The Phantom's Daughter

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I was above ground.

In a beautiful mansion.

Dressed in a fat pink dress with white lace and trim. That is the part I hated. I tried to take the dress off but it was stuck on me like glue. It was so uncomfortable, all these frills and layers of skirts on my legs, it was suffocating, and I wanted to cry.

The house was beautiful though. The high walls, windows that took up the majority of a wall. A piano to one side, lots of furniture to sit and socialize, and a fancy desk that I was at, practicing my writing.

It was strangely uncomfortable and eerily familiar.

A shuffle sounded at the end of the hall.

I stood there, shaking. Ms. Eleanor.

It grew closer and closer. A figure dressed in a fine dress, slumped, walking jarridely.

Ms. Eleanor was dead and decaying. And she turned her corpse head towards me and let out a horrible shriek.

I screamed and ran out the doorway. Ug I could feel those dead fingers grasping at my dress. Running out the door, the skirt of my dress tangled around my legs and tripped me. I struggled to get up and untangle myself, but it was like the folds of the dress were constricting against my legs.

And then the devil showed up.

Pierre, screaming, his wild yellow eyes, long black hair, with the bottom half that of a goat and a long tail ending in an arrowhead, leaned towards me. My scar on my wrist showed, and the demon saw this, it’s eyes widening in recognition. It grabbed my wrist to drag me to the barn. I screamed and screamed and screamed, as his claw-like hands raked my back, trying to get away…trying, trying, trying…

“Rita! It’s alright, wake up! Wake up!”

“No, no, no no no…” everything was starting to come into view. I was in the cellars of the Opera House, in the spare room that Erik had given me. The big red heavy blanket had tangled around my legs and Erik was standing over me, his white mask illuminating in the low light of the oil lamp, but his eyes full of concern.

“Hush little mademoiselle, I am here,” he consoled.

I laid there, my heart beating violently in my chest, and then the pain and grief. I turned, covering my face in my hands.

Erik sat on the bed beside me and rubbed my back. “Another one of your nightmares, that’s all my dear.”

But I didn’t see them as just nightmares. I saw them as reminders. Of where I’ve been, and of what I’m worth.

The scar burned on my wrist from those memories.