Work Text:
The Phantoms of the Opera
Erik dusted his hands off, rather too briskly. It was ridiculous, really, all the things he did around here to earn his salary, things the managers and the whole company of the Opéra Populaire would never know about.
Riding herd on all the damn ghosts, for instance.
How was he to know that when he had settled upon a career as a spectre that the Palais Garnier would turn out to be absolutely infested with lost souls?
He hadn’t seen ghosts or spoken to ghosts or been spoken to by ghosts, other than the personal shades of his past, ever present in his mind, during all the long years of the Opera House’s construction, even though he’d gone places no one else had ever been in the vast site, down to its deepest foundations, exploring catacombs and tunnels and constructing more than a few passageways hidden within the walls themselves.
They’d called the place after Garnier, but no one knew the true ins and outs of the whole structure, top to bottom, from the crowning statuary to the deepest cellar, like he did.
And there had been nary a peep, a glimpse, a whiff, of the supernatural.
Even after the company moved in--having held together since the fire at the old Opera House on Rue Le Peletier in 1873, which occurred just at this same time of year, he realized. Two days, October 29th and 30th , it had taken to reduce Salle Le Peletier, home of the Opéra since 1821, to ash and rubble.
The company had encamped at Salle Ventadour in the interim and made their way to the nearly completed Palais Garnier in late 1874. He remembered his confusing emotions at the time, as his Opera House prepared to take on the purpose for which it had been built. He had mourned the loss of his solitude while simultaneously being swept by shivers of excitement—excitement!—at the thought of music filling the grand auditorium and bringing the place truly alive as it was meant to be.
Perhaps that was why, the first year on All Hallow’s Eve, there had been no ghosts. The orchestra had conducted their first official test of the acoustics mid-October 1874, and the new auditorium captured every glorious note—and every wrong one. Enough wrong notes to wake the dead, and possibly cause them to flee.
But the second All Hallow’s Eve the following year, all hell had truly broken loose.
Only some of which he had been responsible for.
The many apparitions, ghostly encounters, wails and rattles of chains witnessed and heard that evening and early morning had done much to firmly entrench the notion of the existence and powers of the Opera Ghost in the hearts and minds of the Opéra Populaire, and the state of being decidedly absent from the Opera House in the late hours of All Hallow’s Eve had become an established company tradition.
Erik and the ghosts had come to a quick truce that evening. It seemed that they had been quietly watching, and though Erik was still (mostly) part of the living world, his ghostly ambitions had somehow endeared himself to them.
The agreed upon terms were simple. All Hallow’s Eve—really the early hours of All Saint’s morning, if one were splitting hairs—belonged to them. The rest of the year, Erik reigned supreme. Not that they didn’t seek him out occasionally during the year, or that he didn’t ask them for favors from time to time. The main clause of the agreement was respected by both the living and dead parties.
Erik would have the house emptied by midnight, and the ghosts would stay unseen, unheard, un-everything imaginable, until that witching hour.
And thus to his current dilemma this All Hallow’s Eve. Almost 11:30 and here was the damned Second Trombone, trysting yet again with someone or other, gods the man got around, in a large practice chamber. As though the man needed any more practice at this particular skill!
Erik thought of ways to get the ardent couple to leave, quickly, and ideally with maximum humiliation, and briefly considered stealing the man’s pants, but decided that would only encourage him. He settled for taking the two sets of footwear, four shoes in all, which he then chucked with wicked accuracy from his shadowed hiding place. It took until the third shoe for the couple to realize that apparently ensorcelled flying footwear was a definite clue to have done and depart.
At last the coast was clear. As he waited for the sounds of the various Parisian church bells to chime the hour, Erik thought to wonder who would choose to appear this year.
He had learned over the years that not every apparition appeared every year, following some otherworldly agenda of their own. Each year, new shades made a debut, while some familiar acquaintances declined the open invitation.
Some of the missing he had helped to cross over, as it took time, sometimes years, to forge a relationship and an understanding of what that particular spirit needed to cut entirely and finally loose from this mortal coil.
Burdened as he was by a past he did not care to dwell upon, Erik found a curious peace in helping other lost souls achieve their own.
