Awakening in a Strange Place...

[Erik Lenoir]

Erik awoke in the darkness, no light anywhere. He assumed he was in the cellar below his lair and stood up, listening for any sound. There was nothing. Then he noticed he wasn’t cold anymore. He had been shivering with the damp underground cold, but he was now strangely warm.

He considered the fact that he might be dead. He pinched himself sharply on the arm and yes, it hurt. So, most likely he was not dead. He wondered if the warmth was from above, perhaps a fire in the opera house…his mind wandered through all sorts of explanations, trying to find some logic in the situation. He started walking, his hands in front of him, listening for any sign of life or anything else. Then he stopped. He felt his face and head. His fedora was on his head, his hairpiece and mask in place and his cape was tied about his shoulders. Earlier, in his escape from his lair, his face and head had been naked from Christine's removal of the hairpiece and mask, and he had not been wearing his cape. Odd...

He clearly remembered being in the lair and hearing the sounds of the police and the mob looking for him and his escape to the cellar below the lair. How long had he been there? Time seemed to be standing still.

Suddenly Erik felt something at his feet. He pushed it a bit, then leaned over to feel, with his hands, what it was. It was an oil lamp. Knowing he usually kept matches in his pockets, he was happy to find them still there and he took off the glass chimney and lit the wick, then placed the chimney back on. He could see around the place he was in…an unfamiliar brick area, no furniture and nothing to tell him where he was.

Up ahead was a door, with a wooden bar across it. He lifted the wooden bar from across the door and turned the knob. It opened easily. He entered another room, not so austere, but also unfamiliar. There was a dim light coming through the windows.

At first glance, the room looked to be richly furnished, but as Erik entered the room with his lamp, he could see signs of decay. The dust was thick on the dark wood of the furniture. There were two large carved tables in the midst of the room with several richly carved chairs surrounding them. Several chairs had broken legs. There was a once beautiful chandelier with candles sadly broken or burned down to stumps.

About the perimeter of the room, were book cases, shelves upon shelves of books. He held the lamp up to be able to read some of the books. Many classics were upon the shelves. “The Aeneid” by Virgil and “The Odyssey” by Homer, caught his eye. He pulled the Odyssey out of the bookshelf and opened it. Trying to turn the pages, they crumbled beneath his fingers. He quickly closed the book to a flurry of dust, and coughed as he replaced the book on the shelf.

He realized a pain in his heart then; not a physical pain, but an intense emotion for something, someone, that had been lost. It was Christine. He thought of her for the first time since he had come to this place, he knew not where or even when. It could be minutes since he fell asleep in his cellar or days, weeks, months, years, he knew not.

Trying to purge himself of her memory, Erik concentrated on the problem at hand. He knew he must find out where he was and find a way out. He continued about the library. He touched no more books, for they must be a hundred years old, or more, to fall apart like that. He came upon a painting of a young man with serious piercing eyes looking down at him in 16th century clothing. Another painting depicted a wedding from the same era, and another, an old woman from an even earlier era. It was all interesting, but shone no light upon where he was.

Approaching the huge wooden door, carved with many panels, he turned the knob, but found it was firmly locked. Erik turned his attention to the one small window where the dim light came from. He pulled one of the chairs under the window and stood upon it to peer out, for the window was several feet above his head. The window was covered with cobwebs and dirt. He brushed some of it away, and was amazed to see that he seemed to be several storeys above the ground. This window was not a likely place for escape, at least at the present time.

Climbing down from the chair, he replaced it in its place at the table. He started to sneeze from the incredible dust in the room. He tried the door again, and of course it didn’t open. He looked for something to pick the lock with. He shone the lamp on all the surfaces he could, and then he saw it…a large gold key, sitting in front of the books on one of the shelves. Why would the key to this room be left inside the locked room? He tried the key and it worked. The door swung open and he pocketed the key. He found himself in a corridor, lit by many windows.

Then hearing footsteps, Erik blew out his lamp and froze exactly where he was standing…

[phantomsdarkangel]

The second night of her being in the Manor, Christine couldn't sleep at all. She tossed and turned like crazy, groaning softly every time she changed her position. As much as she tried, nothing worked.
Tired of trying, she sat up on the bed she had found and sighed, looking out at the moon. It was a lovely night, she could tell. Absentmindedly, she started to count the stars on the sky, trying to decide which one was the brightest.

