How is it possible? That he’s the maestro who’s been in my dreams all these years? It can’t be. But his glittering eyes said otherwise, as did his knowledge of the music we’ve shared in those dreams.
A tingling thrill scrambles through me at the thought of how many times he’s helped me escape my drowning nightmares, again and again and again. And then today, he came to my rescue when I fell into the baptism font in reality.
He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The fictional character died at the end of the book. Alone, without the woman he had loved and obsessed over until madness became inextricably entwined with his genius. In the end, he had no one but a police chief he’d met in a foreign country at his side as he closed his eyes in death.
How much of that story is true for Leroux’s inspiration? He must be a ghost. How else could he still be in this world and look so close to my age after over a century? But I’m not a ghost, so that doesn’t make sense.
“What are you?” I’d asked.
“What are we, you mean to say.” His taunting response scrolls through me, the credits to a horror movie I’ve lived without ever knowing I was an extra.
I still can’t imagine the answer . . . what are we?
What am I?
Something dark and hungry. I have an appetite. It scratches at some place deep inside me . . . the same place that thrived on Ben’s lust and fear. It’s a morbid instinct I share with the Phantom, something he understands and can satisfy just by holding my gaze and my hand, by drawing light from my heart and joining it to his own. The heat of that connection still nestles beneath my sternum—feeding me.
Grandma Liliana was right. I’m a curse, a monster. Or a murderer.
My throat tightens, as if talons clamp over it. Daddy . . . did I kill you somehow, like I almost killed Ben?
A sob bubbles inside my mouth. Tears prick my eyes.
The solitude of the foyer magnifies the remorse rolling over me in waves. My hands tremble, no matter how I try to still them. Blinking my eyes to clear the tears and raindrops from my lashes, I peel off my boots and leave them by the door along with the tubful of torn uniforms, a haunted bouquet of roses, and other cryptic items I’ll need to examine later. But right now, before everyone comes back from Paris, I have to let my experience play out. The answers are there, if I can process them.
I lift the black glove out of the tub and pull it on. It’s too big, yet the weight of it is comforting.
There are things that don’t add up, that contradict the stories. The beauty of the Phantom’s voice was his ultimate weapon—an acoustic quicksand that could consume and hold any prey. But in the chapel, his voice was a raw, damaged sound. It was his touch and the pleading depth of his eyes that captured me.
Then there was the red swan. I’ve never seen one that color. I didn’t know they existed. The bird was preternatural. The way it disappeared into the shadows just before the Phantom materialized to save me, I would think they were one and the same. Yet there’s another possibility: in lore, otherworldly creatures, like witches and vampires, have familiars that do the master’s bidding. Is that the bird’s role in his life?
Life. If the Phantom is some bloodsucking, hex-casting being, he can’t truly be alive.
Yet, he was undeniably real. Real enough for me to feel his flesh against mine, to taste his breath only inches from my lips. He hadn’t intended to touch me . . . he had planned to stay hidden. I sensed that. He fought slipping out of the shadows, but finally gave in because he had to, to save me.
That place above my ear, where he traced my hair and skin, still thrums with music—a visceral, tonal reminder that we exchanged heartbeats, then walked together in our minds as he showcased our likenesses.
Everything seems different now, deciphered through his eyes. My senses buzz to heightened awareness, and my emotions twist and tangle with his. I can make out his silhouette as I stand next to him, hiding behind the mirrors along the walls. They’re actually windows on the other side, and he looks in—watching students come and go, sometimes dressed in velvet, laces, suits . . . dripping with jewels, furs, and entitlements as they take their places on stage. He longs to be in the audience . . . to be a part of the glitz and glamor, to sit with friends and laugh about the common and mundane until the curtains rise and feature a world of romance, acceptance, and magnanimity the likes of which he’s never known.