A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! Hope you enjoy...
Part III - Curse
XXXVI
.
Christine sat before the vanity dressing table, her thoughts completely interwoven within the past few days. The languid strokes of her brush were made more to relax taut nerves than as a necessity to smooth hidden tangles. She, who always deplored brushing the long, thick ringlets with their multitude of snags had run the brush through her hair so many times, it was surprising she had not brushed much of it out.
The long journey by train had taken well over a week, nearly two, with a silent and dour young man and his quiet sister for companions. Anton, when he did make eye contact, glared at her until she squirmed in her seat. And Mihaela, though she never came across as resentful, also did not speak unless spoken too, and then her utterances were uncharacteristically monosyllabic with little more than a yes or no in reply. Often darting glances toward her older sibling, as if taking her cues from him.
Upon delivering her to the Opera House three days ago, brother and sister immediately retraced their tracks to return to the train station, and Christine, exhausted and emotionally in tatters, entered the office of a surprised Madame Giry and fell quietly weeping into her arms.
Christine did not believe she deserved the blame for her decision; nor did she feel guilt. Had she remained in Berwickshire in the midst of the nightmare that seemed never to end, she would have gone stark raving mad. Yet the absence from Erik gnawed at her soul. Every day, every interminable hour spent apart from him became more difficult to bear…
For many years, she had wished for her mysterious Angel's return, and in reuniting with him found so much more. A companion. A husband. A lover. And though she still was reconciling herself to the revelation of the monster he had unwillfully become, to her he had shown nothing but care and consideration – always. Her gentle beast with a heart she had felt beat against her ear despite his arguments to the contrary – terrifying to others, tender toward her.
Her spot had been filled in the chorus, but Madame assured Christine that she was family, thought of as a daughter, and would not be put out on the street. La Carlotta had been absent a little over a week, due to her most recent explosion of temperament, and Madame allowed Christine to close herself off in the exquisite dressing room since Christine's old cot in the dormitory had been taken as well. With no understudy for Carlotta, the rose-pink room with its gold leaf vanity table and chaise longue proved a worthy sanctuary. To help fill the empty hours, now and then she read short passages from her mother's journal , though mostly all Christine did was sit and stare at the walls when she did not succumb to frequent sleep that only served to haunt her.
At times she even felt haunted, experiencing an odd prickling sensation, as if she was being watched, only to scan the room and see her own image in the floor to ceiling glass nearby, the door on the opposite end of the chamber firmly closed.
For the past three days, she experienced the gift of utter solitude, giving her time to quietly weep over her losses, to think on what had been and to mourn over all that was irrevocably lost. At eighteen years she could hardly be called an innocent, even before entering the marriage bed, but felt as if, emotionally, she had aged decades in weeks. The expression in her eyes appeared older and cosmetic artifices were needed to conceal the shadows beneath them. Not that Christine bothered.
Madame had been the only one to enter Christine's temporary domain and bring meals, but she knew this welcome reprieve could not last forever. La Carlotta never remained absent longer than a week and usually less than that. Nor would the managers agree to allow Christine to remain at the Opera House indefinitely without her working in some capacity – that is if they had been informed of her presence - and dully she wondered if there was a spot open for an additional maid.
Christine set down the hairbrush and crossed her arms against the dressing table, staring at the forlorn image that reflected to her from three oval mirrors. Physically, she looked much the same, but was barely able to recall the fearless young woman who sat here during another of Carlotta's peaceful absences. Seeing little of that naïve girl in the face that stared back.
Her days were haunted. Her dreams were haunted.
And without her dark Angel and Maestro to occupy the former (he never ceased to appear in the latter), the torment of time seemed endless as well.
Time she had asked for. Again. Time she felt imperative. Yet without Erik to orchestrate the minutes, time had become a cruel companion indeed -
How had she so quickly forgotten?
A light knock startled her from dismal thoughts and she looked toward the door, watching as it opened after a prolonged moment.
Meg's fair head peeked around the corner. "Am I welcome?"
Upon her arrival three days ago, Christine begged Madame Giry for complete isolation, but at sight of her dear friend, she faintly smiled, now grateful for the company.
"Yes, of course. Come in."
Meg closed the door and hesitantly approached. "Are you alright? Can I bring you anything?"
Christine shifted around on the stool to face her. "Your mother has taken very good care of me. Please, pull up a chair and tell me all that's happened in my absence."
Meg nodded, her expression somber, but did not speak until she was sitting across from her. It was then Christine noticed a cloth-wrapped parcel in Meg's hand.
"It is good to see you again," her friend said. "I have missed you and was sorry I didn't get the chance to say goodbye when you were last here."
"We had to leave quite suddenly," Christine offered the weak reply, not wishing to go into explanations.
