Phantom: A Love Story.

Captain Sidney's face was now the color of a plum. He stood, and his words came hard as he struggled to breathe around his indignation. "The only reason," he said, pausing to mop the sweat from his brow, "the ONLY reason, that I don't take you outside and shoot you through the damned head right now is out of respect for the memory of that man." He pointed to the painting. "And because of the grief that it would cause Penelope. If you were anyone else —"

Before Phillip could reply Andrew stepped between them. "Wait a minute," he said. "There's no reason why, between the three of us, we can't —" He paused, and turned his head a little. The other men watched him, curious. "Phillip," said Andrew, "no one else in the house plays piano, do they?"

Phillip looked confused. "Why in the hell should that matter now?"

"Because someone is playing your piano."

They all stopped to listen, and, faintly, from another room, they heard it; the soft, ghostly strains of music. "My sonata," said Phillip.

All three men left the parlor, following the sound of a discordant tune to the music room. When they arrived they found every lamp but one extinguished, that one illuminating a ghastly figure with his hands on the keys, the thick, padded fingers of his gloves accounting for the clumsy, tuneless nature of his playing. The Phantom was draped in a grey riding cape with a high collar, ragged at the hem. His mask was painted like a grimacing jack-o-lantern and his shirt and trousers were baggy, so that his limbs angled sharply against the fabric, giving him the look of a scarecrow made up of tattered hand-me-downs. Behind the slits of his crude mask his eyes reflected the lamplight. He did not stop playing as the men entered, except to nod at them, once, in silent acknowledgment, and then went right back to his music, each jarring, clanging note falling on their nerves as he went on.

Phillip managed to speak first. "Who the hell are you?" he said. "What are you doing in my house?"

"Sir!" said the captain, stepping forward. "You should leave these premises immediately. Whoever you are, whatever the nature of your complaint, it should be resolved according to the customs of men of honor."

Phillip looked sideways at the captain. Andrew lingered by the door. The Phantom said nothing.

"Sir —" said Phillip again, stepping forward, and as he did the Phantom leapt to his feet, producing a pistol from the hidden folds of his cape. Andrew shouted a warning but it was too late: a flash and a deafening bang filled the small room, and Phillip fell back, the captain failing to catch him. Andrew ran to Phillip's side and the Phantom spun around, sprinting out the northernmost door, cape swirling behind him. The captain tried to give chase but could only limp along in the creature's wake.

Andrew warned Phillip not to move, but Philip sat up anyway. Andrew tried to talk him down, but Phillip waved him away and said, "I'm all right. Look, I'm not shot; there was no bullet, only powder. He just meant to scare us."

Andrew's sigh of relief rattled his whole body. He was white as a sheet. "But why?"

"So that he can get away!" said the captain.

"Not that way," said Phillip, standing. "That only leads to an old pantry. Penelope and Andrew's father used it as a wine cellar. He'll be trapped in there."

The door was stuck when they pushed on it, barricaded from the other side, and it took all three of them together to break it down. But inside were dusty, unused wine racks; there was not a soul in sight. Andrew gaped, and even the captain looked surprised. Phillip turned around and around in the tiny space. "But he ran in here. We all saw him, didn't we?"

Andrew nodded, and the captain crossed himself. "He can't have just vanished," said Phillip, clawing at the wall. "He can't have!" Andrew tried to calm him, but he continued scrabbling at the wall, repeating the words over and over. It wasn't until Jeremiah, cowed by the presence of the captain but too panicked to stay away, appeared in the music room waving both hands that Phillip stopped.

"Sir," said Jeremiah, mumbling, as was his fashion, but still with an unmistakable note of urgency, "it's Mrs. Devereux, sir. She's in her room, and she's screaming, and we can't get the door open."

"Penelope?" said the captain. "Is she hurt?"

"We dunno, sir," said Jeremiah. "We can't get the door open."

"Useless!" said the captain, pushing Jeremiah down and angling his enormous bulk through the door. Andrew and Phillip followed, Phillip stopping for a second to help Jeremiah back to his feet.

