Chapter 7: Shadows of the World

I am surrounded by fools, I thought, half angry, half amused. Puppies like Chagny and Sayell to the right of me, incompetent managers to the left. And over-arrogant divas behind me.

I wondered what Chagny thought of Sayell. Surely he had noticed the dancer's all-to-obvious interest in Christine. And given his rather jealous reaction towards the supposedly-handsome, supposedly-young tutor of Christine's, I wouldn't think he'd just stand around and let Sayell worship her... unless he hadn't noticed after all. He had always been slightly oblivious to his surroundings, and Sayell seemed to be conspicuous only when the Vicomte wasn't around.

But then, Sayell didn't yet pose much of a challenge. Romantically, at any rate, though his continual presence meant I couldn't talk to Christine

At last, though, Christine was alone in her room. She had locked the door behind her, and was writing in some sort of diary. I didn't particularly want to disturb her, as she had given me no notice whether or not I should keep contact with her. But I had a gift for her: the statue, which I had been carving when I first heard her sing. It had taken a long time to finish, mostly because tutoring Christine (and being secretly paranoid about whether she had a lover on the side and wasn't telling me, and then telling myself that I was insane to suspect her, and then wondering if this were normal, and then wondering what exactly 'normal' is) took nearly all my time.

But now it was done; and though I'd started it for myself, I'd finished it for her, and I wanted her to have it. Now, in case she left suddenly with Chagny. So I decided to slip through her mirror and leave the carving--

Something half-sang into my head, a fragment of a poem: "And moving thro' a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear."

--now where did that come from...? I paused, my hand only inches away from activating the mechanism to open the mirror, and tried to associate that fragment with something identifiable. A few lines sprang immediately to mind:

Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

It was a scary thought, and there certainly were parallels: I the "Lady", cursed into solitude, an incredible illusionist who could, if I tried, make "shadows of the world appear" in a mirror. Christine then would be "Lancelot", so that I'd brought the curse on me by looking at her (and thus looking also at "Camelot", which I could parallel to normal society). I could easily see myself dying -- especially if Christine openly married Raoul -- and what better way to die than singing alone on the underground lake...?

And then I had to laugh at myself, for the last half-stanza involved Lancelot looking for the first time on the Lady's face, as she lay dying. If I remembered correctly, Lancelot -- the only knight of Camelot who didn't show fear -- said "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." And somehow I doubted that Christine -- or Raoul, for that matter -- would call my face lovely...

I smiled grimly and opened the mirror. There were no pyrotechnics, this time. Christine was not watching the mirror, and I neither needed to magnify the effect, nor wanted to draw attention to it. I slipped through, and set the statue -- an angel, with Christine's face, holding a lute in one hand and a rose in the other -- on her dresser, where I'd placed the rose the night of the Gala.

I could not exit unnoticed, however: when I turned around, Christine was watching me. Her expression was somber, and I noticed dark circles under her eyes.

"Hello," she said quietly. Her eyes locked with mine, almost holding me in place. "I thought it was you."

"Christine." I lifted my chin slightly, and longed for a cloak. She had my good cloak -- I'm not sure where she put it, that Raoul wouldn't find it accidentally, and I hadn't wanted to pry in her room -- and the only other one I had was torn and slightly dirty, and I'd never bothered to clean or mend it. And normally it wouldn't be a problem, since cloaks aren't required for skulking about Opera Houses. But I felt safe in cloaks, safe and invulnerable.

Christine either sensed my thoughts, or remembered that she had something of mine, for she quickly rose, opened one of the drawers in the dresser, and pulled out the cloak. I kept my eyes on her, as if she were an enemy who would put a dagger in my heart, and swirled the cloak around my shoulders. I knew, from long experience, how to twitch my left hand when the cloak was there, so that it would flare out most impressively.

She watched me silently, and as she seemed to have nothing more to say I turned towards the mirror to leave. But she called out my name, and I stopped and met her eyes in the mirror.

"It's been a long time, Erik."