Meg nodded pensively. "And now? Why did you return to us so soon and without your husband?" she asked gently. "Do you care to talk about what happened?"
Had it been anyone else Christine would have refused. But she and Meg had shared everything since they were young girls, and it seemed only natural to confide in her now.
"Lucy died," Christine revealed, her voice wavering and brow furrowed in sorrow.
"Oh, Christine," Meg leaned over and reached for her hand. "I'm so sorry!"
Christine gave a tight nod. "It was quite sudden and unexpected. And though it's been two weeks, I feel as if I'm still reeling from the shock."
Meg gently squeezed her hand. "Was it an accident then?"
She almost admitted that Raoul was the culprit, the act deliberate – indeed, twice executed – but refrained. It did no good to air matters she wished only to forget. Matters that must remain secret.
Christine shook her head. "Actually, I would rather not speak of that night."
Meg looked askance in confusion, her brows drawn together in concern. She hesitated as if she wished to say something but wasn't sure how to broach the subject or even that she should. Christine did not prod her, only waited.
"I need to speak with you about something I found." Meg laid the parcel in the lap of her ballet skirt to untie the string. "I helped Maman gather your belongings from the hotel and found this. I slipped it in my cloak when she wasn't looking."
Even before Meg pulled the cloth away, Christine tensed in understanding.
Meg held out the worn, missing journal for Christine to take.
"Did you read it?" Christine asked warily, though with her friend's peculiar behavior, the question was unnecessary.
"I did. I thought it only a story. Tell me that's all it was."
"What do you mean?"
"I could hardly conceive you owning a book of this nature, given your ridicule with the tales of horror I've read, and thought perhaps it belonged to the Count – until I took note of the name inside. Did you not tell me once long ago that your mother's maiden name was Van Helsing?"
Christine briefly closed her eyes. "Yes."
Meg cast a troubled glance at the journal Christine now held tightly clutched in her lap, as if trying to sort out all the jagged pieces in her mind.
"So, a member of your family from the 18th century wrote the tale – which reads more like a diary. But why would you have something like that in your possession? It's not like you at all."
She asked the question, as if fearing to know but too curious not to. Christine had fled Berwickshire, hoping to avoid the topic altogether. Even tonight, she had tried to evade this subject that appeared relentless to make its truth known.
"You should not ask, Meg. You should just forget about this book altogether."
"Is it so very terrible?" Meg put on a smile that trembled, attesting to her nervousness. "Come now, Christine. It cannot be all bad. It's not wrong to be curious, even about things you don't like."
In her friend's presence, Christine felt a sudden need to unburden the load she carried with someone she trusted. With Meg. But did she dare?
"If I tell, you must swear by all that is holy never to speak of it to a living soul. To do so could bring peril to myself, to you, perhaps to everyone here." Christine hesitated. "Are you sure you still want to know?"
Meg's eyes had widened with Christine's caution, but she nodded. "Yes, and I swear to keep my silence."
Clandestine oaths given in girlhood days had never been as significant as in this hour, nor more dangerous.
Christine wavered in indecision another moment, then let the truth spill out. She spoke of the brutal attacks in Berwickshire, of Raoul's terrible revelations about her calling and subsequent training, and ended with the vampyric attack on Lucy that led to her demise. She did not, however, divulge Erik's secrets and that he was the chief link to all of it - indeed, a ruler of his kind. As his wife, Christine had promised her loyalty and would not betray him. He never harmed her, though he'd had every opportunity, and had only striven to help Lucy. Nor did she speak of who truly killed her cousin, the verity of that night still unbearable to contemplate.
Once she ended her testimony of the events as she had lived them, she waited for Meg to respond – sure she would tell her that she must have been dreaming, that her feet were not grounded in reality or some similar admonition. Sure she would discount it as a tale of fiction, fostered through Christine's vivid imagination...
And was surprised when she said nothing at all.
If anything, Meg grew more introspective, her somber gaze having dropped and fastened to the tattered journal.
"Meg?"
Her friend's eyes lifted to hers. "I believe you."
Christine stared, Meg's quiet words the last ones expected.
"I admit, I am shocked. I expected some measure of disbelief or argument to the contrary. It took me weeks before I ceased to deny the truth and accept it, even with all I had seen. And believe me, I have seen a lot."
Meg glanced down at the journal again and gave a tight nod.
"It was the day after you left," she began tentatively. "We had finished packing your belongings to send by train and returned to the Opera House at nightfall. We were met by Jammes who needed to talk to Maman about some minor emergency, and they went on ahead inside. Before I could follow, a man approached from the darkness. He asked about you…"
Meg hesitated and wrung her hands in her lap. Christine's heart slowly began to pound.
