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Erlendur Haraldsson – The Departed among the Living

From a lawyer

I was coming home from a dance. I had not tasted a drop of alcohol.  It was about four o'clock in the morning and full light as we were in the middle of summer. I was walking over a bare hill on my way home from town. Then there comes a woman towards me, kind of stooping, with a shawl over her head.

I do not pay any attention to her but as she passes me I say 'Good morning' or something like that. She did not say anything. Then I notice that she has changed her course and follows me a bit behind. I got slightly uneasy about this and found it odd.

When I stopped, she stopped also. I started saying my prayers in my mind to calm myself.

When I came close to home she disappeared. I lived in a house on the compound of a psychiatric hospital where my father worked. I go up to my room. My brother wakes up and says half asleep, 'What is this old woman doing here? Why is this old woman with you?' And I tell him not to speak such nonsense and to continue sleeping, although I knew what he meant.

In the morning, their father told them that one of his patients had died at three that morning.

What I had seen, fitted her description perfectly.