Disclaimer: I borrowed Susan Kay's novel from my friend. That's it. Actually, I should probably give it back . . .

Yo yo yo. I was just curious, do any of my faithful readers (aka you) play neopets? I do. I'm just that cool. If so, are you doing the Altador cup thingy? I was supporting Merridell, but they were beaten in the second round (cries), so now I'm with Krawk Island! Aye, Avast! PIRATES FOREVER!

Okay, well now that I'm done saying that . . . um yeah. Again, I wrote most this chapter during the little breaks between studying, so sorry if it has a sort of disconnected feeling. This is an essential chapter, so read it carefully. This is sort of the "mini-climax", if you know what I mean.

I am happy to say, though, that the school year is officially over, so I will be able to post more frequently now. A few days ago I posted a sad/dark oneshot from Erik's POV. It's just him talking about his life. Read it and tell me what you think!

Anyway . . .

Chapter 10: A Disaster Beyond Imagination

Erik opened his eyes slowly. He knew he was in his lair, but he couldn't remember anything else, except for a few quick pictures. Mme. Giry had been there. He had been cleaning. And then he remembered pain . . .

He tried to use his arms as leverage so he could sit up. As soon as he moved his right arm, his vision flashed red and he had to bite his lip to stop himself from crying out in surprise and pain. He slumped back down on the pillows behind him. "Merde!" Erik hissed. Muttering more curses under his breath, he looked around. He was lying in the swan bed, the curtain drawn around him. He twisted his neck around to get a view of his arm. His upper arm was wrapped tightly with bloodstained gauze. What now? He thought. This is the third time in less than two weeks I have ended up in bed!

Carefully, Erik pulled himself out of bed and headed for the wardrobe. He put on a shirt and ventured out into the main room of his house. Mme. Giry was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing at the blood on the stones. That cannot be a good sign. The woman still hadn't noticed his presence. Erik suddenly felt a bit dizzy, so he decided it was best if he started asked questions.

"Madame?" Mm. Giry turned around. He hadn't really surprised her. After so many years at the opera with him, nothing surprised her anymore. She noticed that he still looked rather pale, but she knew better than to tell the Phantom of the Opera to go back to bed.

"Ah, Erik. It's good to see you up. You gave me quite a scare just a few hours ago."

"I meant to ask you about that. My memory seems to have left me for the moment."

"Well you were in shock for a while, so you probably can't remember. It happened suddenly, too. Neither of us saw it coming, I don't think. You and I were just standing here talking, and then a man came out of the mirror and shot you in the arm. He said something about your reputation and how he had expected you to do more, and ran off. I was going to chase him, but I decided to take care of you first. You have lost quite a bit of blood."

Erik was suddenly very concerned. His brow wrinkled in thought. "That man . . . did you see any of his features? Have you any idea who he was?" Antoinette shook here head.

"I'm afraid not. He was wearing a mask, and I didn't recognize his voice. I didn't get a good look at him: he wasn't here for long. He was tall, that's all I know. I think he meant to kill you. He most likely thinks he has."

"Someone tried to kill me. That's nothing new." Mme. Giry caught a hint of sadness in his voice. This was definitely not the first time anyone had gone after him with a weapon. It made her sad to think about it. People only hated Erik because of his face. "I suppose I should be worried for my safety." She watched him for a while, and then went back to cleaning.

Erik took a little gold watch from his pocket. Just before he flipped it open, he took a moment to look at the gold decoration. The name R. Firman was inscribed in it. When the new managers had first arrived they had refused to obey the orders he had written for them. He had begun trying to convince them there was a ghost. It had become a bit of a game for him; Erik would sneak into their office at the dead of night and take one of the little items that had been thrown carelessly on the desk at the end of the day, then the next morning he would watch with rather childish delight as they shuffled through the mountain of papers and used cigars, growing steadily more agitated. But after a time, he had become too busy to concern himself with tiny pranks. He would be too busy with –

He closed flipped the watch open before he could think her name. He had not done so in quite a few days. He wasn't going to go back, he decided. She was probably already married. He looked down. The watch read 4 p.m. What is the Boufard family doing right now? Erik wondered. Genevieve would be arriving home soon; perhaps she was walking up the stairs to her apartment at that very moment. Henri would put the "closed" sign in the shop window and follow her. The little girl would already be telling him all about the days' events, like how her friend Clarisse had tripped at lunch time and accidentally poured hot soup on Mme. Lecroix's dress or that she had received one hundred percent on her grammar test. Her father would tell her about some rich costumer had bought a beautiful pair of dress shoes that day, the pair he had spent hours polishing to perfection. And Madeline . . .

Suddenly, the man realized that he hadn't the faintest idea of what Henri's oldest daughter would be doing at this hour. He simply had known her long enough. Perhaps she would be sewing, repairing some old pair on trousers that were getting a bit worn. No, she seemed too rebellious by nature to be doing such a thing willingly. But it was possible. She had, as far as he could tell, been rather out-of-character for the last few days he had spent with the family.

The Phantom closed the watch with a snap and gazed out across the vast lake before him. He tried to picture the Boufard family. He tried to think of what Madeline was doing. Maybe she was cooking dinner already. Or she could be singing, or reading, or doing just about anything. Anything but sewing . . .

---

Madeline had just finished mending a hole in one of her sister's warm winter stockings when she heard the girl's voice from the stairwell. She was telling her father one of her stories from school.

" . . . and we all thought she would be mad, but she just helped Clarisse up and told her they still had lots of soup left, she could just go and get more."

