The Reality

The wind was thick with the soft heat of summer, rich with collected secrets as it blew through the silent leaves of the forest. It made no sound, but Christine knew it was there; she could feel it stir her golden curls, see it bend the blades of grass. In fact, the only sounds at all in the woods that night were the gentle running of the stream and her own little voice as she sang out a night song to the life she plucked from each of the petals of a flower before she dropped them one by one into the lovely rolling waters.

"Goodbye, little flower," she sang. "The river will take you to heaven." And she absently swung the heels of her new black boots against the small mossy ledge where she sat above the water. "Float, float, dream, die, pretty flowers go to heaven…"

"What a pretty song." And suddenly she was no longer alone.

She tilted her head back to look up at the dark, robed shape that towered above her in the night, nothing more than a looming blackness against the faint outlines of branches, but she was not afraid.

"Songbird," she said, nodding with certainty. "That is what they call me." And then her attention returned to the half-stripped flower between her fingers.

"But what is your name?" He moved behind her as he spoke. Was he coming closer or backing away?

"Elainoire…" Christine smiled. "My name is Elainie." She watched the last petal float off along into darkness until it was lost among the curves of the stream. She dropped the stem in after it, then pushed herself up to stand, making certain to brush all dust from her new pink dress.

"Elainie." The sudden wind that whipped through the night all but swallowed his word.

But she liked the wind and she only nodded again as she turned to him, her head dropping back in attempt to seek his face in the dark. "What is your name?"

He seemed to move around her, but closer or further away? "Don't you know?"

She shook her head and looked back to the river. Suddenly she was not so sure. "Did I?"

"I have been waiting for you."

She felt his hand on her shoulder then. The bone white fingers were so long they stretched nearly across her small chest. But she was still not afraid.

She shivered for other reasons. "You were?"

"Oh yes."

She sighed. Slowly. "Me too…" She shivered again and then his other arm gently encircled her little waist from behind and she felt herself lifted off her feet.

"I'm sorry I can't remember your name," she whispered as her cheeks flushed. Perhaps now she was beginning to be just a little bit afraid.

"It doesn't matter," he breathed as he slipped his other arm behind her knees and cradled her child's body to his black robed chest. "I do not want you any less."

Christine tried to turn in his arms to see his face, but she could not seem to manage it. "But you were not supposed to come for me… I…" And now she was afraid.

"Why not?" he asked so simply as he began to carry her along the bank of the stream, floating just above the edge.

The warmth of the summer night was gone. "Where is your blade? Aren't you supposed to have your staff? You…"

He shook his head that she could not see. "What blade?"

"But you always have a blade when you come." She felt about to cry as her efforts to twist in his arms continued to prove useless.

She felt him stop then and the water was the only sound for several moments before he spoke again his hollow words.

"Perhaps you have me confused with somebody else."

She immediately jerked about and looked at him. "You—"

Eyes of fire smoldered back at her from the hollow recesses of the black hood. He had no face. No face at all. Only the blackness of the night itself. She shivered again. But there was a familiarity in his embrace now that fought against her fear.

"Papa promised we would see angels in France," she whispered.

The eyes of endless fire did not blink, could never be put out.

When he spoke, his voice was the wind again that welled from depths unknown within him and blew through her skin. "That is right, my little Songbird. All this time, you have been singing for me."

She clung to him with fear that washed over her like the bottomless waters of time, the sudden undeniable understanding that it was she who had called out to him, her own song that had conjured his shape into reality, her own child's curiosity that had sealed her fate.

"Do not fear death," he comforted her with hollow words as he soothed her shaking with his hard hands of bleached bone.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," she whimpered pitifully.

"I know… Don't cry…"

"I was supposed to be hiding. She's counting. She'll come looking for me…"

"But she will never find you." The sadness in his tone was unmistakable even over the growing roar of the waters beneath her and the wind around her.

"Please!" she sobbed. "Why!"

He only shook his head and held her all the closer. "You are too young to understand."

"Oh!" But then, even through her tears, she became aware of the sound of the beating of his heart. "Oh…"

She looked up to his face again and this time she was certain she saw something. A black outline within the hood. A darker shade surrounding the burning eyes. Sockets? She reached out to where his face should have been and felt something hard, something stiff. Something that was not flesh or bone, something that was…

"Songbird!"

