Awakened in Death

Chapter 5

Carrying the boy swiftly into an empty room deep beneath the opera house Erik was initially perplexed by the bout of compassion he felt for this boy, but quickly put aside his emotions as he initially surveyed the extent of his wounds.

His perplexity was quickly replaced by the shock that this was not in fact a boy, but a young woman dressed in men's clothing. A suit fit for Don Juan, that was sodden with her blood. Erik cut carefully along the seams of her clothes, eyes flickering quickly over her bound breasts and watching as the dark red blood from a myriad of small cuts along her abdomen and arms stained his own hands. Not feeling any serious injuries or fractures along her legs, Erik decided against cutting open her pants, but noted the curve of her leg against his palm, which only reminded him of Christine and slowed his movements.

Quickly bandaging her wounds and putting salves against the violent purple bruises that flowered the lenghth of her back, he dressed her in one of his silken shirts, left her tucked in the bed and quickly strode out, disturbed by the rapid shifts in emotions he had just experienced.

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Groaning at the aches and sharp pains along her upper body and gingerly fingered the bandages that tightly wrapped around her body. The shirt she was wearing was not hers, nor was the bed in which she was lying in. Or the silken blankets that covered her body or the open wardrobe overflowing with gowns that stood next to this bed
Where....?

Her thoughts were cut short with a gasp in seeing a dark shadow standing in the doorway in front of her. The figure stepped slowly towards her and the first thing she saw was the stark gleam of white mask and then the chiseled, impassive face of the man underneath it. The phantom.

He said something to her in French.

Feeling as if in a daze, Misha shook her head. "I don't understand you," she murmured softly.

"Ah, you're American," he said in perfect English.

"Yes, I am."

"Do you have any relatives or friends in Paris that I might contact for you?"

"No," Misha began and felt her lip trembling and a quaver rise inside of her voice, "I have no one. No family...no one I know here. Nowhere I can go."



Erik peered at this girl who was trembling, not from fear, but from sadness. She seemed so distracted by whatever inner pain she was feeling that she took no note of who was standing before her, no inkling of fear for the white mask and the very presence of the opera ghost towering over her.

"What is your name?" he asked gently, surprised at the compassion that creeped into his voice.

"Misha. Misha Barton," she said, looking up into his face unabashedly.

He nodded recognition, "I am--"

"I know who you are," she said with equal conviction.

Erik stood quiet a moment and continued staring at this woman, who lay bandaged in the swan bed.

"You have been asleep for three days, mostly likely due to the extensive injuries you experienced during the fire in the opera house." His green eyes passed over the bandages whose outline could be seen beneath the contours of the shirt he had dressed in.

"If you have no place to go, you may remain here until you are well, but then I must ask you to leave. I will assist in finding appropriate accommodations when the time is appropriate." Then with a curt nod he quickly left the doorway before she could respond.



Misha was left to sit in the silent darkness, considering the situation she was now in. After an hour of waiting, restlessness soon crept over her, and the bandages had begun to itch. Perhaps I could take a bath? she thought to herself, gently crawling out of bed, flinching slightly as her feet touched the cold stone of the floor. The corridor she was in opened into a wide floor ending at the mouth end of a green lagoon. She walked along the edge of the lapping water, timid by the flickering silence of the torches along the wall and the towering frame of a pipe organ.

The open floor split into two corridors--thinking quickly, Misha took the corridor to the left, and crept quietly through the dark hallway until it again opened into a large, tiled room. In the center of the floor was a black marbled, circular tub sunken into the floor. She gathered soap that was tucked in a niche along the wall and turned a spout, grateful for the rush of steaming hot water that began to fill the tub.
She grimaced as she took off the shirt, and began unbinding the bandages she was wrapped in. First large ones that covered the cuts and bruises along her body. Her eyes were sober as they examined the yellowed skin and the angry red lines that had closed and stood in jagged lines against her pale body. Second, she removed the cloth wrap that had bound her breasts, and breathed deeply as her breasts fell free. Quickly removing her pants, she stepped into the water, her leg tingling in the heat, and leaning back against the curved seat of the tub, she began to wash her cuts and bruises, then her hair and finally, gently, the length of her leg--first one then the other.

Finally feeling clean, Misha leaned her head backwards, closing her eyes and sighed deeply as the lull of warm water soothed the ache she was feeling inside. She began to hum quietly, smiling softly as room echoed her voice. And then, tentatively, she began to sing, her voice growing stronger as she continued. She couldn't remember all the words, just the tune of a lullaby that her mother had used to sing to her as a child. And so she repeated the parts she knew, remembering her mother and the world that she had come from, and felt an overwhelming sense of loss fill her and sang louder, deeper, stronger, allowing her sorrow envelop her and flood first the room, then the corridor, her notes quaking in the pipes of the organ that trembled in feeling her emotion.
This trembling traveled upwards through the pipes and cracks of the opera house underground and then to the streets of Paris.
And though in the open air, the sound her voice had dissipated, years from then, many would recall the inexplicable sense of exquisite anguish that had filled them unexpectedly one day in winter.

Erik was sitting in Box Five, brooding. His eyes were fixed at the charred stage that lay in front of him, remembering Christine. He was remembering her kiss, the way her mouth had melted sweet and soft against his, and the taste of her tongue as it had flicked against his, deepening the kiss to dizzying ecstasy. And then he remembered the bitter clenching of his gut as she had turned away from him and left with that boy. Left him alone just as everyone else had.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sound. It was faint, echoing as if from the very pipes of the building. There was a certain power that resonated around him with that sound and he realized that it was someone singing. He moved swiftly towards the sound, traveling deeper into the depths of the opera house, and finally into the black corridor, stopping at the doorway to see Misha singing.

She was laying in the water, head arched backward against the marbled wall of the tub, her body floating gently, breasts bobbing near the surface, the outline of the rest of her body obscured by the darkness of the water.
His mind was racing as he listened to the tone of her voice, the velvety depths of its strength that emanated from her.
And then abruptly her singing stopped. She opened her eyes and stared into the doorway. Erik stepped quickly back, but knew she had not seen him. The corridor was too dark.

Misha stepped out of the tub, and reached for a towel that was hanging along the wall. She dried herself off, patting lightly at the cuts along her body.
Erik's eyes seemed to glint cold as they traveled along the length of her curves. Her breasts hung heavy against her body. The curve of her buttocks and the swell of hips and thighs was generous. And then his eyes centered on the exposed pink of her vulva as she bent to dry her legs.
One leg was shorter than the other, he noticed. The skin along its length was twisted in jagged scars and darkened flesh as if it had been scorched. These seething lines could not have been produced by the fire of the opera house, or any recent accident. They were rough but precise in their lines, as if someone had dragged an edged blade against her skin years ago.

Misha turned towards the door, and Erik eyed the flash of curling black down at the apex of her thighs and then the startling series of hard straight lines that were etched into the shorter leg. They looked like rail lines starting from the base of her shin to the top of her thigh. And then it was all hidden by the towel she wrapped around herself.

Feeling as if he had intruded on too private a moment, Erik remained silent and hidden in the darkness. Misha walked past him, and he noticed her slight limp and the uneven sound of her feet that padded past on the stone floor.
He remained standing in the darkness until he was certain that she had returned to the swan bed room and then walked back along the corridor before seating himself in front of his pipe organ. He had been disturbed at the anger and violence that he had witnessed on this woman's body. Then placing long fingers against the ivory keys, he began to play to drown out the disgust he felt rising inside of him at whoever had inflicted such ugliness upon a woman.

Erik remained seated in front of the organ for hours, until in the open sky above the opera house had gone from flaming red to ink black and streaked with stars. He played lines of notes that cascaeded around him. First violent notes that seemed to shriek in the air around him, and then long dirging chords that pulsated through the floor.

And as his fingers began to still, and the last of his notes had stopped reverberating in the air, he heared them begin again. Looking up and around him, he saw Misha, pale and ghostly standing afar from him. She was dressed in his silken shirt again, but her eyes were what caught him.
They were wild and vacant and seemed to bore into him with intensity although he could see that there was no life behind them. She walked towards him, echoing the notes that he had played. He stood as she drew closer, feeling the strange cold of an unnamed fear tingling at the back of his neck as she stood before him, singing softly now, vacant eyes gazing up at him. He felt breath clutch at his throat at what she whispered.

"Erik.... Erik... please save me," she said. Then leaning forward, she placed one trembling kiss against his lips before collapsing into his arms.
His arms had reached outward reflexively, catching her body, and drawing it close to him as he lifted her and began walking back to the swan room. And as he drew the covers over her body, he could feel something move inside of him, at the frailty of her body, and the imploring way her eyes had looked into him before she had fallen.

And then he remembered the brush of her lips against his. and the way she had known his name.