Disclaimer: I do not, and have never owned, anything belonging to Monsieur Leroux. Not even his underwear... despite what those insufferable French tabloids may tell you.
This was my happy little entry into the Morbidity Contest on PFN. I wanted to write something Leroux-ish, but I also wanted to examine some of his other interesting characters.You know, the boring ones that we all forget are hiding somewhere at the back of the book. I tweaked a few things from the one I originally posted (stuff that was still bothering me) but the rest is all here. Hopefully you won't think any less of me for this... considering it's my FIRST contribution to the world of Phantom fiction. (But hopefully not the last... mee hee.)
Much love to you all. And please enjoy!
It was evening.
At least… he believed it to be so.
The day and the night seemed to blend together beneath the surface of the earth, where naught existed but perpetual darkness. He rather hoped it was evening, in any case, as the thought of sunlight was peculiarly nauseating to him.
The Opera Garnier had been closed for its usual, interminable period, and it was always difficult to establish the precise time of day without the noisy comings and goings of the theater's various inhabitants. Rehearsals would usually draw out the regular lot of sceneshifters, costumers, goldsmiths and dancers. The latter were particularly a nuisance, as they would often go milling about the lower levels, wasting his time with their ridiculous hysterics.
On the night of a gala performance, fresh crowds of theatergoers came to swarm the place with their inane laughter, all the while engaging themselves in a variety of stupid activities. Frequently wandering below the stage for 'a bit of harmless sport.' Their constant disruptions made his responsibilities all the more vexing… never mind all of the damnable firemen that were constantly flooding the catacombs. The noises they made had grown quite excruciating to him, and he was thankful for these stretches of time when the Opera had closed for the season.
The door-shutters were now driven back to their respective dwellings, and he was free to stalk the shadows with only his thoughts for company. It was times such as these that he truly felt himself alone in the vast expanse of this great, majestic building… perhaps even alone in the world.
Alone forever.
Forever…
But not quite.
With hardly any noise, he slowly began to descend the stairs from the fourth cellar, staying close to the walls and mentally counting the number of steps as he took them one at a time. Thirteen…fourteen…he had rendered them all to memory long ago. The use of a lantern was entirely unnecessary, given that his eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness.
They had been so for years.
Reaching the bottom of the stairway, and now approaching the fifth cellar, he kicked his foot against the corner of a wall in an effort to obtain a better idea of his bearings. There were a number of tunnels to enter, and he had to be sure he was following the correct one.
Turning to the left, and pulling his cloak more tightly around him, he entered into the second passageway.
He had been musing on Léon's incident with the fireman, an event that had proved to be vastly entertaining. The fool of a fireman had relinquished every trace of courage at the sight of the withered, old rat-catcher, fleeing from the cellars like a screaming, raving lunatic. How endlessly amusing, he thought to himself, for a fireman to go mad at the mere sight of a floating head of fire.
It was in this frame of mind that he felt his foot strike against a soft heavy object that appeared to be obstructing his path. Peering down from under the brim of his felt hat, he discovered the still form of a body lying in front of him.
The head was tilted far back, visibly at an unnatural angle, and the arms were sprawled out in a clumsy fashion across the ground. Silently emitting a wordless scream from a mouth that was gaping open, the body gawked at him with a glaring, silver stare.
It was obviously the work of the Strangler.
As he stood silently over the newly discovered victim, he wondered with mild annoyance how the wretch had managed to slip past him. When had he been so careless in his responsibilities? At what point in time could the fellow have found his way down here? Surely the man had come to his end by another means? The staircase… the chord…
After all…It had been so long since the last one.
Sighing heavily, he supposed that it made no difference in the end.
None of them ever did.
The darkness never asked any questions.
The coins over the victim's eyes had, of course, been the telltale sign of the Strangler's work, as they always accompanied the bodies placed neatly in the corridors for him to find. Payment for services rendered.
The gesture, which had seemed ridiculous at first, had gradually come to hold a more personal significance to him as the years passed. While his employers gave him ample and sufficient monetary settlements, they held little value in comparison to these small, silver coins. He had kept them all, and none would ever be spent.
Stooping slightly, he removed them from the milky eyes of the corpse, absently placing them in the front pocket of his coat.
From this position, he was able to discern that the man was quite young, no more than the age of twenty-and-five. His dress was that of a workman, and the soiled appearance of his wet clothing seemed to indicate that he had, to his great misfortune, thought to venture to the other side. To the lake...
A place he himself had never dared to travel.
He turned the man's head slightly with his fingertips.
The mark of the Strangler's chord was nowhere to be seen on the man's neck, indicating that he had, in fact, been drowned. It was always more difficult to manage the drowned ones, as the Siren's work was never a pleasant sight to behold.
