In The Eye Of The Beholder

Chapter 1

The thing that always remained in the listener’s thoughts after a conversation with Thomas Powell was the intensity of his belief. No matter that the content of the exchange might appear ludicrous, fanciful and sometimes simply barking mad, the conviction generated by Thomas was that it was all true, every word of it. This frequently left behind an impression which was both fascinating and at the same time somewhat disturbing.

Ryan Ross’s first contact with Thomas had been when, as a psychology student, Ryan had worked with Dr. Sebastian Ingram at a small psychiatric assessment unit in the north of England. It was Ryan’s first ever clinical placement and as a keen and eager to please student he was filled with both the enthusiasm and optimism of any 18 year old starting out in a career they imagined to be full of promise and intrigue. Even the language of psychiatry and psychology, full of words like delusion, hallucination and phobia held for Ryan a sense of the mysterious.

Ingram had told Ryan that if he ever wanted to see a textbook example of a paranoid delusional system then Thomas Powell was his man. “Long time”, said Sebastian, smiling, “since I’ve seen a system so absolutely concrete” He looked at Ryan with the paternal, benevolent look that Ryan would become accustomed to in the coming months, chuckled quietly and said “Never doubting Thomas I call him.” 

Approaching Thomas initially with the apprehension that accompanies most inexperienced young people in their first dealings with those labelled as insane, Ryan had asked tentative, naïve and often-superficial questions.  Somehow, however, even these inexperienced and cumbersome approaches had ignited Thomas’s need to talk and Ryan found himself the recipient of a rambling verbal collage of words and phrases which appeared senseless and almost incoherent but full of terror passion and ultimately warning.

The pictures Ryan drew in his mind from the stream of comment delivered by Thomas Powell was to haunt his thoughts for some time to come, not because of the clarity of description but rather really from the opposite. It was the snatches of pictures glimpsed but only to be guessed at which made the impact. These pictures of torment and fear were so intense that Ryan discovered the old cliché that hairs stand up on the back of the neck was ultimately true.

Although he presented as a blue eyed, blonde haired young man of around 20 years old Thomas’s eyes in a strange way appeared to offer to Ryan a glimpse into a tortured, despairing and ultimately hunted soul exhausted from the chase and ultimately full of despair at the end of a long difficult road. After their first contact Thomas Powell returned to his single room in the assessment unit and continued to scribble furiously in his notepad and yell out warnings about a breach in the defences and the unstoppable tide of the hunters whilst Ryan discussed with Ingram what it all meant.

“ The usual inane psychotic rambling common in paranoid states” said. “The delusional system is characterised by a belief in some type of conspiracy and is not able to be shaken even when assailed by absolute logic.” Ryan remembered that Ingram had smiled, “It’s classic stuff”

 Ryan had used the text books and articles from the academic press to inform himself of current medical and psychological thinking throughout his studies so far and was familiar with the view of paranoia as a mental illness which could be contained with the use of drugs, administered against the persons will if necessary, in cases where the symptoms suggested that the patient was a danger to themselves or others.

At the time Ryan had, of course, done the usual student thing of deferring to his seniors and accepted that someone as experienced and knowledgeable as Ingram must have been right. Ryan had spent three months in Ingram’s unit and been in contact with Thomas Powell most days. At first he had attempted to listen very carefully to the rambling comments which were made with the youthfully arrogant hope that he alone would be able to crack the code and gain access to the secret and ultimately petrifying world that Powell clearly inhabited. As time progressed however and newer, more amenable patients had been admitted, Ryan had found himself more and more absorbed in them and found Thomas Powell taking over less and less time in his thoughts.

Thomas was relegated to the ranks of patients with interesting but hopeless psychotic symptoms that led to a prognosis of an incurable picture made up of paranoid and disturbing experiences on which even the newest supposed  ‘wonder’ drugs made no impact.

But that was then, and in the seventeen years that had passed since that first meeting Ryan had come across a series disturbing experiences of his own which were enough to make him recall clearly the memories of his contact with never doubting Thomas Powell. These experiences had brought Ryan full circle and back to another contact with Thomas, both of them seventeen years older and yet in somewhat similar circumstances with Thomas this time under psychiatric lock and key and with Ryan in the guise of a specialist with psychological expertise.

The place where Powell resided now was very different to the place where he and Ryan had first met all those years ago. Ingram’s assessment unit had in some ways been more like a hotel then a hospital. Carpeted rooms with designer style furniture that, even though it was bolted to the floor, would not have looked out of place in a three star establishment. The unit had been devoid of locks and restraint facilities and the atmosphere had been one of calmness and informality with staff in their own clothes and patients seemingly allowed to come and go as they pleased.

Now as Ryan passed through the various security checks which accompanied his passage from the outside world to the inside of the high security facility which housed Thomas and other people deemed to be of a similar threat to society, a sense of foreboding took root and began to grow.

Powell, Ryan knew, had been here since the incident seven years ago that had made headline news for a day, until the arrest of a nationally known football star on drug smuggling charges knocked it from the top slot.

Ryan heard the sound of his own footsteps echoing in the long straight corridor, painted in regulation cream and green, as he and his appointed guard and escort for the day made their way towards the locked ward door.

The hollow clunk of a deadlock turning indicated the last hurdle to be negotiated before Ryan entered the ward and came face to face with the nurse in charge of the shift.

Howard, the nurse, was a large bear of a man with an easy smile and firm handshake but an obvious sense of perplexity over why anyone would want to see Thomas Powell at all. “Sure”, he mentioned to colleagues later, “ I could understand when he was news seven years ago but now?” The other nurses in the unit seemed equally bemused. “He’s been as quiet as a lamb for years” was the comment from one to which the response came “yeah, you’d hardly even know he was here.” That however was to change, and change very dramatically, very soon.

Thomas caught Ryan’s eye as soon as the psychologist entered the main day area of the ward. In a depressingly drab lounge with old posters from far away exotic places which none of these people would ever see. Four patients sat staring blankly at a T.V. screen that was showing a mundane chat show where people confessed in front of a live audience to various misdemeanours and shortcomings amidst whoops and jeers.

In the farthest corner of the room totally still, with his knees pulled up to his chin, perched on an easy chair sat Thomas Powell. Behind the defensive posture the alert blue eyes were watching, taking in everything and missing nothing. When they fell on Ryan he felt the clear and unmistakable flash that is instant recognition. Across the room and in the space occupied by their shared visual contact Thomas Powell gave the slightest of smiles, as if he had at last reached the end of a long difficult tortuous road, and slowly and silently mouthed the unmistakable phrase “So…you’ve come at last”.