Part One – December 1881
The moment the child was born everyone knew. Everyone only had to take one quick look at the infant to know Christine's secret. Even Christine herself had not been aware of her secret until the face of the babe gave it away.
The phantom had fathered a child.
Nine months…nine tedious, terrible months she spent with the little demon seed in her stomach. They had been overjoyed at the thought of their first child, the first cherubic little creature to grace what the couple hoped to be a large and happy family. Raoul had been happy, surprised a little by the news, but happy all the same that he was a father. But now the child was born, and it seemed that the man's fatherhood was not meant to be.
There was a moment of shock after labor, while the little creature lay between its mother's legs silently, staring at the crowd around her while they stared back at her. The exhausted Christine had no idea that something was deathly wrong at first, but soon enough she saw the aghast expressions on the faces of those surrounding her.
"What is it?" Panic struck the woman quickly as she bolted up from the bed, almost squashing the baby. "Is it dead? Oh god, what's happened?"
But there was no need for either her husband or the midwife to answer for her, for when Christine looked for herself upon the child she knew too.
There was an awkward silence. Then Raoul spoke.
"It's hideous!" He cried with a sick pout in his voice, as if being hideous was the worst crime that ever could be committed.
In truth, the baby girl was not as revolting as she was made out to be. In fact, she was quite pretty with deep-set eyes the colour of dark chocolate truffles that were perfectly shaped. On top of her head lay a small clump of damp curls, each one as black as the coal burning in the small stove in the bedroom. The girl's skin was pale, extraordinarily pale in fact, and a few of her small veins were visible on her round childish face.
However, the right side of her face seemed scratched and worn, as if she had been burned badly. The white skin was a vigor shade of raw red around her right eye, with some parts even appearing to be charred and dead. The girl was obviously deformed, but she was not very ugly for an innocent infant.
Christine was unable to say anything as she looked at the product of her crime. Her hand had flown to her mouth, and her eyes had grown to the size of saucers. The midwife seemed to predict the rage that was slowly building up in Christine's husband, and quickly grabbed the child, snipped the link between her and her mother, and slipped off to clean the babe, sparing herself and the girl from being in the crossfire of the ugly argument that was about to occur.
"Raoul…" The woman finally stammered out, shaking furiously. "This…this isn't what it looks like…" It was exactly what it looked like, and Christine knew that damn well. But there had to be some excuse, something to help this situation.
"You said you never slept with him!" Raoul barked. He was shaking too, but with anger.
"I…I didn't do anything with him!" The singer yelped defensively. Before I said that, anyway…
"You didn't do anything?" Tears of disbelief were falling from her husband's eyes. "Then explain to me how exactly that…that thing that just came out of you was created!"
"Well, obviously it's your daughter." Christine was lying through her teeth, but Raoul wasn't thick enough to believe her.
"That thing's Erik's! You can't fool me, Christine! I thought it was strange when you told me when it would be born, I knew that you claimed it to be conceived much too early for it to be mine!"
Christine just shook her head tearfully, weeping hard now.
"So you did love him? And you went back to him. I wasn't good enough for you, was I, now?"
"I felt sorry for him!" Christine cut Raoul off darkly between her sobs. "I felt bad that he was…I don't know!"
"You felt bad for what? That he couldn't lie with you because you weren't his? That he was a virgin? What good reason did you have to do this, Christine?"
The woman coughed and whimpered under her husband's wrath.
"I…I don't know…I just wanted to give him what he wanted! I don't love him, Raoul! I love you, you know that…I never wanted this…I swear!"
The anger seemed to die in the man's heart. Only a feeling of sorrow remained in him now, and he reached forward to embrace Christine.
"I know." He kissed her head lightly as she wept. "Don't be sad, Christine…there isn't anything we can do about it now…"
Suddenly Raoul became stern again, letting her go.
"But you cannot see him again." He suddenly snapped, his loathing for Erik growing dangerously larger by the second. "You go near him again, and I swear…"
"I wont!" Christine piped up shrilly. "I never intend to again, I promise you Raoul! I never wanted to see him again!"
Raoul said nothing and instead held her patiently. Her cries were childish, loud sobs, and he felt uncomfortable around her, but he remained.
After some time, when the loud crying had died down to Christine sniveling miserably, the midwife entered again. The infant was in her arms, sleeping too peacefully for a child her age, and the nurse had her at a cautious distance.