When they came to Penelope's door there was, indeed, the sound of screaming from within, but it was faint and muffled. This time the door was secured only with a flimsy lock, and Phillip broke it down with one charge, almost splintering it in two. The room was in disarray, with the bed askew, the curtains pulled down, the mirror shattered, and Penelope's belongings strewn over the floor.

There was no one in sight, and the source of the screams was not apparent at first, but then Andrew spotted the steamer trunk in the corner of the room. Heavy lead weights were piled on top of the lid, and the entire thing was shaking. Phillip ran to it, threw off the weights, opened the trunk, and caught a sobbing Penelope as she burst out, throwing her arms around his neck and falling against him, still screaming. It was a long time until she could speak. Andrew stood on one side of the trunk, speechless, and the captain stood on the other, face a furious red, his frame shaking and his knuckles white around the head of his cane, as if he might bash it over someone's head at any moment. Jeremiah fidgeted nearby, not daring to enter Penelope's private bedroom.

Phillip rocked back and forth with Penelope in his arms, tears blurring his eyes. She was blanched and soaked with sweat, her clothes torn and her arms bruised. When she finally talked, the words welled up and burst out of her with little ragged sobs: "It was him, it was him, it was him!"

"The Phantom?" said the captain.

"He told me he was going to bury me alive," said Penelope. "He put me in there, and I could hear him laughing, and I couldn't open the lid, and, and..." she trailed off, voice hoarse.

"But how did he even get in here?" said Andrew. "We just saw him not five minutes ago in the music room? And then he vanished from inside a closet!"

"I don't know," said Penelope. "I just turned around and he was there. And he grabbed me, and he was so strong, and I tried to scream but he had his hand over my mouth and, and, and —"

Phillip soothed her again as she broke down completely. The captain looked away, wincing, tears stinging his own eyes. Andrew looked at the steamer trunk, brow furrowed. "There weren't that many weights piled on it," he said. "And there are more here in the corner. We must have interrupted him before he could finish. But wait a minute Penelope, this trunk isn't yours? He must have been hiding it. Where could he keep something like this in your room without you noticing?"

"What does it matter?" said the captain, voice grating.

"It matters if it tells us how he got in here," said Andrew. "Penelope, where were you right before you saw the Phantom?"

She pointed to the mirror, where the broken shards reflected a dozen versions of the scene. Andrew walked over to it, looked at his reflection, turned to the room, and then turned back to his reflection. Phillip gave him a questioning look.

"Do you see?" said Andrew. "In this mirror you can see the entire room except for the southernmost wall, with the closet door. The closet door..."

He opened the closet and stepped in. After a moment he called out to them; his voice echoed curiously. Setting Penelope on the bed, Phillip followed him, the captain limping along too, and they were shocked to see that a panel at the back of the closet had slid open, revealing a long, dark corridor. Right next to the panel was a stack of lead weights like the ones piled on the trunk. Andrew grinned, clearly delighted by his discovery.

"Incredible," he said. "I bet it goes straight to that old wine closet. To think I never knew this passage existed. Did you, Phillip?" Phillip shook his head. "I bet there are more like it," said Andrew. "So now we know how the Phantom gets around the house without being seen."

"That means the Phantom is someone who knows the house very well," said the captain.

"Yes it does," said Phillip, his sardonic smile returning. "Someone who helped build it, for example?"

The captain's eyes went wide. "You must be insane? How can you even suggest that I'm the Phantom when you were standing right next to me when we all saw him?"

"It's clever, I'll grant you that," said Phillip. "You ask me how you can be the Phantom with your bad leg, well I ask you, how do we know the Phantom is just one man? What did you do, hire some actor, or some runaway slave perhaps, for the part? You are something of a patron of the theater, as I recall."

The captain gritted his teeth. "You miserable little bastard!"

"That's not a denial," said Phillip.

"Phillip, no, the captain would never do something like this to me!" said Penelope.

She stood and was about to say more, but then she saw Jeremiah lurking in the doorway and she pointed and shrieked. "It was him! I know it was him! Just look at his face, there's guilt written all over it!"

