Chapter 1: Think Of Me
The candles had all gone out. Silence and shadowy darkness replaced the noise and flickering lights of only a few moments before. But to Erik, it seemed a lifetime ago.
As the soft sound of the music box played, he buried his face in his hands. The damned melody repeated over and over, mocking him as it did so.
Masquerade…hide your face so the world will never find you.
Hide your face…hide your face…hide your face…
The world will never find you…never find you…never find you…
No, the world would never have found him. But in a burst of utter foolishness, he had tried to gain the world, and now had lost his soul. He sat there, amidst the ruins of a life that he should never have tried to rebuild, and he cried. The sound of the water lapping against the sides of the boat was small comfort to him, for when the sound ceased it meant that his beloved Christine would be lost to him forever.
Past the point of no return…
It had been naught but an hour ago that he had sung to Christine his song of passion and desire, part of an opera he had written himself—for her. And though he had sung of reaching the point of no return, he knew that he had reached that point long before he had held her face in his hands and sang his final, passionate plea for her love.
Anywhere you go, let me go too. Christine, that's all I ask of…
He had fallen in love with her, given her his music, his heart and his soul, killed for her and risked his life for her…and she had betrayed him. For Raoul.
A spasm of hatred for the Viscomte took hold of him. That man, with his title and his flawless good looks, could have any woman that he wanted. There must be dozens of wealthy fathers who desired to match their daughters with such a man. So why would Raoul choose a poor, orphaned chorus girl turned star soprano to marry?
But the answer was obvious. Raoul had seen Christine's loneliness, her sweet and innocent soul, her unparalleled beauty and heard her angelic voice, as Erik himself had.
"She is mine!" he whispered harshly into the darkness. "I made her, I taught her. She would be nothing without me. She belongs to me!"
He heard the soft strains of the lovers' voices, singing their love song, and anger threatened to overwhelm him. The scrape of the oars against the bank and the soft swish of wood against water heralded their departure, and he rushed from the room, knocking over the table in his hurry.
The music box clattered to the floor and the haunting tune stopped abruptly.
They were passing beneath the grate, Raoul rowing doggedly on, and Christine clung to his arm.
Say the word and I will follow you…
She looked back once more, the remnants of her tears clinging to her lashes and staining her cheeks, and Erik thought that she had never looked so desperately beautiful as she did then, a fragile angel being borne away from Hell.
"You alone can make my soul take flight." He whispered the words almost reverently, caressing that final vision of her with his voice. How many times had he done so in the past—touched her with his voice when he could not do so with his hands, made love to her with his music because he could not do so in reality? How many times had he listened in complete rapture as their voices entwined together? Had he not written Don Juan for her? Were not the passionate lyrics his own unspoken desires for Christine? He had expressed a thousand times his love, his desire, and his longing to make her his own through the music!
But it was all over now, all finished. He clenched his fists against the wave of pain and rage, and felt a biting sensation in his palm. He opened his hand.
The small ring glittered in the darkness, mocking him with its brilliance. Erik stared down at it, tracing the lines of the dainty setting with his eyes. Fragile and beautiful.
Just like Christine.
The rage boiled up inside of him, and he let loose with all the fury of the infamous Phantom of the Opera.
"It's over now, the music of the night!"
The sound of the shattering mirrors echoed the screaming of his own soul, no longer entrancing and harmonious, but loud, shrill and discordant, screaming to a deafening crescendo in his ears alone.
One by one, the full length glass mirrors broke, splintering the demonic reflection of his marred countenance into a thousand pieces. Shards of glass flew everywhere, embedding themselves into his skin, piercing the twisted and the perfect alike, sending thin rivulets of blood down Erik's face and arms.
The physical pain was nothing compared to the pain in his heart and soul.
The final mirror, the final wall of glass that had thrown back the horrific fact of his imperfection for so long, broke then, and he stepped through it, the crunch of leather boots against glass terribly loud in the sudden stillness.
He slipped away into darkness.
-
Christine stood at the edge of the lake, her hand clasped in Raoul's, her eyes turned back towards the darkness of the Phantom's lair.
"Come, Christine! We must go." Raoul looked nervously across the lake. In the distance, so far away still that it was barely a murmur, could be heard the chanting voices of the mob, coming for the Phantom. "Even we will not be safe if they find us here."
But it seemed that Christine did not hear him. She was staring into the darkness, and her hand was cold as ice. She was trembling, and even in the darkness, Raoul thought that he could see a tear trickling down her cheek.
Fear gripped him. She was thinking of him. Visions of her, clasped in the Phantom's arms, singing sensuously to him on the stage, appeared in his mind, and anger mingled with the fear. "Come with me now, Christine!" he insisted, pulling at her hand.
Christine turned to him then, and she gently extracted her hand from Raoul's grasp. "The mob will be here soon." She glanced towards the stairs, her face expressionless.
Raoul sighed with impatience. The air was growing colder, and pain was still coursing through his body. Doubtless the Phantom's violence had injured him, and he desired nothing more than to be gone from this place. Let them burn it, burn it all, and the Phantom with it! Let him turn to ash with his cursed music, foul beast of hell that he was!
Still, he forced kind patience into his voice, lest Christine step over the brink she wavered on even now, and desert him for her angel of music. "You are right, Christine. They will not hesitate to kill us along with the Phantom if we tarry."
