October Frights! The Phantom of the Opera, Part One

WELCOME TO THE OCTOBER FRIGHTS BLOG HOP!

This is a super fun annual event where horror authors gang up to terrify and amuse you. You can 'hop' from blog to blog via the link we all share at the end of our posts. October 10-15 we will be serving up mayhem and madness, so stay tuned.

I have written a retelling of the Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. One of my favorite classic books. I also love all of the movie versions I've seen as well as the musical. I'll be posting this story in installments, somewhat fitting for a classic retelling as many classic novels were published as serial in the newspapers.

The Phantom of the Opera

Part One: The Typewriter

It began, and ended, with a key. Firstly a key of gold. Lastly a key of C.

Serafina Szeman made her debut at the Bamburg Opera on the 13th of November. She was leading lady in a production of Freerenmeck’s Angelicus.

I had been seeing her for several months before the opening, but she had been strangely distant during the weeks of rehearsal. She was something of a last minute casting choice, chosen at a hasty audition to replace the famous soprano Edithe Ridaphelm, who had bowed out for unknown reasons.

So I had rarely been able to call on Serafina since she'd started rehearsing and when I had, she was always in a hurry—late to rehearsal, to voice lessons, to the costumier—or else she was very tired and understandably quiet, even cool towards me, but I put it down to exhaustion.

I hoped she'd be better after the opening. Happier at least. And it was a triumphant opening. She has the voice of an angel. Lucid and soft and when she hits the high notes, my spine tingles.

I took a massive bouquet of roses to her dressing room after the show. When I knocked, however, there was no reply. I waited a moment, then slipped inside, hoping to surprise her when she arrived.

I found she was already in the room, her face rapt as she poured over a letter on aged paper.

"Serafina," I said, "you were marvelous! I don't think anyone has sung Lilliana so well! You had me in tears, congratulations!"

She did not look up from her letter. Her eyes were wide...almost adoring.

"Serafina?"

She tore her eyes away from the letter and jumped a bit, quickly sweeping the letter behind her back.

"Darling," she said, extending her other hand as I crossed the room. I took it to kiss, and noticed she clutched a small gold key.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, snatching back her hand. Turning away, she stuffed both the letter and the key into an envelope.

"You were wonderful," I repeated.

She smiled vaguely and tucked the envelope under her comb.

"Thank you, Godfrey," she said. Her gaze was still distant, looking past me, as if I were invisible.

She must still be on the stage...her marble cheeks glowing with the applause like noble edifices caught in a sunset. Her perfectly curved lips smiled meekly despite their obvious glory. But...her normally sharp green eyes were misty—like stained glass that was curtained, blocking the internal candlelight.

I was close enough to smell her perfume—thick with rose and honeysuckle. And another odor.

A mustiness. But spiced...like anise wrapped in ancient molding papyrus.

"Will you let me take you out, now?" I asked. "Now the opening is over?"

"I can't," she said, then she seemed to shake herself and looked guiltily into my eyes. I was about to protest. "Of course," she said, and then I noticed the circles under her eyes.

"I think you need rest," I said. "I'll just drive you home."

"No," Serafina said, smiling. "We should celebrate. I promised we could go out when I had time. I won't be able to sleep, anyway."

I went to get my car while she got changed and then drove her to Les Cloches. We had a delicious supper, but she was still vague and distracted, even after champagne.

After I dropped her off at her house, I sat in my car and smoked a cigar. What letter had she been reading? An admirer’s? She couldn't have any yet...unless they had written the note during the performance. Or perhaps a cast member? But surely not? She loved me, didn't she? We hadn't had much time together since the audition.

And the key?

My mind conjured symbolic heart-keys and secret rendezvous...

A flickering light caught my attention and I peered into the dark. The side-door of Serafina's house had opened and emitted Serafina herself, in a thick wrap, bearing a candle of all things. She did not glance around—and thus did not spot me—but headed directly down the alley with purpose.

I stabbed my cigar butt into my gloved palm and leapt out of my car to follow her. I'd perhaps had a bit too much champagne and had half a mind to seize her arm and demand to know where she was going—who she was seeing.

But as I caught up, I slowed, almost in awe. She moved like a shadow. Her hair shone in the candle-light like burnished copper threads. The gathering fog curled its fingers around her, beckoning her into the night, and I got the irrational impression that she did not belong to me, nor to this world. She was already lost.

I kept to the shadows and corners as I trailed her through unfamiliar alleys that sloped ominously downward. Dread crept upon me even as the fog rose, thicker and thicker. A chill settled on me. I stumbled, looking around at leering facades, decrepit and strange. I realized we must be heading towards the river, hence the fog and cold. Guilt slipped through me for following her like this—then anger—then she vanished.

I froze.

Gaping windows smirked at me, black holes in the soft whiteness of mist. I heard a clink, and took a few rapid steps forward.

