The Strange Tale of Erik Rene

The Strange Tale of Erik Rene
By April Grey

A/N: Thank you Jula and Akina for your reviews. Your support of this project is much appreciated.


Chapter Two


Henri wheeled the chair back down to the stables. I had had a chance to observe my surroundings. We were in a small compound, surrounded by a high brick wall topped by sharp objects, including broken glass, inset into the roughly poured cement to discourage any one from mounting the walls. It reminded me that Madam had mentioned that Port-au-Prince was a powder keg.

For the very rich in France, it was necessary to keep out intruders with highly fortified walls, but what I had seen during my convalescence indicated that Madam was not rich.

There were no horses in the stables and no carriage. The paint on the back of the house, on the stables, out house and smoke house was peeling and in some places totally gone. The gardens were a riot of uncared for plants mixed with weeds. The entrance drive from the stable through the wall had been sealed up leaving only a small heavily chained door with a bell pull over it and a barred window to speak through. While in my early twenties, after those rosy hours of Mazendaran, I had left the East and gone to Paris. And having survived the Paris Commune, I recognized this house as a place under siege.

Henri helped me out of the chair and I fell to my bed, exhausted. Though made of simple straw, I was grateful to have someplace to lay my head and I quickly fell into a deep sleep.

I awoke after dark and felt again the rumbling of hunger in my stomach. In my old life, as I was coming to think of it, I almost never thought of food. I had stored a large provision of tinned goods and cheeses and preserved meats in my house by the underground lake. Madame Giry thoughtfully left out a fresh baguette every day or two, and I kept a wine cellar, but since my taste in wines was only for the finest, most expensive vintages, very often I'd make do with water or ale.

I attempted my feet and found that I was much stronger after my rest. I practiced walking and found myself to be clumsy, yet able to move without falling. I decided not to wake Henri and his family, who lived over the stables where I was, but to try and locate the kitchen for a little snack.

A full moon was out and shone brightly on the gardens and house, hiding its dilapidation and re-gilding it in its former splendor. I walked up to the house and found the terrace door ajar. I walked through, glad that the night was bright enough that no candle was needed to find my way.

The floor creaked. I rarely had that problem in my old haunt, as most of the flooring was stone and where it was wood, I knew every floorboard by heart. I missed my old home and the security of the anonymity of being the Phantom. It had not been a bad set up except for the aloneness; yet, it was not until I fell in love that I had ever been bothered by those feelings. Had not C. come there as an orphan and had I not become her protector, I would still be prowling the corridors and galleries under the opera house.

I entered the kitchen. Right there atop the sideboard was a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth and put inside a box to discourage pests. Well, I was one pest they had not planned on. I began to hunt for a knife.

"Erik, I would suggest some other food if you are searching for some dinner."

I was startled by her voice. What had happened to my hearing that she had been able to creep up on me?

"Madam, I did not wish to cause you any bother," I hid my consternation at being caught so easily. Really, I no longer knew myself.

"Do you not care at all of your health? And, by the way, do you know that your eyes glow yellow in the dark. Amazing, like a cat's."

"So I have been told." My stomach rumbled.

"Sit down. I will bring you some rice and beans leftover from dinner."

"I do not wish to be a problem." Furthermore, I hated being so dependent on anyone. I sat on the kitchen chair while she prepared me a bowl of the simple fare.

"You must not be tempted by your old food. I was not joking—a long life can be yours but it comes with a price!"

"I will consider what you say Madam"

"Please call me Nell." She was not smiling; in fact she almost never smiled. She placed the bowl before me and sat. "I was just coming home when I heard you in the kitchen. Babies are not fond of being born in daylight. Why is that?"

"Nell, you said you would answer my questions."

"Ask away." She gave a small twitch of her mouth, perhaps that was her way of smiling, or perhaps it was no more than a nervous mannerism.

"Your family? You are a widow, but do you have children?"

"Three angels were given to me. They flew off to heaven." She went to the cupboard and fetched a bottle of wine and two glasses. She sighed deeply. "Once my father died, I was all alone, except for my cousin, Henri. And you, sir? What happened to Christine?"

I flinched. I had hoped to never hear my beloved's name spoken again. I looked to the ground and closed my eyes. Breathing heavily, I managed to still the tears that threatened.

