Phantom (eBook)

Susan Kay (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
306 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-100723-9 (ISBN)

Infos

'Phantom of the Opera fans no longer need to ponder what was in Erik's past, as Kay has created one for him in this deeply moving, poignant story. . . This sad, but beautiful, novel will be especially popular with [those] who have enjoyed the current musical . . . ' - School Library Journal 'A MUST READ! Haunting and riveting.'- Rave Reviews 'Do we really need another spin-off of Gaston Leroux's horror tale, The Phantom of the Opera? IF IT'S AS GOOD AS SUSAN KAY'S PHANTOM, YOU BET WE DO! - The Times Picayune 'A VICTORY! STAYS WITH YOU AFTER THE LAST PAGE IS TURNED . . .' - Palm Beach Post Phantom From birth, Erik is disfigured, at once blessed and cursed. Inborn genius lifts him to the heights of the mind, but a horrible deformity denies him both his mother's love and any chance at recognition. He escapes imprisonment to live a life on the run; he kills to be free. Finally, at the Paris Opera House, he encounters beautiful, talented Christine and defies the world and himself in a desperate attempt to love and be loved.

Textauszug

It was a breech birth; and so, right up to the very last moment of innocent ignorance, I remained aware of the midwife's boisterous, bawdy encouragement.

"Just the head now, my dear . . . almost there . . . your son is almost born. But now we must take great care. Do exactly what I say—do you hear me, madame?—exactly!"

I nodded and drew a panting breath, clinging to the towel that had been hung on the wooden bedstead behind my head. The candlelight threw huge shadows up to the ceiling, strange, leering shapes that were oddly threatening to me in the mindless delirium of pain. In that last, lonely moment of thrusting anguish it seemed to me that there was no one left alive in the world but me; that I would be shut up for all eternity in this bleak prison of pain.

There was a great bursting, tearing sensation and then peace . . . and silence; the breathless hush of stunned disbelief. I opened my eyes to see the midwife's face—rosy with exertion only moments before— slowly draining of color; and my housemaid, Simonette, backing away from the bed, with one hand pressed against her mouth.

I remember thinking: It must be dead. But sensing even in that confused split second before I knew the truth that it was worse than that . . . much worse.

Struggling to sit up against the damp pillow, I looked down at the bloody sheets beneath me and saw what they had seen.

I did not scream; none of us screamed. Not even when we saw it make a feeble movement and we realized that it wasn't dead. The sight of the thing that lay upon the sheet was so unbelievable that it denied all power of movement to the vocal cords. We only stared, the three of us, as though we expected our combined dumbstruck horror to melt this harrowing abomination back into the realm of nightmare where it surely belonged.

The midwife was the first to recover from her paralysis, swooping forward to cut the cord with a hand that shook so badly, she could hardly hold the scissors.

"God have mercy!" she muttered, crossing herself instinctively. "Christ have mercy!"

I watched with numb detached calm as she rolled the creature in a shawl and dropped it into the cradle that lay beside the bed.

"Run and fetch Father Mansart," she told Simonette in a trembling voice. "Tell him he had better come here at once."

Simonette wrenched open the door and fled down the unlit staircase without a backward glance at me. She was the last servant to live under my roof. I never saw her again after that terrible night, for she never came back even to collect her belongings from the attic bedroom. When Father Mansart came, he came alone.

The midwife was waiting for him at the door. She had done all that her duty required of her and now she was impatient to be gone and forget the part she had played in this bad dream; impatient enough, I observed detachedly, to have overlooked the matter of payment.

"Where's the girl?" she demanded with immediate displeasure. "The maid, Father ... is she not with you?"

Father Mansart shook his graying head.

"The little mademoiselle refused to accompany me here. She was quite out of her senses with fright and I could not persuade her otherwise."

"Well . . . that doesn't surprise me," said the midwife darkly. "Did she tell you that the child is a monster? In all my years I've never known anything like this . . . and I've seen some sights, as you well know, Father. But it doesn't look very strong, I suppose that's a mercy. . . ."

I listened incredulously. They were talking as though I weren't there, as though this dreadful thing had rendered me some kind of deaf and mindless idiot who had forfeited all right to human dignity. Like the creature in the cradle I had become an object of horrified discussion; I was no longer a person. ...

The midwife shrugged herself into her shawl and picked up her basket.

"I daresay it'll die. They usually do, thank God. And it's not made a cry, that's always a good hopeful sign. ... No doubt it'll be gone by morning. But at any rate it's none of my business now, I've done my part. If you'll excuse me, Father, I must be getting along. I promised to look in on another confinement. Madame Lescot—her third, you know. . . ."

