The Return of the Phantom

A/N: Hello everyone! I know it's not Halloween anymore (unfortunately) but here is a little something I wrote a while ago for the Phantom Halloween Writing Contest. It's pretty scary, pretty dark, and there are some pretty graphic depictions of violence. You have been warned. All that being said, I hope you enjoy it even so and, if it's not too much trouble, please leave a review. I love to hear from you guys!

Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera belongs to other people who are not me.

It had been nearly three weeks since her husband had died, and the House Beneath the Lake had lain in eerie silence ever since.

Christine had not once opened her mouth since Erik had left her, for there was not any reason for her to do so now that he was gone. The last thing he had done before his death was wall up every, single door in their little house with brick and mortar so there was no reason for her to cry for help. As he had done so, he had looked up at her with those horrible, piercing eyes which she had come to both love and hate, and said in that rasp of a whisper that his voice had been reduced to in his last days, "If I cannot leave, you will not, either, my dear."

And she had hated him for it.

He had been so far gone by that point there had been no use in pleading. She had, of course, done so anyway but the only result had been him, drawing her close to his cold, cold body and asking her, "Do you really, truly want to go back up to that… That hell, Christine? Where there can be no music? Where there can be no light? Erik is your only music; Erik is your only light. Your… Angel of Music, yes. He is only doing this to keep you safe, dear Christine. He only wants his dear Christine to be happy, yes… Only happy."

These were, of course, the ramblings of a mad man.

When the last of his strength finally left him, he had been in the process of closing up the very last trapdoor exit. He had collapsed to the floor, in a fit of coughing, unable to move or even talk and for a few brief, beautiful moments, Christine thought she had been given freedom in that small trapdoor. She had thought that he would die, lying there on the cold, stone floor, but he did not. The coughing brought up chunks of clotted blood, more than she had ever seen come up before, and she was sure, so sure that he would die this time.

But he did not.

And with what was left of his once beautiful voice, he had forced Christine to close up that trapdoor and to extinguish all hope of ever leaving. He had forced her to seal her own grave with that glorious voice of his and she could not resist, even though this time her life had depended on it. When she realized what she had done, she had cried and cried and cursed him for making her do it. But he had cried too, from seeing her tears and hearing how she hated him, and he had begged her to show him forgiveness, although they both knew he did not deserve it.

But how could she deny her husband in his dying moments?

His body had been long dead by the time his spirit was finally freed from it. The flesh stunk of death and the almost sweet smell of blood, no matter how many times she had bathed him before. And those cold fingers, which had touched her so many nights in the darkness, had lacked all living heat before even she knew him. And his face… Oh, his horrid face. The skin had long since rotted off of it, leaving only the skull and the eyes that glowed with all the fire his touch had never possessed.

For him, death had seemed almost natural.

She had mourned for him, far more than he deserved. She had cried and cried in the days after his death but whether she was mourning for her own fate or his, she knew not. Yet the tears never seemed to truly stop. There were even times that his deathly comfort seemed preferably to the loneliness she suffered; even his horrible, beautiful voice, that could make her do anything it pleased, was preferable to the unending silence she was met with now.

Even hell with him was preferable to being alone.

The real horror of it all, however, had been that she could not bury him. He had left no means for her to do so, not with all the doors to the outside world walled up so carefully. So, he lay on their bed, his body unmoving and lifeless, the slow and steady smell of rot and death taking over their house. But she had nowhere else to leave him.

The home they had once shared was now his unmarked crypt.

Because their single bedroom was occupied, Christine made up her new living space in the living room but even there, she was not safe from the feeling of his presence that seemed to follow her everywhere she went. Sometimes, it was almost as if he had not died at all. Ghostly fingers seemed to nip at her skin, as they had so many times before while he was still living, while he was still desperate for the heat of her touch. Phantom music seemed to trickle from his organ during the stillness of the night, as it had so many times before, as she lay resting and he sat composing. Sometimes, it even seemed as if she could hear his voice, calling to her as it had done so many times before, coming from their room. It called for her in its mesmerizing tones, speaking her name in the darkness.

"Chrissstine. Oh, Chrisssstine."

