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In the fog covered cemetery, a haunting dirge played on the violin. No one was around to hear it, but even if there had been anyone there that early morning, no one would have been able to hear it anyway.
A tiny meow cut through the mournful music.
Well, perhaps someone could hear it.
Erik opened his eyes and paused his song, scanning the grounds for the source of the meow. Seeing nothing, he sighed and began to play again.
The meow came again, closer this time.
A Siamese cat was wandering the cemetery all alone, and she had approached Erik, staring right at him with wide, blue eyes.
Meow!
He smiled, the first time he’d done so in decades. The little mice that called the cemetery home and the little birds that perched in the trees were all afraid of him, but this cat shared none of their fear - she boldly approached him, perhaps drawn by his music.
“Do you like that, little one? It’s one of my very own compositions.”
He set the ghostly bow to his phantom violin and began to play again, the music causing the small cat’s tail to flick back and forth. Once the song was finished, he expected the cat to leave, but instead she stayed.
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
He tilted his head, studying her.
“Go back to your home, you don’t belong here, dear.”
And with that he tried to shoo her away with the violin bow, but she only leaped up to try to catch the end of it. Erik laughed with amusement at the look on her face as her paws went right through the bow.
“Silly girl,” he said affectionately, and leaned down to pet her.
She pressed her head into his hand, walking towards him, letting him stroke her from the top of her head to the tip of her tail. He was about to repeat his order for her to return home when she began to purr, and the words stuck in his throat.
So she stayed in the cemetery with him, a newfound companion in his hitherto centuries of solitude. She listened to him play, she purred for him, she amused him with her antics. If she happened to catch a mouse now and then, and he heard a particularly loud squeak followed by a ghost mouse that scampered by, pausing to wiggle its whiskers disdainfully at him, well, he chose to look the other way. This cat could do no wrong. He wasn’t sure how long they spent that way together - time had long since lost all meaning to him - but he found his existence considerably improved by this little living being.
And then one day someone else showed up.
He hadn’t thought much of it when the girl arrived. Sometimes people showed up every now and then, they left quite soon after, and his loneliness remained undisturbed. It made no real difference to him.
The girl entered the cemetery respectfully, quietly. She took care not to step on any graves as she made her way to one headstone in particular, sinking down to her knees in front of it.
“I miss you so much, Papa,” she addressed the headstone, tears welling in her eyes.
Erik floated closer to her, intrigued by her tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone cry.
“I just don’t know what to do anymore,” she sniffled, wiping the sleeve of her too-big dark red sweater across her face. “I feel so lost, even still. I wish I could talk to you one last time.”
Erik wasn’t sure what it was about the girl that moved him to pity. She was pretty, yes, in that strange way that modern girls were - long curly brown hair left scandalously hanging down her back, black form fitting pants with a careless rip across the knees - did the poor girl not have access to a tailor? - strange rubber and canvas shoes with laces. She had a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and her big blue, kohl-lined eyes with tears that threatened to spill over.
He set his bow to his violin, knowing that she couldn’t hear him, but knowing it was the only thing he could even hope to offer her.
Christine Daaé closed her eyes as she sat at the foot of her father’s grave. She had come here distraught and full of doubt, but now she only felt a strange sense of peace and calm. For a moment she could almost swear she heard the faint and far off sound of a violin being played exquisitely, but then it was gone.
When she opened her eyes again, she wasn’t any closer to knowing what to do with her life, but her sense of hopelessness had ebbed away. There was also a cat sitting next to her Papa’s headstone.
“Oh! Kitty!”
Christine reached out to it, and the cat walked up to her, meowing.
Erik’s bow fell away and his eye twitched as she picked the cat up and held it close, but he couldn’t deny the girl whatever comfort she could find.
“You’re such a sweetie,” Christine laughed as the cat licked her hand.
She glanced at the headstone one last time as she stood, cat in her arms. This was a sign, she thought. Even if her father hadn’t sent the cat to cheer her, at least caring for a pet would help take her mind off of things.
“You’re coming home with me,” she told the cat, earning a meow in reply.
Erik stared in slack-jawed disbelief as this insolent girl positively stole his cat right out from under him.
He darted after them as they left the cemetery. There was no particular need for him to stay at the cemetery - his body was not buried here, but was, in fact, buried deep under the Paris Opera House, his sudden, unexpected, and final resting place after the cellars caved in during a fire in the 1880’s - no one knew he was buried under the rubble there because no one knew he had been living there in the first place, a recluse from normal society. He wasn’t tied to the Opera House either, but was seemingly free to wander where he would. The cemetery, however, was peaceful and quiet, and he enjoyed spending his time there.
