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THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF MME. GIRY

Being a True Account of the Opera Ghost’s Origins

As Discovered in the Hidden Archives of the Palais Garnier

Transcribed and Annotated by Lizzie Morse

Editor’s Note: The following papers were discovered in November 2023, concealed behind a false panel in Box Five of the Palais Garnier. The documents, written in the distinctive hand of Antoinette Giry, former box-keeper of the Paris Opera House, appear to have been sealed away following the events chronicled by Gaston Leroux in his celebrated account of the Opera Ghost. These papers, preserved by some miracle of fortune, provide unprecedented insight into the origins of the being known as Erik, and shed new light upon the tragic events that unfolded beneath the opera house in the closing years of the nineteenth century. —L.M.

FIRST PAPER

Found folded within a copy of “Faust” - the very libretto from the night Christine Daaé first sang

15th October, 1896

I write these words knowing they may never be read, yet compelled by a conscience that will grant me no peace. The world believes the Opera Ghost to be dead, consumed by his own madness in the cellars beneath this cursed place. They are wrong. He lives still—not in flesh, perhaps, for that was always questionable—but in the memory of one who knew him before he became legend, before he became monster, before he became ghost.

I am Antoinette Giry, and I have kept the secrets of the Palais Garnier for thirty-seven years. But there is one secret that has burned within me for so long that I fear it shall consume what remains of my soul if I do not set it down in ink and paper.

I knew Erik before the world named him phantom.

The year was 1864, and I was but twenty-two years of age, newly appointed to the position of box-keeper through circumstances I shall not detail here, save to say that my husband’s death in the service of his country had left me in need of employment. The Opera House in those days was still settling into its grandeur, still discovering what shadows lurked in its newly carved corners.

It was during my third week that I first heard the singing.

Not from the stage, mind you, where such sounds belonged, but from deep within the building’s bowels—a voice so pure and terrible that it seemed to emanate from the very stones themselves. When I inquired of the other employees, they claimed to hear nothing unusual. The workmen spoke only of the building’s natural settling, the groaning of timber and stone finding their eternal positions.

But I knew better. A voice such as that could never be mistaken for the complaints of architecture.

On the night of 18th November, 1864, I resolved to investigate. Armed with nothing more than a single candle and a courage born of necessity rather than bravery, I descended into the cellars beneath the Opera House. The labyrinthine passages, which would later become so familiar to me, were then uncharted territory—a subterranean city waiting to be explored.

I followed that voice through corridors that seemed to twist upon themselves, past chambers filled with forgotten stage machinery and rooms whose purpose I could not divine. The singing grew stronger, more desperate, as though the singer were calling out across an vast emptiness, hoping against hope for an answer that would never come.

It was in the depths of the fifth cellar, in a natural cavern that the architects had incorporated into their grand design, that I first laid eyes upon him.

He sat before a small underground lake, his back turned toward me, and even in the dim light cast by my single candle, I could see that his form was somehow wrong. Not deformed, precisely, but constructed according to principles that seemed to violate the natural order. His shoulders were broader than any man’s had right to be, yet they tapered to a waist so narrow that it appeared he might snap in two at the slightest pressure. His hands, which I could observe as he gestured in time with his song, were pale as bone and twice as long as human hands should be.

But it was when he turned—having somehow sensed my presence despite my utmost care to remain silent—that I understood why the world would one day call him phantom.

His face… Dear God, how does one describe a countenance that seems to have been assembled from nightmares and fever dreams? The right side bore features of such classical beauty that they would have graced the sculptures of antiquity—a noble brow, a cheekbone carved by a master’s hand, an eye of such piercing intelligence that it seemed to contain all the wisdom and sorrow of ages.

But the left side… The left side was ruin incarnate. Not merely scarred or damaged, but constructed of materials that belonged to no earthly creature. The skin—if skin it could be called—had the texture of parchment that had been burned and reformed countless times. The eye socket was empty, not as though the eye had been lost, but as though none had ever been intended to reside there. And where a human ear should have been, there existed only a smooth expanse of that terrible parchment flesh.

When he spoke—for he did speak, in a voice that was neither fully human nor entirely other—his words carried the cultured accent of the finest Parisian society.

“Madame,” said he, rising with fluid grace that somehow managed to be both elegant and unnatural, “I must apologize for disturbing your evening with my poor singing. I had believed these depths to be uninhabited save for the rats and my own wretched company.”

