No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale

by Pope, Christine

  At some point during that evil time his mother left, never to return. Since he had hardly seen her anyway, he did not miss her that much, but he heard voices raised, doors slammed in distant hallways, then brooding quiet. Her infrequent visits ceased. His father would make an obligatory stop every evening, when they engaged in stilted conversation regarding his lessons, but he never stayed longer than ten minutes; you could time his visits by the clock.

  Other than that, his only personal contact had been Ennis, the butler, and a steady stream of nannies, nurses, and doctors, all of them paid extremely well to never speak of their young charge or his lamentable condition. Some of them never saw his disfigurements at all—up until the age of fourteen, his face had been perennially swathed in bandages and gauze from the unending surgeries. He supposed the procedures would have gone even longer than that, had it not been for the outspoken young plastic surgeon from UCLA.

  He closed his eyes. The man’s voice and face were as clear to him as if they had last spoken yesterday, but more than twenty-five years had passed since then. That doctor had been the only one with the strength or integrity to stand up to his father, the only one in a long parade of distinguished surgeons from Beverly Hills to Pasadena.

  Doctor Santos. Not so long out of his fellowship, new on the staff at UCLA, but already famed for his skill at reconstructive surgery for those with birth defects or disfigurements caused by accidents. He was a slight, dark man with piercing eyes under straight, expressive brows and the fine hands of a concert pianist. Apparently he spent his summer vacations doing pro bono work in South America, repairing burn scars, harelips, and cleft palates, even performing amazing reconstructive work on those suffering from neurofibromatosis, commonly known as “Elephant Man’s disease.”

  Even now the irony struck him. Perhaps Dr. Santos could have helped John Merrick, but he himself was beyond the doctor’s skill.

  He’d gotten very good at hiding in corners, skulking in shadows. So it was no problem to lurk in the hallway outside his father’s office, listening to the conference between his father and Dr. Santos. He had noted that even the earnest doctor had made the long drive from Westwood to Pasadena for this meeting, instead of having them come to his own offices for a consultation.

  “Enough,” Dr. Santos said. “I won’t be a party to any more butchery on that poor boy’s face.”

  He couldn’t see their faces, but he knew that his father would allow no betraying expression. He’d inherited a massive fortune, but he also had the killer instincts to build on it in his lifetime. “If not you, then someone else.”

  “Quite possibly,” Dr. Santos replied. “I have no doubt that you could find someone else to take on the task—although it appears you’ve already run through most of the reputable plastic surgeons in the Los Angeles area. But all that would do is drain more from your bank account.”

  His father was silent.

  After an awkward pause, Dr. Santos continued, “And it’s apparent that’s of no real concern to you. How much have you spent over the years? A million? Two? A drop in the bucket, maybe, but if no one else will be honest with you, then I will. There’s just no more that can be done.”

  “Your opinion.”

  “Yes, my opinion, and a damn good one. I’ve read the boy’s history. Forty-five surgeries—forty-five, and the kid’s not even fifteen yet! For God’s sake, there’s nothing left to operate on!”

  He could hear the shift of his father’s body against the leather desk chair. “What do mean, nothing?”

  Dr. Santos paused. Then he said, “There is so much scar tissue, so much damage to the underlying bone structure, that you risk creating wounds that will never heal. Do you want him to run the risk of infection for the rest of his life? At least now he has half a face. Better that than nothing.”

  “I see. And that is your final opinion?”

  “Yes. The boy needs to learn to live with what he has. It’s a tragedy, but causing further disfigurement or risking death would be much worse.”

  A long, heavy silence. Then his father said, “Thank you, doctor. You may leave your bill with Ennis on the way out.”

  A short laugh from Dr. Santos. “This one’s on me, Mr. Deitrich. Consider it to be part of my charitable work.”

  “We don’t take charity, Dr. Santos,” his father replied, his tone frosty.

  “Guess you don’t need it, do you, Mr. Deitrich?” A pause as he gathered up his briefcase. “Then consider it an early birthday gift for Erik.”

  The doctor’s imminent departure necessitated a hasty retreat down the hallway before his eavesdropping could be detected, but Erik had heard enough. Although it was disconcerting to hear that nothing more could be done, as he’d been fed false hopes for years, at the same time he felt liberated. No more surgeries. No more nights of pain where he stubbornly resisted the opiates they’d left for him, afraid even then of what they could do to his mind.

  Erik lifted the cognac to his lips and drank. Yes, the surgeries had finally stopped, but the nightmares continued. Not every night, of course, and of varying intensity, but he had soon come to view sleep as an enemy. At least the pain had finally subsided, and he’d been able to live a somewhat normal life—as normal as a life completely bounded by the walls of his father’s estate could be. He had tutors and music instructors, even a fencing teacher who was paid very well to not question why his pupil never removed his fencing mask.

  The music lessons were his favorite; by the age of five he could master original scores as if he had written them himself, and after a whispered suggestion from Ennis, who had heard Erik singing to himself when he thought no one could overhear him, a vocal coach came twice a week. No comment was ever made about the bandages, or later the mask, although they both interfered with his singing, but Erik had learned very early on that those who questioned or commented were soon dismissed, their dismissal accompanied by subtle threats if the Deitrich boy’s physical condition were ever mentioned again. And it never was. No one had the courage, it seemed, to take on the Deitrich fortune.

