Through Phantom Eyes: Volume Five - Christine

by Theodora Bruns

  Fortunately, she changed the subject when she looked at my empty plate. “You’re not eating. Have you already eaten?”

  “As I said, my needs are few. I can eat later. Right now, I’d like to hear more about you—your likes and dislikes.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully before she responded. “From what you told me last night, you already know all about me and Raoul. So you tell me what my likes and dislikes are.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Well, I know you think you love Raoul. I know he makes you angry when he talks badly about other people, and I know you have to stand on your tiptoes to kiss him.”

  “Kiss him?” She frowned and looked straight into my eyes. “I’ve only kissed him once and that was in Perros. How could you know that?”

  I leaned forward, placed my elbows on the table and my chin on my knuckles before I answered. “I have a way about me, and, when I need to know things, I have ways of finding them out. How else do you think the Opera Ghost got his reputation for seeing and hearing everything—for knowing everything?”

  “Opera Ghost?” she questioned with wide eyes. “What are you saying? Do you know the Opera Ghost?” Then she gasped and covered her mouth with her napkin. “Are you the Opera Ghost?”

  I smiled and almost chuckled while leaning back in my chair again. Then I raised my arms out from my sides and answered, “One and the same, my dear.”

  “I don’t understand. There are so many things I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t be concerned, Christine. It’s really not a mystery at all. I had to learn at an early age to see and hear everything that went on around me. It was the only way I could survive with this,” I said as I tapped the side of my mask. “Without certain skills, I would have died a long time ago.”

  “But you are human—aren’t you?”

  I chuckled, “Yes, I believe so. Although, there are times when I question that myself.”

  “Then how much can you see and hear?”

  “Well, I can’t see through walls like a real angel, if that’s what you’re concerned about. But I do have excellent hearing, so I can hear through them easily.”

  “Through walls?” she asked rhetorically. “Can you also make your voice go through walls clearly?”

  “To a degree, yes,” I replied. “You’re learning how to control your voice, how to sing softly and yet have it heard in the back of a room. That’s the beginning of what I’ve learned to do. I can make my voice do almost anything. I can make it land anywhere I want it to land. I can make it land so softly that only the ones close enough to it can hear it. I can make it sound like anything I want, whether that’s another person or animal. With enough training, anyone can do it. It’s nothing supernatural, nothing to fear.”

  She sat quietly for a few moments, and the expression in her eyes showed she was putting more of the confusing pieces together. Then she started a dialogue that I feared, since I knew it could frighten her.

  “There were times when I could hear your voice distinctly, like when it was on the roses. But there were other times when it was all around me, like the air I was breathing. Then there were times when it sounded much different, more human. Those times it came from the mirror. Those times . . . I felt . . .” She almost shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Those times, I sensed I was being watched.”

  By the time she’d said that, she was gazing at the flowers on the table, and then her gaze came back to my eyes.

  “You said you can’t see through walls, but could you see me when you were talking to me? I felt you could always see me, but that was when I believed you to be my angel. Could you somehow see me in my dressing room?”

  Here we go, I thought. “Yes, but I never watched you if propriety wouldn’t allow it. So you always maintained your privacy, if that’s what you’re frightened about.”

  She recoiled from me and looked away, still with her arms wrapped around herself. Then she looked toward her room and scrunched her shoulders.

  “Can you see into that room?” She looked back at me, almost with defiance. “Are you still watching me?”

  “No!” I responded with a strong shake of my head. “In that room you have absolute privacy—I promise.”

  “Then how could you see me in my dressing room? It didn’t have windows, so how did you do it?”

  “Your mirror is see-through. When I’m behind it, I can see into your dressing room.”

  “Behind it?” she rhetorically questioned again. “You were behind it?”

  “Yes. That’s true, but again you maintained your privacy. I never used that mirror to see anything that I shouldn’t have seen. I only used it to get to know you better so I could please you more. I only wanted to help you attain your rightful place on the stage.”