I should have fled. Every instinct screamed at me to drop my candle and run until my lungs burst and my legs could carry me no further. Instead, I found myself curtseying as though I had encountered him in the finest salon rather than in this underground purgatory.

“Your singing,” I heard myself say, “is the most beautiful I have ever heard.”

He tilted his head—a gesture that would have been charming in any ordinary man but which, given his extraordinary appearance, seemed to suggest a bird of prey considering its options.

“Beautiful?” He laughed, and the sound echoed through the cavern like the tolling of bells in an abandoned cathedral. “Madame, you are either the kindest soul in all of Paris or the most accomplished liar. Given that you have not screamed and fled at the sight of me, I am inclined to believe the former.”

“I am Antoinette Giry,” I said, because it seemed important to establish some foundation of normalcy in this most abnormal of encounters.

“And I,” said he, executing a bow that would have done credit to the court of Versailles, “am Erik.”

SECOND PAPER

Discovered pressed between the pages of an architectural survey of the Opera House basement levels

22nd December, 1864

Five weeks have passed since that first encounter, and I have returned to the depths of the Opera House on no fewer than seventeen occasions. Each visit has revealed new aspects of the extraordinary being who dwells in those shadowed depths—aspects that both fascinate and terrify in equal measure.

Erik, I have learned, is no ordinary creature. His knowledge of the Opera House exceeds that of its architects, its builders, its very designers. He speaks of passages and chambers that exist on no blueprint, of acoustic principles that govern the building’s every whisper, of architectural secrets that were buried with their creators. When I asked how he came by such intimate knowledge of the building’s construction, his response chilled me to the bone.

“I helped to build it, ma chère Antoinette. Every stone that was laid, every beam that was raised, every mirror that was installed—I was there, watching, learning, becoming part of its very foundation.”

But when I pressed him for details of his employment, of which construction company had engaged his services, he merely smiled that horrible, half-formed smile and changed the subject to matters of music and literature.

His lair—for I can think of no other word to describe his underground dwelling—is a marvel of ingenuity and artistry. Somehow, in the depths of the earth, he has created chambers that rival the grandest apartments of the upper world. Persian carpets cover floors of polished stone. Candelabras cast dancing shadows upon walls hung with tapestries that would grace a king’s palace. A pipe organ, somehow transported to this impossible location, dominates one entire wall of his main chamber.

But it is his library that truly reveals the scope of his extraordinary mind. Thousands upon thousands of volumes, in languages I cannot identify, covering subjects I cannot comprehend. Books on architecture and engineering, yes, but also treatises on subjects that no decent person should wish to understand—the cultivation of fear, the manipulation of human emotion, the projection of one’s voice across impossible distances.

“Knowledge,” he explained when he observed my fascination with his collection, “is the only currency that retains its value in all circumstances. Gold may be stolen, property may be seized, but what resides in here”—he tapped his temple with one of those unnaturally long fingers—“belongs to me eternally.”

It was during my ninth visit that I witnessed the first manifestation of his extraordinary abilities. We had been discussing the acoustic properties of the Opera House’s grand foyer when, without warning, he began to speak in a voice that seemed to emanate not from his throat but from the very air around us.

“Can you hear me, Antoinette?” came his words, though his lips did not move and he stood twenty feet distant from where I cowered against the chamber wall.

The voice surrounded me, seemed to penetrate not merely my ears but my very consciousness. It was his voice, undoubtedly, yet it possessed qualities that no human voice should command—the ability to bypass entirely the normal channels of hearing and speak directly to the soul.

“How?” I whispered, when I finally found courage to speak.

“Practice,” said he, and his physical voice, emanating now from his actual throat, seemed thin and weak by comparison. “Thirty years of practice in these echoing depths, learning to make the very stones sing with my voice.”

But there were other abilities, more disturbing still. On my thirteenth visit, I arrived to find him absent from his usual chambers. After waiting for nearly an hour, I called out his name—softly, for even in those depths I feared to raise my voice too high.

“I am here,” came his reply, though the chamber remained empty save for myself.

I turned in all directions, searching for some hidden alcove or concealed entrance that might explain his invisible presence, but found none.

“Where?” I asked the empty air.

“Everywhere,” came the reply, and I realized with a horror that still visits me in dreams that his voice was indeed coming from everywhere—from the walls, the ceiling, the very floor beneath my feet. Somehow, impossibly, he had made the chamber itself speak with his voice.

It was then that I began to understand the true nature of the being I had discovered. Erik was not merely a man who dwelt beneath the Opera House—he was becoming the Opera House itself, merging his consciousness with its stones and timber, its mirrors and machinery, until the boundary between his identity and the building’s identity began to dissolve.