Until this girl had come along and stolen his only friend.
He strode next to her on the sidewalk, giving her scowling stares, his mismatched eyes flashing. The cat started at him, entranced.
“What are you looking at?” Christine giggled, scratching the cat’s chin.
“That’s my cat,” Erik huffed. “You’re taking my cat.”
Christine shivered a little, feeling oddly cold all of a sudden.
But to Erik’s dismay, she didn’t relinquish the little beast, instead continuing on her way to an apartment building. He followed her up the stairs and through her door, glaring at her all the while. Once inside, she set the cat down and tossed her keys into a bowl by the front door.
For the first time, Erik took a look at his new surroundings. The walls were a faded, dingy white. There were a few odd houseplants on shelves, and a large number of ratty old books piled here and there. She had posters on her walls, ones that seemed to be from stage shows of some sort, but all titles Erik didn’t recognize. She had a faded and patched couch that faced a large black rectangle on the wall, and a number of strange appliances in the kitchen.
He felt terribly out of place quite suddenly - the feeling stole up over him before he even realized it. He, in his Victorian suit and cape with beadwork and sparkling buttons, standing here in this odd and modern home of a strange girl - he hadn’t been in a home since...
Since he could remember. He didn’t even know what year it was.
Embarrassed at how he’d followed her and how out of place he was, he turned and very nearly left the building entirely when he spied something that made him change his mind - there, in the corner by the gauze curtain-covered window, sat a piano.
Not a piano exactly - there was something... missing. But there were piano keys all the same, keys across a thin black box propped on a stand with a little stool in front of it. He looked at it curiously and then turned his gaze to the girl. Did she play this? Was she musical? But the piano was half covered by a blanket - surely she couldn’t play it all the often if it was covered up!
He floated closer to it to inspect these strange circumstances.
Drawn to his presence, hoping he would play with her, the cat - his cat - or, perhaps, their cat, now - approached the keyboard, hoping to gain Erik’s attention. She meowed at him, but he was too absorbed in trying to understand the mechanism of this strange piano. Annoyed at being ignored, she swatted at the blanket, her claws catching in the fabric.
Meow!
Her frightened meow brought Christine running from the kitchen.
“Kitty, what happened?”
She knelt and disentangled the blanket from her paw, frowning at the keyboard. The cat stared up at Erik - just above the keyboard - and meowed again. He looked down with a raised eyebrow, crossing him arms.
Christine smiled at the little cat.
“Do you like the keyboard?” she asked.
The cat meowed at Erik.
“You wanna hear it?” Christine asked, pressing a button on the keyboard and beginning to play.
It was a simple tune, but she played it with the finesse of someone who had grown up playing. After she played for a few seconds, she began to sing a bit of a song in Swedish before faltering and stopping. She pressed the button on the keyboard again, pulling the blanket over it once more.
“Hey, I haven’t sung for a long time, don’t judge,” she told the staring cat, and then scooped the little animal into her arms. “Not since before Papa died, actually.”
Erik had never heard so sweet a voice. She was an angel, he was certain of it. How else could one explain a singing ability like that? And if this was how she sounded after not having sung in a while, how would she sound with practice?
Intrigued by this mystery, he lingered in the apartment, hoping to find out why she didn’t sing anymore. He watched over her shoulder as she pulled out her cellphone to take a photo of the cat and send it to Meg. To his fascination, words appeared on the screen.
Meg: ahaha! she looks like she saw a ghost. what’s her name?
Christine crinkled her nose at the text, but she had to admit, the cat did have a wide eyed, vacant expression on her face.
Christine: She doesn’t have a name yet. What do you think?
Meg: where’d you find her?
Christine: Graveyard...
Meg: what! hmm ok. how bout ayesha? it means “alive”
Christine: Love it! Thanks!
Christine turned to the little cat.
“Ayesha!” she called.
Ayesha looked at her and meowed, and Christine smiled.
She was pretty when she smiled, Erik thought.
Erik wracked his brain trying to figure out how to get her to sing again, when suddenly his train of thought was interrupted by the black rectangle on wall bursting to life. He stared as little people began to move and talk, then looked to Christine to see if some sort of explanation could be found. She stared intently at the screen, reacting to the things that went on there. He swiftly realized this was some kind of entertainment device, and he was about to dismiss it as frivolous when he became intrigued by the little players and the show they were putting on. He sat down next to Christine, just for a moment.
