My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

Author:Johanna van Veen [Veen, Johanna van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVENTH CASE EPISODE

PATIENT R—, A CASE STORY: INHABITED BY ANOTHER

(D = DOCTOR, P = PATIENT R—)

ELEVENTH EPISODE, CONDUCTED ON 22 OCTOBER 1954:

D: “Before we continue, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Miss K—. Firstly, what did you think of her?”

P: “I pitied her. She was very ill.”

D: “Did that make her ill-tempered?”

P: “Sometimes, when the pain was bad. When it wasn’t, I think her illness mainly bored her.”

D: “You’ve said before that you were scared of her.”

P: “Yes.”

D: “Why was that?”

P: “I sensed she might mean me harm. ‘Making mischief,’ Ruth called it, though she meant it in the old sense, when mischief still meant something malevolent.”

D: “And what sort of mischief might Miss K— make, according to Ruth?”

P: “She didn’t know. Neither did I. It was just a feeling.”

D: “Yet you still carried out Miss K—’s plan to rebury Mr. K—.”

P: “Because I thought it was what A— [Mrs. K—] wanted.”

D: “Did it never occur to you that Miss K—’s plan to relocate her brother’s remains might be a form of ‘making mischief’, to use Ruth’s words?”

P: [presses the palms of hands against eyes] “No. I know now that I shouldn’t have trusted her. I’ll have to carry the weight of that knowledge with me for the rest of my life, won’t I?”

D: “Is that why you killed her, too?”

P: [looks at me through fingers, eyes filled with hate] “If you’re going to say things like that, I won’t talk to you anymore. In fact, I think I’m done for today.”

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