"He wanted to know if you were inside the theatre. He was classically handsome, tall and well dressed, and I thought he must surely be a member of the aristocracy who attended the opera. At first I thought him an admirer – but there was something terribly strange about his manner – something frightening. I told him you no longer worked here and tried to leave. He grabbed my arm and demanded to know where you went. Through my sleeve I could feel his hand – Christine, it was like ice! But what chilled my soul were his eyes. They actually glowed in the night and yet appeared so empty – so dark and soulless. As though he were not even human…" Meg shook her head as if wishing to erase the mental image. "I broke away and ran through the door left opened for me then turned to look, fearing he had followed – Christine, he was nowhere! Yet there was nowhere for him to go…"
Her account was distressingly familiar, and Christine could only listen with horror and the knowledge that it must have been Nicolae. Is that why he had traveled to Berwickshire – to hunt down Christine? Had she been indirectly responsible for Lucy's death?!
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to seek calm. No. She would not take blame for his reprehensible actions. The beast had been in Lucy's life long before Christine entered it.
Erik told her she would be safe here, and she was not without means to defend herself, the wretched medallion with its bloodstone never absent from around her neck and his newly acquired silver dagger well within easy reach.
"Tell me," she said, needing to know though she felt certain of his identity. "Did the buttons of his waistcoat or frock coat look like small bones? Like finger bones?"
Meg appeared unnerved by the question. "I cannot recall. But I do remember his accent reminded me of your husband's. As if they hail from the same country."
The chill of fear trickled down Christine's spine.
"I have read that book twice through," Meg admitted, plucking at the tulle folds of her ballet skirt with nervous fingers. "I might have thought it madness that spurred your ancestor to write those words if not for the encounter with the stranger. Descriptions of the monsters written there seemed to embody him."
Christine uncontrollably shuddered. "If it is who I think it is, he is indeed a monster."
"In the truest sense of the word?" Meg asked, as if still needing confirmation of what had once been to her the stuff of horrific fantasy.
How well Christine understood.
"Yes."
Meg nodded, looking idly toward the tall mirror on the wall then back to Christine. "But why does he want you? Is it because your parents were slayers? And the task has now passed on to you?"
"Possibly, yes," Christine hedged, resolved to keep Erik's name out of it. "Though I could never become what they were. However, should he come around again, I know how to deal with him," she added grimly, recalling his attack on her in the dark alleyway along with all she had come to learn about how to dispose of a vampyre.
For his demise she would make the exception. The world without Nicolae would be a far better place.
"Not that you need worry about his return," Meg reassured. "Since that night I haven't seen him." She cracked a tepid smile. "Maybe the Phantom scared him away."
"The Phantom?"
Meg regarded her incredulously. "Christine, surely you remember the stories told us when we were children? Of the Opera Ghost that haunted this theatre?"
"Tales of horror never did appeal. You know that." Besides, her attention had been too wrapped up in an Angel to pay any attention to a ghost.
"Well, they say he's returned to seek vengeance. Accidents have happened onstage and off – more like pranks of mischief, really. It all began almost two weeks ago, and rumors have spread like buzzing bees to a hive that he's the one responsible."
Christine recalled the co-worker who confronted her on the night she attended the opera as a guest and taunted her with mention of the Phantom. Perhaps he or a dissatisfied crew member resurrected the tale. It made sense. There were always those unhappy with a new regime, and the most recent managers did not seem as adept as the last one from the little Christine had heard and seen.
"Do you recall anything of the stories told us as children?" Meg asked a second time.
"Very little." Christine thought back. "I remember that for a short time after your mother brought me here there were whispers and rumors of a haunting and something about a magical lasso. But when the cast and crew began to talk of such things, I left the room. I remember the Buquet brothers were the worst at inciting fear. I tried to avoid both men."
Indeed, she had made herself as scarce as could be that first year at the Opera House, tucking herself away like a scared little mouse into its hidey-hole. In the beginning, in those darkest of days, she escaped to the chapel to pray to the Almighty Father to bring Papa back. Later, she went there to speak with an Angel. With Erik…
"The incident was kept from us, no doubt because we were children," Meg went on. "But ever since the hauntings started up again, I learned that those whispers heard, what we once thought of as only stories, actually did occur. People went missing. Terrible accidents went unexplained. Much like those the monsters are responsible for in tales of horror - and in that journal." She nodded to the book Christine had set down on a nearby table. "I learned that all those years ago Joseph's younger brother disappeared suddenly and unexpectedly. That was what led Joseph to drink so heavily, and recently they discovered secret passageways behind the walls –"
She straightened in her chair in excitement. "Oh, but I did not tell you! The new management issued reconstruction of the men's dressing rooms a month ago - a wall had begun to cave inward - and the workmen uncovered a hidden passage that led down to the third cellar. Behind the walls, they found a skeleton! Can you imagine? They thought at first it might be Simon Buquet, but the gendarmes who were contacted said the bones appear to have been down there a very long time – decades old, even a century. Of course, no one can know for sure, but it is now believed that they must be the remains of the Opera Ghost, that he died a violent death and that is why he habitually haunts the theatre!"
