The Psychiatrist's Descent

Etienne

She was my first patient in six years.

Three weeks ago, the chandelier fell at the Opera Garnier. Dozens, if not hundreds, were injured – some very seriously so, while others walked away with little more than a scratch and a tale – and within hours of the tragic incident it was the talk of all of Paris. The hospitals swelled to capacity, simple clinics opened their doors past their usual hours, and physicians all over the city rushed from their bed chambers to tend to the wounded.

Retirement had lent me a false sense of security. I learned of the incident from a rather loud late-night passerby outside my chamber's street-view window that very night, and spared it nothing more than a tired prayer in passing for the unfortunate parties involved. To me, that night, the incident was nothing more than just that: a simply unfortunate tragedy that I could look forward to discussing with my old colleagues over brunch later that week. In my old age, I had no reason to think I would be involved with it in a professional sense whatsoever.

It was in the depths of that night that she came to me, carried in the arms of her young beau. It was an impromptu appointment, as I am sure all doctor visits that occur at the witching hour must be, and I could hardly find it in myself to refuse them treatment. All the clinics were full, I knew, and the private physicians were occupied. I must have been the sole available doctor in the entire city – of sound mind and able body unlike my senile contemporaries, but out of practice for a good number of years. How could I refuse this patient, unable to even hold herself up and being held up like a bride in the arms of her beau in my doorway? Thus I was forced out of retirement, and found myself caring for the girl in the three weeks since.

The early morning found me in my mahogany-walled bed chambers pouring over my old clinical notes. My patient was hardly a medical marvel that required intense research, but simply having a patient in my care brought back the unquenchable thirst that had led me to the field in the first place. I had a renewed zeal for medicine and was now toying with the idea of returning to the practice in a fuller capacity.

Dawn broke finally, late with the winter light, and I sighed as I closed my journal. I would return this afternoon and pick up in my reading where I left off. For now I had to check up on my patient.

I had inhabited my quaint Parisian flat on the Boulevard Haussman for twenty years, and it was the base of my psychiatry clinic when I was still in practice. I had never gotten around to refurnishing my office after retiring – a fact that helped me greatly now that I had a patient to care for. It was a simple effort to set up the folding cot for her to use as a bed, and just like that I was a doctor with a patient once more.

Her beau arrived in the late morning with the newspaper tucked under his arm. He visited with her for hours each day, from the morning to the evening hours when I would kick him out for reasons of propriety, and each day he would bring a folded newspaper for them to peruse together. It was almost touching to watch – her clinging to his arm as he held the paper out for the two of them to read at the same time – but I couldn't help but wonder about this daily ritual. It seemed so precisely normal, and yet each day when they finished their reading, the beau's eyes would be filled with such incredible disappointment and my patient's with such incredible relief that I couldn't help but wonder about what exactly they might be hoping to read.

"Good morning, Monsieur and Mademoiselle," I greeted on entering the room. I did not know their names – one of the few mysterious stipulations the beau had made me agree to that dark night three weeks ago.

I could not delude myself into thinking I wasn't curious about the suspicious circumstances that surrounded my patient. She had arrived half conscious, with a bloody gash on her forehead indicative of recent blunt force trauma. I had initially believed her to be an unfortunate victim of the chandelier crash at the Opera Garnier; both her and her beau were dressed formally as if they had just visited the opera. But closer examination had made me question that assumption. The beau, on arrival, had been stripped down to his shirtsleeves, reeking of sweat as if he had just visited a scorching African desert despite it being January in Paris. My patient, even more curiously, had been dressed in a dirty yet obscenely fashionable wedding dress and sported bright red bands of chafing on her wrists, as if they'd been tied tightly by a rope of some kind…

They were, simply put, a basket case of curiosities.

"Good morning, Doctor," the beau replied distractedly, still pouring over the paper stretched open in front of him. My patient stayed quiet. Another unusual point – I hadn't heard the girl say a word since she arrived.

I moved in, stethoscope at the ready, to complete a short assessment of my patient's wellbeing this morning. The metal bell pressed against her back, I instructed her to breathe deeply and then listened to the powerful whoosh of air rushing through her lungs.

"You have some very strong lungs," I commented absently. It was a note of little interest to me, but it bore noting nonetheless; it wasn't every day I had a patient with such a strong command of her breath.

"She sings," the beau replied, still engrossed in the paper.

I pressed the bell to her lower back and she suddenly gasped. I drew my hands back in reflex. Had I somehow hurt her? Unlikely, I knew, as I had placed my hands on her back before without a single complaint. But the reaction was startling – especially since she had barely moved, much less spoken, since she first arrived three weeks ago.

Her tiny finger rose up and pointed shakily at a small line of text on the newspaper, buried deep within the Classified Advertisements section. My spectacles had slipped on my nose so I pushed them up with a finger, managing to get the right angle in the glass to read the line she pointed to:

Erik est mort.

Three tiny words – three words that meant absolutely nothing to me. Three words that I could have easily skipped past if I'd been the one reading the paper this morning.

"He is dead…" my patient whispered gravely.

It was my first time hearing her voice. I felt my eyes tear up – whether from the sheer beauty of her tone or from the incredible emotion with which she spoke, I did not know.

She sobbed into her beau's shirt, each crying gasp ringing like a beautiful tin bell.

