On the fourth day, which was seven July, she was different. Her mood was low, so much so that I feared something bad had happened to Madame Valerius. But once Raoul showed up and she didn’t disclose it to him, I knew her changed attitude was because she had only one more day before she had to make her final decision—if she hadn’t already. I felt badly for her, leaving her with that weighty responsibility, but she was the only one who could make it.
As the day moved on, she became more and more withdrawn, and Raoul asked her about it often. She’d shrug it off and continue on with what they were doing. That continued until she had to prepare for the performance, but then continued on after it was over. The tension was thick enough around them that even I was finding it hard to breathe, and I think it was making Raoul angry, because he then took a stronger hand. He started with his domineering ways when they were sitting on the stage by an open trap door and among the sets for the opening scene of the next performance.
“Christine, I can’t stand this. I demand to know what’s wrong. You answer my questions by changing the subject and dragging me off to show me a new location. Also, I’ve noticed you never show me what’s in the lower stories. Why is that, Christine?”
I believe he already knew the answer, considering he’d met me by the lake, so that question had to be his way of testing her truthfulness. That tactic worked and he got what he wanted when she finally answered his question outright.
“That’s because those cellars belong to him, and you can never go down there.”
He raised his head and his chest went out, like a bloodhound when catching a scent. “Does he also live down there?”
“He lives far away, Raoul, so don’t question it.”
She remained faithful to me with that response, but by then his superior attitude was getting on my nerves, so I gave him something else to think about. I closed the trap door. They both gasped and stared at it for a few moments, and then Christine quickly took Raoul’s hand and dragged him away.
He was walking away with her but he was looking back at the closed trap door when he asked, “It was him that shut the door, wasn’t it Christine?”
“No, it couldn’t have been him, Raoul. He’s working on something important, and when he works he’s much too involved to do anything else, especially something as trivial as closing trap doors. The managers pay men to do that, and that’s all they do all day long, close this door, close that door, all day long. I’m sure it was one of them—not Erik.”
Raoul stopped and frowned. “Christine, your hands are like ice, and you’re shaking. What’s wrong? Are you afraid of him?”
“No, certainly not, Raoul,” she replied, but not convincingly.
“Christine, you’re lying to me. Has he hurt you?”
“Raoul, no! He would never hurt me,” she insisted, while dragging him up one level to another.
“Christine, if he’s hurt you or you’re frightened of him, then why stay here? Why not leave? Come with me, and I’ll take you so far away from here that he’ll never find you.”
She stopped and looked at him, as if she was contemplating his words. “No, Raoul, I could never marry you, you know that.”
She continued with her upward climb, and he continued with his plea. “That’s not necessarily the case, Christine. But, even if it was, I could still take you somewhere where this monster won’t find you.”
Again she stopped and looked at him. “Why do you speak that way, Raoul? He’s not a monster as so many claim. He can be very kind and gentle and caring, and even wise.”
“Kind and gentle? He killed Joseph Buquet. Do you call that caring?” he demanded.
Still defending me, she rebuked him. “You don’t know that for sure. It’s just a rumor.”
“How do you know that, Christine? Did you ask him?”
Without halting her upward climb, she answered, “As a matter of fact, yes, I did.”
“And what did he say?” he asked, while trying to keep up with her pace.
She stopped momentarily and looked back at him. “That it was an accident caused by Joseph.”
With spread hands he asked, “And you believed him?”
She turned and kept moving. “You don’t understand, Raoul. He was telling me the truth, and I even saw the proof.”
“Proof? What possible proof could he show you?”
She turned and looked at him again as if she was going to answer, but then started running up another flight of stairs, with his steps and words following her.
“What proof?”
“Just forget about it, Raoul. Forget I said anything.”
“How can I, when you’re obviously frightened to death by him?”
“It’s not that,” she yelled over her shoulder, without missing a step.
He managed to grab her arm and stop her, and, while trying to catch his breath, he questioned, “Where are you going? Stop running.”
“Let’s go to the roof. He won’t be there, so we can talk.”
He complied and said no more until they were on the roof, and so was I. It was a beautiful summer night, with bright stars and a few wispy clouds. But we were all much too concerned with the direction the conversation was going in to enjoy what surrounded us. They were both out of breath and moved to a bench where they sat down.
My own heart was pounding, more from anticipation of what was to come than from exertion. I moved slowly and quietly through the shadows until I was as close to them as I could get without being seen. A large bronze statue of Apollo served as my shield where I could listen and watch them through the strings of his huge lyre.
As far as I was concerned, a foreboding air encircled the top of the opera house that night, and I feared the stage was already set and just waiting for the players to begin their final lines. I believe we would have had more success in changing the course of a river than to change the course of the events that were beginning to unfold that fateful night.
Forty-Four
Christine glanced in all directions, as if she was a frightened fawn hiding in a thicket, and I could hear her quick breaths from where I stood.
“Tell me, Christine,” Raoul started again. “What has he done to you to make you so frightened of him?”
“Nothing, Raoul. I’m not necessarily afraid of him—not like that—not for me.”
