Page 45 of Our Strange Duet

I cringed from his railing, bringing my knees up to my chest and scrunching my eyes closed. I squeezed them as tight as I could, but his face was still imprinted on the back of my mind.

For the rest of my life, I would never not see that face.

There’d been no nose, only a cavity where one should have grown, offering a horrible glimpse at all the things a body was meant to hide beneath flesh and cartilage. Long, angry striations scarred down his cheek, twisting the skin that remained into knotted cords that were a ghastly mess of deep port wine and bone white.

And his eye…

His skull…

“Damn you!” he howled, striking out at a music stand and sending an explosion of papers into the air. He let out a feral scream and attacked the marble plinth displaying the violin. It crashed to the ground, cracking the stone. With an ugly twang, the violin splintered. Strings sprang free of their tension and lashed out like whips. One struck my cheek, drawing blood. I was too terrified to protest.

Still he raged, stomping deeper into the room as he knocked over candles and hurled a set of architectural models at the automaton man who had been staring at his reflection in a mirror last night. Now, as if spurred on by his master’s distress, the figure had come to stilted life, smashing his head into the mirror over and over as broken shards of glass rained down. My world shrank to nothing but the sound of the Angel’s storm, the clatter of his chaos. There was nothing to do but hunker down and wait out the fury.

Finally, he collapsed, grabbing at his chest in such a horribly human gesture I felt compelled to go to him. No matter how appalling the things he’d said, no matter how terribly he’d frightened me, no one deserved to suffer through that much pain alone.

“Erik!” I cried, acting without a thought for myself, concerned for only him.

He froze, as if I’d struck him. Then, slowly, so slowly I almost couldn’t register the movement, he turned to me.

“What did you say?”

I couldn’t find the words to answer, and we simply stared at each other for a long, long time. He was hidden away in a shroud of shadows, but I could just make out the glint of his shrunken eye. I could feel the weight of it upon me, as heavy as a tomb.

“Is this what you wanted to see?” he whispered, and I’d never heard him sound so small, so childlike and wounded.

What had I done?

I didn’t understand it.

I knew his name, but he’d told it to me in a dream. But his face…This was not the face that had been with me then. In the dream—Had it been a dream? How could it have been?—he’d been beautiful. Beatifically so. He’d been angelic, in all things.

But now…

But this…

“I’m sorry.” It came out a gasp, a sob. For me. For him. For the situation I’d placed us both in.

He scuttled back into the shadows’ hold.

“This must be stranger than you dreamt it, yes? Too loathsome and foul?”

When his questions came, they didn’t sound from where he’d disappeared, but from along another wall, at the far side of the room.

I could only look down, pushing the tears from my face, stewing in my own misery. We’d had something astonishing, something precious, and, like a foolish child unaware of her surroundings, I’d destroyed it, smashing it to wreckage and ruin.

“You can’t even bear to look at me now.” His voice had wandered to the pipe organ, though I couldn’t see his figure anywhere.

Fresh tears sprang to my eyes. I had broken it. He’d disappeared once more, haunting me with the power of his voice. I would never see him again.

“Am I now to be a monster to you, Christine? A repulsive carcass? A gargoyle burning in hell?”

“No!” I nearly shouted in my haste to push myself to standing. His voice had drifted to the great mirror, and I hurried after it, eager to show him my penance. “You’re not. Angel. I promise you. You’re not.”

“Did you…did you know that even the angels of hell secretly dream of heaven?” He hissed, and this sound of pain seemed to come out of the monkey automaton. “I frightened you…”

I crossed to the papier-mâché box and ran a gentle finger along the monkey’s velvet sleeve. “Your anger did,” I admitted readily. “But your face…it startled me…and it shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. The Bible tells of angels with eyes of wheels and with multiple faces, like lions and eagles. I should have known you’d be just as extraordinary.”

A choked sound of disbelief came from behind me, and when I turned, I saw he was exactly where he’d last been, crouching in the shadow of a chair. He looked so…fragile. So wounded and raw, like a cowering, abused animal.