The Exorcist (27 page)

"like what?"

"I don't know. I'll have to go and look it up."

"Are you kidding? I thought you were supposed to be an expert."

"You probably know more about demonic possession right now than most priests. In the meantime, when can you get me the Barringer records?"

"I'll charter a plane if I have to!"

"And that tape?"

She stood up. "I'll go see if I can find it."

"And just one other thing," he added. She paused beside his chair. "That book you mentioned with the section on possession: do you think you can remember now if Regan ever read it prior to the onset of the illness?"

She concentrated, fingernails scraping at teeth. "Gee, I seem to remember her reading something the day before the shi--- before the trouble really started," she amended, "but I really just can't be sure. But she did it sometime, I think. I mean, I'm sure. Pretty sure."

"I'd like to see it. May I have it?''

"It's yours. It's overdue at your library. I'll get it." She was moving from the study. "That tape's in basement, I think. I'll look. Be right back in a second."

Karras nodded absently, staring at a pattern in the rug, and then after many minutes he got up, walked slowly to the entry hall and stood motionless in the darkness, stood without expression, in another dimension, staring into nothing with his hands in his pockets as he listened to the grunting of a pig from upstairs, to the yelping of a jackal, to hiccups, to hissing.

"Oh, you're there! I went looking in the study."

Karras turned to see Chris flicking on the light.

"Are you leaving?" She came forward with the book and the tape.

"I'm afraid I've got a lecture to prepare for tomorrow."

"Oh? Where?"

"At the med school." He accepted the book and the tape from her hands. "I'll try to get by here sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. In the meantime, if anything urgent develops, you be sure that you call me, no matter what time. I'll leave word at the switchboard to let your ring through." She nodded. The Jesuit opened the door. "Now how are you fixed for medication?" he asked.

"Okay," she said. "It's all on refillable prescription."

"You won't call your doctor in again?"

The actress closed her eyes and very slightly shook her head.

"You know, I'm not a GP," he cautioned.

"I can't," she whispered. "I can't."

He could feel her anxiety pounding like waves on an unknown beach. "Well, now, sooner or later, I'm going to have to tell one of my superiors what I'm up to, especially if I'm going to be coming by here at various unusual hours of the night."

"Do you have to?" She frowned at him worriedly.

"Well, otherwise, it might look a little bit odd, don't you think?"

She looked down. "Yeah, I see what you mean," she murmured.

"Do you mind? I'll tell him only what I have to. Don't worry," he assured her. "It won't get around."

She lifted a helpless; tormented face to the strong, sad eyes; saw strength; saw pain.

"Okay," she said weakly.

She trusted the pain.

He nodded. "We'll be talking."

He started outside, but then hung in the doorway for a moment, thinking, a hand to his lips. "Did your daughter know a priest was coming over?"

"No. No, nobody knew but me."

"Did you know that my mother had died just recently?

'Yes. I'm very sorry."

"Is Regan aware of it?"

"Why?"

"Is she aware of it?"

"No, not at all."

He nodded.

"Why'd you asks" Chris repeated, her brows slightly puckered with curiosity.

"Not important." He shrugged. "I just wondered." He examined her features with a faint look of worry. "Are you getting any sleep?"

"Oh, a little."

"Get pills, then. Are you taking any Librium?"

"Yes."

"How much?" he asked.

"Ten milligrams, twice a day."

Try twenty, twice a day. In the meantime, try to keep away from your daughter. The more you're exposed to her present behavior, the greater the chance of some permanent damage being done to your feelings about her. Stay clear. And slow down. You'll be no help to Regan, you know, with a nervous breakdown.

She nodded despondently, eyes lowered.

"Now please go to bed," he said gently. "Will you please go to bed right now?"

"Yeah, okay," she said softly. "Okay. I promise." She looked at him with the trace of a smile. "Goodnight, Father. Thanks. Thanks a lot."

He studied her for a moment without expression; then quickly moved away.

Chris watched from the doorway. As he crossed the street, it occurred to her that he'd probably missed his dinner. Then briefly she worried that he might be cold. He was rolling his shirt sleeve down.

At the corner of Prospect and P, he dropped the book and stooped quickly to retrieve it, then rounded the corner and vanished from sight. As she watched him disappear, Chris abruptly was aware of a feeling of lightness. She didn't see Kinderman sitting alone in the unmarked car.

She closed the door.

**********

Half an hour later, Damien Karras hurried back to his room in the Jesuit residence hall with a number of books and periodicals taken from the shelves of the Georgetown library. Hastily he dumped them on top of his desk and then rummaged through drawers for a package of cigarettes. Finding a half-empty pack of stale Camels, he lit one, puffed deep and held the smoke in his lungs while he thought about Regan.

Hysteria. He knew that it had to be hysteria. He exhaled the smoke, hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked down at the books. He had Oesterreich's Possession; Huxley's The Devils of Loudun; Parapraxis in the Haizman Case of Freud; McCasland's Demon Possession and Exorcism in Early Christianity in the Light of Modern Views of Mental Illness; and extracts from psychiatric journals of Freud's "A Neurosis of Demoniacal Possession in the 17th Century," and "The Demonology of Modern Psychiatry."

"Couldya help an old altar boy, Faddah?"

The Jesuit felt at his brow, and then looked at his fingers, rubbing a sticky sweat between them. Then he noticed that his door was open. He crossed the room and closed it, and then event to a shelf for his redbound copy of The Roman Ritual, a compendium of rites and prayers. Clamping the cigarette between his lips, he squinted through smoke as he turned to the "General Rules" for exorcists, looking for the signs of demonic possession. He scanned and then started to read more slowly:

...The exorcist should not believe too rapidly that a person is possesesd by an evil spirit; but he ought to ascertain the signs by which a person possessed can be distinguished from one who is suffering from some illness, especially one of a psychological nature. Signs of possession may be the following: ability to speak with some facility in a strange language or, to understand it when spoken by another; the faculty of divulging future and hidden events; display of powers which are beyond the subject's age and natural condition; and various other conditions which, when taken together as a whole, build up the evidence.

