Thank-you to everyone reading and I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Chapter 5:
Hero was met by more darkness, which was barely pushed back by the weak light of her candle.
Regnava nel silenzio alta la notte e bruna, colpia la fonte un pallido raggio di tetra luna…ed ecco su quell margine, l'ombra monstrarsi a me!* She could have sworn she heard a vice whisper maliciously in her ear – but that wasn't right: there was no one next to her.
Two twin points of light glowed out of the darkness. Eyes, she suddenly thought, though it was impossible for human eyes to glow in darkness like a feline's. Hero made to move into a defensive position, but she was not fast enough and suddenly a thin length of rope was around her neck, like a lasso, tightening progressively. A tall thin shape solidified out of the darkness, holding the other end of the rope and Hero's knife hand flew out, knowing that she had very little time before the lasso asphyxiated her.
Her heart beating wildly, she felt adrenaline pulsing through her as she fought for her life. Swiftly avoiding the dagger, the man, who more an ominous black mask, deflected her hand, knocking it against the passage wall, and making her drop the knife, which made a clinging sound on the stone floor. Pulling the rope even tighter, he moved behind her.
"If you do not wish your next breath to be your last, you shouldn't even think of trying that again."
Hero considered kicking him in the shin, or elbowing him in the gut, but he seemed to have stopped tightening the noose, so she paused also.
"I suppose you're the infamous Opera Ghost, then," she said, as best she could with the rope tight around her throat. "You'd have to be – your opening line was very operatic. And the aria – I suppose that was you as well. But unless I'm very much mistaken, there's no fountain in this tunnel." She didn't mention that his beautifully trained voice could only have come from the stage. He didn't sound like the kind of thug that could be encountered in basements and the Paris catacombs.
The man chuckled behind her, somewhat sardonically. "Opera Ghost, is it, mademoiselle? Is that whom you came to seek down here? You must be a very curious sort of young woman." He paused a moment, before continuing, "Of course, child, curiosity killed the cat, and it seems that yours has led you to the same fate.
"You might be amused to know that my mother is fond of saying more or less the same thing. Though she phrases that last bit as a prediction, rather than a description of current circumstances. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to turn around. And loosen the rope – I'm finding it quite hard to speak."
Startled by the lack of any panic, pleading or tears, Erik did not protest as the girl turned to face him, her hands going up to the lasso and moving it firmly away from her throat. After all, he would have no trouble killing her, if he so chose.
The golden eyes were watching her curiously and not a bit suspiciously out of the black silk mask. Hero peered at him for a second, before nodding to herself.
"Then you are the Ghost. I thought you might be more corporeal than they give you credit for, upstairs."
"I should think that being correct in your assumption would be the least of your concerns right now, mademoiselle. After all, you face your inevitable death – I am your greatest fear."
"You are mistaken, monsieur. I am not in the least afraid of you. And to be honest, I do not think that you will kill me."
"Foolish child." His voice was suddenly all around her, but Hero had seen ventriloquists before, though perhaps never one as skilled, and she failed to be duly impressed. "You are faced with the Opera Ghost. None survive the encounter. I am the terror that stalks the night! The bringer of death! I could kill you before you have a chance to react."
"Perhaps, but you will do no such thing."
"And why not, mademoiselle? Your confidence is entirely without merit."
"You won't kill me for two reasons, the first being that, should you try, you will discover that I am very difficult to kill. The second is that you are the one who set all these traps. Which means that, no doubt, you are wondering how a girl from the Opera managed to get this far with her life and all her limbs intact. Neither will you learn why I have come here. And I suspect that you are rather fond of knowing things." Her voice sounded irritatingly pragmatic in the gloom. She had yet to plead for her life.
The Phantom's eyes flashed at her, and Hero was amused to note that the rats had been correct about his glowing eyes. Hero also realised that he wore a full opera suit and cloak, while wandering abandoned tunnels under the opera house at odd hours of night. She supposed that perhaps the man believed in formal leisure strolls. She beamed up at him, suddenly.
"Did you say you were dangerous?" she murmured thoughtfully, though he thought vaguely that he was being mocked.
"Very dangerous," he confirmed, feeling faintly murderous at her lack of any appropriate reaction. He would have supposed her simply to be extraordinarily stupid, if not for the teasing light in her eyes.
"Infamous? Feared? Mad?"
"Indeed." The lasso tightened for emphasis, and she had not even seen his hands move.
