her – she knew that somewhere, deep in the darkness, the man in the mask who had showed her such kindness was hurting. Her friend was hurting.
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The next day, the manager's of the Opera, with more than a little trepidation, looked into their box of mail, and were galled to find on top of it a very much expected, and feared, note.
The note was sealed with wax of a curiously deep red, and written in a red, child-like hand. It read thus;
Dear Managers, it began, and both Debienne and Poligny got the sense that they were being, ever so slightly, mocked,
I ammost displeasedby the manner in which I was treated when I elected to attend your Bal Masque, along with my daughter, Ellisa. Not only was I grossly mistreated, but she was taken from me by a man who had clearly taken leave of his senses. My wife is beside herself with worry. If you would be so kind as to rectify this immediately;
Yours, O.GAnd so it was that the managers of the infamous Opera House were the first to be witness to the slowly crumbling sanity of 'O.G', and his inevitable slide into complete madness.
888
Erik had sat down and written the note a few hours after his return to his underground home. His tears had ran dry, until all that was left was numbness. And then, without even thinking of what he was doing, he sat and began to write, haltingly and with great difficulty.
He had fashioned, in his grief-stricken mind, an existence in which he was Ellisa's father, in which he was handsome, in which he doted upon his beloved wife and daughter. He had even gone over the memories of the Bal Masque, had… adjusted them to fit his fantasy. And, without even meaning to, he had allowed this fantasy to seep onto the paper.
Once he had signed the letter off he did not even bother to glance back over it, little realising the insanity the treacherous red ink spoke of.
Then he slipped it, as he always did -through the use of a very small, very secret trapdoor -onto Debienne's desk, where the box containing any urgent mail for the two managers was kept.
Then he slunk back into the darkness, to his home, the one place where he had felt free from the cruelties of mankind… but where he now found himself trapped with his own self-pity, a thing he had long sworn to keep at bay, for fear of what it might do to him. A creature such as he had an awful lot to pity himself for.
He turned to the organ, in hope of finding solace there, but found only more pain, and a lack of ability to create music, to create anything beautiful, which he could not in his memory recall experiencing before. All that came from the organ was a pitiful whine of music torn from the deepest, ugliest reaches of Hell. He turned to sleep, but found that when it did come, it haunted him with the image of Ellisa's face, horror-struck as he turned away from her. And then he turned to drink, yet all it did was drown him in a stupor of misery.
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The years passed, spinning in the never-ending circle of life and death and youth, and Ellisa was soon thirteen years old, her memories of her time beneath the Opera House with 'her Erik' out of sight, out of mind, slowly gathering dust with the rest of heronce-cherished childishmemories. Thus is the way of childhood; a thing that can for one moment be an obsession that seems to be eternal is forgotten the next.
But her parents had not forgotten, and when she received a letter, inviting her to join the corps de ballet at the Paris Opera House once again, her father immediately went white, and tore the letter from her grasp. Unable to discern why her father was acting so strangely, she had turned to her mother, completely bewildered.
"Mother," she had started, frowning and brushing from her eyes a lock of reddish hair. She disliked her hair colour; it was so unlike her mother's lovely golden-blonde, or her father's chocolate brown that she often wondered where she had inherited such a shade. "why can I not go to Paris? It is a chance of a lifetime!"
Poor, childish Ellisa did not remember why she had been taken so suddenly from the Opera House those many years ago, and when she asked she was waved off with an awkward excuse. Her father sighed, looking at her distantlyover a pair of stronge spectacles, for his eyesight was failing prematurely.
"It's hard to explain, Ellisa…" He trailed off, noticing with a slight pang the wobble of his daughter's lower lip. She was a vixen alright, he mused silently, for she knew all too well that he could not resist such a look, that knew she had her father well and truly wrapped round her little finger. He turned away so that she would notsee the pain in his eyes as he spoke again;
"Very well, my child." And though his daughter squealed with happiness and hugged him in her delight, his fears could not be dispelled. Though his daughter could not remember 'O.G' clearly, he could still see, clear as day, the inhuman look of rage and grief in the pitiful man's eyes as the mob turned on him… as Ellisa was taken from him.
Ellisa's father knew what a father's love could cause a man to do, and he feared what Ellisa's silent guardian of so long ago might do to get her back, if she wandered once more into his terrible playground.
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It was three months after her arrival at the Opera House that Erik first realised that the new addition to the corps de ballet was Ellisa, his little Ellisa, and it took a further two for him to draw himself enough from the stupor he had slowly sunk into to even care.
His first feelings upon seeing her were confused, numbed. The only reason he recognised her was because of the way she hung about the orchestra pit, long after the audiences had gone home, reverently stroking the keys of the organ, silently running her fingers up and down the strings of the double bass, fingeringgentle melodiesin her mind.
His second thoughts were of how he might bring her, lure her back into his endless, cavernous kingdom. And though the small part of him that still possessed some semblance of sanity and rationality screamed at him to stop being such a fool, that such a course of action would only lead to tearing apart even further his wounded heart, the rest of him did not listen. It did not want to listen, for he had spent so long alone with his awful pain and memories that he would risk anything to end his terrible solitude.
He would get her back, he would bring her back, he would teach her, once more, to play the piano, perhaps even the organ. He would get her back.
Whatever the price.
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A/N: Review… you know you want to!