No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 corner 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