I awoke the next morning and expected to still feel Erik's arms around me. To feel the steady pace of his breath against my ear and listen to the sound of his heart echoing in his chest. But to my surprise he was not there and I found myself alone in my bed.
I stared up at the dark ceiling above me, pondering. My reasons and emotions that had not bothered me much before were now plaguing my every waking thought. I had no time to think on them before, when my body was constantly working, constantly worrying about others and not myself. Now shut up in this place, nothing could distract me enough to keep these lingering thoughts out of my head.
My reason wanted to end it all. To go back to the way things were before when we were simply teacher and student. If we had continued on in that manner, perhaps our feeling for each other would have gone away. I blamed myself for opening up to him and sharing my secrets and fears. I had Genny to talk to, but I had said nothing to her. I trusted a stranger over my best friend.
I could not claim to know Erik's mind no more than my own. Would he have stayed distance or would his obsession with me only grow until he spirited me away? Once I realized he was indeed the Opera Ghost, my mind conjured fantastical events. Had he been watching me before we began are lessons. Was I always in his sight, even if I was not aware of it? If we had confessed our feelings before, would we still be here?
Both of our foolish actions had led us to this state. A prison of the mind. Trapped together and still afraid to confess our love. And through it all, my reason called for me to run. To try and escape at any cost, but it did not think of where I would run to. Would returning home be any worst than staying here? Frederich's face from the dream flashed through my memory and I shuddered. I had my answer.
I forced myself out of bed and dressed for the day. I was suddenly aware of the imperfections on my appearance and lathered my face with soap much longer than was necessary. I brushed my hair out again and again and I let it fall freely at my shoulders. I longed for a bath and was curious if I could even be provided with one in the cellars.
I left my room and found the same scene before me. Erik had already risen and played softly on the organ. I noticed at the bottom of the stairs he had left me a plate of fruit and a pot of tea. I fixed myself a drink before walking towards him. Halfway through my paces, he heard me and turned to face me.
The cup in my hands smashed onto the floor as I dropped it in shock. A strange face stared back at me. Erik did not have on his black mask, and the sudden absences of it frighten me. I didn't even bend over to start picking up the pieces of my shattered tea cup as I stared at the stranger across from me. For a brief moment, I doubted it even was Erik.
He came towards me as I got a better look. His nose was thin at the top with wide sculpted bottom. He had high cheekbones that had deep shadows beneath them. Yet his lips were pale with no color and there were no bags under his eyes or any other shades of imperfections. He was handsome. Almost too handsome, lacking all flaws.
Was I still dreaming?
"Christine…" he spoke and I tired to stop my gawking. I placed my hand on his face, trying to assure myself that Erik's voice had indeed come from the person standing before.
It wasn't warm like my skin, nor was it cold. It was dotted with rough textures that I felt under my fingertips. Then I realized it was not skin at all.
"A mask…" I whispered.
He nodded, removing my hand from it. "Yes, I have made a mask that makes me appear as anyone else." I only noticed the hint of shadows darting across the lower half of the mask as his real lips moved against the fake ones. "I have some adjustment to still make. However judging from your reaction, I think the illusion is quite effective." He pointed out, dropping to his knees to pick up the broken cup.
My stomach felt sick. "Erik…" I started. "I do not like…this mask…"
He stood, his yellow eyes staring back at me from under the mask, wide with surprise. "It is wrong that you would need to deceive me with another mask." I said. "I thought you had finally trusted me enough to see your face…" I placed my hand to my cheek. "But I was mistaken…"
I could have said more. My mind cried out to tell him that I felt betrayed. Betrayed that he had not told me the truth, when I had thought he was honest. Betrayed that he had kidnapped me and that now I was a prisoner in his house, and he still did not always reveal his true nature to me. Yet last night, as he held me, I was willing to forgive him for all these things. Not any longer.
"You promised to sing today." He informed me coldly, all joy and friendliness gone from his voice. I nodded, too angry and stunned to protest.
