by Kim Newman
Irene unwrapped a thick veil from around the head. A cracked china face showed – one green glass eye pushed in, the mouth a perfect, faded rosebud.
‘It’s Olympia,’ said Irene.
The doll was limp, armature broken inside. Her works were stopped.
‘If this is Olympia,’ said Kate. ‘Who’s gone up to the roof?’
X
‘I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU thought to pack a gun,’ said Irene.
‘We’re not in the Wild West,’ said Kate, looking askance at the American.
‘I’ve toured the Wild West,’ said Irene. ‘They have fewer killings in Tombstone and Deadwood than Paris and London. Or parts of New Jersey, come to that.’
Kate hated to admit it, but Irene had a point. Going into battle clad in the armour of rectitude and bearing the sword of truth was all very well, but she’d have liked a Webley revolver to fall back on.
Olympia was not who she seemed – and not to be trusted!
‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ she’d kept saying. ‘I hope we shall be the best of friends.’
Indeed! Kate hadn’t been imagining the smirk, then.
They’d treated Olympia as a useful machine – a dray horse, a tin soldier, a wind-up toy. Was someone inside, like the dwarf in the chess-playing Turk? Or was Fauxlympia another mannequin, substituted for their broken doll? A music box set to play a different tune.
Kate remembered the Surprise Symphony at the Persian’s grave.
Now, she detected the maker’s mark of Dr Falke in that firecracker. He could run up a turncoat automaton too.
From Dressing Room 313, Kate and Irene hastened through corridors to the wings of the great stage. Workmen toiled by torchlight, erecting scenery that might pass for an Atlantean throne-room. A choir rehearsed something watery. Atlantis had a national anthem and it wasn’t ‘Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’ or ‘Married to a Mermaid at the Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea’. Kate thought Antinea’s Ascent was getting ahead of itself, but that was confidence for you…
They climbed fixed ladders to the flies. Kate’s wrists hurt from pulling herself up, but she didn’t complain – unlike some adventuresses she could mention. Irene muttered in pain on every rung.
‘How do you do it, Katie?’ she asked.
‘Cycling and regular shuttlecock.’
‘I’d rather fall.’
The other Angels had passed this way. High above the stage, a brace of Camelots hung upside-down from the rigging, gagged with their own caps and scarves. When Kate and Irene approached, the young men tried to get their attention with muffled cries – which became muffled groans when they realised they weren’t rescuers.
‘Thi Minh,’ said Kate.
‘Or Elizabeth,’ said Irene. ‘Alraune would rope them round their throats, not their ankles.’
Kate conceded the point.
‘Olympia hasn’t played her trick yet,’ said Irene.
Kate chewed that over. The doll was waiting for something. A signal?
They were all dolls to someone. Mechanical chess pieces on pre-set courses, unwittingly playing to lose. Why so elaborate a stratagem? This wasn’t just about a clean sweep of the Angels. Falke could have packed the automaton’s corset full of dynamite and set her to detonate when they were all together. In the de Boscherville tomb or the Café de la Paix.
Irene found the trapdoor, which hung open. Kate was first through.
A filigree steel spiral staircase fed up inside a hollow column. Erik’s route to the roof. Kate rapidly climbed stairs, turning round and round in the confined space, ignoring the creaking and wobbling. Irene, out of breath, kept up.
Water had trickled in and frozen. Gripping the guide-rail, Kate was grateful for her gloves. Footprints were crushed into ice on the steps.
‘Nearly there,’ she told Irene.
‘Wonderful,’ Irene responded, meaning something else.
The spiral staircase ended in a landing, with a door to the roof. Kate put her face up against a window, but it was frosted over.
‘Hah, that’s the last of you,’ said a voice from the dark behind her. ‘The grandmas.’
Irene turned to punch someone. Kate was more cautious.
Rollo had been waiting. His pate was scratched and bruised. His piggy eyes were bright and eager. He held a skinning knife.
Two frog-men were with him.
No, bird-men. Rubber suits and masks, but no air tanks. Instead, folded kite-wings were strapped to their backs. No flippers, but gloved talons.
Rollo gestured towards the door with his knife.