Before he realized it, the entire evening had passed and Christine turned off the tv. Erik blinked, and looked out the window, noticing how dark it was outside. Ayesha, the little traitor, followed Christine to her bedroom.
Erik huffed. There seemed to be no hope of getting his cat back, not now. She’d named the little beast and everything.
He floated grumpily throughout the apartment, reluctantly exploring his new abode. If the cat was staying, so was he. He was drawn to her bedroom, however, by her voice.
It felt awkward to enter her bedroom - he was a gentleman, even if he was a ghost. But she was already dressed for bed, and she’d never know he was there, besides.
“Papa, this is Ayesha,” she was saying, holding the cat up to a framed photo of a smiling, middle aged man on her dresser. “I know she’s just a cat, and not an angel, but you did promise you would send an angel to look after me, and maybe this could be her...”
Erik felt a strange feeling he hadn’t felt since he didn’t know when. It was soft and warm and bittersweet, a compassionate kinship with this soul who seemed to be so lost, so alone in the world just like he was.
Her Papa had promised her an angel? Well, he was no angel, but he could try. He would watch over her, if he could.
He perched on the edge of her headboard and summoned his violin into existence, playing a sweet tune for her as she got into bed. She couldn’t hear it, but as he played some of the tension left her shoulders and took a deep breath, closing her eyes and soon falling asleep.
It was the first night in months that she woke feeling refreshed.
He followed her to work the next day, a place called ‘Starbucks’ that he didn’t quite understand, but he tried his best to help her throughout the day despite that. Unfortunately, his presence seemed only to cause the cash register to short out and the frappe machine to run too fast, and every so often one of her coworkers would wrinkle their noses and complain of a “damp, mildewy type smell” that Erik took a personal offense to. Noticing how stressed she was and how much she frowned when the machines broke (as they tended to do when Erik got too close), he realized he was in fact hindering her work, he decided to stay in the apartment after that.
She went off to work in the mornings, and he watched her go, a little sad for her to leave. While she was at work he spent his days petting and playing with Ayesha, or else he’d turn on the tv and lay across the couch, entranced by the different programs available. Sometimes he’d try to do little tasks for Christine to make her life easier - finding missing hair elastics and bobby pins, pushing the healthier foods to the front of the fridge so that she might see it and not eat another bag of potato chips for dinner. He watered her plants for her when she forgot, and kept Ayesha from eating any little knickknacks.
Christine, for her part, didn’t really notice anything too different in her life. Sometimes her apartment was cold in certain spots, and although she began to clean extra meticulously, there was a certain oder that she couldn’t quite get rid of and didn’t understand the source of. But ever since getting Ayesha, she felt a sense of peace and comfort that she hadn’t felt since losing her father. It was like the feeling that would linger just after a warm hug from someone who loved her, and it saturated the entire apartment. It made her smile to feel, even if she did have to take to wearing more sweaters to make up for the cold spots.
Sometimes he’d hear her lament misplacing an important paper, and sometimes when she’d come home that evening, the paper would suddenly turn up where she thought she’d already looked a dozen times. Sometimes when watching tv at night, she felt less alone, and not just because her cat was curled up and purring on her lap. She didn’t know what it was, but she hoped it would last for a long, long time. Sometimes, right as she was about to fall asleep, she thought she could hear violin music, just like her father used to play. While hearing such ghostly music might have frightened anyone else, she found the sound relaxing and welcome.
Erik was absolutely enamored with Christine. In his eyes, she could do no wrong and was perfection itself. Even though he knew that she didn’t really know he was even there, he began to refer to her to himself as his “little living wife”.
That only led to some awkward feelings upon finding out that his little living wife had a living boyfriend.
Raoul de Chagny, an insufferably living and breathing young man with an unfairly handsome face (complete with nose! The audacity!) came over to Christine’s apartment one evening. Erik was utterly dismayed at this turn of events, horrified as they hugged in greeting, and even more horrified when she seemed intent on not sending him away.
He was seemingly here to watch a certain television program with her, apparently a tradition they had when this particular show was airing.
Erik darted off to the living room. He was not about to let the boy usurp his role in Christine’s life (the fact that Raoul had apparently known her for longer meant nothing to Erik) nor would he allow him to usurp Erik’s place on the couch.
His glee at claiming his spot on the couch was cut short when Raoul, the insolent brat, sat directly in him.
