Phantom of the Opera 1. Cold Ashes

**Summary: In the dead of night, twisted thoughts become reality and intolerable fears give birth to perverted hope. Pity is not love, nor is regret, but sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference…**

**This is a short story based on the premise that for whatever reason, Erik did not release Christine and she has now been living with him underground for several weeks/months. **

**Warning: This story contains themes that some persons may find very disturbing (which will only make you curious now, so probably best I said nothing).**

**© 2010 Gotta-rite  
With credit to Gaston Leroux for what's his.**

**COLD ASHES**

Raoul had left her. He was not coming back.

The bedroom was dark. Only the barest shadows were visible, the only light source being the dim lamp Erik always kept burning outside her room which showed as a mere crack under the door. Erik's wasted skeletal frame rested in the bed beside her. He was lying on his back, his breathing shallow and steady. He seemed to be asleep.

Christine looked at the dim outline of his face. He was truly hideous, she could not pretend otherwise. She had allowed him the use of her body for weeks now and had steeled her mind against him at almost every encounter. Somehow she had hoped that he would grow tired of her disinterested capitulation and let her be. But he was like a man who kept drinking from a pond of bitter water, not because he enjoyed it but because there was nothing else and it kept him alive. In the beginning he had at least appeared hopeful that some day his one dismal water source would be miraculously healed and become a bubbling healthful fountain of life. But with the passing of each black sunless day, his persistent hopefulness had steadily declined, dulled by the slow withering of his young bride's heart. Even so, he never stopped coming to her.

Raoul had forsaken her. He was free and he did not care to reclaim his one-time love. It was understandable in a way; she had agreed to become Erik's wife. How could she expect Raoul to want her still? He must guess that she had lain with the monster. She was Erik's. It was over. He would pursue a courtship with some lady of gentility, the sort of lady he should have set his sights on from the start. She would remain forever with this blighted remnant of humanity, the wife of a living corpse.

Christine's heart beat her for her cruelty. She regarded Erik's pitiable face as he slept on, so peaceful and so blissfully unaware of her malignant thoughts. At least Erik loved her, at least he wanted her. He had not been content to let her walk away with 'the boy' as he still called Raoul. No, he had fought to keep her. He would not – would never – let her go. Raoul on the other hand was evidently content to surrender her to another, satisfying his conscience no doubt with the thought that his former fiancée had always professed no hatred for his rival.

And it was true. In spite of everything she could not hate her impassioned jailor. He was far from being a handsome man but he was full of feeling, he was capable of such tenderness and he needed so much to be loved. The first night he had come to her bed, more than a week after she had consented to become his wife, he had implored her like a child only to be allowed to kneel by her bedside and hold just the tips of her fingers in his cold bony hands. He had fallen asleep propped up against the bed with his head resting on the silken damask bedspread. She had waited until she heard his subtle snoring before extracting her fingers from his grasp and even then she could not bring herself to stroke his unconscious face.

As she thought about it some more, playing over the last few weeks in her mind, Christine realized that he had never in fact asked her to admit him into her bed at all though he had always approached it, hesitantly, hopefully, like a dog sitting by its master's table waiting for a few scraps to be thrown to it. She had thought it strange and discomforting at first that he should knock and enter her room like that, for he had always spoken of their impending marriage as a real and legally binding arrangement. Naturally she had expected that he would be seeing to the particulars and that he would hold off from the desire for any intimate contact until after the wedding. It was a circumstance she had hoped would allow some time for Raoul to rescue her before the worst happened. But as the days had worn on, Christine had noticed that Erik spoke no more of an elaborate wedding ceremony with Latin chorales within the grand marble pillars of the Madeleine. It seemed almost that having won his prize, he no longer knew what to do with it. He was following her about constantly and waiting upon her fondly until she was almost driven to distraction. And eventually one evening, worn out from his never-ending solicitous presence and hardly knowing what she did, she had actually drawn back the covers of her bed and allowed him to slink in beside her, much as a mother might give refuge to a child who had just woken from a nightmare and run to her for comfort.

To be sure, she had at first ordered him in an irritated tone to go away. But the intensely pained and troubled reaction with which her words had been met had immediately softened her heart and before he had left her room she had relented and taken more pity upon him than perhaps he had dared hope for.

He had lain close to her side for many nights after that but without attempting a single touch. It seemed to please him simply to look at her. The dim shadowy light would show him lying on his side, watching her, feeding upon her close proximity like a starving man. That was until the night she had laid her head against his chest.

It was on that irredeemable night that Christine had thoughtlessly handed Erik the key to the fortress, never imagining the consequences. A long quivering sigh had broken from his lips as her face touched his crisp cotton shirt. She had smelled his breath; it was cool and slightly nasally. She had then felt a light touch upon her back through her nightgown which was Erik's spindly hand traveling up between her shoulder blades and down again to her waist in a tender gesture.

He had seemed content with so little. She had thought there could be no danger. And he had been so good to her all that day, so considerate in spite of her tantrums and her accusations. He had promised to let Raoul take her away just as soon as he would come for her. He had said that he could not bear to see her so miserable, that he did not want his precious angel to spend the rest of her life locked up in a living grave with a man who was less than a man and could not make her happy. He had said all those things and by his looks she could tell that he had meant it. Raoul would certainly come for her soon. The least she could do for her erstwhile tutor and confidant, so she thought, would be to give him a kiss.

Silently, she had raised her lips to his chin. She had planted one chaste offering there and his whole body had shuddered beneath her. He had spoken her name, like a whispered prayer and his ribs had pressed against the softness of her covered breast as his breathing became heavy and fast. It had only been one kiss; yet it had been enough.

Suddenly he had risen up and turned her firmly but gently onto her back. His hands had gripped her shoulders, pinning her down upon the mattress and before she had had the presence of mind to utter a sound, his mouth had been upon hers, moist, warm and needful. He had poured all his energy into that kiss, grinding, slurping, fondling with his tongue, emptying decades of suppressed longing and desire into her youthful lips, and his right hand had left her shoulder and moved tenderly over her face.

Though it had been with horror that she had first begun to feel his power unleashed upon her, at the same time, her inexperienced body, naïve and curious, had seized upon his touch. After all, he was not simply Erik the Monster. He was her Angel, her mentor, the Voice who had sung to her with unearthly sublimity and charmed her. He was the friend who had listened to her girlish fears as she spoke to his invisible presence in her dressing-room day after day, the one who had comforted her and encouraged her, who had made beautiful music come alive and inspire her. But above all, he was Erik, the passionate broken man who loved her and needed her as no other earthly person could or ever would. And with a mass of conflicting sensations rushing in her ears and paralyzing her thoughts, she had grasped his caressing fingers that played with the wisps of hair at her temples and guided them slowly down her neck to the shallow place between her breasts as she quivered with fear and excitement.

It had been impossible for him not to let his trembling hand glide sensitively over one delicate mound, impossible for him not to press it and squeeze it longingly through the thin fabric of her nightgown, pinching the hardened nipple between his long tapered fingers. Christine had not forgotten Raoul. Her childhood friend would certainly be coming back for her soon. He had to be. But when he did, Erik would be all alone again, only worse than before because now he knew what it was to have companionship. The loss of it might be more than he could bear. And with that thought in mind she had pitied him; pitied his loneliness and his desperate hunger for human contact and, very stupidly, she had unbuttoned the opening of her gown letting Erik's inquisitive hand slip inside to touch her supple feminine flesh, skin against skin.

He had never asked to be allowed to do this; she had invited him. And in a thousand other unspoken ways she had gone on to invite him to gradually uncover her most intimate parts and explore the most sacred regions of her soul with his amorous awestruck body. It had not happened all at once and certainly not smoothly but nothing could have stopped her from seeing the process through to its end, not even the burning pain that surprised her as much as it terrified. After weeks of sickening anxiety, she had needed the blissful illusion of Love.

Only afterwards, immediately following Erik's deep guttural moan and the shuddering collapse of his body had the truth suddenly come crashing upon her in a cold devastating blow. With bitterness she realized that she was no longer pure, no longer untainted. She had dreamed of giving herself whole and intact to her dear loving Raoul on their wedding night but now she was no longer a maiden. Her stomach crawled with the rancid gall of self-loathing. Nothing would remove the blemish of Erik's hands upon her, the defilement of his kisses, or the sickening sense of having been used and violated. It had not been fair to think of Erik's fervent caresses in that way but Christine had not been able to prevent it, not even later when he had lain with his tortuous features buried considerately in her hair where she could not see them, nestled up close to her in a fond embrace. He had whispered her name reverently again and again as his fingers twisted little tendrils of her hair round the knuckles like tender young shoots.

He had loved her. Christine believed he still did even now. But she had never managed to love him back.

On the evening following that inexorable night he had entered her room and climbed into her bed with the grinning anticipation of a child entering a sweets shop with a pocketful of coins. It had seemed impossible to deny him his pleasure without confessing her humiliating mistake of the previous evening, especially as he had gone out that day and come home with bundles of presents of all kinds wrapped in gorgeous packages with expensive ribbons, and so she had let him touch her again although it was without any enjoyment on her part.

Her misery had then found new depths to which to sink. Feeling little better than a harlot, her days were spent chiefly in lolling upon the sofa in her room, utterly depressed. Night after night, as often as Erik would come to her, Christine had gone on offering up her body to his eager appetites whilst barricading her mind against his presence, making mistake upon mistake, never knowing the way out of this Hell she had created for them both. She had hoped that her obvious lack of pleasure would be enough to end his visitations. But it had not succeeded. The only difference was that now in the darkness afterwards, Erik no longer murmured her name.

Tonight he had actually cried.

Now, being unable to see clearly the tiny hands on her watch which rested by the bedside, Christine could only guess at the time. She presumed that she had been asleep for several hours. Erik still slumbered. Perhaps it was the early hours of the morning. But it was always dark in this place. It might easily be mid-afternoon. Her mouth was dry. If Erik had been awake he would have climbed out of bed and fetched a glass of water for her. He was kind like that.

A snuffling snore broke the silence of their gloomy darkened room. It was Erik, having difficulty with his sinuses again. It did not wake him. He simply shook his head a little from side to side and went on sleeping. He never complained about his health.

Christine felt a compassionate smile tug at her lips ever so slightly and a regretful frown creased her brow. Erik was so fragile in his way and she was treating him falsely. Raoul was never coming back. Raoul did not really care for her at all. But this man, who hungered for whatever little scrap of tenderness she was willing to spare him, this man was not only being shunned and rejected, but systematically tortured and abused by her cold disinterested endurance of his desperate affection.

Christine felt her heart begin to break on his account. He deserved better. He only asked for a little kindness. It was only fear that made him go crazy from time to time; he did not really want to hurt anyone. And what else did she have in life? They were both so alone. Just as Raoul had spurned her, she was spurning Erik. She was strong; she could endure Raoul's selfishness. But Erik? She was killing him, slowly and surely.

And it suddenly occurred to her that more than anything else, she did not want her Angel to die.

Christine sidled closer to Erik's insensible form and draped an arm across his naked chest. She spread her fingers and ran her hand slowly over the protruding ribs and collar bone. He was so painfully thin and until now she had never thought of it as anything but repulsive. It was in fact, she decided, melancholy and pitiable.

He stirred. A throaty grunt heralded his return to consciousness and he took a minute to assess his whereabouts. The first thing he noticed was Christine huddled up close to him with her arm wrapped round him, massaging his chest with the flat of her palm.

"What is it?" he demanded in a voice too loud.

"Nothing," she whispered. "Go back to sleep." But her continued rubbing, instead of soothing him into a restful slumber once more, kept him wide awake. Christine could tell by his anxious breathing that her poor dear 'husband' was not falling asleep.

Withdrawing her arm and propping herself up on one elbow, she leaned over him, reaching a hand up to his hideous visage. Placing her palm softly upon his withered cheek, Christine moved closer and kissed him carefully on the lips.

The faintest trace of a gasp escaped his mouth at once and his feverish eyes peered keenly through the darkness into Christine's earnest face hovering only inches above his own.

"What are you doing?" he rasped in a throaty whisper.

Christine could tell that her close, scrutinizing gaze was making him nervous. After she had burned his mask, he had been forced to bear her solemn eyes upon his wretched features but he had never yet grown accustomed to it. Even during the intimacies of the past few weeks, he had tried to shield his deathly face from her sight. Christine felt a sharp pang of regret.

"I want to say that I'm sorry," said Christine, stroking the side of his head just above the temple where his hair was thinnest. She gave a little half-smile that Erik could barely see in the shadowy room. "I've treated you very badly. I want to be a proper wife to you now."

Her lips reached out for his again and touched the dry, wasted flesh in a discreet gesture.

"Are you not a proper wife?" he asked meekly as she drew back her face from him once more. There was a slight quaver in his beautiful manly voice.

Christine traced a meandering line down the sunken contours of his temple and cheek with one finger. Erik began to breathe deeper. Her lips were pressed firmly together, and had Erik been able to interpret correctly the expression in her eyes, he would have understood that it was one of sadness.

"I haven't been honest with you," said Christine quietly, letting her eyes stray to the line of his jaw where her finger continued its long, tenuous journey towards his chin. "I've let you touch me when I shouldn't have, and I haven't objected, though I never really wanted it." He made a faint noise of distress but Christine placed her fingertips reassuringly upon his lips. "All that has changed now." She turned her hand over and stroked his hollowed cheek with the back of her fingers. "I realize now that I've been unkind to you, that I've been hurting you, and I'm sorry. I want to make you happy." She leaned in even closer to him and said in a half-whisper, "I love you."

Did she love him? Christine was not sure. She could not have explained why she said it. But she knew that she _wanted_ to love him, for his sake and for her own. There was no other future for her apart from Erik. Even if time or distance should separate them, he had become an intrinsic part of her in some mystical way she could not begin to understand. Before he had entered her body that first time, she had never dreamed that such a simple physical act could bind two people together on an emotional and even spiritual level. She was not certain that she loved him, but she belonged to him. It was Erik alone who had broken into the guarded citadel, taken his meal and left the banqueting hall adorned with his flags and colors. Up till now it had been less than a welcoming home for him, all things having been made ready for the advent of Raoul de Chagny, not plain undignified 'Erik' of no country, nowhere.

Yet it was for Erik that the gates had been consistently held open.

It was high time therefore, Christine decided, to sweep out the ashes, light a new fire in the hearth and air the rooms, set bowls of scented rose petals in the entry hall and turn down the bedclothes – for Erik.

He blinked several times.

"Did you say something, Christine?" he asked in a hushed, almost frightened tone.

Christine pecked him on the cheek before answering.

"I said I love you."

It almost seemed that he had been turned to stone. He did not speak or move whilst Christine commenced decorating his face with a slow series of delicate little kisses. As she moved towards his eyes he closed them and she touched the eyelids with her lips. All of this, she acknowledged to herself, would have best been done on the very first occasion of their intimacy. The necessity of feeling every contour of his flesh with her sensitive lips made Erik's face altogether less terrifying, less repugnant. In coming to know it, she found herself coming to accept it.

Erik gave a short blissful moan.

"Oh, what is this dream?" he softly murmured.

"It is no dream, my love," she purred between kisses. Then she stopped and looked into his face closely until he opened his eyes and gazed back at her.

He dared not even blink.

"Make love to me, my darling," Christine whispered in low, yielding tones as a shiver ran down her limbs. "Make love to your wife."


	2. Interruption

**Ok, I thought it might be interesting to continue this story a bit further. I don't forsee a clearcut ending as such, just further exploration of this very twisted relationship. Read on if you can stomach more...**

Chapter Two

Interruption

"Make love to your wife."

Her words transformed Erik's elated joyful breathing into a rapid shallow panting. Leaning in towards him again, Christine offered him her lips. He lifted his head just a little to reach the delightful objects and grasped them with his own, slowly and earnestly tugging at the soft warm flesh, first her upper lip, then the lower, letting only the tip of his tongue venture forth to taste her sweetness. Her breath was heavenly on his cheeks, like little puffs of a gentle summer breeze. He opened his mouth then and drank surely and deeply of her love, breaking contact only briefly to sigh and draw another short gasp of air before merging with her again. When his hands rose slowly to cup her beloved face, his fingers brushed through the soft curtain of her hair which hung loosely forward, tickling his throat, and he smelled its fresh gardenlike fragrance.

Christine let her lover explore every angle of her lips as she closed her eyes and remained close to him. The musty smell of the cellars still clung to his hands, but there was something old and familiar about it now, something comforting almost. His fingers had always touched her with absolute reverence and respect; now she felt their tapered ends at her temples, tracing a line down to her jaw, and in a sudden wave of inexplicable affection she turned her face and brushed her forehead against his hollow cheek.

A yielding moan escaped his lips. She caressed his face with hers and his eager lips met the skin just under her eye. He trailed that kiss over the bridge of her nose and down its length towards its fleshy extremity above the nostrils. To her surprise and amusement Erik went on ardently kissing that appendage, sucking and licking with fervent enjoyment. It was so strange she wanted to laugh but instead she let him make love to her nose without interruption; she was even astonished to feel a quiver of longing deep in her stomach as she reflected on the allure that her nose obviously held for her poor dear husband who was sadly without one himself. He had never made his secret feelings so clear to her before. Christine realized that she had never allowed it.

When Erik's impassioned appreciation of her nose was waning, she thought to give him pleasure by running it all over his face and down his neck to his chest. She did, and he responded with a long, ecstatic groan. The sound thrilled her. She went on to plant kiss after kiss up and down the length of his heaving sternum while her hand massaged the ridges of his chest, pressing subtly with her thumb in small circular motions.

He was hers now, completely at her mercy. Christine had never before felt the thrill of wielding such terrifying power. She lifted her head to look at her husband, his pale skin faintly luminescent against the black shadows that shrouded them. After her descent to his chest she had expected him to leap up and take her, but instead he was simply lying there, panting with sharp ragged breaths, his head leaning well back against the pillows exposing the vulnerable part of his throat, moaning helplessly. There seemed to be no strength in his limbs. He did not even try to lift a hand to gauge the intensity of her purpose with an inquiring touch. It frightened her to see Erik so completely undone – and yet at the same time the pit of her abdomen fluttered and unconsciously she wet her lips.

Sitting up by his side, carefully so as not to disturb him too much, Christine pulled her nightgown off over her head and dropped it aside, letting it slip from the silken bedclothes to the floor. Her small breasts heaved a little with each excited breath and she sat there, regarding the conquered land before her. He was still panting ecstatically but then he dipped his chin to discover what had become of her warmth and of her tender kisses and he saw, in shadowy outline, the supple curves of Christine's delicate feminine body. A sudden brusque noise escaped his throat, something akin to being winded by an unexpected blow to the chest.

It was the prompt for Christine to take one of his hands tenderly in hers, and after holding it and stroking it a few times like a frightened bird, to transfer it to the hospitable custodianship of one of her breasts. With grateful eagerness his large sinewy hand closed around her blessed form. Murmuring her name in breathless appreciation, he kneaded, pressed and squeezed the succulent flesh and Christine felt her eyelids begin to grow heavy as her head lolled from side to side in a dazed ecstasy. His thumb found her nipple and awakened it with rapid teasing strokes. She was breathing harder now and her back arched and flexed involuntarily in her increasing need to feel his powerful hands all over her yearning body.

"Oh, Erik," she whispered between the whimpering little moans that his touch elicited, "Oh, Erik…make love to me…make love to me, darling, please."

Her heartfelt plea moved him to sit up beside her and, taking her sensitively in his arms, he gently guided her down upon the bed. She lay upon her back, nestled in Erik's supporting embrace, and she draped her arms affectionately about his neck. Erik manoeuvred his hips into a position above hers.

This was what she had wanted; for the first time she would truly welcome Erik into the sanctuary of her body without misguided curiosity or unwilling forbearance. For the first time she looked up into his questioning eyes with an answer that was whole-heartedly and unreservedly, Yes. Her head rested weakly in his cradling hands, her eyelids too heavy for her to open them. She could feel his body beginning its gentle probing.

"Oh Erik," she murmured dreamily as her hands wandered slowly over his shoulders and reached affectionately for his face, "I love you."

It was not the explicit thought that she wished to convey but her mind was too full to formulate a carefully worded compliment – and all at once Erik shuddered and a spray of sticky substance wet the inside of her thighs.

And Christine failed to suppress a disappointed groan.

In a breathless, rasping voice Erik started apologising profusely and hurriedly crept away from her, panting and moaning with anguished self-reproach. He buried his head ashamedly in his arms. Christine bitterly regretted having uttered a sound. Although such a thing had happened before and more than once, she had never seen Erik so distressed about it. He lay tightly curled up with his back to her, rocking a little and making unintelligible muffled noises from behind his shielding hands. Usually he would simply slip away quietly to endure his humiliation in silence and it embarrassed Christine to recall how grateful she had been for his many previous failures. She could not bear to see him so broken now.

Raising herself up on one elbow, she reached an arm around his unhappy form and kissed the back of his neck.

"Please don't be upset, sweetheart," she whispered into his ear. "It really doesn't matter. We can try it again in a little while."

He made no response. Christine felt round for his hands. She found them, and was disturbed; they were clenched tightly into angry fists.

Christine swallowed and drew a calming breath. Erik was always somewhat frightening when he was cross; he was apt to do unreasonable things. She could hear his frustrated breathing now coming in little snorting puffs and she wondered what she should do next. With a little courage, Christine decided simply to hold him, half-expecting to be thrown off or ordered to go away.

But he did not spurn her. Minutes seemed to pass while she lay with her face pressed against Erik's back, feeling his body slowly relax from its aggravated state. The darkened room became still as his breathing returned to a low steady pace and Christine could feel his ribs through the sheer flesh, rising and falling. She pitied him.

"Erik, darling," she murmured with her lips brushing his skin, "I _do_ love you."

She was not quite sure why she said it. It was true he had deceived her in the beginning, had tricked his way into her confidence, had kidnapped her and refused to restore her freedom unless given sworn assurances of her return. He had made her wear his ring and denied her the life she had set her heart upon. But her anger was exhausted; if she was consigned to be this man's wife she had rather find the good in him. But where was Raoul? Where was his goodness? He had made only one valiant attempt to recover his fiancée and had then abandoned her forever it seemed. It was simply not good enough! Erik would not have given up so easily.

"I've been so unkind to you for so long," Christine said softly, stroking his straggly hair, "but I only want you to be happy now. Please, Erik, darling, I love you. You do know that, don't you?"

One short aggrieved word in reply broke forth in a muffled croak from his place of concealment:

"Why?"

It was a good question; there did not seem to be a satisfactory answer to it. Christine thought about it, her arms still wrapped securely about her husband. She went on stroking his hair, racking her brain for some plausible reply. The longer her silence lasted, the more she felt sure Erik would not believe her when she did eventually speak and her heart began to beat faster.

"Because," she began slowly, still thinking as she spoke, "because…"

There had to be some reason but every one she thought of was immediately overturned: Because he loved her? But he would not allow her to see the sunshine which did not seem like love. Because he respected her? But in spite of his humane treatment he had in fact taken her prisoner which hardy seemed like respect. Because he was gentle with her? Yet he had forced her to choose between himself and Raoul in a manner that was anything but gentle.

"I don't know why," she said at last. It was weak and insufficient but Christine could not bring herself to lie, not completely. "I just do."

"You don't." He said it with mournful finality. "You don't love me." Christine realised it was useless to contradict him; she had nothing to say. "I've tried to make you love me but you don't," he went on dismally, with his face still turned away. "I _have_ _tried_. I've tried so _hard_…" At that moment his voice broke into a wailsome squeak, an almost noiseless cry from a throat constricted by overwhelming grief.

The approaching cataclysm heralded by a loud gasping breath, the dam then burst noisily in a violent miserable flood. Christine hated it when Erik cried. It was distressing. He did not weep as normal people. He sounded as though his soul was being torn from his body. It was brutal and ugly. Sitting up with a repulsed frown darkening her eyes, she forced herself to watch Erik writhing on the bed in unabashed agony.

"I've tried SO HARD!" he howled, his face covered by his forearms as he thrashed about. "BUT YOU DON'T LOVE ME! YOU DON'T LOVE ME! YOU DON'T LOVE ME!"

It was half in Christine's mind to get up and leave Erik to calm down alone. She was certain that these torrid exhibitions were not entirely without pretence. But her compassionate nature got the better of her once more. She had never been able to desert a creature in pain, no matter how foolish or deranged. So leaning forward she took him firmly in her arms and hushed him with whispered words of comfort and gentle kisses on his forehead. It quieted him after a little time and soon he lay submissively in her embrace, only sniffing occasionally. It was well that the light was poor, for Christine could only imagine what he must look like by now.

"Do you need a handkerchief, my love?" she asked like a gentle mother. Christine could not have pictured herself asking any other grown man such a question but Erik never took it amiss when she spoke to him like this.

"Yes, please," he meekly replied.

Christine got up and shuffled her way round the bed to her chest of drawers. Her eyes were adjusted sufficiently to the dim light to make out its bulky silhouette and once there she felt through the first drawer for a cotton handkerchief. Her fingers located something that felt promising, so she held it up to peer at it more closely; a soft white cloth shone weakly out of the darkness and she determined that it was a plain square shape. Satisfied, Christine closed the drawer and brought the handkerchief to Erik, waiting beside the bed while he used it. When he was finished she took it from him and laid it on top of the chest of drawers by the bed.

"Do you feel better now?" she asked, giving his forehead a little pat.

He made a noise of assent. As he seemed to be settled enough, Christine made her way around to her side of the bed and climbed back into it.

She was cold. Her foot had struck what she supposed to be her nightgown as she was moving past the bed but rather than spend time scrambling into it, she preferred to hurriedly slip under the cosy bedclothes. Drawing the covers up to her chin, she sighed impatiently, waiting for her body to get warm so that she could sleep.

Everything was so depressing. She tried to analyse her feelings amidst the chilling waves that kept breaking over her tense body. This was not the life she had envisioned for herself. She worried about her standing with God; she had sinned with Erik at first, she knew it. She had repented of it in her prayers, of course, and though she had submitted to further intimate occasions with Erik, in her mind she felt herself innocent, an injured party, not a wilful sinner. But tonight she had truly engaged to make herself one with this strange impassioned man by her own free will, even though they were not yet legally married. Was she a bad person? Christine simply did not know anymore. She was tired and her mind would not reason on the subject properly; it was starting to drift into a confused realm of disorganized sensations; guilt, fear, misery...

Her mind was jolted from its abstraction when she felt the bed disturbed. Erik had turned over to look at her; a quick sideways glance showed her that a few glints of light were reflected in his sombre eyes. She did not want to ask him what he was thinking. All she wanted to do right now was sleep. And so with another wearied sigh, Christine let her eyelids droop and nestled deeper into the soft mattress.

She could hear him breathing through his parted lips. He swallowed and snuffled from time to time. It was difficult to relax whilst feeling herself observed and after a while she grew tired of trying and opened her eyes. Evidently it was the cue he had been waiting for, for immediately he spoke up in a small apprehensive voice:

"Do you really love me, Christine?"


