Chapter 21
Before I could wrap my mind around Monsieur Firmin’s words, a battalion of stagehands—wardrobe assistants and wig masters—rushed onstage, shouting orders for gloves and hosiery, rouge and ringlets.
I looked up and spotted Raoul leaning over the railing of Box Five. His eyes were wide with panic and concern.
“Raoul!” I cried out, reaching for him, but was yanked away, hurried off into the wings’ shadowy chaos.
Monsieur André had made it onstage and now stood at its center, calling out to the audience, trying to assuage their growing worries. I wondered if they noticed how his hands shook, nearly dropping the crumpled program they held.
Someone spun me around and began pulling at the buttons and eyehooks of my Serafimo costume. I could do nothing but stand there, allowing them to work around my placid form.
“While you wait…” Monsieur André began, shouting to be heard over the confused panic spreading through the auditorium.
He leaned back to peer into the wings, and his face turned scarlet as he watched Madame Barbier strip my livery uniform off, leaving me in nothing but a short chemise and bloomers.
Her assistants hurried to clothe me in a dress similar to Carlotta’s gown, though not nearly as large or ornate.
“While you wait,” he repeated, and dabbed at his brow with the ruined program.
“We are pleased to offer you the ballet…”
Offstage, both ballerinas and stagehands gasped. No one was ready for such an unexpected change of order. The stage was cluttered with furniture. The drops were all wrong.
“The ballet…” Monsieur André went on, gesturing wildly for Maestro Messenger to begin the music. Out of the pit came the rustling of turned pages and muttered curses. “From Act III. Maestro? The ballet, if you please.”
“I’m working on it,” the conductor growled through clenched teeth.
Madame Barbier forced my arms through the gown’s bodice. The sleeves were somehow both too big and painfully tight. It was clear the dress had not been fitted for me, but there was little to be done about it.
“I don’t…I don’t think I can do this,” I admitted as she whirled me round to start lacing up the back. Hot bile climbed my esophagus, bitter and biting, and I could see the beat of my heart pulsing around the edges of my vision.
“Of course you can, dearie,” she soothed, somewhat distractedly, around a mouth full of pins.
A wave of dancers rushed past us, hurrying onstage with hastily grabbed bowers of greenery.
“I can’t. I’m not ready. We never rehearsed this. This was never meant to be my part.”
“You stepped in before, and it went swimmingly. No one will blame you if it’s not perfect,” she said, then accidentally jabbed me with one of the pins as she tried adjusting the gown’s shoulders. “You know as well as I do, the show must go on.”
“But Carlotta…” I twisted around to the hallway leading back to her dressing room. “Shouldn’t we check on her? Shouldn’t we—”
“It’s all being taken care of,” said one of the assistants as she removed the ribbon holding back my hair in a low queue.
“But what if…but what if what happened to her—”
A backdrop whizzed by us, coming in too fast on the rail. The metal pipe slammed to the stage and bounced, nearly knocking over the back row of dancers. It was a miracle none of them were struck.
What if the same thing happens to me?
I wanted to scream it out loud, letting my fears wash over the audience with as much force as the horrid noises bursting from Carlotta.
I imagined my cries of peril carrying across the horseshoe auditorium, my voice filling every nook and cranny, seeping into the wood grain and causing the gilt paint to curl.
Even as I visualized the devastation such a sound would create, I recognized my alarm was unfounded.
Erik had had something to do with Carlotta.
Erik had caused the chandelier to dance.
Erik had been behind it all.
But I didn’t believe he’d do anything like that to me. My Angel would never hurt me. My Angel would never…
I shook my head, forcing such unhelpful thoughts away.
Erik.
He was Erik.
I had to stop thinking of him as an otherworldly being, a beatific deity who had come to bestow God’s blessings upon me, and to start calling him what he was.
A man.
A monster, a tiny voice in my mind whispered, its words rife with treachery. No one but a monster could do such a wicked thing to Carlotta.
As much as I disliked the soprano, I found myself pitying her. I couldn’t imagine how she’d recover from such public embarrassment. And what had her humiliation been for? So that I could be moved into her place, a new chess piece taking over for a fallen pawn?
I wouldn’t.
It was madness.
“I’m not going on,” I said, squirming to free myself from Madame Barbier’s hold.
“Not like this,” she agreed. “You still need your wig.”
“No. I need to—” Another pin stabbed me, deep enough for a rosebud of blood to well up into the pretty pink fabric.
“Now look what you’ve done,” the wardrobe mistress growled. “Stop wiggling and let us work!”
“Christine!” called out a voice, nearly lost in the shifting scenic pieces and the flurried activity in the wings.
“Raoul!” I exclaimed, and I turned, searching for him.
“We’re not done yet,” one of the assistants chastised, still combing out my loose hair.
“I’m done,” I said firmly, and broke away from the group circling around me.
“I’m here!” Raoul said, suddenly at my side, a bright beacon shining through the dark.
“We need to go!” I said, all but shouting at him as he ran his hands up and down my arms, assessing me, making sure I was all right. “Please, Raoul. Let’s go.”
“Go?” he echoed. “But Richard just said—”
“I can’t be here!” A spasm of shivers ran through me.
“You’re trembling,” Raoul observed.
“I can’t think. It’s too loud here, and I need to…I need to get away.”
“Where?”
My eyes darted around, taking in the chaos surrounding us.
Onstage, the corps was attempting to put on the ballet with only half the dancers dressed and ready.
Their flowered hoops, snatched off a props table with too much haste, were falling apart and littering the deck with petals and leaves.
Above us, the stage lights flickered, growing dim before flaring up again, too bright and casting strange shadows on the painted drops.
The air was hot and full of trepidation, and the ill-fitting corset Madame Barbier had squeezed me into clamped around my ribs like a bear trap.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I just needed somewhere quiet and cool so that I could sort through everything that had happened and figure out how to escape the mess.
“The roof!” I declared. “We need to get to the roof!”
The sky above us was awash with the inky lavender of summer twilight. The brightest stars had taken up their nightly reverie and twinkled down on us with sparkling indifference.
I stumbled forward, clutching my stomach as I took great gulps of the cooler air.
“Christine, why are we up here? What’s the matter?” Raoul demanded, rubbing a hand over my heaving shoulders.
I knew he thought it soothing, but in the midst of my panicked hysteria, it felt as if he were flaying my skin open wide, peeling back any layer of protection I had and exposing every raw bit of me.
“What’s the matter?” I echoed incredulously. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to sob. “Didn’t you see what just happened?”
“Well, yes, but—”
A great piercing sound rose, wafting up the stairwell and echoing out the door we’d left open. My stomach roiled. Was that screaming?
“It was an accident,” Raoul murmured, ignoring the sound, ignoring what it could mean. “Simply an accident.”
I shook my head. “He did that! He did that to Carlotta. All so that I’d have to take her place. All so that I’d have to sing. Don’t you see, Raoul?” I sobbed, clutching my hands over my ears. Couldn’t he hear the screaming? “He’s been behind everything. He’s been doing it all!”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“The Phantom of the Opera!” The words burst out of me like shrapnel.
He blinked at me, and I could tell he didn’t understand.
“The Opera Ghost.”
Raoul let out a sigh. “Christine, there’s no Phantom of the Opera. Those letters…they’re a prank, a scam set to fleece the theatre out of its profits and—”
“What happened to Carlotta was real!” I insisted, shouting over him.
He paused, his eyebrows knitting together. “Yes, but…no one could have done that to her. It’s very sad, tragic even, but…don’t such things happen as a voice ages?”
I began to laugh then—deep, ugly laughter at the absurdity of this conversation, at the impossibility of it all.
“Raoul, I’ve been there. To…to where he lives. I’ve been with him. Spoken with him. I’ve seen his face. The Opera Ghost is as every bit as real as you or I. You must believe me!”
“You’ve seen him? The man who’s been doing all this?”
I nodded, breaking into a fresh set of sobs. “He…he came to me as the Angel of Music and I thought…I truly thought that Father had sent him. Like he’d said, like he’d promised. But…he’s no angel, Raoul. He’s not an angel or a ghost or a phantom. He’s a man. He’s just a man.”
Raoul made an impatient gesture, demanding an answer to a question he’d not seen fit to ask. “He’s a man. Yes. We’ve known that. But who is he, Christine?”
I bit my lip. “His name is Erik.”
“And who is he? A former stagehand? A sacked musician? A…a…what do you call them? Chorus…person?” he guessed, tripping over unfamiliar terminology.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t…I don’t think so. I don’t know what he did before all this. Only that…he’s a musical genius. He taught me how to sing, and—”
Raoul gave a loud, dismissive tsk. “You’ve always known how to sing. I remember you singing with your father on the pier.”
“Not like this. Not like now. Can’t you tell the difference between that and the night of the gala?”
It stung that he could not.
“Your voice…it’s certainly grown, matured, but—”