A Distant Feeling Read online

  A Distant Feeling

  LES WOOD

  HarperVoyager

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

  Copyright © Les Wood 2015

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015. Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  Les Wood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

  Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780008149642

  Version: 2015-05-29

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A DISTANT FEELING

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  A DISTANT FEELING

  In the dead of night I lie awake listening to the dreams of my neighbours. I am so tired, yet I cannot sleep.

  I can hear Mrs. Collins in the flat across the hall. She is sitting in an old church surrounded by men in bright robes. I feel her fear. Upstairs, Mr O’Neill is in an overgrown garden with a welding torch in his hand. The young girl in the flat next door is drifting on an air bed on a wide, waveless sea, far from the land.

  I can hear all their thoughts as they blunder through the confusion of their night-time wanderings. In the background are the quieter sounds of people in the next building, people across the street, in cars that pass on the road outside.

  But as I lie here, I am searching, filtering the babble, seeking without hope for Ellie’s voice. Just to hear her one more time. To know I did the right thing. To ask her.

  If they knew, some might say I was a woman with a priceless gift. Others might say I was a madwoman. Others would be frightened; just as I am frightened. For I know what I have is neither gift nor madness.

  I hear thoughts.

  People who pass by in the street, people who sit with me on the bus, people who queue behind me in the supermarket.

  People who are asleep in my building.

  I hear all that passes through their heads. I swim through oceans of trivia and minutiae, fear and hate, passion and love, anger and sorrow. It surges over me, pouring from the minds of whoever is nearby.

  At first, when I was very small, the thoughts would come only when the signals must have been strong and focused; Christmas or birthdays, I would get flashes from my parents or friends of what was contained in the brightly wrapped presents. They would laugh and clap at my surprise and delight when I opened them, never realising that my reaction had nothing to do with what was in the boxes, but with the confirmation of what my feelings had told me. In the beginning these episodes had been like the first raindrops on a car windscreen - sporadic and isolated splashes. Then came the deluge. And it has never stopped.

  The day I met Ellie I was walking on Byres Road, pushing through the crowds to buy food for dinner. Their thoughts flurried around me like snowflakes in a gale.

  … faster than I thought, just as well that …

  … send such a letter, who on earth does she think she …

  … hope he takes me there. It would be so cool …

  … move, swing right, weave, pedal faster, squeeze past, look left, move …

  … she have to do that to me? It’s not as if I even felt anything …

  … stop, stop, stop, do that to me, stop, stop, stop, stop it, stop, stop, even felt anything, stop it, stop it, stop, Pink Floyd, Genesis, stop, stop it, stop, government …

  … Floyd, Genesis, Yes, ELP. Who buys that crap anymore?…

  …ory government and Cameron scares me. He’s just a …

  I walked with eyes straight ahead, concentrating on where I was going, working to smother the voices.

  But something jarred.

  I stopped and turned. Had I heard right? I looped back, replayed the sounds in my head. Had I just heard the same words from two different voices? Who was that muttering ‘stop, stop’ over and over again? Had I caught an echo of something else there?

  I looked along the street. The people jostled and side-stepped their way to wherever they were headed. A woman in a green coat slunk alongside the window of a butcher’s shop. She was young, like me. Her head was down and she was moving slowly. Something jarred again. I felt light-headed and a strange metallic taste came into my mouth. Something didn’t seem quite right here.

  I began to walk quickly back towards the butcher’s shop. New voices crammed into my head, but as I neared the woman in the green coat, hanging back a few paces behind her, I caught it again:

  …stop, stop it, stop it, stop, stop, stop it, stop, ginger bottles, stop, stop it, film for the camera, stop, please stop, stop…

  It’s definitely her, the one in the green coat, I thought.

  …stop, stop it, stop, the one in the green coat, stop, stop, stop it, stop…

  I froze. The metallic taste became stronger. Did I hear …?

  … stop, did I hear, stop, stop it, stop …

  I held my breath. She knew what I was thinking. She could hear me. I had always thought I was alone, unique, that no one else had what I had. True, there were television conjurers and mind-readers who claimed to be able to tell what people in the audience were thinking, but they were mere charlatans and tricksters. But this woman … I could hear the echoes of my own thoughts bounce back from her mind!

  I fell in step behind her, careful not to let her see me. She stayed close to the wall, walking slowly, never glancing up. Waves of distress and despair flooded from her … stop, stop it, please, stop, stop, stop it …

  I can hear you, I thought. You, in the green coat. You want it to stop, don’t you?

  … stop it, stop, stop, green coat, you want it to stop, stop, stop it …

  She hesitated for a fraction and then moved on. I thought again, You are wearing a green coat, you have long dark hair, you are walking past the entrance to the newsagent. I can hear you.