"I am sorry. It seems I have caused you pain. Well, we are even now." She sipped her wine. I took a large gulp of the abdominal stuff. My mind focused on how my beloved looked that last time I saw her. Her bright blue eyes filled with tears as she begged me to live. I cursed.

"None of that my good man. Love is not a reason to swear. With time, with time. Vanity"

"How old are you Madam? A century? Two centuries? I shall never, ever stop feeling this pain!"

"Do not let the color of my hair fool you. I am thirty-three. Again, I apologize for your pain. It is still too fresh. Calm yourself." She lifted her dark hand and placed it on mine. I stared at her in wonderment. And then I grasped her hand roughly. Human touch, how long it had been denied me and she was so free with it.

"Thank you, Madam, I—Nell. Thank you, Nell."

She gave my hand a squeeze. "Good. Well, it is late. If you wish to steal anything before you leave, the family Bible may bring a few francs. Other than that, there is nothing of value except my medical equipment. In the name of God, do not touch that. Good night, Sir."

She left me there at the kitchen table. She needed no candle, nor did she wear her dark glasses to move through the moon lit house as stealthily as I used to. I sat there, shaken. She thought me a thief? Well, I had been many things in my life, torturer, murderer, and, yes, extortionist. And there had been times that I had to steal to survive. It was as if she could read my soul.

Eventually I rose, ready to return to my bed. The house was so very quiet. I deliberately turned into the living room and saw that it had been converted into a library. Bookcases lined every wall and each of them filled with medical textbooks and journals. There was a table loaded with test tubes and beakers and other medical apparatus that I did not recognize. I also spotted a violin case, quite battered and worn. Music! How I still craved it. She had said that the family Bible was the only thing of value, but here lying in an old battered case was an instrument worth to me a thousand Bibles.

I opened the case and removed the violin. It was not of a fine quality, yet my fingers yearned to tune it, to take the bow in hand and allow the music to course from my veins into it and to life. I rested the violin under my chin and plucked a few strings. I did not wish to be rude to my hostess, but how I hungered after my music.

I heard her steps come down the stairs. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and she was in a man's dressing gown.

"Still here? Ah, please put that down. It belonged to my father."

"You said you had nothing of value."

"I take it you are fond of music?"

"You have no idea."

She shook her head. "I am loath to part with it, only because it was one of my father's dearest possessions." She turned her back on me. "Take it, it's yours."

I heard the catch in her throat and was about to protest that I couldn't, but she was already heading back upstairs.

"Just don't play it in my presence. Violin music gives me a headache," she called from the stairs.

I stroked the wood of the violin tenderly. I felt that some part of my soul had been redeemed.

"Thank you, kind lady," I whispered. Reverently, I returned the violin to its case and headed back to my bed.

Once back in my room I carefully fingered the strings over and over again, playing out some of my favorite airs. My imagination played the music in my mind, while my fingers struggled to regain their function.

Eventually I tired. I was certain that I would never be as fine a player of the violin as I had been. My fingers that had once seemed to belong to a corpse, had become fleshy and thick. Is this what happens when one leaves a state of madness and genius? Was I now just a man? Sans talent. Had I traded in brilliance for dull normalcy?

I remembered that until a century ago, when it was outlawed in Italy, they were still taking young boys of remarkable singing talent to form castratos in order to preserve the beauty of their voices. Velluti, the last great operatic castrati, had died in 1861. I felt that the process was in reverse for me. I did go through a semi-puberty wherein my voice dropped and became manlike, but the other effects of puberty had not shown themselves until I came to this island. I wondered how much further would my progression to manhood go? Would I become rude and rough and unsubtle?

I held my hand before my eyes, even in the flickering candlelight I could make out the coarse black hairs sprouting on the back of my hands and knuckles. My voice, once a talented instrument for singing, could easily be mistaken for a frog. And the violin? Would I be able to make it sing as it had before? Surely not with these stupid clumsy fingers?

So many changes.

I had forgotten to ask about the mask. My nose was still absent. It was unthinkable that it too would decide to make an appearance so late in my life. Still with the growth of flesh on my body and face along with the hair, my lack of a nose was my remaining deformity.

