A/N: Great big thank you, as always, to Wheel of Fish. What an enthusiastic review! :) Thanks also to CalmReader and Marilynxoxo for favouriting.
Chapter 9:
The darkness was so all-consuming that everything in its vicinity ceased to exist. Time was an abstract concept she couldn't grasp anymore, as was colour.
The pitch black of the corridor she found herself in was so disorientating that she needed to plant her hands firmly on the damp stone floor to remind herself which way was up and which way was down. Shallow breaths escaped her mouth every once in a while, fluttering over the collar of her dress, creating the smallest whisper of sound magnified by the silence into something loud enough to startle her. It brought to mind the shuffling of little feet, like the scurrying movements of rats or cockroaches. And why shouldn't they be here in this moist, confined space right by her side?
Hastily she withdrew her hands and pulled her legs closer to the rest of her body, so that every exposed bit of skin could be covered by fabric. More moments ticked by or perhaps they didn't, she really had lost the ability to tell. But after a while her frantic thoughts settled, focused on old memories instead.
Édouard would have had something funny to say to lighten her spirits. She sought solace in the comments he might have made. But even those fond memories and playful assumptions lost their shine when positioned alongside the large gap of his absence.
She was alone, alone in the dark, left at the mercy of a lunatic and murderer.
"Are you done?"
His voice was quiet but most certainly mocking yet she found herself looking up to him nonetheless.
"Yes."
She didn't know what he had meant, what she was supposed to be done with, but she couldn't bear another moment in this purgatory of remembrance and doubt.
"Brush off your clothes, you've made yourself dirty."
Tiredly she pushed herself away from the wall, momentum briefly carrying her forward until her fingertips came to rest on the ground, keeping her in an unsteady balance.
A sigh laced with impatience.
She tensed her muscles and pushed upwards until she finally found herself in a standing position. Her chest ached, a pain that seemed to extend to every part of her body. But she kept moving, following the sound of his retreating footsteps. Perhaps he was going to kill her now, her brain lazily supplied, perhaps this would all be over soon.
The walk was never-ending, infinite corridors sloping deeper and deeper beneath the Opera. She staggered on uncertainly, her feet slipping over smooth stones, trying in vain to navigate the passageways with as much confidence and power as the man in front of her. Eventually she gave up trying, stopped focusing on the ground swallowed up by darkness and fixed her eyes on him instead.
One impossible task exchanged for another.
His cloak billowed softly behind him as he walked but the dark fabric melted so perfectly with the blackness around them that her eyes watered. He was tall, taller than she had realised at their first encounter in box 5, almost unnaturally lean but moving in a way that suggested he was in complete control of his body.
After a while, the air around her changed, grew so warm that she repeatedly had to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand. Then a bright light pierced the dark, it seemed to float in the air by its own accord. She blinked and tiredly rubbed her eyes but when she opened them again, the flame was still there. The closer they drew, the more the light illuminated and finally she could see that the walls on either side of her opened up to offer a view of a dark, still lake.
"Don't make me remind you again not to dawdle, Madame," the ghost said and although her body ached and complained, she pushed herself forward at greater speed.
When she at last arrived by the water, she realised that her fatigued mind combined with eyes that had suffered an extended period of black-out had conjured up the image of the floating flame. It was nothing more than a torch mounted to a mooring pole. She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the little boat that was patiently awaiting them, but the sight of the ghost's eyes resting on her, was enough to suppress any form of hilarity.
"Move!" he commanded firmly and watched her scramble clumsily into the boat. Had she toppled over and fallen into the water, she was certain he'd have watched her drown without any emotional stirrings.
The little vessel rocked softly from side to side under the weight of her body but remained strangely still when he followed. Perhaps it had learned to bend to his will as well. With masterful strokes he pushed them away from the shore and within moments they were slipping deeper into the darkness until everything around her lost its shape once more.
She squeezed her eyes shut then and lowered her hand into the water beyond. It was cold, of course, icy to the point that it made her joints ache within minutes but in all this emptiness it was at least a reminder that she was still alive, that she was conscious.
"Not so brave now, are you, Madame?"
His voice floated to her from the bow of the boat. She withdrew her hand from the water and kept her mouth shut.
"Not so unlike…Christine…are you?"
The emotion in his voice felt like a sigh trapped between her ribcage. It was uncomfortable and heavy yet filled with a kind of wistful beauty. Once again, she remained silent, her thoughts trailing to the letter still stored in her cloak, the letter that was filled with the same wistful sentiment, a letter that would, no doubt, enrage Erik further if he was to find it.
Hastily she pressed her fist to her mouth, stifling the pressing urge to laugh. It felt absurd to be thinking of him as "Erik" for the first time now that she was squeezed in this little boat with him, while the suffocating memory of Christine clung to them.
