Disclaimer: Like I said in the last chapter, I don't own any of it. Not even what's comign up now.

This is the second chapter of the double update bonanza. I've said all I want to concerning actually getting it updated, so never mind. Only to say, I apologise if anyone doesn't like the content. I don't think it's that bad, but some people might think otherwise. So, enjoy! We're back up top!
'And now,' said he, 'to settle what remains. Will you be wise? Will you be guided? Will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand, and to go forth from your hoiuse without further parley? Or has the greed of curiousity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.'

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

Strange Sights

What do I do? Oh God, what do I do?

Raoul shoved his way through the crowds, ignoring the angry looks he was given, and the mutters about rudeness. He didn't know what he wanted now – air, or help, or a confessor.

I must be going mad. Certainly I'm going mad-

In his frenzy, he rammed straight into a figure all in black. He made at once to dart around it, but he felt his arm seized by a vice like grip.

"Let me go!" he shouted, striking out at whoever was holding him back. "Let me go! Let me be!"

"No, Monsieur Vicomte, I think not. I think you and I need to have a little discussion. Right now."

And with that, his captor pulled him sharply into, away from, the crowd; out through some door, and into yet another echoing hall. He was almost slammed into a wall, while he stared up at the dark clad one who apparently towered over him.

Then the man removed his mask. He stared at him, trying to make a connection in his storming mind.

"Pastor Defarge?"

"And good evening to you, Monsieur Raoul," the man of God said, lowering the black mask that had concealed his true presence until now. "And now, perhaps, you would explain to me what is going on?"

"I beg your pardon?"

Defarge sighed gently. "You sent one of the grounds men to ask me about Mademoiselle Daaé, Vicomte. Why should you do that, unless something was wrong? Unless she hadn't returned? Tell me the truth, Vicomte. Is that young lady out there really the Mademoiselle?"

In the turmoil that plagued him, and the prisons that had formed in his mind, it felt somehow good to Raoul to tell the truth, for once. "No," he whispered, lowering his eyes.

The pastor nodded. "I suspected as much. Do not fear, her disguise is really rather good. I doubt I would have suspected it myself, if I had not had that inquiry earlier today. So, where is Mademoiselle Daaé?"

Raoul looked up at the man, from the depths of his misery. He had wished for a confessor, and he had received one. This was his chance. He had to know. He had to know.

"Pastor," and with that he grasped Defarge's arm in his turn. "Please, you must tell me, I must know…can the living marry the dead?"

He at once knew that he was on a winning scent, and hope flowered with his cold dead heart as Defarge looked at him sharply before whispering, "Not here. Somewhere quieter."

I will find you again, Christine. I swear to it.

We seem to make a habit of barricading ourselves into rooms, he thought, as he surveyed the group of conspirators gathered upon the chairs in his bedroom, with the Pastor at the moment seated upon his bed. He himself couldn't sit, he wanted to pace; but he held himself as still as he could. He had to stay calm now. This was the breaking point; the instant between the finish of his tale and any possible out burst. he thought, as he surveyed the group of conspirators gathered upon the chairs in his bedroom, with the Pastor at the moment seated upon his bed. He himself couldn't sit, he wanted to pace; but he held himself as still as he could. He to stay calm now. This was the breaking point; the instant between the finish of his tale and any possible out burst.

Fortunately, it was Defarge who broke the silence first. "Are you sure of what you saw, Raoul?"

"As certain as I see you now!" But even as he spoke, he felt doubt. Could he be certain of what he had seen?

I know that Christine needs help. I know she is being held against her will. And that is what is most important now.

"Raoul," he heard Meg begin gently, "Are you certain? I mean, really…this is…well…"

"You think I'm mad, don't you?" he spat at her, wishing she was a man so that he could hit her without retribution. How dare she! But at once he was horrified at his savage thoughts – what had happened to him in the last day? – and so he forced himself to speak more quietly. "I'm simply telling you what I saw, Meg. I saw Christine disappear in the arms of another man, and before they vanished I saw the man hold up his hand, and her engagement ring was on his fourth finger. That was what I saw. I know that was what I saw."

That's the truth, so Heaven help me.

"And you are thinking that he was dead?" Carlotta asked, with some confusion. The young Spaniard had seemed slightly dazed ever since she had been dragged from the dance floor by a frantic Meg, and even the news of Christine's reappearance and subsequent disappearance was not quite enough to fully wake her up. "What brought on this thought?"

"It is not…a thought. It is a feeling. I looked at him, and somehow I knew he was dead. Knew as you know when you look at a tree that it is alive. I tell you, Meg, Carlotta, Cecile, Pastor, I tell you all, that man was not living when he raised that ring to show me, even before I saw that it was skeletal."

"And I believe you, Raoul," Defarge said, as he stood up swiftly.

"You…you do?" He had not been expecting this, least of all from a man of God.