My lesson for today followed our usual pattern as before; warm ups and scales. I sang Cherbunio's lines and arias over and over for what seemed like hours. Every time I hit the right notes and made my cues, but I felt no joy in singing. The raw emotions I felt about both my physical and mental situations did not reflect themselves in my music. I felt no love or gaiety. Erik sensed this and continued to drill me, even though my technique was on target.
He stopped in the middle of a piece. Even though I could not see his lips through this mask, I could tell he was frowning. "It's obvious you've mastered this piece even if you have no love when you sing it. Perhaps I should give you something more challenging Christine." He seemed beyond annoyed. I had not sung for him in over a week and now I made only half an attempt at it. He had his outbursts before when I had challenged him, but now for the first time he was angry with me.
I guessed it was because of the mask. He had been so proud of it and I had been repulsed by it. I already had my suspicions on why he covered his face. Was his face so terrible that he felt the need to cover it up with an artificial handsome one? I found this fake face more disturbing.
Erik left me to dash across the room to his music library. He returned tossing a manuscript at my arms. "Here Christine, let us sing something else." He instructed as he called out a page number to me. I turned through the pages, the phrases and chords of Mozart's Idomeno passing before my eyes, until I found the correct passage. It was an aria of a princess, but not the gentle kind Ilia. Instead it was the tortured song of the vengeful Electra. I sighed.
"Mozart wrote some of the most beautiful music, yet it seems you have an attachment to these pieces." I noted, remembering the time he had me sing the Queen of the Night. I had been so proud of myself. Now as I reflected on the piece, it had been beautiful music but frightening emotions. "Have you always been so fascinated with these arias of revenge and murder?" I asked.
"Sometimes Christine, we need to view life at its ugliest to see and understand its loveliness." He was quick to respond and he took his seat at the organ bench. "Even the most grotesque of creatures can be beautiful underneath."
His unspoken message was not lost on me. He was speaking about himself, for he had often called himself monster and other vile names. I couldn't bring myself to hate him, not like I hated Frederich. Erik, despite his actions was a man full of sorrows.
The notes struck for the beginning of the aria, and I trudged through it. This piece was indeed a challenge for the majority of the notes were high in my range. It was the aria when the scorned Electra realizes she cannot have the man she loves and plunges into madness.
"I feel the torments of Orestes and Ajax in my breasts"
The lines repeated themselves with increased rapidity to dramatize the princess's descent into madness. I breathlessly managed to keep up with the pace.
"The image of Alecto frightens me to death…."
I stared at the false face that rested on Erik's. The craftsmanship was impressive, with each ridge and impression hand molded to resemble a man's face as much as possible. Had he thought he could make me love him more by creating this handsome façade?
"Tear at my heart you horned serpents…"
I had taken a leap of faith and trusted a man from the shadows. I had started to fall in love with him and I had never seen his face. If I had done these things already, wasn't it enough for him to not hide from me?
"Tear at my heart….or I shall end my pain with a sword."
The music progressed into a wild accession of notes as Electra ended her song with insane laughter. My music fell from my hands, the sheets spilling like waves at my feet. My fingers flew to the hideously perfect face, curled under the mask and drew it away.
Like lighting, Erik's hands flew from the key board and swung back, striking my face. I fell backwards onto the floor, pain shooting through my shoulder on my impact. I lay as if paralyzed , clutching the mask and staring up at Erik.
And I screamed.
Her screaming voice ripped through me. My angel who voice had serenaded me moments before now screamed at the sight of me. I could only stand there, my body filling with rage as I experience this familiar horror once again.
I could have covered my face to save us both the grief it caused, but instead I shoved it forward in plain view. She had been so eager to see it, and now she was going to get a good look.
Tears had already formed in her eyes, tears of fright. Her whole body shook as she reached up her hand, offering back my empty handsome face.
"I'm…I'm sorry..." she whispered.
I stepped towards her and smacked the mask away with one swift move. I followed the sound of it landing on the opposite end of the room, crumbled and broken.