"You're so lucky you have teachers like Mme. Lecroix. I remember at my school, when I was your age, we had a particularly nasty man who taught us arithmetic. He would give the strap for some of the silliest little things, and innocent children got sent to the principal more often than not. A good friend of mine, Charles, got a wicked beating for dropping his pen in a way that was, according to Monsieur Écorcher, "completely disruptive, intentional, and unacceptable." Poor boy didn't come to school the next day. When I went to see him, his mother told me it had been a mixture of the pain in his back and absolute fear of the man that had made him skip the day."

"We don't really have any mean teachers, except Sister Agathe. She sent Marie home in tears once. I can't remember why, it was a long time ago, but I know it wasn't anything really bad."

"I remember Sister Agathe." Madeline joined the conversation when the other two entered the room. "Is she still teaching? Lord, she was old when I started school. The woman must be ancient. Why is it the nasty ones always take the longest time to wuzzle off?"

"Madeline . . ." Henri shot her a warning glance from across the room. His daughter shrugged.

"It's true. You know it is, Papa. You said it yourself last year, remember? About that crabby old woman down the street who keeps getting mad at the children playing in the streets because "they're much too happy for their own good."?"

"Oh," Genevieve nodded "I don't like that lady. She got mad at me and Carol last month when we were walking home. She said we laughed too much."

"How does beef stew sound for dinner?" Henri, knowing he would not win the argument, changed the subject. (A.N.: my dad does this all the time, especially when we're bouncing pointless trivia questions off one another (we're that cool) and it's one of the rare occasions where he doesn't know the answer.)

"We had beef last night." Genevieve pointed out. Henri sighed.

"I know, Genny, but I haven't had time to do any shopping at all this week, between taking care of Madeline, and business at the shop, and Erik . . . I just haven't had a chance!"

"I'll do it." Madeline offered. Henri shook his head.

"I'm not letting you go out alone. Not with that leg of yours. If anything were to happen, like if you fell . . ."

"Why don't we all just go together?" Genevieve suggested. "It's been so long since we've done anything as a family. It would be fun."

Her father considered it for a moment, then smiled. "I don't see why not. It's true, in all the commotion of recent events we haven't really gone out together." Genevieve, delighted, ran to get Madeline's coat from the closet.

A few minutes later, the trio was making their way down the street, stopping sometimes to look at a food display in front of a shop. Madeline had to lean on her father to walk, but Genevieve skipped on ahead.

"Don't go so fast, please, Genny. It's hard for us to keep up." The little girl slowed down and stopped to look in at a shop window. Her family caught up with her and looked in the window as well. It was an old convenience store, but the signs in by the display showed that they were selling for very cheap prices. "Let's take a look inside." Henri said.

The shop was dusty, and there didn't seem to be anyone inside. "Hello?" Genevieve called shyly. No one answered. Henri looked around the desk where the cashier usually sat. It was abandoned. "How curious." He muttered.

"Maybe it's closed, and they forgot to put up the sign in the door." Genevieve suggested. "Look at this . . . everything's so dusty!"

While the other two talked, Madeline wandered over to a corner of the shop, where there were a few old paintings hanging on the wall. One, hanging just above her head, was of a man and woman, walking into the shadows that covered half the canvas. The other side was looked like a place where a bloody battle had just been fought. The man had his arms around her waist, dragging her away from the gory scene and into the suffocating darkness seemingly against her will. She stared at the painting for a few moments, trying to make sense of the bizarre picture.

Suddenly, two hands ripped through the other side of the canvas and grabbed Madeline around the neck. She jumped and tried to scream, but the hands' grip around her throat only allowed a small shriek. Henri and Genevieve whirled around to see Madeline being pulled up the wall and into the painting by her neck. Her sister screamed. They both ran over and grabbed at her skirts to try and pull her to the ground. Madeline's hands flew to her neck and she struggled to free herself from the tight hold. Henri grabbed a nearby stool and wrapped his arms around her whole torso and pulled.

Hands sprang from all the paintings, and they started tugging on Genevieve and Henri and forcing them away. Genevieve screamed and slapped at the fingers that had a firm grasp on her jacket. Once it released her, she bolted from the shop to find a police officer.

Many hands were holding Henri's shirt, trying to drag him to the floor. He took his arm away from his daughter and leaned against the wall. Quickly, he jumped and brought his leg up so it went through the ripped canvas and into the face of one of the unseen kidnappers. To his satisfaction, he heard a load curse and the hands disappeared into the wall again. He started to repeat the action, but all of a sudden one of the hands above him was holding a sword. Before he could react the sword's point swung out and sliced across his shoulder and chest. He cried out in surprise and pain and lost his balance. Henri fell to the floor, losing his grip on both the wall and his daughter. He watched in horror as Madeline's body was pulled up over the picture frame and out of sight.

Genevieve and a police officer ran in a second later.

"Papa!" the girl ran to his side, dismayed by the sight of his blood and the fact that she couldn't see her sister anywhere.

"What's happened here?" the officer stepped forward. "I was told something about a kidnapping, or perhaps a murder. Something about hands reaching out of nowhere . . ."

The officer's words echoed pointlessly in Henri's ears. He couldn't believe what had just happened. It had been something out of an old horror novel. And they had taken his child. They had taken Madeline from him. Tears stung his eyes as he stared at the gaping hole that had been a painting, that place into which Madeline had disappeared, possibly forever.

"She's gone." He whispered. "She's gone again. They took Opale away again."