No Ordinary Man (ONESHOT)

[Erik Spectre]

Érik ran.

He was disgusted... ashamed... of what? It wasn’t his fault, it had nothing to do with him. He was just... so very lonely. Again. A never ending cycle of loneliness was his fate, so he tried to run away from it.

As it was, succeeding was proving to be a trial.

Often times he’d turned a corner he’d been past before and end up where he least wanted to be. He turned again, and there were myriads of doors and halls, each one inviting him in for solace. When he entered one, a dreadful reminder of why he hated this place glared at him. A remnant of her scent, ah yes she’d been here recently. A friend of hers making tea in the kitchen, her favorite flowers sitting on a windowsill... And then the halls carried her voice, though there was nothing but silence. It was just an echo in his mind, a shadow of a real person... Yes, her shadow self...

She was not his wife, that was for certain. And now... Well, she never would be.

Érik gasped and sobbed, darting this way and that, his mask nearly slipping off his face if he hadn’t been lucky enough to catch it. His cloak billowed around him, smacking against the rot alabaster walls and dragging chunks of paint with it when he stopped to catch his breath. He pushed past the people he faced in the corridors, some shouting at him for his discourteous actions, others hoping to seek the cause of his unhappiness. He did not pause to give them an answer.

The walls seemed to narrow, and he was beginning to feel dizzy. He was lost in an ancient maze of denial. He couldn’t accept this. Érik couldn’t be beaten. She’d given herself to him more than once. She was his angel, his seraph of heavenly song... Yet he could not hear her voice singing a glorious aria, or even the notes of a simple wedding mass... There was just a lullaby, stuck madly in his head that refused to be sent off to rest. A lullaby.

Érik shook. He had to stop running... He was getting tired, but it was so unlike him. The man could have run a marathon any other day, but now all the strength was leaving him.

Closing his eyes, he stopped abruptly. His cloak pivoted forward around his willowy frame from inertia, and with quick hands he wrapped it around himself. He hiccuped, shuddering and kneeling down on the rug as if to pray. He almost did. “God, why do you treat me this way?” he would have said. But God had abandoned him years ago.

Instead, Érik lifted his sunken eyes and looked at his surroundings. A step, further, he realized, would have run him straight into a large oaken door. He recognized this entrance... The library. It was... It was the library! The room where he’d first woken up when he came to this accursed manor house, where his nightmares had turned real. Érik stood, letting his cape fall and shimmer of silk in the moonlight streaming from the tall baroque windows. Slowly he opened the door, holding his breath as he prayed no one was inside.

All was quiet. He dragged his feet as he stepped in, clicking the door behind him. Locked, so no one would intrude. Érik moved to the middle of the room, gazing at decrepit book after decrepit book. One by one he peeled away gloved fingers, his bare knuckles white and pulsing with sickly veins. Then his cape was discarded... His necktie, his jacket, his waistcoat... He was suffocating, he needed air... Dreadful heat and noise... His mask dropped to the floor with the rest of his concealment. Only a shirt and pants left.

Érik wasted no time when he felt his exhaustion catch up with him. He fell into the nearest chair, his body sinking until his backside very well hung off the edge of the seat. His arms were limp atop the armrests, and his legs stuck straight out as would two darkly painted croquet mallets. His chin dug sharply into his chest, and one would think he would take to sleeping... But no, his eyes were pasted open, glaring at the door as if Christine would walk through in the next moment.

“Do you see?” he hissed, his voice a dark, defeated rasp. “Do you see what you've done to me, Christine?! I am a rotting piece of flesh, man nor monster! A thing that you brushed aside callously! For what?! A child?! With the boy?!”

With each word said piercingly to the air, he rose and rose, the red anger clinging to his neck and his hands. He sat rigid and furious, a goblin king upon a pastel floral throne. His knuckles possibly dropped to the color of ice as he gripped the armrests.

“I gave you such music, elegance, and splendour, yet you... you throw it away for a life among fops!” More bites, more jabs to one who was not there. With each word he pounded his fists against the armrests in his childish temper. Sheens of sweat broke out on his forehead, prompting him to roll up his sleeves at the imaginary heat. A deep, throaty laugh echoed around the room. “Ha ha ha... It is summer in the southern hemisphere!” he sang, his voice rising.

His eyelids dropped, spurts of laughter echoing from him every few moments. It grew louder, faster, more hysterical as he rolled his head round and round. Eventually his cackle turned to a sob. “Oh... Oh if only I could hop jolly high! … and never come down.”

