Disclaimer: I own the four main characters. Not Erik. Not PotO. That's all. Four main characters and the plotline.

Kendall

Chapter 4 – Navigation and Eventual Arrival

I was really unsure about getting in the gondola-boat-thingy. Not that I didn't trust Kayla and Josie, but… It's a small boat, and we'd all have to stand to fit. I tried not to let this insecure feeling show as I stepped in after Sam. "Kayla, do you know how to get there?" I asked as she pushed off.

"Kendall, please. Even you don't want to know how many times I've seen that section of the movie," she said. "This pole is heavy."

She 'rowed', if you could call it that, until we came to a three-way fork. I looked back at her and said with a hint of sarcasm, "So which way now?"

"Gimme a sec, I'm thinking," she muttered, riffling through the book's pages absentmindedly. Josie, Sam and I glanced at the three passages again.

Kayla came out of her thinking box a few minutes later. "I've got it!"

"Finally!" Sam interrupted. "We've been waiting for, like, two whole hours!"

"Stop it. It's only been five minutes," Josie corrected. "You are the most impatient person in the world, Sam."

"Anyway," Kayla continued, "the passage has gargoyles and statues."

"So that rules out the left side," I picked up, "And I remember there being grates on the wall to let light in."

"That leaves the right tunnel," said Josie.

"Okay, let's go!" Kayla started rowing again. "Monsieur le Fantôme, here we come!"

I rolled my eyes and was struck by a sudden thought. "Josie, question: ((I just finished reading the novel, so this question refers to it)) remember when the Persian first came down here and Erik almost killed him? What if that happens to us?"

Josie looked at me. "We fight back. He's got the element of surprise, but we've got strength in numbers. Four of us versus him, I think we can do it."

"Besides," Kayla had been listening in, "I'm thinking that from the look of this place, it's going to be more like the movie than the book."

"Great," Sam muttered. "He'll strangle us instead. I feel so much better."

"Here we go…" Kayla pulled a lever on the wall.

"How do you know what that thing does?" Sam demanded apprehensively.

"Cause we're at the portcullis," Kayla pointed ahead of us. "And something has to raise and lower it." Sure enough, a metal gate was rising from the water, trailing bits of seaweed and rope.

"I wonder what time it is?" Josie asked suddenly, turning to us.

"Three-thirty," I said, glancing at my watch. "Why?"

She gave me a Look. "Like what time in the movie?"

I tried again. "Isn't it, like, in the 1800s or something?"

"Well, yeah," she gave me half the Look this time. "But when? Like, after the Opera House burned down, or during the Masquerade, or way into the aftermath, like the auction."

"Well, we'll just… have to ask," I said, trying to be funny. Josie snorted, and Kayla finally poled us up to the steps of the lair.

"I don't believe this," she breathed.