It was unpleasant for Erik, but Raoul seemed the most affected, squirming and shifting. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
“Hey Lotte, is it cold in here, or is it just me?” he asked, his brow wrinkling with concern.
Christine frowned.
“I think the building must have put in new air conditioning, or maybe they need to... The temperature’s been all over the place the last few weeks!” she told him, sitting next to him.
Erik raised one hand, and, pointing his finger, poked it into the side of Raoul’s head.
Raoul hunched forwards, suddenly feeling a cold sweat come over him. He jumped up a moment later and sat on the opposite side of Christine, who gave him a puzzled look.
The three of them sat there on the couch, Erik secretly fuming to himself as it became clear that Raoul and Christine were already quite familiar with the show, probably from nights and nights of watching it together... together on the couch... together on the couch watching... and smooching. How he hated the very thought!
After a while Raoul glanced over at Christine, who was innocently eating popcorn. He yawned a little, and stretched his arms out, letting one come to rest over her shoulders. He smiled, the ends of his little blond mustache turning up, and Erik could not abide it.
Erik placed his arm around her shoulders, overlapping with Raoul’s. A funny look passed across his face, and a second later Raoul removed his arm, rubbing at it.
“Pins and needles,” Raoul muttered, frowning.
“Musta pinched a nerve,” Christine said around her mouthful of popcorn, patting his arm.
Erik smiled smugly, though he couldn’t help wishing that Christine could pat his arm. His smile faded a little, reality sinking in. If she could see him to pat his arm, she would surely be frightened of his terrible face, or at least unsettled by the white mask he wore even in the afterlife. No, it was better this way, he thought. Better to be intangible but around her than risk terrifying her and losing her.
Losing her - he couldn’t lose her to this boy just like he’d lost his cat to her!
He considered his options in this regard - he could frighten the boy some more, he supposed. He could interfere with her cellphone and make certain she didn’t receive his calls or texts. He could even opt for a more permanent choice, such as tampering with the braking device of the boy’s horseless carriage parked outside the building.
But as Christine bid Raoul goodnight and saw him to the door, Erik realized with a sinking feeling just how much she loved the boy - and how much the boy loved her. The way she smiled at Raoul when he pulled back from kissing her cheek nearly broke Erik’s heart. It would only bring her pain to lose Raoul, no matter how she lost him, and Erik was all too aware that this lovely girl had already had a lifetime’s worth of pain. She deserved to always be able to smile like that.
Erik sighed deeply as he stayed on the now-empty couch, waiting for the boy to finally leave and stop kissing her. Ayesha, annoyed at being ignored by Christine for even a moment, brushed up against his ankles. He reached down to pet her, grumbling to himself about mustaches.
As much as it irked him, he didn’t meddle in their relationship - at least not beyond making sure the boy didn’t overstep what Erik thought his bounds were when he was in her apartment. Raoul seemed good for her, and Erik couldn’t deny her that. He wasn’t particularly happy about him, but he was happy that she was happy, and he supposed that was enough.
He liked her friend, Meg, more than he liked the boy, even if Meg did seem oddly perceptive - the first time she’d come over to Christine’s apartment when Erik was there, she’d paused and narrowed her eyes at the exact spot Erik was standing, and it made him highly uneasy that perhaps she could actually see him. Her dark, glittering eyes and thick black hair reminded him of his old acquaintance from Persia. But she didn’t mention anything to Christine beyond a remark that her apartment smelled like she’d let some fruit rot somewhere, a remark that made Erik sulk in the linen closet for a nearly an hour while Christine just brushed it off with a laugh.
Still, Erik was glad Christine wasn’t quite as alone as he feared she was. She could text her boy and Meg and talk to them on the phone and go out to see them every now and then, but Erik was the one who got to sit on the couch with her and watch tv after a long day at work, to play his violin for her when she was feeling down, to watch her as she slept.
It was a very good arrangement, he thought, except for one thing - it had been several months and he hadn’t heard her sing again.
She was so talented, and yet she did nothing with it. Even Meg had brought it up to her on occasion, and from what Erik could glean from their conversations, Christine seemingly wanted to sing but was letting her nerves hold her back - after her father had passed away, she’d lost her confidence, it seemed.
Erik couldn’t stand for this. Her voice was a treasure! It should be shared with the world.
He began his plan by pulling the blanket off her piano each night, something she puzzled over each morning but attributed to Ayesha.
“Ayesha! Naughty!”
Ayesha meowed, confused.
