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Haunted Chapter Five

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Antoinette gave me an indefinite amount of time off. Or, more accurately, demanded that I stay in bed until I caught up on years worth of missed sleep, and so help her, if I so much as stepped within fifty meters of the storefront, she would have Meg and Raoul forcibly remove me from the premises and strap me to that bed.

"I mean it," she said with extraordinary firmness. Her already thin mouth narrowed to near invisibility and her sharp brows arched in an austere warning. "No more of this, Christine. You're working too hard--too, too hard, and it's taking its toll."

Even I didn't believe my automatic, hollow assurance that I was perfectly fine.

"Of course you're not, don't try that with me,"  Antoinette snapped. I sighed, running a hand through my errant curls and then wincing as the gesture sent a spark of pain shooting through my still smarting head.

She must have noticed, because her tone softened considerably. She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and squeezed lightly. "You're making yourself ill with all this work. Give yourself time to rest. I can't sit and watch you exhaust yourself."

I couldn't very well tell her that the source of my exhaustion had absolutely nothing to do with my admittedly chaotic schedule. The mere thought of that score, yellowed, burning, alive…It was enough to send me reeling once more, never mind discussing it with someone else. Particularly if that someone else was the viciously skeptical Antoinette. I couldn't bare to think of what would happen if I went near that score again.

Fortunately, in the days following the incident in the bookstore, I didn't do much thinking. I didn't do much of anything at all. I had never slept so much in my life. It was the sleep of the dead, a slumber so heavy and so deep that waking up to use the restroom or shuffle off to the kitchen for a glass of water was a herculean effort. I was vaguely aware of Meg and her mother flitting in and out of my apartment on several occasions urging me to eat the various home-cooked meals they'd left in the refrigerator. I'm fairly certain I did, although I only had vague recollections of myself shoveling down the odd muffin or meatball (Swedish meatballs, of course, left with a note from Meg that read, "Get it? Ha, ha.").

I showered perhaps twice the entire time, which under ordinary circumstances would have been unfortunate for my nostrils, but I was so bogged down by exhaustion that I hardly noticed. I just slept--on and on and on, woven into the sheets and stone still.

For the first few days, it was a blessedly dreamless sleep, silent and soft. I would wake up refreshed, a strange sensation given that I'd been running on empty for months.

The peace didn't last.

They were faint at first, just glimmers of color, distant clippings of sound, nothing more. Yet in time they grew louder, stronger, more vivid. Some were familiar, the same dreams (memories! something insisted, although they couldn't be memories, not my own) I'd been having since I was I child. And whenever they drifted through my mind, I felt like a child once more, ten years old and sitting in my father's lap as we read a newspaper article about a skeleton in the cellars. Ten years old and baffled by visions of a reality too foreign for the present and yet too sharp to be fabrications.

There were three specifically that I knew by rote, as if they had been mechanically drummed into me like Shakespearean lines in an English class.

The first had caused me to awaken with a jolt in the early hours of the morning shortly after the article about the skeleton had been published. I'd cried out for Dad, half asleep and yet alert enough to know that something beyond a ten-year-old's imagination was at work. I hadn't said as much to him--instead I offered the safe explanation: "It was a nightmare, Daddy."

He'd shh-ed and rubbed by back as he curled beside me, drawing me close and kissing my wild hair.

"But that's all it was," he'd said, "Just a nightmare. It wasn't real, it was just a nightmare."

Yet oddly enough, it hadn't been a nightmare; at least, not in a monster-under-the-bed way. It had certainly startled me, frightened me a little, if only for its strangeness, its otherworldly quality. It was the first time I'd ever had such a…dream, one that didn't feel like a dream at all, but something remembered, something I knew, with a pall in my heart, had been true.

I'd been there.

There was never sound in that first vision. There was light, a very soft, very warm, glowing light to my left, flickering from what I assumed to be several candles or a small fire in the hearth. I was standing in a small room with a paneled wooden ceiling, although I never actually saw the ceiling. I simply knew, with that matter-of-fact, cemented certainty, that the ceiling was paneled. A dark wood, the same that lay beneath the intricate floral rug at my feet. The wallpaper was floral, too, peppered with muted burgundy, pink, and ivory roses that were just barely visible in the candlelight. There was a  screen to the far right of the room, an old-fashioned one like something over which Scarlett O' Hara might have dismissively tossed her petticoats as she changed into another gown. It was decorated with scenes from the Orient, swirling with pictures of elegant geishas whose painted eyes seemed to follow me as they sauntered through their gardens of cherry blossoms.

