God Help The Outcasts

By: Anni Re

The snow was falling again, harder now than when he first arrived, carrying Christine sitting silently in the seat of the carriage as he clicked the horses into a crisp trot over the muddy roads, his identity concealed from her. The fat flakes speckled his cloak leaving it damp and chilling. His gloved hands periodically swept them off before they could seep into the fabric as he trudged through the graveyard. He was so close, so close to bewitching her again with the old lie he had inadvertently created, and that Christine had believed for ten years. He saw it in her eyes as he hid in the shadows of Gustave Daae's grave, singing her to him, that she desperately wanted her Angel of Music, was beginning to believe that it was he. Yet Raoul had come and made her see this light, reason and whisked her away. Erik felt anger towards Raoul and shame towards himself. The results of this evening caused one thing that Raoul possibly didn't, nor would ever know. Their actions had made Christine grow up, and they left her childhood clinging to her faith of her father's angel, alone and abandoned at the foot of his tomb. Worse than that, the young Viconte had humiliated him. He bested him, and would have killed him if not for Christine's mercy, and left him alone while he rode off triumphantly on his white stallion and his beautiful bride to be back to the safety of Erik's own opera house.

Erik scowled sharply at the idea that he was no longer welcome, or even passively tolerated, within his own home. Nor would he be able to get back there tonight. Erik released the mounts, for he did not want them tethered in the ice, and he did not expect Raoul to have pursued them so quickly. Without transport Erik lacked the strength and the will power to make the trek to Paris on the cold January night. He knew more than most that highways were dangerous places.

Erik walked to the edge of the cemetery seeking with vain hopes that at least one of the horses and lingered by the carriage. If not, Erik would pull it elsewhere and stay the night within it. But before he could move farther he heard the rich, rhythmic knolling of bells just a little ways away from him. Weary and cautious Erik turned and made his way from the route to the road over the light blanket of snow to the small church just a few meters ringing out the tolls of vespers. Erik saw through the gathering fog that the wooden double doors were left slightly askew for any latecomers. With a twist of his leather clad fingers, Erik pulled his cloak around his face to concealed the incriminating mask and slipped silently through he opening without so much as moving the doors.

There were not that many people within the church yet there were enough to make Erik cling to the shadows that he lived in. His ambers eyes stared out through the blackness watching the way their mouths moved, spilling forth silent words religiously with a look of intense fascination. Erik had never been much of a religious person. He had been raised by gypsies who had not shared their secrets with him and the only thing he knew of Christianity was that he was the child of their Devil. It wasn't until he was eleven when the lovely young dancer that would one day be known as Madame Giry first began to teach him and, after a few months, he began to learn himself. He admired Madame Giry's faith and years later that admiration doubled when he met Christine and her belief in her Angel of Music. That was the only religion he ever bowed to, the only god he ever served, the god of music for a young girl.

Erik's chest seized and it brought back the present, stinging both with the sharpness of Christine's absence and the shock that he too believed in the Angel of Music along with Christine. He leaned his shoulder into a column in the back of the sanctuary, closing his eyes and shaking his head slowly in subdued despair. He had believed in the Angel of Music, and had helped to kill it and banished it away to the top of the opera house to stand beside Apollo and look down with its stony, impassive face at its now dormant acolytes. Erik slowly opened his eyes and turned them towards the front of the church and stared at the wooden cross that was displayed there. Minutes passed and Erik continued to stare, lost in his own thoughts and musings before he spoke to God, but in the tongue of his old faith.

I don't know if you can hear me

Or if you're even there

His voice was soft, gentle and pleading, the powerful man reduced to a child once more. His amber eyes wee warm and wide. His lips moved in small motions but his voice rand like a soft toll in the stone room.

I don't know if you would listen

To a gypsy's prayer

His tongue soured as he turned that word within his mouth. Erik had no desire to align himself with his tormentors. Yet he felt like he had no other option. He was not French for he learned the language from the young Giry. He did not know any language while he was in the possession of the gypsies; only grunts and cries for food, hunger, and pain, like an animal would whine at its master. Erik also had no memory of his life before he was put into a cage. With no memory, with no heritage, he belonged to the wandering nation of the gypsy caravans, an outsider from everywhere else. Erik closed his eyes, pushing himself a little ways away from his shadows yet still discrete enough not to attract the attention of the people he was hiding behind.

Yes I know I'm just an outcast

I shouldn't speak to you.

Erik opened his eyes and his voice softened. He looked up at the cross and pictured a benevolent being looking down at him, a being beaten, questioned, and criticized all his life for being what he was, like him.

Still I see your face and wonder

Were you once an outcast too?