	3. Devastated

**Thanks so much for the reviews :) **

**Bit of storyline development in this one…**

Chapter Three

Devastated

"Do you really love me, Christine?"

He was staring at her, his amberish eyes glinting in the darkness, a mixture of hope and apprehension twinkling in their depths. Christine knew that it was his recent tears that made them sparkle so. But she too tired for this conversation and too disturbed.

"Erik," she sighed, folding her arms up tightly against her chest. "Why do ask me that? I've told you that I do. Go to sleep."

He edged a little closer.

"But do you really?" he insisted.

Erik's timid fawning was always annoying to his bride. But conscious of her heart's inability to resist his gentle wheedling for long, Christine abandoned all effort to remain irritated and resigned herself to solicitude. Reaching out a hand from under the bedclothes, she placed her palm softly on his anxious, hopeful face.

"Erik," she said in a calm, kindly tone. "You've taken me as your wife. How _else_ could I feel about you?"

He shuffled nearer, crumpling the sheets between them which Christine held fast against her body with her other hand to keep out the cold. She let him curl up beside her and rest his forehead under her chin in the folds of the bedspread with his arms drawn close to his chest. The whole upper part of his body was exposed to the frigid air.

"Aren't you cold, Erik?" she asked with genuine concern.

"No," was his complacent little reply.

Christine rubbed his back with her free arm, feeling the ridges of his curved spine.

"I think you'll get cold soon if you don't cover yourself, dear," she said. "Here, let me pull up the blankets."

She reached down and found the bedclothes somewhere near his hips and pulled at them. They were caught under him so she tugged at them, obliging him to move aside a little for her to free them. Then she drew the warm coverings up over his body to his shoulders and allowed him to return to his former nestling position close to her side. He burrowed his head under the covers against her shoulder, ensconced in her comforting nearness and her fresh feminine scent and Christine snaked her arm around him once more.

It was nice to feel him so close when he was peaceful like this. At such times, he was trusting and innocent. It was easy to think well of him. Christine kissed the top of his head.

"Erik, darling," she said in a soothing undertone. "We are to be properly married, aren't we? It would be wrong if we didn't get married, considering."

It made him look up and peer earnestly into her face. She could feel his apprehension. It seemed to emanate from his body. But he said nothing. Christine brushed his cheek with her fingers.

"You do want to marry me, don't you, Erik?" she asked with a little concern. Her breath passed over her lips in soft little wisps. She imagined Erik could feel it on his face. "We can't go on in this manner indefinitely."

"In what manner?" he asked. He really did not seem to understand her.

"Well, in _this_ manner," Christine replied with embarrassed awkwardness. "It isn't right, you know. Only married people should do the things that we do."

His eyes moved from her face and he seemed to be lost in contemplation of her words. Christine waited for him to speak but still he said nothing. Her heart began to beat a little faster.

"I thought it was what you wanted, Erik," she ventured to say in a timorous voice as she felt the veins in her neck begin to pulse. "You did ask me to marry you, didn't you? That was our agreement?"

"You want to be my wife?" he whispered in a low tone full of trepidation as his head rested against her shoulder. He sounded as though he regretted it.

"I am already in the eyes of God," Christine declared, distress accenting her hushed speech. "But it ought to be made proper and legal if I'm to be an honest woman. If I am to stay with you forever, I have to be your lawful wife, Erik. Are you saying that you don't want me to stay?"

His head snapped back so that he stared into her face with startling energy.

"You must never leave, Christine!" he commanded fiercely. But almost immediately he withdrew his gaze and meekly lowered his head against her arm. "I don't want you to go away," he quietly murmured like a contrite child. "Please don't go away, Christine."

"Then you must marry me, Erik," she reasoned with him, finding his hand and grasping it lightly. "You must arrange it."

The hand she held felt dull and lifeless. At that moment, she could almost imagine that it was exactly as a corpse would feel. Christine pushed the thought from her mind. Erik's breath was quick, warm and light against her skin. _No dead man ever had warm breath._

"Erik," she whispered. "Why don't you speak to me?"

His only answer was to press his forehead into her shoulder and huddle up more tightly beside her. A muffled whimpering noise which sounded like speech issued from his lips but Christine could not understand it.

"What did you say, my love?" she patiently inquired.

He drew his face back a little from his hiding place to speak. "You won't love me if we get married," he said, starting to sob again.

"What sort of nonsense is that? Of course I will!" Christine exclaimed, craning her neck to look into his averted face. "I will love you more because you will be my husband! Why should you think I wouldn't?"

Another snivelling noise was Erik's reply.

"What was that, my love?"

He sniffed. "You want to be with the boy," he croaked in a small voice.

Christine let her head drop back on the pillow with a deep sigh. Her shoulder was wet with Erik's childish tears. Raoul used to cry a lot too, she recalled, but his weeping was never so painful. He could cry and laugh at the same time. The only time she had ever heard Erik laugh was when he was being wicked.

"Well, it seems that Raoul doesn't want to be with me," she muttered at the ceiling.

Her words were of no consolation. The man to whom she had consigned her future showed no sign of reining in his emotion. His snuffling and sobbing had become weeping and his weeping was fast becoming a howl. It was growing longer and louder while he clung to her side, curled tightly into a ball, the top of his head pressed firmly into her shoulder like a burrowing animal. Christine grimaced but tried to comfort him with a gentle stroke.

"You think he's still alive!" Erik wailed the moment she touched him.

Her hand stopped abruptly.

"What?"

Erik sniffed and gasped and sobbed some more. Christine felt her skin turn cold but not because of the chilling air.

"What do you mean, Erik?" she asked in a calm, almost dead voice.

Erik was still huddled closely by her side. She did not withdraw from him. Her mind was too preoccupied by the horrible suggestiveness of his words. Erik choked back his tears only enough to blubber out the same awful sentence.

"You think the boy is still alive!"

"Are you telling me that Raoul is dead, Erik?" Christine inquired in a low unsteady tone.

"I didn't mean it!" Erik cried, shrinking back in another burst of grief. "I didn't mean it! It was an accident!"

"You killed him!" Christine gasped in a dead voice.

"It was an accident! I didn't mean for the boy to die! Oh, Christine! Christine!" Erik had gathered himself up into a kneeling position over her and was grasping her hair and kissing it fervently between choking sobs like a pilgrim rendering devoted penitence to a sacred idol. "Christine, please! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!" he repeated over and over in a hurried profusion of tearful entreaties. His voice was becoming weaker and hoarser by the second and with his face so near to her, his tainted breath assaulted her in rapid hot puffs.

Christine sat up quickly and pushed the madman away. With a violent cry of dismay, he submitted to her rebuff, lacking even the temerity to hold out an imploring hand as she slipped out of the bed. Hardly knowing what she did, Christine ducked down to retrieve her nightgown and hurriedly threw the garment over her head, not caring whether it was the right side out or not.

"I didn't mean to hurt him, Christine!" Erik cried out in despairing agony, kneeling doubled over on the bed with his forehead tucked close to his knees. "I never meant to hurt him! Christine, please don't go away!"

He did not cease imploring her forgiveness but Christine could not listen to it. She made her way to the door and opened it, letting the lamplight stream in fully.

It revealed a most bitter sight as she turned back to take one last look at her erstwhile husband and lover before departing; Erik's thin wasted form had fallen crumpled and hopeless upon the disordered bed, worn out with crying and yet still making more noise than an asylum full of lunatics.

Pressing her lips together firmly, Christine departed.


	4. The Siren

**Thanks for the reviews...glad people are enjoying this morbid tale ;)  
**

Chapter Four

The Siren

There was nowhere for her to go. There were really only four rooms in this house; the one she had just come from, the bathroom, Erik's room and the dining room which also served as a kitchen. To enter Erik's morbid chamber was out of the question. Therefore her only recourse was to sit at the table in the dining room and lay her head wearily upon the cool polished table.

The perpetual night air made her shiver in her thin nightgown. She had not bothered to turn on any lamps. She could no longer hear Erik's weeping. He seemed to have fallen quiet as he always did when she moved out of his sight. And so, all alone she sat in the dark, thinking.

It amazed her that only a few short moments ago she had been not only willing but also eager to have that deranged creature joined with her in marital intimacy. Her mind recalled the soft stroking of Erik's fingers upon her breast and it brought forth a confused mixed feeling of longing and revulsion. She hated him – yet she did _not_ hate him. She began to feel sick. In a tired angry fit of self-loathing, Christine raised her head and then dashed her forehead heavily against the table. She tore at her hair with hands twisted into savage claws. Gritting her teeth, she squeezed her head between her hands, digging her nails into her skull, as if to force her brain to stop its ridiculous excursions into a make-believe world where Erik really cared for her.

Erik was mad. And he was manipulative. And he had killed Raoul.

Yet, when she imagined Erik as he probably was now, lying wretched and desolate upon the bed, so alone and so desperate for any scrap of affection, the unhappy girl could not prevent her blindly compassionate heart from feeling sorry. Christine knew that she ought to take up a stick and beat the miserable cad with it, and had she been a man she would probably have attempted the exercise. She began to understand why Raoul had been so intent upon hunting Erik down and chastising him. But she was a woman with a woman's less powerful frame. The thought of her meting out punishment to Raoul's murderer was laughable. But more than that, she suspected that even had she found herself magically spirited into the body of a man, she would not have been able to raise a hand against Erik when it actually came to the point. He would most likely cry and she, like a tender-hearted mother, would swallow her anger and kiss him instead.

She wondered if Erik knew this and secretly laughed at her behind his mask. She did not know. She did not know anything any more.

"_Ah, day of grief and of fright and of mourning…"_

Christine's eyes opened slowly. Her head was now resting listlessly upon the table. She stared languidly into the darkness. She could not help but hear it. It was a voice, a beautiful voice, at once powerful and tender. It floated out from the Louis-Philippe room, their bedroom, riding softly on the frigid air.

"…_My heart is brought to the ends of despair!"_

Christine knew that it was Erik. She knew the angelic masculinity of his tone. Only Erik's voice had ever managed to melt a path through her maidenish reserve. And in spite of her misery and exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, his voice stole upon her now, caressing her fevered temples with its silken touch.

"_Unjust decree, far too late to have saved him,_

_You set the crown on this unhappy day!"_

There was a time when Erik's voice alone could have led Christine to any act of imprudence. But she knew it now for what it was. It was a Siren's call, a delightfully tempting invitation to Death. Christine tried not to listen. But even with her fingers thrust firmly into her ears she could not shut it out completely.

"_Here crushed before me in blood and in tears are_

_All of the hopes and the desires of my heart!"_

It was Romeo's lament from Gounod's opera. Erik's heartfelt rendering of the lover's despairing cry was more moving than any Christine had ever heard upon the stage. Erik possessed such wonderful control of his voice that even though Christine was sure that he was at this moment shedding actual tears, they did not interfere with the clarity of his delivery. Experienced singer that she was, she herself had only managed once to sing like that, on gala night when she had sung Marguerite in the Faust prison scene. It had frightened her so much that she had never succeeded in repeating the triumph. It had required her to elicit a sense of her soul leaving her body which she did not like.

"_Ah, day of grief and of fright and of mourning,_

_My heart is brought to the ends of despair!"_

Christine's fingers dropped from her ears and she listened now with her cheek resting heavily on the table. The miserable dirge compelled her. She forgot about feeling cold and let her arms hang languidly in her lap. Her warm breath made a little pool of condensation on the table's smooth surface where her face pressed against it. Drifting into abstraction, she closed her eyes.

"_Unjust decree, far too late to have saved him,_

_You set the crown on this unhappy day!"_

Yes, it was too late. Raoul was dead. What use was it to punish Erik? Raoul was gone forever and throwing off the only other man who ever loved her could only add to her pain.

Christine gritted her teeth against the madness that was filling her head. The sting of salty tears was already pricking at her eyes and a few drops forced themselves from her closed lids, dribbling across her cheeks and spotting the table.

"_Here crushed before me in blood and in tears are_

_All of the hopes and the desires of my heart!"_

It was too poignant a piece for Christine to bear hearing it any longer. Rising up, she pushed back her chair with a grating scrape and stood up. Her tears were struck from her face with the flat of her palms and she ran the moisture into her hair. Erik was still singing. With a deep breath, Christine folded her arms tightly across her chest and returned to the bedroom where her Siren patiently waited.


	5. What Kills

**Chapter Five**

**What Kills**

Slowly approaching the door to the room which had become their bedchamber, Christine steeled herself for the frightful interview which was to follow. She had no idea what she would say or what she wished to say. She only knew she must face her tormenter again, this moment, or be vanquished by him. Silently she edged round the door frame.

Erik was there, lying face up, sprawled across the crumpled bedclothes in an attitude of hopeless despair. One arm hung languidly over the side of the bed and the bony hand twitched in time with the music issuing from his throat.

Christine stood by the door and listened for a little while longer. Erik did not seem to be aware of her presence as yet. With each breath between phrases his hollow chest rose and then slowly sank as he let the air flow past his vocal chords and over his honeyed tongue. His singing was truly beautiful; mesmerising, angelic.

"_Ah, day of grief and of fright and of mourning,_

_My heart is brought to the ends of despair!"_

Christine crept quietly forward. Her feet touched the floor with the faintest of steps. Erik continued singing his mournful dirge, apparently oblivious to her approach. Several paces brought Christine at last to the side of the bed.

For a long moment she stood there looking down on Erik with a face that betrayed no emotion. She had expected him to stop singing when once she had entered his field of vision but he did not. Erik's eyes were open, staring at the ceiling above their heads and still his heavenly voice went on. There were tears wetting his sunken cheeks.

He truly looked ghastly.

"_Unjust decree, far too late to have saved him,_

_You set the crown on this unhappy day!"_

Christine had had enough of this pretence. She reached out and touched Erik's forehead with the back of her fingers.

It startled him. With a savage snort his hitherto unseeing eyes locked upon Christine's exhausted face. "Christine!" he gasped in a hoarse whisper. "You haven't gone away!" Immediately he leapt up making Christine jump.

Kneeling upon the bed in his fully naked state, Erik crouched low over his knees before her like a humble supplicant. "It was an accident, Christine, truly an accident!" he hurriedly intoned, taking his precious angel's hand in both of his, stroking and patting it. "You do believe your Erik, don't you? Erik would never hurt the boy, never hurt him! Oh please, Christine," he cried, in a voice that was growing loud and desperate again. "Do tell me that I didn't kill him!"

Christine snatched her hand from the madman's grasp. Her forehead had grown hard as the stones upon which the Opera was founded.

"Enough of this nonsense, Erik!" she rasped in a low voice, seething with indignation. Her whole body was trembling with rage. "You let me think Raoul was still alive! And yet all this time you knew he was dead!" Erik groaned and hid his face in his hands. "You killed him! How could you? You killed him!" Christine's voice bit the air with rising fury. "I don't care what you do to me now! You killed the only person I ever really loved and I hate you for it! I HATE YOU!"

In a sudden passion the angry young woman raised a hand and struck Raoul's murderer a forceful blow. Her palm hit his scrawny shoulder with a loud smack. An astonished sob burst from Erik's throat but he did not move from his crouched position. Christine's palm tingled with pain. She wanted to strike Erik's face but it was sheltered from attack, being buried in his arms. Something broke in Christine's soul as she witnessed Erik's passive acceptance of her fury. Again she raised her hand and brought it down upon her enemy with all the force she could command. She gave a little cry as her hand made sharp contact with his thin flesh. Erik sobbed again. And once more she struck him, spending all her energy and her grief upon his worthless frame.

"You have ruined my life!" she yelled at Erik's huddled form, her face burning with stinging tears. "You have taken everything from me! Everything!" she shouted. "Why don't you kill me too?" she cried brokenly, hardly able to stand. "I don't want to live anymore!"

It was too much and she sank down upon the floor, wailing with ugly cries, utterly overcome. Erik let his body fall to one side on the bed and he lay there wrapped in a tight ball, sobbing and whimpering. But it was an odd sort of crying. His pitiful noises almost sounded like breathless laughter catching in his throat. He sighed and groaned and drew jerky breaths and at length he settled into an exhausted silence. The room was now quiet but for Christine's soft weeping.

Neither one stirred for several long minutes.

At length Erik sniffed and brought the knuckles of his hands to his teeth and bit them. He held them there, testing the force of his jaw upon his flesh, leaving crescent shaped marks imbedded in the skin. His emaciated body was trembling visibly. But Christine did not see it. She was lying broken upon the floor, cold and thoroughly disgusted with herself. Her palm still tingled from the force of the slaps she had administered to the wretched creature upon the bed. She had never lifted a hand to anybody before.

"Erik," she whispered in a voice disjointed and sorrowful. "Erik, please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you."

The last words spilled out in a tearful sob. She sat up, wiping the itching tear stains from her face with the heels of her hands. But there was no reply from the unhappy man above her but the sound of a swallow and a low shaky breath. Christine gripped the bedspread and pulled herself wearily to her feet. As her face rose over the edge of the bed she saw him; he was lying on his side facing her, pale, naked and shivering, with his hands clasped at his open mouth. His eyes were staring straight at her into nothing. It was horrible.

"Erik," she whispered again with a tender feeling that would not be suppressed. With her fiercely beating heart burning a whole through her chest, she reached out a hand and lightly touched his brow. He flinched at the contact and Christine's eyes filled with tears once more. "Erik, I am so very sorry. Please believe me."

"I didn't kill him, Christine," Erik's low voice murmured in reply though he still seemed to look through her. Christine could hear the tightness in his throat. "It wasn't me. Erik doesn't – Erik wouldn't do that. It was somebody else. Somebody else does these bad things. Not Erik. Do you understand?"

He sniffed.

"No, Erik," the young woman softly confessed, her heart heavy with sorrow. "I don't understand. I don't think I understand you at all."

Suddenly Erik leapt up, kneeling tall upon the bed, and his grossly deformed features were twisted into even fiercer contours by the passion which had suddenly taken him. He glared into the startled woman's eyes with a look that seared.

"Why can you not understand, Christine? Why?" he demanded sharply, seizing the young woman by the arms with vice-like fingers digging into her flesh. She gaped in horror but could not utter a sound. "Why can't you love me?" he shouted, shaking her. "What must I do? What do you want of me? I have tried and tried to be everything you want me to be!" Agonized tears coursed down his hideous face. "All I ask is that you love me! Just a little! Not _a lot_ – just a little!" he cried, gasping for breath. "You did _say_ that you loved me! YOU DID SAY IT! YOU DID!"

He wailed loudly in utter misery. Letting her go, he collapsed again in a crouching position with his head cradled hopelessly on his knees. "You did say it, Christine!" his tear-filled voice moaned softly, weakened with sobbing. It was the voice of a small boy, begging for a mother's justice, yet knowing there was none to be had. "You said you loved me... But you don't." He sniffed and coughed from his sheltered place, and then sighed a little sigh of resignation. "You don't."

Stunned into silence, Christine looked down at the miserable creature on the bed. Slowly she felt the tender bruises where Erik's claw-like hands had grasped her. She had hardly heard a word that he had wailed at her. He was quiet now. Only his heavy breathing betrayed his recent tirade. Christine realized that she herself was calm, deathly calm, and yet she could not have told why. Her brain seemed to have frozen. Nothing mattered but to know the full extent of Erik's crime, the very worst of its horrors, in order that she might dissect and digest its darkest particles in private and by that means obliterate the misery of it forever.

"Erik," she said in a low voice devoid of feeling. "How did Raoul die?"

Her flat, commanding tone hung heavily upon the chilling air. Slowly Erik withdrew into himself, shrinking away from the girlish figure in front of him as if from a towering angel of vengeance. Crouched on his knees, he began rocking slightly, unable to raise his head or look at her. Christine raised an eyebrow but her eyes were two dead pools.

"Erik," she repeated in the same impassive tone. "How did Raoul die?"

Erik made a whimpering reply, still cowering before her. "He drank too much water, Christine."

"Don't make a joke of it!" Christine snapped impatiently, tired of Erik's nonsense. "How did Raoul die?"

"It wasn't a joke," Erik meekly returned, lifting his head slightly. "It was the water, Christine. He drank too much water. It stopped him breathing."

"You mean he drowned," Christine coldly remarked.

"Yes."

"Then say it!" the young woman ordered sharply, her chest filling with frigid air as her agitation increased. "You drowned him! Say it!"

"No, Christine, I didn't," the accused man humbly replied in a tone which pretended to be calm. "I told you already. Erik doesn't do things like that."

"You were happy to blow up the entire building and everybody in it, including me!" argued the girl, her anger flaring. "You were happy to kill _then_! How can you say that Erik doesn't do those things? Why did you build the torture chamber? Was it for decoration? Of course you kill, Erik! That is _exactly_ what you do!"

"_NO! NO!_ _NO!_"

With sudden fury Erik sprang forward and leapt from the bed. He seized Christine who found herself lifted from the ground, her legs kicking violently in the air. She cried out and tried to beat him with her fists but her blows went unheeded. With rapid strides Erik carried her flailing body out of the Louis-Philippe room, through the passage and out the door which opened onto the lake.

Once standing on the bank, Erik cast down his burden unceremoniously and clutched Christine forcefully by the shoulders. She writhed but could not extricate herself from his grip.

"You see that Christine, do you?" he shouted, directing her eyes to the lake with a savage nod. "Do you know what it is? It's _water_. And do you know what happens when a person drinks too much of it?"

Brutally he pushed her down upon her knees and then, grasping the hair at the back of her head, thrust her face into the frigid water before she had the presence of mind to draw a breath. He held her there, struggling against his hold, her arms splashing violently and ineffectually for what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds. When he dragged her upright again she was gasping, choking and pale.

"It's the water that kills, Christine, not me!" he explained perversely, still grasping her sodden hair. "Erik doesn't kill!"

Her breath was coming back to her. The shock made her start to tremble violently but her anger at being thus abused made it impossible for her to hold back her next words.

"Yes you do," she gasped between breaths. "You kill people. So why don't you kill _me_ now and be done with it…if you dare!"


	6. Only a Woman

**Chapter Six**

**Only a Woman**

'Why don't you kill _me_ now…if you dare?'

Christine's challenge hung upon the air for a brief terrifying moment. Erik had her by the hair, pulling her head back sharply making Christine expose her throat. Her breath came fast and shallow, and she felt little rivulets of water trickle down from her jaw and inside her nightgown leaving wet trails between her breasts. Her knees were hurting, pressed against the stony ledge. For the space of several heartbeats, Christine feared that Erik might indeed accept her challenge.

But all at once his hands began to quiver with some inexplicable emotion. They loosened their grip on her hair and fell away from her like too leaden weights. Relieved but uncertain, Christine took courage to turn and look at him.

Erik was sitting rigid on the hard ground, his feet tucked under him and his hands hugged closely to his belly. His pale eyes were staring directly at her face, lost and faintly troubled. "Christine?" he whispered uncertainly, his mouth seeming to move on its own. His eyes blinked several times but their perturbed expression did not clear. "Christine…"

Christine stood up, tossing her wet ringlets back from her shoulders. Eyes glimmering with raw energy, she stifled a cough and backed off a little from the confused madman kneeling on the bank. Her knees were trembling.

"Erik, I shan't stay here with you," she boldly declared, wiping her forehead with her sleeve. She coughed again. "I can never be your wife. If you don't take me back to the surface I shall be obliged to try for myself. Even if I drown in the attempt it can hardly make any difference." Christine folded her arms tightly across her chest. "At least I would die at my own hand." But the shocked woman was shaking, her teeth chattering with nervous fatigue.

Still Erik had not stirred from his place. He was sitting at the waters' edge, gazing up at Christine with urgent, fearful eyes that glinted softly in the dense gloom. He did not speak. He did not even move.

"Erik?" Christine ventured warily, not at all reassured by this passive horror which seemed to have overwhelmed him. "Shouldn't we go inside now? It's cold out here." It was cold inside Erik's house as well but it had sounded like the correct thing to say. Her mind had frozen. She felt herself slipping back into the old established pleasantries. "Erik," Christine urged again as Erik still remained rigid and silent. "Erik, do get up now." He did not seem to hear her. His eyes went on staring. Unfolding her arms, Christine tried to appear calm. A bitter chill bit her to the bone.

"Let us forget all about this," she suggested softly, earnestly trying to disguise the violent shivering that was racking her body. Her chest and back ached with the effort and her teeth chattered even more persistently. "Come," she said, offering Erik her extended hand in a strange act of kindness. "Let us go back to bed, dearest. We can talk about this in the morning."

Christine saw Erik's gaze shift to the hand she offered. His terrified eyes rested there but a moment. Then his chest began to rise with a few rapid breaths. Looking up, he searched her face again with piercing urgency. Moisture was gathering quickly in his eyes. His mouth fell open to gasp the frigid air. He seemed unable to draw enough breath. His body shook. Christine drew back, clenching her teeth in fear.

Erik started rocking back and forth, swiftly working himself into an agony. "Christine!" he rasped in a breathless whimper. He was clutching his belly, panting loudly. Agonized tears welled up and began to pour down his sunken cheeks. He was not crying however. He was having some kind of horrible seizure. Back and forth he rocked violently, his distress increasing by the second. "Christine! Oh, Christine, help me!"

Christine boldly stood her ground, resisting the urge to flee. She clenched her hands into petrified fists. Erik threw back his head, mouth gaping wide like some tortured soul burning in hell. "Christine!" he wailed in a louder voice, so ugly with fear and despair it horrified her. "Christine, help me! Please, help me!"

"I don't know how to help you," she called over Erik's howling, saying the very first thing that entered her mind. A loud wail of despair, and Erik collapsed in a heap upon the stony ground, clutching his wretched head in his hands. "Tell me what to do!" the frightened girl quickly begged, kneeling in front of him, careful not to get too close to the deranged man. But Erik could not answer. He shook his head wildly, sought her face again with pleading eyes full of tears, and could only gasp out the same desperate words in fearful whisper:

"Help me, oh please, help me!"

There was something in his peering eyes that spoke reassurance to Christine at that moment. Even in the dimness of the cellars she caught the glimmer of something new and unborn dancing in their depths. It was a sort of consciousness that understood higher, brighter things. It was desperately reaching for her. But it was terrified. It was not ready to come forth entirely, not yet. But it was there.

Using every scrap of energy to adopt a calm, self-possessed expression, Christine endeavoured to make her voice soothing and low. "I am not going anywhere, Erik. I am staying here. I will never leave you. You have my word."

Christine held Erik's frantic gaze and watched him closely, her head close to the ground so that they were almost at eye level. Slowly Erik began to settle into an uneasy peace. His glistening eyes blinked, once, and then again. He was now so quiet that Christine could hear the soft dripping sounds that haunted the cellars, and Erik's shallow, ragged breathing that was now reducing to a steady rhythm. She heaved an inward sigh of relief before her fevered mind reminded her that she had by no means returned to safety.

"It's all right," she told her mad companion, feeling comforted herself at the brave sound of her protective voice. "It's all right…I'm here."