Abruptly, Érik stood by turning quickly on the ball of his right heel, his arms swiveling like those of a rag doll thrown round the bend. He stared blankly at nothing, until by way of great force he wretched the armchair from the ground and threw it across the room, smashing it against an empty wall.

“I gave you MY music! he shouted. The ghost shook and shook, slipping down into a ball and clutching his ears. He clawed at his wig, pulling it off and flinging it to the side as well as he had the chair. He shuddered and he rocked. “I trusted you! I trusted you and you betrayed me... You betrayed me... Christine...”

Érik stood and rushed forward, thrashing his arms at the decaying bookshelves and knocking as many decrepit pages as he could manage to the ground. He was far too weak to knock down the shelves. Like a child who rages against his parents, he smashed and kicked and sputtered. Book pages flew everywhere from where he’d ripped them from their bindings. Tales of adventure on the high seas, the glory of God, the spells of witches and hags rained around him. These lives were not his. There were most surely better lives, and the could all rot for all he cared.

His coherent mind was slipping. Érik babbled uselessly, musings about cradles and memories and requiem masses... Now he paced again, and with each step he flung a book to the walls and furniture with his feet. His eyes stared at nothing but the pages fluttering to the ground, his mind only seeing her face. She was blinding him, deafening him, killing him. Nothing existed, if not for her. Absolutely nothing but her...

As he paced and stepped and kicked, slowly he was beginning to return to full consciousness. This was only, however, due to the fact that he repeatedly found his eyes landing on a particular book he had not yet dislodged from its spot on the floor. He hadn’t registered its title in his conscious mind, but subconsciously he knew exactly what it said, and how much it startled him.

Finally, Érik stopped, staring at it with absolute shock and awe. It could not be... That was not what he thought it said, was it?

The Phantom of the Opera.

It was an English title. A red cover with black lettering. Its binding was worn but still good, seeming only to be read on a few tumultuous occasions. Cautiously, he walked towards it. He peered at the cover, a cross-hatched threaded material that was fraying along the edges. His hand shot out and picked it up.

The copy was light in his hands, but he could already feel the heaviness of its words. He opened the book slowly, flipping to the first pages... And saw a photograph.

The opposite was the title page. The image, however... It was a scene as if re-enacted from his own life. A woman and a man in the center were clinging to each other, the man soaking wet. To the side was a darker skinned man who could only be conceived as the Daroga, if one were to match faces to the names of his past. And of course... there was the figure looming over them.

Érik could look no more. He examined the title page and read that the book was by a fellow called Gaston Leroux, yes, like it was on the cover. Illustrated by Andre Castaigne and with Scenes from the Universal production starring Lon Chaney. A moving picture? Érik was growing curious, and proceeded to continue to the first page. He sank down to the ground, his mind temporarily away from his dreadful situation, if only to investigate what this Leroux knew about his life, and why other people were putting on films about it!

“The opera ghost really existed.”

Érik’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well don’t be daft. Of course I existed!” He continued to read on with even more curiosity, though as always his ability to read was a bit slow. He grew frustrated with himself when he tried to, but this book was keeping his attention more than any book since Poe had. The narrator reminded him a bit of Dupin...

As he read on, it was became obvious the book was a work of nonfiction, solely about his life.. The ballet girls’ gossiping brought a laugh from him, especially when they tried to describe what he looked like. He remembered this particular day well, as it was the day his Christine... Yes, the book was hinting at that.

When the narrator related Joseph Buquet’s description of “the Ghost,” Érik rubbed his own unmasked face and shuddered. Without lifting his eyes from the page, he crawled over the misplaced books and sought a blind hand to where he’d laid his mask. He slipped it over his face and tied the ribbon one-handed. It was safer this way... for himself...

He was still mildly amused by the time Buquet was announced dead by Little Jammes’ mother. However, his irritation grew as the book focused on the Comte de Chagny and his brother. Was the title of the book not The Phantom of the Opera? Was that not his name to the people in this book? Then why did it insist on relating the history of the aristocrats who were a thorn in his side?

Perhaps it was largely due to the fact that they played a significant role in Christine’s life. When his darling did not recognize the Vicomte in her dressing room, he remembered how he’d seethed with fury. She was trying to fool him! It did not work of course, he knew who the boy was. He knew that she loved him...

Érik shook his head and tried to move past it. He continued to read, growing quicker by the second by skipping over words and passages he remembered well. He didn’t not need constant reminders, after all. Every once in awhile he came across an illustration or image from the motion picture. When he read about the masked ball, there was a still of a man dressed in just that walking down the marbled staircase of the Garnier. There were images of “Christine” and “Raoul,” actors and illustrations that merely represented the two, not actual likenesses of them. It was as if there were no pictures of them in existence... As if this book was a fictional novel, instead of a biography of his life?