At first, she had denied it and told herself that she had not heard it and that it was only her imagination, filled with wishful imaginings of the dark future he had woven for her out of words, that she had both dreaded and dreamed for. But as time went on, the words only became clearer, always calling… Calling for her. She wondered if perhaps she was going just as mad as he had. After all, he was dead; his cold, cold corpse was lying across her bed, and her covers were still stained with the now brown hues of his last blood. There was no way that he could be speaking to her. His ethereal voice had died with him.

But was he not a phantom?

The calling had persisted—persisted until she could not resist opening the door to her old bedroom and checking on the body that rested so peacefully inside. She knew that he must be dead— for she had seen him die, the blood running scarlet against his cold, white lips, the last breath shuddering through his skeletal frame—but she was no longer certain and the fingers of doubt tugged insistently at her mind. Fear had thundered through her veins as she stood in front of the closed door—the door to the unmarked crypt—and yet, she was not sure why she feared him so in death. With shaking fingers, she had turned the icy, metal handle, half-expecting him to be waiting for her when she opened the door, his skull-face staring at her expectantly.

But he did not greet her thusly.

The body still laid across the bed, in the same position she had left it in days earlier. He looked so peaceful, so unlike his usual self, that he could have been sleeping, were it not for the overwhelming sense of death that clouded about him. The stench filled her, choking her and making her vomit up her breakfast onto the crimson carpet, the sea of blood that surrounded him, and yet, she was grateful for the smell.

It proved that he was truly dead.

The next few days were the first truly peaceful times she had had since his death. The stench of his rotting flesh now drifting through the house only served to prove that he was dead and he could not be speaking to her. So, for the first time in days, she was able to rest without fear, knowing that she was never to be tormented by him again and that the voice was simply her over-active imagination. There could be no other explanations.

Then, the dreams came.

The first woke her in a cold sweat, screaming in terror from the visions that resided within her own traitorous mind—visions of him, standing in front of her, his hands outstretched. What had scared her the most, however, was not just his presence but the fact that his body was already in the process of decaying. He was deathly white—his skin lacked all evidence of the blood-flow behind it—and from his blue lips, there was a trickle of dark blood, staining his chin and his white shirt where it had dripped. His eyes were opened yet they were already in the process of rotting, and fluid had dripped from the sockets down his mask. His fingers, too, were a dark blue and from the looks of it, had begun to swell. They were no longer the thin and boney things she remembered, but grotesque and misshapen.

And in those fingers, he held a knife.

The terror that had rushed through her when she awoke was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach and when she resurfaced, everything looked like him. The shadows moved and danced in the low light and the soft whispers of the lake outside sounding like his quiet breathing. Yet everywhere she looked, he evaded her desperate gaze.

In death, he remained a phantom.

Just when she thought she could no longer breathe from the cold fear building within her—for her throat seemed to have closed up—the world spun around her and she slipped into a dreamless, unnatural sleep. For several hours, she stayed happily dead to the world around her, blissfully ignorant of his presence. For, this was the last time he would not steal, unwelcome, through her dreams; after this, he was an ever-present shadow in her mind—always whispering, always beckoning.

But in truth, he was never truly there.

The hellish dreams persisted for nearly two weeks before she came up with a solution. When she awoke from yet another nightmare, she naively thought that perhaps if she locked the door to his room, the visions would stop. Perhaps if she locked his ghost within the confines of his crypt, he would remain there until she, too, gave up her soul. For hours, she had looked and looked for the skeleton key which he had given her but she could not find it anywhere. In every drawer she opened—every cabinet she overturned, she was met with nothing but endless musical compositions, all written with the same dark red ink.

The notes seemed to have been written with his very blood.

At long last, she found the key, hidden atop a bookshelf, where she assumed he had left it after their marriage, after he told her there could be no more secrets between them. The metal was cold against her hand, as everything seemed to be in the days after his death. Even the fires she set in the grate seemed to do nothing to warm her cold body. Perhaps he had taken her warmth with him when he died. He had always told her that her skin warmed his in a way like nothing else had before.

She had given him her fire and he had taken it.

The key fit perfectly in the lock, as it always had, and the lock made a satisfying click when she turned the key. She stood there for a while afterwards, hoping that she had succeeded in binding his restless, tormenting spirit and wondering if her childish idea could ever work. Deep within her mind, she knew it could not. And that night, after tossing and turning for hours, this proved true.

In her dreams, he returned.

