Chapter Seven

Erik.

I dreamed that I was running through the Brooklyn streets, breathing heavily, in pursuit of something that was always just out of my sight. The sound of my footfalls pounding the road echoed across the tall buildings, and then I was staring into the darkness of my own bedroom, blinking into wakefulness. The pounding noise continued, not as rhythmic as footsteps, and eventually my brain recognised the sound of someone knocking on my apartment door. I sat up, scrambling on the bedside table for my mask and the box of matches.

"One moment!"

I did not know if my nocturnal visitor could hear me through my closed bedroom and apartment doors, but the knocking ceased. It was another thirty seconds before I opened my apartment door, mask and wig firmly in place, candle in hand.

"Mrs Johnson?"

She was also in her night things, her hair falling in silver ribbons around her shoulders, also carrying a candle.

"Mr Danton, it's Miss Giry!"

"What do you mean?"

"She's screaming—I think she's in trouble!"

I seized the ring of master keys from the bureau beside the front door, and started down the stairs, swift on my bare feet, my nightshirt fluttering around my calves.

It was unlikely that some villain had forced his way into the Grand Circle, but not impossible. I could hear muffled cries from Meg's apartment when I reached her floor, sounds of distress, and I unlocked her front door, entering with Mrs Johnson on my heels. I fumbled on the wall to find the switch for the gas lights, turning them up to the highest point so that light filled the drawing room, and passed my candle to Mrs Johnson. There was no intruder, no open windows, no visible threat. Meg's bedroom door was open, but the girl herself was asleep on the sofa, twisted in an over-sized pale blue blanket. She was wearing a nightgown, her blonde hair loose, a book dropped to the floor. There was an empty glass of wine and a half-empty bottle of merlot next to a vase of flowers on the coffee table beside her. Her pale face was streaked with tears and she was still making incoherent screams, partial words cut off by terror.

"Meg?" I crossed the room, struggling with the blanket she was tangled in. Mrs Johnson was looking around anxiously, searching for unwanted guests as I shook Meg by the shoulders. "Meg, wake up."

"Should I fetch the doctor?" My secretary fluttered around me in agitation.

"Yes, do."

I knew that Meg suffered from horrendous nightmares several times a year, but had only witnessed them twice. The first time was when we had been living in my childhood home in Normandy. I had been half asleep in the drawing room when Meg raced through it, looking like a panicked ghost in her nightdress, hyperventilating and struggling to open the door that leg to the garden. It was that night when she told me that she had murdered the Comte Philippe de Changy. The Comte, brother of my love rival, had been blackmailing her. He had threatened to tell the gendarmes that Meg and her parents not only knew the Phantom of the Opera, but had rescued and assisted him. He had stuck a bargain that he never intended to keep; Meg's virginity for his silence. She had led him into the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House, to the concealed trapdoor that led to my chamber of mirrors, a floor below. If it was not the fall that killed him, then the dynamite I had placed throughout the building, razing it to the ground, had ensured his demise. When he was discovered, the authorities and the press had assumed that the remains belonged to the Phantom, quite the boon for me. But Meg blamed herself for the Comte's death, and it layered another shadow onto her dark soul. The second time I saw Meg in the grips of such a nightmare, she had been suffering from morphine withdrawal, and I had mistaken it for one of the side effects.

I pulled Meg into a sitting position as Mrs Johnson left the apartment. "Come on, little dancer, it's all right now."

Even in sleep she looked so afraid that I understood how one might be said to die of it. Looking around, I lowered Meg's trembling form and reached for the vase of flowers. I set the dying blooms on the coffee table, and tipped the vase over her head. It contained a surprising amount of water, and Meg gasped and spluttered as it cascaded over her head and shoulders, her dark eyes opening wide with shock.

"It's all right, Meg. Deep breaths now."

She gasped like a landed fish.

"Deep breaths… there's a good girl."

Meg was still shaking, struggling back into wakefulness.

"I—I—" Her hands wiped the water from her face and sodden hair.

"You were having a nightmare."

Her eyes filled with fresh tears. "He was making me choose!"

"It wasn't real, and it's over now."

Mrs Johnson came into the room, followed by Dr Wilhelm Gotreich, carrying his medical bag.

"No!" Meg gasped, fighting from my hold and standing, placing the sofa between herself and the doctor. "You keep away from me!"

"Miss Giry," Gotreich kept his voice calm. "Do you need medical assistance?"

"I don't need you!" her voice was still trembling. "You keep away!"

"You know that she is phobic," I reminded him. "Please stay, but keep your distance for the time being. Mrs Johnson, will you get Miss Giry a glass of water please?"

"What are you all doing here?" Meg demanded.

"Mrs Johnson heard you screaming," I nodded to the drawing room wall that separated Mrs Johnson's apartment from Meg's. "She thought you were being attacked."

"I did not mean to intrude on your privacy," Mrs Johnson passed Meg a tumbler of water. Meg sipped, the glass clinking against her teeth.