"Is there any reason I should not? Either you are lying, or you are mad, or you are telling the truth. We all know that, until fairly recently and for a good purpose, you do not tell lies, and I can see that you are not delusional. Therefore, we must assume that you are telling the truth."

"But…but Pastor, you can't believe this sort of thing, can you?" Meg asked, looking anxiously at the man of the cloth now, as if suspecting him of harboring delusions as well. "To think that Christine-"

"I don't think! I know!"

"-is married to a corpse," she went on, regardless of his outburst. "That's preposterous! That's…that's…"

"That's the truth," he repeated, stubbornly.

"No doubt. I have seen stragner sights than that. But I know one way that it can be proved." Defarge put his hand to his chin, and appeared to be thinking. "Yes, it must be done, I can see that."

Cecile, sitting stiffly on her chair, hardly allowing any part of her to touch the piece of furniture, asked tentatively, "Pastor?" But Defarge ignored her, as he turned his dark eyes upon Raoul.

"Vicomte, I wonder if you might have some chalk in your possession?"

"What?" Once again, Raoul felt exceptionally confused at what was going on around him. Why were they talking of chalk, for goodness' sake?

"I would guess not. Never mind. Do you have a razor, then?"

"A…razor? Certainly, but-"

"Would you fetch it, please? Much thanks." The pastor turned away. He apparently had no choice but to go into his bathroom and bring out his razor; only when he got there he found himself bending over his sink instead, and breathing hard.

But he couldn't start being sick now. Not now. Not when it seemed there was some hope for her, for them.

So he breathed deeply until he felt calmer, and then he picked up his razor, very carefully, and silently made his way back into his bedroom. He was more than a little surprised to find Defarge now sitting on the floor, having moved the carpet out of the way, surrounded by the pieces of the candles he kept for his room just in case the lamp ran out of oil in the night. It appeared that the pastor had cut the three candles into roughly twelve equal pieces – with his letter opener. Where did he get that?

"Ah. You have it. Good," Defarge said, without looking up as he cut the last large piece in half. "Now, Mademoiselles Giry, Jammes, would you please help me arrange the candles in a circle around me? Thank you. And Mademoiselle Signorelli, I believe there is a box of matches in the drawer where I found the candles. Bring it to me, please."

Then there was silence in the room for a while, save of the rustling of skirts as the girls made their way around the pastor, bending down and making sure every candle was part of the perfect circle, save for one that he prevented them from placing at first. At this point, he looked up at the Vicomte and Carlotta, who held the razor and the match box respectively, and sighed.

"And now, the critical moment, my friends; and the critical question. Do you wish to stay and witness what is to come, or would you prefer to leave and have no further knowledge of this method of mine? I must warn you, think carefully, for you may not like what you see."

This is all like a dream, Raoul thought, probably not for the first time, and not for the last either. "If this will help Christine," he said softly, "then I know I should watch, no matter what you do." And he sat down on his bed, without any intention of moving. There were murmurs of similar assent from Meg and Carlotta, who seated themselves respectively as well. Cecile looked as if she might say something, but apparently decided against it, and moved to stand behind Carlotta's chair.

Defarge sighed. "So be it." He held out his hands. "Give me the razor and the matches then, and I will begin."

Carlotta accordingly slid the box across the floor to him from where she was sitting, and Raoul leant forward to hand him the razor. However, he could not stop himself from asking the obvious question.

"What do you want it for?"

Defarge smiled softly as he placed the blade carefully by his side, and striking a match began to light the candles around him; but he didn't answer. He lit all the candles, going through three matches, until he came to the one that had not been placed in the circle yet. Lifting it up, he applied the last match to that one as well, then looked up at them all as he shook the tiny flame out.

"There is something I must make very clear to you, concerning how this works. When I place the candle down, the circle must not be broken, until I break it myself. Do you all understand?"

Raoul nodded, as the others replied in the affirmative, but he could not begin to feel unease. What game was this man of God playing? Suddenly, finding out about Christine from his source did not seem such a good idea.

"I mean what I say," the mean went on, now looking directly at him. "If you try to break the circle, I do not know what will happen, but I am certain that it will not be good. Do you understand?"

He couldn't find it in him to speak. He nodded dumbly.

"Good." The pastor placed the lit candle in the circle, and at once something changed in the room. There was a new tension in the air; if felt as if it could be cut, carved, sliced with the very razor. Raoul could see the girls across the pastor in his circle, looking slightly alarmed.

Defarge took a few deep breaths, and then settled into a gentle breathing system. With his legs crossed and his arms positioned as such on his legs, and his calm expression, he almost looked like a picture of a Buddha Raoul had once seen, albeit in Western masque clothes. The air of tension in the room did not exactly subside, but it relaxed slightly.

But then Defarge picked up the razor. Raoul barely had time to speak before the pastor positioned it over the heel of his palm and, with an apparently practiced hand, slashed downwards with the blade.