And yet…
There were moments, scattered throughout his recollection, when he happened to catch the faint whispers of that beautiful song, echoing past the old, forgotten chambers of torture and despair. He would purposefully stop and listen to them: the sweet and lulling sounds of a curiously enchanted melody. It was an innocent pleasure that he had only been given on a handful of occasions, and he often wondered from time to time if he too would chance to follow that song into his oblivion. To drown in the murky depths of the forbidden lake…To succumb to the darkness and surrender himself to the secrets that it carried… The idea more than intoxicated him.
Yes.
He would most definitely die there.
Of that, he was infinitely certain.
Grasping the lifeless arms of the corpse, he dragged it a slight distance up against the wall before carefully rearranging it over his shoulder. The stench of putrefied skin had not quite settled in, yet the faintest hint of decay hung visibly in the air. He found that the aroma had a curious and agreeable familiarity to it. It was a memory that seemed to cling to everything in these cellars of the Opera. Memories of anguish… memories of suffering…
In his earlier days, long before he had abandoned the world above, (a time he could barely remember) his knowledge of death seemed weakly insufficient, even though he was as well versed in its workings as any other man who had dedicated his life to the State. But it wasn't until he had come to live in these subterranean depths...until he had become one with the darkness, that he fully understood Death in Its entirety.
Death, after all, had shared Its secrets with him. And so long as he lived and breathed, it would be his responsibility (and his alone) to keep them from all others.
He carried the body down an adjacent corridor, turning up into the northern part of the catacombs where few had ever traveled. He was aware of the eyes that followed him… belonging to the ghosts of those who lingered within the walls of this silent crypt. They had perished here long before in another time and by other means. Innocents and murderers alike, they were eternally encased within the deep confines of this grave, and it served as a pale homage to the memory of their tortured spirits. He never bothered to acknowledge these ghosts, knowing that their time was long forgotten.
Or, at least, no one wished to remember them.
They, too, belonged to the silence now… and would continue to haunt him for all his days.
Just as he haunted these cellars.
He stopped abruptly at a small alcove near the end of the old passageway. Sliding the lifeless corpse off his shoulders, he propped it gently up against the wall. Then, kneeling on the ground, he began to feel about the dirt with his hands, searching for the large iron rung that was fastened to the trap door. It was but the work of a few moments before he was finally able to place the cool, metal handle around his fingers.
Here we are…
Pulling it up with a fierce tug, the door swung open with a loud creak, and a blast of fetid air quickly greeted his senses. He nearly retched from the overpowering stench and swiftly pulled his cloak over his mouth and nostrils. As he gazed down into the black pit, listening to the rats scurrying about in the darkness, he silently mused that this could very well be mistaken for a gateway to the shores of hell. Careful to breathe through his mouth, he collected the body once more before descending the steps into the stifling air of the gaping hole.
It was a small dungeon just below the fifth cellar: a place where none ever came and none could ever be heard. Here, the wailing cries of men were silenced, and their bodies had found the 'hallowed serenity' of their final resting place. Walking the steps one by one, he exercised a caution that he had neglected upon his previous excursions above. For though this was a path he was also familiar with, even he was partially blinded by the deepening obscurity of the black, cavernous pit.
He hadn't far to go as it was only a short decline, and in less than a moment, he found himself standing in the center of the room, gazing at a large mass of broken and twisted remains piled before him. Carefully, very carefully, he laid the body down, side by side with the rest of the men that were heaped together in a mound of rotted flesh. He ignored the piercing shrieks of the rats, preferring rather to arrange the body in a more appropriate position. His eyes gradually became accustomed to this new darkness, and he straightened himself from the soiled floor, regarding this latest addition to the sordid gathering. As he silently studied the face of the young man, presumably for the last time, a strange fascination crept over him. Those features: frozen in the immortal throes of terror, seemed to be pleading with him… begging him even… desperately asking him not to leave.
Are they screaming?
It was a moment, though certainly not the first, when he quietly realized that he would never remember this young man's face, and that he would never know this young man's name.
No one ever would.
He, like all of the rest who had gone before, had perished in the depths of this tomb…lost amongst the towering pillars of these endless catacombs.
But then, what did it matter? What did any of them matter?
They were naught but the remains of lives that no longer existed, who had probably never existed. As victims of a tragedy that had passed into obscurity, and victims of a murderer whose understanding of death was even superior to that of his own…they, each of them, had been cast to the same funeral pyre.
It simply didn't matter who they were.
In the eternal darkness of hell, all meaning was lost, and all reason was shattered. Faces set in agony, faces that only half-remained, and faces that had long since wasted away… They were all of them different, but in the end, they were all of them the same.
They were the same man.
It was the same death.
It was how it had been before, and it is how it would always be.
For in the end, only Death seemed to live on in the darkness.
And he? He would never betray Its secrets—not even when he too would join these faceless, nameless men. His life, the very life he had condemned himself to live here, was entirely inconsequential.
After all, who was he?
He was nothing.
Nothing more than a mere apparition…
Or, that is to say, nothing more than a Shade.