by Marie Noire
A continuation of the classic The Phantom of the
Opera
And Based on the musical by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber
who listen for the music of the
night,
believe in angels and phantoms,
and know that a man's true heart
lies not on his face, but in his spirit.
It is thanks to us that the Phantom
of the Opera,
who wanted nothing more than love,
is now adored by thousands the world over.
May you walk in darkness and not be afraid,
may you hear the music of the night
and know the song…
Prologue
Winterbrook,
PA
Ten
miles outside of Philadelphia, 1871
"Black Attack!" a young
voice shouted.
"Hey, Four-Eyes, what's the
matter? Do ya want your little ol'
grandmother?" called another, unmindful of his prey's tears as he grabbed
her pad of paper and ripped the sheets in to large, crumpled pieces.
"Here's fatty walking. Boom!
Boom! Boom!" complained a
third, stamping his feet heavily in humiliating imitation and pretending to
shake the ground as he walked.
"She's so ugly, too!" a
fourth pulled at her hair cruelly dragging her off of the bench she sat on and
sending her to her hands and knees in the dirt.
"Bookworm!"
"Fatso!"
"Boom! Boom!
Boom!"
"Cry-baby!"
"Stop it!" the girl
finally cried against her attackers through tear-filled eyes, pulling herself
back onto the bench, hoping against all hope that for once they'd listen to her
pleas. "Please, just leave me alone!"
"Aww... are you upset that I
tore your stupid drawings?" asked the first of the four boys.
"Is that all you do,
fatty? Read books and draw stupid
little animals?" asked another.
"I think Black Attack here
needs some exercise, don't you boys?" their unofficial leader asked with
obviously sinister intent.
"Yeah..." his cohorts
agreed, crouching slightly as though they were a pack of wolves preparing to
pounce rather than children at play.
"Get her!" his almost
military order was obeyed immediately.
Before she even had sufficient time
to react, the biggest boy knocked her down on to her back. She landed painfully on the hard dirt
ground, the breath leaving her lungs in a startled gasp. The same boy straddled her stomach and began
slapping her face from side to side with increasing force. Panic set in and she struggled, letting out
a series of sobbing pleas for help, but the boys' excited jabbering and her
inability to make enough noise through the pain they inflicted kept anyone from
hearing her.
"How do you like that,
fatty? Want some more?" the lead
bully asked with an unchildlike smile of cruelty spreading his lips as he continued
to slap her. The boys on the sides
kicked her legs and sides, carefully avoiding any hits against their leader.
"Get... g-get... o-off...
me!" Jennifer hiccupped, her voice weak with tears and pain.
The boys ignored her and out of the
corner of her eye, Jenny noticed a circle of other children gathering around to
watch the beating with either cheers or slightly agape mouths. Not one child raised a voice in her
defense. No one was going to help
her... she had to help herself. With a
final burst of desperation, she let out an ear-piercing scream that startled
everyone present and succeeded in gaining the schoolmaster's full attention.
"Stop it this instant!" he
roared at the foursome, who immediately backed away from her and assumed the
correct ashamed posture of bowed heads and regretful expressions. The innocent bystanders scampered for the
schoolhouse and its small playground, aware that the teacher would punish all
of them if he could.
"Jennifer, why don't you go
clean up at the pump?" Master Cole told the girl gruffly, weary of having
to settle this repetitious scene once more.
"You boys, in my office, now."
Jenny, slowly rose from the earthen
ground, gingerly wiping dirt and grass off her purple cotton jumper and
gathering the shredded remains of her dignity, such as it was. As the school-master herded the boys off
with angry glares, she made her miserable way to the water pump, hugging
herself and dutifully trying to hold back tears. The mild breeze picked up slightly, chilling her and tossing her
long curls of hair about. As if to fit
her dismal mood, the clouds came up silently, covering the springtime sun with
the promise of a rainstorm.
She had been through this situation
many times before; Master Cole would rant and rave at them and box their ears,
maybe threaten to talk to their parents about their conduct. The others would be yelled at too, for their
lack of morals regarding the beating, but no more. And the torture would stop... for a time. If she was fortunate, it would be next week
before they'd all be after her in force again.
Soaking her worn homespun apron
under the pump's cool water, Jennifer wiped her dirty face and elbows and
pulled a comb out of her pocket to pull through her tangled hair. She frowned as she noticed some bruises on
her white arms and felt a lump forming at the back of her head, just starting
to throb dully. As she reached over to
turn off the pump, she caught sight of her reflection in the pool of water in
the stone basin, the clouded sun creating a glowing halo around her head for a
brief second before thicker clouds blotted across.
At ten years old, she was short for
her age and undeniably chubby. Wide
green eyes peered out from beneath mousy-brown curls, giving her that
frightened air that made adults want to protect her and her peers want to bully
her. To make matters worse, she was
shy; preferring art, literature, and music to the junior social hierarchy of
the school grounds.
No wonder no one liked her.
Loneliness tearing her young heart
in two, she sat on the ledge of the stone basin and burst into heart-rending
tears. The scrapes and bruises and
bumps would heal with time, but her heart was what pained her most of all. Life was miserable for her. She had no friends, her parents had been
dead for several months, and in a few years' time... no suitors either. She didn't understand it at all… all she'd
ever wanted was to be liked, to have a few friends to play with and talk with
when she was lonely... which was all of the time these days. She was a fairly good artist, spending her
spare time drawing and painting, or spending hours on end with her
grandparents. In fact, her grandfather
was a well-trained musician, who had taught her to love music and sing. Both of her grandparents said that she was a
fine young woman, with many talents, music and art being only two. But what was the point of having these
skills if no one cared for them?
