The assassin had developed a conscience, well not exactly a conscience.
For some time now, he’d been hearing voices. Voices of the dead; voices of his victims. It was some kind of telepathy, although it was coming from the other side, from beyond the grave. At first he saw it as a talent; a gift that he hadn’t known he had. They came from locked trunks in attics, oil drums in abandoned farm sheds, sealed crates in warehouses and from several plots of compacted soil scattered around the outskirts of town. So many of them. At times it would be just one of them, at others, at least a dozen of them all gabbling away at once. Most of it came down to complaints with a lot of really bad language. In a strange way he was getting so used to them that ignoring what they were saying became easy. He could listen or not. He could choose.
At least, this was the case until his attention was grabbed by the word ‘survivor’ coming through the noise from time to time. He only heard the word when there were others all speaking at the same time. It felt as though he was being teased with it.
Then, the time came when the silence that had gone on for a while was broken. The voice, unlike the others, seemed so calm. It was saying, “Yes, you’ve got it. I’m a survivor. You need to know that it’s not just the dead that can accomplish a direct transference of thoughts. You botched it with me when you were disturbed and you left me for dead. I recognised you the night you brought out the silenced gun and pointed it at me. Right now I’m in the main police headquarters in town, having given the police your full description, name and address. They are on the way to you now.”
He sat thinking about what he had heard for quite some time.
In fact, the loner had just finished his frozen TV dinner when he saw the blue light flashing through the curtains.