There was a table in front of me, cream-colored and flounced and utterly feminine. There was a matching chair, over which was draped a white dressing gown. It felt like silk, and, again, though I couldn't see it, I knew there was a slight tear in the side seaming just below the lace bodice. The material was bathed in a yellow glow, puckered beneath a hand that wound tightly around it.

My hand.

That was all. Nothing nightmarish, nothing at all, but to me, it was so disorienting, so baffling, and so, so completely real that I could think of nothing more frightening in the world. That was not my room, and yet it was. I had never seen that wallpaper before, and yet I knew it with a grave sort of familiarity. Those geishas emerging from the darkness like sylphs were simultaneously strangers and old friends. I had never seen that screen before, but it was mine, and I had, I absolutely had, stepped behind it and changed in and out of that white silk dressing gown with the tear in the bodice.

I had wrapped my hand around that gown before as it lay draped over the chair. The hand was undoubtedly, undeniably my own. I felt its weight, the bones curling over the wood, its blood pulsing through too-pale fingers.  Over and over, night after night, those fingers would clutch that dressing gown as if responding to some sort of call, a sound, an abrupt noise. But I could never hear that sound in the first dream.

I could hear it in the second.

The second one was was much like the first, though it wasn't in the wallpapered room with the low, paneled wood ceilings. This room was high-ceilinged, sprawling and bursting to the seams with everything imaginable: books in endless piles, stacks of weathered paper, strange, mechanical devices that whirred and ticked and sputtered, and I couldn't make heads or tails of them. There were paintings, many unframed, that leaned against the walls or hung high above me, masterpieces that looked museum-worthy and half-finished sketches that were as indecipherable as the machines. There were instruments, too, that, like the paintings seemed to be in various stages of completion: a violin that appeared to have been cross-sectioned, perched against a can dripping with a pungent-smelling finish, a flute and a battered clarinet, the mouth of a French horn that gleamed brazenly beneath the light of the overhead chandeliers, a concert grand piano, what would soon be a beautiful one, I knew, but one without its top.

It was the piano I stood in front of this time, not a desk. As if from a great distance, I watched my hand brush cautiously over the newly-polished ivory keys, the intricate inner workings, the pedals that were stacked, one, two, three atop one another beside the right front leg, waiting to spring into place.

And then my hand would clutch the edge of the piano, like it had clutched the chair in the wallpapered room--startled, fearful, eager all at once. This time, I knew the source of my surprise. I knew the voice that interrupted my reverie.

It was, without a doubt, the loveliest sound I had ever heard.

It said my name. Just my name, but more, so much more than just my name. The voice belonged to a man, and it was deep, rich, resonant, melodious, infinitely more pleasant and perfect that anything anyone could have imagined. And it had said my name, my ordinary, unassuming name with such a reverent tenderness that I could feel my eyelids droop as I let out a sigh of surrender.

I could always feel the man approaching me from behind, but it wasn't a threatening feeling. I knew he was going to talk about the piano, answer my hollow, stupid questions and I knew I wouldn't hear a word he said because all I cared for was to hear that voice. That was all I ever cared about when the man spoke.

He would come closer, his silent footsteps disquieting, but his presence radiating safety. He grew closer, close enough to reach out and touch the small of my back, and I knew he would, he would, and he would say my name again--

Everything always cut off abruptly after that.

"Maddening" wouldn't begin to describe it. Whenever I awoke after that dream, inevitably, I found myself grinding my teeth in frustration. Because I knew I shouldn't have been indulging in the vivid fantasy, but at the same time, I couldn't bear its interruption. And I felt as if I'd completely abandoned my senses, and I should have been worried; I should have been concerned that I was so perilously detached form reality. But God, I relished that voice. I longed for it. And it was such a paradox, so baffling in its duality: transient in its unearthliness yet still solid, substantial, vibrantly and so clearly there.