Erik sniffed and slowly sat up, his body weak and trembling. Christine mirrored his posture unthinkingly and together they sat facing each other just beyond arm's reach, legs crossed, alone in the dank black cellar. Christine felt the wetness of her hair upon her back.

Erik sniffed again and began tugging at the little hairs on his forearm, looking down. "Christine, I didn't mean to do that to you," he said in a quiet, humble tone. His voice sounded a little rounder somehow, as if the sharpest accents of selfishness and distress which usually flavoured his speech had been smoothed away. But there was still the same profound sadness in it, and the same vague uncertainty.

"I know," Christine answered calmly. She folded her arms across her chest, trying to get warm.

Erik let his hand drop. "Please don't go away," he whispered into his chest. And he began to weep softly. Bending forward, he shielded his face with both hands. Erik's shoulders were shaking but he was clearly doing his utmost to moderate his feelings, something that Christine had never observed in him before. His sobbing was modest and quiet.

Without knowing what she did, Christine drew a little nearer to him.

"Oh, Erik," she spoke softly, letting him weep without laying a hand on him. "You frightened me." Her words elicited a slightly louder sob but Erik managed to govern his feelings. He merely went on crying in that low sorrowful way. The manliness of it touched Christine's heart. "Hush now," she murmured, tentatively reaching for him with outstretched arm. Her fingertips lightly trailed over the straggly hair at his temple. "Hush now."

Her gentleness coaxed him out from behind his fingers. Timidly he sought her eyes with his mournful yellow orbs.

"Do you love your Erik, Christine?" he asked humbly. Normally his odd way of speaking of himself in the third person would have disturbed her. But there was something unusual about his tone of voice this time, something so very rational, as if it were understood that 'Erik' truly was a different person, a person he had given to Christine to love.

Like a dog.

Christine sidled closer to her husband and after a little hesitation, held open her arms to receive him. Bowing his head, he let her take him to her bosom where she held him gently. "I love you, Christine," his muffled voice came to her as she ran her hand smoothly over his naked back. He was completely naked as he had been when he had quitted the bed and his flesh was icy cold.

"Oh Erik," Christine murmured in a weary, heartsick tone. "You love me _too much_. I'm only a woman."

Erik drew back, lifted his face to regard her careworn features and stared at her quizzically. Christine blinked in consternation. He was seemingly mesmerized by her face. She waited, wanting to know what Erik would do next and half afraid to find out. And then, slowly, he brought his hideous deformity closer to her until he was near enough to touch her with his lips. Christine remained frozen in place. And Erik kissed her, clumsily, like a raw boy kissing his sweetheart for the first time. Christine responded only minutely. The moment she did so, Erik withdrew, staring at her still in silent wonder. It was very strange. He then lifted a hand very cautiously and gently cupped her cheek. His long tapered fingers pressed lightly on her skin.

"But you don't run from me," he said, apparently answering the last words she had spoken. There was shy bewilderment in his voice.

Erik dipped his head and rested his forehead against his young bride's chin. Christine found herself softly stroking his bedraggled wisps of hair. Her mind felt passive though not altogether peaceful. Perhaps she was only tired. Christine did not want to think any more.

"Erik, I'm cold," she told him, quietly pushing him back from her so that she could speak. "I think we should go back to bed."

He looked up at her and nodded softly. Then he stood up and offered her his hands. Christine took them and stood up beside him. Her nightgown shimmered ghostly white in the deathly darkness. Erik's flesh was of almost the same hue. Together they re-entered the house on the lake and climbed back into their marriage bed to sleep as best they could until morning, if indeed morning had not already come. They lay together, loosely embracing. And the room felt sedate and warm.

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**A/N: Ok, I think I've burnt out the imagination on this one...at least for now. Have a few drinks for me! ;)GR  
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	7. The Morning After

A/N okay been wondering about continuing this and seeing as the story seems to be liked, thought I'd give it a go. Unfortunately don't get much time to write though these days, so hope you'll forgive slow updates. Here's one to be going on with though. Cheers!

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**Chapter Seven**

**The Morning After**

When Christine opened her eyes some hours later the bedroom was still dark as always. Lying on her back, she felt along the sheets beside her and found that her husband's place was empty. It did not bother or surprise her; Erik often disappeared during the night, sometimes for more than a day. After last night's exercise, Christine guessed the enigmatical man had holed himself away some place private till he felt his usual tyrannical self again. She sighed into the air above her and drew up her knees.

_Last night…_

It was like an old forgotten memory belonging to somebody else. Christine lay quietly and let her mind drift through the vale of painful feelings, groping as through a mist. There was no Christine in this place, no Erik, no Opera. These were facts, events, episodes from some horrible tragic play, and a cold, resistant shudder broke upon her with each scene; hands thrusting a young woman's head into the water… the woman being carried out to the lake… a charming voice singing that awful dirge… The truth about Raoul… _Raoul_! With a jolt of pain Christine sat up, her palm clasped to her mouth. That hideous confession! She remembered it!

It was horrible, unforgivable! Erik, kneeling impotently before her, pretending he had never meant to hurt her only Love! Throwing herself over onto her side, Christine thrust her head into her pillow and groaned like a tortured animal. Raoul was dead, truly dead! And that beast of a man had killed him! How had she ever found it in her heart to take the pathetic creature again to this bed last night as if nothing had happened? But at least she had not given herself to him, not this time!

There were tears wetting her face and her nose was full. Her breathing slowed. Her limbs felt heavy. The sheets were tangled about her.

Oh, what was Erik all about? Rolling again onto her back, Christine stared up into the darkness, resting her palms on her forehead. What was to become of them both? What was to become of _herself_? Where was Raoul? Did she dare ask Erik where his body lay? A deep frown formed on Christine's brow as she remembered how she had abused her dear boy in her thoughts. Raoul had not abandoned her at all. How could she have imagined it? Raoul had been here all the time… lying at the bottom of the lake, no doubt.

The flippancy of that last thought sickened her and the old anger began to simmer in Christine's breast. And to think, Erik had promised only yesterday that he would let Raoul take her away as soon as he came! What lies! What hypocrisy, when he knew Raoul was never coming at all! The cad! The insufferable, lying, revolting cad! Christine sat up in bed, threw her feet over the side and slammed a fist into the mattress beside her. An ugly grunt made spittle fly from her lips. She wiped her hand across her nose. Why had she ever been so kind to that despicable man? The savage brute deserved to be hanged! In the darkness, Christine stumbled her way to the chest of drawers and scraped open the topmost drawer. Feeling through it, her fingers seized the first article that felt small enough to be a handkerchief and blew her nose into it. She pushed the drawer closed and hurried carelessly to the bathroom door in the opposite wall. Locating the door knob, the wretched girl turned it and felt for the rope just inside the bathroom which operated the electric light. She pulled on it and the room blazed with yellow light from a fizzing bulb suspended from the ceiling.

Now in the bathroom, Christine caught her reflection in a small mirror and grimaced. Her hair was a dishevelled mess, her eyes sunken and dark. Christine drew closer to her reflection, fascinated and repulsed by the terrible change that time and terror had wreaked upon her. Her skin, once rosy, was now pale and blotched. Instead of a pretty young actress, the face gazing back at her looked like a degenerating corpse.

Giving her nose one last wipe, Christine dropped her handkerchief into the laundry basket by the door and sat down heavily upon the edge of the large bathtub. She wondered whether it would be worth her while to take a bath. Her knees were hurting. Drawing up her nightgown, Christine examined her knees and found they were scratched and bruised from being pushed down on the edge of the lake. She stood up then, and pulling her nightgown off over the head, tossed it aside to examine the rest of her. There were bruises on her arms where Erik had gripped her last night. She could see the individual marks of his fingers, etched upon her body in thin blue lines.

The faucet squealed as Christine released a flow of water into the bath. Soon the room was steamy and noisy as the bath filled. When the water was as high as she wanted, Christine turned off the taps and climbed in, feeling her skin tingle with heat as she lowered herself into the water. She held her breath until she was seated comfortably and then breathed a long sigh as she relaxed. Steam rose from the water all about her and the dazzling electric light glinted in the ripples on the water's surface. With her knees bent, Christine crossed one leg over the other and watched the droplets fall from her raised heel. The soft plinking as they met the water reminded her of the constant dripping of the cellars.

Where exactly was Erik at this moment? Was he lurking in that wretched lake of his, waiting for another victim? Why did he do it? Why did he drown people? Did anybody ever cross the lake for anything but to maintain the building or to dispose of the rats? Nobody wanted to disturb the madman who was living in the cellar. Nobody even knew he was there, except perhaps the Persian gentleman who had been with Raoul. And now Raoul was dead. And she was a prisoner. And the Persian gentleman was presumably dead also, although it was not possible to say.

Christine lowered her foot again into the water as her thoughts dwelled on the Persian. That he had known of Erik for some time was plain enough. Christine had spotted him for a sort of friend to her long before the final disaster. He had often appeared in the passages of the Opera to warn her to avoid one place or another when the monster was afoot. And he had apparently helped Raoul to find his way to the creature's house. But now it was not clear what had become of him. Perhaps Erik had dispatched him along with Raoul. She had certainly never seen or heard of him again since that murderous night. Perhaps, if he was still alive, he might yet rescue her from Erik's grasp. He might inform the police and bring an army to outmanoeuvre her husband. There would be bloodshed for a certainty. Christine was hardly sure if she cared. After all, so many had already died, what did a few more matter?

Christine felt her brow crease. Was she really becoming so heartless? Was this how Erik had begun his bloodied career, by rationalising death? Christine sat up straighter, took the soap from the dish in front of her and a sponge, and slowly lathered it. She did not want to become like Erik.

Water trickled from the soapy sponge as Christine squeezed it down the length of her outstretched arm. No, she would never become like Erik. At least, not unless Erik changed. There was something good in him sometimes; but it was always so fleeting. Last night… Last night, after his seizure by the lake, when his eyes had looked at her, for just one brief moment he had looked as if he was truly human…

Christine finished washing herself in silent reflection, rinsing away the imagined dirt and grime of the cellars, leaving her skin soft and warm. When she was done, she released the plug and stepped out of the bath to dry herself. She returned to the bedroom to dress, lighting the room to do so. How she longed to see the sunlight again!

Feeling oddly calm and detached, the grave young woman quitted the bedroom to make herself some tea. The hall was only softly lighted by gaslight. She passed Erik's music room on her way to the kitchen and dining-room but the door was closed so she did not look in. The house on the lake was deathly still. As she waited for the kettle to boil in the kitchen, Christine sat down at the dining table where she had listened to Erik's horrid singing the night before. She was seated in precisely the same place. While she waited, she let her eyes wander over the small proportions of the room, the antique cabinet, the few utensils and meagre stove. She stood up as the kettle began to bubble and steam and it was then that Christine noticed her husband standing in the doorway.

He was shrouded in his great black opera cloak and was wearing a full black mask. Christine hated the mask and turned away to pour the water into the teapot.

"Will you have tea?" she asked coldly without looking at him.

Erik remained standing where he was and did not speak. He merely watched as Christine set the kettle down and covered the little teapot with a warmer.

"I have no idea of the time," Christine said, taking two cups from the cupboard. "I suppose you'll tell me that it's mid-afternoon again."

"It is eleven o'clock," Erik replied. His voice sounded hollow.

"Then I am having a late breakfast," his wife remarked.

Of course, she was not his _wife_, not exactly. Christine thought of it as she set two places at the dining table. Here she was, keeping house for a man who was not her husband; being regularly bedded by a man who was not her husband, and worse than that, the murderer of her love! This was not the life she had planned for herself. This was madness! Everything was so very wrong.

"Where did you go this morning?" Christine asked, sitting down. She jiggled the teapot a little to hasten its brewing.

Erik stepped closer to the table, drew back a chair and sat down opposite her. Christine looked up to see his yellow eyes watching her steadily. She refused to repeat her question but went on jiggling the pot.

"Will you be sad to leave me, Christine?" Erik asked at last in a low, emotionless voice. Christine felt her skin tingle with irritation.

She drew a small breath. "After last night I wonder that you can ask me such a question. I suppose you remember what you told me, and what happened afterwards."

Erik let his chin drop. Christine poured the tea while Erik sat quietly like a boy who had been chastened.

No more words passed between them for some time. Christine added the sugar to the cups in two lumps and stirred them. The teaspoon grated in the bottom of the cups and clinked on the side of them when the agitated young woman was finished. Christine pushed one of the cups across the table at her husband. He did not touch it.

"Have you eaten?" Christine asked tersely.

Erik's answer did not come immediately. "I am not hungry."

"Well, that makes two of us," was Christine's brusque reply. She lifted her teacup to her lips and sipped at it.

The black form opposite her only stared down at the hot brown liquid in front of him. Christine refused to ask him any more questions, or to urge him to drink his tea. Erik was old enough to decide for himself.

Presently, he lifted a gloved hand and touched the teacup tentatively, toying with the curved handle, pushing the cup round slightly on its saucer. Christine took another sip of her tea in silent irritation.

"Where will you go Christine," Erik murmured at his teacup in a voice that sounded perturbed, "when you are not here?"

The young woman put down her cup with a clink and looked hard at her companion with dogged eyes. "What are you talking about?"

Erik pushed his cup and saucer away from him.

"You will not always be here Christine," he explained, still not looking at her face. "So where will you go?" There was something unsettling in his tone which Christine did not like, and her irritation increased.

"To Heaven I should hope, although I doubt it," she replied in an acid voice, glaring at the madman who dared frighten her. Erik looked up at her at last.

"Christine, you... do you think on Death?" he wondered aloud, seemingly with genuine confusion.

Christine blinked. "Do _you_ not?" she countered. "I thought that's what you meant."

Erik sighed. "You are right to say it," he agreed with her first statement. "But no, I am speaking of you leaving Erik, leaving this place," he slowly elucidated, "alive."

They looked at each other for a moment, Christine nervously touching her cup. Erik's black mask gazed back at her, his yellow eyes glinting coolly in the dim light.

"And why do you speak of that?" the young woman quietly asked after a time.

Her companion dropped his gaze. "You cannot wish to stay," he said in humble tones. "And Erik cannot help you anymore."

Christine hardly knew whether to breathe. She pushed her cup away from her also, sliding it an inch across the table.

"When... should I be leaving?" she uttered tentatively, watching Erik for his response.

"The Time is decided," the stolid man replied, his head lowered. "But is not today. Tomorrow perhaps."

Christine's hope diminished at the sound of this uncertainty. She let herself heave a sigh. "Well then, I don't know," she said with a careless shrug. "I don't suppose I care where I go, or when."

"You do not wish to stay?" Erik glanced up hopefully.

"It does not signify what I wish," she answered without emotion. "You will have it your own way, Erik, as you always do."

"Erik does not always have things his own way," the black man argued forcefully.

"Then let me leave!" Christine threw back at him, jutting her chin forward with an impatient gesture. "Let me set the day and the time!"

"No, Christine."

"There! It's as I said."

Christine slumped back in her chair and reached for her cup again. She lifted it to her lips and drew on it slowly in angry silence.

Erik remained seated opposite, staring down at the table between them as if beaten.

"I don't wish you to go," his words came quietly as Christine finished her tea.

"Then I shan't, shall I?" Christine answered coldly. "You have me a prisoner here. What else can I do?"

"Why do you hate Erik?"

Christine saw her husband gazing intently at her, slight moisture in his eyes. He looked smaller somehow, sitting slightly stooped and watching for her answer like an errant child. She felt her anger subside.

"I don't hate him," she told her companion in a simple voice. "But he hates me."

"No, Christine!"

"Yes!" she insisted, standing up. "Look at me, Erik!" she pointed savagely at herself. "Have you seen what a fright I've become? My liberty taken, my confidence abused! My very best friend in all the world _murdered_! What else do you call it, Erik, except _hate_?"

"It wasn't Erik!" the masked man shook his head furiously.

"Then who? Tell me that!" Christine demanded, towering over her companion. "Who killed Raoul, if not you?"

"He wasn't strong..."

"Oh, so that's the excuse?" Christine turned away in disgust.

"You don't understand..."

Christine span back on her heel. Erik was leaning his elbows on the table, his head in his hands.

"No, I don't!" she fired at him bluntly. "I don't."

Pausing for a second, she expected Erik to speak but he did not. He seemed determined to endure her anger. The exhausted woman swept a stray hair from her cheek and swept her hands down her bodice. After a little while she pulled up her chair again and sat down facing the silently brooding man.

"Do you know, Erik," she went on slowly in a quieter tone, "when I first told Raoul about you, he wanted me to run away. He wanted to _kill_ you. But I wouldn't hear of it. Because, fool that I was, I pitied you. And I thought you could never do me harm."

Christine saw Erik's shoulders rise with a regretful sigh. She continued patiently as one reciting a lesson. "I thought you were obsessed but kind. I thought I could let you down gently, that you would understand. And then all of this happened." She paused for a moment, wet her lips and struggled on. "It all seems so... so surreal and bizarre now that I... I hardly know what's real anymore." Erik nodded slightly though Christine did not see it. "I did... _love_ you, in a way," Christine murmured at the space between them. "But you abused it. You made me into some _creature_ for your own pleasure and I ceased to be Christine at all. Sometimes I'm not sure who I am anymore. And I think you like it like that... I don't understand why you do this to me. If you say you love me, then why am I still here?"

Her words hung softly on the air, a challenge that could not be answered with any argument Erik might conceive. Christine could hear the browbeaten man breathing behind his mask.

Presently he spoke, uncertainly and with much effort. His words seemed to cost him dearly. "I wanted... you... to teach me... something that I do not know." His voice was mellow and he let one hand drop gently upon the table whilst the other supported his head. "Did you truly love Erik?"

Christine waited and then nodded softly. "I did... yes, I did."

"Erik still loves _you_, Christine," he returned shyly. His hand reached cautiously across the table to her. "_I_ still love you," he quietly amended.

His fingers sought her touch but Christine only looked down suspiciously at the proffered hand. She did not move at all. "I know you love me," she gently answered instead.

Erik slowly withdrew his hand and sat up straighter. He gazed at his companion with calm resignation. Christine gazed back at him. His yellow eyes blinked.

"You have to go," he stated simply.


	8. The Way Home

**Chapter Eight**

**The Way Home**

"You have to go."

Christine paused before replying. Watching her enigmatic companion with the keen eyes of a prey animal, the anxious woman weighed her next question slowly.

"How?"

Erik blinked and answered simply. "I will take you to my friend tomorrow. He will take you home."

"Your friend?" Christine wondered aloud. "Who is that?"

"He was here, that night," Erik murmured, glancing sideways.

Christine made a rapid guess. "The Persian gentleman?"

Erik nodded. "That is he."

Christine let her shoulders relax as she breathed a small sigh. She swept a stray hair behind her ear.

"I'm glad he's safe," she uttered, letting her eyes fall momentarily. Erik shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and grunted.

"The interfering fellow!" his deep voice rumbled softly. "So careless of his life! He will take you home."

"Does he live nearby?" Christine wanted to know, leaning forward slightly.

"Near enough," Erik reluctantly muttered, reaching for his cup and saucer again so that he could play with it as before. Pointing his index finger down beside the cup's handle, he inscribed circles on the saucer, making the cup spin in its place with an irritating scraping sound. "You will see tomorrow. I will take you tomorrow."

"Does he know?" Christine said, trying to ignore Erik's fidgeting.

"I arranged it this morning," he murmured, engrossed in his game. Christine drew an exasperated breath.

"Why did you not tell me straight away?" she insisted, reaching forward and grasping the teacup so that Erik was forced to look up at her. They stared into each other's eyes for a tense moment, Erik's eyes full of wonder and Christine's glistening with intensity. After another moment, Erik let his gaze fall in some confusion.

"You cannot know how this will hurt Erik," he tried to explain, shaking his head slowly from side to side, "and hurt _me_. _He_ did not want to tell you."

Christine decided to play along with his words. "But Erik loves me."

"He does not love you as much I do," the masked man told her in a melancholy tone. "You know Erik, Christine, but you do not know _me_."

He sounded so honestly regretful that Christine could only pause and reflect for a time as she tried to sort out what it all meant. Erik had gone out early to arrange matters with the Persian man so that she could be set free at last. He had finally decided to let her go and he had taken another person into his confidence. Tomorrow she would see the sunlight again, Mamma Valerius, and the world that she knew and loved.

And Erik would say good-bye to her forever, for her own good.

She released the teacup and sought his hand. He let her hold his gloved fingers lightly. "I think I may know you a little," Christine spoke softly, shyly meeting her companion's interested gaze. It was impossible to read the expression in those peculiar yellow eyes. Neither loving nor cold, they held her in a magnetic embrace. Christine felt herself being pulled into their depths. Eventually the intensity of the moment forced her to look away. "I am glad you are taking me to your friend tomorrow," she said, directing her words at the table. "You make me very happy."

Erik responded quietly. "And I make myself very sad. But it is decided and I will not let Erik keep you here."

Christine could hear the soft creaking of her corset as she moved slightly, the rustling of her skirts. Erik's breathing behind his mask was like a gentle humming. His fingers twitched under her touch and she felt the soft leather of his gloves, smooth as a baby's skin. The gas-light softly hissed, casting its rosy hue upon the surreal, dreamy scene. Christine blinked several times and cleared her throat. There was something digging at the corners of her mind.

"Your name is not Erik, is it?" she asked abruptly, surprised at the clarity of her voice which seemed out of place in a world so misty and confused. Erik hardly flinched.

"It is my name...the only name I have." His tone was as calm as the underground lake. Christine swallowed and blinked again.

"Who gave it to you?" she said, glancing up and discreetly extracting her hand from her partner's. Erik let her move away and leaned back a little.

"These things come upon us in their own time and way," he explained, watching the inquisitive young woman surreptitiously. "You liked Erik, Christine."

"All I want is to know your true name," Christine shook her head, gaining courage. "After all that we have been to each other, do I not deserve that?" she put her head on one side. To her surprise, Erik suddenly broke his gaze and looked down in confusion.

He pushed his chair back from the table with a scrape as if about to stand. But instead he remained seated, crossed his arms across his chest and stared blankly at the floor.

Christine waited and then spoke again, cautiously. "Do you not wish to tell me?"

The black figure was breathing more heavily now through parted teeth, his hollow chest rising and falling. Christine watched him for what seemed like several minutes, wondering if she ought to speak again. But she did not want to push her tormenter into a confession. With strong forbearance she waited for a reply.

"There is nothing to tell," the masked figure said at last in a weak voice. "Don't ask it again Christine."

Disappointed, Christine could only acknowledge that the subject was distressing and that any moment her keeper might erupt into a terrible rage. She must not jeopardize her prospects of freedom. And so she folded her hands in her lap.

"Very well I won't," she said simply, wearing a serene countenance.

"Good girl," Erik nodded softly. "You are a good girl."

"So what shall we do today?" Christine airily changed the subject. "Shall we sing?"

Erik hummed shortly and then looked up, his eyes having returned to their usual sombre expression. "There is no music for me today," he told her in a practical tone. "Let me only look at you, Christine, the most beautiful object that ever entered this wretched spot!" Christine tried to smile. "And there will be no Erik today. Today I shall have you to myself."

Christine stood up and started clearing away the tea things. "Then perhaps I should read to you?" she suggested.

"Yes, yes that is how shall be," Erik readily agreed, standing up also and looking like a tall black pillar when he did so. "You see Erik tries to make me say that I will sit fondly at your feet and fawn upon you like a dog but I shan't do that Christine, not today! I will sit opposite you as a husband should and listen to your reading and remark upon the passages like a sensible man. Yes, and you will see that Er—that your husband can be a sensible man when he chooses."

"And then tomorrow we shall go?" Christine confirmed, pausing with the teapot in hand.

"Yes, tomorrow," he assented coolly. "It is arranged."

Christine nodded and turned from him, emptying the teapot into the sink and shaking the clump of sodden leaves into the waste bin. There was an awful amount wasted but Erik never seemed to care about such things.

"Thank you for doing this," Christine felt compelled to say as she rinsed the pot. "I know that it hurts you."

Erik's answer came after a pause. "There is no hurt in it that is not deserved."

Christine decided not to say more but quietly finished cleaning the rest of the things. When she was finished, she turned round to find Erik still standing in his place, lost in thought. She dusted off her hands on a cloth.

"I'll fetch a book," she said, hanging the cloth by the sink. "Take a glass of sherry in the parlor. I'll join you there."

Without a word, Erik obeyed. Moments later the two people sat snugly in the parlor, Christine on the settee and Erik in one of the armchairs opposite with one bony leg crossed over the other. Christine had persuaded him to remove his mask so that he could sip his glass of sherry comfortably, besides which she found her companion's grotesque features less disturbing when she could actually see them.

For an hour or more she read to Raoul's murderer, rarely stumbling over a word and pausing only to clear her throat or sip some water which Erik had fetched for her. The book she had chosen was a book of scientific principles related to architecture, a dry subject for Christine but interesting to her companion although Christine suspected he knew it almost by heart already. By the time she had finished the first two chapters, her eyes were growing heavy and she struggled to stifle a yawn.

"You are tired," Erik observed.

"A little," Christine agreed with a faint smile. "Would you like to read instead and I will listen?"

"No," Erik said. "It is lunch time. I will cook for you."

And getting up, he moved away to the kitchen, leaving Christine to curl up on the sofa where she soon fell into a gentle slumber.


	9. Evening

A/N: thanks so much for all the encouraging reviews! So glad people are enjoying this story. And thanks for many suggestions - it's opened my eyes to numerous possibilities. Cheers :)

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**Chapter Nine**

**Evening**

After being woken for a light lunch and then an afternoon of back-gammon and similar pastimes, Erik announced that the dinner hour had arrived. He prepared a roasted fowl for the occasion and watched Christine devour most of the meal alone, only picking sparingly at the feast himself. He was still without his mask to Christine's pleasure and while she ate, she took the opportunity to observe him discreetly from time to time when his attention was diverted.

The poor man was devastatingly ugly to the point of making her feel ill when she considered how she had decorated that hideous face with kisses. His straggly hair swept back from a greatly receding hairline and protruding cheek bones gave him a deathly appearance but that was nothing compared to the hole which was his nose. His skin was sallow and grey. Christine could not help wondering how such a being was still able to draw breath. It was a great comfort to know that tomorrow she would be at home again. And yet there was something unsettling about it too.

After dinner Erik helped Christine wash the dishes and then it was time for Christine's bath. She had grown accustomed to bathing twice a day because it soothed her irritated nerves. Besides which, the bathroom was one room in the house into which Erik never dared follow her.

While she soaked in the steaming water and slowly lathered the soap on the sponge, Christine let her thoughts dwell upon the morrow. Scenes suggested themselves to her fancy one after another; Mamma Valerius overcome with joy at her return, the little pot of violets at the front door which would probably need watering, days spent resting in her own room where thoughts of this evil place could recede into oblivion.

And then of course the questioning would begin. The police would want to interview her. The Opera management would want to know what happened on that last night. So many questions whizzing in her brain, so many questions that she did not want to answer, tumbling upon her one after another. _Where have you been Christine?_ _Who took you? What did he make you do? _Gradually, Christine sensed that she was not as excited about returning to the world as she felt she ought to be. There was something heavy inside her, a ball of emptiness forming in the place where her heart was supposed to be.

