Hello all,

With this chapter, I just wanted to add a brief note of clarification for those of you who have not read the original novel of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux: in that story, which is the version of POTO that Lessons is following, the Phantom kidnaps Christine off the stage the very next evening after he overhears her on the rooftop of the Opera House with Raoul. This is quite different from the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical, where the Phantom spends six months after the scene on the rooftop in hiding, finishing his opera Don Juan Triumphant, and plotting and planning a way to both force Christine to marry him, and force the Opera to produce his work (which also never happens in Leroux). If anything is ever confusing to you as you read along, please do let me know in the comments.

Chapter 3. April 1887. The day after Erik abducted Christine (continued).

Erik kneeled on the floor of his house, panting for breath. Beside him lay a hammer, and the shattered remains of the devices which, before he had smashed them, had allowed him to hear any sounds that might echo through his web of tunnels. He had created them to allow himself to hear any intruders who might enter his domain; he had destroyed them to prevent himself from hearing the rapturous exclamationsof the two lovers as they climbed up out of the underworld, joyful at having escaped the clutches of Hades, who would never hear such sweet things said to him... No, this Orpheus had succeeded in reclaiming his Eurydice, and there was no risk that she might disappear if he turned to make sure she was still following him. In fact, it was likely to be him following her, for the boy surely knew nothing of Erik's labyrinth, and would have no idea how to get out; Christine, however, did know part of it now, so it must be she who was leading the way.

There remained only one alarm, the one which would tell him when the door to the Rue Scribe, and to the outer world, was opened. Christine knew that way out, but there was always the chance that she might accidentally take a wrong turn. And if she did, they would probably never find the door. He could not allow his grief over the loss of her to cause her death. So he remained there, waiting, the momentary surge of destructive energy he'd experienced now exhausted.

He was so very tired. His arms had been trembling with fatigue when he finally dropped the hammer. They were still trembling now. He could not remember the last time he had slept, or eaten. It had certainly been before the episode on the roof of the Opera, and that had been…two days ago. Three? Oh, what did it matter? He would shortly be sleeping permanently. He just had to wait a little while longer, or at least, he thought it would be a little while. It seemed like it ought to have been enough time for them to be nearly to the Rue Scribe, but he was having trouble discerning time, which alternately flowed so quickly he lost track of what was happening, or slowed to a snail's pace, and seemed like a wheel that was stuck, going round and round and never getting anywhere.

Christine had allowed him to share a kiss with her. This fact he was perfectly happy never to move on from. Ecstasy momentarily replacing the wretchedness, he replayed those moments in his mind repeatedly, dwelling on how soft her lips had been, how fragrant her hair, the feel of her trim waist when he had finally dared to rest one hand there hesitantly, oh, so hesitantly, certain that she would draw back in disgust. Such things were not for Erik. But she did not pull away, no, look there, she raised her beautiful face instead, and her lips were parted slightly, and the look in her eyes…

It had been worth waiting fifty years, to have Christine's kiss at the end. Or so it seemed to Erik just then. But then, of course, he could not go on keeping her prisoner. Forcing her to marry him, even in name only. Hurting her. Placing his own happiness above hers. It was all over, then, and he could not continue to carry out his ghastly plans.

Remorse hurt.

Hurt enough to make him renounce any claims he might have thought he had on her; hurt enough to cause him to stagger through his catacombs till he reached the place where he had locked up the boy, and release him, and help him back all the way to Erik's house so that Erik could give him to Christine. The two of them must have looked a right pair of fools, practically holding each other up as they moved. Erik hoped the boy had a strong constitution, since he was going to be the one to take care of Christine henceforth…

Mind wandering again. He felt cold. He'd taken off his coat before starting to smash things, and the exertion had kept him briefly warm, but not now. When was that alarm going to sound?

There. There it was. They were out. All right, then. He rose painfully to his feet, lost his balance, and fell to one knee again. With one hand over his face, he rested the other elbow on his knee, his chest rising and falling unevenly. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. Simply lying down on the floor seemed like an excellent idea, but that would not result in his death. He'd been in this condition before. Exhaustion was not fatal. If it were, Erik would know.

With a Herculean effort, he stood up again, and managed to stay on his feet this time. He stood swaying for a moment, his surroundings wavering before his glazed eyes, and then stumbled slowly in the direction of his bedroom. No…wait…he must take his Don Juan with him, as he had always planned. Where had he left it?

O-O-O

The descent to the underground house had comprised the worst moments of her life thus far. It was such a long way, and there was so little time, and Erik might already be…How long would he wait, after the door had been opened, to make his attempt? She had tried to call his name, hoping his speaking tubes would carry her voice to him and let him know she was coming, but she did not have the breath to do anything more than cry out weakly. Down, down, down she ran, panting for breath, having to stop every so often because of the stitch in her side and the dizziness that came and went intermittently. But after only a few seconds, the terrible fear would assault her again, and she would begin once more, darting like a wraith through the dim caverns, down staircases and around corners, the lantern bouncing in her hand. She reached a spot where Erik kept extra lanterns, flew past it, and then whirled around. If the first one went out, she would be in real trouble. The train of the wedding dress had not spun all the way with her, and she tripped over it and fell flat, the lantern falling out of her hand and rattling several feet away. Its flame guttered, but did not go out, not quite. Erik had designed lanterns which would not, in case one was ever dropped.