I was older when I'd first heard the man's voice in that second dream, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Old enough to know the implications of the unsettling emotions it roused. I couldn't understand it, didn't want to understand it, but over and over again, I found myself thinking of that strange room with the half-built piano and the faceless voice that swirled hazily in my mind and enveloped me in a drowsy numbness. But it wasn't an unpleasant numbness. I should have been disgusted with myself, I really should have. There I was on the cusp of womanhood,  perfectly capable of reasoned thought, and instead of rationalizing the voice and chalking it up as a reaction to a bad bout of clams, maybe, or some sort of subconscious recollection of a scene from a movie I'd seen as a child, I regarded it with a wary sort of fascination. It was like forbidden fruit. I shouldn't have wanted to taste it, but I did. And whenever I did, my anxiety increased. Because I knew if I let it, that voice would completely rob me of my senses and ensnare me in its dream world. Or nightmare world.

That was what the third dream was, a nightmare in every sense of the word. In that flitting vision, memory, whatever it was, there was nothing but anguish and sorrow and fury so raw and feral that it was as if it had shot up from the bowels of hell. It was the same voice, the man's voice, but so changed, so incredibly and terribly altered by an onslaught of merciless emotion, that it could have been a different voice entirely.

I was crying, always crying in that third dream, and I supposed that was why I could hardly see a thing. Hot tears reduced everything to strokes of blurred color, and even then, I felt my eyelids squeeze shut as if I didn't want to see whatever it was that raged before me. My frantic gasps would mingle with those horrible screams, and I saw a blur of color, felt a whoosh of air as if something was moving rapidly in front of me, and every once in a while, the man's screaming would be intelligible. And though I only caught bits of his wild curses, there was always one phrase that stood out sharply, as if someone had turned up the volume on a radio.

"…bound to me! And you have done it yourself--we are bound irrevocably now, and this will never leave you! Are you satisfied? It will never leave you! You are bound to me!"

I knew it was true.

Whatever it was, whatever it meant, I knew it was true. All of it. The first vision with the dressing gown. The second one with the half-built instruments and the voice. The third, in all of that voice's wickedness and sorrow. And the new ones, the ones that sprung to life as soon as I'd touched that score. I was bound to it, to those sounds and images and feelings that were not and yet were my own. And that certainty was nauseating, like watching a horror film only to realize that the ghosts onscreen were sitting calmly and resolutely beside you.

It always left me in a panic, gasping awake with bullets of sweat on my brow and tears running hot and fevered down my cheeks. This world, these images that draped over my consciousness like sheets covered in decades' worth of dust--wavering yet sharply in focus, imagined and yet wholly real--were not going anywhere. Something had changed. Something was building. I felt it to my very core, and it made me ill.

Tried as I might, no amount of sleep could rid me of the memory of that score in the bookstore and the voices it had heralded. While the first few nights after the hospital release had been blissfully peaceful, the other nights, the rest of them, were wrought with those dusty sheets of images, old and new, more determined to wreak havoc than ever before. More determined to imprint the sound of that Voice onto my soul and bind it to my own.

And so it was that I spent my would-be weeks of recuperation trying to convince myself that I wasn't losing my marbles.

And failing miserably.

After all, hearing voices doesn't really do much to bolster an image of sanity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She felt it.

I knew. She felt it. I felt it.

The rain was still ceaseless. I could not see it--could scarcely hear it--but I knew it remained, dogged, persistent, pounding upon the casements and the rooftops in sheets. They spoke of it with misery laced in their voices and exasperation etched upon their brows, but how little they knew, for it was as if sheets of gold rained upon the earth and should I lift a finger, I would be awash in it at last.

The rain was still ceaseless, and she felt its icy fingers in her soul.

Was it a cold sort of clarity for her, as well? Or an aching sort of dread as it had been?

Did it twist and maim and mangle? Would it?

No. No, fie the thought. No more.

It was querulous. Wavering, quivering, but unflinchingly formidable. Dangerous?

Perhaps she thought so.

I did not.

