I. Darkness stirs
The light of the torch was flickering, throwing bizarre, rapidly changing shadows against the rough walls of the underground cavity. Was this still part of the cellars? Meg Giry had to admit to herself that she had lost all her feeling of orientation during her descent. How could one ever live down here? It was so dark, so dark and so cold.
She turned and took a glance around. She was alone in the darkness.
Involuntarily Meg's fingers clenched around the object she was carrying. He was there. She was sure he was. Someone was out there, hidden in the shadows. Once again she turned around, her booted feet kicking up small cascades of dust. Had there just been a flicker of movement, or had it only been one of the dancing reflections on the walls?
Your hand at the level of your eyes…
Shuddering, she slowly raised up her left arm – and froze when she realized what exactly she was holding up. There was something he would retrieve for sure when he saw it… and he had killed people for less than this…
Her hand trembled as she pressed what she was holding to her chest. There was something that would surely draw him to her… Now her other hand, the one holding the torch, began to tremble as well. What felt like a hard lump was building up in her stomach. If he really was somewhere out there, what kept him from coming at her?
Maybe he had seen that she was, despite the men's clothes she was wearing, a woman, and therefore was unwilling to harm her?
No, she could not expect him to be a gentleman. Not him.
What else was keeping him, then?
Her mother. There was something about her mother. Her mother knew things about him and his lair others did not, and she had heard him speak as if… as if she knew him, yes. Meg could not be sure, but it had suddenly occurred to her at that time, and now the memory came back to her. More than one memory, to be exact.
What if her mother did know him?
Why wouldn't she have said so, then?
Yes, there were things her mother rarely mentioned, like her husband, Meg's father, for example, but still –
And then a thought so outrageous occurred to her that the torch almost slipped from her sweaty hand. She had never known her father. She had never even seen a picture of him, and her mother refused to say much about him, except that he had died before Meg was even born. And she spoke of the Phantom as if she knew him, and she seemed not to be afraid of him, and he had always been there, as long as Meg could remember… Was the Phantom perhaps – she willed herself to think that one thought to its end, as hard as it was – was the Phantom her father? Was it what he had become… or what he had always been?
Meg shuddered, and the light from the torch flickered worse than ever, quickening the shadows' dance.
And the clothes she was currently wearing, the shirt and trousers and boots… they had been her father's.
Meg felt her throat tighten, just as if a cold, strong, merciless hand had placed itself around it. No! No! It could not be true! It simply couldn't!
And why exactly not, asked a cruel little voice inside her mind. After all, you have glimpsed him on stage, and you know he is human enough… Christine knows he is…
Christine. Where was Christine? Where had he taken her?
Frightened yet determined, Meg took a step forward into the vast cavity before her, past the pair of sculpted cherubs at the entrance. The light from her torch did not reach the room's opposite end. "Christine" she ventured softly.
Christine, Christine, Christine, Christine… The echo faded away into a silence worse than before.
Meg suddenly wished that she had not come down here, all on her own. How she wished to be back in her own warm room, away from all this cold and darkness! How she wished she had obeyed her mother!
But there was no way back now.
She took another few steps forward, then turned again, then continued forward once more. To both sides, she could see rough stone walls, but the cavity's other end still wasn't in sight.
Again she turned and glanced back the way she had come. The tunnel mouth that had led her here was completely dark now, dark and empty… except for a pair of luminous green orbs shining eerily from where she had been standing just a moment ago, like a cat's eyes, but much too far above the ground for a cat… They held her gaze for a moment that elongated into eternity… and then they were gone.
And then there came a very faint rustling sound, like of something moving in the darkness…
Panic seized Meg, flooded her with the force of a vast ocean wave. All of her own accord, she began to run, her feet carrying her forward as fast as they could. The drum-roll of her own heartbeat filled her ears, her mind, her whole awareness. Ahead, another stone wall came into sight finally, rough as the others, but still seeming smooth – because there was no door in it.
In mindless fear, she threw herself against the wall, again and again, desperate to find a way out, to escape from that terror following behind her. She moved along the wall, still pressing against it, kicking at it, attempting to claw at it, over towards the right-hand corner, refusing to turn around to see what was behind her. Her thoughts were reeling madly; she begged her mother and every deity known to her to help, her to save her, to somehow get her out of here, out, out…
And suddenly the wall before her gave way, and she fell forward, hitting hard ground painfully, rolling over with a groan. Forcing herself to get back to her feet immediately, she saw that she was in a very small square room, and that there were walls all around her. Ahead of her, a rusty metal ladder led up into the gloom.
There was only one way. Refusing to wonder how exactly she had gotten out of the vast cavity, she began to climb. It was not easy, considering that her hands were slippery with sweat, and that she was carrying a torch in one and another item in the other hand, yet she wiled herself to go on, to climb on upwards, trying not to think of what would happen if she slipped. Once she lost her hold wit her right hand, and in her panic to find it again, the torch slid from her fingers and fell down into the darkness, leaving her without the slightest bit of light, but still she climbed on, ever upwards.
And finally there was an opening she could pull herself through, and a so welcome hint of dim, grey light. Staggering forward, she met with resistance, which gave way easily, though, and she tumbled out of the doors of a dusty old broom cupboard, out into the light. Of course, it was only the moon shining in through the window, but never before had the night seemed so luminous to Meg. Having the mind to kick the cupboard doors shut behind her and lock it with the small key she found stuck in one of them, she rushed to the small, dusty room's exit, without thought pocketing the key.
She found herself in a corridor she recognized, somewhere off the back staircase that led to the young girls' dormitories. Before she reached her own bedroom, she never stopped running.
Once back in her room, she locked the door firmly behind her, then collapsed onto the bed, heedless of all the dirt and dust staining her clothes. Only now did she let go of what she had been clutching to her chest: a white mask.