"You're sorry?" I asked my voice raw and mocking. Dropping to my knees, I dug my hands into her backside and pulled her up to my face. She gasped in pain and terror as her eyes met mind. "You're only sorry that you saw!" I shouted. I felt her arms reach up and strike at my chest. I grabbed and held her wrists, pulling her closer. We were so close we would have been nose to nose. If not for the fact that I did not have a nose to speak of.
"Get a good look Christine! You've been begging for so long to see my face. Here is you chance!" She shut her eyes as I forced her closer. "I thought you had sense girl! You pleaded with me and yet you had no sense to see what I was trying to tell you. My protests were to protect you from your curiosity, my dear. To spare you the horrors of what lay behind my mask!"
My ears were full of her sobs. Her hands twisted in vain within my grip as she struggled to break free. "I didn't…know…I thought…"
I cut her off. "Yes, I knew what you thought. Well I can assure you, Christine; this face you see is no accident. It was not as you assumed caused by any war!" I pressed her fingers to my face. Her eyes were close so I made her feel my face, her fingers tracing every horrid detail.
The tightly stretched skin along a face that was rough with scars from my mask. Where cheeks would have been, I was cursed with only bone, jutting out from the sides. A deep hole instead of a nose in the center and my deep sunken eyes in my skull. This was no face. This was a death's head.
"Let go of me!" she cried. "You're hurting me."
Pulling her to her feet, I pushed her arms away, still holding onto them. Her feet were weak and she fell against my chest, a sensation I would have otherwise relished if I had not been filled with rage. I hissed in her ear.
"Oh mad Christine, mad girl who wanted to see my face. If you are in pain my love, it is brought on by your own doing." I marched her along across the room to a door I had not opened for her. It was directly below her room above the stairs. It was my living chamber. I paused before opening the door.
"Since you are so eager to know my secrets…I'll show you them. This is my room. Do you care to see it?" Her pretty little head shook back and forth in protest, but I lead her in. Keeping at least one of her hands in my grip I lit the candles in my chambers to let Christine get a better look.
She moaned in fright as she examined my room. It was directly below her bed chamber. Even in my own home, I positioned myself in hell, with my angel above me always. She moved over to the bed at the center of the room, and then step back as she saw what it truly was. I stopped her and pushed her forward.
"Found something of interest?" I cried. We both looked over the edge of the coffin that was my bed. I felt her limbs trembled beneath my grip as she gasped. "Yes this is where I sleep. It serves as a reminder of what awaits me in the next life. Cold, endless sleep."
Scooping her delicate frame into my arms, I expected her to scream but she was silent with fear. The only noises she made were the strained sobs jumping from her lips I dropped her into the coffin. She winced as she fell in and refused to look up at me.
"Know Christine…know that I am made of death. I tried to spare you, but at last you see that it is a corpse that loves you. A corpse who worships you and will never leave you."
"Please…Erik…you're mad…" she stammered. I gazed down at her, this beautiful girl lying in this dark coffin. Her blond hair spilled over the dark lining. Her pale features contrasting in the dim light of my chamber. If she had been still, she would have looked dead.
A dead wife.
The perfect bride for a creature such as me.
"Please, take me out of here. I want to leave this place…" she begged.
"No Christine." I backed away, now repulsed at what I had done. "As long as you thought me handsome, you would have stayed with me. Now that you have seen me, you are disgusted and you would stop at nothing to get away from me."
She pushed herself up and stared at me. "No, I loved you before I knew your face!" she cried. "Before I even knew your name."
I could not look at her any longer. Even with her eyes glowing with hate she was still a temptation to me. I was a fool to bring her here. "No, that's a lie. You don't…love me. You would say anything…anything to undo what you have done. It's too late." I reached the door. I had to get away from her. "You will never leave this place…ever!" I slammed the door behind me.
Seconds after my fingers twisted at the lock, I heard the sound of Christine's mad cries and her small fists beating at the door. My whole body was trembling, with rage and remorse. Had Christine destroyed our last chance of love by removing my mask…or had I?
I sank to the floor, my back pressed against the door. My hands came to cover my hideous face and when I drew them back, I finally realized that they were wet…with my own tears.