“I am seeking forgiveness from you,” I reminded with growing impatience when she again shook her head.
“No, I am not responsible for your soul and its sins. You do not seek forgiveness; you seek validation of your excuses, permission to hurt, and if I give it, then I am no better than you are.”
Christine suddenly recoiled beyond my touch, and I grew urgent and terrified as she overflowed in reservations and suspicions built. “What about the stories of the ghost that circulate the opera? …The stagehands that disappear? …What about Joseph Buquet?”
She could have concluded answers on her own, and they would have been accurate. But I glimpsed a remaining ember of hope in her blue stare, a prayer that I would deny involvement. Though I contemplated lying, I knew I couldn’t. I’d lie, and she’d know this time that it was a lie.
“Dead, but not of my own hands,” I explained as I hastily got to my feet. She thought I would touch her again; I knew it as she stepped further away, and I heaved a curse beneath my breath.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” I snapped, “that he ventured where he should not go and became victim to one of my traps. I must keep myself protected, as I said, and my traps may be deadly but they do their job well enough. And the other stagehands… Well, sometimes accidents happen and sometimes they are necessary. Those who see my mortal existence cannot very well go free to spread the tale and give a human fallibility to a supposed ghost! That would be suicide! Sometimes…I must kill to keep my secret.”
Tears rimmed Christine’s eyes, and I could not fathom why. Had I not explained it well enough? Surely she should see my point! One would think she’d want me protected!
“Why do you cry?” I snapped, and as I came close, she pulled back and lifted shaking hands to stop me. “I’ve done nothing to deserve your tears. I haven’t been cruel or mean; I have barely touched you! All I’ve done is state the truth.”
“I know your secret,” she insisted in a choked voice. “I know you are only a man. Am I now another liability? Would it be just as simple for you to kill me and keep your secrets as your own?”
“Kill you?” I demanded, confused why she would deduce such a preposterous outcome. “Of course not! I love you!”
She whimpered with my words, and I felt sick to my stomach. I’d given a heart, and I wasn’t sure I should have.
But with utter conviction, I stated, “And you love me.”
“I don’t know you,” she retorted, tears falling faster and glistening in the firelight. “You told me that you didn’t hurt others as everyone said, but you do. You lied to me, and now you want me to qualify your transgressions and dub murder forgivable. You aren’t even sorry for what you’ve done. You think you have valid reasons to kill people.”
Each sentence grew more hysterical until she was gasping breaths caught by sobs. But abrupt and unanticipated, she silenced, and realization flickered in wide eyes. “And…Carlotta? Did you…? Oh, please tell me that you didn’t cause her accident.”
“I did, but it was for you. It was the only way to get you onstage and heard.” I could not reason where her gratitude was. I had given her everything she’d ever wanted, and she only sobbed harder and hugged her body with shaking arms. “Christine, this is ridiculous! I didn’t kill Carlotta! I just startled her. I knew I’d cause no serious damage. And besides, her death would have had Gala night cancelled and your opportunity lost.”
“And that is all that mattered to you!” she suddenly shrieked and surprised me with her aggression. I had never seen it from her and thought she was incapable of real rage and fire. …Despite its inception, I liked it. It showed me that she was stronger than either of us realized. “Gala night would have been canceled, but Carlotta would have been dead by your hands and without remorse! Have you no regard for the worth of human life?”
“Human life is a cesspool of vindictive leeches and poisonous vipers. They bite and sting and know no remorse either! Why should I be the one to carry guilt when they have made me a monster without mercy?”
“Because you kill those who stand in your way, and…that isn’t right, Erik,” she said, soft amidst her cascading tears. “You are not a god.” The statement seemed to ignite another realization, and in the center of a sob, she demanded, “You told me that you were no demon or devil, and yet every assessment of you screams otherwise. Perhaps that was a lie as well…”
Her words pierced into my body and left wounds so deep within the marrow of my bones. Demon, devil… I’d endured such titles from a cruel world, but to Christine, I was supposed to be angel…
“How dare you?” I snapped back, and without thought, I lunged toward her before she could move away and caught her forearms in my hands, yanking them free of her solacing embrace and pinning them to her sides.