Madame Giry had not slept that night, she could not sleep and stood ramrod straight at the door within the opera house that lead out to the stables. She had been making her rounds in the chorus dormitories and was about to retire into he own room when a flustered and half dressed Viconte de Changy rushed past her in a blinding flurry, strapping a sword to his belt. Giry froze and a shiver ran down her spine, knowing that Erik had, after months of silence broken by his bombastic appearance at the masquerade ball had made a move against Raoul to take back Christine. She watched him wide eyed through a tinted and grungy window as he rode of into the winter upon his white stallion before she shrank back from it and braced herself against the wall to keep herself upright. She knew things would come to a head this night; that a line would be drawn in the sand leaving one alone on the other side of it. And both would rather die than to keep in from being them.

She closed her eyes, recalling Erik's dark passion, his stubborn determination. She remembered the first night that she had first seen him, on the other side of those thick unbreakable bars he had spent his entire life behind. When the barker had unmasked him, and kicked him to make his face twist even more from his pain, she saw in his unique eyes that he was strong, that he could endure much more than she could imagine, that he was alive right not because it would spite his captors. She was always fascinated by his eyes, beguiled by their burning chill; eyes like a panther, or a snake. Madame Giry's snapped open from her dozing, releasing the breath that she held. She looked about herself peering into the shadows for those subtle motions of his that she had grown accustomed to. The things that fascinated her about Erik also frightened her.

Madame Giry fell out of her thoughts when she heard the rhythmic thunder of horse hooves. She pushed herself away from the wall and hurried over to the door to the stables in time to see a dismounted Raoul gently tug Christine off the stallion, shining from snow and its own sweat. The Viconte gently guided his fiancée away from the animal towards Giry. The woman in front of him had her magnificent head of chocolate curls bent low, staring at the ground in front of her with her wide doe like eyes. Her arms that hung down beneath the edges of her cloak trembled slightly against her body. Madame Giry's brow furrowed, and in one sweep of her meticulous eyes she looked over the young aristocrat. His broad, smooth hands were clasped over Christine's shoulders, guiding her. His head looked out over Christine's, his face wearily resolved as he walked in step to Christine's shuffling. Giry's eyes stopped at the white sleep on Raoul's arm and the gash on it that soaked in crimson.

Madame Giry braced herself; they had fought. This conflict with Christine had ascended to dueling each other. Raoul had been wounded, but her carried such a look on his face that Giry wondered, with a shiver, if he had also killed that night. Madame Giry reached out and seized Raoul's arm above his wound, stopping the pair. "Is he dead?" she whispered when Raoul turned his head.

The young man detected the urgency in the woman's vice. He shook his head. "No." Raoul momentarily glanced at Christine who was not partaking in the conversation at all, rather resting lightly against her betrothed's chest and staring with blank eyes into space.

Madame Giry let out the breath she was holding, understanding the exchange between the couple. Christine had spared Erik from her intended. Raoul took her lapse in speech as a cue that his interview with Madame Giry was over and began leading Christine away from her ballet mistress and into the heart of the opera.

Madame Giry was a lot more thorough when she inspected the dormitories and interior of the opera house for the second time that evening. Here eyes looked at every sharp angle in the rafters, every shadow in the corner, all of Erik's haunts and hiding places seeking his golden eyes that would undoubtedly be staring right back at her. But the Phantom of the Opera was either not in the building or else did not want to be found. Madame Giry suspected the prior for usually when she sought out her silent and allusive stepson he was kind enough to reveal himself to her.

Giry passed Christine's room before she retired to her own and saw that Raoul was not sleeping outside the door. Curious, she quietly opened the door slightly and peered in. Both Raoul and Christine slept in her bed, Christine under the sheets, and Raoul on top of them. The Viconte had slung his arm across the slope in her back as if to keep her there. Giry quietly closed the door and left them.

Madame Giry almost expected Erik to be standing in her room waiting for her when she opened the door, but was not surprised to find it empty. However as she wandered around the room turning on a couple of her lamps, she couldn't held but wonder where Erik could be. She didn't worry for him though. Erik was a survivor, and he could endure this winter's night, at least physically. Madame Giry felt her heart clench in sympathy for the man who was losing, if not already lost, the only woman he ever wanted. She knew ever since she took him in that Erik was doomed to be alone, that he would only have she and her daughter for companionship and even that was sparingly due to his temperament and his general preference for solitude with his music.

Giry sat down on the stool in front of her dresser, closing her eyes and recalling his music. She admired it in the way that one would admire a language they could not understand, but till thought was beautiful. She ticked off the names in her head of people within this establishment who could speak his language and would celebrate his fluency, but were deaf to it. She surmised again, as she had a long time ago that she had inadvertently done Erik a great disservice by bringing him to this place, a place where he could prosper, but must always remain in the shadows as an outcast. It would've been netter is she had smuggled him to a house in the countryside, far from anyone where he could languish in silence without knowing the difference, or if he were dead.

