Phantom (10 page)

There was indeed a ghost now, but its spirit was beyond the power of exorcism and I embraced its presence with wondering delight. Slowly I was crossing the enticing bridge that had opened up before me, following a magic rainbow which beckoned me ever farther into a dangerous and unknown land…

How much of it was a dream, the product of long-repressed emotions, and how much was due to Erik, I cannot say. I was drowning willingly in the quicksand of this growing fantasy, and it seemed to me that physically we drew even farther apart during this time, meeting only in the strange spiritual oasis of sound.

I scarcely saw him, but when I did he was very restrained and civil, almost quaintly adult in his manner toward me. And as he grew older and more fiercely independent before my very eyes, it seemed to me that the voice of the figure in my room grew correspondingly younger, more petulant and demanding, with every day that passed. Increasingly it seemed to punish me, first with stubborn silence and then with tears. And soon my head rang day and night with the persistent, heartrending cry of an inconsolable baby.

I could not eat or sleep. Night after night I walked my room in despair, cradling the statue against my breast, until at last it lay beside me in my bed, silenced only by the touch of my hand. I spiraled farther and farther down into this dark dream, until the dominance of this cold porcelain tyrant began to touch every aspect of my life.

I no longer went to Mass and refused to see Father Mansart when he came to the house. And when Etienne remarked upon my pallor and my distracted air, we quarreled violently.

"What is the matter with you, Madeleine?" he demanded uncertainly. "You're like a hunted fox, staring over your shoulder all the time. What is it you are listening for?"

"Nothing!" I said sharply. "I'm not listening for anything."

But even as I lay in his arms, in a house on the far side of the village, the sound of crying still filled my ears and made me too restless and agitated to respond to his caress.

At length, rebuffed and disturbed by my strange coldness, he sat up and looked at me with irritation.

"If you do not wish to be touched, I would prefer you to tell me and have done with it. There really seems no purpose in prolonging an exercise in mutual frustration."

I got up like a sleepwalker and went to the door, Etienne ran after me, and as I looked at him I could see anger and concern warring on his face.

"Tell me what is wrong," he demanded.

I shook my head. "I have to go," I said bleakly. "I should not be here. I've left him crying."

Etienne frowned slightly. "Erik?"

I turned to him impatiently. Why on earth should he think I was talking about Erik when it was the baby who cried? I had opened my mouth to tell him this, when I suddenly remembered the dreadful word
asylum
and Etienne's brisk, uncompromising sense of logic.

If I told him, he would think I was mad.

"I don't understand," he persisted, reaching out for me.

I avoided his grasp with an urgency that was suddenly very close to fear. All I wanted now was to get out of this house as quickly as possible.

"Madeleine!" He cornered me by the door and his grip on my wrist seemed like a jailer's. I began to struggle wildly.

"Let me go!" I shouted. "I will not be treated like a specimen for observation at the School of Medicine!"

He let go of me in astonishment and I wrenched open the door.

"For pity's sake, Madeleine, let us discuss this calmly."

"I don't want to discuss anything. I don't want to see you again, Etienne… ever!"

I saw the pain and bewilderment on his face. For once he had no words ready, no nice, neat, empirical solutions to offer. Science and logic alike failed him in the face of my devastating unreason.

"I can't believe you mean that," he said with disbelief. "What has happened, Madeleine… what has happened to make you turn from me like this?"

"Nothing has happened," I told him distantly. "I must go"

"You can't go—not like this.
Madeleine
!"

He caught my hand once more, but I only stared at him unseeingly as the sound of crying swelled in an unbearable crescendo inside my head. I might have been looking at a total stranger. His words were empty mouthings that had lost their power to move me and at last I saw his arm drop helplessly back to his side.

He made no further attempt to stop me leaving, and as I left his house I was aware that he would be too proud to seek me out against my spoken wish. A few months ago the prospect of his indifference would have broken my heart; now I welcomed it with curious relief.

One by one I was closing the windows that looked out on the world beyond my prison, retreating behind the strange barricade that Erik was patiently erecting around me.