Christine rolled to one side, floundering in the waves of satin and lace. Momentarily she flailed uselessly, hampered by the layers of her clothing. Then she got one hand under herself, then her feet, and raised herself up, gasping and holding onto the wall so she could stay upright. Her head was throbbing dreadfully. Her hip and elbows hurt where she'd banged them on the rock. The dress was dusty and torn now, ruined; no matter. Erik's own fault, for making her put it on.

Erik. Hurry.

She bent and snatched the lantern off the floor, grabbed another and some more matches from the shelf on the wall, and started moving again. Her footsteps, horribly loud in the silence, seemed to beat in time with her pounding heart.

Halfway there.

O-O-O

Erik ran his hand slowly over the leather cover of Don Juan Triumphant. Not his only composition by any stretch, but by far the most important, the one into which he had poured his heart and soul, the one which had consumed him periodically for twenty years. His masterpiece. And finally, finally finished.

He'd run down from the rooftop of the Opera, blinded by rage and grief after overhearing Christine's plans to elope with the Vicomte, and gone straight to his instruments, the final pieces of Don Juan pouring out of his fevered, desperate mind like the overflowing of the Rhine, but it was his delusions about her love that were crumbling, not Valhalla… The last sections he'd written were nearly unreadable even to him, as he'd rushed to write them down as fast as he could, before it was time to carry out his newly formed intentions to force Christine's hand and make her marry him. Creative energy combined with a pounding wrath and injured pride had buzzed and hummed all through his body, making his heart race and his hand shake as he wrote and played, wrote and played, and his normally untidy script had quickly deteriorated to nothing but red scrawls across the page. But it was there, all there, after all these years. Complete.

He would so have liked to hear it performed.

What a foolish thought. That would never happen now, nor would it have even if he weren't going to dispose of himself. No one would want to hear that music played. It was too much, too…why, look at what it had done to Christine. It had made her come near to him, that day after he'd kidnapped her out of her dressing room and after his disgraceful and atrocious explosion of fury when the mask came off, and tell him, him, that he was the most sublime man in the world! That memory both wounded and succoured him. And she'd said it after he'd raged at her and knocked her about, dragged her by the hair and made her rake his face with her nails as she screamed in revulsion! Now that he realised the full horror of his actions toward Christine, he knew that she could not have been telling the truth about his supposed sublimity, but that hellish music had made her say it…Oh, if it were only true! But it was not. It could not be.

What a true monster he'd been during those moments, and this second time he'd abducted her as well. There was no other word for it. Utterly out of his mind with anger and jealousy, he had raged at her then too, for hours and hours till they were both exhausted and Christine was so desperate she tried to kill herself by slamming her head against a wall repeatedly. Then Erik had tied her to a chair, so that there were bruises on her wrists when he finally let her go. He'd driven her to the same breaking point that he inhabited, in fact. He knew this because when he explained to her exactly what his torture chamber was doing to the two men trapped in it, his meek little ingénue had flown at him in fury and attacked him with her fists, a butterfly trying futilely to fight a cobra. In the days when he was the most skilled and the most feared assassin in the Orient, no one would have dreamed of doing such a thing! And yet here was a feeble woman, beating on his chest and tearing at his face, of her own accord this time. He'd lashed out automatically and grabbed her by the throat, then shoved her away from him, and she'd lost her balance and gone over backward. She had hit her already wounded head on the corner of a dresser and fell unconscious to the floor, leaving him to drag her limp body out of the room and away from the screams of her paramour behind the scorching hot glass panels of the chamber. Her boy, and the Persian. His only friend, and yet Erik had been more than willing to sacrifice the man and accept his death as collateral damage if it only meant he could have Christine. He shuddered at the memory of just how far gone he'd been by then.

Erik picked up the score, and held it over the fireplace for a moment. Then he blinked, realizing belatedly that there was no fire. He hadn't lit one for days… inconvenient. Now he would have to start a fire in order to destroy Don Juan… where were the matches?

But he could not quite make himself follow through. His arm quivered, but refused to perform the final actions. He lowered the score, and stood staring blankly at the cold fireplace, vaguely annoyed that he could not send his masterpiece into a dramatic fiery doom. Ah well. He was going to take it with him into the grave; that would be sufficient. No one would ever find it down here anyway. It would do no further harm, and neither would its creator. He turned, and headed for his bedroom.