The Vicomtesse had been the first to use his name but until now, Julianne hadn't been able to bring herself to do the same. He had appeared too deranged, too dangerous to earn a title other than "the ghost". But now that he ached before her, now that he had - however involuntarily – laid bare some of the tragedy that dwelled inside him, she felt she had finally encountered Erik.
"Oh, at first she behaved differently of course the treacherous wench. How adoringly she watched me with her doe eyes as my voice carried us to my house. No, I won't speak of that initial passage. It is like a stain on an otherwise pristine piece of art, Madame. Yes…yes, I know what you're thinking but even the greatest atrocity can be viewed as a piece of art."
She allowed him to talk without interruption, sensing that he likely wouldn't have taken notice had she made herself heard.
"But the second time…the second and the third time when I brought her down here she behaved exactly as you do now. Frozen like a statue, frightened into obedience."
He laughed though from where she was sitting it seemed that his mouth remained shut. It was difficult to tell, of course, but she felt the hollow sound more than she heard it, as if it poured out of his rigid frame straight into hers. She drew her cloak closer around her and closed her eyes again, doubting her own sanity if she tried to make sense of the man in front of her another moment longer.
Thankfully, he seemed to have reached the end of his strange soliloquy and without his voice demanding her attention it was almost too easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. The boat swayed steadily from side to side and the sound of the water as it caressed the wood or gently sloshed against some further away stones was soothing.
But when the boat suddenly bumped against something much closer, jerking her body forward, she remembered that despite the exhaustion she felt, she was still in grave danger. Erik stepped out onto the little dock, moored the boat and then started disappearing into what Julianne could only describe as a hole in a wall. He didn't turn around to see if she was following and with nowhere to run, it appeared he was right in assuming she would come sooner or later.
The pole that he had used to propel them forward, could have been her tool to escape, but it seemed to be coated in something that, upon closer inspection, looked like dried blood. Even so, she knew that her strength would fail her before she had crossed the lake halfway and after her ordeal in the darkness, she did not much fancy her chances of finding a way out of the labyrinthine passageways.
She disembarked onto the dock with an unsurprising lack of grace and winced as the aged wood tore some skin off her hands as she was trying to cushion her fall. She didn't have the energy to blink back the tears that pooled in her eyes and staggered forward towards the hole through which Erik had disappeared.
She could see now that the hole was, in fact, a simple doorway that had been chiselled into the elaborate stone wall. It was an odd invitation into a place that seemed otherwise as well defended as any castle she had seen in England. Her legs threatening to cave in underneath her, she stopped and leaned against the doorway to rest. As her eyes adjusted further to the dark, aided by a handful of torches mounted on the walls around her, she realised the destruction that lay before her.
There was no clear, discernible path leading to the black leather sofa that appeared to be the only piece of furniture intact. Instead, there were mountains of broken stone, shards of glass, shavings of marble, bronze and gold out of which peeked ripped apart documents, torn images and a whole assortment of foreign looking objects.
"Do come inside, Madame Doucet."
His voice snaked around her before he, himself, appeared. Her mind had been too busy processing that this was, indeed, a house to notice that there were large, mahogany double doors dividing the main room into even quarters. Erik had emerged from the ones directly opposite her, having seemingly discarded his cloak, hat and gloves. His fingers, now freed, were long, pale and spindly, and scurried over everything in their path like eager spider legs as he made his way towards her.
Too repulsed to watch another moment, she turned her head away and inhaled sharply through her nostrils.
"Don't tell me this ghost hunt isn't to your satisfaction anymore, Madame."
He had reached her, was towering over her and yet she refused to meet his eyes. She didn't care that he could see the tears that were streaking down her cheeks.
"That would be a particular shame after all the trouble you went through to find me."
He raised his hand in so unexpected a movement that it caught her attention and made her automatically jerk her head in his direction. But his hand remained where it was, suspended in the air, too immobile to strike her, too high to caress her. His eyes burned with something quite unidentifiable.
"It appears I have praised you for your punctuality too soon."
Nothing more than a quiet hiss as he lowered his hand, exposing to her the deep gash that ran through it like a fat, protruding vein.
"Your stubbornness has made me quite late and so all the plans I have for you must wait until tomorrow."
Her chin trembled as more tears flooded over it.
"To your left you will find a chamber to sleep in."
She turned automatically, yearning to remove herself from his close proximity.
"I am certain you won't make any attempts to escape. I shan't save you again."
She laughed tiredly and tumbled across another mountain of debris to the only room that did not stand at a symmetrical angle to the others. It was large and silent and appeared to be made entirely out of glass. An odd design but she was too tired to question it further or to expect finding something ordinary in his house.
Retreating to the farthest corner of the room where she could still see the flickering light of the torch outside being reflected all around her, she lowered her aching body onto the floor and curled up, tucking her cloak around herself. As her fingers clumsily removed the letters and shoved them painfully down the bodice of her black dress, it occurred to her fleetingly how odd it was that the man unafraid of killing, had appeared reluctant to touch her.