Phantom

Chapter Thirty-Two



Nobody came. Her screams didn’t alert the Calvary, probably because there was no Calvary. No white knights riding in on their stallions, either. Not for her. Rebecca was on her own—unless you counted Wendy. But Wendy wasn’t going to be offering any assistance any time soon.

She thought about trying to get her down. It somehow seemed horribly disrespectful to let her continue to hang there. Wendy would be angry if people saw her that way, looking less than Barbie doll perfect. She wouldn’t like that at all. The fact that Wendy was well past liking or caring about anything didn’t really register. Letting that register would mean accepting that Wendy was really gone, that she was alone with a corpse. And accepting that would probably shatter the thin layer of sanity that Rebecca was managing to hold intact.

It took a great deal of effort, but she managed to pull herself up from the floor. Almost as much effort as it took for her to get herself controlled enough to stop the desperate screams from pouring out indefinitely. She stood and examined the scene for a possible way to set Wendy free. As she did so, she meticulously wiped the dust from her pant legs, knowing it was ridiculous, that it was proof of her precarious grip on reality, but doing it just the same. She needed something, anything, however mundane to concentrate on so she didn’t think too much about what was happening around her.

“Owwww.”

There it was again, another low groan. It was followed by what could only be described as a muffled, barely audible plea for help. Someone was trying to talk over some kind of obstruction. There was no way it was Wendy. Her mouth was forever frozen in that terrible grimace. So it could only mean one thing. Rebecca wasn’t alone. There was someone else, someone who was actually alive, in the auditorium with her.

Her breath came in short pants. Her knees threatened to buckle for the second time that night. She didn’t know what she should do. Move forward and see who was in trouble, assuming someone was in trouble. Or run, as far and as fast as her wobbly legs would carry her. Common sense told her to get out of there before she wound up like Wendy. A nagging sense of guilt pushed her forward. If someone else was in trouble, she had to help them. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe it wasn’t. But at least if she died, it would be with a clear conscience.

The sound was coming from just behind the curtain. It was only a few feet away, but it might as well have been across a bottomless pit. It was intimating to take those few, shaky steps. It didn’t help that all she could hear was the constant creak of Wendy’s body as it swung slowly back and forth. That awful sound was far worse than fingers on a chalkboard. It was making it hard for her to concentrate on taking that scary leap into the unknown.

Creaakkk. Creaakkk.

She wanted to cover her ears before the awful sound pushed her over the edge and into the black abyss of insanity, but she needed her ears to guide her. She had to save whoever it was who needed saving. She had to focus on that.

“Hello?” Her voice was hoarse from screaming. She hardly sounded like herself at all. “Who’s there?”

Another muffled cry came in reply. Louder this time, with more infliction. It sounded almost like words, like a cry for help. And it was followed by a pounding that was very much like a foot banging against the hardwood floors in extreme agitation. It was insistent, determined. Whoever it was knew she was there, and they were calling to her in the only way they could.

Rebecca cautiously stepped behind the curtains. The lights were already on. It wasn’t as bright as she would have liked, but she could see clearly enough. There was barely room to walk in the small room; it was so overcrowded with props. The platform that Justyn had fallen from was pushed into one corner. Miss King had decided to cut it out all together after the accident, so no one had bothered to repair it. She could see where the wood had splintered, and it made her shudder a little. She turned her head away from it and looked over at the piles of costumes, candelabras, fancy dressing tables, and the painted backgrounds from the sets that filled every corner. There were lots of props, even a few mannequins in full costume. But no living, breathing people were anywhere to be seen. Rebecca was still alone.

She almost sighed with relief. Maybe she had been imagining the moaning after all. Maybe there was no one there, no one in trouble, and she could go get help for Wendy and put the whole terrible day behind her. Of course, that would have been way too easy.

“Hummph! Humph!”

Rebecca jumped. The cry came from her immediate left. So close that she almost expected a hand to reach out and grab her shoulder. If they had, she would have likely died from fright on the spot, her heart exploding in her chest. But no one touched her. Instead, they just continued their muffled cries until Rebecca spun around, desperate to figure out where the sound was coming from. She didn’t see anything but piles of discarded costumes. The room was empty.

