Chapter 1
Erik felt his heart leap into his throat as Christine fell further into his spell like she was falling into a deeper and deeper sleep. He was just about to pull back the curtain which would reveal to Christine the true intention of his song, which something made him hesitate. It was Christine's pale hand, which trembled inside his own like that of a father holding the hand of his tiny daughter. To her he was a father figure and a teacher, he decided to give her one more lesson before he revealed the truth.
Christine followed eagerly after the dark figure as it swept across the stone floor to rest on the seat in front of an organ. Erik played out the same tune that poured out of his mouth on the organ, he then silenced them together.
"Sing for me as I have sung for you Christine." He said and he began the accompaniment again. She echoed his song but filled the music with her own words.
Night time holds me, tricks me into dreaming
Dark means beauty, my fear is slowly dying
Music makes me bolder, another night grows older
What I hear will make my song take flight
For I can hear the music of the night
Christine felt herself come to her senses as if she had woken from a beautiful dream and seen the truth. She leapt forward and tore the mask away from its owner. Erik felt a sudden blast of icy air upon his face, and clapped his hand to his face…regretting the precious seconds when he had left his face bare. With an animalistic cry, Christine was flung harshly to the ground and was followed by anything Erik could lay his hands on. He screamed, raged and cursed until his throat was raw and he shook from fatigue. He continued to shake, but with heartbreaking sobs. Christine was frozen with shock, her body cramped with the pain of her fall. Erik stood up, his back to her and struggling to keep his composure.
"Go! Leave me in peace now." He cried, his voice breaking with sorrow. Christine did not hesitate to flee far from the monster, down steps and through the rooms of Erik's lair. She could not find a way out apart from using the gondola, and she had no idea how to work it.
Eventually Christine came across what she thought must be Erik's room, it was lit by hundreds of candles, there were desks stacked high with papers and at the back, in the shadows, there was a bed dressed in black sheets. Suddenly Christine felt overwhelmingly tired and could not help herself dropping to sleep and into the soft darkness of the shadows.
- - - - - -
Silence greeted Meg as she entered Christine's dressing room. She had been hoping for something more welcoming. A sigh escaped her lips and she decided to search the room for any clue of where her best friend may have disappeared to. A beam of warm light was cast across the floor and on to a single rose which had obviously fallen from one of the many welcoming bunches that littered the room. Meg picked it up and returned it to the neared bunch of roses, she wished she could take one to put in her own room. It had been a long time since she had been given a rose.
Meg felt a chill on the back of her neck, she turned and saw that it was coming from a gap in the mirror. The same gap that was emitting a soft candlelight. The mirror shifted to the right when Meg tried to prise it open, showing a dimly lit, cavernous tunnel. Could Christine have disappeared down there? Meg began to walk down the corridor like she was wading through water, taking slow steps and struggling to stifle her screams when she almost placed her pointed toes on several slimy rats.
The tunnel soon turned into a staircase that twisted deep into the earth, Meg began to walk quicker. She went as if being followed, and took the steps three at a time until she reached the shore of a dark lake. She, like everyone else, had heard the rumours that there was a lake under the opera house and there it lay before her, still as the sky on a winter's morning. Meg then wondered where Christine could have gone to, as she could not have crossed the lake without a boat, and where do you get a boat from when you are under ground? She decided to follow a narrow passage that led into the wall on her left, it was cramped and the ground felt all too soft under her feet, she could not help wondering after the state of her ballet shoes. As Meg came closer to her final destination, she heard a haunting voice singing a lullaby, and she could not help but quicken her step towards it because she new that that voice would be flattered that she had enjoyed its song. As the song grew louder, Meg felt a curtain in front of her, blocking her from the voice. Slowly, she drew the curtain to the side and absorbed the scene that lay before her.
There, head bowed like a grieving man, stood the figure that had filled so many conversations and inspired so many stories. His head was bowed so that it was if he was grieving over the body that lay on a bed before him, this body was that of a sleeping Christine. Christine was so deep in sleep that she could have been mistaken for one who was dead.