Disclaimer: Me is to owning like the Phantom is to sanity.

Hi all. I'm sorry if I stressed some of you out by making Erik leave in the last chapter. I made sure this goes up quickly, for all our sakes. Oh, actually, this chapter has a cliffhanger too. I think it's fair to warn you. R&R anyway!

Chapter 8: Home Again

The opera house had been abandoned. Erik assumed everyone was still too afraid of it to go inside. Even the desperate homeless had stayed in the slums instead of moving into the grand empty building. Erik could enter through the front door without drawing any attention to himself. It had been very cold outside, but he had not needed to spend more than a quarter of an hour in the sharp night air, because he discovered that The Boufards only lived a few blocks from his former home.

As soon as he stepped inside L'Opera Populaire, the man suddenly felt powerful and perfectly at home. He was like a king now: he could go back down to his lair; he could compose and study as he had done before. He didn't have to fear being seen by anyone, at least for now. The door close behind him and he let the familiar shadows take him. He never realized how much he had missed the darkness until that moment when the blackness was once again surrounding him. I'm home. He thought.

Erik made his way through the theatre, down the corridors and passageways he knew so well. He lets his fingers run along the wall. He felt like he was a lost child who had returned home after many nights alone and afraid on the street.

Soon he found the boat. He rowed across the lake as he had done more than a hundred times before. Though once he was on the water there was no light and he had to trust his instincts and habits. He proceeded into the dark until he heard the bottom of the gondola scrape against the shore. Carefully, he climbed out and lit a candle that had been in his pocket.

He looked around at his lair. He couldn't see much in the small circle of light, so he decided to find one of the many candelabras so he could get a better look at his house. Erik took a few steps forward until he heard something crunch under his foot. He crouched down to see what he had stomped on.

The broken glass shards from a gas lamp were all over the floor. That cannot be a good sign. He crawled along the floor until his head banged against something hard. He hissed out a curse and moved his hands until he found whatever he had scuttled into. His candle had gone out. He moved his fingers up and down, trying to figure out what it was. It was vertical and smooth, probably wood. He went up a little higher and felt soft velvet.

The organ bench!

Erik remembered the general layout of his lair. If he moved a bit to the right . . . Yes! . . . there was the tall candle holder that stood right next to the organ. It was still intact, so he lit the candle with a match from his pocket.

All the items on top of the organ were now a pile of broken junk. He leaned forward and shifted through the pile. Ripped and burnt pieces of paper were everywhere. A few of the little machines that he had invented had been crushed. He sighed. He had been expecting this.

Now that he had his bearings, he set out to light as many candles as he could. He found many of his candles and lamps had been cracked or shattered. Once he had as much light has he could get for the time being, looked around at his home.

The mob had done a very good job of devastating it. They had torn apart his furniture and taken some of the more expensive things. Just like the organ, the floor was littered with things that could never be used again. They had turned the entire place upside-down searching for him. The lake's surface, he could see, was covered with floating paper-bits and pieces of fabric. Erik realized that if he had stayed in his lair after Christine had gone, they would have literally butchered him.

Erik then decided to look at his other rooms to see what had come of them. He was happy to learn that the room with the peacock bed in it had not been touched. The monkey music box was it had been the night he left. His closet with all the bed linens in it was empty, but that wasn't so bad. His pantry had been partially raided, too, but he could easily remedy that. One or two of his pots and pans had been taken along with all his best china. All the toilet tissue and soap had disappeared from the bathroom. But over all the only room that had been devastated had been the main room with his organ.

It made him sad to know most of his music had been destroyed, but Erik knew he could always rewrite it or find other copies of the scores he had not composed himself. The man was also thankful that some of his things had been left throughout the rest of his home. His secret compartments full of medical supplies and science experiments and assortment of other objects had not been found.

Among the assortment was his mask collection.

Erik opened the hidden door and took off the grubby cloth he had been wearing for days. He put it in the safe. It has sentimental value, anyway. Smiling he took the familiar shining white piece of porcelain. He placed it on his face as he had done so many times before.

He felt powerful then. In that moment he stopped being Erik and went back to being the Opera Ghost, the Phantom of the Opera, and the composer of the Music of the Night.

But he did not see one creeping shadow move in one of the broken mirrors.

---

Antoinette Giry stepped cautiously into the grand entrance of L'Opera Populaire. It was around noon, so she had plenty of light to see by. She glanced around nervously. No signs of life anywhere. She began to think as she walked to the former prima donna dressing room.