  His father had died when Erik was just eighteen, of a sudden thrombosis after one of his frequent business trips to New York. There wasn’t even enough time to call Dr. Maddox, the family physician, although all the proper steps were taken, paramedics appearing by magic to transport his father to Huntington Memorial, where he was declared dead on arrival. A flurry of activity followed, ending with the discovery that, with the exception of minor bequests to a few distant relatives and ten million to his mother—he suffered a mild shock when he realized she was still alive—Erik was the sole possessor of a fortune that totaled almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.

  That was more than any eighteen-year-old could be expected to handle, and of course he wasn’t. An army of lawyers had been appointed to manage the money, and the household continued to be run by Ennis, and in a way, very little changed. He dismissed his tutors and decided to earn his degree in history through correspondence, which he did easily and in fewer than three years. He chose history simply because it seemed mildly more interesting than any of the other choices. Then, because he thought it might be a good idea to know more about money and how to manage it, he got another degree in accounting. Since he had a monthly allowance equal to most people’s yearly incomes, he toyed with the stock market, earned a considerable fortune, then socked it away in a separate account, unsure what to do with it. On a whim he donated a large amount to the charity for which Dr. Santos did his pro bono work, thus ensuring many more corrected harelips and cleft palates, but truthfully, he was bored. What good was it to be able to play a huge classical repertoire from memory if no one was there to hear it? What difference did it make that he had the voice of an angel, if the only living beings he could serenade were the squirrels that inhabited the trees outside his bedroom window?

  His eyes now adjusted to the darkness in his room, Erik looked over at his bed, the heavy carved four-poster rising blackly in the dimness, and one c
orner of his mouth twitched. At least not all his memories of that bed were evil....

  At twenty-one he had made the unexpected and pleasant discovery that there were women in the world who would overlook all sorts of physical limitations if enough money were involved. Apparently the request that the act take place in total darkness and that there be no touching of his face was routine, even tame compared to what some of these women had experienced. But his first—a lovely redhead named, appropriately, Amber—had introduced him to lovemaking skillfully and even tenderly, and what could have been a tawdry experience became instead a night of revelations. She was with him that night, and several more over the next few months, until she told him—with possibly a trace of regret in her tone—that she was about to take the bar and was going to, as she put it, “quit the business.”

  Even now the recollection made him shake his head. Only in Los Angeles, he thought, could a sharp-thinking redhead with amazing legs put herself through law school as a $1,000-a-night call girl. Amber had been replaced by Sheila, and Kelli after her, until he could no longer remember all their names. Of course he had been careful to be moderate—only seeing them once or twice a month—but even so the parade of faces and bodies became blurred as the years passed.

  Then, only a short time later, he suffered a shock in his carefully managed universe. Although he was necessarily cut off from any form of public entertainments, he still liked to amuse himself by reading the arts sections of the national magazines, if only to give him ideas of what he could use to expand his massive library of recorded music. And what he saw there, along with one photo, was a review of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest musical to cross the Atlantic, The Phantom of the Opera.

  He was familiar with the story, of course, and had caught the original silent version with Lon Chaney on late-night television more than once, along with the less distinguished remake starring Claude Rains. He had been moved by the story—considering his situation, it would have been odd if he hadn’t—but he had never particularly identified with the character. Disfigured he might be, but at least he was able to hide from the world in the mansion his grandfather had built, not in the damp cellars of an opera house.

  The photo in the magazine, however, showed a very different image from Lon Chaney’s gruesome, if remarkable, death’s head makeup, or the smooth curved mask that had covered almost all of Claude Rains’ face. This Phantom wore a mask that covered only half his face.

  Only half his face. He could remember the shock of that moment as if it had happened just minutes before instead of more than two decades ago. With a shaking hand he had reached up, fingers spread, to encompass the ruined right side of his face. Of course. How perfect, how elegant. Up until then he had worn an altered surgical mask that covered him from cheekbone to jaw on that one side—a mask that still exposed the scarring on his forehead and the mess that was his right eye socket—but as he never went out anyway and the only person to ever see him was Ennis, the butler, its shortcomings were overlooked in favor of the comfort factor. But this mask—

  A few carefully placed phone calls to New York resulted in a box of gleaming masks arriving on his doorstep only days later. Of course he was unable to have a life cast taken of his face to ensure the most perfect fit, but he had compromised by requesting a copy of all of the masks made for the New York production, including Michael Crawford’s and all of the understudies’ masks. The Crawford mask didn’t fit, unfortunately—it was a touch too broad—but one of the others suited him well enough, with a little extra padding on the sensitive brow and upper cheekbone areas.