Soon enough, she fell asleep. Again, she wasn't sure how much time had she slept... She woke up when the sun shone on her closed eyelids and made her blink a few times. As her eyes adjusted to the sun light, she sat up on the bed again and rubbed her eyes.

Getting up, she changed her clothes into a soft pink day dress and left the room, looking around the corridor as she opened the door. It was silent, almost too silent. That silence that actually scares people... and Christine /was/ scared. She didn't know where she was, why was she there or how she got there... Everything in her mind was blurry...

Walking around the place, Christine found herself humming. Her voice echoed around the empty place, making it sound louder. Hearing a light noise, she stopped suddenly and looked around, her paranoia getting the best of her. It sounded like someone, something, was following her.

As she got rid of that awful feeling, she turned around and kept walking finding another corridor, one she had never seen before. It was slightly darker than the others but it was lit enough to see through it. She was determined to see what was there, but she stopped in her tracks when she heard a door opening. Christine held her breath and tried to remain silent, unaware of who -or what- was there...

[Erik Lenoir]

Standing outside the door of the library, Erik's paranoiac fear of being found welled up inside him. He couldn't afford to be found; the mob would surely lynch him for the unfortunate murder he had committed in the opera house, or on the other hand, lock him in an asylum for the insane. He knew he wasn't insane; of course not.

He shook himself back to the present. The sounds he was hearing were not a mob....simply a few footfalls. They stopped and Erik wondered if there was really anyone there. Maybe it wasn't footfalls, perhaps only a stray tree branch blowing against the house. House? Mansion? He couldn't tell yet...

He started walking in the direction he had thought the sounds came from. Perhaps there was someone else in the place who would know where they were. Erik had to decide whether he wanted to risk being found or discover where he was... He put aside his earlier fears...this wasn't the opera house...he must find out the truth!

Continuing down the dark corridor, still holding the lamp with the extinguished flame, Erik tried to walk silently, but the heels of his boots made a decided sound, not loud, but discernible upon the stone floor. Squinting his eyes a bit to see any small movement there might be, Erik thought he detected a bit of movement or a shadow and the far end of the corridor which seemed to be quite a distance away.

Quite without realizing it, Erik found himself sprinting toward the end of the corridor.

“Wait!” he called, almost stunned at the sound of his own voice, which echoed in the empty stone corridor. “Wait, please! Is there anyone about?”

[phantomsdarkangel]

Christine's fears made her turn away for a moment. That silence had disappeared and she could hear footsteps. She thought about running, but that'd have made a lot of noise and she didn't want to be heard. If there was some kind of creature; wild creature; she was sure it'd go after her.
Instead of running, she backed away slowly, trying to be as silent as she could.

When she heard a voice, she stopped in her tracks. "W-Who's there!?" she demanded to know, her own voice cracking a little bit. She couldn't help feel totally scared with everything that was going on.

She felt herself completely frozen and not able to move away. However, she could form another cracking phrase... "W-Where are you?" she asked softly. Then, she started to think that, maybe, it was another person that was trapped there. She couldn't possibly be the only one in such a big place...

[Erik Lenoir]

Continuing to sprint through the empty dark corridor, Erik stopped suddenly when he heard a woman's voice ask, Who's there?" and a moment later, "Where are you?" The woman's voice sounded shaky and frightened...

Erik slowed down as he approached the woman, her light figure outlined against the wall. "My name is Erik Lenoir. Do you know where we are? I have no idea how I came to this place..."

He stopped in front of the woman and lit his oil lamp again. In its soft warm light, he could see that the woman had large brown eyes and long, dark brown curly hair covering her shoulders. Pale porcelain skin gave a contrast to her hair. Small and slender, she stood probably eight inches below him.

"Please do you know what this place is? Do you live here?" He realized that she was trembling and probably would have backed away from him had she not had the stone wall of the corridor behind her. She appeared to be afraid of him.

"I won't hurt you," he said gently. "I don't know how I've come to this place...where I am ...I simply want to leave..." His own words sounded hollow and ridiculous. She must think him crazy to not know where he was...

[phantomsdarkangel]

Erik... she knew that name, but no, it simply couldn't be... As the man stood up before her, she took a quick glance at him. She went through the same situation she had had with Meg; that feeling of 'I know this person, but at the same time, I don't.'
The thought of him being the Phantom scared her for a second, but she got rid of that. He seemed lost, as lost as she was. And confused. He didn't know why was he there or how had he got there...