And for some, the Opera House was their peace. Madame Bouvier, for example, a quite knowledgeable opera aficionado, who had succumbed in the Palais itself, several seasons past at a climactic moment during Le roi de Lahore, during Alim’s first death in the arms of Sita, his love. Erik was not unconvinced that Madame Bouvier had remained tethered to this earthly plane simply to see how the story, so rudely interrupted by her own death, played out. She was one of the very few who quietly visited throughout the year, as she caused no trouble and simply enjoyed the operatic productions. Erik had some time ago given her free use of Box 5.
No trouble since the season of her death, that is, which Erik did not blame Madame Bouvier for in the slightest and in fact, trouble he had actively participated in himself. Madame Bouvier had been rather perturbed to find her widowed husband seeking enthusiastic comfort in the arms of a ballet rat during his period of mourning, and Erik had saved the ballet rat’s questionable virtue while Madame Bouvier administered a particular form of justice which caused Erik even now to clench his legs together.
Monsieur Bouvier had not returned to the ballet rat, and indeed had not returned to the Palais Garnier since that incident, which suited all parties involved quite well.
Yes, thought Erik, Madame Bouvier would most certainly be in attendance this evening. As would most likely Boismaison, a member of the corps de ballet from the Opéra’s historic days at the Salle Le Peletier, deceased many decades ago, whose ghost had apparently moved house with the company after the fire there.
Erik had learned that most of the ghosts gathered here had some local connection, either to the Opéra itself, or to someone employed there. Many had lived on the land the Opera House was now situated on, in the houses and on the streets that had existed before Haussmann’s grand redesign had swept the old neighborhoods away like so much chaff. Still others were people who had found shelter here during the Siege or after, in the time of the Commune, many of these victims of the starvation and disease that had stalked amongst the poorest of the poor of Paris during those long months, years ago.
He had also learned that the spirits could not speak of what death was like, or what came after, or many of the hundred other questions one would have for an actual ghost. It had been hard for his restless mind to accept it, until one sad-eyed translucent young woman had told him perhaps it was for the best to not know so much about one’s future. Erik had pondered that for a long while and still did not know what he felt about it.
As to why they spoke to him so freely about anything at all, they answered the same—because he could hear them, because he listened, because he was unafraid, and because he helped them.
Boismaison himself had been a victim of an unfortunate love triangle, the ballerina he was in love with also the object of affection of another man, who had indirectly caused Boismaison’s death. Boismaison on his deathbed donated his body to the Opéra’s doctor, with the request that his skeleton be kept near his beloved even in death. And so it had, until the Salle Le Peletier had burned completely to the ground taking his bones along with it.
Erik and Boismaison had had many conversations over the years about the wisdom of steering clear of love triangles, with Erik reassuring the young man that such a thing was highly unlikely ever to happen to him, having never even been a member of a couple before, much less a component of a triangle.
Boismaison would get the oddest look on his face during their talks, as though there was something he was being constrained from saying. And much like the ghost of Monsieur Le Clercq, whose oeuvre each year with Erik consisted of telling the same stories about appraising the monetary values of various buildings throughout Paris in his living role as, well, an appraiser of buildings, Boismaison would inevitably begin his sad love triangle tale over again, as though trying to impart something of great meaning to Erik.
Erik was not certain if he would ever determine what it would take to allow either Boismaison or Monsieur Le Clercq to cross over. The former seemed to have some sort of mission to complete first and the latter simply would not stop talking about appraising buildings long enough for Erik to embark on any sort of soul-crossing-over discussion…
Erik’s simple solution each year was to walk with one of the gentlemen until he found the other and leave them locked in endless repetitive conversation with each other until dawn shivered their insubstantial forms into dust motes. Blessedly quiet dust motes.
He did not have names or detailed histories for all the attendees at the annual event. He rather hoped he would see the young man who had been coming the last two years, who seemed not quite able to speak yet but had managed to convey a considerable fondness for violin music, which Erik was only too happy to oblige, playing the first few bars of a variety of songs until the young man indicated his selection.
Then there was the apparition Erik privately called Chessman whose interest, aptly enough, was chess. They had a game that had been in progress many years and Erik was eager to continue it, as he had had the advantage at their last meeting.