Then perhaps that was my folly. Perhaps I would have done well to languish, to wither and so die. I daresay I could have. I could have simply…released myself. Peace, he would say in that maddeningly calm way. Let there be peace.

But there wouldn't be peace. There would never be peace. He knew it, I knew it. I would venture a guess to say that even they knew it. There would never be peace unless someone actively sought it. And seek it, I would.

Something was stirring. It was ready. I was ready. Was she?

I was ready. It was a matter of waiting, that was all. And blessedly, I would wait no more.

I would let them play their little game, of course, if only for a memorable send-off. There was no stopping it, in any case. I could hear them, after all, pounding up the stairs, their chatter growing strangled as they approached the door. The woman's was at the forefront.

"…haven't had proper notice, and he isn't--"

"I'm giving you notice now, Madame. Stand aside."

A new one, was it? Never mind, never mind; he would leave as vexed as the last.

"At least let me prepare him! This is ridiculous, I've never--"

"Well, you're about to, Madame. Stand. Aside."

I heard her sigh. The familiar beeping. Whirring. Mechanical clicking. A whoosh, a click, and then in they strode, a whole horde of them, pigs led to slaughter, and at the front of the group stood a man so puffed up with his own importance it was a wonder he didn't burst.

Unwarranted egotism aside, he was almost comically unremarkable. He was of average height, average build, and wore an average rumpled suit beneath a rumpled white physician's coat. His thinning hair was a nondescript mingling of gray and brown, combed in parallels across his gleaming scalp. Spectacles perched atop his pockmarked, slightly bulbous nose which twitched in indignation, nostrils flared above several weeks' worth of stubble. He bristled, utterly unremarkable. Steadfast in his determination to extract an answer.

He would not play me for a fool.

"Dr. DesMarais, I cannot allow this," the woman was saying hurriedly, irritably. "I don't care what your credentials--"

"You should care," DesMarais replied curtly. "They give me leave to dismiss you."

She blushed violent red, though from embarrassment or fury, it was not clear. The man wasted no time.

"Name?"

"I--"

"Your name, Madame. Now."

"Edda Valerius. Monsieur, this is not--"

"Valerius, then. You're the charge nurse?"

"Yes, I--"

"The patient's?"

"Yes, but--"

"So I can reasonably assume that you, being his caretaker, would be able to answer some of my questions?"

"I can only answer what I know--"

"Mmm. Then answer this: what is that?"

"Wh--?"

"You know perfectly well what I'm referring to."

"Oh. That."

"That."

"We…we don't remove it."

"You don't remove it," he said slowly, mockingly.

"That's what I said." Her defiance was feeble, but indisputably there. She was ruffled. Exhausted, through with it all, yet she would not tolerate such an imposition. I could have been proud of her. "We don't remove it."

A muscle twitched in DesMarais' temple. The crowd behind him looked on expectantly, skittishly.

"Why?" he demanded.

"Surely they've told you why?" She looked at her colleagues as if betrayed.

One of them came to her rescue. He was reedy and pinched, his mouth permanently pursed in disapproval, though disapproval directed not toward the woman--to whom he offered a clipped, apologetic smile--but toward DesMarais.

"We have told him why, Edda, he just refuses to listen."

"I'll tell you why I refuse to listen, Poirot: your explanation is rubbish. Absolute rubbish!" DesMarais spat. "'No information on file.' What the hell is that supposed to--?"

"It means what it means!" Poirot exclaimed incredulously, throwing his hands in the air. "Good God, man, this is is not a conspiracy against you--"

"Lower your voices, please!" the woman begged, casting a frantic glance my way. Somewhere in the recesses of what little sense and propriety I still possessed, I suppose I appreciated her gesture. "You may upset him--"

"There is no upsetting this man, Madame, and I will tell you why," DesMarais barked, not bothering, naturally, to lower his voice. "If you won't give me any damn answers, then I'll supply them for you. You want to know why we won't upset this man? I'll tell you why we won't upset this man. He's beyond help. Notebook."

Silence. Those assembled exchanged baffled looks. DesMarais inhaled sharply, furiously.

"Notebook! Now! One of you, take notes; you say he hasn't got a file, then by God, we're going to make him one right now. I dictate. Bertrand, you transcribe. Allez, vite!"

