First of all, thanks to all my awesome reviewers! Only three, but still, that's a good start.
olinjerad: Thanks a ton for leaving a comment – you're my first reviewer! I'm glad you like the story!
kissbangx3: Lol. I did consider calling it Phantom of the Phox, but I didn't. I also worried that people who didn't live in Atlanta wouldn't know what the Fox was, but if these three reviews are any indication, people do know it! Yay!
Phantom Mega Phan: I want to see POTO at the Fox! I want to so bad! You're so lucky! Can't you just imagine the Phantom hiding around in there? I was sitting through Rent and kept imagining that I was seeing his shadow, and that's how I came up with this story. I'm glad you like it! Thanks for reviewing!
The darkness was suffocating. I wasn't even sure I was heading in the right direction anymore. I could still hear the sound of the audience clapping, though, and that told me that I was at least close to the stage. They were on the fourth curtain call.
I sped up a little. If I took too long down here, I'd be late for the bus, and they'd either leave without me or be very pissed off.
I could hear Jenny now: "Oh, Alex, I know you're late for the bus to school in the mornings, but I didn't even know it was possible to be late for a bus from a field trip…" She'd never let me live it through if I got stuck here, stranded without a ride.
The applause slowly died down and I heard hundreds – thousands – of footfalls somewhere above me and to my right. People were leaving the theater.
"Hmph," I grumbled as I felt my way along the dark hallway. "If I'd been up there, they wouldn't have stopped at four curtain calls. There would've been ten… maybe twenty… but no, I just happened to see this stupid shadow, and now I'm wandering around underneath the Fox trying to look for something that I'm not even sure I saw…"
I stubbed my toe on something and my monologue was cut short. I swore quietly under my breath and knelt, groping around, trying to find what I had tripped over.
It was wooden, whatever it was, and it felt big, maybe a few square feet.
My hand found a cold metal ring in the middle and my eyes grew wide. It was a trapdoor!
I admit it – for an instant, I wondered. The thought crossed my mind. Could I have found the lair? His lair? Maybe, maybe, just maybe…
Of course, common sense caught up with me before I let myself get carried away. Of course not, I told myself sternly. The Phantom's a myth, and even if he wasn't, he would be close to two hundred years old right now. Get a grip. It's probably just a regular trapdoor.
What is it about trapdoors? Whenever I think of the word, I think of something strange and mysterious, something that will lead to a great adventure of some sort. I guess I was remembering the Phantom's nickname, "The Trap-Door Lover."
Well, whatever was going on in my mind, it eventually looped back around to the actual problem at hand, which was that I had tripped over a trapdoor that was stuck in the middle of the hallway.
"Okay," I muttered. "To open, or not to open?"
Of course, being as stupidly curious as I was, I opened it.
Light flooded the corridor. I blinked and lifted a hand to shield my eyes. The sudden switch from dark to light was painful. I waited until my eyes stopped watering and then opened them again.
I could see everything clearly now. The hall that I had been walking through was made of cold stone and was obviously deserted. There were cobwebs in the corners, filled with dead things. Ick. I looked down the hallway in the direction I had been walking and saw that there was a dead end.
Despite the creepy situation, I chuckled. I could just see myself walking straight into that wall and falling backwards, just like some idiot in a comic strip.
With this comical idea in mind, I turned back to the trapdoor.
The room that it opened into looked as dreary and lonely as the hallway that I was currently sitting in. I shrugged to myself. Why not? Without bothering to wonder about what could happen, I slid my legs through and dropped the short distance to the floor of the room.
My first thought was, I have found his lair!
The room was lit by torches all along the wall, the old kind of torches made from really big sticks. They weren't hung in hooks, though, like in castles – they were stuck haphazardly in cracks that spread across the stone walls. It was lucky none of them were falling and rolling across the floor.
I turned in a full circle, staring around me at the place. The room I was in was small, just a cube of stone with flaming torches all around the walls. The shabbiness made me sure without a doubt that this was nothing of the Phantom's, not that it would have been anyway… sometimes my imagination gets the better of me.
My eyes landed on a door in the corner. It was the same color as the rest of the wall and I had almost missed it entirely. I stepped over to it, avoiding a few stray sparks from the torches and a few quick-footed spiders. There wasn't a handle, so I did the only thing I could have done – pushed.
The door swung open. Cautiously, I stepped into the next room.
It was a little darker in here, and the room was much, much bigger. The torches were spread in farther intervals, so that there was a flaming stick every fifteen feet or so. This gave the whole room a creepy feeling, as though there were shadows flitting around all over the place. I had to stand there for a minute and convince myself that I was really the only one there.
The room was mostly empty. There were a few other doors on one side of the wall, and in one corner, standing all by itself and looking incredibly lonely, was a harp.
It was a beautiful thing, old and worn in a way that made it seem loved, not abadoned. It was the only thing in the room that wasn't coated with dust, meaning it had been played recently, by whoever occupied these strange underground caverns.
Out of nowhere, a totally irrelevant thought struck me. The Phantom of the Opera never had a harp. All he had was that organ of his. I've always thought the organ was a boring instrument. Why didn't he have a harp? He could have worked wonders with a harp.
My mind started to argue with itself again. He worked wonders with an organ just fine, stupid.
Yeah, but a harp would've been cooler.
Obviously, Gaston Leroux and Andrew Lloyd Webber thought differently.
Yeah, but if he'd had a harp instead of that organ, Christine couldn't have come up behind him and torn his mask of on the piano bench, could she? Then he wouldn't have yelled at her, and that day would've ended on a good note, and the story would've been better.
She still would've torn his mask off, idiot. He would've had to sit somewhere to play the harp.
I don't care. I'm going to rewrite POTO where he has a harp instead.
My mind groaned at itself in irritation.
I walked over to the harp and stared at it for a minute, wondering if someone did actually live down here. It would be a pretty crappy place to live, considering it was old and dusty and cobwebby, but you never knew…
Of course not, I told myself, shaking my head. It's probably just where someone in the orchestra practices or something. Nobody would live down here. Of course not. Don't be stupid.
Ideas of the Phantom were still racing through my mind. I couldn't stop them.
In an effort to quiet them, I looked back at the harp. I had always wanted to learn how to play one of those. They sounded so wonderful, and watching someone play it was so soothing….
It's so beautiful, why would someone just leave it down here in this dusty old place?
My doubts about someone living down here in the cellars of the theater were returning. I groaned silently. My imagination was always running away with me in situations like this – not that I'd ever been in a situation quite like this before in my life.
Don't be a moron, I told myself firmly. Nobody lives down here.
I felt disappointment spread through me and fought an urge to laugh.
What did I expect? The Phantom of the Fox?
I reached out to touch the harp. I wanted to pluck a string, just one, to hear how it sounded, and then I would turn right back around and leave again. Enough with the shadow and this weird place. Phantom of the Fox, I thought again, smiling. Right.
My fingers hovered just over the harp's beautiful, shiny strings, trying to decide which to pluck, when suddenly a voice rang out from behind me.
"Don't touch the harp!"