"What the-" he gasped, but he could do no more, rooted to the spot in astonishment.

"Pastor!" Meg squealed, leaping forwards; but the clatter of the razor on the floor and the force of Defarge's up-raised, blood-stained right hand halted her in mid-crawl across the floor.

"Don't…break the circle," he said slowly and evenly, as if used to the pain now in his left hand, out of which wonderfully red blood was already brimming. Without lowering his other hand, he turned his wrist over to face the floor, and let the blood well and drip and fall onto the bare boards. Then there was no sound in the room for a few heartbeats but the spi-splat, spi-splat of the blood droplets falling and landing and splashing into the rapidly widening red puddle in front of Defarge.

At length the man withdrew his hand with a sigh, just as Raoul found it in him to speak. "What on earth are you doing?"

Defarge sighed again, as he examined his injured wrist. "A price must always be paid. You cannot get something for nothing anywhere. They need blood to stay in this world, even the best of them, if only for a little while."

"Who? Defarge, what are you-" But Raoul broke off, staring at Defarge's wrist. Dear God! Even as he watched in horrified disbelief, the wound in the flesh ceased to bleed, and before the onlookers' eyes closed up like a woman closing up a seam in fabric, the flesh knitting together and all hints of the cut vanishing, as if there had never been a wound in the first place.

"Mi Maria!" Carlotta hissed, as she no doubt scrabbled for her rosary. There was a choking whimper from Cecile. Meg was now completely silent.

Defarge breathed deeply, and then extended both his hands over the pool of his own blood, even now soaking into the floor-boards. "Hear me," Raoul could hear him mutter. "I call upon you again, in the name of the Living God and of the True One. I give you this gift of my red blood to supplement you. Rise and answer my questions!" he barked, and now in the soft candlelight the pastor looked anything but soft; he looked wild, and fierce, and almost un-human, a devil as he gestured in mid-air. Raoul, cowering back on the bed, could only think What have we done? What is he waking up?

But then the terrible moment was over. Something else had happened, but he could not tell what. At any rate, Defarge looked much happier, as he lowered his hands, his eyes fixed on something beyond the sight of the young people. Raoul could hear Carlotta muttering, over and over again, "Santa Maria madre de dio santa Maria madre de dio santa Maria madre de dio-"

"I welcome thee, and am pleased that you have come again to advise me once more," Defarge cut in over her mutterings, and Cecile's dry sobs. "I allow you to make yourself seen, and ask you to make yourself known to us."

There was a movement in the air in front of him, and then – impossibly – a voice spoke out of nothing; a deep resonant voice, that could not in anyway be Defarge's, but someone or something else's entirely.

"You know who I am!...I am the Persian!"

Well, this is the second part of the surprise – my very first cliff-hanger ending! Or at least, the first ending I acknowledge as a cliff-hanger. Sweet.

Why yes, I DID pinch Defarge's speech form The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I just love the Professor's logic!

Poor Raoul, I am making him look a bit silly, aren't I? But I really do think it's what anyone else would be like in the circumstances. Forget being all brave and wanting to kick some zombie butt, by now even he's wondering about what he's seen. Plus he's just seen a priest summon a spirit with his own blood. Before you ask, no, Defarge is not a necromancer. Neither is he a devil worshipper. He just happens to know more than he appears to at first. But then again, don't we all?

Carlotta is saying the Hail Mary in Spanish, something that is part of Catholics' prayer using the rosary. In English it's 'Holy Mary Mother of God'. Ordinarily there's a lot more than just that, but our little girl's panicked, so she just keeps repeating that over and over. I apologize to any Spanish speakers if this isn't right; I was sure whether to put 'sancta' or 'santa' for 'holy', so in the end I plumped for the latter.

A bit of history for anyone wondering about the matches and whether it's historically correct to use them in this; the first ones came out in the 1820s, and 'safety matches' were being issued by the 1840s, since the previous ones had a nasty tendency to burst into flames in your pocket. That didn't stop the girls who made the matches being poisoned by the phosphorus and getting a horrid bone disease called 'phossy-jaw'. Makes you less keen to light the candles tonight, eh?

And finally, I'll bet a whole lot of you are screaming 'What the heck is Defarge doing cutting his wrist? Does he want to bleed to death or something?' The answer is quite simply, no he doesn't. He's not stupid, he's done this before, and he knows where to cut. He didn't cut across the actual wrist, which is where basically everyone cuts when they're slitting their wrists, but at the bottom of the palm where there's less blood pressure. This also explains why, when he used the razor, his blood didn't squirt out in a lovely sanguine display and hit Meg in the face.

The thought of what it would be like if this story had a gag reel is not a very pleasant one.

Well, that is enough for now. Boy, I'm tired. But satisfied. You can add to that satisfaction. Give the nice half-Irish seamstress some reviews!