Looking up at him again, she found some sort of resemblance to that masked man that had invaded her mind. But, then again, he was different, so very different...
Images of /her/ Erik flipped through her mind and, in comparison to the man that was there, there was a difference. She could tell. But,why were they so similar yet so different? she asked to herself.

Christine closed her eyes shut for a moment, but when the strange man spoke and said he wasn't going to hurt her, she found herself sighing with relief. "I..." she started to say, her voice still cracking. "I... don't know where I am h-here... nor how I got here... not even why... monsieur Lenoir..." she pronounced his last name softer than the rest, like a whisper, and then raised her voice again. They both were lost there so she thought it'd be nice to have someone to talk to. And she had to be polite to do that... Introducing herself seemed like a good idea. "I-I'm... Christine... C-Christine Daaé."

[Erik Lenoir]

The girl seemed to be as lost as Erik was and considerably more frightened. He had an odd feeling, looking at her, that she seemed familiar, but then again, she didn't at all. He knew that he had never before met the girl...but then, his memory seemed to be taking an odd turn, starting with his possibly losing a bit of time before he came to near the library.

The hurricane lamp made odd shadows on the walls as its flame flickereed a bit. He realized that the girl had no idea where she was either. What strange place was this? And, furthermore, how had either of them arrived? He, who arrogantly considered himself a genius in most things, could not get his mind to understand that simple fact.

Then the girl pronounced her name....Christine Daaé...the very name brought out a flood of emotion.

"How dare you! How dare you call yourself Christine Daaé! The name of my Angel!"

This girl could not possibly be Christine... her brown eyes were nothing like his Christine's eyes; she was shorter too than his Christine...

His voice echoed in the empty corridor almost as it had when he had projected it on stage at the opera house, for all to hear....He could see her fright and his anger would not help.

Erik touched the left side of his forehead and closed his eyes a moment. It did no good to vent his anger on this poor girl who strangely seemed to think she was someone so dear to his heart...then he opened his eyes and looked at her again.

"I'm very sorry. I know someone by that very name, someone dear to me...Forgive me...I don't mean to frighten you..." He paused a moment, for the words were coming out in a torrent now that there was someone with which to speak.

"Forgive me," Erik repeated, "Is there anyone else about? Have you seen anyone at all? Is there a way out of this place? Please, tell me, Madamoiselle, if you know anything..." He could not bring himself to call her the name of his belovéd Christine...

[phantomsdarkangel]

Christine gasped and closed her eyes again when he yelled at her. "That's my name!" she was quick to reply, trying to get some courage. He was angry, she could tell and she found herself fighting back tears.

After a moment, she could compose herself and listen to what he was adding. If he knew someone with her same exact name, then Meg was right... there /were/ more like her.

When he apologized, Christine opened her eyes and looked at him. "I... I know someone by your name, too... someone dear to me..." she told him, not able to look at him any longer and looking down at her feet.

"I only know I woke up here... and you're the third person /alive/ that I've seen. I know Meg's here, but she seems strange. Then, there's someone by the name of Lydia... apart from them, I've seen a ghost. Yes, monsieur, a /ghost/!" she explained, hoping he'd believe her.

"I don't know if there's a way out... so far, I've found none..."

[Erik Lenoir]

This was indeed a strange place. Erik calmed himself. The poor girl looked frightened.

"You say you met someone here named "Meg?" That wouldn't be Meg Giry, would it? I am acquainted with her mother Madame Giry...and you say there's someone else about? A Lydia... I don't know anyone by that name.

He paused and looked at her. For some reason, he wanted to comfort her. "And you know someone else named Erik?" he asked slowly..."I suppose he wears a mask, too," he said, smiling a bit, knowing, of course, that would be ridiculously absurd. Before she had time to answer, he thought about the other statement she had just made...concerning a ghost. Another absurdity, but this whole situation was rife with absurdities and he, strangely enough, was beginning to believe this girl who called herself Christine.

"Y0u say there's no way out? What's in the direction that you came from? Surely there's a front door to this mansion...or a back door...There's a library back where I came from..." He pointed in the direction from which he had come. "It appears no one has been in that library for ages...whoever lives here apparently doesn't read much..." He smiled again, trying to raise the sombre mood a bit.

"You know," he said, in a musing tone, almost more to himself than to Christine, if there is a way out of this place, I shall find it. Where are these other people you have met?"

