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Smidgie

Disclaimer: I do not own Artemis Fowl, as Eoin Colfer owns Artemis Fowl. I do not own the Phantom of the Opera, as Gaston Leroux, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Susan Kay, etc. own Phantom of the Opera. What part of my non-ownership isn't clear here?

Chapter Two: The Trials And Tribulations Of O.G.

He raked a hand through his hair. Damn them! Damn them and damn their stubborn foolishness! He would show them what happened when they did not pay his salary on time!

Settling at his desk five stories below ground, he tore off his mask and threw it into a corner of the desk. The porcelain clattered harmlessly onto a stack of music.

Time had not changed Artemis; there was little about him to change. Time could not create a horror any greater than that which nature had, he reflected with a hint of sarcasm. Fifteen years had passed as though only one had gone by; his flesh was a little more grey, eyes a little more sunken, and there were wrinkles on skin that had once been paper thin and smooth. But all of this was usually covered by a mask, so no one noticed… not even Butler, who still delivered cleaned laundry and groceries once a week, even if his former bodyguard duties were no longer required by his erstwhile master…

Artemis was still alone.

Fifteen years prior, he had left his home he had constructed in the Dublin sky, had left the clouds and his beloved country for the depths of the Paris Opera House. He had settled in the dark cellars, creating a home out of the cobwebs and the dust, to nurture his bitterness and ferment his hate. Man had driven him here, driven him to settle amongst the spiders and the rats, to become little more than an ugly, writhing creatures like they were. He had come close to losing his mind in those early days, driven mad by the silence of the walls and the weight of the earth pressing down above him. he had been consumed with dreams of being buried alive, crushed beneath the soil of the earth and the stone of the Opera House.

It was the music that had saved him.

Music, echoing down from the opera house above. Music became his sole reason to exist; music became the force that gave him life. Music filled the gaps in his soul and gave him something to love, something to hold onto in the darkness and through the old pain that came back to haunt him on the nights alone when he could not sleep. He had slowly begun to surround himself with beautiful things again, as he had in the sky-high apartment, and arranged for all manner of musical instruments to be brought to him by the ever-faithful Butler. He had been sure the former bodyguard would have attempted to kill him when he requested a pipe organ – a massive pipe organ, like the ones in the cathedrals he no longer set foot in – but his self-contained bodyguard had merely nodded gravely and procured the organ through some means Artemis was not interested in knowing. So long as he got his pipe organ and everything else he desired or needed, Butler could have killed a hundred men to gain it, and Artemis would not have cared.

Artemis was blissfully numb. The pain was mostly gone now, and he had accepted that he would always be alone. He moved through life in a routine: wake, compose, haunt, sleep, and so on.

The entire haunting business occurred entirely by accident. He had been striding along one of the many back corridors of the Opera, and had happened upon a pair of little girls, ballet rats, as the rest of the Opera knew them. The duo of ballerinas had taken one look at him, screamed, and had ran in the opposite direction. He had thought little of it at the time – he was used to frightening children – but later he had overheard the same two little girls retelling their tale of terror to their friends among the ballet rats. "It was the Phantom of the Opera!" they had squealed in unison. He was intrigued.

More research unearthed the old legend of the Opera Ghost, the Phantom of the Opera… Erik. It was a myth, a story, a tale created by little girls and foolish old women, but he could not shake it from his head. So he had begun to haunt more assiduously, letting him be seen by the ballet girls, the stagehands, the performers, and the management alike. He had demanded a salary from the management and when they did not comply, he threatened their children.

That made them comply.

Twenty thousand francs a month was merely a drop in the bucket compared to the vast amount of money he owned, but he liked it. He liked demanding things from them, he liked the feeling of power it gave him, and he liked driving them insane with casting suggestions and various threats against the vile succession of prima donnas they insisted on casting. And he had, eventually, driven them insane: one manager had ended up in a mental institution when he began to hear voices and the other fled to Australia.