Her beau held her close. "There, there, Christine…"

Finally! - a name for my patient!

"Oh, Raoul, I cannot bear to think of it!" My patient – Christine – sobbed, even as I rejoiced in the incredible luck of having finally learned her beau's name, as well. "Poor Erik! He lived such a sad life!"

Two names in the matter of seconds, after a week of anonymity! And now a third – Erik!

"Poor Erik," Raoul, the beau, agreed less enthusiastically.

It was clear to me that I was intruding on a private moment. I was standing too close to the couple to make my leave without notice, so I decided to offer my condolences and leave. The words were nearly at my lips when Christine beat me to it with a sudden exclamation.

"We must return, Raoul!" she cried.

Raoul clutched her shoulders, his grip strong. "Absolutely not! Christine, I love you too much to allow you to do this."

"Let me please, Raoul. Listen, please, I need to," she said. "He's not a danger to you anymore. Let me please bury him – nobody else will."

"And let you return to that dungeon?" Raoul shook his head. "We barely escaped the first time!"

"He's all alone, Raoul, he has nobody else. I don't think I can bear the thought of leaving him alone down there…"

Leaving him alone down there? Nobody else will bury him? That certainly caught my attention.

"Pardon my interruption," I coughed. "This person who has died – surely they are in the custody of a funeral parlor or morgue? After all, if notice has already been sent to the newspaper, I would think his caretakers would have his burial sorted out by now."

"This is a private conversation," Raoul snapped.

"I hardly meant to eavesdrop," I quipped, "but a conversation is hardly private when a third party is standing but a foot away."

My professionalism, admittedly, had seen better days.

"A funeral parlor?" Christine said distantly, ignoring the glares her beau and I were sending each other. "Yes, I suppose it would be the correct thing to bring him there."

"Bring him –? My apologies, again, but as I said, if this man had been under medical care at the time of his passing, he's already been taken care of…"

"Erik placed that notice for me," Christine said, before turning back to her beau. "Don't you remember, Raoul? Before we left, he asked me for one thing – to bury him once he died. Now he is asking me to fulfill my promise. I must do it, Raoul."

Again, they were speaking to each other as if they'd forgotten my presence. I thought on their words. It seemed a man was lying dead in some location undisclosed to me, and was bound to rot away if not for the intercession of my poor patient and her beau. Even more so, it seemed these odd circumstances had all been planned in advance.

Still something wasn't making sense. The gravitating attention they'd given to the newspaper each morning was extreme; what power had this dead man held over them that they waited eagerly on tenterhooks for his death notice? If they awaited his death, perhaps they were afraid of him – the beau certainly appeared to be so. But my patient's voice held no fear when she spoke of this mysterious Erik – only reverent devotion.

"I must bury him," Christine declared. "With or without you, Raoul, but I can't leave him down there."

Raoul's conviction waned. "I can't allow you to go alone, Christine, you know I can't. Of course I will come with you." He touched her hand. "I will obtain a lot in the Pere Lachaise cemetery this afternoon and we will bury him there by twilight."

"Pardon my interruption," I finally said, "but deceased citizens need to be registered with the town hall in order to be buried in a public cemetery."

The couple stared at me blankly for a long moment, processing my intrusion on their conversation once more.

"I can come with you," I offered. "I can sign the death certificate, and then you will be free to bury this man wherever you desire."

I wasn't sure why I felt compelled to offer my help. Perhaps it was just genuine curiosity. There were many aspects of my patient's case that remained a mystery to me, and a part of me hoped that assisting them in this endeavor would reveal some secrets to me.

But perhaps there was something else that was drawing me to this case – something deeper and more personal…

Something that had everything to do with the name Erik.

.

In the forty years since I had moved to Paris to improve my skills and begin my professional practice as a physician, I had somehow never attended an opera. I was thoroughly disinterested in the arts; it reminded me too much of the woman of my affections who had spurned my love as a young man, and even as the pain of my broken heart faded, the habit remained. Still, I was familiar with the sight of the new Opera Garnier, having watched its construction start and stop during the many periods of unrest over the last decade from the safe comfort of my flat. It was a landmark from my window, but all the same it was breathtaking to see up close.

I thought we would merely walk past the opera house, as I so often did for other ventures in the city. My flat was located on the Boulevard Hassmann, meaning almost every trip I made passed by the opera house. We did pass it, briefly, but rather than walking further along the road, my patient led the way to a service gate on the Rue Scribe.

I had already resolved to save my questions for the end of our trip. I knew better than to think my tight-lipped patient would offer me any answers, and I feared being left behind if I pried too much. I was there with their reluctant permission, as they needed my signature to legitimize the death, but I fully knew I was not necessary; illegal burials happened all the time. Thus, when my patient extracted a large skeleton key from the folds of her dress and inserted it in the lock, allowing the gate to swing open on its well-oiled, silent hinges, I simply nodded and kept my curiosity to myself.

I followed the couple down a damp stone path, descending slowly into the underground cellars below the opera house. The air grew colder the deeper we went, and soon the light from the gate behind us had disappeared completely. The path was narrow and claustrophobic; the walls squeezed against us the further in we went. We had no light, but that was hardly a problem as there was only one way to go: forward.