[phantomsdarkangel]

"Yes, exactly, Meg Giry!" Christine exclaimed. "And a Lydia..." she added. The two women were the only people Christine had met. As he didn't say anything about the ghostly apparition, Christine thought it wasn't important.

But as he mentioned Erik, she sighed silently. "Curiously, monsieur, yes, he does wear a mask and he's known to be the famous Phantom of the Opera... he haunted -or still haunts- the Opera Populaire, the Garnier. "His mask has been his prison..." he added, looking down again.

Christine was shaking. Both for the memories and for the situation and feeling of being trapped there. "I haven't found a front door... In the other side of the house, there are bedrooms, a ballroom, and some other rooms I don't know about... there's a garden, too, but it's too big to look for a way out there, and when I was outside, it was too dark to see beyond a few trees..."
His smile calmed her down, if only slightly and Christine went on, "I don't know where they are now, but I can look for them... even though, they have no information about why are they here, either. I covered that when I met them... they are as confused as we are now."

[Erik Lenoir]

*Famous Phantom of the Opera?" Erik could hardly believe her words. He started to laugh, not really with mirth, but at the absurdity of the situation." You know a man named Erik who is called the Phantom of the Opera? Surely you are jesting, my dear. That's exactly the title I was known by, up until a ...." here his voice trailed off, for he had no idea how long it had been since he had left the Opéra Populaire....

He turned again to Christine. "You say you spoke to a ghost? "While I do not doubt you, Madamoiselle, I do not believe in such things. Perhaps the reason is that for some years I was known as the Opera Ghost, or O.G., as I signed my letters, of which I wrote many. I made sure they were signed in red ink, which made them more sinister... I'm rambling...." He put his hand to his left temple again. Why was he telliing this strange girl whom he had just met...all of his secrets? He must be more rattled from the situation than he realized.

"I must meet these other persons you have mentioned," said Erik, thinking perhaps this girl....he had trouble thinking of her as Christine Daaé...had not asked the correct questions. He trusted himself implicitly to get to the bottom of all of this.

"Lead me to where these others are, Madamoiselle....they are all gathered in one place? Perhaps I can garner a clue from one of them....and I am interested to see the one who impersonates a ghost..."

[phantomsdarkangel]

"You're known as The Phantom of the Opera!?" Christine exclaimed. "That can't be possible! There has to be a mistake!" For Christine, that wasn't possible at all. There was only one Phantom and she knew him. This man was clearly not him...

"I didn't speak to a ghost... I just saw one, floating around.." Christine stopped talking when he started to tell her about him, and everything he said reminded her of her Angel. The Angel that ended up not being an angel at all... Everything was confusing her even more as time went on.

"I can take you to them," she added, after snapping out of her own thoughts. "I don't know where they are now, though... but we can look for them..."

Christine offered him a soft, gentle smile and took his hand, pulling him along the corridors while she looked around, unsure of where exactly should she go.

[Erik Lenoir]

Erik took her hand and let her lead him to wherever she cared to lead him. It was all new to him and he must find a way out. Turning another corner, there were large windows, along the outside wall, tall and thin, with stately gothic arches at the top.

"Stop," he said to Christine. "Stop a moment. Let me look out..." A dull glow came from outside the first window. A cloudy daylight, a fog occluded his view of whatever lay beyond the windows. If only he had something with which to break it...

"Madamoiselle, is there something here that you have seen with which I might break the window? Surely that will be our escape..." His eyes searched the long corridor. On one side were more windows lending their gloomy light to the passageway. And on the other side were two doors. Doors leading to ...what?

"Madamoiselle, have you been through either of those doors. I say we explore them at once!" This time, Erik offered his hand to the girl. He was somehow drawn to her, her confusion made him want to protect her and help her find a way out of this place. He had never felt protective of anyone before ...except his Christine. And this girl, in some subtle way, never mind what she said her name was...reminded him of his own dear Christine.

Erik was suddenly caught up in a reverie again and he hadn't realized that he had stopped walking. Thinking of Christine again... A single tear dropped from his eye before he realized it and brushed it from his cheek quickly.

"Come, Madamoiselle, we have delayed enough. " Erik approached the first door and turned the knob tentatively. The door was solid, paneled, made of oak and darkly stained. The top of it formed a gothic arch, matching the pattern of the windows. He pushed the door open. "Come, Madamoiselle..." he said quietly.

Then entering the dark room, Erik called in a louder voice, "Is there anyone here?"