Love…I loved her, a voice in my heart tried to remind, but I did not see the girl I loved before me. I saw the same ugliness the world gave and a creature worthy of only hate.
“Erik, please!” she shouted and fought my hold, but I dragged both wrists to the small of her back and clasped them in one of my large hands, easily restraining her despite her struggles.
“Erik is dead,” I declared coldly. “You killed him with your cruelty and arose the devil in his place. That is what you want, isn’t it? A demon, Satan, a temptation you couldn’t have refused and cannot be held accountable for. Because if you love a murderer who is just a murderer, that is an atrocity brought to life. So a devil you’ll have, and your soul can stay pure. What kind of lover would I be if I condemned you to hell?”
I abhorred my threats and her for believing them, and with a grating chuckle and every word burning my throat, I spat, “Devil. You think beneath this mask is the face of Satan. Well, look and see if you find hellfire and brimstone in my eyes. Do you see the devil? Because I would have thought he’d be better looking and claim beauty as a weapon, but I…no, I’m ugly. Let me show you.”
My free hand went for my mask, and knowing the horror I was about to reveal did not stop me. It was too late; I’d already lost. What difference did anything make anymore?
Fixing my glare on her tear-stained face, I took off my mask and unleashed hell.
Chapter Ten
Christine~
The term devil fell back and suffocated in a throng of other appellations that climbed over one another and fought for supremacy in my addled head.
God works in mysterious ways… This was its own mystery. A man or a corpse brought to life… I saw dead, and yet with a fury so great in its ugly planes that it must be alive.
My breaths were shallow gasps, resounding the air between our mouths, and I could not stop their hastening pace, so fast that I grew lightheaded and wondered if I was creating the horror I gazed upon in my hysteria. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad, and my eyes were deceiving me. Perhaps all of this was a nightmare, and I was actually asleep in my bed awaiting the Gala night performance and over-laden in anxiety. What I saw…couldn’t be real.
“Look at the devil, Christine!” Erik growled and pinched my arms tighter behind my back. I gave a cry at his fierceness and made myself focus and list the reasons this wasn’t the devil.
There was no beauty here, nothing to entice temptations from his victims. He was half a skeleton, bones prevalent and uncovered every place flesh should exist to house their vulnerable state. No nose as if such an imperative structure had been ripped away along with the skin on that side, and an eyeball exposed in its socket without a fully formed lid to soften its spherical shape. I recalled every nuance of the malformed mouth, but alone, it hadn’t been worthy of disgust. As part of the whole package of distortions, it bore a new wave of shock.
My tears blurred a damaged canvas, and even as I blinked and let them fall, they collected again and again over the surface of sight until I finally closed my eyes and stopped looking altogether. The Opera Ghost was a disfigured murderer, and I was ashamed because I loved him.
With a roar that se
emed rooted at the core of his being, he shouted, “Look at me! Look at me, Christine! Damn you!”
And I sobbed and was afraid to open my eyes and see such anger, terrified I’d meet my end at hands I’d adored when they’d played music for me. Would they now appear just as beautiful as they strangled me?
Enraged further by my refusal, the hand squeezing my wrists forced my body forward until without consent or struggle, I was pressed to his length with nowhere to escape. I could feel his every heaved breath in lungs flush to mine, moving both our bodies while my shallow echoes never reached so deep.
And then…to my terror, I noted a detail that made my skin burn in pinks; he was…aroused, and I gave a choked gasp to feel it and know what he wanted. Those were the sensations that frightened me, ones that heated my lower belly and stirred my stability as they raced incessant tremors through the network of my veins. Desire… And it felt like a betrayal to my sense of morality to admit I felt it for a murderer.