I laughed out loud. It was not even an uncommon defect. Infections and illness took more than a few noses in Europe. Sadly, people took their noses for granted until they lost them. There was one member of the German nobility who regularly came to the opera sometimes sporting a golden nose and at other times, silver depending on his mood. It was rumored that the tip of his original nose had been lost in a drunken duel under the stars.

I still longed for my mask, but what horrors had Madam and her servants already seen that they were so sang froid about my own deformities?

I lay upon the bed waiting for Henri and his family to wake, so I could play my violin and see for myself how much had been lost.

It occurred to me then, she had said that Henri was her cousin. She meant someone else of course, a different Henri. The one living above me was a servant, was that not so? With answers only came more questions.

While counting the seconds for dawn, I fell asleep and this time I dreamt. I dreamt that I was back in my home under the Paris Opera. Someone was on the lake, someone who hadn't been announced. I put the siren's call to use, seducing, beckoning, and tantalizing whomever it was to go destroy himself. I heard the splash and went to see whom my victim was.

It had been Christine! She had changed her mind and had decided to marry me, to be my living wife. But the siren had done her job too well and I reached my beloved—too late!

Her skin was blue and her blue eyes were shot through with red. I carried her limp body up out of the lake onto the shore.

My beloved! I pressed my mouth against hers, kissing her and willing her to live. She twitched and her eyes shut and then opened again.

"Erik. Why did you let me die?"

"No, no. You are alive."

"I am your dead wife now, Erik. You let me die in the lake." Her face and voice were devoid of any expression. I felt the old rage rise in me.

"You lie! You damnable liar!" I struck her and a bead of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. I kissed her, not caring if she was dead or alive, "you are mine, always, dead or alive."

"Take me, Erik. Make me your dead wife." I started stripping off her clothing, her wet, filthy wedding gown. Tears were choking me as I ripped all off of her. And then held her close in my arms.

"Make me your wife, Erik," her voice came sweetly in my ear.

The hardness between my legs jumped and I started unbuttoning my trousers. When the trousers caught in my shoes and I kicked them all off. It was cold there on the shoreline. I thought I should perhaps move her to our bed—our wedding bed! But she wasn't breathing. Her lips were growing so very cold that I didn't dare take any longer.

I thrust into her quiet body. So quiet, so very quiet. I had once been advertised in the circus as the living corpse. So was it not at all absurd that the living corpse take a dead wife. No, it all made sense. I continued to plunge into her body, her so calm, unmoving body until I could precede no further. My body went into a spasm and I grunted as my seed warmed her cold womb.

I looked down. Warmth flowed from between her legs and all over me--Blood, hot gushing blood all over me, turning the lake to blood. Heat rose up and the level of the lake rose until we were both drowning in its hot stickiness.

Someone was shaking me. I was screaming.

"Damn it you, wake up, Erik. You're scaring my family."

I blinked up at Henri. He was holding a candle and staring down at me.

"You got to stop these screaming dreams. We've had no sleep for weeks."

"I'm sorry. It was a bad nightmare."

"This Christine? You called her your wife. Is she alive?"

I put my hand up over my eyes. My beloved might as well be dead, but the thought hurt so. "The last I saw her she was quite alive."

"Then you are married?"

"No. She married someone else."

"Ah. I see. Goodnight then. And stop the screaming dreams or I'll stop them for you."

He chuckled to himself, like he had just told a good joke and left.

I put my hand down under the sheet. My stomach was sticky with my seed. It being there was a mockery of my life.

When next I opened my eyes, I saw a rosy dawn streaking the sky outside the door which Henri had left ajar. Already I heard the creaking of my neighbors upstairs, as they got dressed for the day. With trembling hands, I opened the violin case. I quickly tuned the instrument and tightened the bow.

Music drifted onto and then filled the air. I ran a few scales, retraining my stubborn fingers to find their proper positions and then I launched into Schubert's Resurrection of Lazarus. Tears stung my eyes as I was carried to heaven by the imperfect, yet blissful sound. I continued playing until the corner of my eye saw some movement. I stopped. Henri, Amelia and their daughter, Margaritte, were standing in the doorway, staring at me in horror.

"Have you something personal against me, sir?" rumbled Henri.

"What do you mean?"