The path ended at the foot of a large underground lake, lit by filtered light from cracks in the cavernous ceiling above. I stood, agape, as I took in the full expanse of the water. Of course, I had heard the rumors – who hadn't? – that a cistern had been created under the opera to solve a water table problem, but the rumors had always been too incredible to believe. I had assumed they were exaggerating or embellished. Never would I have thought the rumors to be understating the truth – this was hardly a cistern; it was an actual, real underground lake!

A gondola was docked at the cavern shore, tied securely to a rock with a sailor's knot. I fought harder against my curiosity as the questions assailed me. How did this boat get down here? Were we really going to find the mysterious dead man Erik down here? Why? And why did this couple, who appeared so respectable, know so much about such a strange, secret place?

I allowed myself to ask one question. "Will the boat hold three?"

Raoul looked to Christine for an answer, and Christine looked to the boat. "I'm not sure… I know it holds two. Perhaps we should make separate trips, to be safe." She scrunched her eyes as she thought. "Raoul, we'll go across first, and then I'll send you back to fetch the doctor."

"What if it's a trap?" Raoul asked nervously. "What if he's still alive, and he grabs you as soon as I leave you alone on the other shore?"

Trap? Grab her? I frowned. The little they had spoken about this Erik had revealed many conflicting things, none of which were comforting.

Christine sighed. "I don't think he would do that… but to ease your mind, we can do it another way. You will go across the lake with the doctor first, and then come back to bring me across."

"I don't like the thought of leaving you alone here either!"

"I've walked this path many times alone to visit Erik," Christine reasoned. "I will be fine here. Now, go, Raoul."

Without further debate, Raoul and I climbed aboard the gondola, and I sat at the bow as Raoul stood and rowed. I did not question how he knew which direction to steer towards. I did not question anything. I simply sat and contented myself to just observe.

"You must think we are rather insane by now," Raoul said after a bit, making light conversation with me as he rowed.

He was right – I was rather of the conclusion that my patient and her beau had fallen into some type delusional madness. What else could I have thought? I could barely conceive of the situation I found myself in currently. "May I ask who Erik is?"

I heard Raoul exhale. I feared the question was too intrusive. He answered at long last. "Erik is… impossible to explain with words."

It was more of an answer than I thought I was going to get. "Are we really going to find him down here?"

"Christine told me Erik lived down here since the opera house was built. This was his home, I suppose. I really don't believe he'd die anywhere else."

This was too much! A man living beneath the opera house? "Surely, you can't be serious…"

"I didn't believe it either, until I saw it with my own eyes," Raoul admitted. "Look, just ahead…"

And I did look. Up ahead, in the distance, light was glimmering on the surface of the water, foreshadowing an end to our voyage. In a few broad strokes, Raoul brought us around the corner of the cavern and the other shore came in full view.

I do not know what I expected to find on the other shore. In my mind, I had probably imagined that we would find a cadaver lying across a pile of rocks, or a skeleton half submerged in the murky lake water, or – more likely than anything else – absolutely nothing. What I know I didn't expect was exactly what we found.

A large house stared back at us as we rowed closer to the shore. It was built in a style I had never seen before… it must have been a conglomeration of architectural styles from all around the world; Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Indian… somehow every culture found a way to be etched into this curious structure. Candles flickered back through its stained-glass windows, lighting the tall walls of the cavern in a rainbow light. How far below the city were we now? It was incredible to consider that such a structure was built right under the nose of all of Paris, and yet here it was…

"My God…" I felt myself say.

The gondola bumped against the shore and we climbed out, Raoul extending a hand to help me. I was an old man and balance was becoming more difficult for me.

"How did this get here?" I knew I was trying my luck with another question, but it rolled off my tongue so quickly I hardly had a chance to stop it. My amazement at the sight was too great.

"Erik built this," Raoul answered. He led me to the front door, past a small yard of foreign shrubs. I couldn't help but notice his tone was begrudging as he said further, "Erik built everything here. He was a man of many talents – a true genius."

"A genius, you say…" I murmured as Raoul opened the door.

The inside of the house was somehow more surprising than the very existence of the house.

I stepped through the entryway to find myself in an incredibly normal sitting room, styled in a fashion from fifty years prior. But that in and of itself was not the thing that surprised me.

I had seen this room before! No – even more than that! - I had been in this room before!

As I looked around, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Everything was just the same as my memory. There was the rosewood gueridon table and its opaline blue lamp, right beside the plush velvet settee, upon which I had once sat…

It must have been a very strange sort of irony that after so many years of avoiding the opera, the ultimate monument to the art form that reminded me so much of my long-lost love, that in the bowels of the very structure I would find my long-lost love's sitting room, replicated to absolute perfection.

Suddenly the name Erik seemed so very familiar to me. My old heart thudded as I considered the implications… could what I was thinking really be true? Did the world really spin on such a coincidental axis? I had to confirm my suspicions. I turned to Raoul. "This – this Erik, what does he look like?"

Raoul turned from me, standing deeper in the midst of the room. "If you thought me mad before, I hardly know what you'll think of me if I tell you."

Oh, Monsieur Raoul – if only you knew what I was thinking that very moment! "I implore you, Monsieur – I must know!"

He must have heard the tremble in my voice, since he turned back to face me with a hazarding gaze. "He wore a mask. That's all I'll say."