Or had it always been there? What was so wonderful about home anyway? It was no different to any other place. "I am very glad to be going home," she whispered to herself in consternation as she squeezed water from the sponge and let it stream like a small waterfall down her extended arm. "And yet everything seems so dead. Everything is dead and finished and over. What is wrong with me?"

Her thoughts turned to Raoul who was truly dead and her stomach turned. "And the police will ask me about him too. And what shall I say? Should I tell them about Erik? What will I do?"

Sliding forward, she plunged the back of her head into the water and lay there, moving her head from side to side so that the water would swish through her hair. It was wonderfully relaxing and Christine closed her eyes to enjoy it.

"Why don't I feel anything for Raoul now?" she asked herself, sensing the troubling numbness climbing up from her chest into her brain. "I used to love him. And now I don't seem to care. I don't care about anyone, not even Mamma Valerius. Everything is dead, dead, dead."

She opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling where the electric light bulb fizzed. "What is Love anyway?" she wondered silently, only mouthing the words and feeling the hot water warming her neck and sides of her face. The brilliant yellow light bulb pierced her eyes, branding her sight with echoes of its shape which appeared in ghostly form when Christine let her gaze wander over the white ceiling. "I don't love anyone," she murmured to herself calmly. "Tell me Christine, what is Love, my pet?"

As she lay there, a little voice suggested itself on the tip of her imagination. _Love is when you find yourself standing in a vast green field, Christine, with scented flowers and clumps of clover; the sun is shining and the sky is purest blue, and there is nothing to do but to run, and run, and run!_

"Yes!" Christine whispered to herself, hazarding a tiny smile. "That is how I used to feel about Raoul!" She faltered. "And now he's gone. I don't suppose I'll ever feel that way again."

After finishing her bath, drying and dressing herself in her nightgown, Christine was ready for bed. Erik was not in the room and Christine assumed he would join her presently. She climbed into bed and lay there quietly on her back, her hands folded over her belly, gazing up at the ceiling. The bed had been freshly made, apparently by Erik sometime earlier, perhaps while she was in the bath. The linen sheets were cool and crisp. Christine wriggled her toes, luxuriating in the sensation of new linen rubbing against her bare feet. And then she moved her hands slightly. She felt the movement on her belly and stiffened.

"What if I am already carrying his child?" Christine wondered with a sudden sickening dread. Her eyes stared wildly into nothingness. "What would I tell Mamma Valerius? What would become of me?" A heavy feeling of remorse gripped her, growing more weighty with every fresh idea that suggested itself to her anxious mind. "I could not pursue my career... I would have to leave Paris. But where would I go? And what of Mamma Valerius? How could I explain this to her?"

But in time Christine chastened herself into calm. "There is no use upsetting myself over something that may never happen," she said, repeating a phrase that Mamma Valerius had often counselled her with. Christine closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly, letting her body and mind relax. "Think of only good things," she went on silently as the seconds slowly passed by. "Tomorrow you are going home. Tomorrow everything will be normal again. Tomorrow Mamma Valerius will make you tea."

It was some time before Christine realised that Erik had still not made his appearance. It was their final night together. She had already resolved not to touch him yet she had expected he would sleep beside her in the usual way nevertheless. Puzzled, she decided to get up and search for him.

It seemed he was nowhere in the house, and then as Christine was returning to bed, she passed the door to Erik's music room. She decided to look in, just in case her strange companion was there.

The room was dark but the light from the hall illuminated it a little as Christine opened the door. Clearly Erik was not here composing music. She made to walk away but at the last moment decided to investigate further. Cautiously she stepped into the room, seeing in dim outline Erik's huge pipe organ opposite, and to the right his deathly casket standing open in the midst of funeral drapery. With only a mild curiosity, Christine ventured nearer the coffin to look inside.

She was aghast to find Erik lying in it with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Why are you here?" she demanded in a voice that jolted Erik into awareness. His pale eyes blinked and then settled on the young woman's face staring down at him. He wore no mask and the paleness of his skin was faintly luminescent in the dim light.

"This is where Erik belongs now," he said to his bride, calmly and distinctly.

"Don't be silly," Christine contradicted at once. "You can't be comfortable there. Why don't you sleep in the bed?"

"Erik is dead Christine," the sombre man returned, gazing up at her simply. "Or he soon will be. Go back to your bed. It will be morning soon."

Christine was shivering although she was not cold. She folded her arms tightly and clenched her teeth.

"You are making me feel guilty for looking forward to seeing the sunlight again," she uttered harshly with a huff. "That's not very nice."

Erik's gaze turned to a frown. "Why guilty? Why?"

"Because you speak of dying soon, as if my departure is going to kill you!"

Erik sat up quickly. "_I_ am not going to die," he said pointedly. "Why do you say that?"

"You said it, just now," Christine argued, her voice sounding shrill. "You said Erik is going to die. That's why you're sleeping in the coffin."

"_Erik_ is sleeping in the coffin," the living corpse amended.

"Yes..." Christine hesitated, frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know," her husband shook his head at her, genuinely confused. Christine sighed and stepped back. She rubbed her upper arms and tried to regain her composure. Erik was looking at her as if she was no more than a gauzy apparition, a visitation from some ethereal realm.

Christine cleared her throat and braced herself to speak again. "Please tell me one thing," she said succinctly, not able to look Erik in the eye. "It is our final night together. Where did you bury Raoul?"

Erik blinked. "His body is in the crypt."

"What crypt?" Christine countered, darting a look at him. Her husband sighed.

"There were many bodies, Christine, after the Commune," he explained, gazing down at his withered hands while the young woman looked on with a shrewish gleam in her eyes. "You can see them all lined up in boxes, down near the dungeon, if you dig for them. I laid him with those," he finished quietly.

An astonished pause followed as Christine gave herself time to digest the information.

"I did hear stories about what happened after the Commune," she said at last in a small voice. The fall of the Paris Commune decades earlier was a story Christine had heard Mamma Valerius tell, a tale of rebellion, violence and bloodshed which had not spared either women or children. "I didn't know they were all true."

Erik let her words hang in the air for a brief moment. "And so you think me not so bad after all."

Christine was shocked. "No, I don't think that! Those men were wrong to kill so many innocent people. And you were no less wrong!" she told the murderous madman with total conviction. Erik bore it resolutely. Christine's indignation softened. "But I'm glad you buried Raoul," she admitted softly.

"I didn't kill him Christine," Erik's small voice came out of the dimness.

"I wish you would not keep saying that."

The room was deathly still. Erik sitting upright in the coffin, and Christine standing with her arms folded, the two people said nothing for several minutes. They did not look at one another. Christine felt a cold breeze tease her ankles.

"I'm going to bed," she murmured finally, too weary for further discussion. "You can come if you like but only to sleep," she emphasized weakly. "I don't think it would right to... to do anything else, considering."

Christine looked up to find Erik gazing at her coolly.

"I will stay here," he said.

"Very well," Christine shrugged. She moved away to the door. "Good night Erik."

"Christine," Erik stopped her as she put her hand to the doorknob. Christine waited in the open doorway, the gaslight from the hall bathing her in flickering reddish hues. "Will you kiss Erik good-bye?" he asked faintly.

Christine put her head to one side, gazing at the strange man quizzically. "Not good-bye," she said at last in an oddly tender tone, "but good-night."

Her husband shook his gruesome head slowly. "No it must be good-bye."

Christine coughed. "I will do that tomorrow," she said in a slightly discomforted voice.

"Tomorrow Erik will be gone," the deathly figure told her, staring straight into her uncertain eyes. "Only I will be here." He paused. "I'm frightened," he whispered.

Christine let her hand release the doorknob and drift to her side. "What of?" she softly enquired.

"I don't think I'm a good man," came the simple, rasped reply. Christine thought she could detect tears in the madman's voice. She stepped closer, moved round to the side of the coffin and placed her palm on his hollow cheek. The skin was moist.

"You are as good as you wish to be," she whispered gently. Without knowing how or why, her lips found his and planted a chaste kiss there. Erik submitted to it like a child and dipping his head, let his forehead brush his wife's cheek. "Go to sleep," Christine told him, stroking the back of his head before taking him by the shoulders and gently coaxing him to lie down. "And be happy when you wake up in the morning."

Erik grasped her hand as she was about to withdraw. He held it and pressed it lightly between his fingers and thumb before releasing her.

"Good night Christine."


	10. Emergence

**Chapter Ten**

**Emergence**

The morning had not yet broken in the world above when Christine felt movement in the bed beside her. Roused from her light slumber, she felt Erik's long sinewy form slink under the bedclothes and nestle down close to her. His frigid hands touched her arm as he settled himself in a tight huddle.

"You're frozen," Christine remarked thickly. Erik shivered.

Christine closed her eyes again. Lying on her back, she folded her arms to keep warm against the iceblock beside her. Idly she wondered what time it could be. It must be only hours before she would be set at liberty and the thought made her feel a strange mixture of joy and foreboding.

It was difficult to sleep again with Erik breathing noisily, his face sheltered behind his hands. Christine felt irritated that her last night had been disturbed. She tried to conjure up peaceful thoughts to lull herself back into restful sleep. But hours seemed to pass wherein her mind drifted between consciousness and dreamy half-awareness. All the while her husband snored.

Eventually Erik stirred. Christine could tell he was awake because his snoring had ceased.

"Is it morning?" she sighed, tossing over on her side to face her bed-mate, cradling her head on her bent arm. She looked at the curled up figure in front of her, seeing only his dim outlines in the blackness of the room. His face was concealed behind his hands.

Christine blinked a few times and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "I told you you'd be more comfortable in the bed," she said. "You should get rid of that silly coffin, you know. It's a morbid, wretched thing."

Her companion moved his hands from his face, put his palms together and used them as a pillow. His eyes glistened in the darkness, watching the young woman's face.

Christine sighed again. "Are you warm?" she asked, suspecting that Erik was not covered by the bedclothes.

He did not reply at once but went on regarding her wistfully. "It doesn't signify," he said finally in a smooth, low voice. It was a voice that sent a ripple down Christine's spine, at once pleasurable and chilling. "The person you care for has died. There is only me now."

Something in that tone made Christine clench her teeth. She peered at the man lying beside her, facing her. It was difficult to make out his features in the darkness. Two points of light were his eyes and cavernous shadows indicated his sunken cheeks and absent nose. His mouth was but a faint, crooked line.

"You said you would take me to your friend today," Christine reminded him gently. "Should we be getting up now?"

Her companion blinked, extinguishing the glinting lights momentarily. "Erik would have promised you anything, Christine," he purred smoothly. "Anything at all to make you stay with him one more day. But I am not like that," he went on while Christine's eyes grew larger with alarm. "I make no promises that I will not keep. And so, yes Christine," he concluded calmly, "it is time for us both to rise."

"We are going then?" Christine confirmed, feeling shaken.

"Of course," her husband told her matter-of-factly, not moving from his reclining place. "Of course we are going. Why would you doubt it?"

"I don't know," Christine weakly replied. "I suppose I don't always know what to expect from you, Erik."

His eyes flashed. "Erik is dead, Christine!" he told her firmly. "Your husband is dead! Now you can be a widow and be happy!" He sat up, raising himself on one arm. "Get up. It is time to go now."

The next hour passed very quickly, almost as a dream. Christine moved through each minute that her little watch ticked off hardly knowing how. Together she and her companion breakfasted and together they set off for the world above. Christine carried a little bag with her which Erik had filled with various articles he apparently supposed would be meaningful to her; the hairbrush he had bought for her, the lace handkerchief she had never used, a pair of slippers embroidered with purple silk. The slippers Christine had liked very much, but most of the other things were merely reminders of the occasions Erik had successfully performed his husbandly duty, for they were presents he had bought her by way of gratitude.

It was a long and tedious journey up the five levels to the surface, Christine following her guide closely so that she would not lose his black figure in the benighted cellars. Erik held a lantern aloft which shed a halo of light about them, and in its flickering circle Christine sometimes spied rats scurrying along the passages close to the stone walls. The first few times she jumped and faltered in her step but after a time the sight became so common she no longer heeded it. Her attention was fixed securely on the man leading her to the blessed surface, to freedom and life.

Eventually, they found themselves in a narrow corridor with walls lined with timber. The smell of cedar mixed with the musty smell of old books, of centuries of dust and mildew. Their footsteps sounded faintly on the wooden boards beneath their feet and soon Erik stopped. Christine stopped also.

"Do you know where you are, Christine?" Erik asked, looking over his shoulder at her. He was wearing his black mask, just as he had been on the night she had first caught glimpse of this terrible nightmarish man. His hand, holding the lantern high, was gloved in black leather. Christine looked at him quizzically.

"How should I know that?" she said, though a suspicion had entered her mind.

Erik chuckled deeply. It was a long time since Christine had heard that chuckle. She remembered it from long ago, from the days when she had known Erik only as the 'voice' in her dressing-room. "You don't remember our first meeting then?" he teased her. "You, who were so overcome by my majesty that you fainted in your Angel's arms?"

Christine bristled. "I did not faint!" she corrected him, to which Erik only chuckled again. "You held a chloroformed handkerchief to my face! You drugged me! Don't think I don't remember!"

She heard the enigmatic man sigh. "Yes, and in your case I did not hold it long enough."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Christine snapped.

Erik turned away and reached up to tinker with some sort of mechanism high on the wall in front of him. He did not answer the angry girl behind him but in another moment, Christine felt a cool breeze brush her cheek and peering past her slim companion saw that a room had opened up in front of them. Erik's lantern shed its light upon a small dressing-table covered with vases, picture frames and pots and brushes of all kinds. Christine recognized it as her own.

"My dressing-room!" she gasped, pushing past Erik. He let her displace him and then followed her into the room. With only the lantern's light to shed its warm glow upon the little room, Christine turned slowly in a circle, taking in every detail, every chair, every gas fitting. Her eyes fell upon an opened bottle of perfume on the dressing-table. "Nothing has changed," she murmured faintly with a sense of awe. "They have kept it just as it was that night."

"Your people are waiting for you," was all that Erik said, showing the way to the door. "Come now."

It was night. Or at least that was what Christine supposed when Erik opened the door into the main passage and led her along it towards the stairs. The theatre was deserted and quiet. Almost noiselessly they flitted down the spiral staircase which led to one of the back doors, through which the artists customarily exited the building. When they emerged onto the street, Christine saw that the first light of dawn was beginning to trace the outlines of the city.

A hansom cab awaited them at the gate. Erik motioned Christine inside and then climbed in after her. The cab set off at a trotting pace.

Clutching her little bag on her lap, Christine watched the shopfronts pass them by and the occasional lined and weary face belonging to a beggar or street vendor setting up for the day. They jaunted their way down the Place de l'Opera to the clopping of the horse's hooves and jingling harness until their journey brought them to the wide smooth avenue of the Rue de Rivoli.

Drawing up to the pavement under the shadow of a great apartment building, the cab stopped and Erik had Christine disembark first. Once standing on the street, Erik paid the cabman and led Christine under the colonnade that enclosed the pavement and into the building. It was now almost daylight.

Erik led the way up a flight of narrow stairs. On the third landing he stopped and knocked heavily on a plain wooden door with a brass handle and a letter slot cut into its middle at about hip level. Christine could smell an odd eastern fragrance which, though not unpleasant, made her uneasy.

Light footsteps approached the door from the other side. And then with a slight squeak, the letter slot was pushed open by thick fingers. A deep brown eye with thick lashes peered out through the gap.

The fingers disappeared and let the slot drop closed. There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and finally the door opened, revealing a face that Christine knew. It was the dark-skinned Persian man who had tried to rescue her with Raoul. The exhausted woman sighed inwardly with relief as the tall, bulky man ushered her inside with Erik following behind.

The sweet-smelling fragrance became stronger as Christine was shown down the hall and into a quaint little parlour. The Persian man, with shaven head, helped her to a comfortable chair by the fire and immediately set about pouring coffee from a strange sort of teapot while Erik stood looking on, sullen and silent. Christine hardly cared what Erik was feeling. She was too grateful to be free of her dungeon and safe at last in the hands of a man she knew could be trusted. So relieved was she that she allowed herself to settle back into her armchair and close her eyes.

"You kept your word I see," the man said to Erik as he filled the third cup. Christine opened her eyes at the sound of his voice and saw that the cups he was using were tiny.

Erik grunted. The Persian man picked up a cup and brought it to Christine. "Drink it with this," he suggested, offering her a small plate which bore a lump of sugar. Christine picked up the sugar lump and was about to drop it into the cup. "No, no!" her host hastened to stop her. "Put it into your mouth."

With some wonderment, Christine did so. "Now drink," the Persian man directed. And so, she did. She found it was very pleasant to soften the sugar lump with the strong bitter brew. Seeing that she liked it, the Persian man smiled contentedly and moved away to serve Erik. But Erik had already helped himself and was crossing to a straight-backed chair a few steps away from Christine.

"You realise what you have done, of course?" the Persian said, seemingly to Erik, as he took up his own cup and then popped a lump of sugar into his mouth. Sitting down in a large armchair facing them both, he crossed one leg over the other and let his gaze fall upon Christine who was huddled over her cup much like a beggar over a bowl of stew. The Persian turned his sights back to Erik who only glared at him.

"You were ever an interfering booby," Erik sneered, holding his cup between his gloved hands. He had not tasted it yet, for his mask was a hindrance to his lips. "I told you before you had better stay out of my affairs, but like a fool you never listened! Now take the consequences! That is enough of you!"

The Persian drew slowly on his coffee, lowered the cup and chuckled through closed lips. Sensing an approaching argument, Christine watched the two men furtively, feeling her muscles tense. Secretly she began calculating whether she would be able to run past them and out the door should it become necessary.

"How much did you tell her?" the Persian then asked, raising a black eyebrow at his skinny antagonist. Erik looked straight back at him, his yellow eyes piercing the Persian's supercilious stare.

"Never what _you_ think!" he snarled dangerously, and then put a hand to his mask. "And yet this was not enough to shock _her_, as it does _you_!" at which he tore the mask from his face and cast it on the floor. Quickly the Persian averted his eyes and glowered at the black mask lying uselessly in front of his feet. Erik laughed.

"It's surprisingly easier to partake of food with guests when one isn't hampered by that thing," Erik pronounced after draining his coffee cup with one gulp. "My dear little wife understood that, didn't you darling?" he demanded of Christine with a heightened tone of excitement in his voice. Agitated and afraid, Christine only gazed at him mutely. Erik looked like a terrible gargoyle with a gaping mouth showing all of his crooked teeth.

"Stop humiliating yourself," the Persian muttered darkly.

"Oh, it's too late for that, Daroga!" Erik corrected him with a gleeful smile. "We're all humiliated now, you more than most! And you'll have to bear it, like your faithful old Trapdoor Lover once did for you! This is what your people call recompense, you know."

Christine seized the opportunity to try to calm matters. "You haven't even introduced us properly," she told her husband in her best polite voice. "Won't you tell me your friend's name, Erik?"

The Persian glanced up quickly, flashed a sideways look at Erik that was not high enough to encompass his deformity, and then blinked a few times before raising his sights to Christine's earnest face. He smiled coolly.

"Erik was never one to remember his manners," he remarked smoothly. "No, my name does not matter. But you may call me Nadir."

Erik snorted. "Hmph! As well you introduce yourself, great hypocritical booby!" Nadir ignored him.

"Well, I'm very pleased to meet you properly at last," Christine said with a gracious nod that disguised her anxiety. "I know what you tried to do for me," she said, glancing uneasily at Erik who was now slouching belligerently in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "I am glad to see that you came to no harm."

"And I am only sorry that I could not prevent this terrible calamity from befalling you, Mademoiselle Daae," the Persian uttered in silken accents. "And the boy – I should say, the Vicomte – a great tragedy! You have borne this with great fortitude, no doubt by a superior faith in the Almighty, peace be on Him."

Unsure of how to respond, Christine lowered her face, blushing violently.

"Well," Erik announced, standing up suddenly, "you have your work to do, and so I'll trouble you no more." Stooping down, he picked up his mask from the floor and fixed it firmly to his face. With a few brusque slaps he dusted off his gloved palms. "Do as you will, Daroga," he said to the Persian shortly, "but cross the Trapdoor Lover in any way, as we agreed upon, and you won't have any more to worry about from anyone – ever!" And a moment later, he was gone, out of the parlour and through the passage, slamming the door behind him.

Christine sat, stunned, looking at the chair that Erik had quitted. His empty coffee cup was still sitting on a little carved table beside it.

She felt her heart quiver.

"We must take you home," the Persian's voice cut across her thoughts. And when Christine met his gaze, he smiled, showing a row of tobacco-stained teeth, and eyes that glinted like those of a fox.


	11. Recovery

**Chapter Eleven**

**Recovery**

"Monsieur, she is waking."

A voice Christine knew had gently spoken the words, a young woman's voice. A shadow passed across her dim vision. White light dazzled her as her eyelids flickered.

Rapid footsteps brought somebody to her side. Christine realized she was lying in a bed. A moment later, a warm hand touched her forehead and then her cheek.

"There now, Mademoiselle," came a reassuring male voice. Christine's vision cleared and she saw the calm face of Dr Marchant gazing down at her. His spectacles sat on the end of his round nose, and his greying hair was swept back from his ears. "Try not to disturb yourself," he went on soothingly, taking one of her limp arms by the wrist and testing her pulse. "You have been unwell."

Whilst Dr Marchant counted off her heartbeats against his watch, Christine turned her head slightly on the mountain of pillows stuffed behind her, searching for the owner of the first voice. She found her a little off to her right, standing by the foot of the bed. It was Sophie, the maid of Mamma Valerius. The dark-eyed girl met Christine's gaze and blushed.

"How did I come here?" Christine asked. Her voice surprised her; it was weak and she had trouble articulating the words.

Dr Marchant answered first. "You were brought here directly after the accident, Mlle Daae," he said in a tone that sounded awkward and constrained. Putting a hand to her cap, Sophie turned and moved away to clear away some articles by the door. "Don't fret now," the doctor admonished and tucked his watch back into his waistcoat pocket. "You're safe at home."

He gently laid Christine's arm down beside her, took up a small book and pencil, and made a brief note. Sophie opened the bedroom door and exited quietly carrying a covered bowl.

"What accident?" Christine wondered aloud, feeling drowsy and dull.

The doctor cleared his throat and put the little book and pencil away. Returning to Christine's side, he stood over her, regarding her with a look of concern that made Christine a little afraid, although his face was friendly.

"How much do you remember, Christine?" he inquired gently.

Christine blinked several times, uncertain where to begin. At last she said, "I was to come home with the Persian man – with M. Nadir." Dr Marchant's eyes narrowed. "We set off in the cab together...He was talking to me about Raoul."

"Mm-hmm," Dr Marchant encouraged her to continue, his forehead creased with seriousness.

"He and Raoul did try to save me," Christine assured the doctor, her eyes brightening just a little before her energy was spent with the exertion. "But it was no good... And then, I don't know," she murmured, trying hard to remember. "I don't remember anything after travelling with M. Nadir in the cab."

A weak ray of autumn sunlight was breaking through the drapes behind the doctor, showing up a cloud of dust particles suspended in the air. Dr Marchant removed his spectacles and used a handkerchief to polish the lenses. As he finished, he hummed nervously, set the glasses back on his nose and regarded his patient thoughtfully.

"Mlle Christine," he began simply, "I'm afraid there was no Persian man or a cab."

Christine gazed at the doctor, baffled. "I don't understand."

With a sigh, Dr Marchant replied, "You have remembered a dream, Christine. It is not surprising under the circumstances. You have been unconscious for many days."

For several moments, Christine struggled to make sense of the doctor's words but before she could speak, the learned man went on to explain. "Do you remember falling through the trapdoor?" he asked slowly. "Do you remember singing at the gala? You were standing upon the stage, singing, and the trapdoor gave way underneath you?"

"Yes, I remember that," Christine agreed, recalling the last night she had sung at the Opera, the night that Erik had abducted her.

"It was a very bad fall," the doctor emphasized gently. "We were afraid you might not recover. We were afraid we had lost you."

"But I _was_ lost," was all Christine to think to say, staring at the kindly doctor in confusion. "He took me away."

The doctor coughed and looked away momentarily. "You were brought back to this house quite unconscious," he said, returning to her gaze. "Your wounds have almost healed but it will be some time before you are recovered fully."

The aging man watched the altering expressions which flitted across Christine's face. Confusion leaving her speechless for a time, the doctor went on to explain further, "Your friends found you under the stage, where you fell. You were badly injured. But you are safe now."

Christine struggled, her forehead creasing deeply. "But I was in his house...He took me. And then he brought me to the Persian. We drank coffee together... He talked to me about Raoul."

"A dream, Christine," the doctor assured her kindly. "Don't fret, my dear."

"But I remember him!" the girl insisted, staring right into the doctor's eyes. "He is known at the Opera! Everybody has seen him!"

"There is no Opera Ghost, Mademoiselle," Dr Marchant said gently.

"No, I mean the Persian!" Christine corrected him. "Everybody knows the Persian!"

"Oh, of course!" Dr Marchant agreed, taking her hand. "Of course _he_ is real, Mademoiselle. You misunderstand me. He is known, of course, but he did not bring you to this place."

"But I was in his house," Christine trailed off in despair.

"The... the police brought you here," Dr Marchant stammered and coughed again. "It was a very bad fall, Mlle Daae. It was thought you would not live."

Releasing her hand, the doctor turned away and retreated to a small table at the far side of the room to pack some articles into his bag. While he did so, Christine watched, her mind awash with questions and doubt.

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked when Dr Marchant closed up his bag. The doctor turned to her.

"Several weeks," he said shortly. "You bumped your head. You suffered an advanced state of concussion."

Incredulity bubbled in Christine's veins yet her mind felt too sluggish to argue. Her arms felt like leaden weights. She could only stare through half-closed eyes.

"It is natural to have dreamed during that time," the doctor continued, stepping closer once more. "And I have administered pain relieving drugs to you also in that time which may contribute to a sense of hallucinatory unreality. Some persons experience quite _vivid_ dreams, Mlle Daae," he emphasized, regarding his patient squarely. "You must not mind this. It will pass in time."

The doctor sounded so very convinced that Christine was inclined to believe him. After all, he was in a better position to know how she had come to be in bed in her own home. Her head did ache dreadfully. Putting a hand to her forehead, her fingers felt the wrappings of a soft cotton bandage. With a deep sigh, she let her arm drop by her side.

"Now that you are awake, Mlle Christine," Dr Marchant went on after lifting her eyelids one at a time to examine the state of her pupils, "you must promise me to remain quiet and rest as much as you can. Do not try to think about the last few days or months. Rest quietly, and let these dreams pass. You will feel quite yourself again in time." The doctor smiled kindly and took his leave. As he opened the door, Sophie reappeared, carrying a tray.

"Madame Valerius has been informed of Mlle Daae's recovery," the maid told the doctor in hushed tones. "She suggested I bring some warm broth. Do you agree?"