  … stop it … stop … newsagent … stop … I … can … hear… you.

  She halted and lifted her gaze. She turned to the window of the newsagent and raised one hand to touch the glass. She glanced up the street away from me, looking over the crowd. She turned back to the window and examined her reflection.

  Look to your right, I thought.

  She turned towards me and I saw tears trickling down her cheeks. I smiled at her and thought, Yes. Me. I can hear you.

  She took a step back, her hands searching for something to hold onto. She stumbled and I thought she might fall. I rushed forward and grabbed her arm, steadied her. ‘I’m alright,’ she said aloud. ‘Don’t touch me!’ Her voice rang in my head like a thousand bells pealing, so loud that, for once, the sound of all the other voices in my mind was suddenly muted.

  ‘Are
you OK?’ I asked. She held her hands to her ears. ‘Ellie, I only want to help.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I just know you are Ellie … and … and I have no idea how I know this. I’m sorry.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘And you are Chrissie,’ she said. ‘Not short for Christine, but Christal, which you hate.’ She started crying again, harder this time. She took my hand and searched deeply into my eyes. ‘Are you real?’

  ‘Yes I’m real, and, yes, my name is Chrissie,’ I said. ‘And I’m also shitting myself.’

  Ellie looked away, but let out a laugh, which she quickly stifled. You and me, both, she thought.

  People were edging past us, giving us stares, tutting and rolling their eyes because we were blocking their passage on the street. But the strangest thing was, they were quiet. Their thoughts were still there of course, but it was as if they were in another room. For once, it was difficult to make out what they were saying. Only Ellie’s voice, her thoughts, were coming through loud and clear.

  Can you still hear me? I thought.

  Yes, thought Ellie. No echoes this time, just Ellie’s own thoughts.

  I can still hear you too.

  Ellie wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffed back some snot from her nose. I’m sorry, she thought. Am I dreaming? My head feels so light. I have a taste in my mouth.

  Me too. I blinked back the tears I could feel welling up in my own eyes. No … no Ellie, you’re not dreaming. This is really happening. I don’t know how or why, but you’re just like me. I hear them all the time too, these people, everyone’s thoughts.

  Ellie pulled me closer and wrapped her arms around me tightly. Let me feel you, she thought. Let me know you’re real.

  I felt as if my breath had been sucked from my lungs, as if she was drawing my very life force into her own being. My mind was filled with the deepest melancholy, a black well of anguish from which there was no climbing out. Time stopped, and it seemed I stood on the very edge of an even deeper abyss. I rocked backwards and pulled away from her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought I might fall.’

  She stepped back and stared at me. ‘You’re the one,’ she said in small voice. She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Yes, it’s you … you can help me.’

  ‘Help you? Help you with what?’ I said.

  But I didn’t need to ask. Her thoughts drifted and blended into my own mind, like ink dropped into water. I knew it all.

  She wanted me to help her to die.

  ‘No, don’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘It’s what I want. It’s what I need.’

  Standing there on the street, the people pushing past us, I felt the weight of her world. The crushing fear and the self-loathing. The knowledge that she knew everything about everyone. The voices, unending, relentless. Wanting it to stop. The personal relationships that were rendered meaningless by her inability to not know the secrets of her friends and lovers. The boyfriends who lasted half an hour because she knew they were thinking of someone else, or wishing she had bigger tits, or a better hairstyle, or that she was going to be a one-night shag. The essential wickedness which slept in dark caverns in the minds of many people. Voices, voices. God, let it stop. Her colleagues at work – a hospital lab, boring, mundane – never spoke to her any more. She looked right through them. Finished their sentences for them before they even knew themselves what they were going to say. Voices. Sitting alone at coffee breaks. Joyless packed lunches behind the hospital plant room, away from the mental cacophony of the canteen. Back to her bedsit in the evening, no one to talk to, no one she could talk to. Neighbours stared, avoided. She was a weirdo.

  She was me.

  Running through all of this, like the skein in the fabric of her mind, was the certainty, the realisation, that this was all it ever would be. It was never going to end. This was the entirety of her life.

  But there was something else.

  She wanted it to stop. Forever.

  I knew all this without a single word being spoken. It filled my mind in an instant, and I knew then I would help her. I saw the whole thing mapped out before me and I knew I had no choice.

  You’ll do it, I know. I know you will. You know what this means. You feel the same way. You wish it was you.

  No, I don’t, I … don’t …

  Yes, you do, I feel it. I know it.

  And she was right. But I had never had the courage to even contemplate doing anything about it. I had developed my own strategies, my mind games, which allowed me to filter out the incessant internal chatter. They helped, but they never really stopped it. More than once, I, too, had been driven to the brink. And now that I could see what Ellie had planned, I was terrified.