A mask.

I closed my eyes, and clutched for the mahogany backing of the settee in front of me. Memories swam into vision – memories of the village, memories of the church, memories of my long-lost love, of Madeleine, and then finally memories of her son – her disturbed, masked son named Erik…

Erik, the little boy who I'd stitched up after being stabbed by the ignorant villagers who couldn't seem to comprehend what he was. He ran away from his mother's house that night… why it took him until just then, I couldn't say. Madeleine was utterly destroyed at his departure, and our relationship was utterly destroyed in turn, and I had fled to Paris but a month after hoping to forget.

But I couldn't forget. I couldn't ever forget my lost Madeleine… and as a consequence I couldn't ever forget her unfortunate son Erik.

Could this be him? Had the trembling little boy I had diligently stitched up truly survived? I had assumed he perished due to sepsis or starvation or hypothermia or any other number of things in the dark backwoods of that foul village, but now here I was faced with the potential that -

Raoul's voice brought me back to the present. "Doctor Barye?"

I blinked my eyes. Raoul was staring at me with concern. No doubt he was thinking I had gone mad myself – I must have grown quiet with my thoughts. I let my hands release the mahogany settee frame from their vice grip, trying to shake free of the tension that gripped me so.

"You said he wore a mask?" I asked, trying to center myself in a spinning world.

Raoul shifted under my gaze, tight-lipped. "Yes."

"Did you ever see beneath the mask?" I demanded.

Again he fidgeted before me. "I swore to Christine I would never tell what I saw."

The tell-tale signs of anxiety were blooming before me in this man. He was notably uncomfortable with my questions. His last answer gave the explanation; for some reason, he and my patient had agreed to take whatever secrets they had with this place and with Erik to the grave. Something dire had clearly transpired between the three of them, no doubt in this very location… and I was not going to be privy to any more than I was currently - without divulging my side of the matter, at least.

I needed to get Raoul to trust me. Only then would he be willing to open up about these closely guarded mysteries that surrounded us like a murky haze. I decided to take the direct approach.

My heart thudded against my chest as I made a quiet declaration - as if it were a revelation to either one of us - "He was hideously deformed."

That got his attention. Raoul's eyes flickered to me nervously, his voice a choked whisper, "How did you -?"

"Because, Monsieur," I said deliberately, "I fear I have met this Erik before."

Alarm rang across his face. His body shifted, minutely, into a defensive position. "And in what capacity did you make this acquaintanceship?"

Raoul was afraid, I could tell. But why? Everything kept coming back to that one burning question – why? Why was it such a bad thing to know Erik? What did Erik do to warrant such fear? Was it truly just his face that scared people still, after all this time? Or had he done something more?

I was a young physician when I met the little Erik of my memory, but even then I realized he was a child prodigy. A mind like his would go far… if not for the terrible disfigurement that shackled him to his remote home. In my years since as a psychiatrist I treated many mentally ill patients, some with gruesome deformities – although none could ever rival Erik's. The effect that these deformities had on their sanity had been in most cases severely detrimental, to say the least. Societal scorn could wear away even the strongest of minds. If Erik survived and was left to fend for himself among the simple-minded crowds of the world… well, I had cared for a great number of criminally insane folks in my day. It was not a hard fate for me to imagine for him; I had seen men go mad for lesser things.

"I was his doctor many years ago," I said vaguely. My eyes floated back to the settee. Right, it was that cushion exactly where I laid him down and stitched up his abdomen after being stabbed. How old was he then? Seven? Eight? And he had run away right after. My mind kept coming back to that. Why had he run? "I believe I failed him."

Raoul's eyes were wide and unbelieving. "Certainly, you must be lying…"

"I fear to say I am not," I replied. "Although it has been a great many years since I've seen him. I must wonder if I am wrong… but there are too many similarities already for this to be mere coincidence. I would have to see him to know for sure." I looked past Raoul to see a door. "Would he be in there?"

Raoul glanced behind him, his wariness with me ebbing. "Past that door," he nodded. "I'll show you the way."

He led me through the door and down a long hallway, decorated with a long scarlet runner and elaborate candelabras on either side. The hall was such a violent tonal shift from the vintage charm of the sitting room that I couldn't help but make a mental check in my head. Erik – if this was indeed the Erik I knew – showed clear signs of disorganized thinking, if he couldn't even furnish his house in a single contiguous clear style. I could only wonder at what other forms of madness had gripped him.

At the end of the hallway was a large dark-wooded door, elegantly carved and inlaid with golden decorations. Raoul cracked this door open just a touch, peering through one eye to see inside. At last he gasped and pulled the door open fully, exclaiming,

"I can't believe it!"

He broke from my side and ran in. I watched him stop and stare down at a large dark object in the middle of the room.

I stepped in myself, looking around with wonder. Inky velvet curtains hung across every inch of wall, adorned with black lace and scarlet trimmings. A table sat to my left, covered with a satin cloth and boasting over a dozen porcelain busts, all wearing an assortment of masks. And most impressively of all: a tremendous pipe organ sat against the far wall, spanning the entire length of it and reaching high into the ceiling.

"What a macabre sight!" I whispered, as I finally laid eyes on the object of Raoul's attention – and discovered it to be none other than an elegant, polished casket. And in that casket –

A corpse!

