Chapter Text
The opera ghost really exists.
He was, and is still believed to be, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, and a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloakroom attendants, and the concierge. And yet he exists, in flesh and blood, although he remains a legend to but a few; that is to say, a secret of a most spectral shade.
It happened on one fated night in the middle of April. It happened, unbeknownst to those who still resided in the opera house at that lonely hour—the janitors, the electricians, the bleary-eyed staff and the vermin that crawled undetected within the house proper. At near 11 o’clock, the police entered the Opéra Garnier. The officers talked to the manager, the staff, and anyone else worthy of being informed, as needed, if needed. They were simply looking for squatter activity, and they searched around for forty minutes before thanking the staff for their cooperation and bidding them a good-night. Hardly anyone could think anything of it.
If one had walked out of the west entrance to the Opéra Garnier during this search and onto a one-way street known as the Rue Scribe, they might have seen what looked like a single police car and a black police van parked upon the sidewalk, before the gated driveway that once served as a porte cochere in days of old. That night, security cameras facing the Rue Scribe recorded two men exiting the building, getting into these vehicles, and driving off twenty minutes before midnight, and nothing about it gave anyone any reason to question it. It would be years to come before a handful of rag-tag aficionados acquire this footage and deduce it was edited by advance computer software, hacked remotely. No one would believe them.
In the days that followed, only one thing hinted that anything unusual transpired, and that was the ramblings of an old man, a janitor, employed at the Opéra Garnier for the last thirty years. This poor soul, known to very few by his actual name, Armand Goreaud, had been working only the night-shifts, and would talk about ghostly whispers he heard and the existence of hollow walls he found, talk that only served to excite the tourists and annoy the staff members. But since that night in April, Armand ceased his superstitious postulations, except for the mumble he gave if asked:
“This house is haunted no more.”
If he believed there was a connection between the police cars and the sudden absence of the “whispers,” he never spoke of it.
But that was then. These days, it’s very hard to get anyone working at the Opéra Garnier to talk comfortably about the famous opera ghost, especially to a tourist. They will not say anything that hasn’t already been said before, and will repeat all the old sentiments and explanations, and then send you on your way no more enlightened than before. But if one were more than just a tourist, and had the opportunity to ask someone of a higher authority—say, the manager herself—the response would vary slightly. The manager may give you a look before claiming the opera ghost was nothing but a story, but then her eyes would shift momentarily along the walls as if searching for their approval, or affirmation, or some confirmation that the line she delivered satisfied their expectations of her. It’s very strange indeed.
It all goes back to that mild night in April, before the police officers arrived. Below the grand stage, seven floors down, there was the vast, watery catacomb framed by old and molding walls and archways. The only source of light came from the floor above, shining through the slatted grates that led down to these subterranean levels. In the murky, brackish waters swam a pale race of carp that are rumored to have been introduced by an ancient Japanese Emperor. That night, another body inhabited the waters of the opera lake, a body the carp avoided for its apparent state of decay. It floated, half-submerged, in the hall of one catacomb, far from the shaft of light that fell from the grates above.
It lay there, like a drowned man. Like a corpse.
And then it twitched.