RoseBlood

by Howard, A. G.

  My body seizes in fear, as brittle and dysfunctional as a cricket’s empty exoskeleton after being drained by a hungry spider. My deadweight limbs drag me down, suspended in a web of dread, and it all comes rushing back . . . the squeeze of my lungs begging me to breathe, the tear of my fingernails against splintering wood, the swirl of my hair tangling around my neck.

  Grandma, why?

  An arm binds my waist from behind, stopping my descent with a jolt. Somewhere beyond the muffled swish of water filling my subconscious, that familiar violin song pricks at my eardrums—poignant, pure, and enticing—my maestro commanding me to fight. A spark, hot and charged, like a shock from an outlet, leaps from my rescuer’s body to mine, and I revive enough to start kicking again.

  I’m dragged out and over the edge like a piece of luggage, hacking up the flavor of bile and soured water. My feet squish inside my waterlogged boots as I try to stand. The soles slide out from under me and I miss busting my head on the brick basin by inches when a pair of gloved hands catches me. They settle me to sit on the floor beside the well, raking away the slimy hair glued across my eyes before tilting my chin back as if inspecting me for bruises.

  Coughing again, I jerk free and look up in the dimness, half expecting to see Grandma in my fevered state, half expecting her to finally offer some explanation for trying to drown me.

  Instead, the looming silhouette takes a different shape: broad shoulders and a masculine build inside dark clothes. So intent on him, I barely notice that the rain has let up—that the clouds have started to thin and a gauzy gray light gilds the room. The figure standing over me comes into sharp focus before I’m even aware of it.

  Thick curls of dark hair cascade across his forehead and drip water along the nose of his porcelain, white half-mask. Rivulets stream down the naked side of his face—some real, from the bath he encountered while fishing me out of the well, and others impressions, from the drizzling rain and jagged colors stamped onto his skin by light filtered through the stained-glass windows. I choke back a gasp of recognition.

  It’s the gardener . . . the Phantom.

  I haven’t been imagining things at all. They’re one and the same.

  The description of his deformity from every incarnation of the story, what hides beneath the cover-up, taunts me: rotting yellow skin . . . no nose or upper lip . . . sunken forehead and eye. But my attention strays to the left side, and the features both symmetrical and sensuous. He’s his own foil—two polar opposites, squashed into place like mismatched halves of clay onto one man’s immaculate form.

  “I knew it . . . ,” I mumble, my pulse shaking the words in my throat. “You’re real.” I’m not sure if I’m referring to him being the Phantom, or the maestro from my dreams.

  The bared half of his full lips twitches, as if debating whether to respond.

  “It was you all along,” I accuse. “The bleeding roses, the torn uniforms, the dead bird.” It’s my voice, but someone else must be talking through me, because where would I find the courage with so much fear pounding inside my chest? I don’t have the presence of mind to demand the reason he did those things . . . maybe to lead me here, so I’d find him. But why?

  Then it hits me . . . the only reason he could want me to find him. And I want it, too. I want it so much, my blood burns.

  “Please tell me you’re here to teach me. To help me release my song, like you did for Christine.” I realize too late that I say her name wrong. It slips out before I can stop it, before I can even hear how insane I sound. How insane this moment is. I’m not blind to the irony: that my need to feel normal has driven me to seek the counsel of the abnormal.

  I stare up at him, waiting. His silence reaches as high as the cathedral ceiling, interminable. In spite of his impressive size, he folds himself effortlessly, crouching to stretch out an upturned hand. I flinch, horror-struck, my pulse thundering a warning through my ears.

  An expression of sympathy and supplication deepens his brown, hawkish eyes, before they fluctuate to that shimmery, coppery gaze I saw in the garden upon my arrival. The gaze that’s always there to drag me from the water in my dreams, and now in my reality.

  Drawn by their magnetic pull, I become the cricket, entranced by her eight-legged captor. Despite every instinct telling me to leap away as fast I can, I take his gloved palm and push myself up with his support, my hips propped against the basin’s edge so my face is level with his sternum.