I crept closer. I was hardly unfamiliar with cadavers; medical training and practice require quite regular interaction with them. And I was surely not ignorant of the entire point of our expedition to this underground realm. But somehow I still felt a jolt of trepidation overcome me, and I wished futilely to be anywhere but here.

I did not want to be correct. I did not want this to be Madeleine's Erik. I did not want to see him in that horrible box.

I looked anyway.

The corpse before me was nothing like I had imagined. Cognitively, I was aware of the passing of time, and so certainly knew that Erik would have matured and grown since I last saw him – but until now I couldn't shake the visage of his tiny seven-year-old form. It was disconcerting seeing the innocent child from that small village now as the tall, lanky man stretched out before me. His arms were crossed against his chest, dressed in a suit made of some of the finest fabric I had ever seen. The Erik I had known had struck me as a rather proud type of child genius… I supposed it was only natural he would be obsessive over his appearance as he aged. People with high opinions of themselves tended to think themselves deserving of nothing but the best.

The most familiar aspect of the corpse, to me, was the mask atop his face. This mask was plain and white, with an uncompromisingly regal expression of stoicism – very much unlike the haggard brown cloth mask Madeleine made him wear in his childhood. But it was a mask nonetheless.

"That's him," Raoul said without emotion. "That's Erik."

Again, his tone – or lack thereof - left me wondering about the relation these people had with the Erik of this opera house.

He did not give me time to ask. "I must fetch Christine now." He strode quickly out of the room, the soft padding of his shoes on the hallway runner echoing in the silence as he walked further away… and then back again. He poked his head in.

"Stay here until I return, Doctor Barye. And – it would be best if you refrained from touching anything… this place can be rather dangerous. I don't trust Erik was kind enough to disable all of his traps for us."

And without waiting for a response he departed once more, leaving me with nothing but my scattered thoughts… and this corpse.

Erik

Ah, Christine…!

It was physically painful to be in her presence once more. There she stood, on the far side of the shore, alone and waiting for the return of her young suitor.

They had brought along an old doctor, whom I had nearly strangled at first sight. He was not a part of the plan! But to strangle him then would mean to give myself away, which was also not a part of the plan. It was a begrudging moment of rational thought which allowed the man to live on for another day.

I contented myself to simply watch Christine from inside the hideaway I had made in the cavern wall. There was no harm in basking in her presence, was there? No, there couldn't be – I had let her go, and I was firm in my decision. Christine could never be mine, as much as it physically killed me to admit. But that didn't mean I couldn't admire her… that didn't mean I couldn't pretend to run my fingers through her silken golden hair…

Oh, and how beautiful she was! She looked nearly more beautiful than I remembered! How she had flourished in the weeks since our parting! I supposed I must have been very wicked, then, to deny her the light of the sun and the fresh air of the surface – both of which seemed to have brightened her to a magnitude previously unseen.

No matter, though. My darkness would never again eclipse her radiant light. She was released from my clutches and free to live in the light of day.

But I was too, now. My hand touched my face unconsciously. I would bask in the world's light with no one any the wiser.

I would not pursue Christine any longer, though. I was firm in my decision from that night. I chose to let her go, no matter how much I wished to keep her, and so I would hold myself to that. She belonged to the Vicomte now.

That didn't mean I couldn't love her. I would always love Christine. My love for her was all-consuming, burning and eternal. It was a powerful force that tore my shrunken heart to shreds, but I knew I could never hope to be free of it.

So I would just have to content myself with little glimpses like this. I would watch her from afar, just like I originally did when I was her Angel of Music – only now I would not speak to her. Or sing to her, for that matter. I could not give myself away and let her know I lived. She would be too afraid, and the last thing I wanted was for the poor girl to be afraid… of me.

Nadir had warned me that Christine and I should never be allowed to set eyes upon one another ever again. He seemed to think a terrible disaster would befall us if we did.

Well, here I was, Daroga. I was feasting my eyes on Christine's blessed loveliness and the world was not bursting into flames! Truly there could be no harm in this. As long as I did not forget myself as I stood basking in her glory, taking in her beauty, longing to reach out and run my horrible fingers through her pale golden hair…

I couldn't help the quiet, longing moan that escaped me. "Christine…"

She glanced around, startled.

I cursed myself. What was wrong with me? I had been far too loud; the dead, after all, only speak in the volume of silence. With any hope she would blame it on paranoia and come to the conclusion that she'd simply imagined it. I would have to be more careful in the future.

Her whisper echoed around the cavern walls. "Erik…?"

My chest tightened as her voice teased its way into my ears. Oh, what a lovely voice she had! A lovely voice that I had gifted her with. It was my voice – except that it wasn't, because it was hers now, and –

"Christine…" I moaned again in response.

Oh, I really ought to have been cast into hellfire and brimstone at the moment of my birth! Curse my depraved utterances! But they were completely involuntary. I always seemed to lose control when I was around my beautiful angel Christine. That must have been why Nadir warned me to stay away. He saw the destructive paths my obsessive love took me in. He knew me too well.

I had to get away. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't look at Christine's face any longer. I was too afraid now that I would do something I would rather regret.