Giry's eyes snapped open and she gasped, hurriedly crossing herself. "God, forgive me for such a thought," she said quickly. As soon as he voice quieted she folded her hands in from t of her staring down at the rosary beads and the beautiful wooden cross that was draped over the picture of her deceased husband.

God help the outcasts

Hungry from birth

Her hands tightened as she recalled all of his suffering.

Show them the mercy

They don't find on earth

She closed her eyes.

God help my Phantom

He looks to you still

God help the outcasts

Her voice chocked.

Or nobody will.

Erik lingered in the shadows of the massive columns looking out over the collection of people gathered within the church. He felt comfortable enough with his surroundings that he allowed himself to move from the place he was rooted originally and prowled the rim of the room as a ripple in the darkness. Over time he eventually view the congregation's back, then their profiles, and finally their front. Erik dared not traverse any further less he revealed himself so he stayed where he was in the left corner of the atrium near the front. His eyes, starved of unfamiliar faces, stared hard at the members of the congregation relishing the alien facial features and body movements. Erik was confident that he knew the faces of every person within the confines of his opera, from the prima donnas and chorus girls, to the stagehands and stable boys. He even recognized some of the shadowed silhouettes of the regulars in the opera's audience as he peered from his perch in box five.

The new faces were swaddled in winter garments and huddled close to keep in the warmth. Small children with their soft, round faces looking about folded their fingers together in mimicry of the adults around them as they knelt on the pews. A soft smile tugged at the corner of Erik's lips. They reminded him of Christine when she was that age, when he first laid eyes on her in the chapel within the opera house. And his heart clenched again.

Erik's amber eyes focused on the movement of the mouths of everyone he could see. His eyes could read their lips and his keen ears could hear fairy clearly hear their whispered words.

I ask for wealth

Some said

I ask for fame

Others said

I ask for glory to shine on my name

Erik added his own request to the heavens to their verbal list.

I ask for love

I can't posses

The Erik added his voice to the group's collective desire, even raising his voice a little, perhaps in order to be especially heard by whomever was listening.

I ask for God and his angels

To bless me

Madame Giry continued to pray for Erik, her words growing in passion.

I ask for nothing

I can get by

But I know somebody

Less lucky than I

Madame Giry reached out and stroked the rosary beads with tip of her finger.

Please help my phantom

The poor and down trod

Erik was silent for the rest of the service watching from the shadows and the people collected themselves and wandered went away in the little familiar clusters of warmth and security, leaving him alone in the suddenly cavernous halls of the church now devoid of people, save for the clergymen, and ghosts. Erik moved around the building much more freely, exploring for a place to rest for the night within it, but still instinctively clinging to the shadows that gave him his invisibly. He lived within the opera house long enough to never trust that any building was ever completely asleep. He learned that in his first few years of living in the opera house and accidently stumbling onto the night watchmen and sceneshifters and stumbled around with him in the rafters. He reminded himself that she should thank those mistakes of his youth, for they were the first steps in gaining his control over the opera house he lived in as the Opera Ghost, instead of living quietly and unknown in the water cellars five stories beneath.

In his search to find his place to sleep for the night, Erik found a little alcove that was formed by a bracing to support the popes of the organ. As sleek as a feline he shimmed up to the place without a scuff from his dress shoes, like an ascending shadow.

Erik slid into his secret space and found it snug but comfortable. His body heat was soon beginning to insulate the space. Erik tugged at the ends of his leather gloves and released his fingers. He flexed his fingers idly looking around his little crevice. He caught the sight of his reflection in the rounded brass tubes of the organ pipes. He leaned forward and inspected it. He held up his bared hand in front of it and noted how its image was slightly distorted by the reflector's shape. His hand hesitated then drew back slightly and then hesitated again before he slipped his thumb under the bottom corner of his mask and took it off. Erik turned his head and looked at his facial reflection on the warped surface of the tubing. With a pang in his heart, he saw that the curves had placed parts of his face where they were supposed to be. The brass, and its inability to reflect as clearly as mirrors, softened the scarring. For a moment he looked normal.

He sighed pushing his face away form the piping and stared out of the small gap between the wall and the organ at the cross that was now level with on the wall. He rested his hand on the brass tubing and leaned his face up against it, singing softly.

I thought we all were

The children of God

Madame Giry grew weary from her late and eventful night, leaning back in her chair next to her vanity. She thought of her bed and the rest she would get there. She could only hope that Erik gained some peace this night, wherever he was. She rose and went about her room dimming the lamps before she sat down on her bed. She looked over at her vanity one last time and sent one more whispered request over to the rosary beads lying there.

God help the outcasts

The children of God

Finis