But after five days of this, she finally sat down and played a song or two. Soon, she left the blanket off the piano all the time. She played it occasionally, but not for very long or with very much interest.
“Ayesha!” Erik hissed, floating above the keyboard. “Come here!”
Ayesha jumped up to the keyboard, meowing, trying to swat at his hands.
Christine chuckled and came over to remove her. She sat down on the stool and placed Ayesha on her lap, turning the keyboard on and beginning to play. Erik smiled, his plan working. After a few days she began to play regularly again, and Erik would accompany her on the violin, floating just a few feet above the keyboard.
Soon she began to find her book vocal exercises sticking out a little on the shelf. She’d push it back it in, wondering if she should pick it up and open it. One the day she found it on the floor along with a few other books - presumably from Ayesha playing on the shelf - she placed the book on her keyboard bench, and the next day she sang a song while cleaning her apartment, her iPod on shuffle.
Slowly but surely she began to get her voice back again. She had missed singing. Still, she didn’t think she could go very far with it.
“I just sing while I’m vacuuming and dusting, Meg,” she shrugged to her friend one day while Erik was hovering above them. “I’m not anything special.”
“That’s not true!” Meg insisted. “Just pick up the phone and give the theater a call. Sorelli is really nice, I promise, and she already told me she’d give you an audition. Look, here’s her number - just call her.”
She handed Christine the business card for the director of a local live theater company and personal friend of Meg, Sorelli.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, looking at the card. “What if she says no?”
“Then you can go back to singing while dusting,” Meg told her, rolling her eyes. “What if she says yes? You always used to say you wanted to sing on stage.”
“Yeah...”
To Erik’s disappointment, she didn’t call. She wanted to call, it seemed, and she would pick up the card and her phone, running her thumb over the little embossed numbers on the pink business card, her other thumb hovering anxiously over the buttons on her phone, but then she would put both down and distract herself with something else suddenly, usually Ayesha or potato chips.
Erik began to realize that she was never going to call.
He very nearly left it at that, considering that she still sang just for him around her little home. He got to hear her beautiful voice, and he treasured that thought.
But Christine Daaé could be so much more.
After so many weeks and months of watching her use her phone (really, she almost never put the damned thing down) he thought he had a decent idea of how to use it, even if the screen did flicker as he touched it. He waited until she was out of the room one day, and then began to scroll through her phone. Christine had already put Sorelli’s number into her list of contacts, so calling the number was easy and took only a second. He let it ring once or twice and then pressed the red ‘end call’ button, and then he waited.
Sure enough, it worked. By the time she came back into the room, her phone was ringing - Sorelli was returning the call.
Christine answered it, her eyes going wide as she saw the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Hello, who is this, please?” asked a high, clear voice on the other end.
“Uh, this is Christine...”
Didn’t Sorelli know who she was calling?
“You just called me?” Sorelli asked.
“No?”
“I can see a missed call from this number, Christine,” she chuckled. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“Er, well- actually, my friend Meg had told me to call you-“
“Oh! Meg’s friend Christine! Are you calling to set up an audition?”
Christine gripped her phone a little tighter.
“Yeah!”
Erik watched with glee as they set up the important date.
“I’m going to level with you, Christine-“ Sorelli said. “One of our lead singers just moved to Italy, so we have an open spot and a new season rapidly approaching. Provided you can sing decently enough and show up on time, the spot is probably yours. So tell me now, are you serious about this?”
“Yes!” she squeaked.
“Great! I’ll see you tomorrow, then!”
Christine ended the call and shrieked, scaring Ayesha who had been napping on the back of the couch.
She immediately called Meg to tell her the good news, and then Raoul.
Erik wished he could pick her up and spin her around and share in her joy. He settled for trying to soothe the now-flustered Ayesha, who merely hissed at him.
Christine was beaming the entire day, and Erik felt more proud of her than of any composition he’d ever created.
As she sat on the couch that evening, Ayesha on her lap, and (though she didn’t realize it) Erik by her side, Christine felt something she’d thought she might never feel again - excitement for what the future might hold, instead of just the dread of what might be there.
She went to sleep that night with a smile on her face. She knew she’d do just fine at the audition tomorrow, and she was happy that her weird old cellphone had glitched and accidentally called Sorelli.
Erik sat at the end of her bed like a dog at her feet, playing the happiest songs he knew on his violin for her. Waiting for her had been worth all the decades and decades of solitude, he thought. He finally had a true purpose in life - to watch over his beloved Christine - and he couldn’t have been happier.