October Frights! The Phantom of the Opera, Part Three

Welcome back!

Are you ready to delve back into Godfrey and Serafina's nightmare? If you've just joined us, you may want to read the previous posts, which have parts one and two of my Phantom of the Opera retelling.

Part Three: Into Gehenna

I did not run this time.

"Wh-who..." I began. But my voice was reedy and cracked. I swallowed.

"Who are you?" I demanded more firmly.

"Not who, Godfrey," said the sound. "What." I located the source: it seemed to come from the wall behind the dressing screen.

"What are you, then?" I asked, forcing myself to take a step towards the wall.

"I am in a transitional state," said the sound as it impossibly moved along the wall toward the corner. "I am not man, I am not quite deamon, I am the opera ghost!" The sound seemed to recede deeper into the wall, becoming fainter. "Soon, I will be fully manifested!"

Dropping the book, I raced out of Serafina's dressing room and followed the sound as it hummed through the wall, down the hall, deeper into the opera house.

"What do you want with Serafina?" I demanded.

The sound just strummed humorously. I was running now, down stairs, along dark passages, following a phantom noise.

The sound led me into a dusty storage room filled with old set-pieces. An Egyptian god loomed over the shadowy space, his bird-face faded. I dove between papier maché rocks and cardboard walls of varying colors and themes. As I passed between two Greek pillars a trip wire shot up and I staggered, collapsing beside a bust of some philosopher. The bust tipped, and I rolled out of the way—just as a trapdoor opened in the floor. The bust fell into a black hole and splashed into unseen water. The trapdoor creaked shut again, its seals so perfect that it was invisible.

I hunkered in the shadows, trembling. I dared not cough, though the dust tickled at my throat. I waited, but the sound did not return.

I made it out of the opera house without further incident and paced my flat all night, unable to sleep or cease imagining that the sound was back...

In the morning, I called on Serafina. Her maid said she was not to be disturbed, but I refused to leave and at last, Serafina agreed to see me in her parlor. She was wan, her eyes sunken and her lower lip under constant attack from restless teeth.

"There's no use pretending," I said, seizing her hand. "I heard that—that sound last night. It tried to kill me!"

She snatched her hand back. "You SAW HIM?"

"No, he led me to a trapdoor, I almost fell in...you can't do whatever it is he wants. You can't sing for—for whatever it is!"

Serafina hid behind her hands. They were skeletal and white. Her abjectness struck me with horrible pity.

"I don't care if you've dabbled in the occult," I said softly. "I love you. Please stay away from that THING."

She lowered her hands but would still not look at me.

"I didn't realize what it truly was I was getting into," she said, her voice trembling. "Not until I heard that voice..."

"It doesn't matter," I insisted. "You don't have to go through with it!"

"He's always watching, always listening," Serafina said, tears in her eyes. "He'll kill you."

"He almost did, but listen! We can leave Bamberg, go far away. To England, maybe."

"I can't leave before tonight's performance," Serafina said. "I have an obligation to the production."

"Right afterwards, then," I said. "I'll have a cab waiting outside, in case he knows my car. Slip out after the show and we'll escape. I'll just lay low until then. I think he thinks he succeeded in killing me."

Serafina contemplated this, her brow furrowed.

"Yes," she said. "I think that would work." She beamed at me through tears. "I'll come to you directly after the show. Take me away. I love you, Godfrey. Thank you."

I kissed her hand and smiled.

"Thank you, Serafina."

"One never realizes the horror until the reality strikes," she said softly.

"Say no more about those things," I begged. "They need never trouble us again."

I left her house, but not my worries behind. Did the owner of that sound really think me dead? What if it discovered our plot? She said it was always watching.

I returned to the opera house and snuck in through the stable to explore it in the daylight. I searched Serafina's dressing room more thoroughly, but could find nothing. The deamonology book was gone, too. The room where I had nearly fallen to my death was just as unyielding. I could not find the trap door and the trip wire had vanished.

Defeat hung heavy on my shoulders as I returned to my car, parked several streets away. The evening was fast approaching. I drove home and called for a cab.

I had him park by the side entrance of the opera, where many performers came and went. And I settled in to wait, restlessly tapping my watch. I could see the operagoers arriving out on the main Street.

I watched late performers hurry past into the side-door.

A tall, hatted gentlemen I had never seen passed by, pausing at the door. He wore a wool cape with a high collar drawn around his lower face. He turned toward the cab and I caught the gleam of his black eyes, glittering in his white brow—staring straight at me. He lowered the collar and grinned at me with gold teeth.