“Why do you trust me?” I asked him during my fifteenth visit, for the question had tormented me since our first encounter.

He was seated at his organ, his terrible fingers drawing sounds from the instrument that no composer had ever dreamed of creating. For a long moment, he continued playing, and I thought he had not heard my question. Finally, the music ceased, and he turned to regard me with that one terrible, beautiful eye.

“Because,” said he, “you are the first person in thirty years to look upon me without screaming.”

“Surely others have—”

“No,” he interrupted, his voice carrying a weight of loneliness that seemed to press against my chest like a physical burden. “You are the first, ma chère Antoinette. The very first.”

It was in that moment that I understood the magnitude of my discovery. I had not merely found a man living in the Opera House cellars—I had found the loneliest creature in all of creation, a being so isolated from human contact that my simple acceptance of his appearance had elevated me to the status of miracle in his eyes.

And God help me, I began to pity him.

THIRD PAPER

Found within a hollowed-out copy of “Don Juan Triumphant” - Erik’s own composition

14th March, 1865

The winter has been cruel, both above ground and in the depths below. Erik’s moods have grown increasingly volatile, swinging between periods of manic creativity and abysses of despair so profound that I fear for his sanity—if indeed sanity is a concept that can be applied to such a being.

It was during one of his creative periods that he revealed to me the true scope of his ambitions. I found him in his workshop—a chamber I had not previously been permitted to enter—surrounded by architectural drawings and mechanical diagrams of extraordinary complexity.

“What are these?” I inquired, examining sketches that seemed to depict elaborate systems of pulleys, counterweights, and hidden panels.

“The future,” said he, his good eye gleaming with an intensity that frightened me. “My dear Antoinette, I have spent these months designing improvements to our Opera House—modifications that will allow me to move through its halls like a ghost, to appear and disappear at will, to exercise influence over its every function.”

The drawings were indeed remarkable—plans for secret passages that would honeycomb the building’s walls, concealed panels that would grant access to every box and corridor, mechanisms that would allow the manipulation of stage machinery from hidden vantage points.

“But surely,” I protested, “the management would never approve such extensive alterations to the building.”

His laughter, when it came, held no humor whatever.

“My sweet, naive Antoinette. Do you truly believe I intend to seek permission for these improvements? The Opera House belongs to me in ways that its directors cannot comprehend. I have been part of its creation from the laying of the foundation stone. Every secret it holds, I placed there. Every mystery that puzzles its inhabitants, I designed.”

It was then that the terrible truth began to dawn upon me. The stories that had circulated among the Opera House staff—tales of mysterious accidents during construction, of workers who had disappeared without trace, of sections of the building that seemed to have been completed by invisible hands—suddenly took on sinister new meaning.

“The workmen who vanished,” I whispered, understanding flooding through me like ice water in my veins. “What became of them?”

His expression, already disturbing due to his malformed features, became positively demonic.

“They served their purpose,” said he simply. “And when that purpose was fulfilled, they were… dismissed.”

I should have fled then. Every instinct of self-preservation screamed at me to run from that place and never return. But I had grown too fascinated by the horror of it all, too entangled in the web of his lonely madness to extract myself.

“You killed them,” I said, because the words needed to be spoken aloud.

“I liberated them,” he corrected, his voice taking on that horrible, echoing quality that seemed to bypass the ears and speak directly to the soul. “Liberated them from the burden of possessing knowledge they were not meant to carry. The secrets of this place, Antoinette—they are too dangerous to be shared carelessly.”

“And yet you share them with me.”

For a moment, his entire demeanor softened, and I glimpsed something almost human in that ruined countenance.

“Because you, ma chère, are different. You looked upon me without horror. You listened to my voice without fleeing. You are the first person in three decades to treat me as something approaching human. For that gift, I would share with you all the secrets of heaven and hell.”

It was a declaration both touching and terrifying—the gratitude of a monster for the simple kindness of not screaming at the sight of him.

Over the following weeks, I watched as Erik began to implement his plans. Working only during the dark hours when the Opera House stood empty, he carved his secret passages, installed his hidden mechanisms, created his network of invisible pathways. His knowledge of the building’s structure was so complete, his understanding of its weaknesses so perfect, that he seemed able to alter its very bones without disturbing its external appearance.

I became, against my better judgment, his accomplice in this grand deception. Who else could serve as his eyes and ears in the upper world, reporting on the daily operations of the Opera House, identifying which areas could be modified without detection? Who else could provide the small necessities—food, candles, the occasional book—that sustained his underground existence?