"But Monsieur," said a dull-looking twenty-something near the door. "He does have a file; we didn't say he didn't have a file, we just said his history is unknown--"

"We're making it known right now, then. We're starting anew." He gestured sharply to himself. "New management, new rules, new history. Organization is clearly foreign to you all, and I am not about to run this institution equipped with an incompetent staff. We begin anew now. Bertrand!"

"Ah--y-yes, yes what?"

"Notebook. Get one out. I dictate, you transcribe."

"Monsieur, I can't--"

"If you can't, I won't hesitate to replace you with someone who can. That goes for the lot of you." He turned to Bertrand. "Notes. Now."

The boy looked around desperately.

"Anyone have--?"

"I do, here," someone toward the back of the crowd said, offering him a writing pad and a pen.

DesMarais' voice drowned out the sudden rustling of papers and mutinous muttering.

"Now. I shall tell you all why our conversation is not upsetting this man: he is beyond help." He cleared his throat, clenched and unclenched his fist, and gestured to the bed as if lecturing at a university forum. "Note number one: patient in persistent vegetative state, unresponsive to stimuli. Subnote: likely contributor inadequate care--"

"How dare you even suggest-!" Mme. Valerius began, but her anger went unaddressed.

"LIKELY CONTRIBUTOR…inadequate rehabilitative care. Note two: severe cachexia indicative of prolonged nutritional deficiencies. Subnote: evident lack of physical stimuli and regenerative therapies suggested by muscle atrophy--"

"This is not our doing!" Poirot snapped. "I tell you, DesMarais, this is not our doing! We had no hand in this, in him, we told you! And so help me--"

"--muscle atrophy resulting from twenty years--twenty, do you have that, Bertrand?"

"No, no, hold it, you're going too fa--"

"Twenty years of immobility--!"

"So help me, DesMarais," said Poirot between his teeth, "if you press on, the blood is on your hands and yours alone--"

"My hands?" he cried, a purple vein pulsating in his temple. Angry not due to the situation, but due to the fact that he sensed control slipping away. So great was his stupidity that I nearly sympathized with the others--nearly being the operative word. For his predecessors had been just as dense, just as smugly, fatally foolish. I had seen it all before. Endlessly.

And my God, had the routine had worn thin.

"My hands?" he was saying incredulously. "You are all responsible for this--this--mon Dieu, are you all that thick? Can you really all be that thick?"

Somewhere in the rotted recesses of my mind, I knew the irony of the statement was delicious.

"Look at this man!" And he strode over to the bed, thrusting one arm toward its silent occupant. "There is no conceivable way you can all stand there and reasonably tell me that his condition isn't grounds for immediate investigation--immediate closure of this damned facility! The man's near death! And you've let it happen! Do your oaths as caretakers mean nothing? He needs urgent medical assistance! Assistance his family entrusts you to provide him with--"

"He hasn't got a family!" cried Poirot with no small amount of desperation. "You idiot, we've told you, he hasn't got a family, he hasn't got a past! For all we know, he doesn't exist!"

"And so you stand by and idly let him rot? That's the way to do it, isn't it? Let him starve and sink into oblivion--make a spectacle of him by putting that--that thing over his fa--"

"He came to us that way, Doctor, please," Mme. Valerius said, dislodging her bifocals as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Please, you must understand, it's essential that you understand. He came to us as we've told you, wearing it, raving--and when we tried to remove it--"

"We told you what happened when we tried," Poirot said, looking quite ready to strike DesMarias. "You've heard the stories--"

"Poppycock, all of them, meant to play into your medieval fantasies," the doctor said immediately, as if that settled the matter. "Meant to keep this poor man suffering. You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say sadism was contagious, the way you all feed off of each other, strapping him to the bed like an animal, starving him--"

Poirot turned to Mme. Valerius, his jaw clenched. He cracked a small, apologetic smile.

"Edda, I'm sorry about this," he said. DesMarais continued to drone on, unaware of the other conversation taking place beside him. "I know you've done your best with him, and if he doesn't understand that, then f--"

"Thank you, Doctor Poirot, I appreciate that," she said quickly. "He'll understand soon, it's only a matter of--Monsieur, no!"

