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Christine woke up with a start. She had fallen asleep on the settee.
The house was dead silent, which meant Erik was at the Opera House gathering his income or causing all sorts of mischief. However, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was being watched.
“Darling?”, she called out, not wanting to reveal her husband’s real name to anyone who might have come down looking for him. “Are you home?”
Silence.
Just to be sure, she slowly walked into his room, only to find the organ and his compositions abandoned.
No sound came from the lake either, she noticed as she walked back into the sitting room, and the lamps from the hallway that led to the door in Rue Scribe were off.
Christine sighed. Surely she would have woken up if someone broke into their home.
Still, the feeling of being watched never faded.
She sat back on the settee and grabbed the book she had fallen asleep with. Some reading would distract her until Erik came back.
Half an hour later, Christine heard a creak and swiftly got up, expecting Erik to enter the room at any moment, yet several minutes passed and he didn’t. The eerie feeling from earlier was back just as strong.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
No answer.
It was probably just the wind, she told herself, and turned around to go to her room. A relaxing bath would do her good, and Erik was expected to be home at any time now.
However, something made her stop dead on her tracks and let out a terrified scream.
That fearsome life-sized mannequin Erik had confectioned and showed her the first time they met in person was standing behind the settee. Christine’s doppelganger stared ahead blankly, the unfinished, still shapeless cream-colored dress flowing down her body. At least it was useful, Christine thought, as having a doll with her exact measures spared her of being pinched by a needle or having to stand for hours on end when she was being fitted for new clothes.
That didn’t make the doll any less scary though. The first time she saw it, Christine passed out. True, she had made an unexpected debut as Elissa, reconnected with Raoul and found out her Angel of Music was actually very human, all in one night, but the mannequin on top of everything really did it for her. It was too much for her fragile heart.
Christine had asked her husband to dispose of that horrifying thing, or at least keep it somewhere she wouldn’t find- he had the real woman to keep him company now- and so he did. He probably had taken it out to work on her dress and forgotten to put it away. A small, secluded part of her brain told her that the doll hadn’t been there before, but Christine dismissed it, assuming she just hadn’t paid attention.
By the time she was done with her bath, Erik had arrived and was waiting for her in the sitting room.
“Ah, my dear!”, he rose when she walked in. “I am so sorry, my errands today took longer than expected. I hope you weren’t too bored while I was out; I needed a few things for your new dress and couldn’t find them in the stores nearby. I take it you’re ready for supper?”
“Yes, I am. As for my dress… Would you mind it too much if I asked you to work on it in your music room instead of out here? That doll thing still scares me…”
“My Christine, Erik has never brought the mannequin to the sitting room!”
“Of course you have, Erik, it’s right th-”, she spun around and the words vanished. The mannequin was nowhere to be seen. “Where did it go?”, Christine muttered.
Erik must have put it away , she assumed, and doesn’t want to admit it so I won’t be upset with him about it.
Well, as long as that thing was out of her sight...
“Thank you for being so attentive, my love”, the girl turned to him and smiled. “So what are we having for supper?”
Several days had passed and the incident in the sitting room was forgotten, seeing as the doll didn’t make any other unwanted appearances. Christine’s dress was finished, and therefore they had no purpose for the mannequin at the moment.
Though it had happened a handful of times throughout her life, Christine wasn’t prone to waking up in the middle of the night. It was more common when Erik was watching- or, in his words, “admiring”- her sleep while he took a break from his compositions. Because of that, when she did wake up that night she almost instinctively glanced at the chair he usually sat on, only to find it unoccupied. Though it was dim, the light from the oil lamp on her bedside table left no room for doubt. Her husband wasn’t there.
Christine drank a glass of water and sighed, turning to the other side of the bed to try and go back to sleep. However, something caught her eye.
It was that accursed mannequin again! Here, in her room!
She screamed in horror and despair, which caused Erik to run into her chamber, thinking she was somehow injured.
“What is it, my dove?”
“That hideous doll!”, she sobbed, her hands over her face. “It’s been following me, I swear! Get that thing out of here, Erik, please!”
“Christine”, he replied in a soothing voice, and turned on the gas lamps in her room. “There is nothing here. The mannequin is hidden in a place you will not find it, I promise.”
He gently removed his wife’s hands from her face and held her, and she couldn’t believe her eyes. It was there not a minute ago! How could it simply have vanished?
“I’m not going crazy, Erik!”
“I don’t think you are”, he said with sympathy. “Maybe you just had a bad dream.”
“No, it was real! It was there, I swear, and that day in the sitting room too! I fell asleep on the settee and when I woke up she was there, then when I finished my bath she was gone!”
Erik stroked her hair soothingly. Her poor husband must think her insane! First, she truly believed angels could talk to humans and give them singing lessons, and now this. But this had been real, she knew it had…
“Will you do something for me, Erik?”
“Anything, my love.”
“Will you throw it away? The mannequin, can you dispose of it? I don’t want it in our house. I won’t complain about getting fitted for new clothes again, I promise.”
“Of course I will. If you want to, we can do it right now, so you can go back to sleep peacefully.” Christine nodded. “Well, then it is settled. I’ll go get it and wait for you outside.”
After Erik took his leave, Christine drank more water to calm down her nerves, and decided to change into a dress. It was hardly a formal attire situation, but she would never dare to attend a funeral in her nightgown, even if it was for a doll.
When she met Erik by the lake, wearing a simple navy blue dress, the mannequin was dismembered and its parts laid on the shore.
“I figured we could throw it in the lake”, Erik explained. “Disposing of it in the regular trash might bring unwanted attention.”
Christine hesitated. The lake wasn’t exactly part of their home, but it was still close. Erik was right, however. The less attention they drew to themselves, the better.
And who knew, maybe in the future, if someone ever were to drain the lake, it would be a funny surprise! She could almost envision the Opera House workers creating countless stories about the body parts that would be found.
“Let’s do this, then”, she smiled.
They boarded the boat and proceeded to navigate the lake, dropping the parts of the doll randomly. When they reached the center of it, Erik handled her the mannequin’s head.
“Will you do the honors, my dear?”
Christine giggled. Such a theatrical man. She grabbed the head by the false hair and tossed it pompously on the lake. Erik then proceeded to row them back to the entrance of their house and, once inside, Christine went back to sleep.
The following morning, she padded out of her bedroom, only to find the mannequin fully assembled standing next to the settee.