  My eyes drift up to his—my other senses attuned to every aspect of his realness: The strength of his leather-bound fingers wrapped around my palm, the steady rhythm of his breath only inches from my forehead . . . the scent of his warm skin, wet and earthy, like moss on a forest floor, bathed in sunlight and dew.

  Dread and hope grapple for control inside my heart, threatening to implode the organ. As though absorbing my inner turmoil, a faint glimmer of light spreads at his sternum, beneath his dark clothes, reminiscent of how I glowed when I devoured Ben’s anxiety.

  “What are you?” I murmur.

  The naked side of his face changes, softening to an expression so open and ethereal he looks almost angelic. “What are we, you mean to say.” His response reverberates around the chapel, deep and gruff—English words framed within a French accent. He winces at the rumbling echo, like it hurts to hear the hoarseness of his own voice.

  To see him vulnerable, even for an instant, awakens that morbid hunger in me—a lust I don’t understand and can’t control. With my free hand, I touch his chest to reabsorb the glow he stole, not even hesitating. His gaze shifts down at our point of contact. The air seems to close in around us, pushing us closer together, although neither of us moves. The light behind his sternum deepens to green and seeps into my fingertips, then sluices through my veins, hot and intoxicating. My body wakes up, energized.

  His jaw clenches and with a charged buzz, a green light ignites in my own chest. It snaps through my veins to my fingertips, then into him. The loss leaves me famished. Frowning, I concentrate, coaxing the glow toward me again, but it slips into the darkness between us. The light bounces back and forth as we wrestle for dominance.

  Unable to choose, it stalls in midair—a sizzling, green ball—then bursts into a thousand pieces and floats upward, like luminous dandelion seeds, carrying away my insatiable appetite. All I feel beneath my fingertips now is his heartbeat, steady and strong. It matches my own, satisfied and controlled. It’s like coming back to a place I’ve been before, a place I’ve been trying to find again for years—maybe for my whole life.

  Home.

  That sense of peace and comfort swells to a rush of adrenaline, as hand in hand, I mentally climb with my partner onto some ancient, omniscient plateau, view our likenesses from the summit, and tread to the edge, prepared to swan dive with him into the cosmos.

  Wait . . . what am I doing? I waver, afraid of the dizzying heights, anchored only by my palm, so small, wrapped within his.

  Baring the straight, white teeth not covered by his half-mask, he bites the glove on his free hand, peeling the leather away. With his thumb, he touches my temple and silences the doubts within.

  A throb ignites where he presses. A current, musical and pure, passes from my skull to my spine to my feet. I’m a quivering thing—the plucked string of a neglected violin, shaking off the dust of disuse until harmony resonates between me and my maestro, pure, sad, and sweet.

  “Yes, we’ll conquer them, Rune.” I feel his grinding voice through my palm at his chest. The tenderness he attributes to my name, delivered on such a pained rasp, swipes through the chalky residue coating my brain. “The arias that haunt you.” His thumb caresses the hairline above my ear, and he leans so close I feel his warm whisper only inches from my lips. “I’m here. In your mind. Listen for my violin’s voice from your dreams. Shut out everything but me. Together, we already own the notes . . . every last one.”

  Watching me intently, he drops his hands and steps back. My palm falls to my side and the musical
current tethering us breaks. With a swish of fabric, he flourishes the cape to hide himself. A puff of glittery smoke, pungent with sulfur and ash, forms a wall. Once it clears, he’s gone, as if he vanished into the floor.

  Without his eyes or touch to hold me, I rouse from my dazed state, rattled and raw, but at the same time, enlightened.

  All that’s left of the Phantom are puddles shaped like his shoeprints and a discarded black glove. Diable saunters over, plops his haunches down, and scowls at me while licking his wooly, wet fur. He yawns, as if bored . . . as if the monumental encounter never took place.

  My body knows better, my tongue still savoring the flavor of the Phantom’s heartbeat—a delectable, caustic burn like an electrical charge.

  Frowning, I grab the glove and inch toward the door—my focus never straying from the spot where he stood. I slip twice before I gather the tub and plunge back into the cemetery, no longer running from bloody roses, operatic arias, or a guilt-ridden past.