She gasped.

"Goodbye!" The wind that carried his voice tore through her and propelled her at once from his arms into the air above the water.

She reached out to him desperately but she was already falling. He was already rising into the night, and the freezing water was already enveloping her, soaking her new clean dress and ruining her new black boots.

"You will remember my name…" She heard his voice once more before the water was all that roared through her mind while the only sight she could fix her eyes upon through the dark stream was the white of the moon shimmering above, just as if it were only a reflection of itself.

And in those last moments before she died, she did remember his name.

Death…

"Erik!" Christine screamed herself awake with the word in a voice that was no child's, but her own hoarse and pitiful voice.

"I'm here," he answered immediately from nowhere with the softest of urgency.

Christine yelped again, jumping where she lay and twisting about in the confused haze of lingering nightmare, momentarily becoming entangled in her own white nightgown. Then her eyes found him. He was very close, kneeling so that he was at her level, and she realized she was resting on the couch in the Louis-Philippe room of his house. He had not yet even removed the hood of his winter cloak where the drops of melted snowflakes lingered. The room was mostly dark, and all she could see were his glowing, yellow eyes.

She screamed again.

"Christine!" His voice was stern and he pressed her arm.

She jerked away from him, pushing herself up from the cushions, her eyes desperately scanning the dark corners of the room.

He sighed and sat back, resting an arm across his knee and did not try to touch her again. "You were dreaming. Again. Another nightmare. Another ghost. There is nothing to frighten you here. Just you and I."

"You!" Her eyes snapped back to him and she shrank against the softness of the couch.

"Oh, now do I frighten you?" His concerned tone was becoming more irritated.

Christine began to crawl backwards to the opposite end of the couch. "You! How could you!"

"Frighten you?" He sighed again. "Well, one can hardly help—"

"You killed her!" she shrieked with sudden relentlessness. "Death! Death! Angel of Death! I know your name! You came for her in the night and you killed her!" She sprang from the couch and tumbled to her feet to dart across the room.

Erik turned where he knelt but did not yet rise, his glowing gaze growing into a glare. "Christine!"

"You thought I wouldn't recognize you!" she interrupted before he could say anything else. "You thought without your staff and your blade I wouldn't know it was you!"

"Christine!" He was on his feet at once and the black folds of his cloak exploded about him like sudden dangerous nightfall.

"No!" She shrank against the wall next to the dark hearth, throwing her arms over her face. But when he was not upon her within a few moments, she lowered them again as they shook violently.

He remained where he stood, his arms folded beneath the cloak, a pillar of darkness amid darkness.

"How could you?" she whimpered, suddenly barely maintaining the energy to remain standing.

His entire frame stiffened even more. "I only did what you asked of me. I will do anything you ask of me." But there were certainly no favors offered in his tone.

"Did I ask you to come for her! Did I ask you to take her!" Christine's voice cracked with the onset of sobs. "I didn't even know her, but she knows me! She's always known me! And now I cannot escape because of you… you… You!"

"I—"

"Demon! Devil! Apparition! Death!"

He unfolded his arms, and his voice was all the darker, "Really—"

But she would not let him speak and she threw her arms up again. "You cannot come for me without your blade! You cannot! I know who you are! I know your name!"

And this time he was upon her at once, and he pulled her arms away, gripping them fiercely in his black gloved hands. "Christine!"

"You—!"

"Christine!" He squeezed her wrists violently enough to make her cease all further words with a gasp. But it lasted only for a second before she began to shriek with sobs. And she shrieked ceaselessly. Even when he released her and took a step away, her hysterics refused to end.

She stumbled back against the hearth, staring at him and screaming sobbing prayers as her flailing hands found the fireplace poker. Without even thinking, she gripped its handle, pulled it from its rack and swung out at him with a desperate cry.

He caught its iron point in one hand with a solid force that sent a shudder through her entire body. But her hysterics only increased then, and she pulled at it with all her strength, trying to free it from his grip franticly to strike again.

His fingers squeezed about the end he held, and then, with a sudden jerk of the iron, he pulled her to him.

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened to scream again, but she was silenced before she could by the abrupt sting of the leather his glove as he struck her sharply across the face.

