I. Cold and monumental
"God, we'll never find a way out of this", Gaston groaned, getting up again after he had stumbled over some obstacle hidden by the darkness for what felt like the hundredth time. His knees were burning like fire from all the sudden and mostly forceful contacts with the rough ground, and so were his hands.
"I'm tired", Hulot stated.
"We all are", Serge muttered.
They had come a long way, and they had no idea how far they still had to go. They were hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of passages below the Opera Populaire.
"I never realized there were that many corridors down here", Hulot said, brushing his hair out of his sweaty face absent-mindedly.
"There probably aren't", Gaston sighed. "I reckon we've passed the same twice or more."
Nobody protested to this, and Gaston assumed that they all were thinking the same, or at least along those lines.
Of what use had their escape been, and of what use Claude's probable sacrifice, when they now were stumbling through wet, endless corridors in the darkness, unable to find a way out? They might as well still be in this fearsome minion's clutches, Gaston thought bitterly; at least they could have lain down for some rest, then, and maybe they would have even been able to sleep, instead of desperately searching the path which would lead them upstairs, back to the daylight they yearned to see again so much.
Down here, in this eternal night, Gaston found it hard to believe that there was any such thing as light.
There was a splash, unnaturally loud in the silence of the Opera House's bowels, and Gaston winced. He had been down here for far too long. Every dripping of water, every squeaking and scrabbling of a rat turned into a sound of pursuit in his mind. I'm going mad, he thought, my God, I'm going mad. Or are they really coming for us?
A softly muttered curse told him that it was only Serge, who had stepped into a puddle of water on the floor.
Good God, would this never end?
And it seemed that even stoic Serge was on edge, when he cursed in a situation when he normally wouldn't. Under normal circumstances, a backdrop coming crashing down at his very feet after he had secured it for the third time in a row would be tried hard to make Serge curse.
The moment would come when Gaston would wish that they caught them again, he knew it. He would wish that they had caught them again, so this all would be over, and they would again be heading in a direction which he knew.
People said that the Phantom used to live down here. Down here, in this eternal darkness. Down here, where no living human soul ever ventured. Gaston tried to imagine what this would be like, living down here in the darkness, and shivered at the mere idea. And to think that the Phantom was not a spectre, as they had learned recently, but a man of flesh and blood… Now Gaston had been down here, he almost felt sorry for him.
On they dragged their feet, exhausted, but unable to stop, because if they did, it appeared to Gaston, they would never again be able to summon up the courage to go on once more. Those vast, cold, imposing vaults would become their tomb, and the Opera House itself the most monumental tombstone ever erected to a man – only that it would not bear their names. They would be forgotten as the years wore on, and after some time none would remember them.
What did it matter, then, if they ever came out of this labyrinth, when they would not be remembered anyway? These lives they had led, and all their hopes and fears, all their passions and memories would fade to mist as time passed them by. No matter if they lived or died, none would remember their names.
And so centuries would come and go, and they all would be long forgotten, he and Serge and Hulot, yet the Opera House, their mighty tombstone, would remain. And maybe, if, in years yet to come, somebody would venture down into the deepest dungeons of their cold and monumental grave… maybe this man would catch a whisper of their names on a breeze that would stir underground, a gentle breath from a time long past, and they would live again for a moment… live again… for a moment… for a moment in the light… and under the sky… the wind would carry them… just a moment, live for just a moment under the sky… in the light… the light… the light…
"Light!" Serge hissed, and Gaston came back to his senses abruptly. "There's light ahead!"
And indeed, there was a tiny speck of flickering yellowish light, like the light from a candle, and it was coming towards them.
Gaston felt his insides freeze. "It's them!" he breathed. "We must run!" But he could not move; he stood like rooted to the ground.
"I can't run", Hulot whispered beside him. "Not anymore."
Huddling against the rough stone wall, they waited, their eyes fixed on the light approaching them. Even Serge's bearing had lost all its usual grace and pride now; he stood like a bull awaiting the butcher's axe, tall and strong, but… broken.