"Mad, bad and dangerous to know? How Byronic of you. Well, I don't suppose you'll believe me, monsieur Ghost, but I'm a bit infamous myself. And perhaps quite a bit mad."
He stared at her for a moment, surprised. He was not used to being bantered at. Her smile was making him uneasy.
A dangerous idea was beginning to form in Hero's mind.
"Why are you here?" he snarled, becaus he did not enjoy feeling unsettled and he wondered if he should not simply snap her neck and be done with it. And yet Erik could never bring himself to hurt a helpless woman, though this one seemed far from helpless, he reminded himself.
"You might not take me at my word, monsieur, but I have come all this way, though your multitude of traps and, regrettably, cobwebs, to speak to you."
The Ghost snorted the absurdity of her announcement. "Nonsense! To what end? You are a poor liar, mademoiselle. I recognise you now. You are one of those ridiculous friends of Marguerite Giry. One of the ballet rats, no doubt." His voice had become silky and dangerous. "Tell me, my dear, was it a dare? A little game with your friends that went too far? Did they challenge you to catch a glimpse of the Opera Ghost? Perhaps you were too proud to refuse – but pride comes before a fall, mademoiselle. Marguerite may be under a shred of grudging immunity, but you are not."
"The fact you can suppose me a ballerina only confirms that do not, in fact, recognise me at all, and have doubtlessly never set eyes on me before. But that is neither here nor there. I assure you, that I did come all the way here to speak with you. And perhaps to meet the person who is so good at leading the whole of the Opera by the nose. I have come about your rather distasteful pranks at the expense of my friends. While I do not doubt that they are of much enjoyment to you, they are not so to my friends. And unfortunately that means that they spend the best part of each night discussing your latest prank and scaring themselves more than you ever could." Hero fixed him with a steady stare. "We share a room monsieur, and I do not appreciate drama so late at night and quite so frequently. As to your apparent grudge against Sorelli, while I do not pretend to know what bad blood is between you, I ask you to stop. You last prank was in very poor taste!"
Erik stared at the young woman in astonishment. He did not quite know how to react to her audacity. In a moment, Hero found herself face to face with the mask.
"You seek to reason with a madman, mademoiselle! In poor taste, was it? Well! You dare come into my domain uninvited, and proceed to make demands of me? You must wish to provoke me!"
His voice was rising, mad and echoing around the tunnel and he suddenly had her pinned to the wall, his grip on the lasso strong and determined. Hero chose that moment to step on his foot, duck down and scoop up her dagger. She was very quick. This time, Erik was not as quick at evading her and she nicked his arm. It was not a deep cut, though it left a rent in his frock coat and the thin line of blood would doubtlessly stain the fabric.
Erik froze, fury forgotten as he stared at his arm.
"That was a very foolish thing to do, mademoiselle." His voice sounded deadly.
Hero resumed a defensive stance. "I regret having to do that. You were behaving irrationally. Suppose you accidentally killed me? Having said that, this whole episode is absurd. No doubt we are both irrational from fatigue. It is late. Here, I have some bandages in my bag, if you like." Wiping the dagger on her skirt, she put it away in a sign of good faith.
The Phantom's sabre was at her throat before she could locate the bandages.
"You are in my world now, mademoiselle, and you were not invited. You have attacked me with that knife of yours. Now, I will claim my dues. You were quite correct, it seems. I will not kill you just yet. Instead, you will come with me as my prisoner. Consider it the price of your idiocy."
The girl appeared to consider this, as if he had just invited her to luncheon, before nodding at him. "Very well. I will come with you. I am, by nature, curious and there are still questions to be answered. But you may lower your sword. I go with you quite freely."
"Is that so?" The blade pricked her skin.
"Indeed. You know by now that I am not helpless, and I am not particularly lost. I could leave if I so chose, but I do not. Here, I shall offer my knife as a sign of good faith." Slowly, her pulled out the knife, and handed it to him, handle first. It was quickly snatched from her, and vanished into the folds of his cloak.
"I doubt that very much, mademoiselle," he said pleasantly. "Now, come along, before I change my mind and decide to kill you after all."
Hero took the lasso off from around her neck, and it quickly disappeared into the Phantom's sleeve.
They moved through a myriad tunnels and passages, it seemed, and they did not encounter any further obstacles on their way. However, Hero felt sure his route was meant to confuse her, which it did.
As he led the girl through his maze, Erik wondered what he had been thinking. Had Nadir been there, he knew, he would never have heard the end of it. Had he somehow managed to surpass his own madness? Why the Devil did he decide to take the girl with him? An unpleasant voice at the back of his head suggested he'd have been better off killing her when he had the chance.