She was just about to move a little further into the room when she noticed something out of place. The pile of clothes on the floor shifted ever so slightly. When it did, she saw a pair of white sneakers poking out from beneath one of Carlotta’s pink shawls. Even as she saw it, the shoe started to pound on the floor. She noticed that the sneakers were attached to a pair of legs covered in faded blue jeans. With a shocked gasp, Rebecca ran to the corner, and started tossing away dresses, capes, and ballerina tutus. Underneath the mess, she at last found what she had been looking for.

“Tom!” she cried out. “Oh my, God, Tom! Tom, are you all right?”

It was a rhetorical question. There was no way he was going to answer her. Even if he wasn’t dazed and only half conscious, with a stream of blood running from his forehead into his eyes, he was still gagged. A pair of nylon stockings were rolled into a ball and shoved into his mouth, making it impossible for him to do anything but mutter insensibly. When he tried to speak, it gagged him so badly, she was afraid he was going to choke to death on the spot. She quickly pulled it free, and waited impatiently for him to catch his breath.

“Tom, what happened? Who did this to you?”

Tom coughed, and gasped for what seemed like hours before he could speak. Even when he could, his words were broken and garbled. “Becca . . . we have to . . . we have to get out of here. Before he comes back. Jesus, Becca . . . he . . . he killed her.” His eyes were wide with the same terrible memory that haunted Rebecca. “He killed Wendy.”

“I know, I know.” Rebecca sobbed. She wasn’t even sure when she had started to cry. But now that she had started, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to stop.

“Get me out of here!” Tom struggled with the ties that bound him to the dressing room chair. “Before he comes back.”

Rebecca’s hands were already fumbling with the complicated knots. They stopped working completely when the implications of that simple word, “he”, suddenly dawned on her. It seemed there was only one “he” that Tom could possibly be making a reference to. But still she needed to hear him say it. As much as she dreaded his answer, Rebecca had to know.

“Who did this to you, Tom?” she asked. She had no idea how she managed to keep her voice so calm and detached.

“He was wearing the mask, the whole phantom get-up. I didn’t see his face,” Tom told her. “But it had to be Justyn.”

Justyn. It had to be Justyn.

To say that her heart broke would have been the understatement of the century. It shattered, no it ruptured. There was nothing left in her chest, but a gaping, bleeding, open wound that throbbed and ached like nothing she had ever experienced. How could anything hurt so much when there was no physical indication of any injury? How could she hurt so much that she thought even death might have been a blessing?

“Becca!” Tom shouted. “Hurry up!”

Rebecca snapped back to present, to Tom. It wasn’t fair to let him go down with her. Her hands worked the knots like a robot. No longer her own hands at all. They were just mechanical appendages performing the task assigned to them. The rest of her body was numb. She had stopped crying, and she had fallen into a strange state that probably looked like calmness, but was really an agony so deep it had turned her into something of a zombie. But still, she was actually making some progress on Tom’s ropes.

Rebecca and Tom were so involved with the intricate knots; they didn’t even notice they weren’t alone anymore. He was silent as any ghost. He made no sound as he slipped into the room. In true phantom style, he made his grand entrance, perched high above them on the wooden platform, clad in the blood red coattails from the ballroom scene. The costume was called Red Death, and how fitting it was. The outfit was sewn in blood red velvet and complete with a full-faced mask in the shape of the grinning grim reaper. It completely hid the true face of the phantom from their view.

“So now you come to my domain

In this place you will find only pain.

Your lover thinks he can save you

But escape there will be none.

Time to put aside childish games,

The real nightmare has begun.”

Rebecca and Tom snapped their heads up at the sound of the grotesque song. The voice distorter garbled the words. Certainly, there was no hint of Justyn’s angelic singing voice. Why the need for these games now? Why the drama? He was out in the open. It was all going to end now, one way for the other. There wouldn’t be any witnesses when it was over, she was sure. There was no reason to pretend anymore.

“Justyn! Justyn, please . . . why are you doing this? Why do you need to hurt people? All this violence. For what? ”

The reply was sad, almost whimsical, if it was possible to sound that way while speaking through a machine. Yet, Rebecca couldn’t feel any sympathy. Not after the things he had done. The people he had hurt.

“To be a monster has always been my fate.

There are no words to save you—it is too late.

Blood on my hands is a curse I must bear.

No hope for salvation. No love I can share.”