It certainly couldn’t be a biography. In it, he fully realized Christine’s positive fear of him. She did not love him, as he’d known all along. But... As she related to Raoul upon the rooftop, as clearly as he remembered it, she pitied him, but was also horrified by him. He had to endure Christine’s rendering of their time together once more, all the agony he’d felt on the rooftop as she slandered his name and rallied the boy against him. “Horror, horror, horror!” he repeated weakly from the pages as he had once echoed Christine’s cries atop the figure of Apollo. He was nothing more than a shadow to her, one she ignored...

He hadn’t noticed the dark stains he’d left upon the pages until he’d reached the end of that chapter. With the same determination he’d felt that day, he longed to foil their plans and cause havoc in the Paris Opera. They were defying him, even though they knew what he was capable of. They dug their own graves.

Though it was painful, though he knew what was coming next, Érik continued. He persevered, because he had to know... Secretly, his goal in reading this book was the question... How did it end? Was it how he remembered it, kissing her, fainting, then waking up here? Or was there something more to the story... something he’d forgotten?

When he abducted his love from the stage, he was amused once again by the pandemonium among the house and its staff. The directors were as a riot as he remembered them, all thanks to the stupid loyalty of his dearest Mme. Giry. The boy was a mess, but... Though he continued to grate his nerves and make him question why he hadn’t killed him the moment he saw him, he realized as he went through the agonizing chapters that focused on the Vicomte’s plight, that the child truly loved Christine.

This revelation hardened Érik’s heart. By keeping Christine from him, he was denying the boy what he had always been denied himself! What was he thinking... That perhaps she’d loved her angel more than her sweetheart? Yes, once she might have, but not after what he did to her. He continued to find reasons in de Chagny’s dialogue and narration, indeed in that of Daroga’s as well (who he would strangle for revealing his secrets the moment he saw him again), of the boy’s utter devotion to his bride.

Érik sighed, rubbing his chin underneath his mask and burrowing his face into his chest. Had he really been this unhinged? He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so blinded by fury. He remembered not what he said or did, only the emotions that had plagued his mind. This book gave voice and action to those feelings...

The powder kegs... The scorpion... Yes, he remembered that grasshopper. What a kinder, gentler option than spending eternity alone. But he’d spared their lives, because of Christine’s pious sacrifice. His breathing hitched as his eyes inched closer to the... Why was he relating this story to Daroga? “Why am I crying...?” he muttered... “Why am I dying?”

And then it hit him. He had been dying. He recalled the wound de Chagny had given him the night before the kidnapping. It had ached and bled, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was as good as dead in that dank underground, but when he’d reached the manor the wound had mysteriously disappeared...

His heart stopped, and started again, and he had to reread the words he could barely believe. “I... let her go?” When she kissed him on the forehead, something he hadn’t experienced before his time in the manor... Yes, he would have let her go had she done such a thing, he realized.

It was no wonder she was with the boy now, in the manor. She had no obligation to him any longer, and he was too much of an idiot to realize it. He let her go. He gave her away, sent her off to be with the one she really loved. How could he have been so blind? She’d tried to explain to him, tried to make him understand... That was why she’d been so kind to him. His blessing forgave him of what he’d done. Why had he not come to this conclusion himself?

Érik had to finish reading, though he was stunned by his own actions. Yes, as he told the Daroga, he would let her leave to marry her love. He cried along with his black and white doppelganger, as he was the only one left with tears to shed. He was dying, both on the page, and inside his heart.

“Erik is dead.”

The words hardly affected him, because he knew they were coming. His life... His miserable, wretched life was over in these pages. What more could there possibly be, and yet there were still a few pages to go! How could this be, when his life was over and there was nothing more to say...?

Apparently, the author seemed to think so. Afterward it was described the aftermath of his misdoings... Christine and the Vicomte’s disappearance, the investigation of Comte de Chagny’s death... and the Daroga (again, who he would murder), who related to the author of Érik’s pitiful life story. Betrayal was the worst kind of heartache, and that is what he felt from his former ally. Not that the Daroga had ever particularly liked him to begin with, but they owed each other a great deal... Now that makeshift friendship was over as well. Everything was finished upon reading this book.

“Poor, unhappy Erik. Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He only asked to be ‘some one,’ like everybody else! But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Opera ghost.”

The Opera Ghost was numb. The last few paragraphs were finished. He was breathless, and wide-eyed. “He would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind!” These words reverberated in his mind. Yes... He would have been, wouldn’t he?