  It’s … it’s not my time. Not yet, I thought

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But you are the one. You will help.’

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  Soon, she thought.

  The plan was simple and made sense. Ellie had thought about this for many long, sleepless nights. She knew exactly how it would work.

  It took her a week to set everything up, make the necessary preparations. We drove separately, long miles north to the cold, brittle highlands. Desolate mountains, like blades, punctured the landscape, and forests of bare trees pushed spidery branches into the sky. Ellie had arranged separate accommodation – two bed and breakfast houses at either end of a little village on the edge of a loch. She made sure we were not seen together.

  The morning came bright and clear with a new dusting of snow on the hills. I packed my rucksack and drove to the place we had arranged. We met at a layby off the single track road that wound its way between tiny lochans and copses, and climbed the stile in the deer fence to gain the stalker’s path leading into the wilderness.

  We walked without speaking for two or three hours. Ellie’s thoughts were focused on the task ahead. I concentrated on checking the route and making sure I knew how to make the return journey.

  Eventually, a small bothy appeared over a rise in the path. Sheep had grazed the surrounding grass to a smooth lawn and two white-painted boulders stood on either side of the door. Ellie lifted the left hand one, picked up the key which lay underneath, and let us in.

  The room had a dry, musty smell but was clean. A couple of chairs crouched beside the fireplace like dogs, and there was a wooden cot-bed set against the rear window. It was cold and our breath steamed in front of us like unattended kettles.

  Ellie closed her eyes and sighed. I come here a lot, she thought. It is quiet here. I can be alone. I looked at her. I could feel her peace. She turned, and smiled at me. This is a good place for me. It’s a good place to take my leave.

  I tried to say something, but my voice caught in my throat.

  Don’t be sad, Ellie thought. This is my release. It’s what I want. It’s a beautiful day and I’m glad you are here with me. You, one who knows.

  She pulled a chair to the front window. The view looked out onto Suilven, its long, serrated ridge stretching on the horizon like a ship at anchor. Ellie unpacked the rucksack, removing the equipment she had brought with her – equipment that would never be missed from the hospital lab.

  Don’t you want to wait a bit before … before …, I thought

  No. The waiting’s over. I never expected I would find someone like you. Someone who would not need to question why. Someone who knew. I’m sorry this all seems like a rush. You want me to wait. I should take my time, make certain. But you know, don’t you, you know the time is now. I’ve been waiting far too long. I want to go.

  She sat in the chair and opened a sealed plastic bag from the rucksack. She took out a catheter with a hypodermic needle attached at one end. Without any hesitation she removed the protective cap from the needle and, without a flinch, inserted it into a vein on the back of her hand. It was my turn next. To carry out the part she couldn’t do alone. I took a syringe from the plastic bag. On its side, the word pheno was written
in magic marker. Phenobarbitone, a sedative. I attached it to the catheter.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  Ellie looked up at me. ‘You know I am,’ she said. ‘This one to knock me out,’ she gestured to another syringe in the bag, ‘and the next one to finish it all.’ Her voice held no emotion. ‘One final thing,’ she rummaged in the rucksack and took out an old, battered iPod, placed the headphones on her head. ‘The last sounds of this life. The final voice.’ She gave a thin smile, nodded to me and pressed play. From her mind, I could hear the music, carried to me by whatever it was that made us the way we were. Richard Strauss – ‘Im Abendrot’, from Four Last Songs.

  Ellie closed here eyes and settled back in the chair. I took a deep breath, swallowed hard and pushed the syringe, emptied its contents into Ellie’s circulation. Almost immediately her muscles relaxed in a slow deflation. The music in my head continued, the voice soaring and floating as I took the second syringe from the bag and connected it to the catheter. This syringe, I knew, contained potassium chloride, a chemical to stop Ellie’s heart. Her head slumped against the back of the chair, slack-jawed and motionless. I knelt beside her and pushed the fluid from the syringe into her body. Her breathing fluttered and slowed, and after a while, with a last elongated exhalation, ceased. The music became fainter, more distant; two high flutes rising like birds above the horns and strings before melting into the closing chords and finally fading to nothingness.

  I waited. Made sure it was over.

  Around me, for the first time in many, many years, a silence descended. Deep and absolute, a consequence of the sheer solitude, it settled on us like a thrown sheet on a newly made bed.

  I packed everything away, left no trace of what had happened. I arranged Ellie’s hands in her lap, raised her head and closed her mouth. I wanted her to look at peace.

  I hoisted the rucksack and took one last look at Ellie sitting as if watching through the window at the changeless mountains. I turned the handle of the door and, as I did so, a voice, small and infinitely distant, spoke in my head.