From Shadows to Starlight

Nightmare

Chapter 38

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” --James Arthur Baldwin

Nightmare

Erik was wandering through a nightmare world.

It was his own life he was reliving--all the worst moments he could remember. From his early days in the slum with his mother and his nights in a cage at the freak show, to his years in the underground labyrinths beneath the opera house and the months after he left, he felt once more all the pain he’d felt then.

Despair, hopelessness, betrayal, rage, loneliness.

Stumbling through this hellish landscape, Erik knew he had to be dreaming, but try as he might he could not wake up and escape the nightmare. Now he was being swept along by a raging river, blood pouring from the gunshot wound in his back. The river had no bottom, just a never ending blackness that was pulling him farther and farther from the surface. Just when he thought he had drowned at last, he opened his eyes to find himself standing in an unfamiliar cave illuminated with an eerie bluish light that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. A strange, thin mist floated about him and filled the cave chamber, its icy tendrils wrapping around his body and chilling him to the bone.

Suddenly Erik realized he was not alone in the cave.

A shadowy figure stood halfway across the chamber, tall, dark, and menacing, almost completely obscured by the mist. For a while the two remained still, just staring at each other. Then, slowly, the shadow began to move closer. As he approached, Erik saw that it was a man in dark robes, his face hidden both by the mist and the black hood that he wore. Soon the man was standing just a yard away. His presence gave Erik an unusual feeling; he felt strangely familiar, but there was something very foreboding, even wicked about him.

The other man let his hood down, revealing his face. Erik gasped. It was his own. Or it would have been his face, if it hadn’t been deformed since birth and scarred by the knife. A perfect face without a mask stared back at him, smiling with an air of arrogance.

“Hello, Erik,” he said.

Erik just looked at him, confused. What kind of dream is this?

“We’ve had quite a strange relationship as of late, haven’t we?” The man with the perfect face began walking in a slow circle around Erik.

Erik tried to speak, tried to ask him, What are you? What’s going on? But as sometimes happened in his dreams, he found he could not say a word.

Still, the other man responded as if he’d heard. “I am the Phantom, though I shouldn’t have to tell you that. We’ve known each other for a very long time, you and I.”

Go away. I don’t want anything to do with you.

The Phantom glared darkly at Erik. “You should. I am the better of the two of us. You know this to be true. I’ve always been the stronger one, the smarter one. The one who could do anything, whatever I wished. But you had to resist me, you had to let your weakness ruin everything for the both of us. Do you realize that if you had let me stay in control, your life at the opera house could have been perfect. Triumphant. Instead, it ended in disaster. We were left alone, failing at everything we’d set out to do. The love of a woman, our finest operatic work, and our beautiful opera house were all lost in one night, and we were forced to run away like a frightened animal, reduced once more to complete and utter grief and shame. You and I have been fighting each other for too long, Erik. It’s time now.”