"I think it very well," the doctor replied softly. And then he murmured something into the maid's ear which Christine could not here. The maid nodded curtly, and the doctor departed. Sophie brought the tray near the bed and deposited on a side table, so as to help her mistress sit up a little against her pillows.

"I have brought you just a little warm chicken broth, Ma'amzelle," Sophie repeated as she plumped the pillows behind Christine. The maid seemed unable to look her mistress in the eye. She was distracted. When Christine was settled, Sophie arranged the tray before her, uncovered the bowl of appetising soup and handed Christine the spoon. Then she curtseyed as if to leave.

"Sophie," Christine arrested the maid as she was about to turn.

"Ma'amzelle?"

The girl's face was motionless, like a mask. Her raven eyes were downcast.

"Sophie," Christine struggled to find words amidst the fog of her thoughts, "How is Mamma Valerius?"

The girl's face brightened slightly. She glanced at her mistress with something like relief. "My lady is very well, Ma'amzelle," she smiled. "She is very glad to hear you are safe – and well," she quickly added.

"Will you tell her that I should like to see her if she can possibly be brought upstairs?"

The maid frowned slightly. "I'm afraid she it may be much for her, Ma'amzelle," she said, and then, noticing that Christine was having difficulty holding the spoon, took it from her. "Let me help you, Ma'amzelle. You are still very weak."

Christine was not sorry to let Sophie feed her. For the next few minutes, she submitted quietly to Sophie's ministrations, conserving her energy for digestion. Yet all the while her mind would not be quiet. Something strange was happening. Sophie was concealing something from her and Dr Marchant seemed agitated also. Could it be that she was more badly hurt than they wished her to know at present? Or had Mamma Valerius taken a nasty turn after her disappearance? Oh, but no, apparently she had not disappeared at all, but had been convalescing in bed all this time. It did not seem possible! Christine remembered clearly every moment she had spent in Erik's house, the terrible things he had made her do, the terrible things she had _willingly_ done! And Raoul! Was Raoul alive after all?

"Sophie," Christine stopped her before the spoon was brought to her lips again. Sophie paused. "Is there any news of the Vicomte de Chagny? Is Raoul all right?"

Christine saw a dark cloud come over Sophie's eyes, a cloud of genuine distress and confusion.

"Sophie?" she insisted. "Have you something to tell me?"

"I had better let the doctor explain," the girl stammered. "I really cannot tell you anything more," she shook her head.

"But is he alive?" Christine leaned forward, her eyes bright.

Sophie shook her head again. "I really cannot tell you Ma'amzelle," she repeated. "Please do not ask me again. Dr Marchant will explain better than I. And you must rest yourself," she continued, with more reassurance. "It is not good for you to distress yourself. The doctor was very clear on that point, Ma'amzelle. Please, let me help you finish the broth."

Christine was not satisfied but she leaned back against the pillows resigned. At least it was possible that Raoul was alive, and that everything had been a terrible dream. But if it were so, why could Sophie not simply tell her as much? No, something dreadful had happened to Raoul for a certainty. Injury, disappearance, _something_, perhaps at Erik's hands or perhaps not. Could it be a _something_ not quite so permanent as death? Were all her memories nothing more than a vivid hallucination? For the first time in many days, Christine allowed herself once more to hope.


	12. Old Wounds

A/N Apologies for long time in updating...been very busy with uni etc - hope you enjoy the next instalment!

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**Chapter Twelve**

**Old Wounds**

Several weeks had passed since Christine had woken in her bed. She was sitting downstairs in the parlour in a comfortable chair, sipping hot tea, holding the cup in both hands. A light shawl was draped round her thin shoulders. It was silk, fringed in peacock blue and crimson, a gift from Raoul.

From her place by the fire, Christine could overhear the subdued tones of Dr Marchant who was on the other side of the parlour door, standing in the hall. He was speaking to the Persian who had called moments ago. To her knowledge, the Persian had called at least once before and strangely he seemed to be interested only in speaking to the doctor. Certainly nobody had seen fit to show him into the parlour and Christine was feeling too nervous to go out and see him, though she was not sure why. She longed to know what had brought him to her home and yet it seemed safer to remain ignorant.

Drawing slowly on the hot tea, Christine listened intently to the deep voices in the hall. Only occasionally could she discern a few words, and she could not tell who had spoken them. "..._never_ do that...understand...get over it...sustain..._what_ do you...cannot..." Although the words were unclear, she could still make out the tone. It was subtle, urgent, perhaps evening threatening. Christine drew her shawl closer round her shoulders and shivered.

She turned her face to the left and glanced down at the morning edition of L'Epoque which lay on a little table beside her where she had dropped it. A small article in the society news told of the continued search for the whereabouts of the young Vicomte de Chagny and the anxiety of the Chagny family. Thankfully Dr Marchant had informed Christine of the mystery surrounding Raoul shortly after her recovery. Raoul was not dead, but had been traced as far as the railway station where he had allegedly boarded a train out of Paris. Nobody knew where he had gone or why he had left Paris so abruptly. The police had discovered the carriage that Raoul had prepared for flight on the night Christine had sung at the gala. They had since confirmed in a brief interview with Christine that the nobleman had intended to elope with the singer that night. But as to why he had taken to flight himself after her accident, leaving all of his belongings behind was quite unfathomable at this point. His family were blaming it on a bad conscience.

Christine heard footsteps in the hall, and heard the Persian take his leave. She looked out through the parlour window to see his tall bulky form cross the street and hail a cab. He was wearing his astrakhan cap as always and his coat collar was turned up against the cold. Seconds later, the parlour door opened and Sophie admitted Dr Marchant who strolled past Christine to warm his hands at the fire.

"Good morning again, my favourite patient," he smiled at her. His careworn face looked a little pinched after his interview with the Persian.

"Good morning M. le Docteur," Christine greeted him. "I expect Sophie will pour you a cup of tea?" She turned to look for Sophie, but the maid had departed.

"No need, Mademoiselle," Dr Marchant replied. "I shall pour myself a cup."

Christine watched from her cosy place as the doctor crossed to the sideboard where the tea things had been deposited. "I hope you gave my regards to the Persian gentleman," Christine said as a stream of rich black tea filled the doctor's teacup. "I wonder that he did not wish to see me. I assume he came to ask after me after all?"

The doctor set the teapot down with a light clatter and brought his teacup to the sofa by Christine's armchair. "With your permission?" he said, sitting down at Christine's nod. He lowered himself onto the sofa with the sigh of an elderly man. "He is an odd fellow to be sure," the doctor said after a pause. "And yes he did come inquiring after you."

Christine frowned. "It's very kind of him, but I cannot help but wonder at his concern." She drew a thoughtful sip from her cup. "I only spoke with him one or two times, although, I feel as if know him much better than that."

As Christine pondered, the doctor leaned forward and meditated, cup and saucer in hand. It was several moments before he cleared his throat, making Christine look up.

"What is your impression of the gentleman?" he asked cautiously.

Christine raised her eyebrows slightly. "He is not much liked at the Opera," she confided delicately. "But I expect that is only prejudice. He has never done me any harm, on the contrary, I always felt he was keeping a watchful eye over me—" She paused, and then laughed, "Much as he is doing now I suppose!" Her laughter died away as the doctor only looked at her with silent concern. Christine sensed she had said something wrong. "Why do you suppose he calls here? This is the second time since I've been ill and yet he never wants to see me. Is there something I ought to know?"

At those words, Dr Marchant averted his gaze and lifted his cup to his lips. The cup clinked in its saucer as he carefully lowered it. "Nothing at all for you to worry about," he tried to reassure his patient with a gentle smile that did not seem quite genuine. "I cannot tell you why he calls after you but I can tell you that you are in safe hands and nothing matters but that you get well as soon as possible, so that you may delight Paris again with your singing, Mlle Daae."

"My bruises have healed," Christine observed, holding out her arm and examining her elbow which just showed beyond the sleeve of her bodice. "But I still feel nauseous quite often, and lately I've been imagining that my stomach does not feel right. In fact," she lowered her voice to a confidential undertone, "I have some rather private concerns which I'm not sure how to explain."

The doctor knitted his aging brow and replied, "Of what nature, Mlle Daae?"

Christine drew a breath, put her teacup aside and tried not to appear nervous. But a rash of heat had broken out across her back and up one side of her face like a splash of scarlet. "It makes no sense of course, considering what you have told me, that I fell through the trapdoor and have been unconscious at home for some time. But I do still have the most vivid memories—or dreams, I should say—or nightmares, in fact—that something very different occurred. And now," she went on quickly, unable to look at Dr Marchant who was watching her closely, "I am beginning to fancy that something is not right about my body." She placed a hand on her abdomen. "I have not had my cycle this month," she explained in a quiet voice. "I should have done so by now. Can dreams produce such a change in the body?" she stole a hopeful glance at the doctor. The old man pursed his lips and breathed in through his nose.

"I have never questioned you extensively as to these nightmares," he began prudently, "because I did not wish to upset you unnecessarily. But perhaps you would like to unburden your mind?"

The doctor raised a questioning eyebrow and waited for Christine to consider. The parlour fire crackled softly in the grate.

As Christine seemed reluctant to continue, the doctor gently posed a suggestion, "There can be no harm in nightmares, my dear. And the telling of them exposes them to the light of day. You came to us much distressed by these dreams, dreams of capture and escape...yet you have never told the exact shape of these ghoulish thoughts." His kindly tone gave Christine courage to meet his gaze. His expression was all concerned interest, with a degree of seriousness which portended some deeper purpose to his words. "In your dreams, Mlle Daae," he softly spoke, "who was your tormentor? What shape did he take? Was he tall, short, stout?"

"I don't know what you mean," Christine weakly replied, shaking her head. "You tell me I have been dreaming. What difference does it make?"

"To ease your mind, Christine," Dr Marchant encouraged his patient. "Tell me what you remember. Tell me what you dreamed."

Finding her mouth dry, Christine swallowed hard once or twice. Her hands were trembling. She saw them quivering with dismay.

"In my nightmare," she began, coughing slightly, "I was taken captive by a man who concieved a great passion for me, before I met Raoul-that is, before I met the Vicomte here in Paris. I don't know where he is now," she hastened to add. "He did not want me to leave with Raoul and I was frightened that he meant to stop me somehow."

"This is reality, not a part of your dream?" the doctor queried.

"Ah, yes," Christine stammered, uncertainly. "I think...yes, I am sorry, the dream is so real I hardly know where it begins and ends."

"Take your time, my dear."

Christine folded her hands in her lap, frowning in concentration. "I, I had intended to depart with Raoul, as you know, but in my dream that never happened. I was taken by the man I spoke of and he kept me with him for I don't know how long. Long enough for me to think I would never see this world again. Long enough for me to start to believe that I belonged to him. Long enough for..." She stopped. Her brow cleared. She looked up at the doctor, her lips parted, as if ready to confess all.

"Yes, Mademoiselle?" the doctor prompted.

"I was going to say, long enough for me to believe I loved him," she said simply. "But I never did. It wasn't real...was it?"

"Dreams can be real in our subconscious," Dr Marchant uttered, discomforted by the young woman's earnest gaze. "If you loved him in your dream, you could hardly be blamed for...for anything in fact. Indeed, you are a victim Mademoiselle, if anything happened-"

"Nothing happened," Christine interrupted. "I was here all the time. But in my dream, it was not like that. In my dream we were...married in a sense. It's so ridiculous!" she laughed nervously, tossing her head. "That I should have imagined something so grotesque! What must that say of me? And now you will think me even more preposterous to be imagining myself...well, not _whole_ if you take my meaning, simply because of a dream!"

"Dreams are mysterious things," said the doctor in a consoling tone. "Certainly they cannot produce the sort of effect on the body that you are alluding to, Mlle Daae, but they may affect the body in other ways. It is possible that your illness has delayed your cycle," he continued, returning to his customary pragmatic manner. "Nevertheless..." He paused, gazed down into his half-empty cup and weighed his next words before continuing. "It would not be inappropriate for me to examine you, with your permission, Mlle Daae. Only to rule out other possible alternatives, you understand. To put your mind at rest," he assured the young woman.

"What other alternatives might there be?" Christine dared to ask.

"Oh, nothing serious," Dr Marchant waved her concerned expression away. "A disorder of the lining which might easily be remedied with a herbal tonic, for instance. But I would not be doing my duty, Mlle Daae, if I did not take every one of your symptoms seriously."

"No, of course not," Christine smiled. "I appreciate your thoroughness, Dr Marchant."

The doctor returned her smile politely and finished his tea. They sat in nervous silence for a few moments more until his cup was empty.

"And so Mamma is still strong as ever?" Christine asked then, referring to the doctor's attendance upon Mamma Valerius previous to his coming downstairs to check on the younger patient's progress.

"Yes, your Mamma will outlive us all," he laughed. "She has the constitution of an elephant."

Christine smiled as they both rose from their seats. "Am I to bid you good morning, Doctor?" she asked, drawing her shawl about her shoulders. "Or did you wish to conduct an examination now?"

With a slight hesitation, the doctor replied that it would be as well to do so immediately if it would not distress his patient. Drawing a breath, the young woman agreed and led the way to the parlour door, out into the hall, and up the stairs to her room. The doctor closed the door behind them, and instructed her to undress.


	13. Dark Plans

Chapter 13

Dark plans

The cellars echoed with strange, repetitive clinking sounds, drips and screeches of vermin. Sound waves boomed off unseen stone walls, through thick musty layers of fetid air. Picking his way through the darkness with the aid of a shuttered lantern, a tall black figure with an oriental cap moved quickly along the stony paths, under low archways, barely making a sound with his feet.

Arriving at the edge of a body of still, inky water, the figure lowered its lantern and knelt down, seemingly to wait for something. He placed the lantern on the ground beside him, and its feeble reddish light lit his fleshy face from below. A thick raven moustache covered his upper lip and his dark eyes glinted hungrily in the dim firelight.

Presently, his senses were alerted to the almost imperceptible sound of water rippling around some large object. He searched the blackness in front of him but did not raise the lantern. He stood up.

A rowing boat had pulled in near to the edge of the body of water. It butted against the ledge and almost at once a lithe, ghostly shape sprung out of it and stood on the ledge a few steps away from the man who waited.

The newcomer bared a row of menacing teeth which glowed in the midst of a black mask.

"You had better have something important to say, Daroga," he snarled by way of opening pleasantries, "to have dragged me all this way from my home!"

A contemptuous huff met him in reply. "Hmph! Important or not, you are here now." The Persian dug into a pocket and found a packet of cigarettes. "For you?"

"You know I detest those things," Erik sneered. "Why don't you keep cigars?"

"Because then I would have to share them with you," the Persian coolly replied, placing a cigarette between his lips and returning the pack to his pocket. "What kept you?" he wanted to know as he took out a matchbox and struck a match with a fizzing sound.

"Am I at your disposal?" Erik countered, watching the flaring match flame as it set light to the Persian's cigarette. "I came when it suited me. You should be grateful it suited me at all."

"You may like to think so," the Daroga purred, tossing the spent match into the darkness. Taking the cigarette lightly between thumb and forefinger, he removed it from his lips to expel a stream of tobacco smoke with slow, deliberate ease. It flowed only inches past Erik's masked face.

"One day you will regret that habit of yours," Erik observed in clipped tones.

"It was a most unfortunate day for you, my dear friend," the Persian began, ignoring Erik's last remark, "when you decided to take that girl into your confidence. And it was an even more unfortunate day for you when you decided to set her free."

"That _girl_ you speak of is my wife," Erik's eyes flashed.

"Whatever," the smoker puffed, drawing a fire red arc in the air with his cigarette. "It was most unfortunate," he repeated, bringing the cigarette again to his lips.

Erik folded his arms, squaring up against his companion. "I am a law unto myself," he observed. "Or haven't you told me so yourself often enough? What I do is my own concern."

"But you make it my concern also," the Persian warned.

"If you will keep interfering, then yes," the irritated masked man agreed, putting his head to one side. "Had you not tried to stop me in the beginning, nothing would have gone amiss!"

"You and your hostage would have lived happily ever after, I suppose?"

"You are too _old_ and _oriental_ to comprehend the love that existed between my wife and I," Erik hissed.

"I haven't come here to debate your domestic happiness," he was cut off abruptly. The Persian blew another stream of smoke in Erik's direction, making the tall skeletal figure tense with anger. "There are more important things to discuss. The girl remembers, naturally. And the doctor suspects."

"What does that old booby want to know?"

"Why I am bribing him to tell her that she has been at home all this time and not imprisoned by a lunatic murderer."

"There was never any need to invent such a story!" Erik growled, turning and pacing away a few strides. He turned at the limit of the lantern's weak circle of light and regarded the belligerent Persian with eyes that glowered.

"And what would you have done?" the Daroga muttered. "Let her tell the world about you, and have word get back to the embassy that you are still on the loose?"

"That is your difficulty, not mine!"

"And the police would have come down here to arrest you."

"Let them try!"

"Brave words, my friend, but we both know it would never have done for you."

Erik stood silently for a moment while his companion dragged once more on his almost spent cigarette. Its tip glowed red as he sucked on it, and then the Persian threw it away, letting it smoulder on the ground.

"The point is," the Persian resumed matter-of-factly, "that this story was only a temporary measure to patch up your imprudence in letting her go. It is not a permanent solution. All Paris believes that she is still missing—except for the doctor, the maid and the old woman. The doctor can be threatened to keep silent. The maid and the old woman are too much involved. But I've done my homework. Nobody would miss them if they were gone."

"I did not release her to have her killed," Erik quietly warned, guessing the other man's thoughts.

"Then you ought not to have released her at all," the Persian replied.

In a sudden flurry, the Persian found his cap knocked from his head as he was grasped firmly from behind and a thin cord constricted his throat. Erik's mouth breathed closely to his ear. "I did _not_ release her to have her _killed_," the attacker repeated slowly. The Persian imagined he could hear Erik's heartbeat drumming urgently in his chest.

"Let me go," he commanded in a rasping voice.

The cord was pulled a little tighter against his skin. A second later, Erik relaxed his grip and let the Persian tear off the Punjab lasso.

"I should never have taught you how to use that thing," he grumbled, masking a cough. He threw the lasso at Erik's feet. The tall black figure stooped to pick it up.

"That's twice I've spared your life, Daroga!" Erik sneered as he secreted the lasso under his cloak. "You should be careful that I don't grow tired of repetition!"

The Persian chuckled smugly. "We both know you can't do without me, so enough of the theatrics if you please." He rubbed his throat gently.

"What are you going to do?" Erik murmured.

"I haven't decided exactly," the stocky man replied. "It needn't concern you. But you _do_ need to be aware that after this week you will have no business venturing up to glimpse at the girl's house."

"You've been spying on me again!"

"Of course. What did you expect?"

Erik turned on his heel in anger, wringing his gloved hands in impotent fury. Suddenly, he spun back to face his tormentor. "You said a week!"

Nodding, the Persian replied, "Or two. It depends how soon I can make the arrangements. Darius is not always reliable."

"That murderous little toad!" Erik fumed. "Don't you dare let him touch that my wife's neck! If there is killing to be done, let me do it myself!"

"I didn't think you had it in you," his friend smiled.

The masked man dropped his gaze. He stood for a moment, distracted by his thoughts. The Persian grew impatient.

"Are you sure you want to?" he broke into Erik's reverie.

At first, he received no reply from his skeletal companion. Erik hung his head in defeat and simply stared at the ground, turmoil burning brightly in his yellow eyes. Finally, he murmured something that the Persian could not hear.

"Again?" the Persian prompted.

Erik raised his eyes to the Persian's grim countenance. "I am not Erik," he uttered.


	14. Waking

A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers. Really appreciate the feedback, even if I'm not able to take it on board with this piece, it does help me improve my writing. :)

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**Chapter Fourteen**

**Waking**

"_What are you thinking, Christine?"_

_Hands, like the claws of Death, grasping her shoulders from behind. She feels their grip loosen, and then the sensual tingle as they travel slowly down her arms, searching for her wrists. His voice is as smooth and dark as the black satin cloak he wears. _

"_I don't know," she meekly replies in a half-whisper. _

"_You don't have to tell me, Little Lotte," Raoul's voice purrs in her ear. "I believe I can guess."_

"_Can you?"_

_He chuckles softly. "You're wondering how it would feel if I kissed you."_

_Her belly flutters. She leans back a little into his chest and smells the arousing scent of her sweetheart's cologne._

"_You've already kissed me," she playfully reminds him as his hands find hers and their fingers interlace. _

"_When? I must have been dreaming, Christine. Or asleep."_

"_When you were sixteen," Christine laughs. "Don't you remember?"_

_She turns into his embrace. Raoul is gazing down on her, his crystal blue eyes soft with wonder. "No, I'm afraid I don't remember," he confesses with a shy grin. "Are you angry with me?"_

_Christine laughs lightly. "How could I be angry with you, my dearest dear one?" She feels his touch in the small of her back. His fingers explore the small buttons of her bodice. _

"_I was afraid you would forget me," Raoul says as he begins to unbutton her. Christine feels her bodice loosening. They are standing in the grand foyer of the Opera and people are walking past them to ascend the stairs._

"_Not here," she weakly protests. "We can't."_

_He stops undressing her. Her bodice is open at the back, exposing her chemise. She wishes her breasts were bare. "No," Raoul agrees. "We can't." _

_He turns and walks away, retreating across the foyer towards a door that leads somewhere beyond the public area. Christine watches but does not follow. She fumbles with her dress, trying to secure the buttons awkwardly. Raoul does not look around to see if she is behind him. When he reaches the door, he departs without a glance or a word. Her mouth opens to call out to him but no sound escapes. Her voice has died._

Christine opened her eyes wide. The ceiling above her bed was a pale salmon colour, reflecting the amber light of early morning. For a moment, she believed she was back in Perros-Guirec, the seaside town where she had spent happy days as a child. She almost believed she could smell the salt air, the breeze on her cheek, and hear Raoul's young laughter. They had met there as children. The lingering impression of Raoul's embrace made Christine stroke her chest and stomach.

Her eyelids fluttered as she replayed the dream in her mind; the delicious feeling of being loved, of having Raoul near her, and the painful confusion of his leaving so suddenly without warning. He had simply walked away! And she had not followed him. She did not know why. Something had made her feel that she could not go with him. She must remain in the public place, in the world of the living, who were ascending the grand staircase to the things above.

Sitting up in bed, Christine reached for a glass of water that stood on her bedside table and sipped a little of it. Her dry mouth was grateful for it.

"I know why I had that dream," she murmured to herself, settling back against her pillows with the glass of water still in hand. "It's to be expected, after what the doctor told me yesterday." Her eyes began to sting. "Don't be sad, Christine," she admonished herself gently. "You knew the police would stop looking for Raoul soon. He has his reasons for leaving Paris. But at least he isn't dead."

Something inside her protested that last remark. Some little voice screamed silently, '_But he is dead! He is! Erik killed him!'_

"Nonsense," Christine said aloud, frowning. She drank again, feeling uncomfortable for some reason. "That was all a hideous nightmare. I've been here all the time."

The hours passed quickly as the sun climbed steadily into the sky, and soon Sophie was knocking at her door, bringing the breakfast tray. Christine had a hearty appetite and was glad to enjoy the fresh rolls and coffee as she gazed out of the window at the rooftops. The pigeons were courting, making absurd displays and cooing loudly.

After breakfast, Christine dressed herself and looked in on Mamma Valerius. Her old guardian was sitting up in bed, smiling brightly. After the usual pleasantries, Christine wondered aloud whether she had better think of returning to the Opera some day to complete her contract. She was not fond of the idea but she wanted to sound out her guardian on the subject. Instead of answering her, the old lady exclaimed, "I am so glad to have you back from the Angel!"

The statement made Christine look at her, startled. Mamma Valerius continued, "He kept you for such a time, this last time, I was so afraid he would never send you back!"

"Mamma," Christine ventured, searching her guardian's earnest face, "I was only ill. I was here in the house all the time."

"Oh yes, I know we are supposed to say that, Christine," the old lady shrugged impatiently, and touched a finger to her nose. "But you and I can have our little secret, can't we my dear!"

"What secret?" Christine dared to ask.

"Why, the Angel, of course!" Mamma Valerius whispered loudly.

Christine sat down on a chair by the bed, feeling very uneasy. "Did you not see when I was brought to the house?"

"Oh my dear, I only heard about it. I was here, you know. But Sophie told me you had returned. I was worried for you, because she told me you were quite ill. But you are well now, Christine, are you not?"

"As well as ever," Christine smiled. "I will have to be careful of trapdoors in future."

"Did you learn many great things from the Angel?" Mamma Valerius asked, making Christine frown again.

"Why do you ask, Mamma?" she queried, touching her stomach absently.

"Because he had you for such a long time!" her guardian explained. "I imagine he gave you many lessons. You must sing for me as soon as you feel quite up to it, my darling. I'm sure your father will be pleased to hear you."

"Dear Pappa," Christine murmured, remembering him fondly. "I know he always listens when I sing. But you really must be mistaken, Mamma," Christine went on seriously, trying to look unconcerned, "for I haven't been with the Angel. I've been here all the time."

A puzzled frown crossed the old lady's brow. "But you were _not_ here, Christine," she insisted in a somewhat hurt tone. "Sophie told me you were come home on the twenty-seventh. I remember the date, because I was counting the days. You were gone exactly three months and twelve days. The police came looking for you, and I told them you were with the Angel, but they didn't believe me."

Christine's eyebrows rose in alarm. For a moment she was speechless. Mamma Valerius continued, "Of course, I didn't expect that silly old policeman to believe me. He didn't look musical at all. But I don't understand what good it does to pretend you were here all the time. Afterall, they know you were not, don't they?"

"Mamma," Christine interrupted, placing a hand on the old lady's arm, "you say the _police_ know that I was missing?"

"Why, yes!"

"But the doctor told me—and Sophie—everyone is saying I was here!"

"Yes, I don't know why the doctor wanted us to tell you that. I thought it was a silly idea. After all, you know where you've been. I suppose he thought it was wrong to believe in the Angel."

Christine stood up.

"Are you going?" Mamma Valerius asked in a disappointed tone. "Perhaps you could have Sophie bring me some more tea?"

"I'm trying to understand what you're telling me," Christine answered, putting a hand to her forehead and grimacing. "The doctor decided to tell me _lies_ about where I've been? I have not been here all the time, the police were looking for me, and you all decided to go along with this lie for some reason? I don't understand Mamma! Was I really not dreaming after all! Are you sure about this? What is going on?"

"Christine, my dear!" Mamma Valerius reached out for her ward, seeing that Christine's eyes had filled with sudden tears. "I daresay it was all for the best! Nobody wanted to deceive you, my darling! Come, sit down, let me take care of you."

For a moment the young woman hesitated, unsure of what to do. But Mamma Valerius was looking at her intently, urging her to remain. Feeling weak and confused, Christine obeyed, and sank slowly into her chair.