But it was during this period that I began to observe the first signs of what I can only describe as his spiritual deterioration. The isolation that had already warped his perspective on human life began to deepen into something approaching megalomania. He spoke with increasing frequency of his “domain,” of his “subjects,” of his rightful place as the true master of the Palais Garnier.

“They dance to music I permit them to hear,” he said one evening, gesturing toward the ceiling above our heads, beyond which the evening’s performance was reaching its climax. “They sing songs I allow them to remember. They move through halls I have designed for their movement. In what meaningful sense, I ask you, are they anything more than my marionettes?”

The question chilled me, for I recognized in it the reasoning of a mind that had lost all connection to normal human morality. Erik was no longer content to be a secret inhabitant of the Opera House—he had begun to see himself as its rightful deity.

It was shortly after this conversation that the first “accidents” began to occur in the upper world. A chandelier developed an alarming tendency to sway without apparent cause. Stage machinery began to malfunction in ways that defied the understanding of the Opera House’s engineers. Performers reported hearing strange voices during their rehearsals—voices that seemed to offer correction and guidance, though no vocal coach was present.

I knew, with a certainty that terrified me, that these phenomena were Erik’s doing. His network of secret passages now extended throughout the building, allowing him to observe and influence events from his hidden vantage points. But more than that, his voice—that supernatural instrument that could speak from any surface he chose—had begun to reach into the very heart of the Opera House’s operations.

“Why?” I demanded during one of our meetings. “Why must you torment them?”

His response revealed the depth of his transformation from lonely creature to something approaching absolute evil.

“Because I can,” said he simply. “Because they exist at my sufferance, and it pleases me to remind them of that fact. Because power unused is power wasted, and I have wasted far too much power in my lifetime.”

I began, from that moment, to fear not only for the inhabitants of the Opera House, but for my own soul. For I was no longer merely the friend of a pitiable outcast—I had become the confidante of a monster.

FOURTH PAPER

Hidden in a secret compartment of Mme. Giry’s own desk

2nd September, 1870

Six years have passed since I first descended into Erik’s domain, and in that time I have witnessed his transformation from a lonely, pathetic creature into something that defies all classification save that of demon incarnate. The Franco-Prussian War rages above our heads, but beneath the Opera House, a more personal and infinitely more dangerous conflict has been brewing.

Erik’s influence over the daily operations of the Palais Garnier has grown from subtle interference to outright control. Not a note is sung, not a step is danced, not a word is spoken upon that stage without his knowledge and, increasingly, his permission. The directors believe they manage the Opera House, but they are mere puppets dancing to melodies Erik composes in the depths below.

His methods have grown increasingly sophisticated. No longer content with simple mechanical tricks and ventriloquial deceptions, he has developed what I can only describe as a science of fear and manipulation. Through careful observation of the Opera House’s inhabitants—observation conducted through his network of secret passages and concealed vantage points—he has learned to identify each individual’s deepest anxieties and most carefully guarded secrets.

The prima donna, Carlotta Giudicelli, lives in terror of losing her voice. Erik has learned to exploit this fear with diabolical precision, using his supernatural vocal abilities to whisper dire warnings in her dressing room, to cause echoes that make her doubt the quality of her own performance, to create acoustic disturbances that make her believe her voice is failing when it is not.

The managers, Debienne and Poligny, pride themselves on their rational, businesslike approach to Opera House operations. Erik torments them with phenomena that defy rational explanation—messages that appear written in their own hand, though they have no memory of writing them; financial records that alter themselves when no one is watching; correspondence that arrives from impossible sources.

But it is among the chorus girls and ballet dancers that Erik’s influence has become most pronounced and most disturbing. These young women, many of them barely more than children, have become unwitting participants in his grand experiment in psychological manipulation.

He has learned to single out the most impressionable among them—those whose poverty or ambition or simple naivety makes them susceptible to supernatural influence. To these chosen subjects, he appears as a voice without a body, offering guidance and protection in exchange for absolute obedience.

Little Meg Giry, my own daughter, has fallen under his spell. Though she is but fourteen years of age, Erik has identified in her the combination of natural talent and desperate desire for recognition that makes her an ideal subject for his attentions.

“The Angel of Music speaks to me, Maman,” she confided to me just last week, her young face glowing with the fervor of one who believes herself blessed by divine attention. “He teaches me things the dancing masters never could. He shows me how to move with such grace that even the prima ballerina watches in wonder.”

