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    Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera: A Play in Two Acts
    Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera: A Play in Two Acts
    Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera: A Play in Two Acts
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera: A Play in Two Acts

    By Chris Cook

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    GLUT YOUR SOUL UPON HIS ACCURSED HIDEOUSNESS!

    Prepare for a phantasmagoric evening at the theatre! Master of horror, Chris Cook has penned a non-muscial version of Gaston Leroucx's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. This rendition is a faithful re-telling of the story of horribly deformed Erik and his abduction of reluctant soprano, Christine Daae. At plays' opening, a suspenseful ride of terror begins. . .

    The Paris Opera House has long been reported as a portal for hauntings, disturbances, and sightings of mysterious shapes and shadows. Disembodied voices emanate from the rafters and echo throughout the halls and cavernous sewers. Aftern an innocent man is killed, the two managers of the company are issued threats of continued murders.

    A self-described 'Opera Ghost' reveals his true identity and toturous mayhem ensues in a shocking climax. Lyricism abounds in this frightening portrait of unrequired love and adoration-turned-obsession. Bereft of commercial show-tunes and glitzy folderol, there is nothing Broadway about this Phantom. It is pure, unadulterated horror!

    "Chris, thanks for the book. This is great. Stay scared!"

    -George Romero, Director
    Night of the Living Dead
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateOct 31, 2012
    ISBN9781477282229
    Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera: A Play in Two Acts

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      Book preview

      Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera - Chris Cook

      PHANTOM OF

      THE OPERA

      US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

      AuthorHouse™

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.authorhouse.com

      Phone: 1-800-839-8640

      © 2012 by Chris Cook. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 10/20/2012

      ISBN: 978-1-4389-3649-9 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4389-3650-5 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-8222-9 (e)

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      THE COVER ART

      The striking face of Red Death on the front cover was rendered by visual artist and photographer, Martine Oger of Montreal, Canada. Mr. Cook gratefully acknowledges his contribution to the book.

      PROLOGUE

      On Monsters and Memory

      I was a child the first time I encountered the Phantom of the Opera. My recollection of the event is vivid, colorful, chilling, and thoroughly arresting. It has remained one of the special moments from my formative years. The Phantom has ingrained himself in my mind’s eye and left an indelible mark upon my creative conscience. And because the face of the classic monster is something I can never forget, I am inspired to ruminate about monsters and memory.

      A memory is an intangible part of a greater whole of an entire lifetime of experience. But the memory is not an unyielding creature. It is always bending, changing form and substance like mercury rolling off the uneven surface of an Alchemist’s counter. Memories, like mercury, cannot be grasped with a conventional pair of tweezers or the grip of a human hand. They can only be observed, or rather experienced by the beholder and are able to be viewed in the imagination from a safe distance. In dreams, we can also be either a spectator or a participant. What separates a memory from a dream is the beholder’s conviction that the former took place in the material world.

      Nightmares are those dreams wracked with terror that seem so real we could swear we actually lived the experience. I am fascinated by nightmares. Sure, I hate to have them. By their very nature, they play upon the individual dreamer’s subconscious mind and tap into those often deep, dark phobias to plague us throughout the night. But scary dreams fuel my imagination. In Phantom of the Opera, Christine’s abduction by Erik is a scary, dreamlike scene. It is a nightmare for her. In as much as she would like to escape Erik’s clutches, she cannot. He forces her to join him in his underground lair, to marry him and prepare to spend the rest of her life within the bowels of the opera-house sewers. She must be his captive. It is all, in a word, ‘horrific’.

      When something is ‘horrific’, it hits us on a gut level. It terrifies us and creates in our conscious minds an aura of dread. This is an uncomfortable feeling. Yet horror in film, books, art, music, plays, theme parks, and games is more popular now than it ever was. So, why in the world would we as consumers of the genre pay money to become, in a word, ‘uncomfortable’? I think it is because when we indulge in horror, we live fully in the experience. It is one thing to attend a lecture from which we learn and become more erudite. But to sit in a movie house and witness The Exorcist for the first time, well, we are living out a complete spectrum of human emotions. The fear we feel gives us a charge, a shock to the system. We all enjoy at least a little of the ol’ scary tale. What attracts many to these stories are the tales of the unexplainable.

      I am proud to belong to what I consider an elite group of brave souls who dive head-first into the cold, murky, and threatening waters of the misunderstood and the unexplained. It has been said of the genre of horror and the arts of the macabre that those who write and indulge in such fodder do it as some sort of psychological rehearsal for death. I don’t know if this is why I do it or not. I’m not entirely convinced that my raison d’etre as a writer can be ascertained on a conscious level. What I do know is that somehow writing about such creepies and crawlies, is a way of working everything out in my heart, soul, and psyche. It is ultimately rewarding and I daresay I discover much more about myself than perhaps I do about my fellow man. That which is unexplainable is what drives me to write what I do. And I’m not the only one fueled by paranormal phenomena.

      Who among us has never experienced the unexplained at a given point in our otherwise typical life at home? I offer that many is the time we encounter the door that appears to either open on its own volition or aversely close upon its own accord. Disembodied voices heard in the dead of night. The uneasy feeling that we are being watched is unsettling. Particularly if we are certain no living, breathing, being is around. The nightmare seems to be more real than ethereal. We have the sense of Am I awake or dreaming? Did I imagine that? Again, we get ‘uncomfortable’ yet still crave the thrill. As a result, we will forever consume large portions of horror and the paranormal from the buffet of pop culture.

      How dull, droll, and staid would our lives be without the occasional blight of uncertainty. How almost pointless would our lives be if we ventured forward to all endeavors without fear of contradiction or conflict. If we knew beyond the shadow of a doubt what entity lurked just around every corner or what being resides in the in the deepest darkness of our psyche or worse yet, behind the closet door. There is a little rubber-necker in us all. We all suffer a bit from the all-too-human condition of I don’t want to get into a fatal car accident, but if one happens I want to be there to see it.

      Perhaps we should all strive to rise above this rather base example of voyeurism. But truth be told, it is mankind’s nature to be repelled by death and then again

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