And with all the reluctance in the world I departed, under the cover of the dark cavernous shadows, and made my way back across the lake to oversee the progress of my macabre scheme.

Etienne

My heart had never beat as fast as it did that day, as I stood over the corpse of Madeleine's son.

I was a man of medicine. In my life I had cured hundreds, both of body and mind. In my steady hand I had held up the pen that recorded the healing therapeutic conversations with the pleasantly troubled and the criminally insane alike.

I was not lying to Raoul earlier. This corpse, before me, was my ultimate failure. The little Erik I remembered from Saint Boscherville was a child prodigy, destined for greater things than this damp cellar. And although I recognized I wasn't some godlike surgeon who could have transformed Erik's face into something a little more palatable for the rest of society, I knew if I had been allowed to intervene Erik would have lived a much happier life. The asylum I recommended would have allowed him to flourish, even with his disturbing face.

His face…

Little doubt resided in me as to the identity of this corpse – but the fact remained that little doubt was still doubt. I had to know for sure.

Reaching out, I felt the cool surface of the pale white mask resonating beneath my palm. I gripped it carefully with the tips of my fingers, like a priceless trinket I didn't want to sully with my prints, and slowly lifted it off the face…

It was the most wretched sight I'd ever laid eyes on!

Staring back at me was a rotting death's head, looking even more terrible than the one in my memory. In disgust, I recoiled away, falling backwards upon one hand as the other fumbled to keep ahold of the mask.

Even as I backed away, I kept my eyes on him and soaked in his face. The eyes were sunken far back into the skull, so recessed that the shadows cast by the lamplight made it look like he had two empty sockets instead. His skin was as thin as parchment and so translucent I could see the blue and green vessels underneath. And the nose – oh, heavens! – was gone entirely, as if someone had crudely snapped it off like it were the glass topper of an ampule.

If I had doubts as to his identity before… they were answered with this face. The little Erik from Saint Boscherville and the corpse laid out before me in this dreary cellar were without a doubt one and the same.

I do not know how long I sat there, dumbly looking at Erik's face. Not an intelligent thought passed through my mind, entranced as I was by the hideousness of his face and the extreme unfortunateness of the situation. I hammered myself with lamentations and regrets. If I had pressed Madeleine more, I thought, if I had just been more assertive with my suggestions… Erik could have lived a better life.

In this way, the supreme misfortune of this man became my burden. I was at fault for what became of him. Forty years ago I had a chance to be an agent of change in his life and I had thrown it away. If only I had been more insistent with Madeleine!

The rustling of movement from the other room brought me out of my thoughts, and I dimly realized that Raoul must have already returned with my patient by now.

They entered the room – first Raoul, followed by a hesitant Christine – but upon entrance Christine stopped in place with a distinct look of fear on her face.

Raoul noted her reaction, and perhaps thinking he knew the source of her fear, said to me, "Doctor, return the mask to his face. Christine shouldn't have to endure that horror any longer."

But Christine shook her head, quivering even more. "It's not that."

"Then what is it, my love? What makes you tremble so?"

"That," she held up her arm and pointed at the corpse in the casket, "is not Erik!"

The world seemed to screech to a halt with those words, setting both Raoul and I off balance. Raoul swayed where he stood, reaching out for something to stabilize himself and finally grabbing onto a nearby candelabra stand.

"What do you mean, Christine?" Raoul asked, panic crowding his voice. "How could it not be him? Who else could it be?"

"I haven't the slightest idea who that is," Christine said, stepping back from the casket, "but I know that is not Erik!" She shook her head definitively as she spoke. "Raoul, I've seen him – his face is forever ingrained in my mind. I see him in my dreams, I see him when I close my eyes. I'll never forget his face for as long as I live… and so you must believe me when I say, Raoul, that this face is not the face of Erik!"

Christine spoke with such intent sincerity that I couldn't help but trust her on this matter. If she said this man was not Erik, then this man was not Erik. But I couldn't help but stare down the corpse beside me – the wretched corpse with the ugly face. Suddenly it became so glaringly obvious. This dead man's face was withered from death, but lacked the torturous deformities that rendered the face a true living death's head; and - most clearly to me now - the spot where the missing nose had been showed clear signs of posthumous tampering. How had I been so blind? Just moments ago I was completely convinced this was Madeleine's Erik and mourned for the wasted potential that had rotted away beneath this opera house. Now I knew that wasn't the case… not entirely.

Erik wasn't dead. But was this mysterious Erik still the little boy from so long ago? I had stared into a dead stranger's face and thought I recognized it as his… perhaps I was growing more senile than I realized!

"We need to leave," Raoul was saying. "He must have set this up, knowing we'd come. I knew it! – it was a trap all along!"

He pulled Christine out of the room with him, and as I heard their hurried footsteps I became quite aware of the possibility that in their haste to retreat they might leave me here altogether. I scrambled to my feet and, without a second glance around me, followed them out of that macabre room.

They were already gone by the time I reached the sitting room. The front door was wide open – them having forgotten to close it in their haste – and I could only stand in the doorway as I looked out to the lake to see their forms in the boat rowing quickly away.

"Monsieur and Mademoiselle!" I called out, swinging my arms up.

Raoul looked over his shoulder at me, and I saw a quick apology flash across his face. "Don't worry, Doctor, I'll come back for you… once I make sure Christine is safe!"