Christine frowned at the gruesome and disturbing news. The hidden passages came as no surprise - Erik had found their existence and made use of them, also showing her the path he had taken to the chapel when he'd been her Angel - but to hear of the discovery of a skeleton was frightening. Moreso, that it was reputed to be the notorious Opera Ghost.
"Meg - you don't believe in a Phantom haunting the theatre, do you?"
She gave a slight shrug. "Whose to say what is real? Weeks ago I never would have believed that monsters from books appear outside those tales of fiction. So I suppose a two-hundred year old ghost isn't beyond the realm of possibility."
"No, I suppose not."
Christine drew her brows together in dismay. She had escaped one nightmare only to enter another?
"They say he has the face of death, that one look paralyzes his victims, and those few who do manage to escape – he hunts them down to wreak his vengeance. Few have seen him, and those few have not lived to tell the tale."
The chill moved entirely through Christine and she shuddered clear down to her spine.
"Really, Meg. Must we speak of such things? Besides, it makes no sense. If those victims did not live, how then was the tale spread? Surely no one stood by and simply watched them die!"
Meg looked at her incredulously then laughed. "Well, this is bizarre! It is usually your mind running free and wild with imagination and I who chimes in as the voice of reason. But likely you are right. Rumor warped what little truth existed into a morbid fantasy that became a ghost story."
With haste they neatly filed and explained away the circumstances rather than accept such accounts as true. A ghost story in and of itself felt safe, and Christine craved safety.
"Well, whatever the case, powder does not fly by itself and dump down onto the diva's newly coifed head. The prank had to be engineered by someone."
Christine felt a smile tickle her lips. "Is that what happened to make her leave?"
"First came the wet ink left in her shoes, then the throat spray that made her croak like a frog during rehearsal – then the white powder that coated her head to toe and made her look like a ghoul!"
Christine laughed for the first time in weeks. "It sounds more like the pranks of a mischievous schoolboy than a vengeful ghost!"
"And couldn't have happened to a more deserving victim," Meg agreed gleefully.
Christine nodded. La Carlotta's unmerited superiority and waspishness to those she considered underlings – which included everyone but management – had long been the bane of the entire theatre. It was always unclear to Christine why they retained the diva as a performer, much less the lead.
"Speaking of!" Meg clapped her hands together. "They are holding auditions for Carlotta's understudy tomorrow afternoon. I hope you feel well enough to try out. You really should."
"But Carlotta has never had an understudy."
"She will now. After her latest walk-off, the new management has decided that a change is imperative to the smooth running of the theatre. High time too! We are between productions, but they have chosen to run Robert le Diable by Meyerbeer next. Do you know any songs from that? The theatre performed it decades ago, but you can sing anything you want to audition for the role. They just want to hear your voice."
"I haven't decided if I'm even going to audition."
"Oh, but you must!" Meg struggled to contain her excitement, carefully framing her words. "I know these past weeks have been difficult for you, I cannot even begin to imagine what you went through – but this is what you've always wanted, Christine. To take the lead. And though you will only be an understudy, her royal highness storms off the set as predictable as a winter storm. You will surely get your chance to sing before a packed theatre soon, perhaps even on opening night if she doesn't return by then..."
As her friend continued to coax her submission, Christine could not deny the idea appealed to her long-held aspiration to take center stage. Erik had been less than heartening with regard to her vocal ability the first night they met in the maze, but since then she'd had what amounted to several lessons with her skilled Maestro. Was it enough to take on such a challenging role for a principal part in the opera?
After weeks cast in misery and days chosen in solitude, the desire to free her voice on stage burned stronger with each moment. The worst, she would fail. But for every true thespian, theatre life was held together with the glue of the old adage that one must try and then try again and then yet again. For practice, as everyone knew, bred perfection.
With a smile, Christine waited for a pause then nodded, feeling a surge of excitement for the first time in weeks.
"Alright - you have convinced me, mon ami! I'll do it."
Surely it was only her imagination to hear, before Meg's exclamation of glee, a faint sound that seemed to come from the tall mirror - like the brief huff of a chuckle. An auditory hallucination, no doubt, brought on by their talk of ghosts. Meg gave no notice, and after casting a curious glance toward the reflective pane, surprised to see her cheeks now bloom rosy with excitement, Christine returned her full attention to her friend as they eagerly discussed the upcoming production.
xXx
A/N: So, Christine has found new inspiration and all seems to be going as it should be. 0-:-) How nice...
(muwahahaha)