He wondered if it had not been her banter, regretfully interspersed as it had been with bursts of audacious violence, that had thrown him so off-centre. Though Erik would never admit it, it would be good to stave off the solitude, if but a little.
Hero walked calmly. She was not afraid. He could have made a proper attempt to kill her while he had the chance, and he had not done so. No doubt he had hoped to project an image of evil and madness, but she was not convinced. She had seen no evil in his eyes, and nowhere near as much madness as he seemed to believe in. She also felt quite guilty about the whole unfortunate knife business, deserved though it might have been.
Walking beside her with a steely grip at her elbow, his movements made no sound. She decided to break the silence.
"I didn't introduce myself. You must think it very rude, but I am sure, under the circumstances, it can be excused. My name is Hero Winterwood. What shall I call you?"
"You seemed to have no qualms with referring to me as the Opera Ghost."
"I didn't know you then. And we are not in any sort of Gothic novel, so I won't continue to address you as such, if it's all the same to you."
"A name has little meaning down here."
"I disagree. A name has as much meaning as you give it. Geography is irrelevant. Come now, humour me, monsieur."
So few knew his name anymore that it hardly seemed worth the bother to withhold it.
"Erik," he answered Hero, with a weary sigh. "My name is Erik." He suddenly felt very old.
Hero nodded. "A pleasure, then, Erik."
Erik found that he couldn't be sure whether she was lying.
The rest of the journey was conducted in silence. Hero's silence was contemplative, and Erik's wary.
Following the Opera Ghost, Hero skirted around the edge of an underground lake along a perilously narrow ledge. There was a house built on the other side of the lake, she realised with some surprise, before focusing all her effort on not tripping over her skirts. It made a strange kind of sense – she'd had trouble picturing Erik living in a nice Parisian apartment with a flower box and fading wall-paper.
They were in some sort of cavern past the tricky passages of the maze, and Hero wondered how far under the opera house they had come. The surface of the lake was still and dark, disturbed only by a slight beam of light coming from an air shaft in the ceiling high above the water, which must have led out onto the street. Hero wondered which street it was.
The narrow ledge twisted out of sight up ahead, and seemed to disappear, leaving them with nowhere to go. Erik stopped in his tracks and his gloved hands glided over the stone wall, pressing in so that a door previously hidden among the rough stone opened into another passage, this one darker than the cavern and quite narrow.
The tunnel seemed to curve around the lake, because when they emerged at last, it was through another trapdoor on the other side of the water.
"Well, my dear Ghost, I must say that I am reconsidering the fact that I am not in a Gothic novel," Hero teased. "Mrs Radcliffe could not have written better herself. I feel quite the heroine."
They were at the house by the lake, and through another door, an ordinary wooden one, Hero found herself in a sitting room that was quite unremarkable if you discounted its location. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sudden light, and she blew out her own candle, putting it into her bag. There were beautiful Persian rugs covering the stone floor thrown one over another and they were a little worn. A small writing desk stood in the corner, with a candle on it burnt half-way and some stacked paper. A leather sofa and two blue upholstered armchairs stood around a fireplace that was stacked with logs, though it looked as if it had not been used for some time. Bookshelves covered one wall, and a shaded lamp rested on a little table between the sofa and one of the armchairs.
The room was illuminated by three candelabras placed around the small space, and the tapestries on the walls, also Persian and also quite worn, gave the room a comfortable appearance. The furniture was old-fashioned and perfectly ordinary. Three closed doors led out of the room.
Having taken a cursory look around, Hero turned to face the Opera Ghost. He was not what she had expected, though if asked she would have been unable to say what that had been. He was a very tall man, towering over her though she was by no account short. He was also rake-thin, in a way that suggested illness, or a negligence in keeping regular mealtimes, or any meal times at all. His suit, though she recognised the expensive fabric and skilled tailoring, hung off his thin frame, and did not quite fit correctly, as though the tailor had attempted to make it on description and measurements, but without a proper fitting. His black mask hid his face and shadowed his unreadable yellow eyes. His hair was sparse and dark.
He was an enigma, she decided, and Hero had always been fond of riddles.
OOO
* "The night, deep and dark, reigned in silence, a dim ray of gloomy moonlight hit the fountain…and the spectre appeared to me on that edge" Erik is doing his best to be creepy by quoting bits of Regnava ne silencio from Lucia de Lammemoor. This part of the aria foreshadows Lucia's doom.