And with a strong push, the boat swept around the cavern's corner and disappeared from sight, leaving me completely alone in the strange house five cellars below the closest trace of human society.

.

The cavern was cold and damp, and I quickly grew tired of waiting on the dark rocky shore for Raoul's return. I was an old man pushing seventy years – conditions like these would surely give me a case of pneumonia that would be a hard battle to fight.

My mind turned to the house behind me. Its grandiose form loomed over me, taunting me with its presence. Inside had been surprisingly warm and comfortable, nothing like the chilly, humid air that clung to the walls of this putrid cavern.

I decided to go back inside and wait for Raoul there. I would watch for him from the window, so that I wouldn't keep him waiting once he returned. But even as I pushed back through the entrance door, the hairs on the back of my head stood up.

Was it because of the corpse that was still in the house, that we would not be taking care of? It was an unspoken agreement the three of us had made. Our plans had changed, and our departure was to be as quick as possible. The other two seemed to not want to linger in this cavern longer than absolutely necessary… which meant time could not be afforded to move the poor, unfortunate man's cadaver which had been apparently planted to fool us.

So was it because of the corpse? No, I reckoned it wasn't. I had lived in Paris for too long to feel that sort of naïve pity. The holidays had just passed, after all; countless bodies must have frozen to death in the backstreets of Paris and the alleyways just outside my apartment window. I never spared them a second thought then; why should this body bother me now?

If it wasn't because of the corpse – then what was it?

Was it because of Erik – the one I knew, or the one Christine and Raoul knew? Was it because I couldn't make up my mind about if the two Eriks were one and the same?

Was it because the Erik of this underground domain – an assuredly dangerous madman, whether I knew him or not – was in fact alive? That he had set up this trap to lure my patient and her beau here, for some undisclosed reason, and that he was quite possibly hiding in wait somewhere in this house at this very moment? That he could be just around the corner, his eye peering out through the crack in the hallway door, watching me at this very moment?

I felt myself freeze, in the middle of the sitting room, eyes trained on the small sliver of darkness beyond the partially open hallway door. Somehow I felt someone was watching me.

Logic caught up to me, and I shook my head free of those paranoid thoughts. The Erik of this domain was a madman – that much was clear – but I had dealt with the criminally insane before. I knew how to handle them.

And besides… if this was truly Madeleine's Erik, I had nothing to fear. He and I had gotten along well enough, to my recollection. He hadn't been overtly pleased with my pursuance of his mother's affections, of course, but what child enjoyed watching their parent partake in a courtship, anyway? His had been a normal reaction to my sudden involvement in his life. Now we were grown, forty years past those awkward interactions. Surely now he'd only remember me as the nice doctor who wasn't appalled by his unfortunate deformity.

Yes, that was a nice thought. If this Erik was Madeleine's Erik, that was.

And that matter was put to rest rather definitively as something in the room caught my eye, and I moved closer to the hearth to see it better…

In the sitting room of the strange house at the bottom of the Garnier Opera House, I found myself staring at pictures on a mantle that I never thought I would see again – damning pictures that only solidified the truth of the matter… that the Erik I had known and the Erik who had lured us to this house were assuredly one and the same.

The first was of a man who I knew to be the late mason husband who'd died in a construction accident years before I met my long-lost love. He was gaunt, with sagging cheeks but an aristocrat's nose; the epitome of the polished working man. But, more importantly, beside him -

My fair Madeleine stared coldly back at me from the black and white tones of the daguerreotype. She looked as unattainably beautiful as she had all those years ago when I had pursued her affections after Mass each week. Even in a fifty-year-old photograph, her sneering expression clenched my heart. She was a beautiful woman and she knew it, too… somehow, a quality that would have been rather repulsive in any other woman just served to enhance her loveliness to me. She regarded herself as higher above the rest of society, and in turn… so did I.

I now allowed myself to ponder the situation fully as I paced around the room. How was it that Madeleine's son had happened to find himself scores beneath this monument? The last I had heard of him was over forty years ago, when he ran off the night the village people killed his beloved dog. I had departed for Paris about a month afterwards, resigned to nurse my broken heart after Madeleine had pulled away from me irreparably ever since. My last thoughts of him were forty years old and had been committed to the idea that he'd died alone in the unforgiving country woods.

How was it that after so many years he left such a deep impression on me that I recalled every detail of our meetings like they had just happened yesterday?

Raoul said Erik had lived here since the opera house was built. What happened in these forty years, between his departure from St Martin de Boscherville and his settlement in this gloomy cavern?

And was life truly that cynical? With all the ends of the world, how was it that I was to somehow happen on Erik once more in this lifetime? I had thought him gone for good one time and even prayed to the Lord for my good fortune in that - I had naively assumed Madeleine would be free for my affections once her unwanted son had disappeared - but here I was, faced with the child I had opposed, forty years later…

What was he like? Who had he become? What brought him to this life? These were certainly odd circumstances that he found himself in, to be living under an opera house for so many years… and those circumstances were only the ones I had seen for myself so far. His life was an iceberg… I knew the end and the beginning, but so little of the in-between.