The day that I walked away from Etienne was the day that I finally turned my back on reality and locked the door.

A
curious contentment descended upon me when I finally abandoned myself to the dream and ceased to function with any pretense of sanity; when I accepted that heaven had looked with pity on my plight at last and sent me the perfect, beautiful baby that Charles had promised; when I accepted that I had two sons.

One was a monster, a genius of inhuman and terrifying dimensions; but the other was as enchantingly normal as I could ever have wished and his welfare was my consuming obsession. I could not bear to be parted from him.

Strangely, Erik showed no jealousy of this new interloper. At my request he carried the old cradle down from the attic bedroom, without a murmur, and watched me caress the carved wood when he had set it beside my bed.

"You're happy now," he said quietly. "You don't want to marry Doctor Barye now that you have the baby… You'll have to stay and look after it, won't you?"

I nodded dreamily as I bent over the cradle and began to arrange the lace coverlet. After a moment I remembered to thank him for being so helpful.

"If I'm helpful you won't send me away, will you?" he persisted. "You'll let me stay here with you both."

"Yes," I said vaguely, "I expect so…"

He gave a little sigh, I could not tell whether of relief or satisfaction. I think he lingered awhile, watching me. I was not aware of the moment when he slipped silently from the room.

When Marie got out of her chair and stared at me, her face was as white as the collar of her gown. I could not think why she should look at me like that. I had merely asked if she would like to look at the baby.

She did not reply, she simply went on staring at me and I wondered, with surprise, if she could possibly be jealous. I watched her grope her way across the room to the piano where Erik sat watching us.

"Your mother is very sick," I heard her tell him in a low, strained voice. "I am going to ask Doctor Barye to come and see her at once."

"You must not do that," he said steadily. "Mother doesn't like Doctor Barye, she doesn't want him here in this house. If you bring him here, I will not let him in."

"Erik…" she protested helplessly, "you must try to understand that—"

"I think you should go now, mademoiselle."

His voice cut across her wavering tone with devastating authority and I saw her stare at him for a moment with a disbelief that bordered on fear. Then abruptly she rushed back to me and began to shake my arm.

"Madeleine… listen to me. I'm going to fetch your cloak and take you down into the village at once. I'm going—"

Her voice broke on a gasp of terror as Erik's long fingers closed around her wrist.

"I think you should go now," he repeated ominously. "I want you to go."

She pulled away from his grasp and steadied herself against the mantelpiece; I saw with vague curiosity that she had begun to cry.

"I must tell Doctor Barye," she muttered feverishly to herself. "I must tell him what terrible things are happening under this roof."

"She doesn't want him here." I watched her back away as Erik began to walk steadily toward her. "And she doesn't want you, either… interfering… asking questions… you tire her."

Marie stopped crying and looked at me, as though she could not believe that I made no move to correct his astonishing impudence. When Erik brought her cloak and handed it to her, she took it from him without another word and followed him from the room like a sleepwalker.

"You must not concern yourself," I heard him say calmly as he opened the front door for her. "My mother is quite well, but she does not want visitors anymore. Good day, mademoiselle. Thank you for calling."

If she made a reply, I did not hear it. I listened instead, with calm indifference, to the sound of the key turning in the lock and the bolts sliding into place.

At length he came back into the room and stood beside my chair, looking down on me solicitously.

"Shall I play for you?" he asked.

"Yes," I said dreamily. "Mozart… the Piano Concerto in C major."

He sat down at the piano and began the cadenza, playing from memory with his familiar effortless brilliance, and wrapping me in a warm cocoon of languorous sound that floated me ever farther from reality. I had no thought, no desire, now but to be left alone in a world entirely fashioned and furnished by his imagination.

The day drifted, as all my days were beginning to drift, in a calm, unquestioning haze of dependence. All decisions and conscious thought had been taken from me; I was merely a contented spectator, able to observe with strange detachment.

