The strike began in earnest the next day.
The train station horns did not bellow and the clatter of the track was silent. There was no need to ship workers to the edge of the railways and the coal shovelers had joined them.
Even those determined to visit Phantasma, walking on foot or horseback from the town, seemed to carry with them the weight of the Appalachian silence. Still, they came in droves, filling the amusement park with their laughter and excitement, and tired feet.
Herbert had decided there was no reason for them to practice, as had been their custom, since Mr. Y had taken over the position so thoroughly from him. Christine's rehearsals for the spectacular continued in whispers and never once did she fully complete the numbers before any of the other acts.
It was useless to practice outside the Colosseum. And inside the Colosseum, Erik hoarded all her time like a hungry child before a feast. He refused to share her attentions with anyone else. It had be years, she reasoned. And his possessiveness only seemed to match her own.
And so, with little practice to do and the sun high in the sky, Herbert instead decided it was time for Christine to experience Phantasma.
"What would you like to try today? The racing horses? The swirling teacups? Or perhaps you are quite brave and will join me on the Tornado."
"What's that one?" she asked, pointing to the tall structure where ballooning fabric parachuted couples down to the floor.
"I'm afraid, my dear, if you want to try the 'Fall from Heaven' you will have to bribe Mr. Y to take you. I'll never get on that infernal contraption."
Though she'd been in Maunch Chunk all winter, she'd rarely looked any closer at Phantasma than it took to find her way. She'd never been one for carnivals. And there was something particularly uncomfortable about an entire park existing as a manifestation of Erik's mind. Still, the amusement park looked different, and it wasn't just the mountains of snow that had been removed to show the cold dirt beneath.
A gnawing worry had taken up residence in Christine's belly since Erik's incident with Porter: ever present but easily forgettable. Now, it made its presence known in the silent spaces of Christine's day. The unease rolled in her as she looked at the rides she would have to brave.
Much of the commotion at Phantasma had always been tourists. While they still filled the walkways and their screams echoed from the rides, the absence of the local inhabitants and a large chunk of Phantasma's workers changed the tenor of things. She couldn't put her finger on what was wrong, but something was wrong. Perhaps the strike had gotten to her.
She'd successfully coaxed Sam and Herbert out of riding the Tornado, but was not able to escape the pirate ship. It was a marvel, though she lost her stomach as some point during the ride and was not sure where she would find it again. Sam simply smiled and howled next to her, delighted.
Christine returned to solid earth grateful for the stillness of Phantasma's main street. It was still decorated with garland and bows for the recently passed holiday season. If she looked straight ahead and did not stare too hard at any one thing, she could almost imagine she was walking near Le Marais, her boots tapping over the old cobblestones.
"What is that?" She asked, a dark building with tall, closed shutters catching her eye. It was the only structure whose main door mirrored the misshapen mask at the entry of the park.
"That," Herbert answered, "is Mr. Y's fun house."
"And what's in there?"
"Fun of course."
"Why don't you go inside to find out." Christine looked to her escorts, wondering if this would end much like the amusement ride and she would find herself without a stomach again. But Herbert's eyes were encouraging, and Sam looked ready to burst with information. When she nodded, Herbert held fast to Sam's shoulder. "We'll wait out here for you."
There was no line outside the fun house and Christine had no good retort for why she did not want to enter. Without any good explanation other than her unease, she walked toward the malformed door and through its darkened entrance.
.
The music from an old jewelry box tittered discordant and warped as she entered. The gnawing feeling in her belly blossomed, fulling her body and frying her nerves. Her eyes struggled to make sense of the relative darkness around her. Christine lingered in the foyer, all at once terribly unsure if this was a good idea. It was that melody – she knew it, but could not remember from where. It conjured up other strange memories from the darkness.
Two large hands reached out from the dark and shoved her forward, their touch utterly spanning her low back. She sucked in a startled gasp and hurried away at their demand for motion.
Her feet sunk into hot ground. The roll and feel of it was warm and sinking around her ankles. Sand. She was sinking into hot sand. The heels of her boots did not click against its floor. She struggled against the swallowing with heavy, slow steps. The discordant harmony paced with her – speeding and slowling with her pace. The harder she fought against the sinking, the tighter the ground's hold became.