As he crossed the threshold, he found himself suddenly thinking of interesting places he had not yet visited, books he hadn't gotten round to reading, music he would have liked to have heard once more. But it was too late for that. Hadn't he already done more than enough? Erik must do this now. Why did his brain have to be so contrary? He'd wished for death any number of times, and now that it was at hand, he was thinking of other things, things that he would have to go on living in order to do. Well, the hell with that. Angrily he shook his head from side to side to clear it, then went down on one knee, threw open the lid of the large chest at the foot of the coffin which he slept in, and reached resolutely for the small wooden box tucked away in one corner, which contained a number of small vials. His long-fingered demon's hand hovered over the collection. This one, yes. Totally unknown in Europe, but amazingly effective. It would result in a painless exit. Over the years he had made quite a lot of people think that he was something supernatural, but that was merely another of the master magician's illusions. Spirit, angel, ghost he was not, but in reality, mortal. He would have about fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to arrange himself in the coffin with his score. He picked it up, and took out the stopper.

O-O-O

She had surely passed the lake by now. No sense going that way, the boat would not have been there. It was still against the quay on the other side where Erik had brought it after he kidnapped her this second time. She thought she must now be nearly there, going through the tunnels that skirted around the edge of the lake. Erik had built them in case someone happened to be on the lake and he could not use the boat. The lantern cast bizarre shadows on the walls, and it was as though she were caught in a nightmare that had become reality. Christine moaned with fright. She was trapped in an endless maze of darkness. She would never find Erik in time, and no one would ever find her. Lost, lost…

What was that? Just the opening to another tunnel. Don't go down that one, there was a trap there! Turn here, then here…God, the ache in her side, the horrible weight of the trailing wedding dress dragging at her… Its train caught suddenly, yanking her backward, and she gasped violently, her heart in her throat and choking her. Had something reached out to grab her? She whirled, lifting the lantern up high.

Nothing. Just the empty tunnel reaching back behind her, till it faded back into blackness beyond the circle of lantern light. She heard her own terrified breaths in her ears, as they echoed off the walls.

Dripping water in the distance. The lake…behind her now. A faint echo from above, then oppressive silence all around.

Erik! What on earth was she thinking, wasting time being afraid of the dark when he was in such peril? He'd always told her that she had nothing to fear down here, because he was the most dangerous thing anyone could meet in this labyrinth and he would never harm her…but now it was he who threatened his own life!

She was close now, and had caught her breath somewhat. Would he hear her this time? She tilted her head back, and screamed desperately.

O-O-O

"Erik! Erik!"

Startled, Erik jerked and dropped the vial. It smashed on the floor, its contents spilling out irretrievably. "Damn it!"

"Erik!"

Christine's voice! He clapped his hands over his ears. Oh God! Why was he hallucinating like this, why must he hear her voice again in this fashion? Was it the torments of Hell reaching greedily out for him, thrilled that Erik was finally within their grasp? For just a moment he faltered in his intentions, a primitive dread of the direful punishments he'd been taught to believe in as a boy seizing him. His heart seemed to stop, paralyzed by a child's unthinking fear.

But no. He had promised he would do this. He must not allow Christine to live her life in terror of him. He deserved Hell, and it was his own fault that he was headed there. There were plenty of other vials still in the little felt-lined box. The best of them had gone, but that one, that one there, it would work. Not quite as easy a death, but not too awful. The phantom Christine's voice had ceased. He reached tremblingly for the poison.

"Erik! Erik! Please!"

"No!" he groaned, dropping the box and falling to both knees once more, hands pressed to his ears again in a vain attempt to protect himself. "No, please!"

"Erik!"

But it went on, beseeching him, slicing through him like a knife, driving him fully and entirely mad.

"Erik! Don't, please, I'm coming!"

Forgetting about the desperate need to do away with himself, he leaped up, frantic for some escape from this torture. Hands still futilely over his ears and a grimace of pain on his monster's face, he staggered unseeingly about his bedroom, collided with the armoire, and then half-fell through the doorway and reeled through his house, totally unaware of his surroundings as he went, uncharacteristically stumbling into furniture and knocking things over, wild to end the horror. The crashes of falling tables and knick-knacks seemed all part of this, their cacophony echoing through his fracturing brain as demons jeered at him and beckoned dangerously. Sharp claws raked at him and sinister laughs rang out, and he knew there was no hope. His shoulder hit a bookshelf, which rocked precipitously, books and scores cascading down, their pages falling out. Glass shattered. The fire irons clanged onto the hearthstones, and he tripped over them and almost went sprawling on the floor.

"Erik! Erik, I'm almost there! Wait, oh please wait!"

All the fiends of Hell seemed bent on attacking him, and he cried out in his suffering, his head splitting, his heart tearing in two. He felt his mind finally breaking, a long ominous crack yawning wide before him. He would fall through it in another few moments, and be utterly lost.

"Erik, Erik, Erik!"

He slammed into the piano and fell hard, hitting his elbow so that a shaft of fire radiated up his arm. There had been piles of scores on it, and at the jolt they exploded upward in a white and scarlet cloud and fluttered down all around him in a shower of loose sheets. Cowering on the floor and surrounded by the disordered pieces of his music, he shuddered in agony. "Please…" he moaned again, begging for a mercy that would never come. Too late, too late for that!

The door banged open, frightening him badly, and a nightmarish vision stood there, filthy and torn, its hair straggling and its eyes fierce.

"Erik!"

O-O-O O-O-O