Closer Than You Think. Darren O’Sullivan

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       Prologue

       28th August 2018

      Bethesda, North Wales

       The eighth

      He once read somewhere that people become who they are based on their environment and experiences. Their childhood memories, the interactions with friends and profound moments, good and bad, create the building blocks of existence, and once those blocks are set, they are solid, like a castle wall. Some people are kind, some passionate, some victors, some victims. Some are violent. He knew that more than most. And although people couldn’t fundamentally change, he knew, from personal experience, they could evolve. Transform. A switch could be thrown, showing a different way to be, without really being any different at all. It happened in nature: the caterpillar doesn’t change its DNA when it becomes a butterfly, but unlocks a part of itself that has lain dormant, patiently waiting for the right moment to create a cocoon. He had experienced several evolutions which had altered the direction of his thoughts and actions. But these didn’t change who he was. He would always be someone who killed.

      And it wouldn’t be long before he would kill again. A matter of an hour or so. He wanted to fulfil his purpose now, but knew he had to wait, be patient, and watch. Standing in the shadow of a wide tree, he looked into the eighth’s bedroom window, waiting to see her enter, and he thought about when he would be in that room with her just before he ended her life. He knew she would panic and cry and scream before he sedated and killed her, because they always did.

      He had planned to be outside her house after dark. But, with it being such a long time since he had done the one thing that made him feel alive, the thing that made him feel like he was flying, he arrived early and took time to enjoy that forgotten sense of anticipation. This also gave him a moment to reflect on the last person he’d failed to kill in this manner. A woman named Claire Moore. She played on his mind more than she should. The one that got away, so to speak.

      Before coming to Bethesda, he’d felt compelled to write a letter to Claire. He wanted to explain the reasons for his absence from the world. He revealed to her that after their eventful night a decade before, he needed to regroup, re-evaluate. After her, he never intended to kill in the same manner as he would tonight. But then he discovered she was moving on, leaving that night, their night, in May of 2008 behind. He wrote that he had learnt she was becoming the same person he felt the need to visit before. Which told him she was forgetting him, and he didn’t want his last survivor to forget him, because if she did, everyone else would.

      He knew, one day, she would read his letter. Perhaps, before then, he would write more. If so, he would let her read them all, right before he ended her life. He could have killed Claire Moore several times in the past few months but decided not to. He wanted to wait, savour the moment. He wanted her to know him as well as he knew her, and to understand his reasons.

      He wanted to be able to taste the connection they once shared on the tip of his tongue, as the light in her eyes faded. Claire Moore would die, as she nearly did by his hand all those years ago, but not yet, not until he was in buried in the centre of her soul once more. He wanted every voice to sound like his, every shadow to be one cast by his frame blocking the light. It was the reason he was in Bethesda, and why the woman whose window he looked into would die.

      The knowledge of what would happen within the next hour, and what would follow over the coming weeks – the speculation, the fear – coursed through his veins so hard his skin itched. He knew he needed to focus, to contain his excitement, until night staked its claim over the day. He centred on his breathing, regulated his heart rate. He pushed thoughts of what he would do to the woman in the house opposite him out of his head.

      Then she, the eighth, walked into her bedroom. He watched her step out of her work clothes, her light skirt falling effortlessly around her ankles. He enjoyed the sight of her slim frame in just her underwear, and the tingle that carried from behind his eyes to his crotch. It was a feeling he hadn’t felt in a very long time. There had been plenty of kills since 2008, but not one reignited the fire he remembered from a decade before. For the past ten years, when the itch had been unbearable, he had scratched it discreetly, and taken those no one cared for. The old and alone, the homeless, the migrant. But this one was to be a spectacle, like in those wonderful days in Ireland, putting him back where he belonged, in people’s minds, in Claire’s mind – a destructive force touching everyone like cancer.

      He missed being someone who was feared. In the days when a simple power outage caused widespread terror, he would often kill the electricity to a street, just to watch people panic, thinking they would be next. He especially enjoyed one occasion, three months after that night with Claire Moore, when a storm swept off the Atlantic and cut the power in Shannon. It caused the whole town to descend into terror, thinking he had visited. Police took to the streets, people locked their doors. News helicopters circled, expecting to see a house fire in the aftermath – his other calling card. But there was no fire, no death as he was in Greece on that day, on the island of Rhodes, enjoying the sunshine without a care in the world. He intended that trip to be one in which he learnt to be the man he would become, the man he had evolved into. But, seeing the news, the terror coming out of Ireland, drove the desire to kill once more. It was there, on the sun-bleached Aegean coast, that his metamorphosis began, as he felt a more primal calling. He needed to kill, not because it was his purpose, but for the thrill of it. After a brief search he found his victim, an unaccompanied male who had survived the Mediterranean Sea to start a new life in Europe, and he ended his life, luxuriating in the power he felt while doing so.

      But the power didn’t last long, because no one cared about this man’s death. And upon returning home to Ireland, he could sense СКАЧАТЬ