“Look at me!” Erik commanded again, every consonant puffing against my jaw with his nearness, and though I didn’t want this image of that horrible face, full of rage and animosity, I obeyed with a whimper.
A monster…this was a monster, forcing me to his body, lusting for me, devouring every good spot within me, and I could find no inkling of the Erik I’d loved within such insanity.
“Please,” I whispered futilely to that mangled face and its soul-deep scars.
“Please? You beg me? Is death truly all you expect now? To be murdered by the man who adores you, who would move heaven and earth to possess you? That is all I’ve done, Christine. My sins and crimes, all for you, to be with you, to give you what you deserve. Even my sordid past. One could argue that it led me to this spot. Destiny, they call it! I was destined to be yours!”
Mine… and I wondered as I stared in horror at every word passing that malformed mouth if it was indeed destiny and I was cursed for the very thing I’d loved, …but the man I’d loved was not a murderer willing to sacrifice my life for his own gain. I’d loved an illusion, and now the illusion was gone.
“But why do you still cry?” he demanded, his mismatched stare touching every feature of my face as if searching. “You’re supposed to be happy. You…you smiled as you came with me tonight, willingly into my domain. You teased and grinned and held my hand, and now…you can barely look at me, only through the sheen of tears… You were supposed to hear my sins and accept them for the man they’ve made me, one eager to be with only you forever.” Growing agitation painted his voice in hysteria as he accused, “You knew I was the Opera Ghost.”
“But…you lied to me,” I whispered, not trusting my voice to give anything but sobs.
“Logistics and minor details,” he justified, shaking his head, and my gaze was riveted to those distorted features in motion. A corpse…but moving and breathing, animated when it should rest in the grave…like his victims. “The heart is the same and the soul beneath the sins. I am the same man who has spent weeks as your angel and ally, teaching you, loving you. I have not changed!”
“Everything has changed,” I corrected, and the sob finally found a path out to echo around us.
He seemed confounded by my words, and it surprised me that he’d truly believed nothing he’d told me tonight would matter, that not a single letter would leave an imprint behind and make a difference to my heart.
And…to look into his eyes, I wanted to follow the dream again, to be naïve and gullible and let him rewrite every transgression he’d stated, but…the face before me was a stranger, and I remembered that he with his demented features had murdered the dream as brutally as every other life on his hands. My innocence was equally his casualty, and I’d never be the girl I’d been when I’d stepped through the mirror again.
“No…no,” he muttered, and anger bore cracks that slowly shattered to the pain beneath as tears rimmed his eyes. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. No, not like this. You were supposed to love me. You do! I know you do! …You do…”
Pain drained with the fall of his tears, and with an exhausted cry, he slid to his knees before me again, still clutching my wrists behind my back. Perhaps I could have broken free if I’d fought, but I wasn’t sure I wanted freedom. My heart felt twisted inside, constricted in its cage as part of me tried to hold it in and away from the ghost crumbled at my feet. It seemed a losing battle because he sobbed, and my heart sobbed with him.
That disfigured face was pointed toward the ground and out of my sight, but he slowly edged closer until he could set his brow to my stomach, a delicate pressure, never too much to shatter me. I gazed at his crown, making out the skull beneath a thin layer of hair, and as his shoulders shook with the power of his sobs, I ached to comfort him. If my hands had been free, I would have stroked his hair, but as we were, I was terrified one motion too fierce would destroy him.
He took my ability to touch, so I gave him the only other way I knew to comfort. Soft and timid, I began to hum the lullaby my father had played for me upon his violin years and years ago. And I ignored the voice of sense that said I was foolishly offering my solace to a murderer. For one moment, I yearned to forget that word and see only a despairing man crying before me, the man I loved.
Sobs halted their progression with my song; he seemed so desperate to listen as if in a soft melody, I gave him what he needed. …Maybe I did.
As the song ended, he turned that bowed head so that his disfigured side was against the silk of my dressing gown, and tears smeared and soaked through until I felt their chill.
