A/N: I wrote this sometime in 2005/6 and posted it in the "PotO Horror Stories" thread on the PotO board at IMDb. What it was is basically people taking known urban legends and well-loved horror stories like Poe's and giving them a Phantom twist. I once read a lovely short story many years ago, The Dead Girl, by Guy de Maupassant, and remembering it all of a sudden, I'd got the idea to weave the Phantom story in a similar vein. Largely movie-based, with a bit of Leroux (Philippe gets a mention).

The dead do tell tales. And they do come back to tell them…

The Dead Soprano

They had married quickly, eager to put the scandal behind them once and for all.

And just as quickly she was dead.

The viscount had been inconsolable, and those who knew him well either pitied his loss or politely offered empty condolences. The men and women of society were utterly perplexed by his behavior, such show of emotion on his part—and for a commoner at that. Surely, he did not truly love her? He felt some affection for her, understandably; they had been friends as children after all. But it was simply unheard of that a titled man would claim to love a lowly opera singer enough to risk his good name and reputation to marry her. Her kind were good for mistresses, not matrimony. The kind whose company a man sought every few nights or so, to escape the very institution of marriage.

Then again, the viscount had always been different, a fact he took great pride in, and was never one to bow to convention and conformity and the dictates of nobility that he found to be rather frivolous. Love, he scoffed. These people do not know the meaning of the word. Theirs was not a fixed union, his and Christine's, influenced by money, power, or position. They had wed each other in love, and now he mourned her, with the same feverish ardor as when he had loved her.

God help me, I love her still. Had he not sworn before God and man to do so to the very end?

"Christine," he whispered brokenly in the dark of his study. The surly, disheveled viscount was slumped in an armchair by the hearth, the fire having died long ago. Though the chilly autumn wind made its way through an open window, he did not feel it. His insides had grown cold the day his wife left the earth, and he could not be bothered with such trifling phenomena as cold weather. Raising his head from where it rested in his hand, he reached for the snifter next to the brandy decanter (put to very good use as of late) on the side table to his right. Bringing the glass to his lips, he downed its contents in one gulp, feeling the liquid sear its way through his throat and chest, finally settling and festering in his empty stomach.

He had never been a drinker till now, just as he'd never been unkempt and unshaven before. Then again, he'd never been a lot of things—not since Christine's untimely demise. Gone was the handsome, idealistic youth. In his place was this miserable creature, barely recognizable, walking about in a daze and pretending to be Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny.

In his left palm rested her ring, the one she had solemnly accepted from him as she herself vowed to love him forever. He enclosed the wedding band in his trembling hand, the ring on his own finger meeting it, and he found himself resenting her for breaking her promise all too soon. Forever, indeed. "Christine," he sobbed again.

Christine.

How could a singular name evoke so much beauty and misery, passion and grief, perfection and pain? He spoke it reverently, urgently, as though it would call her to him, so that she might put on her ring again and fulfill her end of the bargain. Christine. A name. Her name. Sacred as a vow, potent as a prayer, painful as a curse.

Not even a year had passed since the night they had hurriedly exchanged vows, the night she had last performed onstage, the night they had fled the Opéra Populaire's deepest cellars—he, drenched and wounded, she, sad and seemingly so far away. The besotted young nobleman had braved the catacombs to face the Phantom—that mad, hideously deformed coward who hid behind a mask, who had spirited Christine away and had threatened their very lives and happiness.

Angel, she had called her abductor, and it never failed to send an angry wave of jealousy washing over her husband that she had done so quite fondly. After all, wasn't this Phantom the very same maestro who had taught her everything he knew of music, had nursed and honed her talent to perfection, and thrust it upon the adoring limelight from whence he, Raoul, had caught a glimpse of her again when all hopes of doing so in the past had proved futile? Suppose I should thank the man, the viscount mused sardonically, surprised that for the first time since he had known him, he should refer to the monster as a man. Admittedly, he owed it to this Angel, this Phantom, that the childhood sweethearts had found each other once more, and Raoul could hold no grudge against him. The man loved Christine just as much as he did, and was driven to madness because of it, leaving him crushed and broken in a dank dungeon of his own making.