"Indeed." And whose fault is that, dear lady? "26 days, I believe."

She blinked, though whether to the length of absence or merely to the fact that I had kept track, I was not sure. "I never got the chance to tell you that performances of our latest opera -- Tosca -- begin tomorrow. I... will you be there?"

"I'm sure you'll do well," I answered, choosing to ignore the latest question. Oh, I'm sure you'll do well, my dear. And all the while your dear Vicomte will be gazing at you oblivious to everything else, cheering at every possible moment. Oh yes. He is a lovestruck little boy and he knows it. "Even without my tutelage in these weeks, you will do well."

Her face flushed sharply at the reminder of my absence. "You could at least have said something to me, these last few weeks, even if it was only goodbye! Or was I to assume that you had abandoned me without giving me another chance?"

I whirled on her, then, feeling my veins throb with anger. "I?" I cried, my voice rising like the winds of an approaching storm. "I abandoned you?" I stalked towards her, then stopped as she shrank back. "You, who ran to the Vicomte as soon as you could, and never left his side?"

"Raoul is only a friend. I told you that."

Is that really what you think? And, more to the point, is that what he thinks? That boy loves you, Christine, whether you admit it or not.

She bit her lip. "I thought you were a man, Erik, not a god who could see into men's hearts. How do you know he does love me as you say, and as a man rather than a brother?"

Oh dear, oh dear. Had I spoken aloud? "Because I knew him before you did, Christine. I know his type. I know him. And he loves you -- believe me on this if nothing else." I unclenched hands I hadn't realized were clenched. "Chagny is a fool. And if he continues pursuing you," I added silkily, "he might just be found in -- oh, say, the third cellar, which is as far as anyone dares go. Swinging from his neck by a rope -- and it is not a pretty sight, Christine, not at all. But it will be suicide, of course, and no way to tell differently."

"Erik!"

I laughed, then, at the shocked expression on her face. "I'm not serious, Christine." A half-lie, really; if Raoul continued to steal Christine I wouldn't be beyond threatening him. But she didn't need to know that, not now. "You should know better. Raoul has given me little reason, as yet, to kill him. Besides, if ever I do need to teach him a lesson, I'd make sure it clearly is a lesson."

A knock at the door interrupted me, and Chagny's unbearably cheerful voice called Christine's name. She turned towards the door for a moment, and I took that moment to escape through the mirror. Chagny, who a moment later sauntered through the door, didn't even suspect my presence.

You may be a fool, Chagny, but you have your usual impeccable timing. I scowled at him from behind the mirror as he presented Christine with a barely-opened red rose. She replied with the usual meaningless pleasantries, and he laughed, kissed her hand, and asked her to lunch.

"But I have rehearsal, Raoul, you know that." She pulled back, and I thought I saw her eyes flicker towards the mirror.

"Oh," he insisted, smiling, "but surely there is plenty of time before the rehearsal! And you must eat. I know you won't eat tonight, you never do eat before performances. You can't go all day without food. Now: come. We go to lunch."

I saw that it was pointless for her to argue with him; he was set on taking her to lunch, and could be quite stubborn. And I didn't really want to see her accept his offer -- as surely she would -- didn't want to see her smile shyly at him and forget about the dark shadow in the mirror. So with a slight sigh I turned away, ignored the impulse to leap out of the mirror and spirit Christine away from Raoul's arms, and stalked into the darkness of the maze which was my realm.

But the darkness gave me no comfort; shapes which I knew did not exist loomed up before my eyes. Imaginary voices whispered in my ear, taunting me. The darkness closed in on me, appearing to flood out the air, choking me and suffocating me and, worst of all, disorienting me. Is this what other people feel in the dark? I wondered, as for the third time I found myself hard against a wall. The edge of the mask cut into one hand, although I didn't remember removing it. Or am I simply going mad?

Somehow I found myself near a crack in the wall which I had enlarged to let in some air. I stood for a long moment by that crack, feeling the cool touch of fresh air against my skin, until my breathing slowed. The voices remained, but fainter; it took me a moment to realize that they were no longer imaginary. Curious, I crept a little closer to the source and flattened myself against the wall to hear better.

