Black Velvet

 

by Marie Noire

 

A continuation of the classic The Phantom of the Opera

And Based on the musical by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber

 

 

 

Dedicated to those of us

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?

                                                           

 

On to Chapter One

 

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