Spectre d'un Rêve
Ghost of a Dream
S.J. Hartsfield
Author's Note: This is a sort of post-script to the story we all know and love. It combines elements of Leroux's novel, Webber's musical and "Phantom" by Susan Kay (if you've read it, you should be able to pick them out).
The mask was beautiful. Therein lay the irony. Smooth unblemished porcelain in the half-shape of a handsome, masculine face. Simple – yet it caught the light in such a way that it shone as though illuminated by the light of Heaven. Even in the dark of the underground chamber, it glowed with an ethereal luminescence… le lumière de Dieu. Perhaps he really had been an angel.
She held it carefully, letting it rest in the cupped palm of her small hand. The mob moved all around her, ravaging the magnificent chamber. Part of her wanted to cry out, to stop them. Couldn't they see the beauty in what they were destroying? Somehow she doubted it.
And where was Christine? Had the Ghost escaped with her? The Vicomte too? She looked back down at the mask as thought it might provide her with answers. The mob didn't care about Christine, she knew – they were only concerned with the man who had murdered the opera's leading tenor. Whether or not they would find him…
She stood, holding the mask gingerly to her chest, and muttered a swift prayer. Please let Christine and her Raoul be safe, wherever they are. Then she ran from the chamber, still clutching the mask.
It lay on the bureau, leaning against the mirror. At nights when she would lie awake, thinking of all that had happened (for thoughts of the disasters often occupied her mind), she would gaze at it, transfixed by something she couldn't quite name. Was this the same ineffable attraction that Christine had felt to the Phantom – her Angel? She knew there was nothing to fear from the mask itself; the empty-eyed bit of porcelain had no power. But it held the memory of power… there was no denying that.
One night she found herself climbing out of bed, crossing the small room, and taking the mask in her hands. She had expected it to feel cold, but discovered that it was still quite warm, almost… alive, as though it had just been removed from the face of its owner. She stared at the empty socket under the furrowed porcelain brow and shivered. What had the Opera Ghost's eyes looked like, gazing at her friend from behind the mask? She had never gotten near enough to him to find out – something for which she thanked God. Christine had told her of her Angel's eyes, of the strange mixture of danger and passion she had seen in them. She herself was no stranger to either, but the combination was something unknown to her, at the same time terrible and intriguing. She continued to look at the mask, creating her own image of the Phantom's eyes – the eyes that had filled her friend with such fear and wonder. She imagined bright blue like the Vicomte's eyes, or warm brown like her own and smiled, lost in her imaginings.
Then she saw it. It was there for only a moment and then it was gone – cat-like, yellow, and staring from the hole in the mask. She gave a small shriek and dropped the mask to the rug. It landed with a muffled thud and the socket was as empty and gaping as before.
She did not retrieve the mask for several days after the incident; indeed, she could not even summon the courage to return to her room alone for nearly a week. When she finally did, the mask still lay on the carpet, harmless and immobile as any other object in the room. But she knew better. There was evil in that mask, something terrible and unnatural. She wanted to dispose of it, and quickly, but could not bring herself to touch it. The empty-eyed mask gaped at her like a terrible death's-head, and she wondered how she could have ever found beauty in its cold, colourless stillness before.
Finally she resolved that to touch it for a few moments, only long enough to get rid of it, would be far preferable to staring at it for the duration of her stay in the room. She could not ask anyone else to help her, for no one else knew that she had the mask in her possession. If they knew, they would most certainly take her for a sympathizer of the Ghost – otherwise, why else would she have preserved an item from the monster's cave? She allowed herself to shiver for a moment before squaring her thin shoulders, and she bent to pick up the mask.
The moment she laid hands on it, a strange warmth spread through her, tingling through her body to the very tips of her fingers. Before she could stop herself, she was cradling the mask in her arms, smiling serenely. How could she have doubted its loveliness? The shape of the brow, the slant of the socket, its pure white pallor, its very essence was tinged with curious, unreal beauty. There was nothing to fear from this mask, nothing at all.
