The Exorcist (26 page)

"Incidentally, your mother is here with us, Karras. Do you wish to leave a message? I will see that she gets it." Then Karras was suddenly dodging a projectile stream of vomit, leaping out of his chair. It caught a portion of his sweater and one of his hands.

His face now colorless, the priest looked down at the bed. Regan cackled with glee. His hand dripped vomit onto the rug. "If that's true," the priest said numbly, "then you must know my mothers first name. What is it?"

The Regan-thing hissed at him, mad eyes gleaming, head gently undulating like a cobra's.

"What is it?"

Regan lowed like a steer in an angry bellow that pierced the shutters and shivered through the glass of the large bay window. The eyes rolled upward into their sockets.

For a time Karras watched as the bellowing continued; then he looked at his hand and walked out of the room.

Chris pushed herself quickly away from the wall, glancing, with distress at the Jesuit's sweater. "What happened? Did she vomit?"

"Got a towel?" he asked her.

"There's a bathroom right there!" she said hurriedly, pointing at a hallway door. "Karl, take a look at her!" she instructed, and followed the priest to the bathroom.

"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed in agitation, whipping a towel off the bar. The Jesuit moved to the washbasin.

"Have you got her on tranquilizers?' he asked.

Chris turned on the water taps. "Yes, Librium. Here, take off that sweater and then you can wash."

"What dosage?" he asked her, tugging at the sweater with his clean left hand.

"Here, I'll help you." She pulled at the sweater from the bottom. "Well, today she's had four hundred milligrams, Father."

"Four hundred?"

She had the sweater pulled up to his chest "Yeah, that's how we got her into those straps. It took all of us together to---"

"You gave your daughter four hundred milligrams at once?"

"C'mon, get your arms up, Father." He raised them and she tugged delicately. "She's so strong you can't believe it."

She pulled back the shower curtain, tossing the sweater into the tub. "I'll have Wilie get it cleaned for you, Father. I'm sorry."

"Never mind. It doesn't matter." He unbuttoned the right sleeve of his starched white shirt and rolled it up, exposing a matting of fine brown hairs on a bulging, thickly muscled forearm.

"I'm sorry," Chris repeated quietly, slowly sitting down on the edge of the tub.

"Is she taking any nourishment at all?" asked Karras. He held his hand beneath the hot-water tap to rinse away the vomit.

She clutched and unclutched the towel. It was pink, the name Regan embroidered in blue. "No, Father. Just Sustagen when she's been sleeping. Bu she ripped out the tubing."

"Ripped it out?"

"Today."

Disturbed, Karras soaped and rinsed his hands, and after a pause said gravely, "She ought to be in a hospital."

"I just can't do that," answered Chris in a toneless voice.

"Why not?"

"I just can't!" she repeated with quavering anxiety. "I can't have anyone else involved! She's..." Chris dropped her head. Inhaled. Exhaled. "She s done something, Father. I can't take the risk of someone else finding out. Not a doctor... not a nurse..." She looked up. "Not anyone."

Frowning, he turned off the taps. "...What if a person, let's say, was a criminal..." He lowered his head, staring down at the basin. "Who's giving her the Sustagen? the Librium? her medicines?"

"We are. Her doctor showed us how."

"You need prescriptions."

"Well, you can do some of that, can't you, Father?"

Karras turned to her, hands upraised above the basin like a surgeon after washup. For a moment he met her haunted gaze, felt some terrible secret in them, some dread. He nodded at the towel in her hands. She stared blankly. "Towel, please," he said softly.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Very quickly, she fumbled it out to him, still watching him with a tight expectancy. The Jesuit dried his hands. "Well, Father, what's it look like?" Chris finally asked him. "Do you think she's possessed?"

"Do you?"

"I don't know. I thought you were the expert."

"How much do you know about possession?"

"Just a little that I've read. Some things that the doctors told me."

"What doctors?"

"At Barringer Clinic."

He folded the towel and carefully draped it over the bar. "Are you Catholic?"

"No."

"Your daughter?"

"No."

"'What religion?"

"None; but I---"

"Why did you come to me, then? Who, advised it?"