Kate pushed it open and stepped onto the roof. The Phantom’s secret stairs came out behind the water tanks where, in summer, the corps de ballet liked to splash about. Someone had tried to carve an igloo out of ice blocks, but it had fallen in.
Sleet lashed Kate’s face. Her specs fogged.
It wasn’t snowing heavily, but up here the wind was worse – howling around the domes and statues and chimneys of the opera house.
Irene was shoved out after her. They clung to each other. Irene took Kate under her wing, wrapping her heavy cloak around them both.
Grandmas. That stung worse than the cold.
‘Keep going,’ said Rollo. ‘Your carriage awaits.’
Kate supposed it was likely to be a tumbril.
Kate and Irene struggled along a cast-iron walkway. On a dome surmounting the Palais Garnier, a fig-leafless nude Apollo raised a golden lyre to the heavens.
‘That’s the tiniest penis I’ve ever seen,’ commented Irene.
Kate giggled, though she’d rather scream.
‘Make allowances,’ she said. ‘It is bloody cold.’
‘Shush, you,’ said Rollo.
They trudged around the dome, treading carefully to avoid falling over. It would be ignominious to slip and dash one’s brains out on cast-iron before they even reached the scaffold, the guillotine or the ducking-stool.
Out in the city fires still blazed. Rescue work continued and skirmishes were decided in the dark. Did loyal army factions or the civil authorities yet recognise the Atlantean threat? Or were they still under the impression they fought only bad weather and disorganised looters?
The five Angels – Thi Minh, Alraune, Olympia, Mrs Eynsford Hill, Unorna – were on their knees, arranged atop the low wall at the edge of the roof. Alternating comic and tragic masks were fixed to the balustrade at the front of the building, and Angels were spaced between them. All the women were stripped of scarves, topcoats and hats. They looked out at Place de l’Opéra, hair whipped by the wind. All except Olympia shivered as if freshly soaked with ice-water. Unorna teetered alarmingly. Kate didn’t suppose the witch could fly, with or without a broomstick.
‘You’ve not been forgotten,’ said Rollo. ‘There are perches for you too.’
Kate and Irene were separated. Kate was roughly helped out of her coat. Irene handed her cloak to a bird-man as if he were an attendant. She fussed in her waistcoat pockets as if looking for a coin to tip him. She whirled her top hat away. It caught the wind, sailing off into the night.
Braziers burned all around the dome, casting some light but radiating little heat. The rooftop statuary – besides Apollo, winged ladies representing Poetry and Harmony and a pair of Pegasuses – was firelit. A canopied, presumably waterproof throne which resembled a sedan chair was a new feature. Snugly occupying this pretentious item of furniture was Queen Antinea. She wore armour pieces which resembled large seashells and shaggy white furs that might once have clad several polar bears. Her helmet had lobster claws and bobbing crustacean eye-stalks. Did the Balsamo woman really think she’d be able to rule a country dressed like that?
It would not do to underestimate her. She might be a fake Atlantean, but she was a real sorceress. At least the equal of Unorna, judging by the attack launched against the Witch of Prague on the astral plane. Her hat was very silly, however.
Assolant was here. And Dr Falke. A few evil-looking Jesuits and a n
un with a disturbing glass-eyed fish-mask – if it was a mask – huddled with a fur-coated, top hat-sporting type Kate recognised as Favraux, the banker. A chorus of frog-men, bird-men and Camelots completed the whole Atlantean conspiracy. Favraux must be funding the coup – though he was the sort of financier who poured other people’s money into risky ventures and kept his own fortune safe in a respectable bank.
A sloping frame was erected on one of the frozen-over vats, bearing one of Falke’s contraptions – a bat-winged rocket. Was it to be fired at an opposing army or a strategic location?
This seemed more for show than tactics.
Rollo hauled Kate and Irene towards the balustrade.
Some of the Angels turned and saw them coming. Mrs Eynsford Hill had to pull Unorna back, to keep her from dropping over the edge.
Kate tried to shout a warning about Olympia, but a hairy hand clamped over her mouth.
‘We’ve heard enough from you,’ said Rollo.