[phantomsdarkangel]

Christine turned around when he stopped and looked out of the window. She looked out as well and tried to recognize if she had seen that part of the place before... and she had! "Monsieur... that's the garden... I've been there and it's too big to find a way out of the house. Believe me, I tried..." Christine told him, sighing silently.

Letting her eyes wander the corridor, Christine saw the doors Erik was talking about. "I've never been through either of them... I must say that I just now saw they were there."
She suddenly got the feeling of /wanting/ to explore. She wanted to know as much as she could about the house, mansion, palace or whatever that was. She wanted to discover and learn. She had always been a curious girl, but she was often too scared to explore. But right then, she was happy to have someone to explore with.

Smiling softly and taking Erik's hand again, she walked towards the recently found doors. Looking up for a moment, she noticed the tear that Erik quickly wiped away and she looked down again, somehow feeling like she should asked him what was the matter, comfort him, listen to him...
She had been scared of him when she met him, but that fear was completely gone and she could see that he wasn't as cruel as she had started to believe. He was simply different.

Stepping inside of the room, following him, she looked around the place. It looked like it was empty, but Christine couldn't be sure of that, not just yet...

"What is this place Erik?" she asked softly, in a whisper, as if she was scared of someone else hearing her. "It looks... dirty and abandoned..." she added.
Suddenly, something caught her attention and she looked up, beaming. "Oh, look, Erik!" she exclaimed. "That's a piano!" With his hand still in hers, Christine pulled him along as she walked up to it. She placed her other hand on the top and shook off some dirt from it. "It's beautiful..." she said, going back to her soft, sweet tome of voice.

[Erik Lenoir]

The girl who called herself Christine...in his head, Erik was starting to think of her by that name, although he had earlier rebelled against it... came into the dark room with him. His oil lamp, which he had almost forgotten he was still holding, was turned down low and lent a soft glow to the room, but not much light.

As Erik and Christine went into the room, Christine exclaimed with some excitement in her voice that there was a piano in the room, just as he also picked it out of the darkness.

"I am going to turn up the wick on this lamp," he stated. "Then perhaps we can see a bit. It's darker than in the corridor..." he said, stating quite the obvious. Erik took off the hurricane chimney and turned up the wick, which brightened up the immediate environs considerably, but keeping the edges of the room still in darkness. It was a larger room than the library he had earlier occupied and had no apparent window. He set the lamp on the piano, a grand piano, which was made of a dark wood. He touched the wood, but the dust was thick on it.

"It is beautiful," said Erik in reply to Christine's comment. "But very dusty. There must be something here with which I can wipe the piano," he said. And just at that moment his eyes lit upon a stone fireplace in the darkest corner of the room. "Christine, look, a fireplace!" He stopped momentarily after he called the girl Christine. It sounded odd, and yet...

"May I call you Christine, Madamoiselle? It feels odd, for you are not like my Chrstine, and yet...the name suits you..."...He went on, "I think it would do us some good to build a fire in the fireplace....there is wood already there...he looked about in the darkness...paper...where can I find paper to start the fire...I have matches..." He spied some books on the fireplace mantle, in between several large urns.

He picked upone of the books..."Something in Russian," he mused. "Appears to be poetry. I don't care to ruin someone's books by starting a fire with them..." He laughed at his own musings. "Although it would seem that no one has touched this book for some years." He continued looking and found some rags stuffed behind some of the other books. "This is what I need..."

Throwing them in the fireplace on top of the chopped wood, Erik pulled out matches which he always carried to light the candles in his lair and his fireplaces. He found the lever for the damper and opened it, then started the fire which began to burn brightly. It lent more light to the room. He took a few more of the rags and wiped off the piano, then opened the top to see inside. It appeared to be intact. He sat down at the keys and struck a chord which made his ears hurt.

"This piano needs a good tuning, Christine. I wonder if there are tuning levers about. I could tune it if I could find some..." He laughed. "I don't suppose we could be that fortunate!"

Erik was starting to feel comfortable with this young woman, a feeling he had never really experienced before. He could have felt comfortable with his Christine, if only, if only she had accepted him. But this young woman, there was no expectation of love, they were only thrown together by fate in a strange place. Comfortable...was that what friendship was? He had read about it, but in all of his relationships with people, only one came close. That was Madame Giry. The woman who had helped him escape the travelling show. Giry, she who delivered his letters, she who did Erik's bidding. But this was different and... comfortable...