  She gazed down into her plate and rested her forehead against her fingertips. “Behind the mirror?” She looked again toward her room. “There’s a mirror in there. Can you see me through it?”

  “No. That mirror is exactly what it looks like—an ordinary mirror.”

  She looked at me with a slight frown, and then she gasped. “I walked through my dressing room mirror. You called me through the mirror, but how? I thought I was dreaming or dead, but now I know I wasn’t. I know I’m human, so how could I walk through the mirror? Explain this to me, please.”

  “You didn’t walk through it. It opens much the same way as a door. I opened it and you walked into the passage behind it with me.”

  “There’s a passage behind it?”

  “Yes, it’s one the Opera Ghost hides in and travels through.”

  “I’m so confused. Everything about last night is a blur. I was so frightened after the chandelier fell. I was frightened for those poor people and I was frightened for myself and my angel. I thought I was dead when I entered that passage.” She shuddered again. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It frightens me.”

  “Then we won’t talk about it. Let’s do something that will make you feel better. Let’s forget about the horror of last night for now and begin your music lessons. We could rehearse for the upcoming production of Othello, and when we’re finished we can sit by the fire and read a good book together. How does that sound?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Yes, I would like that.”

  We went into my music room, and, while I began playing, Christine sang Desdemona with all the despair the role called for and was so perfect that she almost replaced my horrible visions. Then the lines of Othello approached, and my voice rumbled through the room with all his anger and love, combined with my own, and, with it, the vision of the chandelier returned. I tried harder and focused on the keys. But my fingers, which transferred ruthlessly all the emotion displayed in that scene, kept changing places with the bodies lying under the chandelier. Concentrate! Concentrate, I demanded, while trying to focus on Christine’s face.

  The very air was charged with such power that I should have anticipated an explosion of great magnitude, but I never did. I never expected the hateful deception of the woman I loved and unquestionably trusted at that moment. I’d just laid my heart open, exposed, and defenseless, and yet she turned on me like Judas, with smiling lips at one moment and a viper’s bite the next.

  With the sound of our combined voices filling my home and my soul, my heart was ripped from my chest as my mask was torn from my face.

  Twenty-Four

  With gut wrenching horror, I felt my mask being ripped from my face, ripped by the hand of the woman I loved. I jumped to my feet, with clenching jaws and with my naked and gruesome face exposed prematurely. The sands of time passed in slow motion until Christine’s screams instantly woke me to the truth, causing me to storm forward in a rage that easily could have ended the life of that screeching woman.

  Quite naturally, she covered her face with her hands, attempting to hide from the monster that unexpectedly appeared before her. She backed away, fell against the wall, and then crumbled to the floor—as if preparing for her death
.

  In that instant, I felt my life end. Everything I wanted and needed was gone in that one instant. All my hope for a love with Christine vanished along with my mask, and the pain within my chest was so great I could feel it bleeding.

  Her eyes cautiously appeared between her fingers, those eyes so familiar to me, those eyes in the street when I was a child, those eyes gawking at me in the cage, those eyes on the streets of Venice, those eyes that haunted my sleep. Those eyes were then sucked into a swirling funnel and combined with my lifetime of emotional anguish and torture. Together, they joined forces and violently exploded—all in that one moment in time.

  I screamed and flung slicing words in her direction, words I would never dream of using in the presence of a lady. But, during those horrifying moments, she wasn’t a lady to me, so, with a dragon’s roar, I began dismantling everything in my path. Time moved strangely, and the happenings of the next span of time blurred and became as difficult to differentiate as ships moving on a vast sea draped in mist.

  I rushed back on her again and towered over her, growling insanely. She was crying pitifully, but then she looked up at me with her eyes filled with a different fear, and in them I saw other eyes. I saw the eyes of the men at the campfire massacre in Persia, and together they quickly stopped me. Her eyes were the same as theirs. They saw their deaths coming, and I saw their last thoughts about the monster preparing to end their heartbeats. I saw the black eyes of those Armenians, and I saw the blue eyes of my Christine; then together they shared the time and space in my darkened memories.

