Someone mentioned this being a highschool fic...while it started out that way, rest assured, it will not stay here. Right now we are in 1993 California, but at some point this will jump ahead to 2007, and Erik will have changed a great deal. He's going to have indulged in all those darker things we all remember from Kay and Leroux, and yet he will still remember Christine, and admire her from a-very-far. Hope you are enjoying...
I posted a forum if you have any questions about where this story is headed, then you can ask them there, or we can talk about any Erik's that you want. And all my quotes so far (I think) have been from Susan Kay's book, Phantom. If you haven't read it, then you'd better before I get a Punjab Lasso out!
"Love is a scorpion's paralyzing poison, but now a thousand little mouths are sucking it steadily from my veins..."
"Christine!" Gus opened the hospital room door and hugged his daughter as hard as he could. "I was worried about you!"
"Papa, what happened to him?" she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.
Gus turned her away before she could see Erik lying there, hooked up to a plethora of machines. "Someone tried to hurt him," he said tersely, then glanced up at Detective Kohn, who was holding a mask. "Put that on him, for God's sakes, before someone else tries to come in here and look."
He held Christine firmly by the shoulders until Detective Kohn announced that Erik was covered.
Christine stared at him, his skeletal, pale body against white sheets. Tubes were running beneath his mask and an IV was hooked into his thin arm. Beneath the lights, Erik looked absolutely horrible, and yet she could not turn away nor be disgusted by his pitiful form.
He was unconscious, and if the beeps on the heart rate monitor were any indication, his pulse was very weak. "Is he going to live?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Gus said, closing his eyes. "He was supposed to visit with a psychiatrist later on today, and I had hoped to get a clearer image of what goes on in that head of his. But now..."
"Mr. Dally, could I see you outside?" Detective Kohn asked.
"I'll just sit here with him, Papa," Christine said, nervously approaching the side of Erik's bed.
Her father and the detective stepped outside into the hall, and Christine looked through the holes of Erik's mask, seeing his eyes were still closed. She breathed easier knowing he was asleep...but worried that he might not wake up.
Then she worried about what she might say if he did wake up...
"Are you sure it's a good idea to take him into your home?" she heard the detective ask.
Immediately Christine turned her head to listen. Her father was going to take him home? If he survived...?
"He's innocent, Detective. I know it; you know it. Nothing during this trial has pointed to anything else."
"Except the testimony of ten or twelve high school students," Detective Kohn reminded him.
"Who hated him, simply because he was different," her father stressed. "Phillip Chaney was a star athlete, a former Senator's son. His brother Raoul is in a special military school on the east coast. Their mother was a close relation to the Roosevelt family! This entire trial has been pitting two variegated families against one another!"
"Don't attempt to convince me," Detective Kohn said quietly. "I feel sorry for the boy. He's got serious issues, but I can see him struggling to be good. I hope he wins the battle – but something tells me a few nights of sitting around watching sitcoms with you and your daughter isn't going to help him."
"I'm not taking him for that, you damned fool! I'm taking him so someone doesn't kill him before he's proven innocent! And yes, maybe I do want to give him a semblance of normalcy! It's more than obvious his mother never tried!"
The door behind them shut, muffling further conversation, and Christine returned her attention to Erik. Softly she began to hum, remembering a song her mother used to sing her to sleep with. The melody started slow and grew to a point where instead of humming, she began to sing...but she suddenly shot out of her chair when the monitor beside the bed began to beep furiously.
Suddenly Erik's back arched off the mattress, and he let out an inhuman groan, his arms trembling off the sides of the bed.
"Stop moving," she whispered, watching the tubes in his arms stretch out. "Oh...don't move..."
"It hurts," Erik whimpered, one hand beginning to claw at his stomach. "Get it off me...get it out of me..."
"Don't move," Christine exclaimed, beginning to panic as he flailed about. "You'll hurt yourself worse!"
His eyes popped open, and he stared at her for a moment, then began to convulse violently.
The door behind her flew open and in moments Erik was surrounded by a doctor and three nurses, who were all trying to physically restrain him to the bed.
Whether it was whatever poison that was working it's way through his system, or the feeling of being held down, Erik began to struggle more, screaming in agony.
"Get off of me! Let me go, damn you! Damn you!"
"Mr. Ramsey, be still!" the doctor said sharply. "Someone get me a sedative!"
"No! No drugs!" he roared, twisting his arms away from the nurses who held them down. He managed to rip out his IV, and became frantic when the doctor touched his mask.
"Who put this on him? How am I supposed to monitor his vitals if I can't see his face? My God, he probably can't breathe with this on!"
"No! No!" Erik knocked one of the nurses down, panting heavily from the exertion, and yet continued to fight them of.
"You're hurting him! Stop it!" Christine suddenly yelled as the doctor began to lay over his torso and pin him to the bed.
Behind her, she could hear her father yelling the same, and she rushed forward, heedless of the violent rage in Erik's eyes.
"Stop...just stop...," she pleaded, and laid a tentative hand on his arm.
Erik stilled completely under her light touch, his breathing heavy, his stomach still feeling as if it were on fire from whatever it was he'd ingested. But she was there...and she was touching him...and he thought he saw tears in her eyes. His beautiful Christine was crying, and Erik lost the battle that had raged inside him for months. He'd tried to fight what he felt for her, but couldn't, and it was the bitterest loss of all.
"Leave. Please just leave," he said weakly. "Let me die. I don't care. Just let me die."
His words tore at her heart, and Christine felt her face crumple in misery. Before she could say another word, her father guided her out into the hallway, where she cried for the boy she did not yet know.
- - -
"Cyanide, Lina? You always come up with interesting ways to amuse me," Andras said, patting his lap.
Lina crawled into it from the floor, a kitten who needed petted and appeased with words like silk that fell from her lover's lips. "It was too easy," she whispered, "Erik Ramsey was just like all the rest. Did you know that in prison...it is often your fellow inmates that prepare your food? I almost considered it too easy...but at least we got him out of there. If he survives...he will make a great recruit."
Andras growled into her ear. "I am sure you will put him through most rigorous training, my pet. Have you any ideas for him yet?"
"I've heard he is quite clever. He has a fascination with mirrors...he's even tried to build a catoptric cistula. You know I've always wanted one..."
"Ah, yes. I remember. But yours, shall we say, had a twist...?"
"Oh, Andras! I cannot wait to get my hands on this boy!" she said, her dark smile one that gave most shivers of unease. "He's perfect! And when I see beneath that mask...well...I believe he will be the One!"
"Really?" Andras hid his displeasure by tilting her head backwards with his sharpened nails. "Don't you think I should be the person who decides who is the One?"
Immediately her eyes lowered, and she was once again the demure twenty year old girl he had taken in all those years ago. "Of course, sir. But won't it be magnificent if he is...?"
"Certainly," Andras murmured thoughtfully.
If only his followers knew...there was no such person who existed! The One, well, it was believed by all in the organization that He was out there. He, a person of exquisite power and grace, who could command the universe and obedience from all men with a divine Voice!
Andras kissed Lina, and drew her closer to the darkness that rested within him with each whispered word of praise.
If Erik Ramsey turned out to be the One, Andras mused, then he would eat his hat.
Have I shocked you? Oh! It was not those damned Chaney's after all, was it? Awwwwww.