Even as he finished the last line, Rebecca saw the lights flicker on something silver in his hands. Even before he held it up and took aim, she knew with a horrible certainty exactly what it was. In an instant, Rebecca found herself staring straight into the barrel of a gun.

Rebecca didn’t know much about guns. It wasn’t very big, but she was sure it was big enough to do some serious damage. Even if she had thought of some type of escape plan, it would have been abandoned now that she had this new obstacle to face. Tom had somehow managed to free one arm, and was working on the second. But they couldn’t run. Not with a pistol pointed at their backs, and a person they knew was crazy enough to fire it standing with their finger on the trigger.

“Justyn, you have to stop this!” Rebecca cried. She stepped in front of Tom, blocking him from the firing range. “Let Tom go. It’s me you want. I promise I’ll stay if you let him go.”

“No, Becca . . . .”

Tom started to protest, but he was cut off by the eerie voice box, for the first time speaking in plain English and not using lines from the play. The cold, callous tone was enough to stop anyone in their tracks.

“You must care for your hero an awful lot if you’re willing to risk your life to free him.”

“I don’t want anyone else to die because of me! Please, please Justyn . . . .”

“Owwwww.”

Rebecca stopped short in the middle of the thought when she heard the moan. It definitely wasn’t Tom this time. He was silent behind her, and somewhat paralyzed as he stared at the gun. The sound had come from the other side of the room, far on her right. She gasped, and looked around to find the source, while still desperately trying to hold her ground and protect Tom.

“Becca, Becca,” the phantom tsked. “So quick to doubt the one you claim to love. Perhaps your love isn’t an award worth fighting for, after all.”

Even as he said it, Rebecca heard the moan again. Things weren’t what they seemed. She realized that now. There was more to this story that she had ever thought. More players than any of them had known. Even before she saw the silver toed black boot protruding from the second pile of costumes, she realized what a fool she had been. Even before the costumes shuddered as someone struggled beneath them, Rebecca was flying across the room. She was on top of the costumes in an instant, tossing the clothes away in desperation.

And there was Justyn. Poor Justyn. In far worse condition than Tom was. His entire face was bruised and bloodied. It was hard to tell where the phantom makeup ended and the real wounds began. One eye was completely swollen shut, and there was a large gash across his forehead. He was tied, just like Tom, to one of the dressing room seats. He had been less than ten feet away the entire time, but he must have been unconscious. He was only starting to come to, and didn’t seem to have any idea the kind of danger they were in.

“Justyn! Justyn, say something!”

“Aghhh, Bec . . . Becca? Ouch, my head . . . .”

Rebecca cried and kissed his bloody forehead, as gently as she could manage. “Oh, Justyn.”

“How sweet. A lover’s reunion.”

Rebecca was so filled with relief to know that Justyn wasn’t the killer, wasn’t the real phantom, she almost forget that they weren’t alone. The garbled voice brought her back to reality. The phantom had gotten closer. While she had worked to extract Justyn from the smothering costumes, the red-cloaked skeleton had inched his way down from the platform, moving as silently as a ghost. Now he was so close that she could feel his breath on the back of her neck as he spoke. But he was still partially hidden in the shadows so she couldn’t make out who he was.

Rebecca turned to face him, furious, outraged. She used her body to shield Justyn. Tom was white-faced and silent, watching the scene. But the phantom had his back to Tom, so at least for the moment he was safe—safer still since the barrel of the gun was aimed squarely at Rebecca’s chest. She didn’t let it stop her. She held her ground firmly, and didn’t flinch.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” came the mechanical reply.

She should have been scared, terrified, when she was facing such a deadly opponent. But Rebecca was done playing games. Awesome fury had squashed all remnants of fear and squeamishness. It was ending. Right here, right now.

Rebecca reached out her arm, and in one quick movement, pulled away the skeleton mask.

Then she gasped as with a smirk of satisfaction, the phantom stepped from the shadows. Rebecca backed up a step, almost falling over when she recognized the familiar features—the short hair, the broad shoulders, the bulky frame large enough to fill out the masculine costume. The large strong arms, powerful enough to overpower two boys. Rebecca saw the face of the phantom. Saw her face. Not his. Not a man. The phantom was a woman, and one she would never have suspected. Rebecca couldn’t fight back her tears or the awful feelings of betrayal as her tormenter was at last revealed.

“I am your dark angel.”

It was Debbie. The phantom was Debbie.