But what if the outcome had been reversed? Raoul pondered the question that had haunted him since winning Christine's heart and hand—a lifetime ago, so it seemed. What if, on that fateful night, she had chosen to be with her Angel instead? And she very nearly had, the demons whispered and taunted the young man. Raoul could've sworn he had seen love shine in her brown eyes that night when she thought he wasn't looking. It was love, pure and unmistakable, a love and a longing meant not for him but for another. And as they poled their way across the underground lake, away from their defeated tormentor, he had seen one other emotion pass in those brown depths as well. Was it regret? He did not wish to think on it.

The Phantom had given her an ultimatum—her love in exchange for Raoul's life. Foolishly, the boy had stormed the villain's lair unarmed and unaccompanied. But for the tiniest mistake on his part, a split-second's distraction, and he was at the mercy of the enraged Phantom. And then Christine had kissed the monster! She kissed him, caressed those twisted features of his as only a mother would—or a lover, perhaps—while Raoul, bound tightly and miserably to the portcullis, could only look on in horror. So stunned was he that he barely registered the Phantom sobbing, breaking under the weight of that kiss, and then releasing both him and Christine from their captivity. At the time, the viscount had wanted so badly to believe that the kiss had been nothing but a desperate move on Christine's part to get the creature to spare his life. These days Raoul wasn't so sure anymore. Or was he? Perhaps he had known all along. Did you kiss him to save me, Christine? Or did you kiss him because you loved him?

So eager was he to escape with his prize that it had been all too easy to convince himself of Christine's complete and utter devotion to him, and whatever uncertainties he may have had about where her loyalties lay had been all but banished to the farthest and darkest recesses of his mind. Now, those uncertainties were once more coming to the fore, the viscount's innermost fear rearing its ugly head again, exacting its vengeance for going unheeded all this time. There was no doubt of it now, Raoul brooded. He would have shared the Phantom's madness had Christine chosen differently that night.

Still, the fact remains that she had not, that it was the Phantom who had been destroyed, and it was from this madness that the boy had delivered his lovely young bride—only to lose her to pneumonia nine months later.

Curse the irony of it all!

He never did find out what on earth had possessed her to go outdoors in the middle of the night in the midst of a raging storm. He had discovered her in the foyer, shivering and soaked to the bone, her wet nightdress clinging to her body like a second skin. She had fallen ill soon after; Christine had always been such a frail thing. The sickness had been swift, and the viscount took solace, however little, in the fact that she suffered no prolonged and unnecessary pain.

"Christine," he despaired, his breathing becoming staggered and difficult. Pocketing his dead wife's ring, Raoul left the oppressive study, sneaked into the stables, and, as he was wont to do more and more often, led the white mare out, mounting her only once outside the manor gates—an eerie white apparition fading and disappearing under cover of darkness.

* * *

He stumbled blindly over graves and headstones, disturbing the peace and quiet of those resting there. He had left the horse outside the graveyard, and he could not recall for the life of him whether or not he had tethered her properly. Oddly enough, he realized he could not have cared any less if the animal decided to abandon him to wallow in his grief.

He must have been wallowing a bit more than usual this evening as he had trouble finding Christine's final resting place. He had been to see her several times in the forty days that she had been dead, and knew his way around even with his eyes closed. But tonight the cemetery seemed to expand with every step, and the young man made a mental note to give up the brandy permanently. He went around in circles, and, suspecting as much, stopped to take a breather upon one of the many tombstones dotting the graveyard.

Numerous shadows from adjacent statues and mausoleums played at his feet, in step with the gnarled forms cast by the near-naked boughs above him as though performing some elaborate choreography. The ashen trees leered down upon him, mocking him in his predicament, a knowing glint in their hollowed out boles like the sunken eyeholes of a sinister mask. Despite the unnerving environment in which the young man currently found himself, the equally ghastly silence had a curiously calming effect. Glancing up, Raoul marveled at the countless stars that had all but enveloped and even rivaled the moon in its full glory. Not a single cloud was in sight and he could not remember another Parisian night sky ever being so clear.