The darkness was oppressive. The music changed tempo. Was the music in her head? Surely, she could not dream up such unsettling melodies.
Sweat beaded on the back of her neck as the room warmed around her and she removed her winter jacket, letting if fall to the floor forgotten. The scorching heat burned her skin. The music turned to a single flat note held in perpetuity.
When she thought she could take no more steps, lights burst in her vision. Wild, vibrant lights all the colors of the rainbow, changing from one color to the next in quick succession, until she could no longer distinguish the colors to more than a feeling within her. Panic seeded where worry had been planted, yet she could not feel it. Her head was too scattered in the heat. Her fingers trembled against her skirt.
Christine closed her eyes and struggled for a breath.
A cool breeze blew against her temple. She opened her eyes in response and the world from before faded away. She was in darkness again and her feet did not feel heavy.
Shallow light began to fill the void and the world rolled underneath her. She could not catch her footing on the moving floor and stumbled to her knees. It was colored with strange patterns and spun and undulated, all moving in seemingly different directions. It rolled her along the room in an endless pattern of swirls and shifts. And above it all Faust played.
Christine's fingers dug into the floor, trying in vain to steady herself against the motions sickening her. Her head spun and dark spots danced in her vision.
An archway formed in the distance, solid and unmoving against the floor. She braced herself, determined to end this dizzying display and rose to her feet. Like most unpleasant things had been in her life, they were better when you moved through them quickly. She took the floor at a run, never lingering on a swirl for longer than a moment.
Why did they call this a fun house? Did Americans think this was fun?
She stumbled twice but made it to the solid archway unscathed. The moment she touched the feature she screamed. It was warm and wet and breathing. A rush of wind from under her feet stole her scream from the room.
Gasping for breath, she rushed onward, deep into an inky blueness, strands of damp filament dancing and growing larger around her as she traveled deeper.
Everything around her breathed. And shimmered. And moved with a floating grace. Even the music hummed in a muffled, distant way. She couldn't rightly tell which way was forward or back, or even which way was up or down.
Her hair floated strangely away from her body. It was like she was under water.
That's what it was.
She was underwater and the kelp danced and the surface of the water shimmered and the siren's song was coming closer the longer she walked down into the depths. The deeper she walked, the darker the water became. But the song was so pretty and strange, and she had to follow it onward. It enchanted her. The sea had always been beautiful. And the worry in her stomach faded to a dull throb.
From her periphery she saw a tale and turned. Another moment passed and she saw shimmering scales upon an arm and turned again. The mermaids where always just out of reach. Searching for them, she twisted herself in the sweating kelp until her feet could no longer move and she struggled for freedom.
This was what sailors warned about – sirens dragging you into the deadly depths with their voices. Panic began anew when she could not untie her ankles and the kelp pressed tighter.
And then all she could do was hold on as it lifted her up in a rush to the surface. So fast. Too fast. Christine didn't have enough breath in her lungs to scream. She closed her eyes and held on tight.
Her hands felt soft grass between her shaking fingers. The movement of before was only a memory. Stillness pervaded her now. Warm stillness and chirping. Christine opened her eyes, and a golden poplar tree grew before her, bright and shimmering in the moonlight. The wide expanse of the night sky towered above them, millions of stars glittering against the deepest blue.
Christine forced the air in her lungs and crushed the growing panic in her stomach. When she got out, she was going to scream at Erik. This place was awful and strange and dangerous.
Golden leaves fell from the branches of the tree, landing softly on the ground and in her hair. They glimmered before her in a radiant mixture of fall colors. At least the poplar tree was still and lovely and golden and…a poplar tree.
It was a golden poplar tree.
The panic she tried so hard to calm roared back to life within her.
A golden poplar tree was the only feature of Raoul's torture he had shared with her. A shimmering, golden poplar tree with ropes for branches that reached out for your throat. 'Keep your hand at the level of your eyes,' he'd said. He had never smiled when he repeated those words in the telling of his story. It was why there were shallow scars across his neck to this day. She had always made him cover them. She had not liked the memories they provoked.