For a time Karras pondered, then he leaned against the bookshelf and read the remainder of the instructions. When he had finished, he found himself glancing back up at instruction number 8:

Some reveal a crime which has been committed and the perpetrators thereof---

He looked up at the door as he heard a knock. "Damien?"

"Come in."

It was Dyer. "Hey, Chris MacNeil was trying to reach you. She ever get hold of you?"

"When? You mean, tonight?"

"No, this afternoon."

"Oh, yes, I spoke to her."

"Good," said Dyer. "Just wanted to be sure you got the message."

The diminutive priest was prowling the room now, picking at objects like an elf in a thrift shop.

"What do you need, Joe?" Karras asked him.

"Got any lemon drops?"

"What?"

"I've looked all through the hall for some lemon drops. Nobody's got any. Boy, I really crave one," Dyer brooded, still prowling. "I once spent a year hearing children's confessions, and I wound up a lemon-drop junkie. I got hooked. The little bastards keep breathing it on you along with all that pot. Between the two, it's addictive, I think." He lifted the lid of a pipe-tobacco humidor where Karras had stored some pistachio nuts. "What are these--- dead Mexican jumping beans?"

Karras turned to his bookshelves, looking for a title. "Listen, Joe, I've got a---"

"Isn't that Chris really nice?"' interrupted Dyer, flopping on the bed. He stretched full length with his hands clasped comfortably behind his head. "Nice lady. Have you met her?"

"We've talked," answered Karras, plucking out a green-bound volume called Satan, a collection of articles and Catholic position papers by various French theologians. He carried it back with him toward the desk, "Look I've really got to---"

"Plain. Down-to-earth. Unaffected," continued Dyer. "She can help us with my plan for when we both quit the priesthood."

"Who's quitting the priesthood?"

"Faggots. In droves. Basic black has gone out. Now, I---"

"Joe, I've got a lecture to prepare for tomorrow," said Karras as he set down the books on his desk.

"Yeah, okay. Now my plan is we go to Chris MacNeil--- got the picture?--- with this notion that I've got for a screenplay based on the life of Saint Ignatius Loyola. The title is Brave Jesuits Marching, and---"

"Would you get your ass out of here, Joe?" prodded Karras, tamping out his cigarette butt in an ashtray.

"Is this boring?"

"I've got work to do."

"Who the hell's stopping you?"

"Come on, now, I mean it." Karras had started to unbutton his shirt. "I'm going to jump in the shower and then I've got to work."

"Didn't see you at dinner, by the way," said Dyer, rising reluctantly from the bed. "Where'd you eat?"

"I didn't"

"That's foolish. Why diet when you only wear frocks?" He had come to the desk add was smiling at a cigarette. "Stale."

"Is there a tape recorder here in the hall?"

'There isn't even a lemon drop here in the hall. Use the language lab."

"Who's got a key? Father President?"

"No. Father Janitor. You need it tonight?"

"Yes, I do," said Karras, as he draped his shirt on the back of the desk chair. "Where do I find him?"

"Want me to get it for you?"

"Could you do that? I'm really in a bind."

"No sweat, Great Beatific Jesuit Witch Doctor. Coming." Dyer opened the door and walked out.

**********

Karras showered and then dressed in a T-shirt and trousers. Sitting down to his desk, he discovered a carton of Camel nonfilters, and beside it a key that was labeled LANGUAGE LAB and another tagged REFECTORY REFRIGERATOR. Appended to the latter was a note: Better you than the rats. Karras smiled at the signature: The Lemon Drop Kid. He put the note aside, then unfastened is wristwatch and plated it in front of him on the desk. The time was 10:58 P.M. He began to read. Freud. McCasland. Satan. Oesterreich's exhaustive study. And at a little after 4 A.M., he had finished. Was rubbing at his face. At his eyes. They were smarting. He glanced at the ashtray. Ashes and the twisted butts of cigarettes. Smoke hanging thick in the air. He stood up and walked wearily to a window. Slid it open. He gulped at the coolness of the moist morning air and stood there thinking. Regan had the physical syndrome of possession. That much he knew. About that he had no doubt. For in case after case, irrespective of geography or period of history, the symptoms of possession were substantially constant. Some Regan had not evidenced as yet: stigmata; the desire for repugnant foods; the insensitivity to pain; the frequent loud and irrepressible hiccuping. But the others she had manifested clearly: the involuntary motor excitement; foul breath; furred tongue; the wasting away of the frame; the distended stomach; the irritations of the skin and mucous-membrane. And most significantly present were the basic symptoms of the hard core of cases which Oesterreich had characterized as "genuine" possession: the striking change in the voice and in the features, plus the manifestation of a new personality.

Karras looked up and stared darkly down the street. Through the branches of trees he could see the house and the large bay window of Regan's bedroom. When possession was voluntary, as with mediums, the new personality was often benign. Like Tia, brooded Karras. Spirit of a woman who'd possessed a man. A sculptor. Briefly. An hour at a time. Until a friend of the sculptor fell desperately in love. With Tia. Pleaded with the sculptor to permit her to permanently remain in possession of his body. But in Regan, there's no Tia, Karras reflected grimly. The invading personality was vicious. Malevolent. Typical of cases of
 
demonic possession where the new personality sought the destruction of the body of its host. And frequently achieved it.