The Phantom of the Opera Exists, and He's in Love with Me

I never believed in ghosts until I heard him sing.

The Paris Opera House had been my dream, my escape from a mundane life in America. When the prestigious Académie de Musique offered me a position as their new soprano understudy, I abandoned everything—my apartment, my cautious boyfriend, my predictable future—and boarded a plane to France without looking back.

But from the moment I stepped onto that ancient stage, I felt eyes upon me. Burning, possessive, eternal.

They said the Phantom was a legend, a story to frighten chorus girls and sell tickets to tourists. The older performers would whisper about Box Five, always empty yet somehow occupied. About the notes written in red ink that appeared beneath dressing room doors. About the voice that echoed through the catacombs when the theatre fell silent.

They were wrong about him being a legend. He was real, he was watching, and somehow, impossibly, he had chosen me.

***

The first note appeared three weeks after my arrival.

I found it tucked into the mirror frame of my modest dressing room, the paper yellowed and elegant, the handwriting precise yet somehow desperate:

*Your voice carries sorrow you haven't yet learned to name. I could teach you to transform that pain into something magnificent. Come to the stage at midnight. Come alone.*

I should have reported it. Should have laughed it off as a prank from jealous ensemble members. Instead, I found myself standing center stage at midnight, my heart hammering against my ribs, the darkness of the empty theatre pressing against me like velvet.

"You came."

The voice seemed to emerge from everywhere and nowhere—from the gilded ceiling, from the orchestra pit, from inside my own chest. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, rich and haunting, carrying centuries of loneliness in each syllable.

"Show yourself," I demanded, proud that my voice didn't tremble.

"Not yet." A pause. "Are you afraid?"

"Should I be?"

Silence. Then, impossibly soft: "Everyone else is."

"I'm not everyone else."

A sound that might have been laughter echoed through the empty seats. "No. No, you're not."

***

The lessons began that night.

He would never let me see his face, always remaining in shadow, always keeping impossible distance. But his voice guided mine, coaxing notes from my throat I never knew I could produce. He taught me to breathe from depths I didn't know existed, to feel music not as sound but as something living, something dangerous.

"Music is not meant to be safe," he told me one night, his voice closer than usual, almost a whisper against my ear though I could see nothing in the darkness. "Music is meant to consume. To possess. To make you feel things that should terrify you."

"Like you?" I asked.

Another long silence. "Yes. Exactly like me."

I should have been afraid. My colleagues certainly were when they noticed the changes in me—the dark circles under my eyes, the distant look, the way I would sometimes pause mid-sentence, tilting my head as if listening to something only I could hear.

"You're spending too much time alone in this theatre," warned Marie-Claire, the lead soprano whose position I was understudying. "There are stories, you know. About girls who become... obsessed."

"With what?"

She lowered her voice. "With him. The ghost. He's taken them before. Some say he drives them mad. Others say..." She crossed herself. "Others say worse."

"What could be worse than madness?"

Marie-Claire's eyes met mine, and I saw genuine fear there. "Loving him back."

***

The first time I saw his face, I was alone in the catacombs beneath the theatre.

I had followed the sound of music—a piano playing something so achingly beautiful it made my chest hurt. Down forgotten staircases, through passages that shouldn't exist, past underground lakes that reflected candlelight like scattered stars.

He sat at an ancient piano, his back to me, his fingers moving across the keys with desperate grace. He wore a black cloak, a white mask covering half his face.

"You shouldn't have come here," he said without turning.

"I know."

"You should run."

"I know that too."

Slowly, so slowly, he turned. The masked half of his face was beautiful—sharp cheekbones, full lips, eyes the color of smoke. But even in the dim light, I could see the scarred skin that crept past the mask's edge, could imagine what lay beneath.

"Now you see," he whispered. "Now you understand why I hide."

I walked toward him. I couldn't help it. Something beyond reason, beyond self-preservation, pulled me forward.

