V. Down once more

"It is still further down."

Raoul groaned. "Do those cellars never end? It's no wonder he is mad; everybody would crack up eventually, living in a place like this!" Holding the torch up to scan his surroundings, he shuddered at the mere imagination of spending more time down here than absolutely necessary.

Christine sighed and stroked his shoulder soothingly, then turned to Meg, who was bringing up the rear. "I think we have arrived at another dead end. We had better return to the boat and try to find another way." The thought of having to use the blood-stained craft once more was not pleasant, but she did her best not to let it show.

Until now, she did considerably better than Raoul. "We will never find him, anyway", he complained. "And it's cold and wet down here. Can't we go up again? All I'm doing is getting my clothes dir– aargh!" His left foot had sunk deep into a water-filled hole in the uneven stone floor, and he struggled to get out again, splashing water everywhere and dropping the torch, which sizzled and hissed on the wet ground, until Meg darted past Christine to pick it up again. "I hate this place!" Raoul cried furiously, finally managing to yank his foot free, and he would have toppled over if Christine had not caught him just in time. "I hate it! And I hate that Phantom of yours!"

"Oh, do watch your step, and stop shouting!" Meg broke in impatiently. "How are we supposed to creep up even on somebody half deaf if you're making such a din?"

"Look at my boot!" Raoul mourned. "There's a huge cut in it, all through its side, and it was fairly new! And my foot's all soaked now!"

"We'll get you a new pair of boots, love", Christine comforted him, pulling him along towards the boat again. She knew that he had been rather attached to those boots, and she felt sorry for him, but now was the wrong time to lament the loss of pieces of clothing. "Are you hurt, by any chance?"

"Only a bit", Raoul answered bravely. "It twinges slightly, I reckon."

"Really? Darling, if you've hurt yourself seriously –"

"No, I'm fine", Raoul assured her, putting on a heroic grimace.

Meg, marching in front with the torch, turned her head to give Christine a reassuring nod. "It didn't look like he hurt himself", she said, winking. "He just wants to be pitied."

Raoul poked his tongue out at her. Rolling her eyes, Christine thought that at least he had regained his somewhat childish sense of humour.

Had this exchange taken place somewhere else and under different circumstances, she would probably have laughed, yet in her current situation, she felt as far from mirth as one could be. Part of her awareness was in pain, in a kind of pain she had never encountered before. She was not even sure if the sensation could be called that, as it was nothing physical. Still, it was a very disconcerting feeling, to say the very least. It seemed that part of her consciousness was being pressed through a sieve, bits of it carefully examined and poked at, jumbling her thoughts as well as her memory. Repeatedly she massaged her temples, yet this was of no help at all. The only way to stop it, and of this she was quite certain, was to find the Phantom and get him out of whatever trouble he had landed himself into.

God, this sounded so silly, as if she were looking for an ill-mannered child! But maybe his behaviour earlier on made her think like that, or the way Madame Giry had spoken about him. It seemed that the ballet instructor had a tendency to see just another ward in him, another boy to take under her wings, but one she was particularly fond of, like a younger brother – while on the other hand, she had suddenly fallen silent from time to time and sighed, then continued more slowly and thoughtfully, as if watching carefully what she was saying. Christine wondered what kind of relationship they had, the woman who had been almost like a mother to her and the man who had substituted her father in her childhood years, then a friend and brother, as well as a guardian, when she had grown older. They had almost been her family, they and Meg. When she had still been a little girl, it had seemed quite natural to her that Madame Giry would know the Angel of Music.

But now, when looking back on those times, it surprised her that she had not wondered about this connection during the later years. Not that she blamed herself for not noticing in the beginning, but later on, it should have made her think, miraculous as it had all been to her.

But on the other hand, who would suspect a man of entering and guarding one's dreams at night? It was not what a man usually did, not at all.

Still, she would have to be less trusting from now on.

Climbing back into the boat, Christine was careful not to slip on one of the still moist blood stains. It seemed that the Phantom's hunt had been successful, and this was what Meg said, but what had happened later on… It was a riddle. From what Madame Giry had told them, it was clear that there were several of these… Lost Ones, but how exactly they had managed to capture the Phantom, and what kind of treatment they were subjecting him to, remained a mystery, and one to worry about. Christine was convinced that it took a lot to capture the Phantom, and still more to make him feel like he was feeling at the moment – like she was feeling, through him. How much stronger was the sensation for him?

"Where do we go?" Raoul asked, taking up the pole again.

Christine closed her eyes for a moment to concentrate on her awareness of the Phantom, to tell Raoul the exact direction, or as good a direction as possible at least – and then something happened that had never happened before. Suddenly images were flashing through her mind, gone again quickly, but clear enough for her to see. A large underground hallway, dusty and dry, lit by two blazing lines of braziers, with shapes milling about all around them… drifting tendrils of fog… a man's silhouette, tall and threatening, seemingly clothed in black, and with a thin bandage covering one of his eyes… the reddish-yellow light of the fires dancing, dancing with the shadows… fog, creeping low, but climbing up… an open entrance lit by a lantern's eerie red sheen, spilling out over a pair of cherubs sculpted into the stone on either side of it… an eye, a cold blue eye, pale and empty as the sky on a clear October morning… the flickering fire of the braziers, dimmed by gathering mist… shapes, shapes milling about… light and shadow dancing and mingling… the mists were billowing up… an iron grasp around her mind, a drill boring into it, searching, searching… the empty eye… fog, oceans of fog… the fires were dying as the clouds were swallowing them… darkness was falling swiftly… and oh, that mind cruelly delving into her own…

"Christine?" Raoul's voice dimly entered her consciousness, like through a wall of fog.

"Christine?" It was Meg. "Christine! Are you alright?" She was shaking her. "Christine!"

"Christine!" Raoul echoed, his voice thick with worry.

Opening her eyes again, all seemed to swim before her, sliding in and out of focus, making her dizzy. She blinked, trying to get used to her surroundings. "I'm fine", she muttered, waving Meg's hand away. "Just fine…"

"Christine, please", Raoul begged, so anguished that it was painful to hear. "What's wrong? Are you feeling ill? What happened just now?"

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Christine regarded each of them in turn, their faces both bearing expressions of strong concern, and she assumed that they mirrored her own. For she knew what it was she had seen. "They've taken him to some kind of hall, a huge underground room, but dry, so probably on one of the higher levels." She spoke hastily, already motioning Raoul to pole the boat onward. "There's a man… hurting him. A tall man with only one eye. The room is lit by fires, and it is well lit, but I have never been there, I don't recognize it. The only thing I can say is that it's very large apparently, huge really… yes, and on either side of the doorway, there is an angel carved into the stone –"

Meg interrupted her by leaping to her feet so quickly that the boat swayed dangerously. "Angels, you say?" she demanded breathlessly. "Two angels? And a large, dusty hall?"

"Yes, somewhere on the higher basement levels probably. Have you ever been there?" Christine concluded hopefully.

"Not on a higher level! It's down here! Are you sure about the angels? A pair of angels, their feet about on knee-height, and their heads on a level with your shoulder?"

"Yes, I'm sure – I mean, not how tall they are exactly, but you might just be right –"

"Raoul, turn the boat around!" Meg commanded. "Go back where we came from, and as fast as you can! I know how to get to this place."