She hardly heard anything her guardian said after this. A few words filtered into her hearing, something to do with backgammon and why Sophie never wound the grandfather clock correctly. After several minutes of sitting dumbly with only a few nods in reply, Christine returned the subject that interested her, attacking her guardian with a question.

"If I was not here, Mamma," she interupted unexpectedly, "do you really believe I was with the Angel? And where exactly do you suppose that was?"

Recovering her surprise, Mamma Valerius smiled. "He is at the Opera, Christine. Did you not tell me so yourself?"

"Perhaps," Christine murmured.

"I only wonder you did not starve, for I don't suppose he eats or sleeps or does anything of that kind."

"Mamma," Christine emplored, gazing at her guardian with incredulity, "do you really believe that a supernatural being had me under his care? Do you really suppose that there is truly an Angel?" The old woman only returned Christine's gaze, in dumbfounded silence. "The Angel is only a story, Mamma!" Christine cried. "He was never real! You encouraged me to believe but it was all a falsehood! Like this! Like all of this!" Christine stood up again, trembling with passion, while the old lady stared at her wide-eyed. "I was not taken by an Angel, Mamma!" the anguished girl almost shouted, clutching her side. "I was taken by a monster! And if you only knew all the things that he did to me, and to Raoul, and to so many other innocent people, you would never call him an angel, Mamma. You would call him the Devil himself!"

And imediately Christine fled the room.


	15. Confession

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Confession**

"_Raoul is really dead Raoul is really dead Raoul is really dead Raoul is really dead Raoul is really dead..."_

The words kept churning through Christine's mind like the blades of an egg beater. Alone in her room, she stood leaning heavily against the door, her head too heavy to hold erect. She could not even think of crossing the room to her bed to lie down. Nothing mattered but the horrible truth. Breaking upon her afresh with every repetition of the phrase, it beat her down relentlessly, driving her at full speed to madness, until she could no longer stand. Weakly, she slid to the floor with a thud, and there she lay with her back to the door.

Her eyes stared unseeing across the polished boards and over the Persian carpet. She hardly felt the draft that blew through the crack under the door.

"_Raoul is really dead...Raoul is really dead..."_

Her body was numb but the thoughts were slowing down. Christine could perceive a slight pause between each phrase now. Strange how she noticed something so insignificant, and how interesting it seemed. _"__Raoul...is__really...dead...Raoul...is...really...__"_

The last word waited a long time to come. Christine began to wonder why it would not speak itself. It had descended somewhere into her chest or stomach it seemed. It was no longer in her head.

"Raoul," she spoke aloud in a dull tone, listening to the peculiar sound of her voice as if it belonged to some other creature. "Is. Really." She paused. "Dead."

She blinked. "Dead," she said again, and this time her voice sounded like her own. "Dead," she repeated, needing to hear it another time. The word was not lost inside her. She could call on it if she wanted, own it, make it do what she wanted. "He is dead," Christine whispered, and blinked again. Now she could see the fluffy edges of the carpet where the passage of many feet had brushed the wool into small tufts of lint. "Dead," Christine said, feeling warmth return to her arms. "And Erik killed him."

Slowly, Christine sat up. She leaned her back against the door. Her eyes gazed at the pattern of sunlight on the carpet, a perfect rectangle of gold which matched the shape of the window pane with the curtains drawn back. "I wanted so much to believe," Christine murmured in answer to an unspoken question. "I wanted to think it was all a dream. I wanted to think they were telling the truth. I wanted this world to be true."

Suddenly, there was the sound of hurrying footsteps on the other side of the door and an anxious tapping. "Ma'amzelle?" It was Sophie, the maid. Christine blinked but did not move. "Ma'amzelle, are you well? My mistress is worried for you."

She would try the door in a moment, Christine was certain. So she called out, with only a slight tremor in her voice. "I'm very well, thank you Sophie! Please tell Mamma that I'm quite well." Christine heard a soft shuffle as Sophie hesitated. But then the maid acquiesced and agreed to take the message to Madame Valerius. Christine sighed deeply.

"I knew it was all lies," she comforted herself as soon as Sophie had walked away. "They tried to trick me, but I knew it was all lies." Her hand strayed to her belly which was firm and slightly rounded. Sitting with legs stretched out before her, Christine observed her pretty ankles and her small feet in their blue satin house slippers. "How could I have dreamed such a hideous story?" she asked them, as innocent as they were. "You know I could not. I could never imagine such a thing. I could never imagine anything so vile." With surprise, Christine discovered that her cheeks were wet with tears. When had she started crying?

There was nothing to do now but to feel miserable it seemed, and so Christine gave herself up to long, painful weeping. Afraid that her agony would be overheard though, she stifled her cries as best she could with a hand to her mouth, which had opened on its own, gaping wide, like her wounded soul. Her body shook with every choking sob. She could barely see through the stinging salt in her eyes. It seemed she would empty them of every scrap of moisture, and she soon became aware of the mess issuing from her nose which had started running over her hand. Somewhat grieved by the interruption of her soothing outburst, Christine hastily groped for a handkerchief.

When she had cleaned herself, and sniffled a few times, the weary girl rested a little while longer where she was, resting against the door and regarding her pretty bedroom with its simple bed, tall wardrobe and fancy little dressing table. This was a little girl's room, Christine concluded, as her eyes wandered over the pink ribbons on her dresser, the little picture frames that gilded images of her late father and of herself as an eight-year-old cherub by the sea, and other sentimental things of long ago. Her favourite books from childhood were still lovingly displayed on a shelf by the window, their words too simple for her now, so that she had not picked them up to read in many years. The quilt on her bed was decorated with embroidered bluebells and butterflies. There was nothing in this room that hinted of the womanly knowledge she had now acquired.

"If I was a nun," Christine murmured aloud, "I could not appear more pure. And yet I know what I really am."

"_And __what __is __that, __Christine?__"_ a little voice hissed in her head.

Christine could not even frown. She was too tired and resigned. "I am a prostitute," she said, with little emotion. "A woman taken for sexual favours, and one who offered them without payment, which makes me even worse. At least a prostitute is paid. I gave my love for free, or rather for freedom," she amended with a lifted eyebrow. "I could have maintained my virtue if I'd wanted to, but it seemed like the sensible thing to do, at the time."

"_Sensible?__"_ the little voice prompted.

"No, not _sensible_," Christine shook her head. "_Desirable_. Better than never knowing what it would be like to be loved by him. Better than never knowing how it would feel to be used by him. No matter how horrible. No matter how sick. I wanted to know _who __he __was_. And what a way to try to discover it! You are disgusting, Christine! A disgusting, perverse, low, vile creature. And I hope you're satisfied!"

Christine did not appear outside of her room again until the late afternoon. When she did, she found the table set for dinner and Sophie helping Mamma Valerius to her chair. The old lady made a point of sitting at table on Sundays at the very least, when her health permitted. She was very glad to see her ward again, and smiled as Christine took her place by her.

"Are you feeling better, my dear?" the old lady asked.

Christine nodded slightly and tried to return the smile.

Dinner passed with little conversation, as Madame Valerius was tired and Christine's thoughts were too much occupied elsewhere to say very much. It was not until the tea was poured and the grandfather clock struck six that either of them stirred themselves to talk.

"What is it were saying, Christine, about the Angel?" Mamma Valerius began as soon as Sophie had left with the empty plates. Christine looked up to see the old lady regarding her inquisitively over a poised teacup.

"What exactly do you mean?" Christine asked, not feeling inclined to help the conversation.

"You said," and here the old lady closed her eyes to aid her dubious memory, "You said, that if I knew what he had done, I would consider him a devil, or The Devil, or some such." Mamma Valerius opened her eyes and turned them on her ward with a puzzled expression. "What can you have meant by that, I ask myself."

An involuntary sigh made Christine's small frame heave. The grandfather clocked ticked off the seconds while the young woman deliberated over the appropriate response.

"The Angel is not an angel, Mamma," she spoke quietly and distinctly, with eyes cast resolutely at the large white teapot between them. "He is a man. An ordinary man. Well, that is," she caught herself momentarily, "he is not in fact _ordinary_, but rather quite _extra_ordinary."

"A man?" Mamma Valerius repeated in surprise. "You must be mistaken."

"No, Mamma!" Christine fired up at once, touching her belly. "I am _not_ mistaken. I have seen him. I have _lived_ with him. And Mamma," she stammered, feeling colour enflame her cheeks to her very temples and her back flush with agitation, "I have good reason to know he is a man."

The old lady seemed unwilling to believe. "But you would never go away with a _man_, Christine. You are not like that. I know you too well, my dear."

"It was not my choice," Christine tried to explain, letting her voice soften in appeal. "I didn't know who he was. And when I discovered it, it was too late. He didn't want to let me go."

"Are you saying that you were taken by force, Christine?"

"At first," the saddened girl admitted in a dull tone. "But there were things that happened afterwards. And... and I allowed it."

The old lady did not respond immediately. Hazarding a glance, Christine saw that her guardian was perplexed. In a way, this was worse than if she had cried out in dismay and cursed her young ward for an immoral strumpet. Christine wondered if she had made her meaning clear and dreaded further explanation. After a few more moments, Mamma Valerius looked at her and nodded, but Christine was not sure what the nod meant.

"I didn't mean to do anything bad, Mamma," Christine whispered, tears pricking at her eyes.

"Of course not, my darling," the old lady reached out to her with a motherly touch. Her kindness made Christine cry. "You were in love with him."

Those words startled Christine. "But I wasn't, Mamma!" she protested. "How could I have loved him? He was insane, and cruel. And he... he did terrible things," she hastily amended, not wanting to disclose Raoul's murder at this time. The poor old lady did not need to know that just yet. "I was never easy in his presence. And I only wanted him to be happy. I thought if he was happy..." And here she trailed off, not knowing how to finish.

"You wanted him to be happy, Christine," her guardian warmly agreed, patting her arm. "And that is love, my dear. Love of a certain kind, and a beautiful love. You are a good girl, and I am very proud of you."

There was no stopping her tears at hearing her dear old guardian say these words, and getting up from her place, Christine hurried into her warm embrace, sobbing gently. Scarcely could she believe that she was not censured by the good-hearted woman who had never had even passing acquaintance with scandal to Christine's knowledge. It was too wonderful, and after weeping some more, she finally drew back with a tearful smile to gaze gratefully at Mamma Valerius' dear face.

"I think I could have loved him," she said with utmost sincerity, "if he had not been so mad. But he frightened me. And really, I don't think I could have helped him in the end."

"Tell me about him, Christine," the old lady nodded. "Tell me all. It will do you good."

The young woman hesitated, and again her hand wandered absently to her slightly swollen belly. Her eyes flickered over the table, the tea things, her guardian's gentle hand on her wrist, and finally over the old lady's face which had not lost its accepting gaze. "He...was...my husband," she said quietly, and with an air of soulful nostalgia. "In every sense but law. I belonged to him. And he loved me... I believe."


	16. Where Does Fantasy End?

A/N: Seemed to me this story was losing some of its M rating, so I've tried to spice it up a bit in this chapter, in a realistic way. Enjoy :)

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Where does fantasy end?**

Where does fantasy end and reality begin? Christine pondered the question as she lay in bed the following night. The covers were drawn up to her chin, cosy and secure, and only the ghostly moonlight filtering through the lace curtains gave shape to the bed, the wardrobe and dresser in palest outline. Gazing out at the few stars that could be seen through the misty silvery clouds, Christine thought about the events of the day.

After her confession to Mamma Valerius, she had slept well. But this morning had brought Dr Marchant to the house with very serious news. She was indeed carrying a child. There was no doubt of it and though the doctor was not concerned about its origin, Christine revealed it to him all the same. The pragmatic man had appeared unsurprised by the revelation, yet his face had worn a troubled expression.

"Why did you tell me that I had been here all along?" Christine had wanted to know.

The doctor had been unable to give her a sensible answer. He appeared very much grieved by the turn of events, and suggested that she may like to consider terminating the pregnancy.

"How could I do that?" the young woman now demanded of herself, as she lay in her solitude. Stroking the slight roundness of her abdomen, Christine recalled the doctor's admonition. It would be a safe and simple process if done right, and would save her the trouble of raising a child alone, not to mention the scandal of unwed motherhood. She was not the only girl in Paris to submit to such an operation. Any number of the ballet girls and artists at the Opera alone had done so before now, and would again. And it was by no means certain she would survive a birth, for she was weakened by her traumatic experiences. Christine had promised she would think it over.

Of course, Mamma Valerius had been apprised of her condition, and born it admirably. There was nothing to fear from that quarter. Christine was sensible of her good fortune, in being under the care of a compassionate guardian. She would not be turned from the house. But what of her career?

"I would not be the only one at the Opera to have a secret love-child," Christine reasoned. "I might even acquire some respect, as no longer the prudish maiden who pretends not to entertain gentlemen in her dressing-room. But no," she shook her head and turned onto her side, "they would laugh at me, and say, 'There is Christine Daae, the girl who is too simple to remember to use a sponge'. How horrid they are! I am done for."

Christine wished that her father was alive, so that he might counsel her. She thought of praying, but abandoned the idea. Perhaps God would not be pleased to hear her prayers until she had repented of her sins, and all of them this time, not only the first few which had seen her become Erik's mistress. The last time they had been together, she had wanted it. And now, as she thought about it, Christine could not pretend that she was truly sorry for seducing her tormentor. Nor indeed was she sorry for the earlier occasions of intimacy. She was glad to have knowledge of that sort, for although it had not turned out to her benefit, it had opened her eyes a little to a truer understanding of the world. And how vital a thing that was, for where did fantasy end and reality begin?

"Did he love me?" she wondered, letting her fingers trail slowly over one breast and softly squeezing it over her nightdress. She remembered how Erik's hands had touched her just so. Undoing the first few buttons at her throat, she slipped her hand inside, as Erik had done, to feel the softness of her skin. Her nipple was firm and erect. Erik had kissed and sucked at it. The memory made her body tingle.

Tossing back the quilt, she turned once more on her back and stretched her arms over her head, folding them as a pillow for her head. Erik had liked it when she had offered herself up to him like that. His powerful, cool hands had cupped her small breasts, completely engulfing them, and massaged them slowly, making her sigh and groan with ecstasy. Then, he would draw them down over her heaving rib cage, her hollowed abdomen, and trace a path to her hips. Sometimes, Christine had wished he would kiss the place between her thighs but he never would bring his face close to her womanly parts. Instead, he would test her readiness with a long slender finger. It made her gasp even now to recall it.

How she longed to feel him inside her again! Though she hated him, how glorious to feel his body thrusting urgently against hers! Fast, and then slowly, holding it for a moment close to her body so that she felt the strength of his hips in full contact with the seat of her body. She loved it when he would pause like that, as if they were united forever, never to be undone. And then he would begin again, panting and straining, grimacing with fatigue. The horror of his visage was truly beyond all reckoning at those times, so that Christine felt ill to look at it, and yet her heart drove him onwards to completion while her hands clutched his buttocks in desperation and despair.

Where does fantasy end and reality begin? Did he really love her? And had she loved him?

Christine's hand had found its way to her sensitive place and she was massaging furiously, holding her breath in anticipation. Very shortly, a wave of pleasure burst upon her, making her moan softly. It was some relief but not to be compared with giving herself up to another person. And now, would she ever know that pleasure again?

"If only I could have married Raoul," Christine murmured in regret, "I should have been happy for the rest of my life. I could have enjoyed this love-making with him and never been afraid. But I shall never love anyone now. My heart is dead within me. And without love, I will never marry. I would rather have my freedom than be enslaved to a man I don't like."

It was as well she thought that way, Christine considered, for with a child, who would marry her? And she would never give up the child, not to anyone. It was her own. And certainly she would never terminate it. Who could say if she would ever find a husband in any case, and then she would be old and childless, when right here at this moment she had the fruit of mankind in her belly? No, to be blessed with a child was a treasure she could not give up so easily. And so, she must resign herself to spinsterhood. Certainly she could not submit to being anybody's mistress. She knew now what that was like; all passion and confusion. It was not the gentle, romantic vision she had treasured up for her future. It was nonsense and lies.

Where does fantasy end and reality begin? Pondering that question a little longer, Christine soon drifted off into a confused slumber, and did not wake again until morning.

When the sun shed its rays boldly upon her face the next day, Christine woke, feeling somewhat disoriented and uneasy. She felt her stomach instinctively, and was reminded that her concerns had come to pass; she was pregnant and unmarried. Her heart sank a little and she sat up in bed, to regard the pigeons collecting nesting material from the mossy tiles on the neighbouring rooftops. How easy it seemed for all other creatures in nature!

As she was getting ready to go downstairs, Christine had occasion to open the bottom drawer of her dressing table. She was searching for something new to fix her hair with, being tired of the girlish ribbons she usually wore. When she pulled the drawer open, her eyes lighted on a small bag, the bag Erik had sent her away with. Christine guessed that it had been hid there by Sophie, so as not to alert her of the deception being played upon her, when they were all insisting she had never been a captive. With mixed feelings, Christine picked it up and resting it on her lap, opened it gingerly.

Inside were the keepsakes Erik had packed for her. Tenderly she drew them out, one by one. There was the hairbrush with coloured glass decorating the handle. He had bought that for her after the first time she had let him sleep beside her in his mother's bed. The next was a lace handkerchief, which was a gift for her 'kindness' in letting him fondle her breasts. And here, she found rolled up tightly, two satin slippers. These were a gift after the first time they had made love, and Erik had lovingly placed them on her feet himself, as an offering of worship to his idol.

Christine deposited them all on the dressing table in front of her, and gazed at them for some time in consternation. They represented so much that was wrong and distressing, and yet at the same time, so much that was tragic and missed.

"These are gifts from the father of my child," Christine murmured nostalgically, stroking the satin slippers and admiring their beautiful sheen. "Gifts from the father of my child...whom I shall probably never see again...and whom it is probably best that I never see again. For how could I have loved such a man? And how could we ever live in peace together? And where does fantasy end and reality begin?"

Feeling frustrated with the romantic and troublesome turn of her thoughts, Christine gathered up the articles, stuffed them into the little bag, and buried them deep in the bottom drawer from whence they had come, hoping never to look at them again.


	17. The Solution

A/N: There have been calls for the return of Erik, and I must admit, I agree-it's been a while. So here he is!

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen**

**The Solution**

Evening was already falling once more when a tall, lean shade was spied sweeping quickly along the Rue de Rivoli. Beneath the colonnade of arches it darted, close to the wall, where the shadows were darkest, and before its shrouded face could be made out from under the wide brim of its black hat, it disappeared. A careful watcher might have discovered the doorway through which it exited the street, but none of the early risers were troubled to take notice. They had stalls to cart away, rubbish to sweep up, and not a few were already the worse for drink.

A peremptory knock on his apartment door was the first warning the Persian had of his uninvited guest. After checking carefully through his spy hole, the bald-headed easterner opened the door, and without a word stepped aside for Erik to enter.

Erik's long strides took him quickly down the hall and into the parlour where his friend had been lounging before a fire. A crumpled newspaper rested on a little table beside the sofa where its reader had tossed it, next to a pewter vase bearing a few dismal, spent blooms. Erik stopped in front of the hearth and sniffed grumpily at the fragrant incense mixed with tobacco smoke that permeated the room. His friend soon entered the room behind him.

"Why isn't it done?" the Persian said, passing Erik and approaching the mantelpiece. A box of cigarettes awaited him there. Picking it up, he retrieved a long, white cigarette. He was standing with his back to Erik whose yellow eyes watched him with a glimmer of hate. "Well?"

The Persian turned to regard Erik coolly. Erik's eyes narrowed. "Where is that toad, Darius?" he demanded in a low voice.

"Out on business," the Persian replied.

"Not minding his _own_ business, I'll wager."

"No, minding yours," the Persian responded with calm precision. "It seems you need somebody to do that. You haven't kept your part of the agreement."

"There are still two days," Erik snarled.

"And you could have disposed of them all by yesterday, we both know that."

Suddenly, the pewter vase crashed into the wall above the mantelpiece, inches from the Persian's head. Recovering himself quickly, the Persian squared up against his assailant. Erik was only a few paces in front of him, trembling with barely-contained rage. His haggard breathing was audible behind his mask. But the cool-headed easterner knew better than to make the first move.

For a few tense moments, the two men stared at each other, like cobras judging when to strike. But gradually Erik's temper subsided, and placing his hands on his hips, he laughed bitterly, "You still pretend you're not afraid of me."

His companion gave a wry smile, and calmly lit his cigarette.

Finding a place to sit in an armchair across from the hearth, Erik swept his cloak aside and sat down. Taking his hat off, he perched it precariously on the arm of his chair, crossed one slender leg over the other, and glared at his host.

"If you must know why they are still alive," Erik began, watching the Persian take a few puffs before sitting down at his left, "I'll tell you, you miserable booby. And if you interrupt, I'll serve you as I served the Shah's favourite guardsman."

"That was a stupid business," the Persian grumbled.

"No more than taking his name upon yourself, _Nadir_," Erik taunted.

"At least that name was believable," Nadir countered. "'_Erik__' _ indeed! You soft-headed fool. Now get to the point."

Instead of letting the insult enrage him again, Erik grinded his teeth and then drew an impatient breath. Nadir blew a long wispy trail of smoke from between his lips which spiralled sinuously into the air above their heads.

"If I am dead," Erik declared flatly, "you will have nothing to fear from your government. Nobody would ever know that you betrayed them."

"True," the Persian agreed.

"But if I am dead," Erik went on in the same matter-of-fact tone, "you cannot collect your share of the salary I exact from Messrs Poligny and Debienne, those elegant gentlemen who run my Opera."

Nadir chuckled, with a touch of mockery, "Never was extortion so eloquently described!"

"That is because this is _not_ extortion, you old goat," Erik sneered. "It is lawful salary, for the care I take in directing their feeble company." But Nadir only waved him on to continue. Erik picked up his hat and rested it on his knee, running his bony fingers along its broad felt brim. "If I am dead," he said, directing his gaze at his companion through narrowed eyes, "there is no need for the girl to die."

"Wrong," said Nadir promptly. "She can tell people that you lived—and that is enough."

"No, _you_ are wrong," Erik raised his voice, leaning forward, "because according to the blessed edicts of your government, it doesn't matter how long it took you to do away with me, the important thing is, that you did!"

"Hmm," the Persian considered, drawing again on his cigarette. "You may be correct."

"I know I am."

"But that makes little difference," Nadir said, tilting his head to one side. "Because I have no mind to be killing you any time soon. Aside from my ardent brotherly affection for your good person, there's the money, you know."

"Exactly," Erik murmured. He paused, glanced down at his hat, and then regarded Nadir with unearthly composure. "I can write it all over to you," he said, without blinking. "All of it. There's more of it there than you can ever find use for. And if you're not a total ass, you can even go on playing at being the Opera Ghost in my absence, if you like. Make a few more thousand all for yourself. Those boobies would never know."

Though his black eyebrows were first raised in surprise, presently a long sigh of contemplation escaped the Persian's fleshy lips. Nestling deep in his chair, holding his half-spent cigarette aloft, he paused to consider his companion's words. The smell of tobacco and incense irritated Erik's sinuses, and he snuffled impatiently behind his mask.

"One assumes," the Persian pondered aloud, "one assumes that in exchange for such a prize, I am to spare the girl, the old lady, the maid, and the doctor. And you will be...where exactly?"

"Nowhere."

"Not haunting me, I suppose," Nadir chuckled.

"Do you think I would bother myself to haunt _you_ of all people?" Erik returned with an irritated sneer. "This is the best offer you are likely to get, Daroga, so don't be a fool like you were in Mazenderan!"

"And you will submit to your dear old jailor slipping the noose over your neck? I doubt it Trapdoor Lover."

"You have good reason to doubt that, _Daroga_," Erik hissed, putting hate into every word, "and you needn't be afraid of that. I shall do it myself. And you will watch me."

A long pause ensued. A few ashes fell from the Persian's cigarette, burning a small hole in the hearth rug. Not a muscle of Erik's twitched while he pierced his companion with a stare so intense that Nadir was forced to look down and away. After several moments, Nadir cleared his throat testily and raised a questioning gaze to Erik's burning eyes. There was not a hint of emotion in those yellow orbs. They were the eyes of an insane zealot with nothing at all to lose. "Because," Nadir reasoned silently to himself, "the dead have nothing."

Nadir gave a short nod. "Very well," he said. "I will watch you, to see you do it right. And to finish you off, if necessary," he added quietly. It was a kindness he was offering, as one assassin to another.

"Good," Erik replied, and stood up. He placed his hat on his head. His companion stood up also.

"So when will you do it?" Nadir asked. "Are your affairs in order? You're not going to cheat me out of the money are you?"

"Of course not, booby," Erik shrugged impatiently. "Come to my house tomorrow and you will find everything waiting. Money, accounts, letters, all of it. Then you will see me die. And if you will do me the courtesy of singing my requiem mass, I will be obliged to you."

"I don't know a thing about music as you well know," Nadir said, leading the way out of the parlour. "I'll chant a few prayers over you, will that do?"

"It is _something_," Erik conceded. "And my coffin is ready as you know."

"Then what time shall I see you tomorrow?" Nadir asked as they reached his apartment door, and Erik's hand was on the doorknob, about to exit.

"Come at midnight precisely," Erik said with some ceremony in his tone. "Give me at least twenty-four hours. Come at midnight, Daroga." And with those words, he was gone.


	18. What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?

**Chapter Eighteen**

**What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?**

Night had fallen like a shroud over Paris. A short distance from the Rue de Rivoli, the house of Madame Valerius was in the process of being shut up against the cold, the curtains being drawn closed by Sophie, who had already securely locked the door. In the parlour, Christine sat quietly reading a Hugo novel while Mamma Valerius dozed in front of the fire. Having begun _'__Les__Miserables__'_ in an attempt to avert anxiety, Christine had just arrived at Hugo's long essay on ecclesiastical architecture. Normally, such a lengthy passage would have done nothing more serious than bore her, but tonight it reminded her most uncomfortably of a certain person, a person who had found such subjects interesting. It had just come into her mind to skip those pages when she heard a murmur of surprise from Sophie.

The maid was standing at the window, looking out on to the street. With her right hand grasping the heavy drapes, about to pull them closed, Sophie instead turned round to her mistress with a look of concern.

"What is it, Sophie?" Christine asked her.

Sophie hesitated, looking somewhat embarrassed. "Only that... Please, ma'amzelle, it is only that there is somebody outside."

Her attitude made little sense to Christine. "There are always people outside," she replied. "I'm sure they do no harm there."

"Pardon, ma'amzelle," Sophie persisted in a hushed voice. "I do not make myself clear. This man is looking directly at this house. And I think it is not the first time he has been here."

Somewhat startled by those words, and unwilling to let Sophie see it, Christine calmly laid her book aside. "What does he look like?" she asked pensively.

"Tall, dark... it is impossible to say more," the maid shook her head.

"You cannot see his face?" Christine wanted to know.

Sophie turned back to the window to look again. "No," she said, and then stepped back and drew the curtains closed quickly, as if to shut the intruder out. "It is too dark to see. But I know he has been there before. I know his shape, and manner of watching."

"And it is not the Persian gentleman who has visited sometimes?" Christine asked, in a tone that betrayed her anxiety.

"No, Ma'amzelle," Sophie assented with certainty. "He is much taller and thinner than he."

Standing up slowly, Christine stepped cautiously to the window, put her hand to the drapes and peeked out. At first she saw nothing but the circles of lamplight on the pavement. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the uneasy woman spied the lean shadowy figure of a man she knew too well to mistake for anyone else. With a fright, she let the drapes fall shut.

"How long has he been there?" Christine whispered to Sophie.

"I do not know," Sophie whispered in return, standing close by her mistress' side.

"But you've seen him before?"

"Yes, many times."

"Why did you never say?" Christine demanded in a nervous undertone.

The maid shrugged helplessly. "I thought he was nobody, and would go away. Did I do wrong, Ma'amzelle?"

Sophie's anxiety was enough to make Christine compose herself. "No, you did no wrong," she said, forcing a smile. "It is nothing serious. Probably some idle person waiting to meet someone, and only looking this way by accident. It's nothing."

With her heart in a tumult of fear and perverse gratification, Christine returned to the sofa and pretended to be calm. Taking up her book, her eyes fell upon the architectural essay with renewed discomfort, but she could not read a word. It was impossible for her to understand her feelings at that moment. Pleasure at knowing Erik still cared for her, fear of letting him know she felt it, and anger that he dared approach her. Not knowing how to behave, she hurriedly flipped over the pages of the essay to find a more pleasing passage while Sophie stoked the fire and departed. Mamma Valerius snored lightly.

It was while Christine was letting her eyes pass over the next part of her novel without taking in a single word of it, that she heard the first faint, plaintive notes of a voice beginning to sing.

"_Ah, rise up, O sun!  
Make the stars pale to nothing  
That, undisguised by evening,  
Blaze in the velvet sky."_

The voice was soft and melancholy, yet powerful; a rich tenor voice that issued from beyond the parlour windows, from the street outside. Christine recognized it at once, and closed her heavy book slowly.

"_Ah! __Rise __up! __Ah! __Rise __up!__"_

The singer was letting his voice fall upon the night air like a new satin sheet cast upon a virgin bed. It was beautiful. Yet, Christine would not let herself close her eyes to enjoy it. Her gaze was fixed on the parlour drapes which shielded her from view.

"_Appear! Appear, pure and enthralling star!"_

Without meaning to, Christine drew a sudden breath, put a hand to her mouth, and held it there. Did she dare walk to the window once more, and look out upon the man who was stealing her heart and her reason? _My __siren __is __calling __me..._

"_Ah, she is dreaming! And now she loosens  
A lock of golden hair..."_

An angry shout called for the singer to be quiet. But the voice went on, with greater passion than before, punctured by distant barking and howling of dogs from several blocks around. Mamma Valerius gave a gentle snort and blinked a few times.

"_Ah, __rise __up, __O __sun!  
Make __the __stars __pale __to __nothing_..."

Christine caught the look of surprise on her guardian's face but said nothing.

"_...That, undisguised by evening,  
Blaze in the velvet sky."_

In a moment, Mamma Valerius would have to speak and Christine was afraid of it. To reveal her feelings was impossible, as she did not know them herself. Only one thought stood out clearly above all others, and so, assuming the appearance of equanimity, Christine stood up and walked stiffly to the gas lamp that was shining on a table near the drapes. As the voice continued singing, Christine resolutely turned down the gas till the lamp was extinguished. Then, returning to the sofa, the stony-faced young woman picked up her book and told Mamma Valerius that she was retiring to bed.

"Shall I send Sophie in to you?" Christine added.

"Yes, my dear, if you would. But who can that be singing? How beautiful!"

Christine's lip curled slightly, an involuntary admission of pleasure which she tried to erase unsuccessfully, and she bent to give her guardian a parting kiss.

"_Come, appear!  
Pure and enthralling star!"_

As she straightened up, Christine bit her lip and shook her head sternly. "Nobody, Mamma. It is nobody."

She did not wait to discuss it more. Leaving Mamma Valerius to listen to the closing refrain, Christine quitted the parlour to find Sophie, and thence to seek the solitude of her room.

"_Come, appear!  
Come, appear!"_

One last sustained note rang forth, a final appeal, and then the voice fell silent. Mamma Valerius was left to wonder at it, while outside, the tall dark figure of a man in an opera cloak and broad-brimmed hat stared a little while longer at the shrouded windows of the Valerius' house. After a few minutes, he saw, on the second level, a thin line of orange light appear between the chink in the drapes. He waited, his gaze fixed upon that window which he knew to be Christine's. But after another few minutes, the light was extinguished.

The barking was subsiding and the angry man had shut up his window in relief. But while the rest of the street laid itself to rest, Erik remained, embraced by the shadows. It seemed he was unwilling to move away from this spot, as if expecting something yet to happen. Minutes passed and the cold air did not make him shiver. His eyes never strayed from the window behind which Christine slept.

Eventually, however, it became clear that he watched in vain, for there was no change to the house, except to see all the windows grow dark one by one. And so Erik turned reluctantly away, leaving Christine to her peaceful slumber, while his feet carried him slowly towards his home.

* * *

**A/N: Don't worry, this is not the end. And in case anyone would like to immerse themselves in the moment a little more, here's a link to the song ****that Erik was singing****. Go to youtube and add this tale end bit to the address in your browser window:**

**/watch?v=F_xfQ5mR68s&feature=&t=1m**

**Alternately, go to youtube and search for "Michael Spyres leve toi soleil" It's the first one that comes up in the search results. I chose it because I like the way he sings it. To find other versions, just look for "Ah leve-toi soleil" from Romeo et Juliette by Gounod. Enjoy! :) **


	19. Death Watch

**Chapter Nineteen**

**Death Watch**

Night became morning, and morning became evening once more. Five levels under the ground, there was no discerning the hour except by the hands of the clock. No waning daylight heralded the close of this, the final day. The gas lamps burned continuously in the house on the lake, and it was almost midnight when Erik played the last few notes of a recently completed death mass on his organ. The great 'A-men!' burst sombrely from the music room, reverberating through the entire apartment and out across the waters of the black lagoon. The Persian heard it as he rowed the last few yards towards his comrade's home.

Coming to dock at the bank, Nadir threw a mooring rope round an iron ring Erik had installed for the purpose. Not that there were any currents on the lake that might cause the boat to drift away; it was just another of Erik's eccentricities which his friend had wisely learned to obey. After resting the oars in their place, the Persian hauled himself out of the boat and held his lantern high. By its light he located the recess in the wall that concealed the doorway into Erik's abode.

The grim visitor knocked at the door. It opened with a flourish before the Persian had time to clear his head of the mournful death mass. Dazzling yellow light engulfed him, like the fire of a hundred footlights on the stage.

A black shape stepped between him and the brilliant light. "I didn't hear you ring the bell, Daroga," it said. "You've become far too sneaky in your old age."

Erik stepped back and let Nadir enter. He closed the door behind the Persian, while Nadir made himself comfortable in Erik's easy chair. The room was much as Nadir remembered it, having seen it last many months ago. There was still the same old ugly furniture, the same curios and knick-knacks acquired from their travels in Asia and beyond. The grasshopper and the scorpion taps were still in their places, near the small window that overlooked the torture chamber. That window was concealed by a drawn curtain, Nadir noticed. There was also a step leading up to it, to allow a shorter person access to peer through it upon the horrors on the other side.

"You never told me why you wanted to reconstruct the torture chamber here," Nadir said, nodding at the window. He then looked at Erik, expecting a response.

The tall, skeletal man stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by the memorabilia of his bleak and sordid life, and put his hands on his hips. "Why shouldn't I?" he said in a surly tone. "It's _my_ house."

"Undoubtedly," Nadir shrugged, pulling a cigarette from a breast pocket. "But I don't suppose you ever found much use for it here, barring that _one_ incident." He leaned over and used his lantern, which he had deposited by his feet, to light the cigarette. He then extinguished the lantern.

"I don't want you smoking in my house," Erik warned.

"What does it matter now?" Nadir said with raised eyebrows, and put the glowing cigarette to his lips. Erik watched as his guest let the smoke escape in a long, satisfying puff.

Turning on his heel, Erik strode to the mantelpiece and picked up a stack of envelopes, some bulky and sealed with red wax. He then walked over to the Persian and dropped them rudely in Nadir's lap.

"Your money," Erik announced, before Nadir could clear his throat to speak. "Accounts, bonds, old debts," he went on significantly. "You'll find everything you need in those."

"You'll pardon me for checking," Nadir interposed, with his cigarette held between his lips so that he could tear open the envelopes one by one.

"Take your time, Daroga," Erik waved him on airily and turned away to pace across the room. "You always were a skinflint."

"Business is business," the Persian mumbled.

"I remember you didn't always think so," Erik said, returning to him and then pacing away again. "I could have solved any number of problems for you if you'd taken that tack back in Mazenderan."

"I doubt it," mumbled Nadir. "Besides, things were different in Mazenderan."

"No, they were exactly the same."

"Those people were my family," Nadir said, looking dangerously at his companion. Erik was standing by the window on the opposite side of the room.

"So they should have been glad to die together," Erik shrugged. "But there's no pleasing some people."

Nadir grunted, tearing open another envelope and inspecting the contents. "I don't believe in killing my entire family to solve a simple dispute about inheritance, as you well know. But in any case, I don't believe you're as callous as you pretend, Trapdoor Lover."

"Then you're a fool," was the immediate reply.

"Why didn't you kill them then? It would have amused you. Letting them live only led you into trouble. Like another occasion I could mention," the Persian said, nodding towards the window over Erik's shoulder. "You could have been rid of me that night, Trapdoor Lover. I thought you'd have me once and for all. But you let me out of that infernal machine of yours. You never had the stomach for death, in spite of all your toys. You're an illusionist, not a murderer. It was the little Sultana who put those sick thoughts into your head, a proper bloody-thirsty bitch! You were only her instrument. _She_ was your tutor."

"And you think I didn't learn my lessons well?" Erik grinned, his eyes sparkling through the holes in his mask.

"I think you made death into a game, not the glorious labour that it is. You give no consideration to _who_ you terminate, or how. You're impetuous, and theatrical. Look at that torture chamber," Nadir pointed at the window. "That was for the Sultana's amusement. It's a toy. You dishonour the profession when you turn execution into a game."

"But it _is_ a game, Daroga!" Erik protested. Striding across the room to within a few inches of the seated Persian, the black figure stood there with hands on hips, looming over him. "Don't you think it's a wonderful game? The Trapdoor Lover decides who dies and who lives. You never saw the fun in it because you never played it. You only take orders from your government."

"There should always be a _purpose_," Nadir said angrily, standing up to face his opponent, letting the envelopes and half-read documents fall to the floor. Impatiently, he threw the cigarette into the false grate. Erik laughed scornfully. "You never understood the difference between execution and murder," Nadir growled. "Execution has a purpose."

"Whose purpose?" Erik threw back at him.

"What has that to do with it?" the Persian waved his hands in frustration and annoyance. "Purpose is what I'm talking about, as opposed to idle whim. That's why you were never suitable for the profession, Master Illusionist."

"Oh, do tell, Daroga, why not?"

"Because you have no satisfaction from simply ending a life that has become inconvenient or redundant. You must turn it into a theatre piece. Death for you is not an end in itself. There must be a show, music, drama! That is what I mean, Trapdoor Lover!" the Persian argued in a strong tone while Erik gazed at him in bemused silence. "You don't relish death half so much as you make believe. You relish creating a spectacle. And down here there is nobody to watch your spectacle and applaud, except that one night! You didn't kill me then because you didn't need to," Nadir went on more calmly, as a smug grin made his lips curl. "You'd had your show. And your audience was well satisfied."

"Then how fortunate for you that there is no audience here tonight," Erik hinted.

"The Sultana would gladly have watched me put through the horrors of your death machine out there," Nadir said, nodding at the window that looked onto the torture chamber. "But she is not here. There is only you and I, old friend." He crossed his arms comfortably, looking up at the taller man. "I'm your only audience tonight. So..."

Nadir gestured at Erik, a small sweeping motion of the hand, as if to say, 'Proceed'.

Erik's eyes narrowed.

"You haven't checked all the papers yet," he said, crossing his arms likewise.

"Hmph, I've seen enough," Nadir said, glancing behind him at the litter of envelopes by his feet. Erik uncrossed his arms as Nadir turned his sights back to him. "I don't want to keep you waiting."

The two men looked at each other for a few seconds, as if reading each other's thoughts. Only the smallest hint of uneasiness was betrayed in their mutual gaze.

"No, neither do I," Erik agreed.


	20. Lord, Have Mercy

**Chapter Twenty**

**Lord, Have Mercy**

"Neither do I."

Erik turned slightly, breaking their gaze, and Nadir shuffled sideways to let him pass. But as Erik stepped forward, suddenly Nadir felt his throat burn, and gagging in shock, he fell against Erik, gripping his bony shoulders tightly. The two men stumbled a little as the Persian stepped on one of the envelopes that littered the floor, and slid off balance. A cord as sharp as a cheese-cutting wire held him upright, as Erik held the end of the deadly noose aloft, his lips set in a grim line. The Persian's fleshy face turned scarlet. His eyes bulged in horror. His fingers flexed, clawing at Erik's jacket as he slowly sank to his knees. The string of catgut round his throat puller tighter the more he struggled, till it cut into his flesh, dying his linen collar blood red.

As the world started to turn grey and then black, Erik's voice was like the distant rumble of thunder. "See now what you made me do? Why could you not stay out of my affairs? I told you one day this would happen. Didn't I tell you? Why did you not listen, silly interfering fool!"

A few last ugly noises issued from the Persian's throat, like the gurgling of a water down a plug hole. They grew weaker while Erik crouched over the fallen body, holding the noose tight until every last flicker of life was extinguished. "I won't have you hurting her! I won't!" Erik suddenly cried, his voice changing to that of a panicked child as the last drops of spittle bubbled from the Persian's lips. "I will stop you, Daroga! I will! You're a bad old fellow, a very bad old fellow! Why didn't you listen to me?"

Nadir's limbs were heavy and useless. Blood saturated his collar and shirt, and covered Erik's gloved hands with a slick film that smelled of metal oxide. As Erik gazed upon him, he received no answer to his question but a fixed, lifeless stare. Erik's hands quivered.

"Why did you make me do this, silly old booby?" he whimpered, still holding the cord tight. In an oddly tender way, Erik sat down beside the corpse and laid a hand over the dead man's eyes to close them. "Why couldn't you do as you're told? You're a bad old fellow. Why did I have to make you stop?" Unshed tears were making Erik's eyes sting. Slowly, he loosened the noose from his friend's lacerated neck, pulling it gently free of the bloody wound. "I told you I didn't want to hurt the girl. Why didn't you listen to me? Why did you never listen to me? Bad old fellow!" Having freed the cord, he dropped it to one side and put his ear to the Persian's chest to listen for a heartbeat. Then, removing his bloodied gloves, he held the back of his hand less than an inch from the dead man's lips to test for breath. Finding neither, he laid his palm gently on his friend's senseless forehead and ran it back over the bald pate in a gesture of kindness and regret.

"If Erik had been here," he told the corpse solemnly, "you would not be lying there pretending not to hear me, Daroga. But you never liked Erik." The room was strangely still. Erik and the corpse sat among the strewn papers, while the blood slowly congealed on the wound left by the catgut noose. "I know you were jealous of him. He was a better person than you, old booby. But now there is only me, and so I'll have to play your Death Mass alone." A drop of salty moisture dripped from Erik's chin. "And maybe Heaven will forgive you for all those bad things you made me do," he chided the corpse gently, and then tore the mask from his face so that he could strike the moisture from his gaping nose hole. Finding a large handkerchief in his breast pocket, he wiped it over his face and blew loudly. "I wish Erik was here to help you," he snuffled through the handkerchief. "He's a bad fellow too, leaving me here to take care of you on my own. What would the Sultana do to him, eh? But I don't care about her any more. She can't hurt you now, Daroga. I've fixed that."

Stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket, Erik slowly stood up, raising himself up to full height, and gazed down at the silent corpse, like the Reaper without his scythe. "You've left quite a stain on my carpet," he observed quietly, noting the russet patch under the body's head. "Mother would not have liked that. She always said I ruined her things. But then, it wasn't _my_ fault you chose to bleed here."

Some moments later, Erik had removed the corpse, and had set himself to sponging the carpet. On his hands and knees, with a bucket of bloodied water and a cake of soap beside him, he scrubbed at the stain with a brush and sponge. He rolled the carpet back to find that the blood had soaked through to the boards, and when he found this, his brow darkened. "There never was such a fellow for causing trouble," he grumbled, rubbing the soap over the stain and scrubbing. "You never saw _my_ blood make such a nasty mess!" he shouted to somebody in the next room. Without expecting an answer, he continued scrubbing.

Nearly an hour had passed before he was satisfied that the work was complete. There was still a ghostly tinge of burgundy in the carpet, and a large wet patch that threatened to leave a water mark. After putting away his tools, Erik retired to his music room which was lit by candles fixed at each end of the organ, and another row of candles set along the rim of the coffin which stood open under its bower of black drapery.

Erik strode purposely to the organ, and sat down at it. Before him was an open folio of sheet music, a Death Mass he had completed just before his visitor had arrived that evening. It was hastily scrawled in red ink, for Erik had run out of black ink earlier that day. Now, he gazed at it solemnly, and slowly turned the pages back to its beginning. Above the first line of notes, Erik had dashed its title in broad strokes, _'Dies Irae - Kyrie Eleison'_, or 'Day of Wrath - Lord, Have Mercy'.

Straightening his back, so that he sat high on the stool, Erik raised his arms, stretching them out to either side, and flexed his long slender fingers. Then, with a single nod, he brought his fingers tenderly to the keyboard without pressing a note. He paused, finding exactly the right keys, and then, suddenly, he plunged the instrument savagely into life.

A great blast of dissonant noise shook the small room.

"Dies irae! Kryie eleison!" Erik screamed over a host of horrible, minor key arpeggios. "Dies irae! Christe eleison!" His arms leapt about on the keyboard, striking vicious chords that made the candle flames shudder. "Quantus tremor est futures, Quando iudex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus!"

The dark-skinned corpse, which was slowly losing colour, rested in the open coffin without regarding a single furious note of the harrowing death mass. It lay silently through the entire hour and a half that Erik played, unmoved by the composer's calls for mercy from a vengeful God. Not even the bellowing 'Amen' at the end roused it to repentance or fear.

"Amen! Amen! A-men!" Erik sank from his labour when it was done, and sat for a while, slouched in front of the sheet music. The candles still burned. Some of them had grown quite long wicks now, and were giving off long trails of sooty smoke. Pools of wax had formed around their bases, and some had dripped inside the coffin from those that lined the coffin's edge.

Erik swung one leg over the organ stool and sat on it sideways, regarding the coffin and the bulky shape that inhabited it. The candlelight flickered, creating a wall of brightness between Erik and the corpse. The polished wood of the coffin shone beneath it, like that of the most beautiful ornamental table, and the black drapery that hung overhead glowed softly as the heavens on a stormy night. Erik remained thus for some time, his head cocked to one side, dazed and thoughtful.


	21. The Truth

A/N Thanks very much for the reviews! They keep me motivated and I enjoy hearing how people are liking the story. There'll be a few more chapters, and given the story started with a few chapters covering one night, I'm thinking the last few should follow a similar pattern. If you have any thoughts on what you'd like to see in the last few chapters, mention it in a review or PM and i'll see what I can do :)

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-One**

**The Truth**

It was Sophie's frantic knocking on the bedroom door that woke Christine. Her ears seemed to wake faster than her eyes, until she realized that it was still night. Sophie was already calling her in a strangely urgent undertone before Christine had struck a match to the candle by her bed, wrapped herself in a gown and unlocked the door. She opened it to find Sophie's wide-eyed face glowing above a candle flame.

"Sophie, what is it?" Christine hissed in fright, imagining that Mamma Valerius had been taken ill.

"Ma'amzelle, I am so sorry," the maid answered in a hurried whisper, "I told him to go away, but he insists he must see you. He is downstairs in the parlour. I could not make him go away."

Christine felt the back of her neck tingle, as if her hairs were standing on end. "Who is downstairs, Sophie?"

"The man, the man from before," Sophie tried to explain. "He said – oh, Ma'amzelle, he said, he is your _husband_," she stammered in confusion. "I did not know how to make him leave. He pushed past me through the door. He is very tall. Should I send for the police?"

"No," Christine said with authority, making the maid noticeably calmer. "Did he say why he is here?"

"Only that he must see you," Sophie shook her head. "But is it safe Ma'amzelle? He looks like an assassin!"

Christine had already handed Sophie her candle and was wrapping her gown about her more tightly. "I will see him, it is quite safe," she assured the girl, who was staring at her with earnest eyes. "Please make sure that Mamma is well, and then come down and let yourself into the parlour. I will let you know then if you need to do more."

The maid nodded, handed back Christine's candle, and then hurried away. Christine walked quickly to the stairs and followed them down to the first floor passage. It was about three o'clock in the morning, Christine noticed as she passed the grandfather clock in the entry hall, and opened the parlour door.

Inside, the room glowed softly under gaslight. The first thing she saw was the tall dark figure of a masked man, leaning on the mantelpiece. His back was to her. He was wearing an opera cloak, and a broad-brimmed black velvet hat. Christine wondered if she should speak or cough first to announce her presence. But before she had done either, she heard Erik speak without turning round.

"I am sorry to have woken you at such an hour," he said in a quiet, humble tone. "I hadn't thought to see you another time, but Life is such a mixed-up business, isn't it?"

He was looking at her now, his head tilted to one side, and his strange yellow eyes glinting at her from the midst of a black mask. It shocked Christine to be reminded of how tall he was compared to her slight frame. His gloved hands with their long tapered fingers were flexing nervously by his sides, and she remembered with a faint gasp how they had touched her.

"Why are you here?" was all she could think to say. Her voice betrayed no emotion.

Erik blinked, extinguishing the light in his eyes. "You never did have very good manners, my dear," he chided her in a voice that sounded like he was smiling. "Won't you ask your husband to sit down?"

With only the mildest confession of annoyance in her manner, Christine offered Erik the settee, and then sat down in an armchair opposite. She blew out her candle with a quick puff and set it down on a table by her. At that moment, Sophie entered the room, casting a furtive glance at Erik before asking her mistress if anything was wanted.

"Yes," Christine said, rising to Erik's criticism of her manners. "It's very late but I daresay our guest would like some tea?" she threw the question open to her husband. Erik nodded, and Sophie was dismissed, who cast a concerned at glance at Christine before disappearing behind the door.

Erik removed his hat, laid it on the settee beside him, and ran a hand through his thinning hair. He looked old, Christine thought, as he leaned back and slouched a little to one side, gazing at her with a kind of abstracted resignation.

"So," Christine said, folding her hands in her lap, and suddenly conscious of how underdressed she was. Only her nightgown covered her under the silk robe she wore. Her feet were tucked into the purple slippers Erik had bought her. She had never intended to wear them again, but she loved them so much, she had relented. Now she wished she had chosen a different pair tonight, so that Erik had not seen them. His thoughts must have wandered in the same direction, because he chuckled softly when Christine tried to draw her feet back under the hem of her robe. "Will you tell me why you are here?" Christine diverted him, in a clear, matter-of-fact tone.

She saw Erik draw a breath. "I never told you about the boy's death," he said without ceremony, and Christine's eyes flashed in surprise. She recovered herself in a moment.

"You drowned him," she told the masked killer, determined not to be drawn into any tricks.

"No, I didn't," Erik sighed, and raising an arm, grasped his head as if to steady his thoughts. Christine watched silently, wondering what lies he would tell next. Letting his arm drop beside him again, he leaned a little to his other side and shook his head at her. He seemed to be very tired. In what appeared to be an effort to distract himself from the burden of confession, he slowly began to draw off his gloves, tugging at each finger, one by one, loosening them little by little. "I did not drown him, Christine. That was your mistake," he said, looking down at his hands as they worked. "He was alive when I plucked him out of the torture chamber, the same as that silly old booby who led him there. He was alive. You saw that for yourself."

"Yes," Christine agreed faintly. It was true. Erik had laid Raoul on the couch in the Louis Philippe room, and she had run to him, and felt for his heartbeat. He had been breathing then.

"I could not let him take you away, not until we were married," Erik further explained. "After all, I had got your promise, but you women can be so capricious, how could I know you would not betray me?" He glanced up at her, questioningly, and Christine found herself nodding in agreement. "So there was nothing to do but keep him safe until after our vows had been made. I could not let him go; he would have taken you away."

"And so you put him in the dungeon," Christine submitted, remembering how Erik had declared he would hold her lover prisoner until after the marriage.

"Yes," Erik nodded, freeing one hand and laying the glove beside his hat. "I told you I did. And so I did, just as I said. I took him down to the dungeon on the fifth level, near to where the Communists buried their victims. But he was alive, Christine. He was alive when I took him there."

"So what happened?" Christine asked in quiet dread.

Erik drew a long breath and let it out slowly. He had already started working on the second glove. It was tighter than the other, and resisted him stubbornly. "He was such a troublesome peacock," the beleaguered man muttered, tugging at the middle finger. "I knew he might wake up and start making a noise. And there are people down there, Christine. You think nobody goes there, but they do. The rat catcher for one. He's not such a bad fellow but he would start interfering if he heard any noise down there. So I wanted to make him sleep. At least until I knew you really meant your promise! And so I gave him the smallest waft of a drug, Christine. Only the smallest waft, just to make him sleep. But it was too much," Erik concluded, drawing off the second glove and laying it gently with its fellow. "It was too much, in his condition, you see. He was already weak. And so when I went to check on him the next morning, he was dead."

Before Christine had a chance to respond, the door opened. Sophie entered, curtseyed to her mistress, and asked if she should toast some muffins also.


	22. Justice

A/N: Some very helpful reviews after the last couple of chapters! Thanks so much for the reminders and the observations, also for letting me know what you'd like to see happen. I hope I can bring this to a satisfying conclusion... but if not, you can get your revenge in a review hehehehe. Btw, this is not the last chapter. There's a little more to go :)

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

**Justice**

Sophie was standing only a few feet in front of where Christine sat, waiting for an answer. As Christine regarded her, she noticed that Sophie's honest face was frowning and anxious. For some moments, she gazed at the maid without comprehension, only dimly aware that she had asked a question, until something about muffins pushed itself past the dark pictures in her mind.

"Oh, as you will," Christine waved a hand at Sophie faintly. The maid turned slightly, and cast her sidelong glance.

"And for the gentleman?" Sophie questioned, in what seemed to be an excuse to remain longer.

"Yes, yes," Christine nodded, coming to herself. "Please, take as long as about it as you wish."

Those words made Sophie frown deeper, but without challenging the order, she departed quietly.