She did not even gasp; she made no sound at all. They both released the fire poker simultaneously and it fell with a clatter against the marble before the hearth.

Erik lifted the hand that had slapped her and pushed back the hood from his head. And then Christine followed his gaze to his other hand, the jagged slash in the soft black leather of the glove and the flowing red that seeped from a line in the white beneath. He flexed it slowly.

"Oh… Erik," she whispered, and her own shaking fingers rose to touch her face where he had struck her.

He shook his head, and she was certain, even in the near-dark, that she saw genuine fear in his eyes.

Large, silent tears bubbled from her own eyes then and she threw herself into his arms. But when she did not feel him move at all to embrace her, she moaned and sank to her knees before him, burying her face in her hands. "Erik…"

No response. Silence. But then he put his fingertips under her chin to lift her head, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring directly at the fresh blood in his palm.

"I am only a man, Christine." His voice came from above like the voice of an angel... But not the Angel of Death.

She studied the wound she had caused for a long moment before nodding ever so slightly and squeezing her eyes shut again.

And then he was kneeling before her once more. "You are not going to have any more nightmares."

"But she—"

"Listen to me, Christine. It is over. She is gone. She will not haunt you anymore."

"Oh, Erik…" She opened her eyes weakly to meet his behind his mask.

"Everything I have told you has been the truth, Christine."

"Everything," she breathed.

He only nodded, his gaze never breaking from hers.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and she lifted a hand as if she might touch his mask. "I'm sorry…" But then she lowered it again and instead took his hand in both of hers and very gently began to tug the ruined glove from his fingers.

"You are not well," he said softly as he closely followed her shaky actions, but made no move to stop her. "That is all."

"I am numb when I wake," she continued, her voice never rising above a breathy whisper. "I am dizzy every time I stand… I fall."

"Christine…"

His long, white fingers curled as she set the glove on the floor alongside their knees. She tucked her own fingertips under his and straightened them slowly.

"You are afraid I've caught pneumonia…" She lifted her other hand as if she might touch the blood, but did not quite. "You are afraid I'll catch my death."

"I will light a fire. I will bring you something warm to drink."

"I don't want to sleep…"

"You don't have to."

"I am afraid."

"I know." And somehow, as he spoke those words, she thought he almost might have said that he was too.

She found herself holding her breath as her fingertips slowly slid down from his, past the inside of his knuckles, and almost to his palm where the center had become filled with a small pool of blood as she held it upright. She exhaled then all at once and took up the edge of the hem of her long nightgown where it rumpled about her knees just below their hands, and she pressed it against the wound.

He shifted where he knelt, moved as if he meant to speak, as if he meant to stop her, but then he said nothing, did nothing, just watched as the clean white began to soak up the blood.

She dabbed at it gingerly, and then in the brief time after most of the blood was wiped away but before it began to flow again, she pressed a clean fold of the soft flowing fabric against it and pressed her own hand over it tightly, folding her fingers around its back, and holding it there.

"Some things that seemed so important before just don't seem to matter anymore," she murmured. "Not in the same way…"

There was a distinct crack then of the knuckles of Erik's other hand where his fist pressed against the floor at his side.

Christine did not flinch, but merely blinked slowly and lifted her eyes to find his again. "Erik…"

"Christine."

She blinked again, even more slowly and leaned toward his mask, just a little closer. "Erik…"

"…Christine…" And his fingers finally curled to wrap around the back of her hand as well.

She lifted her other hand to touch her own face as if to brush away a tear that was not there as she exhaled with the faintest of sighs before speaking very softly. "Why did you kill her?"

His grip on her hand was for a moment almost bone-crushing, and then it was gone, the red-stained fabric dropped across her knees. He clenched that gashed hand into the tightest of fists, and when he spoke, each word was measured with severity. "Christine, I am tired of this."

"It was her father you hated," she continued softly, unaffected. "Why did you take out your anger on her?"

He stood, taking her by the arm with his uninjured hand and pulling her to her feet.

"You threw her into the river, Erik. You pushed her right in while she was playing hide and seek where she shouldn't have been. You wanted to punish her father by taking her away from him."