"...and from that day on, there was a silver-haired ghost wolf running in Copenhagen. Only a few people have seen it; most have forgotten of her until she comes for them in the night." The voice, thickly accented, was one I recognized: Joseph Buquet, one of the master stage workers.

There was a slight pause, filled with the rustle of ballet shoes -- I assumed, since he often told stories to a group of chorus members -- on a wooden floor. "Well then," he said in a rough but enthusiastic voice, "shall I tell another one? Or are you too frightened?" There was a chorus of both nos and yesses -- I think depending on which question they were answering -- but they finally made it clear to the stagehand that they wanted another.

"This is a true story," he said in a somber voice. "About a ghost who haunts this very Opera..."

And as I listened, he told my story.

Not entirely accurately, of course. He seemed to know little of my life before the Opera. But he knew that I had helped to build the Opera House, and knew that I lived inside the walls. He knows far too much, I thought savagely. I need to deal with him. Soon.

But as his tale progressed, the facts fit less and less: he claimed that my birth-name was Pierre (hah!) and that I was the son of a stoneworker in Rouen. That I had run away from home at the age of 7. That I could change my shape, like a werewolf. (Not an ability I would mind having, of course, but physically impossible.) That I could create steel sculptures out of string, or could carve stone with my bare hands. And then he came to describing my looks, and I nearly laughed.

"He looks like Death itself," Buquet said in a hushed voice. "His skin, it is like my great-grandmother's letters, yellowed and brittle. He has a deep, unfathomable black hole where his nose should be; his eyes gleam with golden fire. If he comes upon you in the night, all you see is those fierce fire-eyes; and then the magic lasso comes up behind you, and his eyes light up with fierce red flames just before you die."

Utter nonsense; although I could see where the "magic" lasso came from, for those who had seen me in action swore I didn't move even when I did, none of the rest of it matched. Fire-eyes, indeed.

"Ahh, yes." Buquet sighed, a long, drawn-out wheeze. "He is like all ghosts; if you honor him he will leave you alone. But if you do not respect him, he will come for you in your dreams; he will come and sing for you and drag you into the lowest depths of hell." There was a deep silence, broken only by my own breathing. Then he shooed them off to rehearsal, with a cheerfulness which sounded forced.

You know too much, Buquet. Far too much. I should teach you a lesson... But I was too tired, far too tired, to do anything about him now. He was only a storyteller, after all, and renouned around the Opera House for telling ghost stories; I doubted that his audience held too much truth to them. Probably most of his "true" stories were almost completely fictional, or were based on someone else's "true" tales. And for the one-in-a-hundred stories which did contain quite a bit of fact, they could easily be passed off as another fiction.

I started to move off, to go back to the lair -- maybe to work on Don Juan, which I had neglected for too long. The chorus seemed to have departed in silence, except for one, who stayed to talk to Buquet. I only paid half-attention to their conversation at first, but the first words caught my curiosity.

"Is the Opera Ghost real, Buquet?"

I recognized the voice as that of Christine's dancer "friend," Sayell. He sounded tense, and I wondered why; he hadn't struck me as being superstitious.

Silence met the question; then, "I don't know. I've heard stories... but little more. Why do you ask?"

Sayell dropped his voice, and I couldn't hear what he said next. But Buquet burst out with a sudden oath. "You aren't serious," he stammered, "you can't be. No. You aren't..."

I got the feeling that he was saying that to convince himself as much as to convince Sayell; I crept closer, curious to hear what Sayell was saying.

"I swear to you, I'm not lying." He sounded strained. "I wish to God I were. But I'm not. I tell you, I went back there. And I saw a shadow. Was it the Opera Ghost? Or were my eyes playing tricks?"

Buquet made a few strangled noises. "You're crazy. Didn't they tell you not to go there? The cellars are his domain! You shouldn't have been there!"

"I was, though, and I can't change that now. And I need to know: Was that him, that I saw there?"

