A/N- Thank you to all of you who have so considerately reviewed and commented on my story, Hybrid, Thanks for the wonderful faith you have in me, I hope I do not disappoint you. I am glad you like the picture, I thought it was cool when Erik came across it too.

Mouette, Thank you for your patience as my faithful beta, as well as your votes of confidence, it means so much to me. Keep up the writing on yours, too, I love them and don't say so often enough. Thank you again for being my beta.. I don't know how I could have gone through another story without you. The comma thing and the backward sentences, honest to God, I talk that way. Must be a regional thing.

UpWay2L8- I love ya, after all these years you stand staunchly by my side, your the greatest friend a person could ask for. I had better say that as you know all my skeletons, right? LOL... Everyone, we have known each other since even before 6th grade, we are older than dirt, and still friends, too. Wow.Hope ya forgive me for that Up!

xEternalxDarknessx- You are so wonderful and patient with me, I appreciate your reviews and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your compliments. I will try not to disappoint you, if I do, please let me know, I shall work to redeem myself. Please continue to read, I have some interesting things in store for Erik coming up.

I must also thank Nicki, she patiently reads all my works and lets me know if I am crazy or not, she has been doing this since about chapter four or five of Even a Mask... You are wonderful and I thank you for your faithful reading of my words. Maybe we shall meet someday my friend.

A word of thanks also to my 16 year old daughter Amanda who also reads the words faithfully and with baited breath so often. She was taken by surprise when I found my words in May and has been overjoyed to read the words as they are written since then. She keeps me real. Much thanks kid. She reminds me that no, teenagers are not something to be afraid of, as my mother was of me. (As upway2l8would say, yes, Mary, but she is not you either, important difference there. LOL...) I am very glad to have her she restores my faith in teen agers.

Merci to all of you, I pray you enjoy chapter 5, and remember, I didn't create the characters of Christine, Gustave, Raoul or Erik, they are Leroux, Kay and ALW composites. I draw my inspiration from the movie versions, though they are interchangeable, so I try to keep the descriptions rather general for that reason, though Christine will always be described with long brown hair and brown eyes, and should I describe Erik, he shall have the green eyes and black hair and leather mask, the deformities will resemble the movie version, I just don't see it medically possible for someone to look like a corpse and be alive, and my stories try to treat as much as possible close to a possible reality. Deformed at all in the 1800's where ignorance was the way and people were generally afraid of anything they didn't understand or know would make even slight deformities scary to them. It was not stuff of horror stories as I see it as much as stuff of ignorance as I believe ALW saw it. And since it is my fanfic, I believe I am entitled to this perspective. Ok, that is my updated two franc's worth, on with the story now.Thanks again...

Chapter 5

Construction of a dream

Construction began within a week. We decided to build in a clearing near the Monastery, but not so close as to have to follow the constraints of the original building. The brothers were divided between the vineyard and assisting me with the building of the chapel. Brother James was very happy when I showed him of my plan to place the pipe organ behind the altar, sunken just a bit and with a thin filmy material hiding the pipes' shine, but allowing the pipes to show behind the altar. Then I planned to suspend a cross from the ceiling in the front of the pipes, simple but elegant. The pipes would face the congregation and the person who was playing the organ would be facing the congregation behind the pipes, in this case the order who attended the masses. This was in part so that I could enjoy my Christine away from their view and to still allow her to have center stage as a diva should.

I held no more malice, it had been a week since I felt my soul break in two at the sight of that picture which so vividly depicted the fact that Raoul was with Christine first and that I had no right to be there. I was not privy to the intimacies of Christine's life as he was; I only knew her soul through sorrow and song, and there was no contest. I had to let go and so I believed I did at last. I was grateful for having known her, as I would not have learned to be compassionate if it were not for the compassion my beloved had shown me. I would carry a simple love for her to the grave.