Jeremiah shrank back, hands up, speaking a denial, and Penelope actually ran at him, nails raised. Andrew caught her and the two struggled for a moment, Andrew unprepared for her burst of strength. He managed to push her back to the bed as she screamed all the while, "It was him, it was him, that black bastard, I know it! Don't you see how much he hated my father, how long he's been waiting for the chance to pay us all back? 'Oh, Massa so mean to me, oh, Massa's daughter gun pay now,' is that how it is? Is it? Is it?"

Even the captain looked astonished. Phillip stuck a finger in his face. "Will you still not admit it? Will you not even speak up to clear Jeremiah's name? I know you don't have any respect for him, but I thought at least your sense of honor meant something to you."

The captain shook a finger back. "Enough of this, damn it. I know that little Sambo isn't the Phantom and I sure as hell aren't him either, but I know exactly who is!"

"Then why don't you tell us?" said Phillip.

"Because I'm going to deal with this properly, like a real man would," said the captain, sneering.

"Now wait a minute," said Andrew, "let's think hard about this. We don't really have any idea —"

"It was Jeremiah!" said Penelope.

"It's the captain!" said Phillip.

"I know who's behind this, I know!" roared the captain.

"But we don't know, none of us know!" said Andrew.

Penelope collapsed on the bed, sobbing. Phillip went to comfort her, casting hateful glares at the captain. Captain Sidney stood square-shouldered, still as a statue. Andrew sat in the corner, head in his hands, helpless. Jeremiah inched away, a shadow in the doorway, half his face illuminated. All of them were reflected over and over again in the broken pieces of the mirror.

And outside, the drums were beating, beating, always, without stopping, until dawn.

***

Amelia's eyes opened. She sat up and looked around; was she in the attic? She rubbed her neck (sore again. Would she ever sleep in a real bed in this house?) Yes, she'd been putting away boxes up here and then sat down for just a second to rest. How did she fall asleep here of all places? But of course, she knew the answer; it was because she'd stayed up all night. Because she'd been afraid to go to sleep. She sighed. Am I losing my mind, she thought, or is this all really happening?

She chastised herself; there was nothing crazy about having dreams. True, they were vivid dreams, more vivid than she ever remembered having before, but so what? And she'd already explained to herself how she could dream about the Devereux's names and faces before knowing about them. She was jittery from the move, and still in mourning. It made sense. It all made sense.

As she went downstairs, she did not admit to herself that she was going to the bedroom to check the closet for evidence of a secret door. Such a door would, of course, spoil all of her neat explanations. She also did not acknowledge that piano music was audible and was obviously coming from the storage room, the room that was once the music room, the very room where Phillip confronted the Phantom in her dream. The house seemed tense as she moved through it. Wherever she went, it felt as if someone had just finished an argument there and left the lingering residue of their anger.

Amelia went to the bedroom (she could not really think of it as her bedroom, and dared not think of it as Penelope's. so it was simply "the bedroom", just as the house was just "the house"), comparing its dimensions to those in her dream. The closet was still in the same place. She hesitated before opening the door, then felt childish, but continued to hesitate, bracing herself for what might be waiting inside. But of course, it turned out to be empty, even of her own possessions, a bare space of floorboards and drywall. She ran her hands over the back wall. She would have to get some tools and break through the plaster, and then —

Then what, she thought? What would she find even if she were right? If the secret passage ever really existed the Devereuxs doubtlessly would have boarded it up after finding it, and likely the various remodels over the years had gotten to any others they missed. Inspecting the closet told her nothing one way or the other. Amelia realized that her hand was hurting, and then realized it was because she was clenching something hard in her palm; the gold piece from the garden. Had she been carrying it the whole time? It felt cold, like always.

What is this thing, she thought, holding it up? If it had ever once had a definite form, it was now just an ambiguous lump. She tried to drop it, but her fingers would not release. Let go, she thought, let go! But she could not. She stood with hand shaking, wrestling with herself. If she dropped it in here, she realized, it would be in the closet all the time. She would think about it whenever she looked at the door. It would be better to throw it away; yes, outside, or in the trash, where she would have no idea where it ended up. And then she had an even better idea; she would give it to Ms. Price, along with her book. Yes, Ms. Price would love to have a keepsake from Devereux Manor.