He had barely caught his breath, however, when the ground began to shift beneath him. With a start, the viscount moved away and turned back to the tombstone he had so rudely used as a respite for his weary legs. He then felt his heart sink to his stomach at the grisly and unearthly scene that played before his disbelieving eyes.

The occupant of the grave had risen from his deathly slumber, skeletal remains breaking free of the soil as though he were a living man shrugging off his tangled sheets upon waking in the morning. And to the young man's horror, all of the other graves had followed suit. Oh yes, the brandy most definitely had to go.

The petrified viscount wanted to flee, but a strange and morbid fascination overpowered his fear and held him fast in place. Somewhere in the back of his mind he tried to think of the many ways the Phantom could have conjured such diabolical trickery to torment his young rival once more, to punish him for Christine's death. But Raoul knew somehow that even the infamous Opéra Ghost himself could never pull off such a thing on such a massive scale. Raoul knew as well that if the Phantom did indeed want to put an end to his adversary's existence, he would have done so long ago, perhaps even on the very same night Christine's own had ceased. In fact, he almost wished the Phantom had come after him. Death, even if it were suffered in the hands of his enemy, seemed a very glad and welcome prospect these days, if only to be promptly reunited with Christine in the afterlife.

And what of the Phantom anyway? How was he faring? Was he still alive? Was he mourning her, too? Surely, he must have heard by now. It had occurred to Raoul before the funeral that perhaps he ought to send word to Christine's former teacher should he wish to pay his last respects, but the young widower finally decided against it, knowing the man would most likely be there anyway, invitation or no. A sudden, unbidden image came to the viscount's mind of himself and the Phantom grieving together over a pair of drinks at a tavern somewhere, but Raoul shook it off as quickly as it had come.

Snapping out of his reverie, Raoul watched with bated breath as the first skeleton finally emerged, only to turn its bony back on him and, with an equally bony finger, proceed to scratch at its own tombstone, upon which was engraved:

Jean Marie de Quelen, Man of God and Humble Servant of the People

The name was vaguely familiar; perhaps the corpse had been one of the elder gentlemen who had moved in his brother Philippe, the Comte de Chagny's social circle. Perhaps he had been a public official of some sort. What on earth was he doing in the ground with a paltry little marker over his grave? Shouldn't he have been entombed and enshrined in some grand monument of granite and marble? Raoul's terror, now somewhat diminished, turned into unbridled curiosity as he watched the dead man scrape away at the inscription on the stone. When the words were finally erased, the skeletal finger again scratched over its handiwork, completely rewriting his memorial:

Jean Marie de Quelen, Hypocrite and Plunderer of Public Coffers

He remembered him now—silver hair, intelligent blue eyes, benevolent face. Who would've thought…

Whirling to the next grave, Raoul watched as the corpse, recently deceased and not quite fully decomposed, did the same.

Adrien delle Fratte, Loving Husband and Father

Monsieur delle Fratte's remains, like de Quelen's, had altered the words on his own tombstone, so that now it read:

Adrien delle Fratte, Insatiable Gambler and Wife-Beater, Drank Himself to Death

Every single dead person there was now scratching away and rewriting their epitaphs with confession after confession, and Raoul, far from the horrified state he had been in initially, was now struck with a profound and inexplicable sadness. Then, remembering suddenly the reason he was there in the first place, he ran frantically toward his wife's grave, which he now managed to spot without further incident.

Sure enough, there she was, in the same white dress in which she had been buried forty long days ago, her voluminous brown curls cascading in a messy, earthen wave down her back. Her gravestone had read simply, "Christine de Chagny, Beloved Wife," and tears came to Raoul's eyes as the truth was unfurled before him at last.

Here lies Christine de Chagny, who, having deceived her husband and returning to her Angel one night, caught cold in the rain and died.