Minutes elongated into eternity. First there was only the light, then there were footsteps, then an outline against the darkness. A man. One single man. He was coming closer. The light shone all around him.
"At last." The voice sounded youthful, as if a very young man's. At the same time, a face became visible in the light of the candle, a face that was a young man's as well, even-featured and fair-haired. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, or maybe a little younger.
And Gaston knew him. He recognized that face, because he had seen it before, just a short time ago. This man, together with another, had been among the milling mass of their captor's servants, and when the pair of them had paused to regard the prisoners, they had stood out among the dark kind around them because of their light skin and blond hair.
"Blimey, it took me ages to find you." The young man's voice carried a strange accent, one Gaston did not recognize at all. "But it seems you haven't got far." He flashed a bright grin at them, exposing a set of quite perfect white teeth. And to Gaston's immense astonishment, it was not an unpleasant grin.
But what surprised him even more was that it was Hulot who first addressed the fair-haired youth. "What do you want with us?"
The lad flashed them another toothy grin. "Do my liege-lord's bidding, of course. Get you out of here safely, and then bring you to somebody. No idea who exactly. He wasn't too clear on that." He frowned for a moment, then shrugged. "Not that it bothers me. All my uncle's business, the other half of it. And I'll find out soon enough anyway." Gesturing in the direction he had come from with his candle, making the light flicker and dance, he finished, "What are we waiting for, then? I reckon we should be going."
"Now wait a minute", Gaston broke in, understanding not even half of what the young man had been telling them. "You don't mean to say that… Who is this liege-lord of yours?"
"Oh, him", the youth said lightly. "Not Créon, if that's what you think." Probably noticing the look of irritation on Gaston's face, he added, "That Master bloke. Big fellow, long hair, ugly scar on his face, bandage over one eye – ah, I see you realize who I mean. No, not him."
"Who then?" Gaston asked, and his breath caught as he realized what the answer might be.
However, the one to utter the question was, once again, Hulot. "Are you the Ghost's man, then?" And to think that Gaston had believed that Hulot had not been paying attention when he had explained to him about their plans!
Throwing back his head, the lad laughed. "No", he said, shattering Gaston's sudden hope, "not for the Lord Phantom, either. Though if he is whom you serve, then I serve your liege-lord's secret ally."
There was an unspoken question in the lad's words, but Gaston wondered how to answer it. Liege-lord? This boy was a stranger fellow than Gaston had expected. What should he answer? What was it the young man expected? There could only be one possible answer, he realized.
He drew a deep breath.
Only one answer.
God help us all.
"Yes", Gaston declared, and at once this cold place, these monumental foundations of stone seemed strangely solemn to him. "We serve the Lord Phantom."
The lad bowed his head. "Then follow me."
As he and his friends trailed after the fair-haired young man in the darkness, Gaston saw that the boy, while holding up the candle with his right hand, held what seemed to be a map in his left, and he regularly checked their position as he swiftly led them through the darkness. Soon they found themselves before a dead end, and Gaston suspected that it was the very same to which he and his companions had come once before, or maybe twice, though it was impossible for him to say now how long ago that had been. The lad stopped and, handing his candle and map over to Serge wordlessly, began running his hands over the stone, muttering under his breath. To Gaston, it sounded like curses, yet in the current situation he would not have been surprised had the boy spoken incantations.
After half a minute, maybe more or maybe a little less, a gentle grating sound could be heard, like stone grinding over stone, and then the wall slowly began to move. Gaston watched in awe as what seemed like a massive stretch of wall receded for about five feet, revealing a narrow, dark passage leading off into blackness to their left. There was a soft gasp from Hulot as he stepped forward to see the strange spectacle more clearly, yet Serge remained where he was, and his features did not shift at all. Those smoky green eyes gleamed oddly in the flickering candlelight.
Once again, Hulot surprised everybody, this time by wanting to venture into the darkness first. With an expectant look at the fair-haired young man, Gaston held him back by the sleeve. But the lad, though he accepted map and candle back from Serge, made no move towards the opening. Instead, he closed his eyes, and an expression of concentration entered his face. His lips moved slightly, just as if forming words, and occasionally he wet them with the tip of his tongue. Then, as quickly as he had begun to act in this strange way, he opened his eyes again, and he grinned brightly once more and finally started towards the narrow passage revealed by the wall sliding back. "After me, if you please, folks", he said cheerfully.