Amelia was about to leave, but that's when she heard it: the creaking of the hinge as the closet door swung a little, obstructing the light. She turned, and when she saw someone standing just inside closet, less than a foot away, between her and the door, she thought to scream, but the scream caught in her throat when she recognized the intruding figure: the billowing cape, the ill-fitting clothes, and the burlap mask, its leering goblin face just barely visible in the dark. The Phantom stood with a gloved hand on the doorknob, so still and silent that Amelia managed to convince herself, if only for a second, that he somehow was not real, and not there at all.

Then he pulled the door shut, plunging them both into total blackness, and Amelia knew that she was trapped. Her back was already against the wall, there was nowhere to go. She braced herself, jaw clenched, waiting to feel those gloved hands grab hold of her, but nothing happened. She held her breath, listening for the telltale rustle of the Phantom's baggy costume or his boots on the floor, but there was nothing. Perhaps he was waiting for her to make the first move? Amelia's heart pounded until she thought it would burst. She kept her jaw clenched to hold in her screams, convinced that a scream was what he was waiting for. She would not give in. A single icy bead of sweat traveled from her temple down her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw. She started to feel lightheaded. I can't just stand here forever, she thought.

So instead she charged, rushing her attacker in the dark, expecting to collide with him, to tangle with him, to beat him with every ounce of her strength. Instead she hit the door full force and it sprang open, depositing her on the bedroom floor, shaking, in the long rectangle of grey light leaking through the panes of the French doors. Amelia whirled around, expecting the Phantom's ghastly image to be looming over her, but the closet was empty again. The bedroom was empty too, and the entire house was silent; even the piano music had stopped.

Amelia shook her head, muttering "No, no, no," under her breath. The Phantom had been inside the closet with her, of that she was sure, and the door had not opened again. The closet was too small for him to move past her without touching her, even if there was any other way out. So where was he now? "Where the hell are you?" she said. No one answered.

She dialed 911, then hung up in the middle of the first ring. Who could she call? Ms. Price? Her father? No, of course not, she scolded herself, her father was dead; but even so, the urge to dial his old number and listen to the ring over and over was almost overwhelming. She had to put the phone down. She bit her fingernails, lost in thought. She realized she had bitten them down to nothing when she tasted blood.

Finally she went to the dresser, the one she had only filled the day before, and began to empty it. Devereux Manor was not her house. Devereux Manor had never been her father's house either, and maybe had never even been the Devereux's. Whoever had claim to it now, she was happy to leave it to them. Her father's old suitcase was big enough to hold almost everything she had. She stopped to get a few essentials from the bathroom and grab her laptop, and then loaded everything into the car.

She set the GPS to find the last motel she'd stayed at, the reverse course of her trip of a few day's past. She did not look at the mirrors as she pulled away, did not look at the house at all. She turned the radio on and up as loud as it would go, and thought about nothing. Failing that, she thought about her father. It was painful, and the tears made it harder to drive, but anything was better than thinking about the house. She would never think about that house again, she vowed. The house was not real, she told herself, the house did not exist, the house was merely another unreal figure from her dreams.

The house was a phantom.

Unbeknownst to Amelia, that flat, misshapen piece of gold was still in her pocket. She felt the coldness of it through her clothes the entire drive, but never realized that it was there.

***

There was no point in trying to work. There was no point in going out. There was no point in doing anything, it seemed, so Amelia just lay back on the bed, watching the blades of the ceiling fan go around and around. The motel room smelled faintly of cheap disinfectant; they must have cleaned it not long ago. The quiet was unnerving. She realized that she was straining to hear piano music. Maybe if she was still enough, and quiet enough, she could just faintly —

She sat up and ran her hands over her face. God, she thought, what am I doing here? She looked at the clock; not early enough to sleep, and she was afraid of sleep now anyway. She stripped her sweaty clothes off, leaving them in a trail on the way to the tiny, white-tiled bathroom. She turned the hot water up as far as it would go and stood in the shower, letting it run and run. Her skin turned bright pink, but she didn't mind; after twenty minutes, she was numb to the burn. Idly, she slid her hand down her stomach, over her hips, and between her legs, touching herself without thinking about it, a mechanical reflex more than anything.