"If it was, he'd have killed you," Buquet said hoarsely. "I think you were pretty damn lucky, and you should keep your mouth shut."

Sayell muttered something -- I thought I heard "superstitious cowards" in the middle -- and sighed. "Thank your for your advice," he said, sounding like he didn't really mean it. "I should go get ready for rehearsal."

I put my mask back on, and stood for a moment, thinking. I now had two people who knew too much. Buquet -- but he was quite superstitious, and seemed to make up half his stories. Sayell -- he had, or at least said he had, gone into my 'domain.' Not down into the lair, and not far enough to trigger traps -- unless he passed me when I was too preoccupied to notice, since some of the traps I had to disable temporarily to pass through -- but far enough to see something. Still, Sayell was just a boy, really. And after Buquet's story today, if Sayell talked, the others might think he was embroidering on the ghost story.

And yet--

He would talk, and rumors would spread. And though I could count on them not totally believing Buquet because of his reputation as storyteller, Sayell had no such reputation. They might start to believe him...

I had to make sure he didn't talk.

Swiftly I made my way to his dressing room; although I did not have a mirror-entrance installed, there were other ways to get in. I made sure, when the Opera Populaire was being built, that each room had at least one secret entrance; in this case, it was a sliding panel in one wall. After listening for other voices, I slipped through.

Sayell did not see me enter, since his back was to me. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall and waited. He did not take long to notice me -- perhaps dancers are used to sensing the locations of others, to make blocking easier -- and when he did, the reaction was immediate. His face paled, the skin under his eyes twitched, and his mouth half-opened.

"Hello," I said with mock geniality. "I see you know who I am."

"Yes," he whispered; his tongue flickered out and licked his lips. "Yes, I do."

Slowly, making sure he saw what I was doing, I drew out the coil of thin rope which I always carried. Rope, I had found, could be very useful, especially the strong thin rope I used. I ran the rope through my fingers once, and then wound it around itself, seemingly absently.

"I heard your conversation with the stagehand Buquet," I said conversationally, beginning to pace slightly. "He was right, you know. It isn't wise to venture into my domain. And even less wise to brag about it." I pulled the rope tight and dangled the finished product before him. He gulped and stepped back, recognizing the lasso for what it was.

I smiled at him, but not with the intent of relaxing him. "I've been following you for some time, Sayell." The loop swung lazily from my fingers. "You seem to have a rather unhealthy interest in the singer Christine Daae, wouldn't you say?"

"I, uh..." He stumbled backwards and tripped over a chair. I watched him coldly, making no offer to help him as he scrambled up. "No, I wouldn't say," he said, half angry, half afraid. "I'm not threatening to kill her or anything."

Now came time for the ordinary rope to convert itself to the "magical lasso". I'm sure all he saw was a flick of my hands; the next moment, the rope was around his neck. I pulled the rope in, slowly drawing him towards me. He fought a little, but I'm sure that survival instincts did not allow him to do much more. Besides, he probably had convinced himself that I was hypnotizing him with my eyes, like a snake.

When at last he was close enough to touch, I turned him around so his back was to me, placed one hand on his shoulder and one knee behind his, and forced him to kneel. I then half-crouched over him and whispered into his ear:

"You've convinced yourself that you're important, that you saw something in the cellars which I don't want you to know about. I can assure you that you saw nothing but dark, dust, and rats."

"Then why--" He grabbed at my leg; I danced back, and decided it would be wise to bind his hands in front of him. The rope was certainly long enough for me to cut a length off, and I forced him again into submission before giving the lasso a warning tug.

"You were saying?" I asked cheerfully.

"Why," he repeated, sounding like he was clenching his teeth, "why did you come here, then, if you have nothing to hide?"

Nothing to hide? You should know better, Sayell. Everyone has something to hide. "Because you would otherwise still think there was, and you would talk; people would come into the cellars expecting to find something, and if they blunder too far they might actually find something."

"So there is something down there, then?"