Serafina had slipped into a deeply recessed doorway and her candle had been lost in the cloaking fog. I tiptoed along the wet cobbles—ancient but perfectly fit—we were in the old quarter of the city, very near the river.

I stopped behind a cracked and mossy lion statue by a nearby gate and watched as Serafina unlocked a heavy door and was swallowed by a rotting, crumbling house.

Her candle did not appear in any of the windows. I realized I was hunkered by the house's main gate. She had gone into the cellar.

The house, with its deformed lion, damp moss crevices, and stench of decay, repulsed me violently. But with a wracking shudder, I charged down the slippery steps to the cellar door and seized the icy handles.

Serafina had not locked it behind her.

The humid doors creaked open and heaved me into moist darkness, where I fell to my knees on slimy stones.

Dark emptiness bulged around me, menacingly soft with a hard metallic odor. I got to my feet, unsure why I was trembling. Trembling not with any understandable adrenaline from secretly following someone, but with an irrational premonition. Something terrible was happening to Serafina and there was a sick, coppery flavor in my mouth. A chilling draft wafted that anise and parchment smell to me and I set off impulsively into the stone hallway.

The passage hooked right and plunged down, into the bowels of the earth, it seemed. I went slowly, afraid of slipping on the slime-coated flagstones.

The incline leveled out and I ran into a cobweb-covered wall.

I felt along it until I found the passage made a sharp turn to the left. I followed it around yet another corner and saw a flicker of light at last.

Two doorways yawned before me.

One the entrance to hell. One heaven. The right door gaped, black and sucking, cold and promising of terrors unimagined. And I fancied the smell issued from that featureless hole; the air was heavy laden with putrid rot, mixed with molding paper...ancient parchment...and a hint of anise.

Through the left door, a candle glowed, illuming the silhouette of my sweet Serafina.

Her back was to me; she was seated, gazing with her candle deeper into the room. I crept closer, careful to avoid the right hand opening. Serafina was speaking to someone I couldn't see.

"When will I get to sing for them?" She asked. "Surely I proved tonight I was good enough?"

I pressed myself to the door frame and peered around into the room, hoping to get a glimpse of whoever she was speaking to.

But no voice answered her. A clacking sound filled the malodorous air, cacophonous and malignant. As I peered into the secret rendezvous, I was sure the champagne must be making its full force know, for there was no earthly reason for the sudden dizziness that seized me. My head swam and the strange but not unholy sight rippled before my eyes. I nearly doubled over with nausea.

The room where Serafina sat on a stool was small. She was not more than ten feet away from me, sitting at an antique desk pushed against the far wall. On the desk sat her candle, and a typewriter. The typewriter was the source of the horrid clacking.

Serafina was at a slight angle to me and I could see her hands were in her lap.

The typewriter was operating itself!

I clutched the doorframe to keep from falling.

"I will do my best, Asmodeii," Serafina said. As if replying to the typewriter. I could not read the candle-lit page from the door.

The typewriter clacked away, like bones rattling in a cemetery. Then silence.

"You flatter me," Serafina said, her voice eerily girlish...a giggle hiding on the edge. "I cannot wait, either."

The typewriter replied and Serafina said, "Thank you, I will. Good night."

She took the page from the typewriter and folded it carefully, tucking it into her bosom. She turned and I retreated into the shadows. There was nowhere to go but back, or into the other horrible doorway.

Inexplicably, I found myself slipping into that foul abyss. The cold sucked at me, metallic and hungry.

Serafina passed from the small room and vanished back up the passage without glancing into my hiding place, taking her candle with her.

I was frozen in place, alone in the dark but with the distinct impression I was not alone...a legion lurked in the chasm behind me.

Suddenly, I remembered my matches. Pulling the book from my pocket, I clumsily fumbled out a match with my gloved fingers and struck it.

I turned around and nearly screamed. A row of skulls leered at me.

My heart hammered, each stroke threatening to be the last. The skulls were mortared into the wall. It must be an ancient crypt, perhaps part of the legendary catacombs that spread labyrinth-like beneath the city.

I shuddered and took my guttering match timidly into the room where Serafina had held her strange communion.

The typewriter gleamed sinisterly in the rank shadows. I dragged my feet reluctantly through the room. The typewriter seemed to wink in the flicker of my dying match. It loomed larger and larger and my feet grew heavier and heavier, but I was determined to seize the hateful thing and throw it upon the flagstones.

I was hardly thinking rationally, but part of me was aware that the thing must be operated by some hidden mechanical means, and if I tore it from the table, the secret would be revealed.

I was so close.

Just a few mores steps.

My match went out.

Darkness swept over me and the typewriter burst into hideous clacking laughter.

RETURN tomorrow for the next installment!

And check out more October Frights on my fellow blogs: