Page 13 of Angel's Mask

Christine’s blood jumped. Somehow, the moment she’d seen the Phantom in that hall, she’d known. “But why? I’m nothing. Why would he do that?”

Jean-Paul shrugged, his whole body drunkenly leaning to the left as he did. “Who knows! He’s like that sometimes. Folks don’t talk about it as much as the frightening bits but...he helps people. The ones he thinks are good enough.”

“Why would he help me?” Christine said, more to herself than Jean-Paul. “Who – what is he?”

“No one knows,” Jean-Paul replied through a yawn. “There are a dozen stories about how the place opened with a ghost already there. None of us know what he is: Communard prisoner, violinist who killed himself, or something else.” Jean-Paul shrugged, hiccupped, closed his eyes, and keeled over onto the table again.

“Something else,” Christine whispered, shivering.

She walked back into the Opera proper. It was very late, and the building was silent and dark, but Christine had the candle Julianne had given her the night before. The quivering light did little to dispel the shadows down every hall, and at any other time, the stillness and the dark would have made Christine afraid. But not tonight. She didn’t feel the sense of being watched as she had on and off since her arrival, but she still felt welcome. This washisopera they said. So, she hoped he would not mind where she was headed. She had a promise to keep.

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The auditorium of theOpera was never fully dark. It simply was not allowed. Once the chandelier was extinguished and the footlights doused, a single oil lamp always remained on the stage, burning low in a wrought-iron cage meant to keep the fire in check. It was called a ghost light. Every theater had one, and Erik could not help but think that if it was meant to keep ghosts away, it was extremely ineffective.

The ghost light cast the great chamber in a hundred shades of shadow. The golden gilding on the boxes and statues shone ever so dimly, and the red velvet of the seats and curtains looked almost black. High above, a few of the great chandelier’s crystals shimmered like fairy wisps in the dark, leading travelers astray.

Perhaps the lights had led him here, Erik thought, as he gazed about the empty theater, pushing his lank hair carefully out of his eyes, and realizing for the first time he had forgotten his hat somewhere in his distraction. He’d wandered for hours, far below the Opera, to his home and back, unable to escape the thought of Christine Daaé and her shining eyes. The cold and the utter quiet of the theater were a welcome relief.

A noise broke through the stillness. Footsteps. Erik hid in the shadows of the orchestra pit, alarmed that anyone would be on stage at this dark and dangerous hour. Whoever it was, they would never dare to intrude upon his nighttime kingdom again after what he would do now. He steeled himself as the steps grew closer, preparing to strike...and swore in consternation under his breath. It was her. Of all the places he could have been, fate had led him to this ridiculous, astonishing girlagain.

Erik watched dumbstruck as Christine came to the very center of the immense stage and set her candle down. Her hands were shaking, and she looked more nervous and scared than he had ever seen her. She knelt, as if to pray, and stared into the dark.

“I know you can hear me, ghost.”

Erik tensed at the tremulous, extraordinary words.

“I don’t know how, but I can feel it. I can feel you here. And I just needed to tell you...thank you.” Erik recoiled deeper into the gloom. “You heard me. You made me believe. I tried not to for so long, but you saw me, somehow and helped, so, thank you.”

He looked away, the strangeness of the sentiment twisting in his brain. Pityandgratitude in one day were too much.

“I believe. I can’t deny that now. So, with your leave, there is someone else I must talk to.” Erik’s eyes flew back to her. Was she holding back tears? She looked up, towards the chandelier; no, towards heaven. He knew before she spoke which ghost she sought now.

“Father...I promised you I would sing on the stage of the Paris Opera one day. And you promised me that you would send me an angel to guide me so that I could.” She bit her lip, a tear escaping down her cheek. Erik knew he was intruding on a terribly intimate moment, but he could not turn away. He had barely thought about how showing himself to her in that hall would bring back someone long lost to her. Such a deception might have filled a good man with guilt.

“I’m so sorry, Papa. I don’t know what I did to make you break your promise. And I know this isn’t the way you wanted me to keep mine, but it’s the best I can do.”

Erik tilted his head as Christine rose, closed her eyes, and took a quavering breath before the first soft notes of Susanna’s garden aria fromThe Marriage of Figaroquivered unsteadily from her lips.

“It is at last the moment, when I can rejoice without care,” she sang in Italian. Erik flinched at the breathy, broken notes, and turned away. He already knew too much about this girl’s heartbreaking dreams. He didn’t want to hear a voice that was just as pathetic and miserable. “In the arms of my beloved...” He stopped. In the lower register, her voice gained strength and depth. And beauty.

“Timid scruples, leave my heart...” Something in the thin, shaking sound was changing, growing in strength and confidence. No, her voice was not terrible, far from it. This was the girl who has listened rapt toFaustfrom the shadows and now she sang Mozart with the deepest love in her voice. “Oh, how it comes, the fire of love, to this place.”

Erik turned back slowly to watch her, fascinated, and fighting back mounting amazement as the recitative continued. Note by note, her song transformed, growing rich with longing and astounding light. “The earth and the sky respond! How the night furthers my deceptions...”

Erik could not deny it anymore. Her voice was like her eyes in that dark corridor: completely unexpected and utterly beautiful.

“Please come, do not tarry, oh beautiful joy.” He relaxed into wonder as she began the aria proper. Not only was her voice beautiful – shining and warm, like a summer sky full of stars – he could hear her heart as she sang. “Come to where love calls for your delight.” Behind Mozart’s idyllic melody was such yearning, such beautiful loneliness, and he felt each note in the depth of his own forgotten soul.

“Here the river murmurs and the light plays, and restores the heart with sweet ripples,” she sang. The song was a call to another world, begging heaven to hear her. Erik tried to focus on the many deficiencies in her technique – her shallow breaths and wavering pitch in the tessitura – but the untamed beauty of her voice was too intoxicating. Her song swept him up in ecstasy even as her eyes gazed out into the dark, the ghost light making her tears shine like gold.

“Come, my love,into this hidden garden. Come, come...” The phrase grew slowly, flowing, ardent, and full of longing that took Erik’s breath away. He had never heard a voice with such raw potential or true feeling in his theater. “And I will see your brow crowned with roses.” The perfect, flowering notes filled Erik with an aching as strong as the one he heard in her voice. He had to do something. How could he let her prayer go unanswered when she had looked at him and pitied him? How could he dream of forgetting her? This girl didn’t deserve only a ghost’s charity. She deserved everything she ever had been or could be promised.

“Crowned with roses...” The last notes faded into silence and Christine closed her eyes and shivered, as tears streamed down her face. Even weeping, she had stopped beingalmostbeautiful. To Erik, in that moment, she was radiant.

“I’m so sorry, Papa, please forgive me,” she whispered, again looking to heaven. “I know you wanted more from me than this. But I can’t. I can’t make that dream come true. Not alone.” She gave a defeated sigh as the darkness answered with silence, as it always would, unless...

Erik shook his head. No. It was insane. He couldn’t. Even though it would be so easy, so perfect. As if heaven itself had set the path before him.

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