"Then go." Christine replied, her lovely voice flat. "I will not stop you."
Raoul gritted his teeth. "What foolishness is this, Christine? You would not stay with that monster!"
Christine whirled on him, her pale face flushing with anger, forgetting that the man of whom Raoul spoke had threatened both their lives only minutes before. "You forget, Raoul, that "monster" of which you speak inspired the voice that pulled the veil of my obscurity from your eyes! Did you notice me when I was but a chorus girl, standing with little Meg and admiring the handsome Viscomte from afar? Did you notice me when I stood silent, shadowed in Carlotta's glory? Or did you notice me when I stood, arrayed in stars and gossamer, singing with a voice inspired by no monster, no devil's child, but an angel trapped in the depths of Hell!"
Raoul was silent. There was no response for accusations such as these.
Christine's face and voice softened. She saw the pain on Raoul's face, and the love she felt for him could not help but implore her to mollify such a blow. She touched Raoul's face, fresh tears coursing down her cheeks. "Little Lotte is gone, Raoul. She left with Father. When he died, so much of my soul was stolen from me. But the Angel of Music came to me, and he filled the spaces in my shattered existence with beauty and music beyond the dreams that he sang to little Lotte in."
"He is not the angel that your father promised you, Christine! Would your father have sent you a murderer to guide you? Would he have sent a madman to guard you? I am your angel, Christine. I will guide and guard you. I will fill your days with joy and your nights with love, and music, too, if that is your wish. Sunshine will fill your life, Christine. With him, there is only darkness."
Christine's eyes filled with understanding and pity both. "You will never see him as I do, Raoul. That is your curse, and your gift, also. His face is twisted and distorted, but beneath the exterior is a soul so beautiful that the knowledge of such beauty is sometimes painful."
"You cannot leave me, Christine. Say you'll stay with me, share with me each night, each morning, just as we promised that night on the rooftop. That's all I ask of you, Christine. Nothing more."
Christine cupped Raoul's face gently in her hands. "You are a titled man, a handsome man, a wealthy man. You have so much to offer the world. There will be another woman for you, one who desires all that you have to give. But Raoul, the Phantom has loved and needed only one woman in all of his existence. And now that she stands, caught between the sunshine and the darkness, she cannot help but choose the darkness. For she is the only light that can ever pierce that darkness, just as the man who dwells there is the only one who could ever pierce the darkness of her soul. We are two beings who have long dwelt in the night, the Phantom and I, and only together can we find the path to, at the least, starlight."
Raoul felt tears on his cheeks, and he trembled when Christine gently brushed them away. "Little Lotte belonged to you, Raoul. And I cannot say that I do not wish sometimes that I were still she. But I am Christine, Raoul, and Christine belongs to the Angel of Music."
Raoul stepped away from Christine. "Go, then. Go to your angel, and may the flames of hell consume you both!" He turned sharply away from her, cursing as he walked away from the shore, leaving Christine to make her way back across the lake to the labyrinth.
-
Erik made his way down the dark corridor behind the mirror, his green eyes glowing in the darkness. It was dank and cold in the tunnel, water dripping from the walls and running in a thin stream beneath his feet. Had it always been this confining, this musty in here? He fought to keep at bay the unexplainable sense of panic that was steadily building within him.
His hands groped about in the darkness, fingers trailing down the walls and coming away covered in slime. He had been a fool to come here without a candle, but the flickering light might have led someone to him…
He had forgotten his mask. He realized this when a cold drop of water slid down the right side of his face, and he clapped a palm to his cheek in consternation. How was he to go above the surface without it? But again, how was he to go out with it? He was instantly recognizable both with and without the mask.
He would have to bribe someone to take him out of Paris, as far from France as he could get. He would…
He had come up against a barrier, walked directly into a wall of rock that dug painfully into his shoulder and arm as it halted his steady pace.
When had the tunnel become blocked? When had he last gone out for food, for paper and pens and ink? Had it been a week ago? Two? Three? His world had shrunk down to his plans for Christine and himself, and he could no longer remember the last time he had eaten or slept, or gone out for much-needed supplies.
The tunnel that led out from beneath the Opera House, his only means of escape, was blocked. He had no way out.
He was going to die.
For a moment, panic flared up, clutching at his chest and choking his throat. They would find him, and kill him. He could see it in his head—the clutching, grasping hands of the mob, dragging him down and beating him with fists, sticks, planks, stones. Perhaps the gendarmes would order them aside and dispatch him with a quick bullet through the head.
Or perhaps they would do things legally, and chain him, lead him to the jail and have him tried for his crimes. Then, after an appropriate time, he would be led out into the public square for the crowd to jeer at him as he walked up the scaffolding to be hung. No doubt the Viscomte and his blushing bride would also be there. Raoul would laugh, and perhaps spit on the ground when Erik hung, and then drive away, satisfied that his idyllic world was safe. Christine would turn her head away and cry, and perhaps she would feel pity for her Angel, her poor Angel…
No! He did not want Christine's pity. He wanted her love, only that, and he could not bear the thought of being dragged before a mocking crowd again, of being jailed and beaten. If he must die, he would die here, in his labyrinth.
He turned and walked out the way he had come, with each painful step resigning himself further to his fate. By the time he reached the end of the tunnel, he had come to welcome the thought. He sat down again, righted the music box, picked up the mask.
Hide your face so the world will never find you…
They had, at last, found him.