Erik had arrived at the Grand Foyer, having checked that the guards were confined to the watch station and were either asleep or doing a grand job of feigning such, on this night when the unwritten but spoken softly into their ears rule was to “stay put, messieurs, until dawn, if you value your lives.” And stay put they did, assisted by the potent brandy mysteriously provided each All Hallow’s Eve by an equally mysterious benefactor.
As the city’s midnight chimes whispered through the window glass, the grandiose golden and crystal décor of the Grand Foyer began to sparkle and shimmer more brightly than the low gaslights should allow, as one after another the attendees of the All Hallow’s Eve ball winked into existence, bringing each with them their own glow, as though they were wrapped in swaths of soft aurora.
Those of a social nature greeted one another and linked arms to stroll the grand hallway, some casting reflections in the mirrors and windows and some not, in an arcane pattern Erik had yet to decipher. Those less social adjourned to the salons of the sun or the moon, there to mingle quietly away from the crowd. A boisterous few, mostly unseen, felt as sudden bursts of cold or heard as cackles of laughter, careened at speed through the air, finding grand flying indeed in the large auditorium, swooping over the red velvet seats and circling round the great chandelier.
The rules were clear—no damage to the Opera House, its contents or to the guards who were obliged by the terms of their employment to stay. Any other unfortunates foolish enough to linger this evening were, by mutual agreement, fair game. As yet, there had been no—irreversible—incidents.
Boismaison’s dire love triangle warning had been delivered, and he was now deep in recursive conversation with Monsieur Le Clercq as Erik scanned the crowd for Chessman. Alas, he did not appear to be in attendance this year, but the young man who loved the violin approached, with an uncharacteristic smile, a new ability to speak, and a name, Papavoine, and carrying the cause of all these new manifestations, his own violin.
He and Erik engaged in a few mutually satisfying duets until Madame Bouvier appeared and floated the notion that since there was another violinist now to provide music, would Erik care to dance?
Erik stuttered that he had not had occasion to learn the art, whereupon Papavoine swung into “The Blue Danube” which Erik had played for him at their first meeting, and Madame Bouvier swept Erik up as well as a semi-corporeal being could and led him through his first waltz, dancing together in the midst of a glowing sea of shades who joined them, in ones and twos, until the whole golden hall was a whirlpool of colored light, trailing a step behind each dancing figure just as Erik’s opera cape flared about him with every turn, as close to a spectre as he had ever been there in the Grand Foyer amongst all the other silently dancing spirits.
As the evening wore on, or rather the early morning progressed, several ghosts made appeals to Erik for errands to be performed in the world of the living and he was able to accede to each one. A few would lead to souls crossing over; others would lay the groundwork for that momentous event to come; and some were more mundane, instructions or messages or the locations of lost objects to be delivered to their relatives.
Sadly, each year certain requests proved what Erik knew to be true, that some spirits were unstuck in time, and their messages could no longer be delivered as the recipients were long dead themselves. Still, in several instances, just attempting to communicate these requests provided a shift in the spirit’s attention, and allowed them to at last act on what was actually holding them here, if staying bound to the world was not what they themselves desired.
The party began to wind down, ghostly energies expended, and Erik said his goodbyes to old friends and new, as each moved away down the Grand Foyer and slowly thinned to transparency, dissolving into the low gaslit gloom or turning to join with their mirrored reflection, if they had one, rippling like waves on water into a sudden glass smoothness.
The violin player had departed, saying he did not know if he would come again and thanking Erik for the gift of music when he could not play his own.
In the quiet that followed the music’s end, Erik heard an unexpected sound, a small voice, crying, in the uncertain distance. The cry pierced him, and spoke to him and was infinitely familiar to him, this wail of a child for an absent and missing mother, one he had voiced himself, but only when there was no one to hear.
He felt compelled to follow it, and he had learned from previous experiences that when this mood was upon him, he must do as the spirit moved him, as it were, and so he followed.
Down the length of the Grand Foyer, to an entrance to one of his secret passageways, tracing the internal labyrinth down until it joined existing steps, through all the many cellars until he came at last to the shores of his underground lake, across which his home waited for his return.
The voice, however, called from the other end of the lake and so he stepped into his boat and poled his way across, dropping to a seated position to paddle as the lake changed depths, until finally reaching the other side quite a long distance away from his dwelling.
Greeting him on the shore where his boat landed was a young girl, perhaps six or seven, barefoot, in a tattered dress, clutching a ragdoll, and glowing with ghostlight in the darkness.
