The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson

If she hadn’t been so weak, she would have succeeded. She must have come all the way on foot.”
    He seemed too exhausted himself to go on pacing. His red-rimmed eyes made him look ill, and his hands trembled. How long had he been without decent sleep or peace? Two weeks? When he sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, Linden turned so that she could continue to study nun. In the back of her mind, she began trying to conceive some way to give him a sedative.
    â€œSince then,” he sighed, “Berenford and I have been taking care of her. I got him into this because he’s the only doctor I know. He thinks I’m wrong about her, but he’s helping me. Or he was. Until he got you into this.” He was too tired to sound bitter. “I’m trying to reach her any way I can, and he’s giving her drugs that are supposed to clear her mind. Or at least calm her so I can feed her. I leave the lights on in there all the time. Something happens to her when she’s alone in the dark. She goes berserk—I’m afraid she’ll break an arm or something.”
    He fell silent. Apparently he had reached the end of his story— or of his strength. Linden felt that his explanation was incomplete, but she held her questions in abeyance. He needed aid, a relief from strain. Carefully she said, “Maybe she really should be in a hospital. I’m sure Dr. Berenford’s doing what he can. But there are all kinds of diagnostic procedures he can’t use here. If she were in a hospital—”
    â€œIf she were in a hospital”—he swung toward her so roughly that she recoiled—“they’d keep her in a straitjacket, and force-feed her three times a day, and turn her brain into jelly with electroshock, andfill her up with drugs until she couldn’t recognize her own name if God Himself were calling for her, and it wouldn’t do any good! Goddamn it, she was my
wife
!” He brandished his right fist. “I’m still wearing the bloody ring!”
    â€œIs that what you think doctors do?” She was suddenly livid; her failure made her defensive. “Brutalize sick people?”
    He strove to contain his ire. “Doctors try to cure problems whether they understand them or not. It doesn’t always work. This isn’t something a doctor can cure.”
    â€œIs that a fact?” She did not want to taunt him; but her own compulsions drove her. “Tell me what good
you’re
doing her.”
    He flinched. Rage and pain struggled in him; but he fought them down. Then he said simply, “She came to me.”
    â€œShe didn’t know what she was doing.”
    â€œBut I do,” His grimness defied her. “I understand it well enough. I’m the only one who can help her.”
    Frustration boiled up in her. “Understand
what?
”
    He jerked to his feet. He was a figure of passion, held erect and potent in spite of weakness by the intensity of his heart. His eyes were chisels; when he spoke, each word fell distinctly, like a chip of granite.
    â€œShe is possessed.”
    Linden blinked at him. “Possessed?” He had staggered her. He did not seem to be talking a language she could comprehend. This was the twentieth century; medical science had not taken
possession
seriously for at least a hundred years. She was on her feet. “Are you out of your mind?”
    She expected him to retreat. But he still had resources she had not plumbed. He held her glare, and his visage—charged and purified by some kind of sustaining conviction—made her acutely aware of her own moral poverty. When he looked away, he did not do so because he was abashed or beaten; he looked away in order to spare her the implications of his knowledge.
    â€œYou see?” he murmured. “It’s a question of experience. You’re just not equipped to understand.”
    â€œBy God!” she fumed defensively, “that’s