He kept moving her face toward him as he spoke. “Well, something has happened. Why do you continually go to him and then act the way you are now? What is he holding over you—love or fear? I’ve seen love in your eyes when you speak about him, a strange love that’s driven by passion. Why do you deny it?”
“Oh, Raoul,” she sighed and lowered her head again. “You can’t possibly understand, because I don’t.”
There was silence while he gently ran his hand across her back, and then, much to my heart-stopping fear, she began from the beginning and started telling him everything about us. She told him things that were to be our secrets. She divulged everything, and I felt so betrayed. She even told him about the secret passage and how she came and went from my home.
How could she? How could she tell him those things when she knew how important my secrecy was to me and my existence? My emotions began to flip flop rapidly, from pain to anger and back again. But, in the end, it was the pain that remained, and my eyes began to burn and my chest began to ache.
The first thread snapped, and a rip began to appear across my heart, and with each of Christine’s words that followed, another thread broke, and through each broken thread my heart seeped my life sustaining blood. I believe that, during those moments, if I’d looked down at my chest it would have been crimson. She’d shot me in the heart just as her lover had shot me in the back.
Once she was finished with the first of her betrayals, Raoul spoke softly to her. “Please, Christine, this is breaking my heart. Let me take you away from here where he can’t find you.”
“I can’t leave, Raoul. It would kill him if I left and he didn’t know
where I was.”
“Christine, from what I’ve heard, if we stay here, he could kill both of us.” She stared at him, and then lowered her shaking head. “Then let me take you away someplace safe,” he continued, “and I’ll come back and deal with him.”
Her head sprung up. “No, Raoul, never! You must never meet him. It wouldn’t be good for you, and something terrible could happen. Please, tell me you’ll never try to find him. Oh, I shouldn’t have told you about the passage. Please, Raoul, promise me you’ll never try to find him.”
He didn’t divulge that he’d already met me, but he did expose more of his stupidity. “I’m not afraid of him, Christine. He’s nothing more than a diabolical old man.”
“Raoul, don’t be a fool. He has . . . I know you wouldn’t survive if there was a confrontation between the two of you.”
“Oh! I hate him, Christine. I hate him for what he’s doing to us. You think this Erik is stronger and more powerful than I am, don’t you?”
With her hand over her mouth, she stared at him. “You can’t possibly understand him and what he can do, Raoul. He has an incredible mind, and I . . . I . . . he uses powers and . . . he’s unbelievable. You wouldn’t survive, Raoul. You wouldn’t survive. He would . . . He would kill you. I know it.”
Raoul sat quietly, perhaps thinking about the two times we’d already encountered each other. In a moment he said, “Then I’ll take the police with me. I’ll take lots of them. He can’t fight us all.”
“Oh, no, Raoul, you mustn’t. Promise me you won’t do that. I don’t want him hurt. You can’t let anyone hurt him. So many have already . . .”
He took her hands in his and ran his fingers over my ring. She was still looking down until he spoke her name, and then she looked up into his eyes.
“Do you love this monstrous man, Christine? Please tell me the truth. I need to know the truth, so I can be put out of this misery I’m in.”
She took her hand from his and began rolling my ring around her finger. “I wish I could answer that question, not only for you but also for me, but I don’t know, Raoul. I honestly don’t know or understand what I feel for him. His music and his voice make me feel as I’ve never felt before. It’s like being in a dream. But then there are times when he makes me so very angry, and we argue.” Then she looked directly into his eyes. “You know when he makes me the angriest? It’s when he’s talking badly about you, Raoul, just like you’re talking badly about him. You make me angry when you speak about him this way.”
Raoul looked away from her. “Christine, you’re confusing me. How can you pity him, be angry with him, and fear him all in the same breath?”
She lowered her head into her hands. “Oh, Raoul, I don’t know what I’m saying. I feel as if I’m going crazy. I just know that I need to . . . I want to be honest with you just as I’ve tried to be honest with Erik. But, most of all, I need to be honest with myself. Sometimes I get so confused that I just want to go away from both of you so I can think. You both make me angry, and yet what I feel for you both is so strong.”
She looked back up at Raoul. “I know I love you, Raoul, and I think I want to go away with you and try to forget all of this. But then there’s Erik, and I don’t know if I can live without him. I can’t leave him, and I can’t hurt him. He’s done so much for me and my career, and I know it would make him cry if I tell him I’m leaving, and I don’t want to see him cry anymore.”
While Christine continued to twist and twist my ring on her finger, Raoul came up with what he thought was a simple answer.
“Then don’t go back down there anymore, and you won’t see him cry. Let me take you away from him and his influence over you.”
She sighed, “It’s not that simple. If I don’t go back down there, he’ll be hurt and come looking for me, and he’ll call me with his voice, and I won’t be able to resist him. And if he suspects that you had anything to do with it, he could lose his temper, and no telling what he’ll do. He has a very bad temper, Raoul, and when he loses it, it’s most frightening.”
“Then that does it, Christine, you can’t go back to him. I won’t let you go back to him.”
