me - co-ack!'... And now, crack! It is on a chair in the ghost's box and it says, `Madame carlotta is singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!' ...And now, crack! Aha! Where is Erik's voice now? Listen, Christine, darling! Listen! It is behind the door of the torture-chamber! Listen! It's myself in the torture-chamber! And what do I say? I say, `Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose, and come to look round the torture- chamber! Aha, aha, aha!''

Oh, the ventriloquist's terrible voice! It was everywhere, everywhere. It passed through the little invisible window, through the walls. It ran around us, between us. Erik was there, speaking to us! We made a movement as though to fling ourselves upon him. But, already, swifter, more fleeting than the voice of the echo, Erik's voice had leaped back behind the wall!

Soon we heard nothing more at all, for this is what happened:

`Erik! Erik!' said Christine's voice. `You tire me with your voice. Don't go on, Erik! Isn't it very hot here?'

`Oh, yes,' replied Erik's voice, `the heat is unendurable!'

`But what does this mean?...The wall is really getting quite hot!...The wall is burning!'

`I'll tell you, Christine, dear: it is because of the forest next door.'

`Well, what has that to do with it? The forest?'

`Why, didn't you see that it was an African forest?'

And the monster laughed so loudly and hideously that we could no longer distinguish Christine's supplicating cries! The Vicomte de Chagny shouted and banged against the walls like a madman. I could not restrain him. But we heard nothing except the monster's laughter, and the monster himself can have heard nothing else. And then there was the sound of a body falling on the floor and being dragged along and a door slammed and then nothing, nothing more around us save the scorching silence of the south in the heart of a tropical forest!


  By PanEris using Melati.

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