He dragged her brusquely over to the Louis-Philippe bed, only releasing her once at its edge. "Sit," he commanded.

She sat obediently, but did not stop speaking in her sleepwalker's tone. "But you didn't know that when you took her away from him, you gave her to me… When you killed her, she came right to me. You didn't know she would find me that way. You didn't know I would see it all."

He had turned as if to leave the room, but at her last words, he whirled back to her, leaning over where she sat and gripping her face in one hand. "Don't go anywhere," he snapped, and then he released her again and withdrew to the door.

She watched him calmly, but then, just before he left the room, her eyes widened in sudden terror and her hands clenched at the fabric of the nightgown over her knees, drawing it up so that the bloody edges were wet and sticky against her bare shins. "No," she gasped. "You promised never to leave me alone again!"

He paused and glanced at her over his shoulder. Then after a brief clenching and unclenching of the first that squeezed tiny droplets of blood onto the carpet, he turned back to her completely with an unmistakable air of helplessness that sent a chill of terrible fear down her spine.

"No…" She began to shake her head, slowly at first but soon quickening almost violently. "No, it's true!" she shrieked, and her fingers twisted at the cloth of her nightgown, almost tearing it. "I saw it! I felt it! I was there!"

"But I wasn't," he said softly, for the moment remaining by the door.

"No!" She would not stop shaking her head.

He turned slightly, pensively, looking away so that he could not see her, and with one hand, unfastened the cloak from about his shoulders and dropped it onto the chair by the door. And then after another moment's thought, he looked up again and crossed to the bathroom.

"Erik!" she cried desperately, though she did not move from where he had planted her. "Erik!"

But he did not answer, and in the bathroom took his time to wash the blood from his palm and dry it with a hand towel, which he kept clenched in his fist when he then returned to the bedroom.

"Erik!" She was sobbing again. "Just tell me why! That's all I want to know! I need to know why!"

"Why?" he snapped, stopping where he stood. "Why? Why!"

"Please!"

And then he was before her again, once more gripping her fiercely by the arm and this time dragging her straight from the room. She stumbled along the hall behind him, attempting to grab on to his shoulder with her other hand for support as he propelled her to the laboratory door.

"Erik! Please!"

"Why!"

Inside, he pushed her into a low chair just before the now-empty cold steel table.

"I will show you why!"

She rubbed at her bleary eyes, blinded by the staggering light of the room as he released her and disappeared through the door in the back. She could see absolutely nothing at first, but then, just as the harshness began to come into focus, he emerged again, and slammed something on the high table directly before her face that made her jump with the earsplitting crack of solid glass against steel.

"This is why!" he cried, and he snatched her hands from her face, forcing her forward so that she had no choice but to see what was there in that heavy glass jar.

A pink and grey human brain, just the right size for a child, bounced and bobbed where it floated in sickeningly dirty green liquid that nauseated her with its smell even through the seal of the container. Straggled tendons fluttered like the tentacles of a sea creature as the black of dead blood vessels bulged and popped through the tissue.

A flip of Erik's hand rotated the jar so that Christine had a perfect view then of the growth on one side marring the smooth young wrinkles. It oozed from the dull pinkish color, the head of a bulging yellow-white worm drinking in the stagnant, stinking swamp of the fluid, a parasite feasting on the very mind of a child, devouring her from the inside out.

"She died from a tumor in the brain, Christine. That is why. That is all."

Christine gagged and her hands jerked free from Erik's grip to cover her mouth, but she could not look away.

"This is all I know. This is all you know. Everything else is only in your mind."

She shook her head slowly, but she still said nothing. Her fingers crept up her face to cover her nose. Her vision was already swimming from the smell, but she still did not look away.

"I was not there. You were not there." His hand gripped the jar again. "This is reality. Your nightmares will never be."

But as he moved to take it away, her hands shot out and stopped his arm. Her fingertips dug sharply into his sleeve and she turned her face up to meet his eyes.

"That's hers?" she whispered. "That's really her?"

He nodded stiffly.

"Oh, Erik… Oh…" She released his arm and sank back where she sat as a gradually heavy wave of acceptance overpowered her. "Oh… Oh... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry… Oh…"

And then she began to weep, but he was not alarmed, for they each knew, she was finally weeping for reality.