Kate was hoisted up onto the wall with the rest, Irene to her left and Thi Minh to her right. The rim of the balustrade was broad enough for safety – unless wind, snow or trident-prod changed her balance. But she was unsteady. Her knees pressed on cold stone. It was like kneeling on black ice.
She didn’t look down. The view across Place de l’Opéra was worrisome enough. People gathered. She saw them on the rooftops of other buildings, and down in the dark streets.
An audience for the executions? And then a coronation?
Antinea began a speech. Kate didn’t bother to listen too closely. She got the gist. The Angels were being sacrificed to water the seeds of New Atlantis in blood.
Hoot and hosannah!
As she might have guessed, Rollo was up for doing the honours. He put away his knife and flexed his fingers.
This was a job for a shover.
Rollo walked along the path beside the wall, inspecting the Angels’ backs.
‘Who to pick, who to pick?’
The knife-thrower certainly had personal ill-feeling against Kate, an Angel during l’affaire Guignol.
But he passed her by.
Kate couldn’t feel her face. She was perilously close to telling Rollo to hurry up and get on with it before they all froze to death.
‘Am stram gram, pic et pic et colégram…’
She recognised the French version of the ‘Eenie Meenie Miney Mo’ choosing rhyme.
‘Bour et bour et ratatam,’ continued Rollo.
He was behind her again, fingers tickling her spine.
‘Am…’
The touch was gone.
‘Stram…’
He was behind Thi Minh.
‘Gram!’
Alraune!
Rollo put powerful hands around Alraune’s neck and shoved her over off the balustrade. He didn’t let go. Dangling her in mid-air, he squeezed her throat.
Alraune choked and kicked.
XI
SUDDENLY, HE WAS there…
Rising through a trapdoor no one had suspected.
Black cloak swirling like a dark cloud.
Mask pure white.
The Phantom of the Opera seized Rollo’s coat-tails and dragged him away from the edge of the roof. The knife-thrower let go of Alraune…
…who fell, face calm, hands up, for an instant…
…until Thi Minh caught Alraune’s thin wrist with one hand and hooked her other arm around a tragedy mask. The sudden weight pulled the acrobat off the ledge, but she kept hold of the mask – and Alraune. The stonework held. And Thi Minh’s shoulders. With great strain, the tiny woman hauled her tall friend up until they were both safe. Breathing heavily, they lay on the roof.
Erik loomed, cloak like wings. Yellow eyes reflecting fire.
Kate and Irene got down off the balustrade and made themselves small.
Rollo couldn’t get up. He convulsed, eyes bulging and bloody. Erik had pulled his coat tight like a strait-jacket, piercing him with his own blades. A dozen knives stuck through his ribs and into his soft insides. He coughed and died.
Antinea was still making her bloody speech.
Kate shouted ‘Olympia!’ at Erik and waved her hands like Thi Minh.
Olympia was not who she seemed and could not be trusted.
But it wasn’t Olympia who leaped on the Phantom’s back.
With a screech like a banshee, Alraune sprang up. She wrapped long, sinewy arms and legs around Erik’s thin body from behind. She sank sharp teeth into the pale exposed flesh of his neck.
An Angel of Ill Fortune!
A fatal woman. All who cared for her died.
She was exactly who she seemed… and not to be trusted.
‘Congratulations, Monsieur Erik,’ said Antinea, clapping politely. ‘So kind of you to join us at last. It is heartening to know something can always coax you from your rat-holes. We’d have searched the house for years and not laid hands on you. But you love your girls so. It’s touching that such a monster is such a romantic.’
Erik’s arms were pinned. He tried to shrug off Alraune but she clung like ivy, entwining tighter around him.
Kate understood this had all been to draw Erik out.
Alraune strongly argued for the diversionary theory that Fantômas was their enemy. Kate realised the traitor Angel had murdered the Persian herself. She’d have got close to him the way she got close to everyone – by being what they desired, one way or another. Mandrake was a weed, a parasite which killed its host. Kate had a sour burst of pity for Alraune – so soulless she could feel no friendship, no qualm, no shame. She had deceived Erik who, as Antinea said, was perhaps the deepest romantic of them all. A monster with a heart.