"Thank you for your concern, but it was just a nightmare—what are you doing?!"

This, directed at Wilhelm Gotreich, who had begun to cross the drawing room.

"I am going to fetch you a towel," there was infinite patience in his tone.

"Oh…" Meg ran a hand over her wet hair, as though she had forgotten the water that caused her nightgown to cling to her torso. The doctor returned from the bathroom and passed the towel to Mrs Johnson, who in turn placed it around Meg's shoulders, gently patting her hair, and even that made Meg jump before she allowed this small kindness.

"Do you want the fire lit, dear? You're shivering." Mrs Johnson nodded to the dark hearth, but the girl shook her head. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Not unless you can undo the past," Meg murmured. "I'm safe now, thank you, Mrs Johnson."

The older woman glanced between us uncertainly.

"It's all right," I assured her and looked at Dr Gotreich over her shoulder. "I'll take care of Meg now."

"I am going to leave you a small dose of laudanum," Gotreich said, and Meg snapped the reply:

"I don't want any of your medications! I… I know you mean to be kind, but I don't want any of it."

"I am going to leave it for you nevertheless. If you change your mind, you can take it."

"Thank you, doctor," I replied. "I'll see that she takes it if she needs it. Come, Meg, come here and sit."

The sofa had, of course, been dampened, so I led Meg to the armchair next to the fireplace. As Meg patted her hair, trying to absorb the water, I took the blanket from her bed and draped it around her shoulders. Mrs Johnson collected up the light blue blanket and unbuttoned the sofa's cushion covers, hanging them over the bathtub so that they could dry. Dr Gotreich took his medical bag over to the table, and decanted a small amount of laudanum into a phial, diluting it and then corking it. He lifted it to show me without speaking, and I nodded in acknowledgement as he placed it in the table's centre.

"Thank you," Meg stood up, looking at each of us in turn. She seemed unsteady on her feet, so I put a hand under her elbow and she clutched the blanket around her as though it was a cloak against the snow falling heavily outside the windows. "Thank you for coming to help me, even though I wasn't in danger. Even though I don't deserve—"

She suddenly buried her face in her hands and I drew her into my embrace, nodding to the doctor and my secretary. As they left, I stroked my hair over her hair, as if I was petting a cat. Gradually, she lowered her hands and her arms moved around me, returning the embrace in a desperate need for comfort as she buried her face in my shoulder.

"You need not feel guilty," I told her, still stroking her hair. "They want to help you when you are in distress. As do I."

"I feel so humiliated!" she wept. "I am a grown woman, this shouldn't happen to me anymore!"

"Everyone has nightmares," I assured her. "But they always come to an end. Get into bed now, and know that there is nothing to fear."

I guided her towards her bedroom, pausing to pluck the vial of laudanum from the table.

"Do you want to take this?"

"I do not," she spat, and I placed it back on the table. "But will you stay with me until I fall asleep?"

"If you wish," I replied, and turned off the gas lights. After a moment to allow my vision to adjust, I continued towards the bedroom. As we entered, I reached to turn on the gas light in here, but she caught my wrist.

"Leave it off. Close the door."

I did as she asked, and the darkness grew even darker.

"Can you see anything?" I could make out the shapes of herself and her bedroom furniture in shades of grey, but my eyesight in darkness has always been as sharp as a cat's, or so I have been told.

"I can't see anything," she told me. "But I know my own bedroom well enough."

Meg's curtains had been lined with some dark fabric so that the moonlight, the snow-light, only entered the room by the gaps where the curtains did not quite meet each other or the walls. My eyes adjusted again, and I saw Meg reach out, move cautiously into the room, find her bearings as she bumped into the bed. She moved to the head, shucked the blanket and the towel from her shoulders, and then pulled the nightgown over her head.

I looked up at the ceiling, even though she was nothing but a shape in the darkness. I could hear the rustle of fabric, then it went quiet, and there was a touch on my arm. Meg was in front of me, a charcoal grey shape against the lighter grey of her curtained windows.

"You said you would stay with me," her words were soft.

"I did."

"Then please… please stay."

Her other hand moved to my shoulder and pressed so that I leant forward, and then Meg Giry's lips met mine, a spark of fire between us, my mask pressing against her skin. It lasted for only a few seconds, before she pulled back.

"I'm sorry." She sounded close to tears. My hands reached out, encountered bare skin, and then our lips were together again, and I do not know whether she initiated the kiss, or whether I did. What was I doing? This was Meg Giry, who I had known throughout her life, who I had physically delivered into this world, and who now had her arms around me in a fierce embrace as my fingers tangling in her damp hair. This was unwise, and it was my turn to break the kiss.

"Meg, I—"

"Please, Erik," she whispered. "Please don't reject me."

And I bent down, and kissed her again. It was unwise, yes, but there are occasions when wisdom is simply discarded and the body takes over. I was clothed in nothing but my nightshirt and Meg had removed hers, and I felt the shape of her body as she kissed me back, allowed me to the wrap my arms around her, to mould our bodies together, working out the logistics of the coupling I knew was to follow.