“I haven’t asked much of you, Christine,” he hoarsely bid, leftover tears tainting his angel’s voice. “Not much at all, …only your love. That is what I want, more than anything. Not even forgiveness accounts. Don’t forgive me; hate me for the monster I was and still am, but give me your love at the same time. Please…I’ve built such dreams for us, a life… I never lived before you. I can’t keep living with only shards of fantasy; they are sharp and serrated and will wound my heart until it scars.”
“I…I don’t know what to say…or to feel,” I said as I battled the possession of contrasting sensations.
I longed to break away from him, and I longed to hold him just as much. My body betrayed and succumbed against judgment’s reservations. But when the idea of his scarred cheek flush to my torso should have disgusted me, I suffered the perverse urge to feel it against my bare skin instead and hated myself for it. …The layers of material in between felt scorched and uncomfortably thick, and skin would have been blissful…
“Just love me,” he begged as if it were so simple. “Love me, Christine.”
Something inside shouted that I already did.
Slowly, he tilted that face upward until only his chin rested on the wet stains his tears had left against my dressing gown. Despite its awful distortions, I did not even flinch to regard it. I studied its malformations so near and wondered how God could create something so hideous. Why would He? Why torture any creature in such a manner as if He wanted this man to suffer and bear the repercussions for His mistake? It seemed unjustly cruel.
Perhaps my compassion gave Erik hope. I did not show disgust when disgust was swallowed by too much pity. It was difficult to be repulsed when my heart ached simply to consider that corpse face constantly concealed by a mask’s protection to keep it from ridicule and judgment. The mask was its own oddity, but it paled in horror to this damaged face, gazing at me with tears in its deeply-set eyes. …He asked only for love, and my heart loved even if my mind doubted. Love thrived at the core of my being.
I felt Erik’s free hand slowly snake a path up my spine, and I shivered and lost a gasp at the rippling sensation that chased his fingertips. …Up until my curls claimed him and ensnared his caress, weaving about his knuckles and making the choice my heart wanted without my consent. His fingers found my bare nape, his palm cupping curls and skin as his fingertips pressed taut. Before reason could catch up and pierce the fog, his grip grew fir
m and he dragged me forward.
I never had the chance to struggle or refuse, granting only a tiny whimper as he forced my lips to his.
Oh God… This was awkward and unwanted, without permission or preparation. His mouth was fierce and demanding, his swollen lips puckered and intent against mine as if a kiss were only pressure and contact. I’d never known a kiss before, not to script its nuances, but this seemed too…aggressive. I went stiff against him, for the first time trying to escape, but my jerked motions only seemed to make him more desperate as he held tight like he wanted to bruise me everywhere at once.
My tears fell fresh and coated his disfigurement, pouring between our joined lips until I could taste their salty flavor and knew he must as well. He knew I cried and kissed me anyway.
Finally, my state penetrated his haze. I felt him sob against me as his grip loosened, and I was able to pull my lips free and breathe.
“No, no,” I moaned and twisted out of his weak grasp, curling my limbs close and shrinking away. “No, …you cannot take a love I haven’t given.”
He still knelt on the floor, staring at me with a malaise of shock and humiliation as he gasped, “I’m sorry.”
Abruptly ducking his scarred face from my sight, he sought his discarded mask. I watched his trembling hands replace its barrier, and yet my mind could only wonder if they’d shaken in such a manner when they’d held me. Then they’d only felt strong and convicted.
“I…I’ll take you back,” he stammered, numb and distant, and part of me shrieked inside and longed for the man who’d only just acted with passion as his guide. I hated myself for seeking that man, but this one had taken his own love and buried it beneath abashment. I felt shut out, and for every overwhelming event of the night, I still ached for my angel. He felt lost to me.
I did not argue and returned to my world as willingly as I’d entered his. Our journey back was uncomfortable, as neither of us seemed able to process the fervent drama we’d just acted, more realistic than any the stage had shown tonight.
Scripted in Love's Scars Page 11