  For the first time in years, I’m running toward something . . . toward the girl in my dreams who has taken her place among the planets and stars, beside a pair of glimmering, coppery eyes.

  11

  THE TEMPORARY NATURE OF PRECIOUS THINGS

  “Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.”

  Herodotus

  I stumble into the grand foyer, my body cold and wet, but my mind set aflame. The door thuds behind me, echoing through the spacious, white marble hollows. In the poststorm light, I glance around. My clothes drip, forming puddles—a rhythmic pitter-pat to accompany the images clicking through my mind: glimpses of a masked man with a shattered voice and strong hand.

  Every bronze statue stares back—all-knowing and familial, as if they’re linked to the Phantom, too—welcoming me into their secret brotherhood with carved gazes and immortal expressions.

  How is it possible? That he’s the maestro who’s been in my dreams all these years? It can’t be. But his glittering eyes said otherwise, as did his knowledge of the music we’ve shared in those dreams.

  A tingling thrill scrambles through me at the thought of how many times he’s helped me escape my drowning nightmares, again and again and again. And then today, he came to my rescue when I fell into the baptism font in reality.

  He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The fictional character died at the end of the book. Alone, without the woman he had loved and obsessed over until madness became inextricably entwined with his genius. In the end, he had no one but a police chief he’d met in a foreign country at his side as he closed his eyes in death.

  How much of that story is true for Leroux’s inspiration? He must be a ghost. How else could he still be in this world and look so close to my age after over a century? But I’m not a ghost, so that doesn’t make sense.

  “What are you?” I’d asked.

  “What are we, you mean to say.” His taunting response scrolls through me, the credits to a horror movie I’ve lived without ever knowing I was an extra.

  I still can’t imagine the answer . . . what are we?

  What am I?

  Something dark and hungry. I have an appetite. It scratches at some place deep inside me . . . the same place that thrived on Ben’s lust and fear. It’s a morbid instinct I share with the Phantom, something he understands and can satisfy just by holding my gaze and my hand, by drawing light from my heart and joining it to his own. The heat of that connection still nestles beneath my sternum—feeding me.

  Grandma Liliana was right. I’m a curse, a monster. Or a murderer.

  My throat tightens, as if talons clamp over it. Daddy . . . did I kill you somehow, like I almost killed Ben?

  A sob bubbles inside my mouth. Tears prick my eyes.

  The solitude of the foyer magnifies the remorse rolling over me in waves. My hands tremble, no matter how I try to still them. Blinking my eyes to clear the tears and raindrops from my lashes, I peel off my boots and leave them by the door along with the tubful of torn uniforms, a haunted bouquet of roses, and other cryptic items I’ll need to examine later. But right now, before everyone comes back from Paris, I have to let my experience play out. The answers are there, if I can process them.

  I lift the black glove out of the tub and pull it on. It’s too big, yet the weight of it is comforting.

  There are things that don’t add up, that contradict the stories. The beauty of the Phantom’s voice was his ultimate weapon—an acoustic quicksand that could consume and hold any prey. But in the chapel, his voice was a raw, damaged sound. It was his touch and the pleading depth of his eyes that captured me.

  Then there was the red swan. I’ve never seen one that color. I didn’t know they existed. The bird was preternatural. The way it disappeared into the shadows just before the Phantom materialized to save me, I would think they were one and the same. Yet there’s another possibility: in lore, otherworldly creatures, like witches and vampires, have familiars that do the master’s bidding. Is that the bird’s role in his life?

  Life. If the Phantom is some bloodsucking, hex-casting being, he can’t truly be alive.

  Yet, he was undeniably real. Real enough for me to feel his flesh against mine, to taste his breath only inches from my lips. He hadn’t intended to touch me . . . he had planned to stay hidden. I sensed that. He fought slipping out of the shadows, but finally gave in because he had to, to save me.

  That place above my ear, where he traced my hair and skin, still thrums with music—a visceral, tonal reminder that we exchanged heartbeats, then walked together in our minds as he showcased our likenesses.