And so it returned to her bureau, a strange combination of girlish decoration and pagan idol. Of course she never fell to her knees and worshipped it, but the reverence she felt for it was nothing short of religious. She would even occasionally allow herself the pleasure of removing it from its hallowed place before her mirror and cradling it, almost like a child. She was completely and utterly under a spell that she could not (and did not wish to) explain.
For weeks it remained thus, and she could not persuade herself to change her strange habits. What was so wrong, after all, with having a pretty knick-knack adorning her bureau? She never entertained visitors in her room; in fact, she hardly entertained visitors at all. There was no need, after all… she suddenly felt much older than the other chorus girls, much older and somehow much wiser. It was the mask, she knew, that made her feel this way, but she did not resent this sudden aging; on the contrary, she was grateful to be finally maturing beyond her fellows. Their idle chatter and tiresome gossip was no loss to her.
It was during this time that her dreams began to be plagued by a tall, dark figure. The figure never showed his face (for she was quite sure it was male), but it lingered always on the edge of her mind, never speaking. Often she would cry out in her sleep, trying to speak to the figure, to ask him what he wanted. But she never succeeded, and night after night the mysterious form stayed silent.
Some nights, the apparition would seem so real that she would have sworn, upon waking, that there had truly been a stranger in her room as she slept. But she never told anyone of these dreams, not even her mother (though her mother did not fail to notice changes in her daughter's character). At times when the dreams seemed particularly real, she would regard the mask with guarded curiosity, wondering if somehow this cold, dead object was affecting her mind. But of course that was ridiculous, impossible. A sensible girl such as herself had no business believing in these childish fancies.
It had been many nights since her phantasm had visited her, and she was anxious for him to appear once more as she drifted into slumber. Perhaps, she thought to herself in her last conscious moments, he will finally be ready to speak to me.
He spoke her name softly, gently, and it was a more beautiful sound than she had heard in all her years. She listened attentively, afraid to turn away from him, sure that if she did, he would disappear, or cease to speak. "Child," he said, "you believe you know the tragedy of the Phantom." His voice was unearthly beautiful, like the mask that now shined from the other side of the room. She gave the tiniest of nods, to let him know she understood. "But his tragedy is not yet finished.
"I am dying, child." Indeed, he sounded tired, weak, but evermore like an angel. She watched him raptly as he continued. "I have made my peace the best I can," he said, "but I cannot die just yet. Do you know why?"
She hesitated, ever so slightly unwilling to address so celestial a being, but finally whispered, "The mask. You need the mask."
He nodded, his face robed in shadow. "I have behaved as the monster that I appear," he confided, "and I will never be allowed to atone for all my sins. I daresay no church would let me in to confess." Here she wondered if she should laugh, but the true sadness in his voice wrenched at her heart so that she could not bring herself to. "I have no doubt that I will be spending eternity as a monster among other monsters. Therefore, all I can ask," he sighed, "is to be allowed to die a mortal death with the dignity of a man."
"The mask, child." A long, thin-fingered hand emerged from the shadow of his silhouette, waiting patiently. She crossed the room quickly, lifting the mask gently from its resting place. When she offered it to him, he lifted it from her trembling hands quite gently, as though expecting her to flee. But she stood her ground, watching silently as his withdrew into the shadows and placed the mask on his face.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the ghost's slightly labored breath. She was unsure of what to do; would he sit if she offered a chair? But no, he was moving silently toward her open window. Before taking his leave, he turned to face her, as though he had forgotten something. "Thank you," he said, with a small, stiff bow.
"Will you be all right now?" she asked, feeling very stupid. Of course he would not be all right, he was old and ill and dying. But it seemed the thing to ask.
By the moonlight she thought she caught a glimmer of a smile – but no, she could not quite see his face. "I think," he answered, "that now I will be as right as I can be." With that, he leapt, swiftly and silently, from the window. She ran to it, fearing the sight of his body on the roof below. But he was gone. No sign remained of him but the open window, and after all, mightn't she have opened the window herself? It had been a dream like all the others, had it not been? Many nights before had the cloaked stranger made his way to her room, and she had awoken upright, as though going to meet him. What made this night any different?
Then she saw the empty space on her bureau, and she understood.
Fin