Family Secrets (A Phantom of the Opera Fan Fiction)

Chapter 1

I never really knew my family, and for someone growing up in the age where everyone has a large family and knows every one of them, that was fairly unusual. My mother and father,Randalf and Harriet DeBois, were both only-children. My mothers parents had passed away when I was barely one, and my father, it seemed,only had a nanny that he would talk about.

One day, when I was just five years of age,I asked him why he didn't have a mama and papa.He looked at me, smiled with tears welling up in his eyes, and told me, "I did have a mother and father...once.You look just like her..." he stared at me and nodded, as if confirming what he had just told me was true.

"Why haven't I ever met them papa?" I asked, trying to make a picture of my grandmother and grandfather in my mind.

"Well," he said slowly, "You have never met them because,your grandmother is trying to protect you."

I stared at him, trying to comprehend the idea of a womanI had never met trying to protect me "How isshe protecting me? From what?"

He looked at me with the eyes of a very concerned father, trying to tell ifI was ready for the truth. At length, he said "Did you know that your grandmother was a famous singer, once?"

I gasped, for scince I could remember, that had always been my dream. "That must have been wonderful!"

"Yes I suppose it was, and she was a very good singer too. While she was just a dancer at the Opera Populaire, a man heard her sing and liked it very much, but you see, this man was tormented. He was a..."

"A Monster? Like a Goblin?"

My father let out a short, dark chuckle "Yes, I beleive he was a monster, in his own way..."

Another gasp from me as a stared at him with wide, child like eyes, yearning for more of this story of my grandmother and this monster my father seemed to dispise so.

"Well,"he continued, noticing the look in my eyes "this monster, beleive it or not, had a beautiful voice, the voice of an angel, my mother would discribe it as, but his soul...his soul was far from an angels. You see, this man, taught your grandmother to sing so he could perfect her voice, so he could own her voice in his own way, but owning her voice was not enough if he did not have the physical body, and soul, ofher as well. It was during this time that, your grandfather started to court her, she refused his tokens of affection, because she found that, she had started to love her angel, and did not want him to leave for, she knew that, if she left with your grandfather, the angel would leave forever, but asyour grandmother and grandfathers realationship started to strengthen,the angel started to get jealous. One night, hekidnapped her and took her to his lair, your grandfather followed for he had found the monsters lair. The monster trapped him in a punjab lasso, and threatened to kill him if your grandmother did not agree to marry him. She choseher angel over your grandfather, not because she loved him more, butto protect your grandfather.The angel however saw through her facade and was so movedby her actions that he let her and your grandfather go and they got married and lived happily together.Nine months later, I was born...and he found out.He found my mother and father, and he was so furious that theydid not have the "courtesy" to even wait until he was dead and buried to have their child.He was going to kidnap me, and murder me for the pain which your grandmother hadmade him endure...but your grandmother stopped him by giving him whatever he wanted, to protect me...but the thing he asked for was...the first born daughter in their family"The tears thathad been building in his eyes started to overflow "That is the reasonI had no brothers or sisters, they couldn't bare the thought of conciving a girl and having to give her to him, not knowing whatwould become ofher..."

"What happened to the first born girl then?" I asked forI had failed to understand.

He looked at me again, with his eyes filled with tears and said "She's living quite happily, as of this moment..."

With that he got up and left me with my thought, thinking of this girl who was living happily with a monster like that.

* * *

I sang all the time whenI got the chance. When I was only three, my father taught me how to play the song Jingle Bells, on our huge, grand piano my father got as a giftfrom a family. Once I knew the words to that song, I played it from December, all the way back again, all the while my mother yelling at my father to shut me up. I remember father trying to calm her by telling her that "he" would never find them or me in the small town that we lived, Mantova, Italy. Hearing mother scream about "him" made me so frightened, I would run up to my bedroom and weep until father would come to sooth me by singing a song I remember speaking of an angel of music. This song always calmed me and I longed to learn how it was to be sung. At the age of twelve, I was sewing a quilt together for a wedding present while humming the tune of it. My mother walked in to see how the quilt was going. When she heared the tune, her eyes filled with anger and greif, and she slapped me across the face.

She grabbed me by my arms and started to shake me screaming at me, telling me never to sing it again, asking me how long I had been singingit for and who taught me it. My father heard the screaming, and ran in, tearing my mother off of me, starting to cradle my small weeping figure in his arms

"You! You taught her that awful song didn't you! Didn't You" My mother kept screaming profanities at my father, willing him to confess to teaching me the tune.

He picked me up and placed me on the loveseat, before standing up, grabbing my mother,and lookingher straight in the face. His voice grew quite and low, a voiceI never wanted to hear come from my fathers mouth ever again. "If you, ever, lay a hand on our daughter like that again...and may God forgive me that you are a woman, and no man should ever threaten you, but if you ever lay a hand on her like that, I swear to God almighty that she will not be the only one crying."

He let go of her and came back to my side, comforting me, as my mother stood and glared at the both of us.

"Well forgive me,if i don't want us murdered, and her kidnapped by tomorrow morning!" She stormed out of the room with out another word.

" Papa...what did she mean? Who is coming to hurt you? Oh please! Pleasedon't let anything happen to you or mama! Please!" I grasped his torso and held on.

He pried my hands off of him, looked me in the eye with a firm look, and said, in a much softer tone than what he used with mother "Nothing will ever happen to you or me or mama, as long asyou never sing that song again...there is a man-"

"The monster?" I asked, for I still feared the monster would come and snatch me away one day.

He looked at me, very seriously and said "Now Aria Marie DuBois, I want you to understand this. Monsters...well monsters are figments of our own imagination that help us grow up when we are younger, and learn that not everything is nice so when we are older we are more...ready for the real world. Well, your old enough now that you should refer to him as The Man from now on...I cannot tell you his name bacause..well, you knowing his name would put you in more danger than you already are. I do this to protect you as I always have, and right now I tell you this to protect you. That song...it can draw The Man toward you and tell him of your whereabouts. I know that I sang it but, the thing is, when sung by the voice of your grandmother, it draws him closer to you, and I am certain that, when you were born, your grandmother gave you her voice, before she died, yes, your grandmother is dead, But when she passed away...she gave a little part of her to you. Her voice...do you understand me?"

"Yes, I do...i am never to sing the song again or the mon-...The Man will find me, take me away and hurt you...I will never sing that song again. I promise."

We hugged eachother for a long while, and after thatI never sang that song again. If I could do nothing else to protect them as they had done for me through out my life,I atleast owed them that.