The corpse stood in front of her, whispering her name with its hands outstretched and bearing the same knife. This time, however, she had succeeding in locking herself in the room with it. She tried to turn and run but when she tried to open the door, it did not budge. In a panic, she beat at it with her fists, like a cornered animal, desperate for escape. But he—the corpse—had only laughed. And his laugh was no longer the beautiful, melodic sound she had known before, but a horrible thing—taunting and cruel, telling her she could not escape him.

And she had screamed herself awake.

As her key—her lifeline—had failed her, Christine decided to take more drastic measures against her silent assailant. She crept to his room and unlocked the door, but it was a long time before she summoned up the courage to enter his tomb. Her only remnants of courage sprang from the fact that she could still smell his rotting flesh; he could not be living and the stench proved that. The door creaked as she pushed it open—slowly and careful, as if she might disturb him—and then she saw him, laying just like he had at the moment of his death. Only now, his flesh was a green-blue color, his body bloated and distorted. And yet, there was another thing that had changed, as well—something that made her blood run cold and a scream rise to her throat.

In his blackened hand, he held a knife.

She screamed and fell backwards, every impulse telling her to run. Yet there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from him. She collapsed, her shaking hand covering her mouth. There was no way he could have received that knife, not after he had died, not when there was no one to put it in his hand, not after he had walled up every entrance to their house. There was no way. And yet, the weapon sat in his hand, staring back at her coldly, and she was suddenly reminded of his cruel laughter. It came back to her so strongly that she could have sworn it came from him and not her own cursed memory. Goosebumps crawled up her arms and she fought the urge to be sick.

Then, her fear was overpowered by anger.

She rushed at his corpse and yanked the knife from his hands, screaming when her fingers brushed his icy ones. She hated him—hated him for making her marry him, for loving her, for locking her in this hell, for torment her while he was living and dead, for stealing her future, for filling her with so much terror that she wanted to die. Every part of her being was filled to the brim with burning, unrestrained anger, driving out her fear for the first time since her dreams had begun. The handle of the knife was painful cold in her hand as she brought it down to his chest.

The knife went through his rotten skin easily.

She stabbed him again and again, screaming and cursing and crying, telling him all the things which she had bit back while he was still living. Fluid spilled over his shirt, dirty and putrid, but he did not bleed. She heard the crack of his ribs when she smashed them with her fists, horribly satisfying given her thirst for revenge. She mutilated every inch of his deformed, wretched body, even ripping off his mask to drag her knife along the sides of his face, and piercing both of his rotting eyes, which had haunted her so terribly in her dreams. It was only then that her anger began to subside, leaving her feeling empty and dead inside.

Instead of fear, she felt nothing.

For the next few days, Christine did not sleep. She had mutilated the corpse in her revenge and closed him safely within his crypt again, yet she still dreaded the dreams. She knew now that there was no way to stop them, no way to silence his ghost until she was dead beside him. And so, she sat—doing whatever it took to keep her burning eyes open as the shadows danced and the lake breathed around her.

He was always there, her Phantom.

It was not for another four days that she finally fell asleep, exhausted and unable to keep her eyes open any longer. And although she had tried to fight the need for sleep, she knew she had been defeated long ago. Her eyes at last slipped closed and she welcomed sleep. However, she was still gravely unprepared for the sight she was met with in her dreams—the body she had destroyed. The corpse's flesh was beginning to peel off of him where she had cut him and more fluid had leaked out of the gaping holes that no longer provided any covering for his decaying insides. The horrible lack of mask upon its face caused her heart to freeze and her throat to closed up when she looked at it. His blackened, bloated face stared down at her, the flesh that had been a meager covering even in life now stretched too tight over his bones, cracking and ripping to reveal the skull beneath.

This was the man whom she had once both loved and hated.

In its hands, it no longer held the knife; now, it was pressed against her palm. The corpse's eyes, which had become unnatural, glowing orbs within its sockets, travelled slowly down her body to her hand, where they lingered expectantly. "Oh, Chrissstine," it murmured, "Come, Chrissstine. Come again to your angel—your Angel of Music." Once again, his voice had become beautiful, almost like the angel's it claimed to be. Her eyes flickered closed as she felt his icy hand close around her own, guiding it upwards, ever so gently. And yet, when his cold, deathly fingers twined with hers once more, she felt at peace, even as he continued to move the knife higher.

The blood felt warm as it ran down her neck.

But when she awoke, the blood still remained.