The construction was going to be fast, we could have it done by fall if we were blessed with continuing good weather. I hoped fervently that it would be so. I longed for my own space and that was going to happen soon if I had anything to do with it. I grew to enjoy the wine from the vineyards quite a bit; it was a good way to keep the ache at bay when we had a particularly difficult day of building. At night I would play the organ and compose masses for the monastery. They were going to publish and distribute them after I completed my third set. By this time they knew my name was Erik and nothing more. They didn't know where I had come from and they didn't know why I was there, but they were very grateful and looked at my presence as a gift from God when they saw my talents. They didn't see the drawings of my tortured mind when it reared its ugly head at times in the night. I would burn them after I drew them, so that the wound would not keep open too long. It would heal, there would always be a scar and it would be easy to reopen, but I had to admit, as the weeks turned to months I began to see that it was possible to be at peace and perhaps there was a God somewhere who had a purpose for me, a God who didn't make a mistake when he made me, despite what my mother wanted me to believe. Somehow I could feel remorse for my past crimes now, having found there was a true purpose for my living. It was easier to look at each of those who had degraded me as naïve and ignorant and feel pity for them and their narrow-minded lives- some of which, like Javert's, I had shamelessly ended. Knowing I had suffered and was sure God had vindicated their deaths already, I no longer feared life or death. I had not come far enough to remove my mask or my hair and maybe that would never happen, but I was making progress. I didn't want to ruin anything; it was too dear to me to be finally at peace.

The construction was near completion. We had moved the pipe organ in to the back of the altar area. Having laid the silken fabric over the pipes to deter the shine from them, we then hung the cross in front of the pipes. It was suspended by three cables at various points from beams out of the roof going from the point of the cross in a pattern as rays of sunshine from the 'Son'. A bit of a play on words I thought would be appreciated through art form. The grapevine pattern was strewn throughout the cross, as it was fruit of the vine as the blood spilled had been.

The brothers seemed to be so delighted with the construction they forgot formalities and began to call me Brother Erik. I laughed inwardly at this; they could not be further from the truth. Still, it was nice to feel as if I belonged somewhere. This was truly the first time in my life I felt anything near a family bond, and I could see why it was so hard to live without it after one had experienced it. I felt so bad for Christine; I understood her pain more each day and secretly prayed for the chance to tell her so. I knew that by now, surely she and her precious Vicomte were married. They would be happy and I would be forgotten, as it should be. There is no reason to continue to miss what you cannot have. I loathed truly saying that, but it was the thought in my mind when the tortured nights arrived and I found myself sketching from memory yet again. These were no longer lurid depictions they had been at first, but they still had a fair amount of cleavage and they would show a just kissed expression on my beloved's face, the last face I saw in my memory.

To further accent the fact that I was far from any religious order's constraints, I could not help but build secret passageways and certain trap door areas, naturally not where they would dare disrupt the Holy Sacrament, but where they would be able to be arrived at should I ever need to suddenly disappear. By far the greatest secret passageway was behind the mirror in the small room to the side of the chapel. I fancied it my room while I was there. It was the only room of respectable size, with a decent bed and wardrobe that actually was a wardrobe, not at box with a bar. It also had a bit larger window; though it would have been disconcerting for me to make it too big, the fresh air was something I had grown to appreciate in certain ways. Windows were good, in the proper place.

The colors I chose to use in this room would be red and gray, as it seemed that black might be too pagan for these holy men. I still was designing this room for my tastes and therefore I had to be allowed the privacy to create this one without the aide of the brothers. They wondered why I had dispersed them to the vineyards when they came to help one morning clearly before work was near completion; I merely said that this was the time when the architect put his hand to the finishing touches and I preferred to do so on my own. I could actually see Christine, the girl, not the organ, in my room; she would find parts of it reminiscent to her old dressing room, such as the mirror. This mirror would be the passageway to the monastery and my room there. It would afford me the chance to continue illusions for the sake of mystery. Call it a flaw in my nature, but I still enjoyed keeping people guessing.

Somewhere deep inside there was an elemental lack of trust in this situation, I always had been starkly pulled away from anything akin to happiness whenever it was in my grasp, and this peace could be construed as happiness on some level. It was confusing for me to decide how to proceed. So, I decided to keep building tunnels and catacombs under the building. It was good work, setting my hands about coming up with shortcuts to different places in the monastery. There was not much of an area to place anything under the chapel. So, I sufficed to have a tunnel to the monastery instead.

