Today was my second session with Nat and his parents. I call it “family therapy”. Nat calls it a “postmortem”. It proved to be a far more agreeable affair than expected. Nat appeared clean-shaven and neat, for him, although his hair is still long. A diagonal fringe, rather like that of Hitler (another non-carnivorous person), almost covers his left eye. His parents tried to cajole him into acknowledging that he possesses emotions other than blackest despair. Apparently they were overjoyed to see his pleasure in playing with a toy balloon. Another plaything—of Nat’s own making—is less pleasing, being constructed chiefly from his discarded, festering, pus-soaked bandages.

Again his parents reeled out a string of quaint and charming happenings from Nat’s childhood. It is hard to believe that this macabre youth was once such a charming child, unless, of course, one happens to be a strict Jungian. Nat’s mother and father are still at the “where did we go wrong” stage. More helpfully, however, they lay the blame for their son’s present condition upon various subcultures and occults which have preoccupied Nat’s mind since early adolescence. He merely laughs at this. It is a menacing laugh; the parents’ turn to become embarrassed. This is not a “paranoid” family as such, but it may well subconsciously have off-loaded its collective neuroses onto Nat.

FRI JAN 25

Today I visited Nat’s home, just a short walk from my surgery. This house is the oldest—and one of the smallest—in the ancient village of Black Langley, birthplace of the only English Pope. This oddly named “Black Pope” was born at a site not far from Nat’s house. It was at home in this strange structure that Nat had been brought into the world by one of my practice’s more senior colleagues. He has lived there all his life, seldom venturing from the county, and certainly never setting foot outside these Isles. The history of his home is shrouded in mystery. His family inherited it, through puzzling twists of lineage, over thirty years ago.

Nat’s room overlooks the village churchyard with its abundance of yew trees and two fine examples of the American redwood, wellingtonia. The bay window is so heavily latticed that the view is almost obscured. From the ivied encasement the garden itself looks almost unchanged since just after the ice age left it, save for the peculiar herb and fungal gardens of Nat’s childhood design. One mushroom looked impossibly green, although I noticed no psilocybe or marijuana plants.

Nat had invited me down in the early evening to look over some drawings he’d been working on. His half of the room was covered in black paint onto which he had etched and scratched eldritch sketchwork, revealing the gaudy wallpaper beneath.