Gaston cleared his throat uncertainly. Should he ask, or had he rather not? He decided to try. "What were you just doing?"
"Oh, that." The lad acted as if closing one's eyes and seemingly talking to oneself was a perfectly normal way to behave. "Just communicating to my lord that it's time to send my uncle forth from his current position now."
"Communicating? To your… Now wait a minute. You don't mean to say that…"
"I don't have to stand opposite him to speak with him", the lad said lightly, in a tone as if stating the obvious. "He has access to my mind, and to my uncle's. We just take our positions, and he tells us when to act. It's quite simple."
Gaston exchanged a glance with Serge, who shrugged. At least Serge understood this no more than he did. "That's… quite extraordinary", he commented.
"Why, of course it is. But my lord can hardly be considered an ordinary man, now can he?" The boy spoke as he turned to run his hands over the wall beside him, and soon the grinding noise from earlier on was repeated, and the wall slowly closed behind them, blocking their way back. Watching this did not give Gaston a pleasant feeling somehow. "Of course, that particular trick is fairly new. He picked it up from your master, I daresay, at least from what he mentioned. He is aware of us at all times, and he knows our exact location because he can feel us. Well, he could do that before, but this way, it's much clearer now, and we can contact him as well, not only the other way round. He claims there's still need for experimenting, yet it seems to work well enough to me."
Listening to the strange things the boy was telling them in wonder, Gaston hardly noticed that the passage they had been led into narrowed even more, so it came as a surprise when his shoulder brushed the wall on one side. They had been forced to walk in single file from the beginning, but soon, Gaston expected, they might have to walk sideways as well.
"There we are." In the weak light of the candle, Gaston could barely distinguish what seemed to be a curtain, but of a very heavy fabric, thick layers of leather maybe. Reaching out, the lad brushed it aside with some difficulty and stepped out into the open, and Gaston and his friends followed. The air felt less stuffed in here, but Gaston was not entirely sure that this was a good thing at all.
"Right", the lad said. "Now listen carefully." His voice was still tinged with an odd accent, but Gaston barely noticed it anymore. "It's not far now, but we'll still have to go slow. For some time, we'll be on dangerous ground. My liege-lord assures me that every step you take can be your last, if you're not careful. So keep off to the side, to the rail, at all times. Hold on with both hands, and keep as close to the wall as possible. And be prepared to fall." He made a dramatic pause, though he spoiled the effect somewhat by grinning. "The light will have to go now, of course."
Serge quickly took in their surroundings, as far as the weak candlelight reached. "We're on the great staircase, then", he said.
The great staircase. Gaston felt a touch of cold, like an icy hand grasping his heart. A vast, wide spiral staircase, with what seemed to be a drop to the bottomless in its middle, leading down to the lowest cellars. Nobody ever went beyond a certain level; in fact, they had been warned never to do so. The lowest basements were not used anyway, and Gaston wondered if they had ever truly been, maybe before the water had seemingly pressed in from outside. And people said that the lower parts of this staircase were… dangerous. Not that anybody seemed to know why; they just said it was. It was a story everybody knew, just like the story of the Opera Ghost, and now, as Gaston stood down here, and as the lad blew out his candle, leaving them in complete and utter darkness, Gaston was just as ready to believe it.
"Very well", came the boy's voice from somewhere ahead. "Both hands on the rail, now. Firmly. And walk slowly. And if anything happens, then be sure to tell the others, but not too loudly. This place carries sound much too well."
Gaston had no choice but to do as he was instructed. The cold hand was still there, threatening to paralyze him. What, precisely, might happen? From what their guide had mentioned, it sounded pretty much as if the ground were likely to drop away from beneath their feet. He shuddered inwardly at the idea. If only Hulot held on tightly! "Hold on", he hissed to his friend, right behind him in the darkness. There came no answer.