One day as the whole tunnel network and the confusion of colors was gradually mixed and distributed along the walls of my room on the side; I finally set my hand to creating the final nail in the coffin of my love for Christine. In admission silently of my inner perversions, I was recreating the exact mirror from her sitting room at Populaire. I carved the intricacies, with one stark difference here, at the top, in recognition of the fact that I was in a chapel, I placed a very intricate carving of Mary, bearing salacious likeness to Christine. For the briefest of moments I even felt self recriminations for this, than I thought no, nobody would ever know here. Yet, I was then able to keep her near me every night through this mirror. The mirror was lovingly and wantonly created in private on my sleepless nights, finished and burnished it was ready for me to hang with the latches and mechanical devices necessary to ensure it was flowing on the hinge system. I didn't quite know why it was so important, but it had to be that way. I guess I had finally given completely into my perversion. As I said before, I knew as I did it this was the final nail in the coffin that was my love for Christine. I have found that my unrequited love is dark and without any compass to give it reason. It is unbidden and ferocious in its need to be dealt with. There was no way to find rationality when it took over; for it was feral and wild. There was no taming it, only mastering it. I was trying; God knows how I was trying.

The Chapel was done in October, we were able to move the rest of the items in and give all the attention to the final touches in short order. I was finally able to compose at all hours of the day and night once again. I would allow them the time to hold their service each morning, I even played the organ for them on occasion, though I found it difficult still to try to be thankful to a deity for anything. Had I after all been solely responsible for my creation of some semblance of peace here? I didn't see God lifting his hand to either build, heft or to design without malice within me. There was no great Epiphany while I was carving the mirror, probably the least holy and most reviling point of this whole creation. I smiled to myself as I went to my little room to get my things ready to take to the room aside the chapel later. I had to walk the vineyards to get some grapevine to add to the remodeling I was planning in the rafters of the sad dark monastery. I was planning on the revamping of the sitting room now that the small chapel was completed. I have to say that the chapel turned out beautifully, it was simple and there was ample room for the order to attend, and any of the peasant locals who may want to enter for a service.

There was a nice mahogany wooden stand filled with votive candles for intensions at prayer time. There was a matching table and box for prayer requests with some parchment and a quill with ink; they wanted to ensure that the order had anything necessary to allow more prayer time for them, as I saw it. Why in the world did they need to waste so much time doing that? Was not work and kindness a form of prayer, why did they have to kneel and pray along with everything else they had to do? Oh well, I guess that it is just their way, not mine, but then, what would I know about how to pray? It was rather ridiculous that I was criticizing them their habits; me, with lascivious thoughts and lurid dreams of Christine occupying every fiber of my being, judging them on what they did to pass time. Hypocrite!

Before I was to silently move my things to the room by the chapel, I felt that I needed to get this walk out of the way. I would take the road to the path that had led me here about 7 months ago. I had not been out of the confines of this vineyard and monastery since. The desire to leave was never there. I was actually looking forward to getting out for a bit and seeing things from this perspective, I decided to just walk and sketch this time; I would go out tomorrow with some of the brothers and pick up the grapevine for the décor then. I was still not quite easy in these robes they insisted on wearing. I thought about donning my trousers and shirt, now clean and pressed, having waited in the excuse for a wardrobe they have in the monastery. I fingered them when I returned to my room to get some parchment and charcoal for my sketches. No, I would wait. I sensed that the day for those clothes would come, though I did find my cape of some use yet in these chilly early days of autumn. Placing the cape over me, quite splendid looking over the robe I was wearing, I thought wryly, I silently left the room in the monastery and tried out my new tunnel through to the room of the chapel. Satisfied that the tunnel and the mirror mechanisms worked well, I was ready to go out the door. The evening was beautiful, the sun was preparing to set, and it was striking to see the clouds against the sun, with the vineyards and the monastery in there. It was worthy of a painting, but since I didn't bring my paint, in fact, I no longer had my paints, I had to suffice with the charcoal and parchment. I found a rock and sat down to sketch some of what I was seeing. It was difficult, but I had to shift my focus to nature to come up with the correct feel for the monastery's renovation.

Lost in the picture until the light subsided, I decided to leave the parchment where I was and walk a bit. I turned around and began to head for the road. The light was fading fast and the shadows were spreading out over the vineyard. One of the brothers would be out soon to light the gas lamps along the edges of the vineyard. They did this to ensure the vines were able to be tended to quickly if the early autumn air became too cold for the delicate skin of the grapes yet to be harvested. The only time the lamps stopped being lit were when they were without the tender- skinned grapes. Then they would be allowed to rest, but until then, there was always one brother assigned to light the lamps and walk the grounds to protect their interest. It really was quite amazing. They didn't have the distillery here at this monastery, rather they harvested here and sent it off to the neighboring monastery near the seaside to be distilled and distributed through the use of the natural waterway. It was easier that way-they could all share in the profits. I was thinking of the ingenuity of this simple arrangement when I stumbled on a scene which would surely change everybody's lives.