Erik blinked, certainly only from the sudden glow and not from any unbidden start of tears at the sight of her tiny forlorn face before him. The ghosts of children were rare in his experience, and an unaccompanied child, this unaccompanied child, was a unique event.
“And where are we off to, mademoiselle?” he ventured, as he gathered the cloth bag he kept in the gondola for carrying provisions or whatever oddments he needed from time to time from the world above.
Somehow he knew it was the correct question to ask.
In answer she took his long fingers into her own tiny hand and led him along the shore.
They walked into ways that Erik had not journeyed along in years, further and further, until they came to a small passageway. Erik had been everywhere below, and remembered every detail, and could think of nothing remarkable about this passageway…except to note that at some point since he had last passed through, a wall had given way, and now, scattered along the floor amid stones and clods of earth were a set of tiny bones, glowing with their own ghostly light against the dark ground.
“I see,” he said, kneeling, as she watched with solemn eyes.
“I am to gather them up, am I not?” he asked, and she nodded, once, twice, thrice, her straw-colored hair shifting against her thin face with each movement.
He lifted each tiny bone, cradling them gently, counting, as he placed them into the bag, noting that none of them were broken. Most likely starvation, then, or illness, during the Siege, or during the Commune after and buried here, as travelling for burial in a city at war would have almost certainly led to still more death.
He had the full complement of bones now, and still the bag felt empty.
“Is there anyone else here for me today?” he asked, while he yet knelt, still taller than her by head and shoulders where she stood next to him.
She shook her head no, and gathered his fingers again in her hand as he rose, and they proceeded down the passageway, past her resting place to a series of twists and turns that he knew eventually connected with a path to the surface.
Dawn was still yet some time off, and she took him through the streets of Paris, far to the east, to a potter’s field.
Only then did he begin to despair. Certainly she was looking for a specific person, and where amongst this jumble of graves, most of them unmarked, where and how would he find the proper place?
She squeezed his fingers with a smile and releasing her grip, pointed behind him as she began to run.
He turned to see a woman, kneeling to the ground with her arms outstretched as his tiny companion threw herself bodily into the welcoming embrace.
Rising with the girl snuggled against her, the woman smiled at Erik, a sublimely maternal smile the likes of which he had never received in his own life from his own mother. It warmed him as though it truly was that smile which he had craved all of his life, and he stood and basked in it for long moments.
With a small laugh, the mother turned, and tapping with her foot, indicated a spot upon the ground.
Digging with a piece of shattered stone, Erik soon had a hole big enough to accommodate his precious cargo and he laid the bag gently into the earth and covered it over.
The little girl heaved a long and contented sigh, followed by a yawn, from within the circle of her mother’s arms, held astride her hip.
The woman eased her down to stand beside her, and turning to Erik, opened her arms to him.
He did not run forward, though he wished to; rather he stepped slowly ahead, encouraged by that same warm smile, just for him, for all of him, for the good things he had done that so few knew about and yes, even for the bad things, understanding them, understanding what had driven him to them and then he was enveloped in the warmest, most all encompassing embrace he had ever felt.
She hugged him as he had always imagined it would feel to be a son hugged by a loving mother and he nearly made the decision to cross over himself then and there if only he could stay in her arms forever.
All too soon he felt her arms loosen, her hands shift to his shoulders, as she set him back from her, looking into his face with a small smile, tender with a dash of sadness that he knew meant it was time for them to part.
Erik stood amidst the jumbled stones and bones of the paupers’ graves surrounding him, while the girl and her mother clasped hands and turned, walking to the west, fading as the sun began to rise in the east, and as the little girl spun to give him a last wave, he saw a taller indistinct figure scoop her up and join hands with her mother and he knew this was the father, and knew also why he could not see him, as Erik had never known what a father would look like.
Turning, he made his way back to the Palais Garnier, his hat tilted low, his collar pulled up, shielding against the sunrise.
For now, it was his chosen fate to live in shadow, and to only be truly seen by souls long departed. It was All Saint’s Day dawning, the terms of the ghostly truce kept once again, and it was time to return to the Opera House and his reign there over the living and the dead.
And to collect the far, far, far too low of a pittance that passed for his salary.
Honestly, if they only knew.