I listened to these words with a horror that I dared not reveal, for I knew that the “Angel of Music” who spoke to my daughter was no heavenly being but the monster who dwelt in the cellars below—the creature whose gradual descent into megalomania I had witnessed with my own eyes.

When I confronted Erik about his manipulation of the young dancers, his response revealed the complete absence of anything resembling human conscience.

“I am giving them what they desire most,” said he, his terrible voice echoing through his underground chambers with that quality that made my bones vibrate in sympathy. “Recognition, talent, the ability to transcend their humble origins and achieve greatness. Is that not a gift worthy of gratitude rather than condemnation?”

“You are using them,” I accused. “Corrupting their innocence for your own twisted purposes.”

His laughter, when it came, was the sound of winter wind through a cemetery.

“Corrupting their innocence? My dear Antoinette, you speak as though innocence were a virtue to be preserved rather than an impediment to be overcome. These children come to me ignorant of their own potential, blind to the possibilities that exist beyond their narrow understanding. I open their eyes, expand their awareness, grant them access to powers they never dreamed of possessing.”

“And in return?”

“In return, they serve. They become extensions of my will, instruments through which I can exercise influence in the upper world. They are my hands and feet and eyes in places where I cannot venture directly. Is that so terrible a fate? To be chosen as servants of a being possessed of knowledge and abilities beyond mortal comprehension?”

It was in that moment that I understood the full scope of Erik’s madness. He no longer saw himself as a deformed man hiding from a world that would reject him. He had reconstructed his identity as something approaching a god—a supernatural being whose right to command worship and obedience was self-evident and beyond question.

But there was worse to come. During my most recent visit to his domain, I discovered that Erik had begun work on what he called his “masterpiece”—a composition of such complexity and power that it would, in his words, “remake the very foundations of musical art.”

The work, which he had entitled “Don Juan Triumphant,” was unlike any music I had ever encountered. The score, written in Erik’s own hand, covered page after page with notations that seemed to follow no earthly system of musical organization. The melodies, when he played fragments for me upon his organ, produced effects that music should not be capable of producing—sensations of vertigo, flashes of unwanted memory, emotions that felt foreign and unwelcome in my own consciousness.

“This is not mere entertainment,” he explained as his fingers drew these impossible sounds from the instrument. “This is music as architecture, as engineering, as surgery upon the human soul. When ‘Don Juan Triumphant’ is performed—when it is experienced rather than merely heard—it will demonstrate to the world the true power of artistic creation.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I feared to hear the answer.

“I mean that music, properly composed and correctly performed, can alter the fundamental structure of human consciousness. It can break down the barriers that separate one mind from another, dissolve the illusions that humans mistake for reality, reveal the underlying truth that all existence is merely performance upon a stage I have designed.”

The implications of his words struck me like a physical blow. Erik was not merely composing music—he was creating a weapon of unprecedented psychological power, an artistic experience designed to shatter the sanity of all who encountered it.

I realized then that my years of complicity, my willing participation in his schemes, had made me an accessory to something approaching apocalypse. The lonely creature I had pitied and befriended had become a threat not merely to the Opera House or its inhabitants, but to the very nature of human consciousness itself.

And God forgive me, I no longer possessed the strength or courage to oppose him.

FINAL PAPER

Sealed within an envelope marked “To Be Opened Only Upon My Death”

31st October, 1881

Seventeen years have passed since I first descended into Erik’s domain, and tonight I write what I know must be my final account of the extraordinary and terrible events I have witnessed. The Opera House above my head prepares for what may be its last performance, and I find myself compelled to set down the complete truth of what transpired in the years between my previous writings and the present moment.

Erik’s madness, which I had observed growing throughout the 1870s, reached its absolute culmination in the spring of 1881. The catalyst was the arrival at the Opera House of a young soprano named Christine Daaé—a girl whose voice possessed qualities that seemed almost supernatural in their purity and power.

From the moment Erik first heard her sing, I knew that she would become either his salvation or his final damnation. The obsession that seized him transcended anything I had previously witnessed in my long acquaintance with his unbalanced mind. He spoke of her not as a woman to be courted or even possessed, but as a work of art to be perfected, a divine instrument requiring only his guidance to achieve its ultimate purpose.

“She is the voice I have been waiting for,” he confided to me during one of our increasingly infrequent meetings. “The throat through which my compositions will finally speak with their intended power. Everything I have created, every scheme I have devised, every modification I have made to this building—it has all been in preparation for the arrival of this single, perfect instrument.”