"I see a man who creates the most beautiful music I've ever heard," I said. "I see someone who has been alone so long he's forgotten he deserves not to be."

His hand caught my wrist before I could touch him—his grip cold, his fingers trembling. "You don't know what I am. What I've done."

"Then tell me."

His eyes searched mine, and I saw something break behind them—some wall he had built over decades, perhaps centuries, crumbling in a single moment.

"I was born in this theatre," he said, his voice barely audible. "My mother was a singer. My father... was a monster who wore a human face. I inherited both their gifts—music and monstrosity. When the world rejected me, I descended into these shadows. And here I have remained, watching, waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

His free hand rose, hovering near my face but not quite touching, as if I were something precious and forbidden. "For someone who wouldn't run when they saw the truth. For someone whose voice could match the darkness in mine."

"And have you found her?"

His eyes burned into mine. "You tell me."

***

We existed between worlds after that night.

I would perform my duties during the day—rehearsals, fittings, the endless politics of the opera world. But at night, I descended into his kingdom of shadows and music.

He showed me wonders hidden beneath the theatre—a lake that glowed with phosphorescent light, chambers filled with instruments from centuries past, manuscripts of music that had never been performed, would never be performed, written only for the darkness.

And he showed me himself, slowly, painfully—removing the mask inch by inch, letting me see the scars that mapped his face like a landscape of suffering. The first time I kissed the ruined skin of his cheek, he wept without sound, his entire body shaking.

"Why?" he asked. "Why don't you fear me?"

"Because fear and love aren't as different as people pretend," I answered. "Both make your heart race. Both keep you awake at night. Both make you do impossible things."

He pulled me close, and I felt the centuries of loneliness radiating from him like heat. "If you stay with me, you'll belong to two worlds. The light above, and the darkness below. It will tear you apart."

"Then let it."

***

But the worlds could not remain separate forever.

Marie-Claire fell ill the night of our biggest performance—Faust, appropriately enough. They needed an understudy. They needed me.

As I stood in the wings, waiting for my cue, I felt him watching from Box Five. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was there, as certain as I knew my own heartbeat.

I stepped onto the stage and began to sing. But I wasn't singing for the audience, for the critics, for my career. I was singing for him. Every note was a love letter written in sound, every breath a confession of the impossible thing that had grown between us.

The audience rose to their feet when I finished. The applause was thunderous. But I heard only silence—the profound silence of Box Five.

I found the note in my dressing room after:

*You have outgrown my shadows. The world above needs your voice more than I do. Forget me. Live in the light. Please.*

*—E*

I ran to the catacombs. Through the passages, past the lake, to the chamber where he always waited.

It was empty. The piano sat silent. The candles had been extinguished.

But on the piano bench lay his mask.

I picked it up, holding it against my chest, feeling something shatter inside me that I knew would never fully heal.

***

That was three months ago.

I am the lead soprano now. They call me a sensation, a revelation. They write articles about my "mysterious melancholy" and "haunted beauty."

They don't know I still descend to the catacombs every night. They don't know I sit at that silent piano and sing into the darkness, hoping, praying, begging for an answer that never comes.

But sometimes—sometimes—I hear a voice join mine. Distant, echoing, impossible to locate. A harmony that makes my blood sing and my heart break simultaneously.

He's still there. Still watching. Still loving me in the only way he knows how—from the shadows.

And every night, I return to those shadows, because I learned something in his arms that I can never unlearn: the light means nothing if you've tasted the dark.

The mask sits on my dressing table now. I touch it before every performance.

Someday, I tell myself. Someday he'll come for me again.

And when he does, I won't let him disappear.

***

Last night, I found a new note. The handwriting trembled more than before, the ink darker, almost desperate:

*I tried to let you go. I cannot. I am yours, always have been, always will be. Meet me where we began. Midnight. I will finally show you everything—if you still want to see.*

Midnight approaches. The empty stage awaits.

And I find myself wondering: when you love a ghost, do you become a ghost yourself?

I suppose I'm about to find out.