That had been unfair of her. After all, she did not bear the scars. She merely had to look at them.
Christine search the branches for magical lassos, and, while the tree did look like hundreds of vines of twisted rope, none of them ended in a deadly display. Her fingers rubbed her throat, assuring her there were no threads around her own neck. It did not help lower her fear.
Before her eyes, under the shifting night sky, the tree bore ruby fruit. So much fruit that the bows of the tree sunk in heaviness. She rose to pick the ripest one and found it cold and hard – a true ruby the size of her hand with thousands of facets to create its shape.
She pulled the jeweled apple from the branch and with its snap a cavernous scream filled the expanse. The anguish of the cry brought tears to her eyes. She dropped the apple from her hands and covered her ears.
And then the floor swallowed her up and she tumbled into the abyss.
Darkness again.
Lights in strange places.
How long was a fun house supposed to be?
Christine righted herself from the mound of pillows she'd fallen into and saw her reflection in the dim light. She was pale and scared and – and her face was too long? No, too wide? Too…. She looked around her and several Christine's looked back at her. All the same, yet all different. All her, yet – not her.
Only one panel did not reflect her image. She walked toward it and saw that it was merely glass. She touched an edge, and when she realized it was free standing, she walked through the passage into a new corridor of glass and mirrors. She did not see the imposing figure hiding in the mirror behind.
It was a maze of mirrors and after only a few steps inside, Christine was lost. What has Theseus used? She wished absently for some string. Her own scared reflection continued to look back at her. And then others began to look back at her. It was a dizzying array of bodies and faces. Characters from history. Caged or floating. Still in repose.
Music began above her. Another discordant and haunting melody. It made her skin crawl. She continued walking, wondering how so much could be fit into the two-story stone building on Phantasma's Main Street.
Christine slid between two panes of glass, opening a long corridor before her. Her feet flew across the floor, relief filling her that she was finally at the end of this awful amusement, and she slammed headfirst into a wall of glass.
No sooner did she push away, than she saw a face smiling back at her. She screamed.
But the woman behind the glass did not hear her. She was dancing and smiling, dressed in flowing fabrics that floated at her movements. Her face was wrong. Parts were missing. She looked…dead.
Christine turned and ran, seeing another figure through the glass – a man dressed as a sheik, laughing at her with no teeth. And then another: a merman with bites out of his stomach, a French ballerina with bloody feet, gypsies and cowboys, and all manner of men and women. Some walked, some shimmered in place. Some looked to the distance, others stared into her. Some screamed for help. Did they have souls like hers? Did they feel what she felt?
They were in cages. All of them.
Caged.
She pounded on the glass and hollered, but nothing budged. Sad brown eyes called out to her in agony.
All were beautiful yet had something wrong. Something grotesque. Something strange. Christine fumbled along the pathways, lost in an unending loop. Her mind remembered other old corridors and her body remembered those memories. The fear and the inevitability of loss roared again in her blood. Unable to get away, and lost in the maze of her own mind, she began to cry. They all had her eyes. They all searched her eyes with imploring sadness.
And they all had her eyes.
Tears clouded her vision and the maze got darker.
Hands began to touch her again, and fear rolled her stomach. There were no hands on her. Yet she could feel them, ghosting over her, pulling her under, pulling her to them.
She would never get out.
She would be lost in this horrible sad maze of Erik's mind forever and she would never be free. She would turn into another one of the lost souls he'd trapped inside. His imaginings would drown her with them. She ran – she ran blindly and ran and ran and suddenly she could no longer hear the music over her screams.
.
Strong arms wrapped around her through the dark and she screamed again. "Christine!" Urgency, low and sharp, filled Erik's voice as he spoke into her ear. "It's me. Christine, it's okay. It's just me." She struggled to control her racing heart, the tension in her body still not easing at the realization it was Erik who held her. Unwilling to let her go, he moved with her tightly against his chest to a small door. As ever, he found his way effortlessly in the darkness. "Stairs here," he warned, finally easing the caging of his arms.