I watched in growing horror as Erik began his campaign to win Christine’s devotion. Using his supernatural vocal abilities, he convinced the impressionable girl that he was the “Angel of Music” her deceased father had promised would come to guide her career. Through his network of secret passages, he observed her every movement, learned her every desire, shaped himself into the precise form of mentor and protector she needed.

The results were spectacular and terrifying in equal measure. Under Erik’s tutelage, Christine’s voice developed capabilities that seemed to transcend normal human limitations. She could produce tones of such purity that they seemed to bypass the ears entirely and resonate directly within the listener’s soul. Her performances began to induce altered states of consciousness in her audiences—religious ecstasies, spontaneous emotional catharses, experiences that bordered on the mystical.

But I recognized in these phenomena the influence of Erik’s own unholy musical theories. He was using Christine as a testing ground for his ideas about music’s power to alter human consciousness, gradually accustoming audiences to sounds and sensations that would prepare them for the ultimate revelation of “Don Juan Triumphant.”

The young Vicomte de Chagny’s infatuation with Christine provided Erik with a focus for his jealous rage that elevated his scheming to new heights of elaborate malevolence. I watched as he orchestrated a campaign of psychological warfare against the boy that demonstrated the full extent of his theatrical genius. False hauntings, manufactured mysteries, apparent supernatural manifestations—all designed to drive Raoul to the edge of madness while simultaneously cementing Christine’s dependence upon her “Angel of Music.”

But it was the night of 20th October, 1881—the night Christine vanished from her dressing room as if the earth had opened and swallowed her—that Erik finally revealed the true scope of his intentions.

I found him in his underground chambers, seated before his organ, his terrible fingers drawing from it melodies that seemed to make the very air writhe and twist. Christine stood beside him, her eyes vacant, her expression serene, her entire demeanor suggesting a mind that had been emptied of all will save that which Erik chose to permit.

“Behold,” said he, gesturing toward the girl with proprietorial pride, “the perfect student. No longer burdened by doubt, by fear, by the petty concerns that diminish lesser artists. She exists now purely as an instrument of musical expression, a voice freed from the limitations of individual consciousness.”

The horror of what he had done struck me with the force of divine revelation. Through some application of his unholy knowledge—whether supernatural, psychological, or a combination of both—Erik had managed to empty Christine Daaé of her essential self, reducing her to nothing more than a beautiful automaton capable of producing the sounds he desired.

“You have murdered her,” I whispered, my voice barely audible even in that echoing space.

“I have perfected her,” he corrected. “Removed all the flaws and impurities that prevented her from achieving her ultimate destiny. She is now everything I have ever dreamed of creating—pure voice, pure sound, pure obedience to artistic vision.”

It was then that I understood the full extent of my own complicity in this abomination. For seventeen years, I had enabled Erik’s descent into absolute evil. My friendship, my companionship, my willingness to serve as his connection to the upper world—all of it had contributed to the creation of this monster who now stood before me, gloating over the spiritual murder of an innocent girl.

The events that followed—Raoul’s desperate attempt to rescue Christine, the confrontation in Erik’s chambers, the apparent destruction of the Opera Ghost—have been chronicled by others and need not be repeated here. What matters is that I have finally recognized my own role in these terrible events, and I find the weight of that recognition unbearable.

I am dying, though whether from age, from guilt, or from some lingering effect of my long exposure to Erik’s unwholesome influence, I cannot say. My daughter Meg believes I suffer from a wasting disease of the lungs, but I know better. My soul has been poisoned by knowledge I should never have sought, by sights I should never have witnessed, by complicity in crimes that have no earthly forgiveness.

Erik is gone—or so the world believes. But I know him too well to trust in his destruction. Creatures such as he do not die so easily. They adapt, they transform, they find new forms in which to continue their existence. Somewhere, in the depths beneath some other city, in the shadows behind some other stage, the being I knew as Erik continues his work.

And God help whoever finds him there.

These papers I leave as testament and warning. Let them serve as evidence that evil, when it presents itself in the guise of genius, when it clothes itself in the appearance of artistry, when it speaks with the voice of divine inspiration, remains evil nonetheless. Let them remind future generations that there are doors which should never be opened, paths which should never be walked, voices which should never be answered.

I have spent thirty-seven years serving the darkness that dwells beneath our most beautiful creations. Now, as my final act in this world, I serve the light by revealing the truth of what I have witnessed.

May God forgive me. May He forgive us all.