The midwife's voice trailed away as she disappeared out into the darkness on the landing. Father Mansart closed the door behind her, put his lantern down on the chest of drawers, and laid his wet cloak across a chair to dry.

He had a comfortable, well-lived-in face, tanned and leathery from walking in all weathers; I suppose he must have been about fifty. I knew that he had seen many terrible things in the course of his long ministry; nevertheless I saw him recoil involuntarily with shock when he looked into the cradle. One hand tightened on the crucifix around his neck while the other hastily made the sign of the cross. He knelt in prayer for a moment before coming to stand by the side of my bed.

"My dear child!" he said compassionately. "Do not be deceived into believing that the Lord has abandoned you. Such tragedies as this are beyond all mortal understanding, but I ask you to remember that God does not create without purpose."

I shivered. "It's still alive . . . isn't it?"

He nodded, biting his full underlip and glancing sadly at the cradle.

"Father"—I hesitated fearfully, trying to summon the courage to continue—"if I don't touch it ... if I don't feed it . . ."

He shook his head grimly. "The position of our Church is quite clear on such issues, Madeleine. What you are suggesting is murder."

"But surely in this case it would be a kindness."

"It would be a sin," he said severely, "a mortal sin! I urge you to put all thoughts of such wickedness from your mind. It is your duty to succor a human soul. You must nourish and care for this child as you would any other."

I turned my head away on the pillow. I wanted to say that even God could make mistakes, but even in the depths of my despair I could not quite find the courage to voice such blasphemy.

How could this horrible abomination be human? It was as alien to me as a reptile—ugly, repulsive, and unwanted. What right had any priest to insist that it should live? Was this God's mercy . . . God's infinite wisdom?

Tears of exhaustion and outraged misery began to steal down my taut face as I stared at the striped wallpaper before my eyes. For three months I had struggled through an unending maze of tragedy, following the one candle that burned steadily just beyond my reach and beckoned me on—the small, flickering light of hope contained in the promise of new life.

Now that that candle had been extinguished there was only darkness; darkness in the bottomless, smooth-sided abyss of the deepest pit in hell. For the first time in my life I was alone. No one was going to shield me from this burden.

"I think it would be wise if I baptized the child at once," said Father Mansart grimly. "Perhaps you would like to give me a name."

I watched the priest move slowly around the room, a tall shadow in his black habit, collecting my porcelain washbasin and blessing the water within. I had meant to call a son Charles, after my dead husband, but that was impossible now, the very idea quite obscene.

A name ... I must decide upon a name!

A sense of unreality had descended upon me once more, a numb, unthinking stupor that seemed to paralyze my brain. I could think of nothing and at last, in despair, I told the priest to name the child after himself. He looked at me for a long moment, but he made no comment, no protest, as he reached down into the cradle.

"I baptize thee Erik," he said slowly, "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Then he leaned forward and placed the muffled bundle in my arms with a determination I dared not fight.

"This is your son," he said simply. "Learn to love him as God does."

Collecting his lantern and his cloak, he turned to leave me and presently I heard the old stairs creaking beneath his heavy tread, the front door closing behind him.

I was alone with the monster that Charles and I had created out of love.

Never in my life had I experienced such fear, such utter misery, as I did in that first moment when I held my son in my arms. I realized that this creature—this thing!—was totally dependent on me. If I left it to starve or freeze to death it was my soul that would burn for all eternity. I was a practicing Catholic and I believed only too seriously in the existence of hell's flames.

Fearfully, with a trembling hand, I parted the shawl that covered the child's face. I had seen deformities before—who has not?—but nothing like this. The entire skull was exposed beneath a thin, transparent membrane grotesquely riddled with little blue pulsing veins. Sunken, mismatched eyes and grossly malformed lips, a horrible gaping hole where the nose should have been.

My body, like some imperfectly working potter's wheel, had thrown out this pitiable creature. He looked like something that had been dead a long time. All I wanted to do was bury him and run.

Dimly, through my revulsion and terror, I became aware that he was watching me. The misallied eyes, fixed intently and wonderingly upon mine, were curiously sentient and seemed to study me with pity, almost as though he knew and understood my horror. I had never seen such awareness, such powerful consciousness, in the eyes of any newborn child and I found myself returning his stare, grimly fascinated, like a victim mesmerized by a rattlesnake.

And then he cried!

I have no words to describe the first sound of his voice and the extraordinary response it evoked...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.8.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-100723-8 / 0001007238
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-100723-9 / 9780001007239