A ripple ran through the crowd as they turned collectively to look at the woman, who had suddenly reached toward DesMarais in terror. And when they saw what he was about to do, panic erupted: there were gasps, curses, mad scrambles for the door. All the while, the doctor pressed forward.

He'd advanced to the bed, looming above me, draped with a curtain of false superiority, his mouth twisted in a mawkish smile. And he said, as if he supposed I could hear him--more irony, come to think of it--"You're going to be well-taken care of from now on. We're going to get you help, you understand?"

"No, DesMarais, get away from--!"

"Shut up, Poirot! I've had it! I've had enough of this disgusting display! The man is in pain, unable to fend for himself, unable to understand why all this is happening--"

Oh, ho!

"--and you turn him into a sideshow spectacle! A mask! A mask! This isn't a carnival, you raving idiots! This man is a victim! He is ill! And you treat him like--"

"What are you doing?" Mme. Valerius cried, suddenly frantic. "Stop! Stop! Don't touch it, please, Dr. DesMarais, don't--!"

"Shut up! Shut up! As of this afternoon, I am launching a full investigation into the workings of this institution and if I have any say in it, you'll all be out the door faster than you can say--"

"STOP!!"

They'd all said it at once, comically in sync, and yet it was too late.

His hand had descended on the mask as he'd been talking, absentmindedly beginning to pry it off and clearly not expecting any response from its wearer. I was near death, wasn't I for all intents and purposes?

Was. Had been. Suddenly, something rich, vibrant, strong poured into my veins, coursing through my limbs, rattling me to the bones for the first time in what felt like an eternity. And I inhaled deeply, growing alert, aware…alive. I felt my heart rearing up to nudge into my ribcage, long-frozen blood rushing to fill the void, a roaring in my ears--and a vision, sublime, simultaneously great and terrible for what it would provoke swam before my eyes, filmy yet gloriously vibrant.

Her.

I felt her. Alive, breathing, here. Now. And close. She was close.

I was ready.

My hand shot up of its own accord, wrapping around the doctor's wrist in a viselike grip, prying it away from the mask and wrenching him upwards, slamming him against the wall. I was up before I realized it, not quite standing, not quite floating.

The roaring in my ears was drowning out the panicked screams behind me. I vaguely registered hands attempting to subdue me, tugging and pulling and punching, but to no avail. I might as well have been a ghost.

Ah!

More irony.

The doctor's face was steadily turning blue beneath my chokehold. Vaguely, disinterestedly, I registered I would do well to lessen the grip. He gasped frantically when I did, wasting precious air to plead.

"Stop, please!" His voice was a faint rasp, injured, I realized with that same sense of disinterest, from being nearly strangled. "Please! Stop! It's--okay--we're--t-trying to--"

Enough.

There was a flash of light, a bang, screams.

Silence.

I stood fully then, heaving, trembling. Suddenly feeble.

But whole.

I was whole.

I made my way to the door. I had nearly reached it when I grew aware of his presence.

"Oh, my God…" I heard him say. "No…what…What did you do?!"

Slowly, I turned. His back was hunched, his eyes wide. His unspoken thought boomed through the room like a canon.

Not again. No, no, not again!

"Do not follow me," I told him simply.

And I was gone.
Whew! Long hiatus on this one.

Boy, does it feel good to be writing for fun again!

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Phantom of the Opera © Leroux.
© 2011 - 2024 Muirin007
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elmerthewizard's avatar
"Was. Had been. Suddenly, something rich, vibrant, strong poured into my veins, coursing through my limbs, rattling me to the bones for the first time in what felt like an eternity. And I inhaled deeply, growing alert, aware…alive. I felt my heart rearing up to nudge into my ribcage, long-frozen blood rushing to fill the void, a roaring in my ears--and a vision, sublime, simultaneously great and terrible for what it would provoke swam before my eyes, filmy yet gloriously vibrant."

I was listening to 'Davy Jones' and I was at the climax of the song, and I don't think I can express this anymore frankly than, it was just too perfect a written sentence and too perfect a musical moment, and I suddenly felt the fiery passion that I believe he felt. Listen to the song and you're sure to see what I mean.