All day he sat and worked on a series of designs for a building unlike anything I had ever seen before—a building so extraordinary and bizarre that it was only the elevations —front, rear, and side—which made it recognizable to me as a structure at all. I waited patiently for him to finish and begin to play for me again, but he was transported by a fierce, elemental frenzy of creativity which I dared not disturb. Repeatedly he screwed up sheets of paper and flung them into the fire with angry frustration. And when Sasha whined for attention and pawed at his hand, he picked her up impatiently and shut her outside in the dark garden.

That last action was so utterly out of character that it penetrated the stupor of lethargy which gripped me. In that moment I suddenly saw him as the grown man he would become—totally consumed by his obsessive quest for perfection, formidable and frightening in his ruthless drive to create. He would be nine this summer, and already he was touched with the awesome, unpredictable majesty of the ancient Greek gods. A time would come, as Father Mansart had foreseen, when he no longer acknowledged the barriers that confine and unite the human race. He would be a law unto himself, untroubled by tiresome mortal questions of right and wrong.

A soul entirely lost to God.

It was dark when he finally laid his lead down with a sigh of exhausted satisfaction. I saw him glance automatically over to the hearth and check in surprise.

"Where's Sasha?" he demanded with concern.

"In the garden." I frowned. "Don't you remember, Erik? She was annoying you and—"

"You shouldn't put her out into the garden at night, Mother. It's too cold for her now that she's old."

I sat in my chair, tried and condemned by his unwavering certainty, and dimly troubled by this curious lapse of memory.

Would he always forget these deeds which he did not wish to remember?

Before I could collect myself sufficiently to reply to his accusation, the dull whining outside the front door changed to a frenzy of barking as Sasha deserted her patient vigil on the doorstep and rushed to the gate.

"Look!" shouted a voice in the road. "There's the monster's dog!"

Through the window I caught the glare of lanterns and a moment later a barrage of stones began to rain in the direction of the gate. When Sasha gave a yelp of pain, Erik leapt to his feet and rushed to the door; but I reached it first.

"No!" I screamed. "Don't you see they're trying to lure you out there? They'll kill you if you go out to them… Erik!"

The eyes behind the mask were an insane yellow gleam of rage. When he threw me aside, with a violence that knocked all the breath from my body, I struck my head on the newel post at the foot of the stairs. For a few moments I was too dazed to do anything except cower on the floor, listening with disbelieving horror to the ugly voices of the mob and Erik's awesome rage.

Laughter and shouting… a man's high-pitched scream of pain… Sasha's frenzied barking rising to a crescendo and ending in one long, piteous howl.

And then Erik's shriek of demented anguish.

"I'll kill you! I'll kill
all
of you!"

Swaying dizzily to my feet, I staggered to the open doorway, but the lanterns were already swaying and bobbing away down the road, driven off by the demonic fury of an outraged child. When Erik struggled back down the paved path with Sasha in his arms, I could see at once from the unnatural angle of her head that her neck had been broken by some savage blow.

I stretched out my hand to him, but he pushed past me as though I didn't exist. Stunned with shock, I followed him into the kitchen, where I found him kneeling beside the bloody bundle of fur, his thin shoulders shaking with the harsh violence of his sobbing.

In the light from the oil lamp I was able to see that his mask had been torn off in the struggle and his yellow flesh slashed in several places. Blood was trickling into his eyes, and as he lifted a hand to wipe it away, I suddenly caught my breath. The blood on his shirt was not Sasha's, as I had first thought. The stain was growing, welling outward, fed by some unseen knife-wound within.

An icy coldness gripped me as I laid a trembling hand on his sleeve.

"Come away now," I whispered. "There's nothing more you can do for Sasha."

"I must bury her," he said with dull despair. "I must bury her and sing her requiem."

"You can't!" I breathed in horror.

"She
will
have a requiem!" He sobbed. "A requiem to take her soul to God!"

"Yes," I said hastily, praying silently that I would be forgiven for condoning this blasphemy. "But not tonight. You've been stabbed, Erik, don't you realize that? You must come and rest while I attend to the wound."