  Everything seems different now, deciphered through his eyes. My senses buzz to heightened awareness, and my emotions twist and tangle with his. I can make out his silhouette as I stand next to him, hiding behind the mirrors along the walls. They’re actually windows on the other side, and he looks in—watching students come and go, sometimes dressed in velvet, laces, suits . . . dripping with jewels, furs, and entitlements as they take their places on stage. He longs to be in the audience . . . to be a part of the glitz and glamor, to sit with friends and laugh about the common and mundane until the curtains rise and feature a world of romance, acceptance, and magnanimity the likes of which he’s never known.

  Next, I follow him deep beneath the ground, but not here—not the opera house. It’s an earlier, hazier time. He shares a cage with other children I can’t quite see; I’m blind to his face still, maybe because now I’m looking through his eyes. They’re treated like animals, but it’s different for him, because he’s different. His appearance forces his tormentors to isolate him, and to steal away something so precious, it leaves him incomplete, humiliated, and lost. To the point he wants to die.

  My heart sinks inside my chest—an anchor dredging the depths of his despair. I break free and surface within another memory. A warmer time, before his loss. I can feel his intense hunger; he goes without food often. Seated at a dusty table, he asks an innocent question, and I hear a Frenchwoman’s sweet voice, chiding him. It’s his mother. “You don’t want that kind of love,” she says. “It isn’t love at all. It’s dark, and it’s evil. Just like the devil and the witch in your favorite story, who treated Jean and Jeanette like possessions, to be eaten like fatted calves. But children are powerful, and clever. They should be treated as gifts from the heavens.”

  A devil and a witch . . . Jean and Jeanette . . . the fairy tale from my childhood: Les Enfants Perdus. His mother used to tell him the same fable that my dad read to me.

  In that blink of recognition, the vision slips away. I’m in the foyer, standing inside the academy in my soggy clothes and wearing a man’s glove. That’s where the intuition stops.

  I need more. I need the Phantom’s history. I need everything. Because somehow, my present, and even parts of my past, are interwoven with his.

  I walk, fingers wiggling in his oversize leather glove, led by spectral footprints I can sense but not see. I wind my way through the corridors t
oward the renovated theater—the Phantom’s deadly playground. My wet, stockinged feet grow colder with each step. Other than my dripping clothes, the journey is quiet. It’s the absence of sound that leads me onward . . . a silence that breathes and beckons.

  As I shove open the heavy, elaborate double doors, my breath catches, lungs stuffed with sawdust, fresh paint, and the sterility of furniture polish. I prop the doors open, allowing light from the corridor to seep across uncountable tiers of seats like a dusky nebula. It’s the first time I’ve been here. I’m not sure where any of the power switches are, so sparse illumination is all I have.

  I consider the plays and operas that were performed here centuries earlier, before the top three floors caught fire, before smoke and soot forced the designers to stain the wooden décor black. Tainting the edges of those moments are the murders the Phantom was rumored to have committed in an opera house much like this one. I wonder if anyone ever really knew what happened. Anyone other than the object of his obsession.

  He seemed sincere when he said he would help me. Maybe that’s what he wanted with Christine . . . Christina . . . in the beginning: to be her friend. To help her. Until he fell hopelessly in love with his own creation.

  If the stories are true, he’s dangerous. But what if they’re embellished, or completely wrong?

  I descend the slanted aisle. Mister Jippetto’s half-finished props sit on canvas tarps, in preparation for the upcoming opera. They clutter my path and I edge around them. On the night of the performance, all it will take is a flick of the wrists, and prismatic spotlights will line the rafters, mirroring the rainbow palette I see when I sing—the one that always ends up staining my mind with splashes of bloody red in that moment when the last note is ripped from my soul.

  The dark, gaping maw of the stage waits below. One side of the red velvet curtains folds open—the tongue of a rabid wolf, slavering to devour my song and leave me gutted and drained.

  For so long music has bled me dry, but today, something changed. When the Phantom touched me, when his eyes held mine, I felt it. And I still feel it now.