Slowly, very slowly, they began to venture forward. Serge seemed to follow the boy closely, and Gaston tried to keep immediately at his heels, every now and again listening intently for the sounds Hulot made behind him. Every breath, every step, every sign of life from the man behind him was a new relief, only to be replaced quickly by fear rising up once more.
How long they slowly climbed the stairs this way, Gaston had no idea. Every moment he expected the ground to give way beneath his soles, and his hands on the thin metal rail were long slippery with sweat, yet he dared not take them away and wipe them dry on his trousers, in case the ground would suddenly choose to devour him. He knew that he would not be able to hold on for long if he really fell, yet still he did not dare to loose his grip for one moment.
At last the blond lad's voice came again from the blackness ahead. "Right. We can walk normally now."
Gaston found himself feeling as relieved as he probably had never felt in his life, happiness flooding him with an overwhelming power. They had made it! They had left those dreadful cellars!
But what now? Only then the question occurred to him. Where was the boy leading them?
Huddled close together in a cluster, they made their way up the stairs. Gaston was glad for his friends' proximity; at least he knew this way that they were alright. Well, not exactly alright, maybe, given that they all had received more than only a handful of scratches and bruises on their risky escape attempt – he still did not understand that there had been no more than a few to pursuer them, and that they had given up rather soon apparently. But as well as they could be.
As they left the staircase, Gaston could have capered with joy. They were on known territory now. They were back home.
And soon there was a light ahead, the light of another candle in the deep shadows. There were two shapes ahead, one of them, the one holding the candle, a man as fair-haired as their guide was, though he looked definitely older, and his hair was cut shorter. He might be around forty years of age, Gaston guessed. His features were serious and hard without being rough, and he had a sharp nose. When he spoke, the same accent was in his voice as in the lad's – his nephew's, Gaston assumed. "You took rather long, Sándor, my boy, yet let us not discuss unimportant matters. I think we can see this mission as accomplished." Then he turned to address Gaston and his friends. "Messieurs, you may call me Lászlo. I work for the same lord as my nephew here does, and am equally here to do his bidding."
"Yet you haven't yet revealed what his bidding might be." Lászlo's companion, previously half hidden behind him, now stepped out into the candlelight, nearly causing Gaston's jaw to drop. It was Madame Giry, the mistress of ballet, in a dark red flannel robe, yet looking as stern and dignified as ever. From how thin her lips appeared, Gaston could easily tell that she was in a towering temper. Who wouldn't be, probably scared out of bed in the middle of the night? But he knew from experience that whenever Madame Giry's temper changed for the worse, it was best to step lightly around her. Very lightly indeed.
However, Lászlo did not appear to be intimidated by her at all. "It is nearly fulfilled now", he replied. "The only thing we still need is you to provide us with the location of the Lord Phantom."
"I told you to quit calling him Lord all the time", Madame Giry snapped. "He's no Lord, and he's not likely to become one any time soon. And if you call him so to his face, I bet he'll be strutting around looking horribly smug for a week. Moreover, what makes you assume that I know where to find him? You still haven't answered that question."
"My liege-lord was positively sure you would know", Lászlo replied calmly.
"And why should I trust you with it?"
"There's no need to. All you have to do, Madame, is take these three gentlemen to wherever he is hiding. And make sure they tell him everything they know." Beckoning to his young nephew, Lászlo already turned to go. "Oh yes, and one more thing", he said over his shoulder. "Make sure to tell him that he won't stand any chance as long as he tries to face everybody at once." With this, and a meaningful look, he and Sándor disappeared, conversing softly in a language Gaston did not remember to have heard before, the light of the candle abruptly dimmed as they turned around a corner, and then it faded away completely.
There came an indignant snort from the darkness. "Not exactly what I would call a gentleman", Madame Giry remarked. "Very well, Messieurs, come with me. You are going to see a Ghost first thing this morning."
Trudging after her in the darkness, Gaston felt his thoughts spin wildly in his head. Where were they going? What was going to happen now? And, most important of all, what did Madame Giry have to do with the Opera Ghost?