He must have watched them all along – through his many peep-holes. It had been the same at the Théâtre des Horreurs and in the Louvre, when he held back until the last. Only a direct threat to his protégées prompted him to step on the stage and act. Antinea understood him.
General Assolant walked over, pistol raised.
‘You’ll die last,’ he said.
To Erik? Or to Kate? Hard to tell.
Assolant’s arm shook in the cold. He couldn’t get an aim until he was close. He’d never been in a battle, just administered head-shots to the fallen after his firing squad had done the heavy work of murder.
The General passed Mrs Eynsford Hill and fell back, dropping his gun.
His hand went up to his face. A knife and fork stuck out of it. More scars for the collection.
Murmurings among the chorus. Falke and Favraux sputtered.
Antinea raised her hand. She was intent on Erik and Alraune. Nothing else would mar her enjoyment of the Fall of the Phantom.
Olympia moved, striding towards Erik.
‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ she said. ‘I hope we shall be the best of friends.’
Alraune grinned like a fiend, teeth red. Erik seemed to relax, like a python’s victim succumbing at last to the crushing coils. Blood seeped across his starched shirt-front and stained his perfectly tied white tie.
‘It is a pleasure to meet you…’
The mannequin made a fist and punched Alraune in the face. The pop! of the German girl’s nose breaking was like a pistol shot.
‘I hope we shall be the best of friends.’
Olympia tore Alraune away from Erik and tossed the scrap of a girl off the roof.
She wasn’t who she seemed, but she was to be trusted.
Kate stood, helping Irene up. The others scrambled around.
Unorna pressed her hand to Erik’s wound and was sheltered under his cloak. Mrs Eynsford Hill tripped Assolant and kicked him when he was down. Thi Minh scooped up the General’s pistol and fired a warning shot that tore Favraux’s hat from his head.
Antinea was enraged. She swore violently in a language which wasn’t Atlantean. It might have been Corsican or Sicilian.
Dr Falke, sensing the whole coup teetering, fiddled urgently with his bat-rocket. His armature hissed as he worked, as if he were steam
-powered. His bird-men assisted, clumsily. They rushed through a process which should be carried out with more care.
Whatever the weapon was, it was about to be fired.
Kate, Irene and Olympia ran towards Falke’s crew.
Antinea shouted.
Kate didn’t even have an instant to wonder what she meant to do before she had her hands on Falke’s backpack and started pulling wires. Irene got to his legs and twisted his metal braces.
The old man keened in frustration.
Olympia tossed bird-men the length of the vat. They crashed and skidded on ice. The fish-nun’s mouth gaped and she barked like a seal, then ran off, scattering Jesuits and Camelots like a ball crashing through skittles.
A fuse fizzed. A clockwork whirr sounded.
‘You’re too late,’ crowed Antinea.
Olympia – whoever or whatever she might be – threw herself onto the bat-rocket, shattering its works with her armoured body, smashing her head against the fuse. A small explosion broke the thing into pieces. A burning wing spun round and round across the ice like a runaway Catherine wheel. Fragments stuck into Falke’s chest and he died, unable to fall. His locked metal braces held him in place, a slumped statue.
Olympia’s head was on fire. She plunged her face into meltwater to extinguish the flame. She lay, breathing more like an injured person than an automaton, steam rising from her blackened mask.
Thi Minh, Erik, Unorna and Mrs Eynsford Hill fought bat-men and frog-men at close quarters. Everyone slid around on the roof, losing their footing. A bat-man toppled, wings torn apart by the wind, and screamed all the way down – which gave his comrades cause to distrust their equipment.
Irene boxed Favraux’s ears and administered several kicks to his upholstered trousers.
Kate took the pages Mrs Eynsford Hill had written and gave them to Erik.
‘It’s her plan,’ she said, nodding at Antinea.
Behind his mask, Erik chuckled. He crumpled the pages up and tossed them over his head – where they caught light and burned with a purplish magnesium flare. Answering flares rose from rooftops all around… Cheers sounded from across the square, then across the city.