Thunder rumbled through the air,
like the deep growl of some vicious predator.
A split second later, the sound and feel of cold raindrops surrounded
the sobbing form at the pump, mixing with her tears and drowning out her
cries. The wind howled its own lament
to the Heavens, perhaps using its greater voice to whisk her pleas to a higher
source.
What was her purpose in life?
****
Miles and miles away, across the
ocean from the tiny farming town that Jenny had spent her entire life in, a
full-grown man was in much the same position.
In the City of Lights, Paris, the patriotic citizens were dying one by
one, defending their city from the oppressive Third Republic. Anyone on the streets who was even a
suspected sympathizer to the old ways was seized by the merciless government
soldiers. It seemed the only way to
survive was to just accept the Commune of Paris and try to live on in the
relative peace that acceptance offered.
On the nearly deserted
Champs-Elyceé, the only sign of movement came from a few rats fighting over a
scrap of wilted lettuce and from a tiny mass struggling to support its meager
weight on its one intact arm. Quickly
approaching was a large, ominous figure in a flowing cloak, its footsteps as
silent as a cat's despite the height and weight it surely carried. Like a ghost or divine demon, it paused
directly over top of the smaller form staring at her with unfathomable eyes
that glowed like coals.
The tiny child stared through
tear-filled eyes back up at the black shadow hovering over her and she shivered
with both cold and fright. Was this
another Commune soldier come to beat the very life from her at last? A cold-hearted grown-up who would break her
fragile neck rather than help her to shelter?
The helplessness of her life and the pain from her beating finally sank
in, causing the girl to faint on the rain-soaked pavement.
The large shadow bent over her
closer, scooping the wounded child into its strong arms effortlessly, carefully
supporting her broken arm and bruised body.
A look, first to the left and then to the right, ascertained that no one
else was about... even the small group of soldiers had vanished from the
darkened Champs-Elyceé. A doctor was
what this child needed most... but where to find one at this hour who would
treat an orphan from the streets?
Determined to search all night if he
had to, he started off in the direction of the refugee hospital near his own
home. The doctors might not treat her
on charity, but if offered enough money they would treat a rat if he so
desired.
Hours later, in the very center of
the once brilliant and beautiful fine arts section of the old city, an
abandoned building site stood, one of the few places to avoid the bombings from
Prussia during the war only a few months' prior. The hundreds of workmen who'd spent every waking hour on the site
before the miserable times had long since left for good...
All but one shadow.
He skulked across the grounds
darting from shadow to shadow, heading down into the catacombs of the
unfinished Opera Populaire, where the dark cellars housed not only food and
drink, but a Commune dungeon, from which screams of torture echoed throughout
the night and day. However, this man
was certainly not one of the poor searching for the odd barrel of wine or
salted horse-meat, for his clothes were finely tailored of luxurious materials
and food was certainly the last thing on his mind. Nor was he a member of the ruthless Third Republic military, on
his way to stand guard over hapless prisoners.
He was no trespasser to this place... for he considered it his own. And now he was merely fleeing his way down
to return to his subterranean home on the lake under the Opera.
He had witnessed the brutal beating
of that homeless little girl who'd made the mistake of begging for food on the
wrong particular corner. By the time he'd reached her, the soldiers had already
left, prowling the city for drink and whores. The poor child had been left for
dead and would've frozen to death or been run over by a carriage if he hadn't
happened along at that moment. On top
of that, it had taken him most of the night to find a doctor willing to treat
the tiny girl despite the large sum of money he offered in return for the
service. At least for now the child was
safe and would be taken care of, but no one could save the entire city from
this inhumanity.
He was sick to death of the cruelty
of mankind; and who wouldn't be? He'd
been subjected to it for all of his life, had terrible things done to him both
as a child and as an adult. He wanted
nothing more to do with this insane, unfeeling world that insisted on killing
the weak and the different out of pure malice.
Down, down, down he went, until he
finally he came to the very foundations, where the darkness of night-time above
paled in comparison, over a dozen stories beneath ground level. There, he'd taken it upon himself to build
his own house under the Paris Opera, preferring the eternal darkness of the
cellars to living above in the world of men.
He finally reached his drawing room,
settling into his chair in front of the constantly burning fire with a
sigh. He could deny it all he wanted
to, he could attempt to hide from reality, but sooner or later, he had to wake
up and smell the coffee, as it were. He
could try to be the surly hermit he desperately wished he could be; but the
truth of the matter was, no matter how much he hated man's atrocities, he still
longed for companionship, friendship... and love.
Unfortunately, no one thus far had
attempted to indulge him in that due to a certain, woeful circumstance... he
had once been known throughout Europe as The Living Corpse, and with good
reason. He was downright hideous to
look at, deformed from birth, gruesome to say the very least; he looked like a
skull with a thin membrane of skin over his face. For this reason, he wore a mask of white leather over the disgusting
right half of his face. Even with that
covering, however, nearly everyone who crossed his loathsome path regarded him
fearfully, terrified by the intensity that blazed in his pale blue eyes. Not exactly the kind of looks that
attract people to your side...
He sighed again... he was forty years old and had
never had a true friend in his life... let alone any actual love. He wished that he didn't care about it...
but God help him, he did. For now he
would just have to content himself with his music, he thought, rising to fetch
his violin from its cushion near the coffee table. With skilled fingers, he drew the bow across the strings of the
Stradivarius instrument, unwittingly playing an Irish love song he'd heard
months earlier at a fair.
He'd survived forty years already
without love... without a doubt he could survive more.
Couldn't he?