Christine could not control her heartbeat or her breathing. Her hands trembled against the stone walls. She desperately tried to stop her tears, but couldn't.
As they rose from the first floor, light began to fill the space, until, at the top of the stairs, they were awash in midday light. Christine turned to look at him, but found she could not. Instead she burrowed into his chest and stared blankly at the sun-filled wall. She needed some time to get her barring. Erik's hand lightly rubbed her back – up and down, up and down – giving her a meter to slow her breathing to.
When it finally evened and she lifted herself away, he spoke. "My workshop," he gestured at the attic space. It was filled to the brim with mechanical things and contraptions. She was again overwhelmed. But not at the strangeness. It was the mundaneness of the place that overwhelmed her. So different from below. So full of light, unlike times before. Christine couldn't help but remember his other workshop – how dark and cold it had been. Had this been what was in the shadows all along?
"Thank you. For the rescue. I'm not sure what came over me." An unbidden blush filled her cheeks. Would Erik be disappointed in her reaction to his creations? Of course he would.
He took his seat before the broad workbench at the center of the room, hunching over a mess of cogs and circuits. They sat in silence for a time: Christine regathering herself. She'd been right before. She was never one for carnivals.
He dared not to look up from his work, "I'm sorry you found the Fun House unpleasant." His voice was off. Hollow. It struggled to find the familiar warmth Christine had grown so accustomed to.
"I find that name infinitely misleading. What were they? In the cases?"
"You know they are not real. Not real people."
"They moved. In the water. In the cages."
"It's all cogs and wires. Surely you've seen the posters for the amazing automatons. I know you've seen the Singing Siren." His head swung to the side, trying to see her in his periphery, "You know as well as anyone I can make lifeless things look very lifelike."
"They are unnerving." She swallowed, her throat dry. "And the mirrors? The floors?"
"All tricks of the light. Those you should know well from before."
His tone burned with condescension and Christine bristled at the hearing of it. He was implying she was still a scared petulant child, but she knew better. That Fun House was unlike any carnival ride she'd ever been on. Indignation rose within her. "And the poplar tree?" she accused. Her tone careful, but critical.
He eyes found hers then, seeing the truth she held in them.
"So, it seems, the Vicomte did tell you something of his journey to the Underworld." He tossed the contraption in his hands aside, turning to look at her. "Did you find none of it beautiful? None of it beguiling? Was there not some small part of it you could find to love?" She was stunned at the passion behind his words, and when silence lingered in the air, he began to pace. "All this I've built. All these things I've created. How can you understand when everything you are is beautiful? How can you know how wondrous strange imaginings can be? Can you not see that sometimes there can be beauty in the ugly things? That not all the goodness fills the beautiful things?"
She winced at his words, each one precise in its infliction of pain. With clear purpose they struck true to her core. "Are the things I create monstrous? I am monstrous, Christine?" And there the question was before her, a gauntlet tossed at her feet. The Phantom of the Opera finally demanded his reckoning.
"You are no more monstrous than I am."
He scoffed, "Don't be a child. I created all you see. I am the things you see. They are as a part of me as my mind and music, as my face and mask. If you cannot love them, there is no hope you will ever love me."
But they'd said the words. He'd bound them with them.
And still, he didn't believe it. "Is that what you want from me? For me to love you." It was a stupid question.
"Broken and cursed as I am. Greedy and needful as I am. Yes." He stopped pacing, and turned his back to the window, pulling the mask from his face. "I thought if I brought you here, I could live half a life – so long as I could hear you sing again, so long as you were near me. But now I've kissed you and touched you and heard you speak like a lover. I want everything again."
"Erik, there is nothing in me to love." Her voice was so quiet it made him take a step toward her. "There is so much beauty and strangeness you command. Somehow you defy God and have things both wondrous and beautiful. But me? I have a beautiful face and a beautiful voice, but inside I am rotten and cold and broken. There is no beauty underneath."
His gaze seemed to mirror her own agony. Her neck ached, but she could not will her muscles into submission.