Just then there was a shriek from the gardens, and I heard Madam scream, "What in the name of God did you do with it? Where is it? Damn it all to hell, where is the bolt?"

Amelia's hands flew to her mouth as she ran outside.

"The fox is in the henhouse now," murmured his daughter as she too ran outside.

"She'll be like this the entire day." said Henri, "And it's all your fault."

I stared. Surely I was living in an insane asylum. "I don't understand."

"It's her reaction to your music. When her father died she swore she kept hearing him play his fiddle for weeks on end." Henri sighed. "It's not enough that you keep us all awake with your infernal screaming, but you had to get her upset playing at the crack of day."

I could still hear her yelling at the poor woman. "What is wrong?"

"We sold the bolt of black silk--the one that she was going to use to make the mask for you. See, so it's your fault entirely. She wouldn't have needed the silk and found it gone if not for you."

"Look here. That is really going a bit far to lay things on my lap. I'm getting very tired of your attitude. I don't need to take this or stay for your abuse."

"That's right—leave. You'll be dead within the hour. And a good thing, you've brought enough trouble."

"What!"

"Hush. Madam doesn't know about the bounty on you. It's all over the island that you are her White Zombie and that she brought you back from the dead all the way from France. All the Bokors here are in an uproar and would like to examine you."

"What is a White Zombie?"

"They don't have the undead in France?"

Ah. My mind traced back to the years I spent wandering Eastern Europe with the circus. There were quite a few rumors whispered about by various circus hands and artists about the undead. Those who believed in them hung garlic and silver crosses about their necks.

"No. Not in France, but to the East there are stories of the Oupire. They are the undead."

"Well, it seems you have joined them my friend. And there is now such a high price on your head that it will take months to save enough money to bribe a way out of here on shipboard for you. That is if you will stop playing that infernal instrument. Do it again and Madam will put you outside and turn her back on you."

Actually, I rather doubted that and felt it was simply wishful thinking on Henri's part.

"And what are the Bokor?"

"You are like a newborn, you know that?"

"Educate me, please." I sat down on my pallet and steepled my fingers. If my life was in peril and my presence troubling to Madam, I needed knowledge of this place. Perhaps it was time for the Phantom to return.

Just then there was a clash of pots and pans and tinkle of glass breaking.

Henri rushed out.

I heard Madam's voice scream, "You sold it? Without my permission?"

I quickly dressed. If Madam's tempest was my fault, as Henri suggested, it was my responsibility to quell.

Henri spotted me coming up the hill to the terrace and frantically waved me back. I would have none of it.

Madam came up behind him. She was dressed and wearing her dark glasses.

"You do not need to concern yourself, Erik, with this matter." She was practically choking on her spleen.

"Madam. I am sorry—I did not realize my playing would upset you. And I am no longer in need of a mask." I smiled, practically simpering, and schooled my voice and face to be as charming as possible. It seemed to have an effect.

She went very still. Henri glared at me.

"Very well. That is good, then."

She turned to Henri. "Let us proceed with our day."

His mouth dropped open. His eyes darted from the mistress of the house to me and back again.

"Very well, Madam." He said finding his voice. He shrugged and went back inside shaking his head to himself.

"Come Erik. Sit beside me and have some coffee on the terrace." She sat down.

Margaritte, wild-eyed and quivering, came in with a tray. Her eyes seemed to almost pop out of their sockets. She put down the tray and nearly ran back inside.

I heard a mumbled argument come from inside while Madam poured our demitasses.

Amelia's face appeared at the window, also staring at Madam.

"I think my household is in shock." She said serenely.

"Yes, you are quite right."

She laughed. And took my hand. "I am glad to have your company, even though you cannot stay for long. Haiti is no place for a white man to thrive. Last night I thought perhaps you would try to rob me and leave; I am happy that I misjudged you. However, the politics here are such that your alignment with me will force you to be a prisoner here at my house during your stay. When the time is right we will be able to help you escape to a better destination."

A strange feeling overcame me. I have had very few people I could call my friend--I had been alone for almost my entire life. And then there had been the firestorm of feelings leading to my passionate crimes in Paris only a few months ago. Nell was a very different sort from my beloved, but right there and then I decided I would leave Haiti at my own leisure—and no one else's plans would stand in my way!