It was the new management that was the problem. They were two hard-headed businessmen who lacked the airy and vague attitudes of their predecessors. Both successful, they viewed the acquisition of the Opera as just another business venture. They cared little for the music, for the beauty of the Opera on its own. They were going to destroy it, Artemis knew, going to destroy it slowly, and he as the resident ghost was going to make certain that they would not… nor would the truly horrendous current prima donna…

Reflecting on that, he pulled a sheet of paper towards him, and began to write.

Gentlemen,

Your failure to pay my salary has left me quite out of sorts…

xy

"…And we both know what an out of sorts Opera Ghost means… you leave me no choice, gentlemen, but to make an example of you to all of those who think they would defy me. And I assure you, I will not be merciful.

"Incidentally, La Carlotta appears to be increasingly into her dotage. Truly, gentlemen, is not six years of auditory torment not enough? She has been blighting the stage since long before you took acquisition of my Opera, and I think you shall find that her health will be progressively at risk unless she is replaced. The understudy will not be sufficient, in this case, to appease me. And the second violin simply must go. You wouldn't want him to have some kind of accident that might impair his ability to torture a violin, would you?

Your obedient servant,

O.G."

"Can you believe it, Andre?" Richard Firmin furiously asked his partner as he waved the letter around the manager's office. His fellow manager, Gilles Andre, sighed as he sank into a chair and brushed a hand over his eyes. He had not been sleeping well since this Opera Ghost character made an appearance. Then again, no one who worked at the Opera had been sleeping very peacefully of late. The whispers of a monster that haunted the theatre troubled everyone, even those who professed not to believe in the Phantom. "We won't stand for it!" Firmin cursed viciously. "This lunatic will get what he deserves, you mark my words, Andre! This is not the eighteenth century any more!" Andre tiredly looked up at his partner.

"The Phantom legends come from the nineteenth century, Firmin, not the eighteenth."

"Who cares when the damn story is from, Andre?" Firmin snapped. "The fact remains that this man – for he is a man, not a ghost – is an unscrupulous bastard taking advantage of the changeover period here at the Opera to gain some fast money." Andre rubbed his eyes.

"That's not true. He was here before we were. Poligny said – "

"Poligny? Ha! When did he say that, before or after they dragged him away to the asylum?" Firmin jeered. "You're too easily frightened, Andre. Mark my words, this man will be exposed for the coward hiding behind the façade of a fiend, or I'm not Richard Firmin!"

At that moment, a ghostly laughter filled the office. It seemed to come from every surface, and as Andre shrank back in his chair, Firmin puffed out his chest and addressed the room at large. "Who are you? Who is there?" The laughter stopped. "Answer me, coward: who is there?"

"Richard Firmin!" the voice that had laughed triumphantly declared, imitating Firmin flawlessly. "I am Richard Firmin, and you, sir, are a coward hiding behind the façade of a fiend!" It continued to laugh.

Above their office, Artemis crouched in a tiny space designed for some unknown reason long ago, when the Opera House had been built. Leaving them to their squabbling and confusion, the tall man straightened his body and sauntered causally out of the tiny space he had been cramped in, and exited through a secret door. Not for the first time he wondered what kind of man designed and built an opera house with so many secret passages and hidden doors, not to mention the extensive cellars beneath the upper stories of the Opera House.

Whoever he was, Artemis was deeply appreciative of his effort. He knew the Opera House had been built by Charles Garnier, but surely it wasn't Garnier – a nice, normal fellow – who built so many different and confusing passages in the lower cellars, as though creating a maze for those who walked there? Not that he had any problems, of course. His sense of direction was perfect, his memory flawless. He had never forgotten anything in his life, and sometimes he was not sure whether those powers of recall were a blessing or a curse. There were things he longed more than life itself to forget: the horrors of the carnival, the shrieks, the stares, the whip…

He shook off the memories as though one might shake off cobwebs after trekking through a dusty staircase. The carnival was over. There was no more leering gypsies, no more fear, no more pain. He was a grown man, with his own home, and his own domain.

If only he could remember that when the nightmares came…

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