"So this is your tactic this time? Instead of me not being worthy of you, you are not worthy of love? This is cruel Christine. If you cannot love me, just tell me. You've never been caged here. You are free to leave." But the madness was there. Lurking in his eyes. He was fighting it valiantly.
The world opened up beneath her and swallowed her whole. She must still be in the fun house. This could not be real. I can love you. I do love you. "It is not a tactic. It is a fact. You have changed and grown and become better without me. I've spent ten years indifferent to goodness. I don't mean to be cruel. You can have whatever is left of me Erik, whatever is here is yours. I just – I just think that when you see the real me you will be disappointed in what you find."
"What did he do to you, Christine?"
She stood motionless before him, unable to speak. Of course he would ask. Of course he would demand the reason fo her empty coldness.
His hands fisted on his work bench. "It is best you go Mademoiselle."
Hundreds of emotions tumbled around in her chest – fear, disappointment, anger – anger was the most helpful and she clung to it fiercely. Erik's eye blazed with their own wild distress and she could not bear it. "You want to know why I was left here? What he did to me? Like you he was in love with my voice – 'Sing, Christine. Sing and be glorious before these men. Look how you impress them, look how helpful your voice will be to us.' He became like you. And then he became worse. He saw that I had pulled away from him, from everyone, but was convinced I would change with time. Until I could no longer stand to hear his voice." She did not let him crowd near to her and walked away to the far side of his work bench.
"He took me from Paris to England and then to America. He could never stay still, even though all I wanted was to be still. He left me at the mercy of rich men who were accustomed to getting the things they wanted. His willful ignorance at their propriety endeared him to all." She could not bring herself to meet Erik's gaze.
"When he suggested we return to Paris, after he would not marry me, after I bore him a dead child," her voice broke, "and nearly died and still he would not marry me, I urged him to go on ahead. And he did, with a younger brown-haired woman he met by the sea."
And there it was. The truth that had turned her cold. The hurt, not surprise, mirrored in Erik's eyes meant that he had known. He had always known and wanted her to tell him herself.
"But you had been with child. Surely he wouldn't have let you endure that stigma alone. Surely he wanted his child."
"I had no vows. I had no name. I had a man, but no marriage. I had a child. I had a child growing, but no family to bring him into." The sobs began and she could not stop them. Still she would not let him near. Her gaze fell outside to the newly falling snow. "He told me I'd lost all my magic, that I'd fed all of it to a wound that would never heal. He said that's why the child had not lived. And he left me in the house alone.
"And you were dead. My angel and protector was gone. And the memories I had were of a monstrous man, a man I'd broken, who'd broken me. I only understood how much I wanted you after you were gone. And I was horrified with myself. That I knew all the terrible things you'd done, and still I wanted you." She looked him in the eye, "God may have cursed you, but you've cursed me."
They finally locked eyes from across the room, both unable to look away. After long moment, Erik released a cavernous breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were brighter in color than Christine had ever seen them.
"I have done terrible things."
"Yes. And I used to care" she answered bitterly. And there was the truth of it. She no longer cared. Her eyes slid shut, disgusted with herself.
"When there is less danger, when you and I can sit in silence together again, I will demand and full account of what happened before. And you will leave out no detail."
It was not his story to demand, and yet she knew why he demanded it. He wanted justice for her. He felt the hearing of it was a just punishment for him. But telling Erik the story would provide her no justice and cause her only more pain. She would not look back, through the yawning fall behind her feet threatened.
"Life has broken me. I let life break me. He never heard me. He didn't want to. He listened, but never really heard. And I choked on all my words until my body filled with bitterness and sadness. I wasted ten years of my life with a man who loved my voice, but never heard the words I spoke. I poured all the rest of my hope into a child who is gone from me. I am I so very cold now inside. Will you want me now? Now that you know I am just as broken and ugly as you think you are?"
Erik took Christine in his arms and held her close, the malformed side of his face resting against her cheek, "Yes."
She clutched him tightly to her, afraid he would release her and leave her alone again, "I don't believe you."
"Then it is my turn to prove it to you."
