The Memoirs of Evangeline

Chapter 1

*Present*

Darkness completely filled the room, broken only by the flash of lightning crossing across the heavens outside. The house loud with the sounds of rain drumming against the windows mixing in to the sound of music distantly played from a room below. The young boy had long ago woken by the storm outside of his bedroom window. Cautiously but ever so quickly the boy got out from underneath the confines of his blanket, that just hours ago had been carefully wrapped around him by his parents. The cold hard floor beneath his bare feet let out a small creak as he lowered himself down on to its surface.

The boy paused, carefully listening to see if the creak had alerted his parents that he was up. But there was no indication that the sound had been loud enough to cause an alarm. Before making his way across his bedroom, the boy took one last glance at his bed grabbing the stuffed bear that lay next to the pillow. With the next roll of thunder, his faithful companion now safely in his hand, he rushed out of the room.

Every step was taken with great care, he had been caught out of bed at this hour before and was not eager to repeat the incident. It was usually his papa that caught him up at this hour. But papa was always still awake at this time of the night, playing and composing his music. If papa was awake at this hour, then why can't I be awake? Besides, while he would be stern when catching him out of bed, Papa would just laugh it off in the end, especially given this storm. It was this thought that kept the boy from returning to his own bed.

He paused outside of his mama's room. Nothing coming from the room but the silence of her gentle breathing, melding beautifully to the rain outside. Another flash of lightning quickly followed by a crack of thunder. Clutching his stuffed bear tighter, the boy pushed the bedroom door forward and entered the bedroom. The creak of the door let out was masked by a roll of thunder.

Quietly as to not disturb his sleeping mother, the boy crossed the room to her bedside table where a well-worn book lay. The same book that had been read to him hours before. Picking it up, the boy then went to the other side of the bed a climbed up upon it. He settled himself and his bear upon his father empty pillow, before flipping through the pages of the book.

It was too dark to properly see the words upon its pages. Not that it would matter, he could barely read. But he had heard passages from his mother's book so many times he could rattle them off by heart. He looked the first page and imagined the words he knew lay written on those pages, in his mother's own hand occasionally his father's...The Opera Ghost did Exist.

 Chapter 1: The Opera Ghost Did Truly Exist

The Opera Ghost did exist, he was not just the figment of the imagination as some may have you believe. No, he was a man, a man of ordinary flesh and blood, just as alive as you and me. While he was considered a horror and menace to many, having wreaked havoc for years amongst the halls of the Palais Garnier, he was also many other things. A composer, an architect, and magician, one may have even called him a genius. But to a very select few, he was simply known as Erik.

I was among those select few. I was also, in time, one of an even fewer group of people, those that Erik could call his friend. The stories you may have heard of him, are first and foremost true. During the events that transpired that led to the rise and kidnapping of the Prima Dona Christine Daae, I was there. I was there when she fled from Paris with her beloved Raoul, and I know what truly happened to his brother...the poor Comte Philippe de Chagny before his body had been found on the shores of the lake beneath the Opera House.

It all began I suppose long before the story you know. I was quite young at the time, hardly grown outof girlhood, 21 my whole life still ahead of me.  While the years have caused some of the details to fade, I remember it all as though it had all happened yesterday. The beautiful colors, the soaring music, the grandeur and emotion of it all. They all could have sent the mind of the most level-headed of individuals spinning.

I had only been living in Paris a few weeks, having moved in with my grandparents leaving the rest of my family in the countryside. The guise we had told everyone was that I was to take care of my grandparents as they entered their ailing years. In truth, it was to get away from everything that had happened as of late. Mainly a broken engagement between myself and a family friend.

My grandfather was one of the kindest individuals I ever knew. A talented businessman having greatly expanded his own grandfather's business. But his true passion had always been painting, as a young girl, I would spend hours with him and my brothers by the Seine as he painted. My grandmother Marie, was his opposite in a way, not a bit of artistical ability and a bit sterner with us. The one who would scold us if we had misbehaved in her presence but would be the first to hand a sweet when we returned home. She had grown up a servant in his household and was very proud of how far she had come. It had been her suggestion that I move here when my engagement fell through.

Soon after I arrived in Paris, I began to work at the Opera house in the costume department. An opportunity that had arisen because of some paintings that my grandfather had sold to the owner. It is during my first few weeks of working in the Opera House that our story proper begins.