  That was the beginning of an obsession that soon consumed him, devoured almost every waking moment for more than five years and still had its grip on him even today. One cast CD was played into scratched ruin, then another. Efforts were made to procure recordings from around the world, even before they were commercially available. His library soon burst with bootlegs—both audio and video—of the show. He collected press clippings, books, sent to New York for every souvenir the show offered, wired to London for the ones he couldn’t procure in New York, went so far as to have an unused back parlor gutted and fitted with a small pipe organ and ornate candelabras in an effort to duplicate one of the sets from the show.

  If he had stopped to think about it, he supposed he would have shocked himself with the depths of his obsession, but it all seemed perfectly natural and, if anything, at least a constructive outlet for his energies. The compulsion at least allowed him to think of something besides his isolation, his utter loneliness.

  And then the show came to Los Angeles.

  Up until then he had resigned himself to never being able to see it in person. There was no way a trip to New York would be feasible; he couldn’t allow himself the vulnerability of being that far from home. But with the show only a little more than ten miles over the hills to downtown Los Angeles, the thought of not seeing it was pure torture. The terror of facing crowds was nothing compared to the agony of being deprived of the one thing he had desired for so long. Still, the planning took some time, and it wasn’t until the show had entered the last year of its run that he finally got to see it.

  With Ennis and a handsomely compensated LVN as his companions, he had ventured out, face well-covered by a surgical mask and dark glasses, a wheelchair as his excuse for the mask and the nurse, to a Saturday evening show. Unfortunately, the subterfuge of the wheelchair forced him into a slightly less desirable chair-accessible seat, but that was a small price to pay. The lights went down, the first chords of the overture were struck, and the magic began.

  Afterward he was shaking, and immediately replaced the dark glasses so his companions could not see the tears that stained his cheeks. They were forced to wait until the theater had mostly emptied before they could wheel the chair out to the street where his limousine waited. He remembered being angered by the delays, wanting nothing more than to return to his home, to the comfortable dimness of his suite. To be alone again, away from prying eyes.

  His wish was granted soon enough, even though at the time the wait seemed interminable. Once he was safely in his chambers, he flung the dark glasses into a corner and sat huddled in a chair by the window, utterly spent. Finally his loneliness had been given a shape and form. Finally he was unable to deny any longer what he had been craving for so many years.

  “Christine….” he had whispered, finally raising his eyes to the moonlit gardens beyond the mullioned windows. What was it like, to burn for a woman in such a way, to descend into hell, only to be redeemed by her kiss?

  He had to know. It seemed as if until this night he had only been half alive, haunted by something that should be there. Those brief encounters with the women he had paid over the years suddenly disgusted him. What were they but only bodies, bodies paid well to satisfy an animal craving that had nothing of soul behind it?

  That night he made a vow. Until he had his Christine, he would never know the touch of another woman. Until he could find the soul that answered the emptiness inside him, he would not rest.

  Little had he known, he thought now, just how long that search would take. She had to be perfect, the modern-day embodiment of Christine Daaé. It was not just the voice, but the face, and not just the face, but a certain innocence, an attribute not as easy to find these days.

  A few years down the line he hired Jerome, who came with sterling recommendations from several of Erik’s lawyers. A former private investigator, Jerome was more than happy to abandon his practice for a far more lucrative exclusive contract with a mad multimillionaire. If said millionaire made the odd request that he locate a local voice student with dark curly hair, fair skin, blue eyes, and a pure coloratura, and then dig up every fact about her, well, he was being compensated handsomely enough that he was more than happy to find out everything he could. It also caused Jerome to do more loitering around college campuses than he probably would have cared to do otherwise, but a man could put up with a lot when he was being paid in the low s
ix figures to do so.

  There had been a few near-misses over the years. One time the girl was physically perfect but was, unfortunately, a mezzo. Another had a lovely voice and was quite beautiful, but she was a flaming redhead, and apparently that wouldn’t do at all. Yet another had a notable voice and a head of gorgeous brown curls, but the presence of a longtime boyfriend and a penchant to smoke the occasional joint on the weekend combined to make her completely undesirable.

  And then, after Erik had almost given up hope, Christine Daly was found. It was unfortunate she hadn’t been located earlier, since she was now in her senior year at USC, but apparently she had transferred in midway through the junior year, and Jerome had missed her. Since he traveled amongst a huge number of campuses all over Southern California, it wasn’t completely surprising that she had been overlooked—Jerome had paid someone to hack the music department’s records, and her name had appeared on the list said hacking produced, but her student photo was missing. It wasn’t until he visited the campus himself and saw her leaving a class that his interest was caught. From then it was a simple matter to gather all the information he could about her, from her orphaned state to her precarious financial situation, her utter aloneness in the world. Now all Jerome had to do was get her voice on tape, to prove finally that this was the girl Erik had been seeking for so long.

  After that, well—Erik lifted the cognac and drank deeply, this time savoring the aromatic warmth that caressed the back of his throat and tickled his nostrils. If her voice truly matched her looks, then she would be his, even if she didn’t know it yet. As for Randall Cagney—he was an irritant, a nuisance, nothing more. He could be dealt with. But it was important to procure Christine, and soon, before hers and Randall’s relationship could progress much further. The thought of her untouched beauty was deeply arousing, and he did not want it sullied by Cagney’s common gropings.