He stood, his body rigid but not trembling. He was beyond shuddering, beyond the grotesqueness of bellowing. He looked up, closing the book in his hands and observing all around him. The books were collecting dust again. The light through the window was fading. It was almost nightfall.

With such clarity, Érik saw everything in his life. He saw what had transpired in the form of these words in his hand, what was happening to him now by his memories and presence in the room... and he saw what would happen in the future. “Erik is dead.” Yes, he had died, and yet he was alive once again! Was he thus greeted with a second chance?

This book was a waking call. Pity was so often used in relation to him, but this would not do! He would eradicate any thought of pity from people’s minds, and instead replace it with admiration of his genius! This was to be! He would not be content with a cellar again!

With a flourish Érik opened the pages once more. He peered for a second time at the first paragraph that had proclaimed his existence. He reread the block of text, remembering that he particularly liked the phrasing of his presence in the opera house. “Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.”

He was the Phantom of the Opera long ago. He was once a genius, a monster, and part-time Angel. But deep down, yes, Gaston Leroux had it right. He was a man, of flesh and blood. To be caught between the midst of life and death by being brought here was a blessing in disguise!

Christine had made her choice. She could have her child, have her life, but she must know that he would always be in it. He breathed in deeply, shut the book with a pop, and placed it delicately on the empty shelves. He continued to pick up each and every book he’d sent flying, stacking the papers that had been torn from their bindings and placing them on the table nearest where the broken armchair had sat. He sent a silent apology to those who the books belonged to. Such a shame... He’d pay for new ones.

Érik gathered everything. His cloak, his vest, his cravat, his wig everything he’d brought with him and exited the room, leaving the door open for the eager readers who might await the library’s doors.

He took the lift down to his house. He was no longer afraid of anything, including death. Loneliness was what he had always dealt with, and now he resigned himself to it happily. But he would not be alone.

When he reached his house, there was nothing there. His eyes widened as he moved around the empty rooms, dust and marks of where furniture and rugs had once been. Impossible! Had someone actually stolen everything he owned in the short time he was out? How long had he been gone...?

He raced back to the lift, going to the top floor and rushing through the halls. He needed to find Christine, at least, to tell her he was...

This hallway was new... Or perhaps the house hadn’t let him find it yet. In any case, there were rows of doors spread out, with name plaques denoting whose they belonged to. Many of them were called Erik... Some called Raoul. Others, well he had no idea who they were.

Sighing, he leaned up against a wall and scratched his head. Where were the women’s quarters? Perhaps someone there could help him find Christine...

His eyes landed on the door across from him. The name gleamed in the strange electric light that ignited the former kerosene powered lamps.

Erik Spectre.

Drawn to it, rather magnetized to its presence, Érik reached for the door handle and turned the knob.

It was there. His home, his belongings...! It was all there, intact and placed in an inviting way. His things were there but... something was different. He saw what it was across the way.

Windows! Érik rushed toward them, placing his hands on the sill and watching as the stars twinkled in his vision. The curtains were a heavy red fabric with gold tassels, and he clutched them, pressing his masked face against their soft material. He breathed their newness deeply, placing his palm on the glass and gazing at the stars. This was no house to him any longer.

This was a home.

For hours Érik sat at the bay seat, watching as the moon rotated in the sky. It was in its half form, like that of an opening eye. He was giddy, his legs tucked to his chest and his face resting on his arms. He awaited the sunrise.

When he saw it, he could barely breathe. Here he was, sitting in his very own rooms in the dormitories, watching the sunrise. It was a miracle! When it was over, he stretched and popped his neck, unfolding himself from his position.

The room was lit up, and he saw how very normal it looked. The coffin was no longer his bed, but a mattress and frame with the same canopy he’d once housed the pedestal under. There was his organ and his piano, spread around the magnificent room. Opulent but mysterious decorations adorned it, and the stave around the trimmings was no longer the Dies Irae, but the Ode to Joy! He opened the closet and found his clothes, and another cupboard contained his various instruments and manuscripts! There was his bookshelf, his armchair and rug, and a quaint little fireplace he could imagine resting by.

Erik Spectre, as he know subconsciously called himself, held his hands close to his chest and smiled, but exhaustion was overtaking him. Without bothering to take off his clothes again, he sank into his mattress, discarding only the mask, which he let drop to the floor. The sunlight greeted his closing eyes, continuing to shine on his smiling face.

“Merci... Oh, dieu merci!”

He slept deeper, and longer, than he had in his entire life. When he awoke, his life was to begin again. After all, this was no ordinary man.