Once the door was closed behind her, Christine folded her hands again in her lap and gazed at the masked man slouching in the settee opposite her. She noticed that Erik was regarding her quizzically. She was not sure what it meant.

"So Raoul died from an overdose of your drug," she stated quietly and firmly, gathering her thoughts, and then nodded slowly. "So I was right after all. You did kill him."

Erik sat bolt upright, fixing her with an incredulous stare that Christine could only read by the flashing of his eyes. It made her tremble. "Why must you say that, Christine?" Erik demanded in a quick voice. "Did I ask him to intrude on my property? Did I not try to save the silly fool?" Seeing Christine shrinking back in her chair, Erik stopped short, and sighed deeply. "If Erik had not been there," he explained in gentler tones, "the mistake could not have happened. Erik wanted you to stay with him, so very much, Christine! And he is a fool when it comes to chemicals. He should not have been allowed to touch the boy, that's an undisputed fact. He deserves your anger, Christine. And he's dead now, so you can be happy, can't you?"

"Why would I be happy about that?" Christine dared herself to ask.

"Because Erik killed the boy," he said. "It's justice."

Christine's fingers flexed nervously. "Are you sure it was Erik?" was her faint reply.

Her companion's gaze had drifted again into a curious stare which now rested on her abdomen. Upon discovering it, Christine realized that her shape was showing under the flowing folds of her gown. In her confusion, she rested her hands protectively on her belly, and her eyes met those of her husband. An unspoken thought passed between them, both questioning what the other knew.

"Perhaps it was not Erik," the masked man said quietly, returning to the subject. His tone had changed. It reminded Christine of the voice that she had thought belonged to the Angel of Music long ago. He was staring at Christine with his hypnotic eyes, drawing her in, making her conscious of the seed he had planted within her. "When you think about it Christine, it could not have been Erik. After all, Erik did not kill."

The gaslight danced in his eyes. His spindly fingers played teasingly on the edge of the settee, miming a slow passage of some aria. It was so strange, this feeling that was pulsing in Christine's brain. It was as if the world was split into two realities, and she could not tell which was the right one. Across from her, only a few paces away, sat the man who had destroyed everything that she had believed in, and everything that she loved. She hated him. She hated his self-serving nonsensical stories, his lies, his deceit. She hated his long, bony fingers, his sparse hair, and his ugly yellow eyes. She hated the smell of the dank cellars that wafted from his black clothes. She hated his infantile reasoning and vile temper. And then, breaking the spell, he abruptly left off drumming the settee with his fingers, and sank back in his seat with a weary sigh. Something in that action made Christine feel pity and remorse.

She wondered why Sophie had not come back yet. She wished the maid would interrupt them again.

"Whoever it was who killed Raoul," Christine forced out her friend's name, afraid that it would antagonise her husband, "do you intend to inform the police?" And then she held her breath, anticipating anger.

Erik did not respond with any emotion however. He was resting his head in one hand, and did not even look at her. "There's no need to inform the police," he said in a tone that sounded bleak. "There's nothing for them to do."

Christine frowned and chose her next words carefully. "His family do not know what has become of him. They think he left Paris and they are worried. Should they not be allowed to know what happened?"

Erik raised his head suddenly with furious anger. "I curse that boy and his infernal family!" he shouted, pointing an accusing hand at Christine. "Did anyone care what happened to me when I left this city and went abroad? Did anyone come looking for me?"

"What happened to you is not the point," his wife interrupted in a deathly quiet tone which disguised her alarm. Feeling the need to emphasize her determination to suffer no outbursts in her home, Christine stood up. "And please don't raise your voice, my guardian is sleeping." She noticed that she was trembling. But Erik was already wringing his hands penitently and sitting hunched on the settee, like a disciplined child. He was truly the strangest man she had ever known, and Christine gazed down at his meek form with horror and compassion, and a little of some other feeling she could not understand.

"I will be good, I will be good, Christine," Erik murmured in a chastened tone. "I only came here to tell you this one last thing, so you would know the truth, and not hate me absolutely."

It was on the tip of Christine's tongue to ask if accidentally overdosing Raoul was supposed to be not as bad as deliberately drowning him, but she stopped herself. She knew she was tired and anxious, and nothing would be served by quarrelling. Instead she said with a mixture of sadness and assertive honesty, "Well, my husband, if you came here because you want my forgiveness, I'm not sure that I'm ready to give it to you. But in time, perhaps."

"Your forgiveness is not necessary," Erik said, shaking his head. "I have already taken care of justice."

"What do you mean?" his wife frowned.

"I've taken a poison," Erik told her simply, looking up at her with a clear, unabashed gaze. "It's slow-acting, but I will be dead by morning."

Christine's face fell in horror and disbelief. For several seconds she was speechless, staring down at her husband's candid eyes, with her mouth hanging open, as if struck with some kind of palsy.

"No, you didn't," she mumbled at last, suspecting a trick.

"Yes, I did," Erik chuckled, perversely amused by her reaction.

"Why?" Christine demanded, standing over him, pumping her hands up and down as if she could wring sense from the air.

"There was nothing else to be done," her husband shrugged.

His nonchalant attitude was like a hot steel knife ripping at her mind and heart. How could he sit there so calmly, talking as if he had done something good for a change?

"But I'm going to have your child!" Christine rasped, tears stinging her eyes. With a despairing gesture, she turned from him slightly and struck a hand across her forehead, while her other hand unconsciously cupped her belly, showing her shape clearly. Erik stood up quickly, lost his balance slightly, righted himself, and took that hand in his. Christine eyes filled, and then spilled over.

"Oh, Christine, silly girl, you don't want it!" Erik warned her, drawing her close to him and putting a protective arm around her shoulders. "You don't want something like that."

"I _do_ want it," Christine protested through her tears. "I'm going to have it."

"But it will look like me," came Erik's distressed answer, in a small, rasping voice. Then an agonized sob broke from his throat, and he too started weeping.

Misery and compassion overwhelming her, Christine wrapped her arms tightly round his skinny body and cried into his hollow chest. "Even if it does look like you," she sobbed, drawing back from their embrace only far enough so that her words would not be stifled, "I will still love it."

Erik looked down at her and shook his head. "But it will not be happy," he pushed the words out, choking on his tears.

"Yes it will," the young woman nodded reassuringly. Drawing back her arms, she lifted her hands to her husband's face, and carefully removed the hateful black mask. Erik allowed it, and took it from her. "I love you," Christine told him, lost in the moment of sublime forgiveness and reconciliation. Erik's shocking features, the gaping hole that was his nose, even as it was, trickling with a shiny discharge, was not enough to stop Christine reaching up and placing a kiss on his quivering lips. Even as she did so, part of her mind wondered what prompted the action. The other part merely basked in the ecstasy of filial devotion.

"I love you too," Erik's voice trembled. He found a handkerchief and wiped it over his face. Christine stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers, and a fresh burst of weeping overtook her.


	23. One Thing

**A/N: First of all, my apologies for the extreme lateness of publishing the conclusion of this story! I hadn't realized that a whole year had passed. 2012 was a good year for me though. I was lucky enough to get to visit the Paris Opera house. I don't know if its possible to see the backstage areas or the cellars, but I did get to see the public areas, the grand staircase, the foyer, etc. Very beautiful building.  
**

**I hope you won't hate me for the way this story ends. Anyway, see what you think!  
**

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

**One Thing**

"I love you too," Erik's voice trembled.

Amidst her tears, Christine let Erik shyly touch her shoulders and draw her into a delicate embrace. His clothes smelled of old books and rose water, the mildew of the cellars not quite masked by an expensive cologne. She rested her cheek against his chest and felt her belly brush his. She was going to have this man's child, and he was dying.

For several minutes they stood together, comforting one another. Finally, Christine sniffed and turned her face to look up at her husband. Erik was gazing down at her with a mystified expression, his eyes somewhat detached and thoughtful. It was the way he always used to look at her when she was kind to him. He was no longer crying, but his eyes glistened with moisture still. Christine threaded her arms under his and wrapped them around his back.

"What are you thinking?" she gently asked. It occurred to her at that moment that she had rarely put that question to him before. She had only guessed.

Erik blinked and seemed to have not heard. Christine was about to ask again when his answer came in a vague tone, "I should have married you, Christine."

In spite of herself, Christine laughed bitterly. "We both know that would not have worked," she shook her head. And then regret seized her, for she realized there was nothing more hurtful she could have said at that moment. However, to her surprise, Erik only nodded softly.

"No, you did not want me."

"I wish we could have been friends," Christine steadfastly returned, withdrawing her right arm and stroking his cheek. "We were never really _friends_, were we?"

Erik raised his sparse eyebrows. "I thought we were _good_ friends," he muttered. He let Christine fold her arm around him once more.

"Perhaps I was mistaken," Christine quietly said, and rested her head against his chest again, too confused to speak further. She listened to his heart beat. Was it her imagination, or was the gentle thud irregular? How much poison was coursing through his veins at this moment? Why had he taken it, and why was he leaving her?

She felt Erik's fingers lightly touch her hair.

"Are you crying for me, Christine?" came his puzzled voice above her head.

Christine realised that she was sobbing. "Of course I am," she blubbed into his chest, no longer ashamed.

"God bless you," Erik chuckled nervously, pulling her closer. "You're so good to me, Christine. Why are you so good to me?"

"I don't know," Christine snuffled in genuine confusion. All she wanted was to bury herself in his embrace, feel his arms around her shoulders and answer no more questions. There was no safety in talking to him. There was never any sense in his words. The only real thing between them was the feeling of his hands stroking her back, the smooth texture of his silk shirt against her cheek, the sound of his breath passing deeply into his lungs and out again. He breathed like a singer. He was an artist. An extraordinary man. And he was insane. Or perhaps she was, because she loved him. Christine thought she heard the parlour door open again at that moment, but they were not disturbed by Sophie's entrance. The maid, having caught sight of the lovers standing together, must have discreetly retreated.

Erik wobbled slightly, and Christine withdrew from his arms in concern. He looked very tired. Waving him to the sofa behind him, she suggested they both sit down. Without hesitation, Erik lowered himself on the plush red seat, and Christine sat close beside him, taking his hand in hers and resting it in her lap.

"Are you sure there's no way to reverse this?" she asked, hardly daring to sound hopeful.

"None," Erik said simply, watching her play with his fingers. He looked at her with a regretful frown. "If I had known about your child I would not have done this."

Christine looked up and stared at him with incredulous dismay. Erik gazed back at her, nonplussed. "Oh why must you always be so impulsive?" Christine cried, giving his hand a violent shake. Erik chuckled foolishly, making Christine give a perverse little laugh through her distress. For a few moments, his eyes regarded her, pensive, fearful. Christine wiped away another tear.

"Are you angry with me?" Erik wanted to know.

His question confused Christine. Of course she was angry with him, but what right did she have to be so?

"No, I'm not angry with you," she said, lacing her fingers through his.

"You look angry," Erik said.

Christine shrugged and shook her head. "What's done is done," she replied, making an effort to look him in the eye with a sanguine expression. "I only wish it did not have to happen this way."

Her words made Erik's lips curl up in gratified relief. "You are a good girl," he said. "I know you understand me. It had to be this way. But it will not be easy for you," he added, fixing his sights on the curve of her belly. "I think you should stop this before it's too late."

Christine loosened her grip on his fingers and stared into his impenetrable eyes. "It isn't something I can stop."

"Of course it is. The ballet mistress will know somebody. It's very simple, Christine."

"I don't want to hear of it."

"Suit yourself," the weary man muttered, beginning to slump.

"It's all I will have of you," Christine thought to say. It was not a lie and yet the words almost stuck in her throat. She expected to hear him bitterly chuckle, but instead he turned a surprised and gentle gaze upon her with a crooked smile.

"And you will miss me," he predicted.

Christine hesitated and nodded.

"Good girl," Erik said.

"Is there anything you want me to do for you?" she softly returned, noticing that her husband was growing weaker by the moment. He was probably in a lot of pain and trying to hide it. It sickened Christine to think of what he was experiencing at this moment as his body was slowly destroyed from inside by some vicious potion. Shyly she unlaced her fingers from his and tenderly stroked his sparse hair. Erik leaned closer, and Christine found herself holding him, his chin tucked against her shoulder.

"I would not ask it of you," she heard his muffled words close to her ear.

"You may ask anything of me," she replied quietly. "I will do whatever is in my power." _Though I will be the judge of what is in my power_, she added silently.

Erik straightened up and looked at her serious face. Her complexion was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. His eyes did not blink.

"Bury me, Christine," he said, watching her. "The Daroga has taken my coffin and I have no place to rest but in Mother's bed. It would be unpleasant to lay there forever and I don't want to pitch myself into the lake. There is a place where the Communists were buried, near the dungeon. You could put me there. I don't suppose they will mind."

Christine's eyes were wide. "Do you mean, dig a hole and bury you?"

"No, no, there is already a hole," Erik shook his head. "But I will need you to fill it."

His wife thought for a moment, looking disturbed. "I don't think I will be strong enough to move your body," she murmured uncomfortably.

"True. True," Erik agreed, as if the thought was new to him. "True." He sighed.

"What happened to your...to your coffin?" Christine ventured. "You said the Daroga took it? Why?"

"He needed it."

"For?"

"You can seal me up in the house," Erik said, returning to the former topic.

"Erik, I want to do things properly," Christine urged, alarmed at how easily she was speaking of her husband's death. "If there is a way to bury you properly, I will find it. You don't need to concern yourself at all. Let's not talk about it. I will not let you pass without a proper burial. I promise."

Relief passed over his twisted features. He nodded and grasped her hand. "And if you would sing a psalm over me, my dear Christine, I know the angels will bless you. But do not come to the house, my darling," he said, suddenly straightening up. "No, do not come to the house. Go to the place near the dungeon where the hole is waiting. I will lay myself there and you will only have to push the dirt in over me. And then sing a psalm. Besides, you will want to visit the boy while you are there, and if you want to sing a psalm over him too, I won't be angry, Christine, because I know that you love me."

They sat together for a few more minutes without speaking. Christine's face was thoughtful and Erik had closed his eyes. His breathing was growing more shallow.

"Erik – darling," Christine added the pet name as an afterthought, "please don't go home. Stay here. Let me take care of you." She did not even know where she would put him but to send him home in his condition seemed wrong.

Her husband opened his eyes. They were watery and pale. "No, my dear. I must go." He stood up slowly. "Good of you to remind me, the time has come to take my leave."

Christine stood up beside him and took his arm. "At least let me walk with you," she said softly.

To her surprise and pain, the dying man appeared to be irritated her suggestion. "I didn't come here for that," he grumbled. "Only to tell you that it wasn't my fault that the little Vicomte died. And if you'll do me the goodness of filling in my grave for me and singing the psalm. That's all that I need of you, Christine."

"So you're planning to walk into your grave all by yourself?" she tersely replied.

"You will find me there." He frowned. "Don't argue with me, Christine, please. Do as I say. Come to the place where the Communists are buried and fill in the hole where my body will be lying. Is it such a difficult thing? I only ask you this ONE thing!"

"I will do it!" Christine whispered urgently. "I will do this for you. And I will sing the psalm. And..." She started to cry. "And I won't argue with you anymore."

"Good girl," Erik nodded. He shook her hand. It seemed so horribly formal to the girl who was trying to stop her tears. She lifted her face and stood on tiptoe to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. He smiled, a brief, glowing smile that Christine had never seen before. It was gone in a moment. "Goodbye, my dear, my love, my life. God will bless you, I have no doubt. The angels ever loved you Christine. You are the music of heaven and I have known one sweet hour with thee in the final moments of my vile existence. Bless you."

Christine let him kiss her cheek in return and then he walked steadfastly to the door. She wished he had not made his final speech so theatrical. She wished he had been able to say goodbye as if he really meant it. But perhaps, had he meant it, he would not have been able to take his leave at all.

"Goodbye, husband," she said as he opened the door to let himself out. He turned slightly to take one parting glance. "I will remember you."

He nodded and quickly departed. Christine sat down and listened to his footsteps pass down the hall and the click of the front door as it closed behind him. She thought of following him but only when it was too late.


	24. Coda

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

**Coda**

The curtain fell to moderate applause and several loud calls of 'Bravo!' from one or two enthusiastic gentlemen. Christine resisted the urge to dab at the perspiration on her forehead as a stagehand hovered in the wings with a lush bouquet. Seconds later the curtain was raised again revealing an audience of politely satisfied patrons. Christine stepped forward with her leading man curtseyed as he bowed low with a hand over his heart. Pedro smiled brightly at her and took her hand, raising her up and presenting her to the crowd for approval. The audience responded with a few more hands raised in applause and the stagehand hurried on stage, presented Christine with the bouquet, and quickly retired.

"Will you be joining us at the cafe tonight?" Pedro asked when the curtain calls were concluded and they were battling their way through the melee of artists and stage folk back to the dressing rooms.

"Thank you but I cannot," Christine called over the squeals of laughter of a ballet girl no older than twelve it seemed.

"Oh come now, you must!"

"No, really, I promised my daughter I would be home in time to say goodnight to her."

They reached the hall where doors led off to each of the artists' dressing rooms. "Oh yes, your daughter," Pedro smiled. "Does she dream of becoming a great singer like her mother still?"

"Yes," Christine laughed. "But I wish she would take more trouble with her mathematics. Sophie has been teaching her household budgeting and she doesn't care for it I'm afraid."

Pedro chuckled good-humouredly and was just then accosted by Carlotta who demanded to know what his plans were for the evening. Christine smiled and ducked quickly into her dressing room. Her dressing maid was there, waiting to help her remove her costume and wig. Christine was glad to be rid of the long blonde braids which had made her scalp itch all evening.

"Another bouquet!" the maid gasped in mock astonishment, taking the flowers from Christine. "Not that you don't deserve it. And who is it from, I wonder?"

"I haven't a clue, Jeanne" Christine shook her head, sitting down at the dressing table and laughing.

"Not from the Opera Ghost, leastways," Jeanne said.

Christine stiffened.

"You probably don't know that story," the maid continued, removing Christine's wig and placing it on a stand.

"No, in fact I remember it well," Christine cut in. "I'm so glad people don't talk about it anymore."

"Oh, to be sure!" Jeanne agreed. "Sends shivers up my spine! So you've been here long enough to know the story? I thought you'd have been too young."

"It was only nine years ago," Christine said, and stopped.

"Really? Nine years?"

"It _feels_ like nine years," Christine amended.

"Your daughter's age," Jeanne noted, brushing Christine's shoulder-length hair with a shell-handled brush.

"Yes, I suppose that's why I remember it."

"My, she is such a sharp thing though!" Jeanne chuckled. "The last time she was here I told her that God has an angel for children and do you know what she told me back? God watches children himself because angels have too much work to do in heaven keeping all of the good folks up there happy."

"Oh dear," Christine laughed.

"She was adamant on that point too! No angels for children, and none for the rest of us neither."

"I suppose she misunderstood something I said about her father," Christine hastened to explain. "I once told her that her father liked singing more than anything else, and considering how much time I have to be away from home because of the Opera..."

"Oh yes, she thinks the angels are busily singing for him night and day! Oh, how funny children are!"

With her hair brushed out and redressed, her makeup removed and costume put away, Christine took leave of Jeanne and hurried home. It was now quite dark but the streets were well lit. In half an hour she was approaching the Rue Notre Dame des Victoires having threaded her way along the honeycomb of intersecting streets. Every few yards she passed great carriage doors in the stately Parisienne buildings. Some were open, letting her glimpse the activity in the courtyards beyond. Little hidden worlds in themselves, right in the heart of Paris.

Not a day had passed in the first three years after that terrible parting during which Christine did not think at least once of Erik. It had been a relief when she realized that several could pass by without bringing him to mind, and that her memories were losing their poignancy. Tonight however she thought of him every step of her way home. Every step that he had traced from her house to the Opera on that last night. Why had she not followed him? Why?

Her thoughts turned to the day that had followed. Descending to the fifth cellar, finding him laid out in that hole near the dungeon, where the only light was her lantern. She wondered now how she had borne it. The smell, the mouldy smell of the cellars and the sweet, pungent smell of decay, seemed to have embedded itself in her nostrils for days afterwards. She had done her best to check his breathing, lying next to the grave and reaching down to feel his chest and parted lips. She had called to him. He was silent and still. She had stroked his icy cold cheek. His hands, resting on his chest, were stiff. There was a bundle of papers tied together with string hugged to his chest and a note pressed between his fingers which she had prised free. She had read it within her lantern's pool of reddish light.

"_Christine, everything I have is yours. You will find it all in these papers. Take them. Give half of it to your child, if it lives. Do not go to the house on the lake. I forbid it. Never go to that place again. _

_Your little Vicomte is buried five yards from here. I have marked the spot for you. I did not kill him Christine. It was an accident. Believe me, it is the truth._

_God bless you for your kindness to me. Farewell._

_Your loving husband."_

Christine had taken the note home with her, along with the collection of papers which she tugged free from his fast embrace. The papers were business letters of some kind, records of accounts and bank notes. She had put them aside to sort through later. Only months afterward had she noticed that Erik had not signed his final letter by name.

Filling in the grave had not been difficult. Not physically difficult at least. The first shovel of mud had been the hardest, the finality of it, the decision that he was indeed dead. She had wept bitterly with each clod and when it was done, had kept her word and sung Psalm 23 for him, her voice echoing in the catacombs. It was all she could do to finish it. After saying a silent prayer, which she had hoped God would understand and forgive, she had gone in search of Raoul's burial place. Erik had not said in which direction to find it and casting her lantern around the space, Christine had not been able to see anything like a marker anywhere. At length she realized that the shovel left for her work may have been the marker, for it had been stuck into the mud about the distance from Erik's grave that he had indicated. Just like him to have played such a cruel joke on her, she had thought. She then had searched the ground in the vicinity where the shovel had been standing until she found a place where the mud looked recently disturbed. There she had knelt down, setting the lantern down beside her.

"So, my dear friend," Christine had then sighed, gazing at the uneven ground before her. "I did not think it would ever come to this. I am so sorry for everything that happened to you." She had tilted her head to one side, lost in the calamity of all that had happened since the infamous gala night. "I am so sorry for thinking that you could ever have abandoned me. You were better than I deserved."

She turned the corner into her street and treaded the last few yards to her door. Madame Valerius had passed away quietly two years ago and left the house to her ward. It was a consolation, though Christine had at first desired to quit the house with its memories altogether. Perhaps one day she would. Nevertheless, there was Lucie, Lucie with her raven black hair and piercing eyes constantly set in a serious gaze. The house on the Rue Notre Dame des Victoires was her home since birth and she was attached to the room that used to be Christine's. Sometimes Christine wished that her daughter had belonged to Raoul so that nothing would remind her of Erik ever again. The girl had his wit and imperious temper, also his brilliance and artistic nature. Raoul's daughter would have been a golden-haired angel, Christine supposed, with an even temper and generous heart. To compare them was quite unfair, she admitted to herself. Besides, she loved Lucie for herself. She was a perceptive, loving child.

Christine arrived at the house, let herself in and climbed the stairs. Sophie met her on the landing.

"The young mistress is still awake, Madame," she said.

"Thank you Sophie. Oh, Sophie, tomorrow would you please order some more coal? I think you asked me about it this morning."

"Yes, Madame, I placed the order today and also I ordered a goose for Sunday."

"Oh yes, I had forgotten, Dr Marchant is coming to dinner."

"I thought a pie might also do nicely, Madame."

"Are you hoping to impress the doctor Sophie?" Christine smiled.

"But of course," Sophie nodded. "He is a good man."

"Thank you, Sophie," Christine concluded, choosing not to discuss Sophie's hints further. "I'm sure the doctor will appreciate it."

Sophie went downstairs and Christine knocked at her daughter's bedroom door. Only after hearing the girl's voice bidding her enter did she open the door. Lucie had once lost her temper when her mother had entered without express permission. Looking round the door, Christine saw the girl sitting up in bed, her nib pen poised over her open journal.

"Mamma!" she exclaimed. "I've been waiting for you. How long you are getting home!"

"Lucie, I've told you it isn't good to write in bed. You might get ink on the sheets."

"No, Mamma, I am careful. Besides I had so many thoughts to get down."

"Then you ought to have sat at your desk," Christine chided.

"Read this," Lucie commanded, holding out the book to her mother.

Christine shook her head ruefully and took the book. It was open at a page of verse that Lucie had scribbled. The girl had lately taken a fancy to poetry and amused herself by stringing together rhymes which were occasionally witty, and at other times rather too profound for her age.

"Do you wish me to read it aloud?" Christine asked, bringing a chair to her daughter's bedside.

"Yes, if you please," Lucie instructed. "I think it's rather good. Sophie says it is sad though."

"Oh," Christine said, bemused by her daughter's confidence. "Well, then, let me see. It has no title," she noted, sitting down.

"It's not supposed to have one."

"Oh, I see."

Christine held the book open at an angle to better catch the light. She began to read aloud.

_"Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I gave you my name?_  
_Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I smiled at you?_

_"Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I turned you away?_  
_Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I avoided you?_

_"Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I shared my nightmares?_  
_Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I needed you?_

_"Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I beat you with my fists?_  
_Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I screamed at you?_

_"Did you know that I loved you_  
_When I finally let you go?_  
_Did you know that I loved you?_  
_Did you know?_

_"I was never sure._  
_And now you're gone."_

"There! What do you think, Mamma?" Lucie demanded as soon as Christine was finished. "Sophie thinks the beating with fists part is not fit for a lady to write. But I think ladies might beat with their fists if they want."

"It_ is_ sad," Christine hesitated. "And it's very good," she assured her daughter who was now frowning at her. "I like it."

"Good," Lucie smiled, and held out her hands for the book. "I like it too."

Christine returned the journal to her daughter and folded her hands in her lap. "Sophie is correct about the beating part of it though. A lady ought not beat people if possible. Especially not somebody she loves."

"You're crying, Mamma," Lucie sternly observed.

"Am I?" Christine put a hand to her cheek and struck away a tear. "Well, it is only because your poem is very beautiful and I'm proud of you."

This made Lucie nod sagely. "You can have it when I'm dead, Mamma" she said, very seriously. "I've made a will you know. People must have wills, Sophie says so."

"Well, I hope you won't need yours for a long time," her mother smiled in spite of herself. "Now it's time to go to sleep. Give me a kiss and say goodnight."

Lucie kissed her mother's cheek and Christine turned down the gas before closing the door. She paused by the door before walking to her own room. The hall was dark.

_"I was never sure. And now you're gone."_

She stood for some moments reflecting on those words, letting all of her blackest memories arise one by one in the darkness surrounding her.

_"A lady ought not beat people with her fists...especially not somebody she loves."_

_"You have ruined my life!"  
_

_"I HATE YOU!"  
_

_"I tried SO HARD!"  
_

_"You love me too much. I am only a woman."  
_

_"You don't run from me."  
_

_"I am going to have your child."  
_

"Did you know that I loved you? Did you know?" Christine repeated to herself softly as her reverie disolved into the present. "I was never sure. And now you're gone."


End file.

Phantom of the Opera, Drama, Suspense