I was drawn to him. Not to the disturbed boy, with the cloth brown mask Madeleine had crudely sewn for him. But to the undoubtedly formidable man he had grown to become. I had seen a great many men with deformities like him, left to be the playthings of the world. Not one had been turned out without damage. I had counseled men who had committed terrible atrocities after a lifetime of scorn…

So I was not afraid, as other men might be. I knew Erik; I knew his past. That was an advantage I did not have over the other criminally insane patients I'd cared for. Erik was not an unknown to me, not entirely.

I stopped my pacing as the realization hit. I was intrigued in Erik. I knew without question that he was to become my next case study. It was an obvious move: he was deformed, like so many others that I had studied that grew to be emotionally disturbed, and he showed a clear many signs of that in kind - yet what set him apart from all the rest was the clear intellect he'd shown when I'd known him as a boy. He was a genius, far above me at that time, and I could only guess what that could have meant for him in life. Did his genius give him support? Or did it hurt him, knowing fully well the trespasses being committed against him and knowing he'd never be seen as anything more than his malformed face?

Erik was always my special patient. I treated him once and never forgot him. Now I had the chance to follow up on the case of a lifetime… and I was intent on seeing it through.

All that I had to do, now, was find Erik.

Erik

I watched until the boat rounded the corner before returning my attention to my house… where the Vicomte's doctor toy was still loitering.

That damn doctor had ruined everything! If he hadn't removed the mask, if he hadn't been so damn curious, the plan would have worked! I seethed from my spot in the shadows, burning my eyes on his hunched, shivering form. I hoped he caught his death down here. No, more than hoped…

My hand felt for the catgut I always kept safely hidden in the inner pocket of my suit jacket, and my fingers toyed with the material as I mused. I did not care for intruders in my house. I had traps set especially for them… but this doctor was not an intruder, I supposed. He had been personally invited by the Vicomte to accompany them down to my domain… for some reason. Logically I could only reason the boy was afraid to face me alone and had brought along the doctor as a weak sort of second. Pathetic. I let the catgut go.

I slipped through one of the many secret entrances into my house that my paranoia had driven me to build all those years ago. Unlike the opera house above, my house had no passageways built within its walls; all I had created here were hidden doors and seamless sliding panels. I had no need for the types of secret passageways I had built in my operatic kingdom above; those were meant for spying and ghostly maneuvering. The hidden doors in my house, on the other hand, were built as a last resort: to assist in my escape if an intruder – or more likely, an angry mob - ever were to present themselves and I needed to make a quick departure.

This particular hidden door brought me into my powder room, which shared a wall with my sitting room where the doctor had now retreated back to. I approached the sink and carefully lifted a latch underneath its basin, which allowed an ovular segment of the wall above to become a looking glass through which I could observe the doctor on the other side, through the framed map of the world I had hung overtop my hearth.

The doctor was completely lost in thought, standing right in front of me! He was staring at the two photographs I had on my mantle. I supposed it was only natural he would be curious in knowing who the parents were of such a horrible monster as I.

And then a spark seemed to alight in his face, and he began pacing. I silently growled as I tracked his movements around the room. That was an expensive Persian carpet he was trampling over – if he wore it away with his incessant pacing, I would be undoubtedly obliged to kill him.

Still…

What was he thinking about, with such an intent look of concentration set upon his features as he paced around my sitting room? Was I really that curious of a specimen that he needed to devote the entirety of his mind to considering me? I supposed my house was strange enough on its own. One didn't typically find houses of this caliber on the streets of Paris – let alone in the bowels of the finest opera house in all of Paris!

Perhaps that's all it was: idle fascination.

I stood in the powder room, watching the doctor intently, even as he stopped his pacing and dumbly stood, thinking even harder. Don't blow a vessel in your brain, doctor, with all that strenuous mental exercise!

My finely tuned ears heard the tell-tale sound of the gondola crashing against the shore, indicating the return of the Vicomte. For his sake I hoped the gondola was undamaged. Then I heard him step hesitantly back up my steps, before the front door opened and I saw his head peek through.

"There you are!" the Vicomte called. He extended a hand to the doctor. "Come, we must return! We daren't stay here any longer."

The doctor spared a last glance at my mantle – and, in consequence, at the world map above my hearth, behind which I stood. We might have locked eyes, if not for the thin wall between us.

And perhaps he felt the connection, too, as he paused in his position, staring unknowingly into my terrible eyes.

"Doctor Barye!" the Vicomte insisted, snapping the doctor out of his thoughts and –

Oh?

"Lead the way, Monsieur Raoul," the doctor said, following the Vicomte swiftly out the door and leaving me utterly perplexed.

Just where had I heard that name before…?

I followed the pair out of the house, back through my secret doorway, but clung to the shadows to remain unseen. They were already on the boat, gliding steadily away from shore.

I narrowed my eyes at the doctor's face. If I squinted, and perhaps imagined him without half a century's worth of wrinkles…

My fear was confirmed. It was him… what a sick, twisted sense of humor fate had! After all this time, the first man I had ever truly loathed had somehow managed to intrude upon my life once more:

Doctor Etienne Barye!

Bad things for you, I seethed in promise, watching the boat drift further and further away. Bad things for you, old doctor, if you dare trespass in my kingdom ever again!

The boat rounded the cavern's corner, and then silently - without fanfare – the boat disappeared, and I was finally alone once more.