  My anger then moved inward, and I turned from her and continued dismantling my music room. The winds of rage tossed everything in the room—sheet music, books, chairs, wall tapestries, paintings, candles—everything in my wake was nothing more than parchment in a hurricane, including my own tortured soul. When there was nothing left to hurl, I slammed my body against a wall. Then I slumped down it to the floor in mournful cries.

  Everything was gone. I had nothing left. Christine then knew not only the monster’s face but also the monster’s heart—everything was lost. She was gone. I’d lost her for good. I had nothing left but my sorry excuse of a body and despicable soul.

  Then there was an empty stillness, and I was lying stretched out and face down on the floor, with the hem of Christine’s skirt in my hands and pressed against my naked and deplorable face. Gradually, I heard my pathetic crying mixed in with Christine’s pitiful sobs, and I felt the hem of her new dress wet with my tears.

  “Christine.—Christine,” I whispered pathetically.

  The room became silent with nothing but our breaths as evidence that life still continued in my dismantled home. Slowly, I curled away from her, turned my back, and got to my feet. A second later, her quivering voice came across the settling air.

  “It doesn’t matter. Look! It doesn’t matter.”

  I heard her get up and move into the parlor, so, with my hand covering the gaping hole in the center of my face, I glanced over my shoulder. She was hurrying through the parlor with my mask in her hand, and when she was in front of the fireplace she threw it in.

  “Look!” she continued to exclaim through her sniffles. “It doesn’t matter. Now I know what’s behind the mask and it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to wear it any longer.”

  I knew her too well, and the act she was performing wasn’t a convincing one, which sent me in a more dangerous direction than the calamity we’d somehow managed to live through.

  As I headed for my armoire and another mask, I growled low at her. “Oh, really? You’re so accustomed to seeing a man without a nose that it doesn’t matter to you any longer? Your curiosity, my little Pandora, is now sufficiently appeased?”

  “No, it really doesn’t matter,” she tried, unsuccessfully, to convince me.

  Her tear-streaked cheeks pressed into an artificial smile, adding more fuel to my fire. Her acting skills were great, but not great enough to pass her teacher’s scrutiny. I felt my anger mount with her continued deception, the anger I feared the most—my controlled anger. After slipping on another mask, I walked toward her, slowly and deliberately. Her eyes were focused intently on mine, and I heard a small whimper before she tried again to defuse the irate monster approaching her.

  “I don’t think I told you how beautiful your eyes are, and I love your smile. It makes my heart happy when you smile. Please, smile for me, Erik.”

  “If a smile is what you wish, then I’ll grant you your last wish. Is this better, my sweet,” I responded with my most sinister smile.

  She tried desperately to control her breathing, but a whimper escaped nonetheless. I stopped about two meters away from her and looked at my smoldering mask in the fireplace.

  “You really shouldn’t have done that—my dear. That mask was my favorite one, and it took me a long time to perfect. I wore it for you this day, Christine. I’ve done a lot of things for you, not only this day but for months now. I gave you my heart unconditionally. I gave you my music that made it possible for you to sing center stage.” I motioned toward my burnt mask and shook my head. “I gave you so much and this is how you repay me?”

  I slowly closed the space between us, and she started to back away but then caught herself and held her ground. When I was directly in front of her, I reached for her hair and smiled wickedly. Her quick and trembling breaths gave away her fright, and I narrowed my eyes with pleasure. Then I grasped the back of her hair tightly, forcing her head to stay in one place. I watched the fear in her eyes mount as I moved my face down until our lips were only a few centimeters apart.