“Oh, Raoul, you can’t say that. I have to make this decision, and he isn’t always a frightening demon like you think. Most of the time, he’s so gentle that he can cry out of tenderness. He reminds me so much of my father at those times, and I feel safe when I’m with him. He’s such a contradiction, and that’s what makes me so confused, that and how I feel about you.”
Before she twisted her finger off, Raoul took her hand. “If you fear him at all, why do you go back?”
“I’m not sure. I’m drawn to him for some reason, and, once I get down there, I don’t want to leave. There have been many times when I’m down there and it’s Erik who tells me it’s time for me to go, not me. He makes me leave, telling me he has to work on his opera. But I would stay there if he let me, and sometimes I think I want to stay there with him forever.”
Raoul’s voice was definitely irritated. “Christine, you frighten me when you speak like this. I think you might love him more than you’re willing to admit. I sense you’re not being honest with me.”
“Raoul, I brought you here so I could speak to you without hindrance. I want to be honest with you and myself, but I just don’t know for sure what honesty is right now.”
She turned her face away from him, and he spoke softly. “Do you love me, Christine?”
“Yes, Raoul. I do love you, that I know for sure. I know what love is, and I love you. I love Meg, and I love Mummy. I know what love is, and what I feel for Erik is not like that, and yet I’m compelled to go to him. When I’m with him, I feel safe in a way that no one else can make me feel. What I feel for him is so powerful and almost supernatural.”
There was silence before Raoul spoke again. “I think you’re being hypnotized, Christine, and that frightens me even more. He could make you do things without your permission.” She looked at him sternly for a few moments, prompting him to question her. “Why do you look at me that way?”
Hesitantly and slowly she responded, “You’re the second person to tell me that.”
“Who else told you that? Certainly not this man,” he said with scorn.
“No, it was the Persian. He once warned me about Erik’s power to control minds.”
Oded, I growled under my breath. His interference would surely cost him dearly if he were within my reach right then. My anger instantly flared, giving me a few brief seconds of relief from the stabs to my chest before I once again focused on their conversation.
“Then that’s what it is, Christine. You’re being tricked into going down there, tricked into doing his bidding. You must not go there ever again.”
She looked at him again, and I watched her eyes fill with tears, and she once again twisted my ring around her finger.
“What’s wrong, Christine? Why do you cry over this monster?”
She turned her head and didn’t answer, but I almost did. Between Christine’s betrayal and Raoul’s arrogance, my strength to bridle my actions was being tested to the fullest. I clutched the back of Apollo with my fingers, wishing it was Raoul’s neck. Often, I had to close my eyes and press my forehead against the cold metal in order to push aside emotions that were wearing away at what little restraint I had left.
“Christine, please don’t lie to me. I can take the truth even if it hurts, but please don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t want to lie to anyone, and especially not to myself. I’m trying so hard to be honest with everyone, but it’s driving me crazy.”
“Oh, Christine,” he said as he pulled her into his chest, “don’t cry.”
Her words were muffled and spoken through tears. “I don’t want to hurt Erik . . . poor Erik. He loves me, Raoul, and I feel something for him that frightens me, and I don’t want to hurt him.”
He took her shoulders in his hands and looked right into her eyes. “Christine, listen to me. This man is a
monster, and he’s only going to hurt you if you keep going back down there.”
“Oh, Raoul,” she sobbed and melted into his arms. “I don’t know what to do. Poor Erik. I don’t think he would hurt me, although there was a time when I thought he was going to kill me, all because I saw his face, his horrible face. Oh, poor Erik. But then he turned as meek as a lamb and cried like a baby and begged me to forgive him.
“Think of him at my feet, Raoul, cursing himself, begging for my forgiveness, and confessing his immense love for me. He crawled on the floor before me and begged me. I told him if he loved me that much, he would let me go. From then on, he showed me nothing but respect and explained to me when he would let me go, and he did. He kept his word, and he let me go. A monster wouldn’t do all that.”
“Christine, you mustn’t go back down there. This man is mad.”
“I know, Raoul, I know. If I go back down there with him, I fear I’ll never see you again. I won’t have the strength to leave him again if he cries.”
“Christine, listen to me. I don’t care what my family says. I don’t care about my inheritance or my name, I only want you. These last two weeks have made that clear to me. I only want you. Go away with me now, right now. We can move up north away from all of this, and our secret engagement can become a real one. Marry me, Christine, for real, and you’ll no longer live in fear. Come with me, right now,” he said as he got to his feet and took her hands, lifting her up.
“No, I can’t Raoul, not now. He expects me to sing for him tomorrow night, and if I’m not there his heart will surely break. He tells me that often, and I can’t be responsible for his heart breaking, I just can’t.”
Raoul huffed. “Why do you care about this man? He has caused both of us so much heartache, not to mention the deaths he’s caused. He’s nothing more than a diabolical, cold-blooded murderer.”
“No, Raoul, you don’t understand. He’s not like that, I know.”
Through Phantom Eyes: Volume Five - Christine Page 63
