part 5
Both girls looked at her with their mouths open, obviously reverent to the grandeur of her speech and unable to squeeze out a word. No one had ever said such a thing before since the legend of the Ghost had appeared.
- So it's safe to say that your Ghost of the Opera must be something completely different. Most likely, the one you're all so afraid of is an ordinary runaway madman..." Brill rattled behind them in the middle of the sentence. Both choristers shrieked and fled in a dim corridor backstage, leaving Brill alone.
The same thing turned abruptly towards the source of the noise, raising his hands in self-defense just in case. A few white strands broke out of her hair, falling on her face. Brill stood with a rapidly beating heart, waiting for the attack and looking around: the fear of the choristers was transmitted to her and to every shadow of her soul almost vanished into her heels. Suddenly the perpetrator of the commotion came out and meowed. Brill was relieved when a thick striped cat broke in and started rubbing against her black skirt. She leaned over and raised the cat and scratched it behind her ears.
- Oh, you nasty kitty, you're flipping over and terrorizing the glee club. - A weak smile illuminates her usually impassive face. Brill stroked the cat, waiting for her heart to stop beating like that. - You must be the real Ghost of the Opera. Yes? I don't think half the guys around here will notice the difference. And you've certainly caught on to my fear, despite all my courageous speeches. - The cat looked at her with huge golden eyes and did not react to the joke.
Brill sighed and let the stripper go, remembering the reason for her return to the theater. "It is necessary to find out the reason for this terrible feeling, clouding all my thoughts. It gets worse every day. I can barely think of anything else. Her growing anxiety was confirmed by the dark shadows around her eyes. Brill walked carefully down the hall; a striped cat followed her on her heels.
She hoped that her previous intervention would calm her conscience. Sometimes a simple warning was enough to dispel her strange feelings. Unfortunately, this time everything went wrong. Despite her meeting with Monsieur André and her warning, the last few nights she had nightmares that were too terrible to remember in the morning. Brill woke up long before dawn, screaming and sweating. She didn't know why. And she hated that ignorance.
After days of sleep, the dreams became clearer, though not insignificantly. Now Brill could remember the red velvet of the Opera House seats and the fever of the terrible fire coming down from above. But what made it to the bone was the screams of hundreds of panicking people. In addition to these meager details, Brill still remained in the dark, which is prepared for the theater in the future. It was the dreams that led her back into the walls of the Opera House. Dreams drove her crazy.
Earlier this morning, waking up from another nightmare, Brill made a plan to successfully penetrate the opera. Given how her first - her last - meeting with the leadership ended, she was sure she would be kicked out of the theatre as soon as she was caught in the act. However, her excitement turned out to be groundless: sneaking in was amazingly easy - she just walked through the door. Going backstage and expecting her to be detained at any moment, Brill was surprised that no one even paid attention to her. In fact, there was no one around to stop her. The endless passages and corridors were completely deserted: loud and dark, they seemed to stretch in all directions without any system.
And now, as Brill was looking at a strange collection of stuffed animals standing in a "forest" of ten-foot Greek columns on either side of it, she was feeling a spillage of seemingly groundless tension in the air itself. "God, those girls' stories must have had an impact on me... I felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. This place looks so strange without crowds. Probably most of the troupe is hiding in the rooms. They are all afraid of this ghost. Poor people..."
Brill took her darkened glasses out of her pocket and stepped into the area behind the stage, which was the best illuminated; fortunately, he was free from the obscure presence of the broken props. As far as she understood, this corridor led to the dressing rooms of leading performers. "I suspect that the same Christine, who everyone is talking about, lives somewhere here. With all this talk of ghosts and kidnapping ... perhaps I will have to take a turn for the title of the main madwoman. This thought made Brill laugh quietly but immediately covered her mouth with her hand, finally muffling the soft sound.
Her laughter quickly turned into a sigh of convulsion when the door at the end of the hall opened sharply, hitting the wall with force. The rattle of the tree hitting the tree was heard in the quiet aisle, forcing Brill to jump slightly. A young girl came into the hallway, slowly staggering back, with her curly, dark, lush hair. Even at a distance, it was obvious that the poor girl was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
- Raoul, how can I betray him? - Sobbing, she told the girl to someone in the room who was not visible to the outside. - He supported me in the worst years of my life, giving me his music when I was dying in silence! - Her voice was getting louder, dangerously close to hysterics as she continued to back away from the room. The light pouring through the doorway illuminated her tearful face. - I can't do that! I can't end up like this! Please, please, Raoul, don't ask me to do this! - The girl with the flour-filled moan covered her face with her palms and gave her will to sob furiously. When she turned around, she rushed away, barely bumped into Brill, and fled around the corner.
to be continued...