"Monsieur…Madam…" She held out the girl slowly, looking nervous when neither of the two accepted the bundle.
"Raoul…?" Christine asked quietly, unsure exactly how to finish the question she wanted to ask him. But Raoul seemed to know.
"We can't keep her, Christine." He said quietly.
Christine turned to him, a sudden fury in her eyes.
"Raoul, you can't be serious."
The man shook his head. "You have to see, Christine, that it is impossible for us to keep his child…"
"Raoul, if you carried around a heavy child for nine months straight and then was given the suggestion to get nothing out of it, you would disagree too!" the girl snapped. Her husband gave her a stony look as a response, and Christine could see a hint of pain in his eyes. He did not like making this decision.
"What do you propose we do with it, then?" She asked bitterly, but more gently this time.
There was a painful silence as Christine, the midwife, and even the small child watched Raoul in wait of a response.
Finally, he spoke. "Christine, you will return the girl to Erik. In two week's time, when you have recovered from this event, you will go back to the lair with the child and return without her. You may write him a note, if you wish, but you will not speak a word to him, nor will you speak a word of any of this after the deed is done."
The infant seemed to close her eyes in pain after the grave statement, and the midwife fussed quietly over her, her ears still listening intently.
Softly Christine responded. "And if I come back with the child?" Her voice was sharp, almost challenging.
"Then you will have to pray that the child can swim, as she will mysteriously find herself abandoned in an unexplainable pool of water." Raoul retorted as coolly as he could manage without his voice breaking. "And you will also have to pray for someone else that will marry you and stand your adulterous ways, for I will no longer be that person."
Another silence followed as the nurse present stifled a gasp. The young child's dark, tender eyes opened once again, this time with a look of unmistakable sadness within them.
Christine had averted her eyes from her husband, and once again her beautiful face was flushed with tears.
"Fine." She snarled horribly, burrowing her face into her hands and yanking away when her husband tried to touch her. Her newborn let out a soft moan, as if expressing Christine's sorrow for her.
"It's for the best, Christine." Raoul hesitantly left his wife's side and relieved the midwife of the burden in her arms. He allowed a quick glance at the girl, allowing his eyes to meet hers for the first time.
The small child blinked at him, an apprehensive look in her eyes. She was frightened, but still there was some sort of gentleness in her expression.
Suddenly the infant reached out her chubby hand, and awkwardly grabbed the man's finger.
Raoul gasped quickly as some sort of inhumane warmth ran through his heart. Just as quickly, however, a fury rushed through his blood. So, the monster's child had taken to him? The damn creature dared to touch him, to be held casually!
Shock and anger cursed through his hands and he drew them away, sending the infant to the floor with a sickening crack. He was unable to control himself to remain and see the child's fate, and with a shaking feeling, he fled the room and barged out the door.
It was a dark night, a large blanket of black spread over all of Paris illuminated only by the candlelit streetlights. A good half of the lights had managed to get themselves doused by the heavy rain that pounded against the streets like a thousand miniature drumsticks, and there was absolutely no light at all anywhere near the winding pathways and alleys that normally were out of question for the city's aristocrats.
Yet Raoul somehow found himself charging down these roads, tears in his eyes. His thin white shirt caught itself on something sharp, but the man didn't care and let his clothing tear as he rushed off towards nothing. People were around him. They were the strange shadows of drug dealers and ladies of the night that stared at him. Every once in a while Raoul caught a glimpse of the whites of their eyes and he would panic more.
Finally the harried man found himself alone again. He was on a bridge; a strange pier over a river that he had never known existed. Of course he wouldn't know it was there – Raoul always had been limited to the "good" world, the proper world, the politically correct world of dashing young men with wealthy wives sporting massive, stately gowns and thick rows of curls that lined up like the sausages displayed in the renowned butcher's window on the fancy cobblestone street. He had known manors, maids, fine education and high class, not the damp backstreets that were contaminated with as many gangs and whores as there were rats from what he was told.
But now, even after years of splendor and wealth and orders to stay appropriate, he found himself on this bridge, as torn and broken just as any other man, rich or poor, in his situation.