This is Meg Giry.

I ignored the intrusive voice in my head as I continued to kiss her, eyes closing and senses becoming overwhelmed with the taste of her. She let me press her against the wall, to lift her in compensation for the difference in our heights, and felt her wrap her legs around my waist.

I am not a virgin, but it was late in my life when I had lost my sexual innocence. She was not a virgin either, and for a fleeting moment I remembered how incensed I had been when I had learned that Meg was having consensual sex with the man who would then become her fiancé. Had my anger been, as she had insinuated, due to the fact that her virginity had not been surrendered to me? No. For so many years I had struggled to see Meg as the grown woman she was, rather than the child she had once been. I had not considered that she could be an object of sexual desire. She was not the one I had wanted in my bed. How could it be that she would invite me into hers?

Other men are not as in control of their vices as I am. Wherever I have been on my travels, I have met men who cannot seem to see the world through a haze of lust. It is not that I do not have urges, my body reacting to the presence of a beautiful woman in my presence as would any healthy man's, but I have learned to channel those feelings into other areas of my life. Into my music.

Meg gave a noise like a whimper, and I realised that I might be crushing her. I placed her back on her feet, and she took hold of my hand, and led me to her bed. I let her push me to a sitting position, and then could not restrain my worries any further.

"Meg, are you sure—"

"Shh," she pressed her fingers against my lips. "Don't speak. Let there be no words, no thoughts. Please, let us both just feel. Let us feel connected to another person, just for one night. I can't stand feeling so alone."

Her words pierced right into my solar plexus. Meg's soul dwelt in darkness, I knew, but I had never realised that she might feel as lonely and freakish as I did. I cupped her cheek in my hand.

"You are not alone."

I helped her to pull my nightshirt off over my head, and then gently pressed her down onto her back. It was an automatic reaction when I felt her fingers touch the edge of my mask, hover around the line of my wig, to reach out and catch her wrist. They were so much a part of me now that even though I sat there without a scrap of clothing, my muscles taught with desire, I only felt truly naked without them.

"Don't—"

"I can't see you," she reminded me. "But I know that you can see me. I am completely exposed to you, Erik. Grant me the same courtesy."

And so I let her remove my mask and wig, my shields against the world and its cruelties. She was blinded by the darkness, but I let the tips of her fingers explore the topography of my deformed side and balding scalp. To my amazement, I found that there were tears in my eyes, and was thankful that she could not see.

There was a routine to lovemaking, I was sure. Throughout my life I had been an indiscriminate reader, and the furthering of my sexual knowledge came from fiction and non-fiction alike. Lust was not just a male sin, but a female one as well, and a woman was quite capable and deserving of pleasure from the exchange. I explored Meg's body with hands and lips, familiarising myself with the body of someone who was most definitely a grown woman. Throat, from which I had coached a singing voice that might still become remarkable. Breasts, a feature that I had never been able to help noticing—I am a healthy male, after all—abdomen, with firm muscles honed from almost two decades of dance training.

The sounds she made told me where she liked to be touched, caressed, and I kissed my way to her centre, permitting myself to taste her. I allowed her to guide me to her pleasure, and when she had achieved a shuddering climax, could restrain my own desire no longer.

At first, I worried that I was hurting her, but when Meg wrapped her arms around me, her fingernails lightly scratching my skin, I let my instincts take over. In these minutes, this eternity, it did not matter that I was a disfigured pariah with a background in murder. It did not matter that she was working through grief and struggling to find her place in the world. In the dark, we were simply a man and a woman, seeking comfort in this most primal of connections. There was no guilt, no embarrassment, just the two of us and the waves of pleasure, building towards climax.

Bodies entwined, limbs linked, our hands clasped each other on the sheets. She reached the peak first, and it was all I could do to control myself, to pull away before my own release overwhelmed me. God, the relief, after so long, I could not suppress the cry from my throat.

Meg was still trembling with the aftermath of pleasure, and I could not think what to do next, what the correct etiquette for this bizarre situation was. I shifted further away, feeling red heat begin to flood my body as shame tried to scratch at my conscience. Once, I had been prepared to wait for a wife before engaging in intercourse, my Catholic upbringing worming its way into my disastrous attempts at courtship. I had found her, fought to possess her, and let her go when I finally realised that her heart belonged to another. Some of my attitudes had changed after that. I was more in control of my urges than most men, if the conversations I heard around me were true, but that overwhelming ache of loneliness had been burning in my body for years.

"Don't leave me," Meg's voice was soft, sleepy, sated, or so I hoped. "Please don't leave me here alone."

She reached out for me in the dark and drew me back down beside her, so that my head lay on her breast, my ruined side rested over her pounding heartbeat. Her fingers stroked my wispy hair, feather light, and I listened as her heartbeat slowed, her breathing altered, and when I was sure that she slept, allowed myself to sink into satisfied, blissful sleep.