The Lifted Veil

My name is Latimer, and the time of my death is drawing very near.For months I have suffered from a weak heart, and now I can tell, almost to the hour, when it will stop.On the twentieth of September, at ten o'clock at night, I will be sitting alone in this very study, longing at last to die.

I have carried a strange gift since I was a young man — visions of things before they happen, so vivid that I could hardly tell them from memory.Once I foresaw an ordinary evening months before it arrived, down to the smallest word spoken at the table.When that evening finally came, it unfolded exactly as I had already seen it in my mind.

A second gift has troubled me even more: without wishing it, I can hear the private thoughts of the people around me.The small, selfish, and foolish thoughts of some dull acquaintance would crowd into my mind like a badly played instrument I could not silence.I heard what people truly thought behind their polite words, and it was rarely kind.

This double burden has cut me off from everyone I have ever loved.Other men can lose themselves in another person's company; I could never lose myself, for I always saw too much.Even a warm smile turned cold once I had glimpsed the small, careless thought hiding behind it.

So I have lived, for many years now, in a strange and lonely silence among my own family and friends.They believed my quietness was pride, or illness, or a difficult temper; none of them ever guessed the real reason.I do not write this hoping that the people who know me will finally understand me.

I write it instead for strangers who will read these pages only after I am gone.Perhaps, when I can no longer be pitied to my face, someone unknown to me will read my story and, for the first time, feel something like sympathy for the man I was.