Returning to the opera had been a matter of both fearing for someone else's life and her conscience. She had seen the mob as they had made their way to the underground lair: they wanted to see the blood of a certain man. This man happened to be an acquaintance of the ballet mistress. She had always felt it her duty to protect him. Even after her daughter had returned shortly after going into the bowels of the theatre to reassure her mother that the man had disappeared from his house on the lake she had not been satisfied. The woman could see in her mind one person with a gun or a sword straying from the mob and wandering the passages to find the one they were looking for unarmed and unable to defend himself.

Still, it had taken her more than a week to work up her courage to come back and look for him. Over that time her usual calm domineer had slowly transformed into shaking nervousness. She could not stand the idea of any human suffering. And this man had felt so much already. He didn't deserve any more. But she had still been nervous to come. Even in a weakened state, he could kill her rather quickly. He had always been stronger than her, and had never seemed nearly as bothered by murder as the average person should. He had not hesitated to strangle Buquet or Piangi or let the chandelier fall on the audience.

Mme. Giry soon found herself standing in front of the mirror in the dressing room. The pane of glass slid aside to reveal a dark tunnel. She brought her hand up to the level of her eyes and, holding a lit candle with a steady hand, proceeded into the shadows.

The blackness around her was almost suffocating. It made her feel alone and afraid. She held the candle higher so she could see better. Carefully, slowly, she walked through the tunnels and arrived at the underground lake.

To her disappointment, the boat was not moored on her side of the water. She squinted across the lake and saw little pinpoints of fire on the other side. Someone has been there recently, or is there right now! Hope and fear both began to build up inside her. The lights could be from Erik, or from some policeman or person from the mob. The only way she would ever know was if she crossed the lake. And the only way to cross the lake was to swim.

Taking a deep breath, Antoinette extinguished her candle and waded into the water. It was ice cold, but she kept going. After about ten paces it was over her head, and she had no choice but to push off the ground and do a crawl to the other side. She swam underwater for protection and took breaths only when she absolutely had to. She was surprised by her own speed, and that made her more confident.

As she felt herself near the shore, she broke the surface for a breath. Just as she began to gulp the cool air her windpipe became completely cut off. She choked and sank back into the liquid ice. Her hands went to her neck and she felt a rope tighten around it. She couldn't take a breath then even without the rope. She was going to both drown and be strangled at the same time.

She started to panic. She knew that it would only make it worse if she struggled, but her body refused to listen to what she was telling it to do. It was thrashing, only making the noose tighter.

---

Then everything was nothing.

---

Then she started to exist again. Air filled her lungs and she took it greedily. Her head was hazy, but slowly it began to clear itself. Her limbs regained feeling. There was a moment when she assured herself that she was indeed alive, and then she opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a white mask above her.

"Erik!" Mme. Giry sat bolt upright. "Oh lord, I was afraid you were dead. I was afraid I was dead!" he looked at the floor.

"I must apologize . . ." he muttered. "I thought you were some looter coming to put an end to my earthly existence." He looked back up at her and spread out his hands. "And you needn't have worried. As you can see, I am very much alive, fairly unscathed, and started to rebuild my home just last night."

The woman looked around. They were sitting on the stone floor by the shore of the lake. There were organized stacks of paper on the floor, a broom leaning against a wall, and the organ had been polished.

"I haven't even begun to clean up all that glass, though." he pointed at the floor. "the mob did a wonderful job of messing this room up for me."

Relieved that Erik was alright, Antoinette nodded. "I can help you clean, if you'd like." She offered. The man stood up and helped her to her feet. He was wearing clean clothes and a wig, and did seem perfectly healthy, save for a slight stiffness in his legs.

But before they could move from where they were standing, a load bang resounded through the catacombs. Erik stood still for a split second. Then he collapsed into a heap on the stones. Mme. Giry whipped around. A masked man stood by one of the broken mirrors. He held a pistol at arms length.

"Well," the man said, lowering his arm. "That went surprisingly well. I expected him to put up more of a fight, with his reputation."

Mme. Giry stood frozen for a minute, before lunging for a candelabrum. In a second she was in another position, ready to charge. Narrowing her eyes down to slits, she glared at her target.

"If you don't mind Madame, I must be on my way." Antoinette leaped forward to attack, but the man disappeared into the tunnel beyond the mirror. She took a few steps into the shadows and swung her heavy weapon, but soon decided that there was no point in chasing him.

Turning on her heel, she raced back to where Erik's limp body lay.

MAUHAHAHAHA!