I gripped my watch so hard the glass cracked.

The man's neck!

His throat was missing, replaced by some obscene metal gadgetry. Gears and rods protruded around the edges. Long copper strips and wires tangled like tendons in place of his larynx. Rivets lined his jaw.

In a moment, the neck was covered again and the man as gone.

Not a man. But not a deamon, either. The opera ghost!

I leapt out of my cab and raced to the door.

The door slammed in my face and when I tried to open it, I found it locked. I beat on it frantically and yelled for someone to open it, but no one came. I raced around to the main entrance and dashed up the steps, shoving aside several fur-garbed dames.

They squawked in protest but I didn't slow down, hurling an elderly gentleman to the side as I charged up the last steps to the door.

"Sir, where is your ticket?" demanded the concierge.

"I'm a friend of Serafina Szeman," I growled, trying to skim past him.

"I'm afraid you must have a ticket or pay now," the concierge insisted, blocking me with a firm hand. I dug furiously for my wallet and handed him the whole thing.

"Sir!" Protested the concierge, but I was already gone, racing along to the backstage entrance.

I burst into her dressing room and found it empty. Except for the deamonology book, lying on the vanity, open to the hieroglyphics page.

I nearly lost it and went racing off to search the entire opera house, then I saw a note beside the book.

It had been hastily written in pencil.

I'm sorry, Godfrey. You don't understand. I need to sing this concert. I need to see the wonders of Gehenna and the Convocation. This is an honor beyond anything you would ever understand. When I come back, I will be all yours.

Love,

Serafina

I stared.

She must be mad. Or this was fake. It was her handwriting...but the man had a machine that spoke for him and a typewriter that worked on its own. He could surely replicate handwriting.

But where had she gone? Gehenna? What was that? Where was that?

My eye fell upon the symbol that was circled in the book. Opening rune.

Opening...I looked again at the walls. The man had been inside the walls. He'd spoken to me from within. There had to be secret passageways. I began probing the walls' unyielding surfaces.

I frantically went over every inch of the bored green wallpaper. And then again. And again.

A knock sounded and a stagehand called, "five minutes, Miss Szeman." I sank to the floor in despair. So much time had already passed. I would be too late!

The carpet stared back at me, intricately patterned, unlike the wallpaper. And there!

In the corner, nearly hidden by the wardrobe, the Opening Rune peered up from between the twining curlicues.

Breathlessly, I crawled over to it and placed my hand on it. It felt no different from any other part of the floor. I pressed on it and felt something click beneath the carpet. Before my very eyes, the wall beside the wardrobe slid away, revealing a sliver of ultimate darkness.

I stood and took a candle from the vanity.

There was no time to be frightened of the foul wind that blew from that chasm. I stepped into darkness and the secret opening slid shut behind me. I was horrified to find various miniscule peep-holes into Serafina's dressing room. He HAD seen me, and presumably saw Serafina whenever she changed behind her screen!

A passage led off, narrow and low. I had to duck and go sideways to proceed. I came to a fork and was unsure which way to go...until I saw Serafina's gold key lying several feet down the left hand branch. The tunnel suddenly stopped and I found a hole in the floor, with a ladder leading down. This must be the direction that the man-deamon-ghost had led me before.

The passage went on and I found the lever that must control the trap door. Down another ladder, and I found myself on a stone embankment high above the water into which I was meant to have plunged. It appeared to be an underground river...or a sewer, though it was only mildly rank...and rank with a strange sour-metal smell. Chemicals, maybe.

The embankment ended and I found a tiny arch. My candle was guttering and I was forced to stop to trim the wick clumsily with my knife against the stone wall.

On I went, breath shallow and limbs quivering. The new tunnel dripped with slime and sloped steeply downward. The anise wrapped in mustiness stole into my nostrils and my lungs pumped faster.

That smell. And I thought I smelled old copper, too. And decay. The tunnel leveled off and I faced three entrances, all trimmed with archways built from human skulls.

Which way?

In the trembling light of my candle, I saw words written above the arches, carved into the stone.

Tartarus, Abaddon, and ...Gehenna.

I took a nervous breath and plunged into the arch named Gehenna—too fast.

I sprawled down a flight of slippery steps. My candle bounced into the darkness and went out.

Return tomorrow for the horrifying conclusion of the Phantom of the Opera!

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