A Broken Place

During the day, Christine was just one more worker in a crush of thousands. She worked for an hourly wage, taking calls and placing orders. The job was repetitive, dry, and boring. No creativity could force its way into the tightly managed scripts that governed the calls. The only music was bland hold-music. As long as she remained polite and efficient, each day hummed by with excruciating similarity to the one before. And Christine was content for it to be so. There was nothing in the rigid routine to disturb the fantasies that swirled in her mind: beautiful dreams of music and art and hidden worlds that only she could see.

"Christine Daae?" Her coworkers would have said, if asked. "She's kind of weird. You can be talking right to her, and it seems like she's miles away. Not that she talks to anyone, anyway. Always with the earbuds in. Nice girl, though."

Yes, the job and the people were boring, but it paid the bills and it gave her a schedule that allowed for her favorite past-time. She'd spent many years wandering the city, finding its hidden, lost, and secret places. The carryall she lugged with her was bulging and battered; the sketchbooks within filled with pencil and charcoal drawings of buildings and streets that seemed in utter shambles. Every now and then, faces and figures appeared in the mix, shadowy matches for their surroundings. There was a little magic in each, though, that caught the eye and sparked the imagination. The music of Sibelius, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and others which played ceaselessly in her headphones had infused itself in her art, giving it an indescribable beauty. There was no desolated block, no blighted suburb Christine had not explored and documented.

Except one.

It was well-known that the old, abandoned opera house was haunted. Even staunch skeptics avoided that block. Legend said that there had once been a thriving illegal drug market in the area, but then the dealers and junkies started showing up tied to nearby street signs, disoriented, with purpling bruises around their throats. They had no description of the attacker; there had been only silence and then terror. Legend also said that trespassers would hear ghostly sounds that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Now, neither gang member nor prostitute nor police set foot on the overgrown property.

Though the siren-song of the unknown beckoned, Christine had long brushed it off in favor of other, less notorious, places. But she was getting bored. The city seemed to hold no new surprises for her. It was as routine and familiar as her job. Her desire to fall into the music and create magic on the paper was ebbing.

"Besides," she thought, "It was an opera house, once. Of all the places I should be drawing… And how dangerous can it be? If no one will go near it, I'll be perfectly safe. There no such thing as ghosts. And a phantom haunting an opera house? Ridiculous."

The afternoon was cool, but tolerable. Resolutely, she packed her carryall and dressed warmly in a knit hat, peacoat, and heavy jeans. A bus ride and long walk later she stood across the street from the long-avoided building. It was much bigger than she had imagined from people's descriptions. Three stories tall, grey stone, and built in imitation of Romantic style European theaters, its lines were graceful and soaring. The façade was dirty and unmaintained. The marble staircase was worn and choked with layers of old leaves and trash. Some of the windows were cracked. The sidewalks and lawns were overgrown and wild. It looked madly out of place in the midst of abandoned lots and massive industrial warehouses. Christine fell instantly, hopelessly in love. She set up on the crumbled curb across the street and began to draw.

From a window two stories above, it stared down at her. This woman was dangerously close to trespassing on its territory, maybe planning to disturb its precious solitude! The Phantom narrowed its eyes and considered her. Years had passed since it had had to dispose of an unwanted visitor. It looked for details that might betray the intruder's intent. She was clearly not a prostitute, though the full bag could hold anything. Her clothing suggested neither gang member nor homeless person. Cold observation tumbled into confusion as the woman pulled out a rickety easel and sketchbook. It descended to the lower level to get a closer look. Indeed, she was now setting an array of charcoal sticks and other paraphernalia beside her. Then, she placed headphones on her head, and proceeded to sit still as a statue and stare at its theater.

Long minutes ticked past and neither of them moved. Then, as the sun began to set and its rays turned the grey building a dull orange, she smiled and began to draw. It blinked and waited, but no more nefarious deed occurred. She simply worked at her easel until the light was too faded to see, gathered her things, and left. It sat, perplexed and utterly thrown. What did this woman want? Curiosity bloomed where only uneasy paranoia had sat before.