1Erik couldn't sleep easily that night, not even the next day. He tried to think reasonably; ghosts didn't exist. The previous choir member's accident had been just that, an accident and the previous investigation a coincidence. The frightened people and the events attributed to the ghost could have been a kind of shared insanity, like that time that a woman started dancing in a town and more people joined her dancing until they fell dead from exhaustion. Could that be the case for small-scale opera? Another theory could be that someone made up the ghost story to do evil, steal things, do blackmail, and hide in the process by attributing it to the ghost. He made a mental note of the men and some women of the opera, without finding any specific suspicious profiles.
Occasionally as he passed the haunted dressing room was tempted to turn the doorknob and go inside, but the memory of their conversation in the bistro kept his spirit resentful. Meg had told him that if she hadn't told him, she hadn't done it in a bad way. She never thought that the bride would do them any harm, and that she didn't mention her much either was because, according to her and the other dancers, "the more you talk about her, the more you feel her presence on you."
When a week had passed, he felt his voice fade; the choir director accused him of wavering and be out of tune with the rest of the team. Renée and Faye looked away without complicity. He soon found himself in the dilemma of where he would have to practice his singing to correct the dire situation that he found himself. In the small room he rented he couldn't sing. His luck and the little money he had left dragged him to live in a small room inside the house of an elderly soldier, whose nerves were ravaged by the horrors of war. He had a strange habit of hunching over his chest, biting his nails, and turning away from the noise. "There are some things that can't never be forgotten, young man. I carry my memories and regrets like a backpack on my back" he told him once. Erik didn't want to disturb him by singing, he didn't even want to see him upset in any way.
Meg offered him at a dinner in her house to sing there, that she would open the door for him so he wouldn't bother to find another place. Although Meg offered it to him with all of her heart and he was tempted to say yes, he watched as the fork almost bent at a right angle in Madame Giry's hands. Erik turned to look at her and she gave him a silent and wordless reply. That will not happen without my supervision at all times. And although Madame had known Erik since childhood and allowed the friendship between him and her daughter to be strong and stable, the rules of etiquette and behavior couldn't be forgotten. Erik broke into a cold sweat as Madame stared at him and Meg ate her dinner so carefree.
He sighed and rolled over on the bed. He was thinking of going to the roof of the opera but the stagehands stopped him in the corridor and advised him to return to the stage. He tried other rooms and warehouses but they were frequented by sneaky laborers and lovers, which made him extremely embarrassed. Any place where he had to pay for privacy was out of the question.
He mustered up the courage to turn the doorknob; His quick, silent nervous movement calmed him down a bit. The room, though still crammed with props and smelled of confined space, looked at himself and felt different in a way he didn't know how to describe. He scratched the back of his neck with his long, slender fingers. What happened to the previous member of the choir was because he messed with her, right? So if he didn't mess with her she wouldn't hurt him, right? he sighed in exasperation. That was assuming she existed.
With that thought he sat down on the old wooden chair and sighing reviewed his music sheets. It was difficult for him to start; his voice hid deep in his throat He averted his gaze from the full-length mirror and sat across from the vanity; a dirty little oval mirror facing him. Erik put the music sheet on the table, clasped both hands, resting them on his forehead and closing his eyes imagined the piano accompaniment on his head: Pietà, Signore, Di me ache. Slipped from his lips. Signor, pietà.
He repeated the aria three times; taking mental notes and correcting himself, as he begged for mercy from a mannequin wearing a dusty Henry VIII suit. When he finished, he felt liberated, like an artist after finishing his work. And though satisfied, he couldn't help but feel ... watched. He had an odd feeling, through the mirrors and screens, that something odd remained. It wasn't something threatening, but he felt like he was on stage performing a private play that someone was enjoying. Erik attributed it to the paranoia generated the last week and, although he wanted to downplay it, did not stop bothering him.
He looked at the clock for the fifth time; he would have to get back on stage before the ballet rehearsal was over to see Meg and continue with the chorus. He grabbed his scarf from the hanger and noted that on the small baroque, dusty wall shelf stood a small glass vase with a red rose in water. At the bottom of the glass was a white envelope. Erik turned around, finding no life, wrapped the scarf around his neck and took the envelope carefully. He looked at the calligraphy on the note; a shaky and horrible handwriting, forced into beautiful cursive script, said "I'm glad you came back". No sender. As far as he knew, Meg, Renée and Faye were the only ones who knew about his practices in that room, and he couldn't imagine them leaving the flower and the note in the room. At the end, Erik left the envelope with the note where he was and went to rehearsal.
The next day, he found the rose from the day before accompanied by another white rose. The note on the envelope said nothing new. On the third day it was three flowers, on the fourth four flowers, by the seventh it was a beautifully adorned full bouquet. Amazed by the change he took the white note on the envelope, and noted that the message was new: "You have changed for better" driven by curiosity, and uneasy about the situation, he found a pencil in the old drawers of the vanity and wrote behind the already written: "Who are you?"
Whoever it was who gave him those flowers and renewed them every day, must have noticed how Erik placed the white envelope between a rose and a chrysanthemum.
Erik walked into the haunted dressing room, anxiety eating into his nerves: He wanted his written question answered. He opened the door and looked at the new flowers. He eagerly picked up the note from the envelope to see his reply: "Someone who admires your work, Erik". That didn't say much, and it was starting to make him uncomfortable that he was being harassed in some way, or being teased by the opera staff without him knowing it. At the end of his unsuccessful hour of practice, Erik tossed the white envelope into a drawer of the vanity and took the bouquet out of the dressing room. As he walked out of the hall with long, quick strides he nearly hit Meg and Sorelli. Erik froze in his place: in his distraction he didn't hear the lively conversation of them approaching the hall.
Meg looked at him and said animatedly between both "Ah! Erik! We were just talking about you! He isn't cute, Sorelli? But he's awfully shy. Look Sorelli, Erik brought you flowers!" Meg waited for Erik to give his gift to the redhead, but he stayed nailed in his place. Sorelli looked at him with a mixture of doubt and amazement. Meg seeing the inaction of both raised Sorelli's hands and pushed Erik's arms, giving her the bouquet of flowers.
Sorelli snapped out of her trance first, and smiled shyly at him.
"Thank you so much for the flowers, Erik. They are beautiful! We should talk more often." a rapturous and fleeting regret like lightning shot through him; those flowers were not for her. "You're welcome. Yes, we should talk more often. With your permission, I must practice," and with large strides he avoided further conversation. He just hoped that the person who gave him the flowers hadn't noticed that it was now in Sorelli's hands.
The next day there were no flowers in the dressing room, not even on the dusty baroque wall shelf. After finishing his practice, he remembered where he put the envelope with the note yesterday, opened the drawer and checked the note out of curiosity: "I never believed that you were so ungrateful with the gifts that others give you."