Ghost: Retelling the Phantom of the Opera

Ghost Part 1

Erik opened his eyes.

Blackness.

Total blackness.

He thrashed, breaking up through the shallow water, gasping. His head spun, his pulse beating like waves against rocks. He choked, his mouth filling with hot liquid...

His shaking left hand flailed out—and slapped the cold edge of a wet ladder rung. He grabbed it tight. He screwed his eyes shut again, sagging against the ladder, fighting to regain his balance. His hearing still buzzed, his skull echoing with that thunderous BOOM...

He clawed at the rung of the ladder, feeling as if he was hanging onto a mast on the rolling deck of a ship. He spat out the liquid in his mouth...

Blood. It splattered on the metal. Ran down his lips.

And then the pain hit him.

Needling, nettling pain, all across the right side of his face—deepening into his cheekbone. Gasping, he freed his right hand, his fingers trembling, to feel what had happened...

His wet fingertips met the bare, uneven surface of the top of his head, then crept down over his forehead, exploring the span of paper-thin, stretched skin that had always been so delicate, so easily-bruised...

He jerked his hand away and twitched back.

Blinding, screaming pain.

He must have touched a raw nerve—and fragment of open bone. That already-fragile, taut tissue had all been torn open.

He clenched his fist and pressed it into his chest. The after-flash of the explosion lit the insides of his eyes like a limelight, keeping him from seeing anything in the surrounding dark. He leaned forward, quivering and swallowing, pressing his forehead to the metal rung until the dizziness and shaking abated—anchored by the staggering pulse-point in his face.

Deep, empty silence fell. Only the sound of his ragged breaths came back to him from the brick walls of the cavern—and the quiet ripples of the water around his shoulders as it calmed. The white flash faded from his vision. The spinning stopped.

Slowly, with both hands, he grasped the ladder rungs and heaved himself to his feet. He stood for a moment, thigh-deep in icy water, swaying. His body ached. His cold, wet clothes clung to him like lead.

He felt hot blood trailing down the side of his neck. He could barely see a faint light, high above, which illuminated the edges of the ladder.

Gritting his teeth, he turned his back on it. Grunting with every move, he started wading forward, deeper into the darkness, groping for the wall off to his left. His hand met damp stone. He had just come from this direction five minutes ago, in a little raft.

It had been a different world five minutes ago.

He slowed to a stop as his senses came back to him—and the new memory flittered like fire through his mind. The memory of what had happened between then and now. The wintry, horrified rage that had washed over him as the truth sank in...

He slumped sideways against the corner of the wall. His ragged breaths mingled with the murky splashes. The vast, majestic weight of the palatial building just above him threatened to crush him.

He couldn't see anything. But his right-hand fingers trailed listlessly through the surface of the water.

It would be simple. He could just fall forward, let the cold blackness swallow his whole body, and take a deep breath of the water. Suck the darkness into his lungs in one, agonizing instant—and let it have him at last. It would be simple...

Something bumped his hip.

He frowned, squeezing his right eye shut.

It bumped him again. Just above the surface of the water. He lifted his hand...

The prow of his little wooden raft nudged his fingers.

He rested them there, going still, as the boat bobbed quietly.

He blinked the water out of his eyes, and set his teeth. His lower lip trembled.

Black, twisting, poisonous pain writhed through his chest, knotting around his heart, winding through his ribs, penetrating to his gut, heating his face.

He had his answer. Death was indeed the honest conclusion—the only conclusion—but he wanted something first. And even if it meant tearing down everything he had built, burning his work and his own body along with it until it all lay in smoke, ruin and ashes—he would get it. 

To be continued...

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