  With a tone that would make the devil himself retreat, I hissed, “You deceiving temptress. My face is not bad you say, my dear? Well, that’s so nice to hear. You see, once a woman sees Erik’s face, she’s hooked and can never look upon another’s the same way again. My face is quite handsome, I agree. A feast for the eyes, I admit. Now, at long last, you know the face of the voice that has comforted you and guided you.

  “You’re extremely privileged to have seen it. You know, most never have that privilege. But it does come with a price. The Erik with the concealed face only asked you for four days, because after those four days you could have loved him. But now that you know his comely features, you’ve instantly fallen in love with him, and you’re his possession now—and forever and ever and ever. Now those four days have turned into four hundred years.

  “Oh, what’s that you say?—You don’t mind, you say?—Oh, you’re so brave for such a young and pretty girl.” I watched my fingertip move across the tears on her cheek. “A pretty girl with a beautiful voice. She could have any young man in Paris if she wanted.” I looked back in her eyes. “Would you like this man, Christine?—This man without a nose? Certainly you do, because, I’m a sort of Don Juan, you know. I’m irresistible—wouldn’t you say? Yes, I’m Don Juan, because I now have the beautiful young singer to call my own—forever.

  “What’s this I see in your eyes? Disbelief? You say you can’t believe the beautiful face of Erik can be real. Perhaps you think the face without a nose is also a mask? Well, do you want to remove it also?” I reached for her hand that was clinging to her skirt and held it in mine. “Well, see for yourself, my dear. See that its beauty is real and not merely the figment of your curious imagination.”

  Holding her hand firmly, I made her nails dig into my cheek and then ripped them across it. “Are you quite satisfied now, my pretty? Now that you’ve left a scar on Erik’s perfect flesh and made his tears turn to ruby red?”

  I looked at her quivering lips and outlined them with my finger. “Have you ever kissed a man without a nose, Christine?” Then, with unadulterated venom and narrowed eyes, I looked back into hers. “I know you haven’t. You see, I’m a dying breed—I am.” Still with a firm grasp on her hair, I moved my other hand down and wrapped my fingers around her throat.

  “They say that, when you lose one part of your anatomy, your body compensates and other parts become m
ore acute, more sensitive. Since you’re such a curious little creature, aren’t you curious to know what other body parts have compensated for my lack of a nose? Perhaps my fingers,” I questioned as I moved them slowly up and down her neck. “Or perhaps my lips, my dear. Would you like to find out what my lips would feel like against yours?”

  I remained silent for a moment and glared down into her eyes, watching as she struggled to maintain her composure. I could feel her rapid pulse in her throat, and I could feel her quickened breaths as they passed her lips and landed on mine, one after the other.

  My voice was not nearly as venomous as I repeated my question, “Well, do you, Christine? Do you want to know what it would be like to kiss the man with the angelic voice, the man with the monster’s face, the man without a nose?”

  I glanced down at her lips and then back into her eyes. She did the same, and then there was silence again with only our breathing heard. She was so frightened, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t answer me because her eyes did. But then, slowly, her eyes changed, and my anger began melting under the warmth of her gaze.

  The longer we held that position, the more my temper waned and my remorse over what I was doing to her began to slip through my web of revenge. Then my remorse started to gain the superior position, and I softened my grasp on her hair and my vengeful thoughts. Soon my hand was no longer gripping at her hair; it was cradling the back of her head. Then my fingertips woke to the softness of her hair and neck; like the finest spun silk.

  I looked again at her rosy lips and was about to back away from her when her eyes changed again and spoke that special language. They spoke the words her voice couldn’t convince me of. They weren’t frightened any longer; they were telling me to follow through on my threat and to kiss her. I studied their expression until I felt my own breathing start to increase, then I let go of her and backed away.

  The tall clock’s pendulum was the only marker of time as we fixed our attention on each other’s eyes, neither of us knowing how or when to make the next move. After a few tension filled moments, Christine released a slight sigh. I used that one simple movement to back away farther; with my head lowered in shame. Once I reached the door to my music room, I raised my eyes to hers again.