Daring fellow. And either very brave or very foolish, though I suspected more the latter. I jerked the lasso again. "There is something everywhere," I hissed. "Down there, it's mostly Death."

I could feel him subtly testing the strength of the binding around his wrists. "So... what does the cellar have to do with Christine?"

I tightened the lasso a little more forcefully, and felt his whole body quiver. The lasso was meant to strangle, unlike death by hanging in which the victim died of a broken neck. I wasn't planning to kill Sayell, just scare him. A lot. And he would get mighty uncomfortable before he was in real danger of dying. "You ask too many questions, boy. Dangerous thing to do."

He wheezed slightly, and I let the rope slacken a little to let him talk. "You still haven't... answered my question."

I leaned closer to him, "accidentally" pressing my knee into the small of his back, and taking grim satisfaction in his twitch of pain. "I don't need to. But -- Christine is mine, and you oughtn't forget that; and right behind me is the Vicomte de Chagny, who probably doesn't take rival suitors very kindly."

"Oh so you're Christine's mysterious tutor? We wondered about that... she wouldn't say who he was." He shrugged slightly. "But then, she's always got her head in the clouds. I wouldn't have put it past her to make this thing up to get some attention."

I suddenly became angry at him, and started emphasizing my words with vicious flicks of the rope which tightened the lasso. "Don't say things like that about Christine!" He started to choke, and awkwardly brought his hands up to his throat, clawing as best he could with bound hands; I ignored that and continued to tighten mercilessly. "She's not flighty, she doesn't make things up, and she certainly does not do it to get attention!" I took another breath, ready to launch into how Christine at least had the sense to keep her mouth shut, and that if I heard even a rumor about him talking, about his visit to the cellars or about my little talk here, or even about the identity of Christine's tutor, I would personally make his life a living hell before I killed him.

And then I realized that I'd done too good a job, and that I'd never again have to worry about him talking. Dead bodies don't talk.

I stared, almost paralyzed by shock at what I'd done. I'd killed before, and though I'd always had damned inconvenient pangs of conscience which I'd never managed to shake, I could never admit to much remorse. The killing had always been unavoidable, before... and I had never had Christine, attached to me by an invisible silk thread of emotion, which a murder could easily sever.

Emotion... fah. Stupid things, especially love. Everyone could be so much more efficient without them. They restrict you and bind you until the only thing you can do is fawn dotingly on someone to whom you've pledged lifelong commitment... Angrily I shut all thoughts of Christine out of my head, and with the cold detatchement I had come to wear as an invisible cloak prepared to deal with the body.

I couldn't simply hide him; if he didn't show up for rehearsal this afternoon, they would come looking for him. If he had been seen going into his dressing room, but not out again, people might suspect. But he'd had the courtesy to lock his door; perhaps I could pretend... I threw the other end of the rope around the light fixture, pulled on the loose end until Sayell's feet were several inches off the floor, and lashed it down with slightly feigned clumsiness. I then found a box which had been tossed into a corner, stood on it a moment to give it the imprint of shoes, and kicked it out of the way. When I was done, there was little to prove that it was murder and not suicide.

No feigned suicide note, of course; I couldn't fake his handwriting well enough, and an obviously fake note would be detrimental. I looked at the setup, nodded with satisfaction, and left through the sliding wall panel.

They would find him, and probably soon. There would be a police investigation, and, having little proof for murder -- and presumably almost everyone in the building had a decent alibi, since none of them had done it -- would deem it suicide. Life would go somewhat back to normal; Tosca might not start tonight as planned, but it would run. Little would change. Except--

Except perhaps Christine. I dreaded to know what she would think... especially when rumors of Opera Ghost Murders spread around the cast and crew. I had to explain myself, and fast.

The only difficulty was, I mightn't be able to talk to her alone until Sayell was discovered... and by that point, it may be too late.

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Other references:
Full text of "Lady of Shalott", and a cool pic relating to "Lady"
A really wacky "Lady"-related story which doesn't have much to do with Black Rose, but which I thought was amusing.