And even now Christine was just like any other woman! Going off and acting like a common tramp, sleeping with the first thing that would come to her, and allowing herself to conceive a child with a monster! Raoul knew that she had never been taught that way, never been brought up to be a little whore – but she wasn't a wealthy girl to begin with. She wasn't from a good, prominent family; it was bad breeding was what it was…
No. It was the other aristocrats talking in his mind now, not him. Christine was no slut, he knew. She had never been a slut, just an ingenuous, naïve young creature who had every girl's desire to make a place for herself in the world. Raoul remembered with a sinking feeling all the sly and devious men who had promised the young singer fame and fortune in turn for a few favors back; it wasn't uncommon for a worthless, horny bastard to play himself up as a god-sent savior for the beautiful opera girls. He had heard tales of many a man who had Christine believe that she would finally rise, and then slept with her and skipped town before she even awoke the next morning. They had had such an effect on her that the lovely girl was even wary of Raoul, as he was a wealthy man from a well-known family like all the rest.
But of course, she trusted something that she couldn't see. Christine had trusted a voice, a single, bodiless voice, more than she had trusted a dear, estranged friend. This Erik fellow had posed as no threat whatsoever. It was perfectly normal for masked voice teachers to casually appear in dressing room mirrors, apparently, since Christine hadn't panicked or drawn away at the thought of the monster, had she? It was all right for a demon to touch her, kiss her, love her in all his grotesque abhorrity while a perfectly normal man was forced to endure the pain of being refused his heart's desire!
And now this! When he had thought she loved him, finally, she returned his affection by bearing a bastard child. Christine had surely taken it upon herself to bluntly tell him she'd rather be with Erik! Raoul felt as though his heart had been shredded.
What a sticky predicament to be in, he thought angrily, caught between a limbo of love and hate. The world was not the simple luxury the naïve boy had thought it to be. The devastating discovery of life's concealed complexity was messing with his mind.
"Monsieur?"
The man turned around and found himself facing a young girl shrouded in a cheap black-netted cloth that wove around her torso and chest. In the moonlight he could see a shady strip of eyeliner heavily painted on her otherwise small, innocent face. Matted dark curls wrapped tightly around her head. The girl looked only thirteen, just out of the difficult prepubescent stage of life, and still here she was looking ghastly, exhausted, and horribly emaciated.
It took Raoul a moment to realize he was in the company of a prostitute, and a horribly young one at that. Uneasily he backed away, as somehow the child had managed to strike a bit of awkward fear into his heart. Never before had he personally encountered such a…a person of questionable morals.
"Sir," It was evident that the girl did not particularly want to peddle her services; poverty and hunger were the only factors fueling the question. "I…I…"
It was obvious she was new to her profession – any other whore would have been more forceful, more demanding that Raoul buy her. A bit of pity crept into his heart for the poor creature, and he was tempted to press how many francs he had on him into her hand for free and send her on her way, but a small poisonous lust had also embedded itself in the man's mind.
"How much?" He croaked groggily, his mouth moving on its own accord.
"Ten francs." The girl spoke flawless French, but her accent was English. Raoul shakily fished in his pocket and pulled out several coins, but he hesitated. This was a young girl, after all. And, he remembered, he was married. Christine would be heart broken.
Then again, she hadn't had a conscience with her own affairs, he remembered. And this girl wasn't a monster. In face, he was doing her a favor by buying her next meal!
Raoul wasn't thinking straight, he realized. But it didn't matter anyway.
He shoved almost three times the amount she had asked for into her sweaty palms and forced her into a kiss. The whore was slightly surprised – usually she was taken back to a room or somewhere with privacy – but who was she to argue with the generous sum she had been paid?
Feeling only a little disgusted with himself for being with such a young girl, he went further. Raoul could feel all the stern lessons and morals that he had grown up with dissolving with the sweat budding on his skin.
It serves the cheating bitch right. He thought briefly of Christine. She'd deprived him for nine months and he hadn't been rewarded. He'd gone and found his own reward.
It was not questionable for the two to be together on a public bridge. After all, they were in the city slums, where even a once prominent, dignified man became just another scum of the earth toiling and dying in an eternal hell of sin. There was no class, no position, no backround, nothing. There was only existing, tainted, poisoned existence, and the air in every breath served as a weight to pull the miserable human creatures down further into submission.
And slowly Raoul was learning, along with the other lessons he had discovered that night, that good upbringing did not spare anyone an inevitable fall.