"I came because I'm desperate!" she blurted excitedly. "No one advised me!"

He stood with his back to her, fringes of the towel still lightly in his grip. "You said earlier psychiatrists advised you to come to me."

"Oh, I don't know what I was saying! I've been practically out of my head!"

"Look, I couldn't care less about your motive," he answered with a carefully tempered intensity. "All I care about is doing what's best for your daughter. I'll tell you right now that if you're looking for an exorcism as an autosuggestive shock cure; you're much better off calling Central Casting, Miss MacNeil, because the Church won't buy it and you'll have wasted precious time." Karras clutched at the towel rack to steady his trembling hands. What's wrong? What's happened?

Incidentally, it's Mrs. MacNeil," he heart Chris telling him drily.

He lowered his head and gentled his tone. "Look, whether it's a demon or a mental disorder, I'll do everything I possibly can to help. But I've got to have the truth. It's important for Regan. At the moment, I'm groping in a state of ignorance, which is nothing supernatural for me or abnormal, it's just my usual condition. Now why don't we both get out of this bathroom and go downstairs where we can talk." He had turned back to her with a faint, warm smile of reassurance and reached out his hand to help her up. "I could use a cup of coffee."

"I could use a drink."

**********

While Karl and Sharon looked after Regan, they sat in the study, Chris on the sofa, Karras in a chair beside the fireplace, and Chris related the history of Regan's illness, though she carefully withheld any mention of phenomena related to Dennings.

The priest listened, saying very little: an occasional question; a nod; a frown.

Chris admitted that at first she'd considered exorcism as shock treatment. "Now I don't know," she said, shaking her head. Freckled, clasped fingers twitched in her lap. "I just don't know." She lifted a look to the pensive priest. "What do you think, Father?''

"Compulsive behavior produced by guilt, perhaps, put together with split personality."

"Father, I've had all that garbage! Now how can you say that after all you've just seen!"

"If you've seen as many patients in psychiatric wards as I have, you can say it very easily," he assured her. "Come on, now. Possession by demons, all right: let's assume it's a fact of life,, that it happens. But your daughter doesn't say she's a demon; she insists she's the devil himself, and that's the same thing as saying you're Napoleon Bonaparte! You see?"

"Then explain all those rappings and things."

"I haven't heard them."

"Well, they heard then at Barringer, Father, so it wasn't just here in the house."

"Well, perhaps, but we'd hardly need a devil to explain them."

"So explain them," she demanded.

"Psychokinesis."

"What?"

"Well, you have heard of poltergeist phenomena, haven't you?"

"Ghosts throwing dishes and things?"

Karras nodded. "It's not that uncommon, and usually happens around an emotionally disturbed adolescent. Apparently, extreme inner tension of the mind can sometimes trigger some unknown energy that seems to move objects around at a distance. There's nothing supernatural about it. Like Regan's strength. Again, in pathology it's common. Call it mind over matter, if you will."

"I call it weird."

"Well, in any case, it happens outside of possession."

"Boy, isn't this beautiful," she said wearily. "Here I am an atheist and here you are a priest and---"

"The best explanation for any phenomenon," Karras overrode her, "is always the simplest one available that accommodates all the facts."

"Well, maybe I'm dumb," she retorted, "but telling me an unknown gizmo in somebody's head throws dishes at a ceiling tells me nothing at all! So what is it? Can you tell me for pete's sake what it is?"

"No, we don't under---"

"What the hell's split personality, Father? You say it; I hear it. What is it? Am I really that stupid? Will you tell me what it is in a way I can finally get it through my head?" In the red-veined eyes was a plea of despairing confusion.

"Look, there's no one in the world who pretends to understand it," the priest told her gently. "All we know is that it happens, and anything beyond the phenomenon itself is only the purest speculation. But think of it this way, if you like: the human brain contains, say, seventeen billion cells."

Chris leaned forward, frowning intently.

"Now looking at these brain cells," continued Karras, "we see that they handle approximately a hundred million messages per second; that's the number of sensations bombarding your body. They not only integrate all of these messages, but they do it efficiently, they do it without ever stumbling or getting in each other's way. Now how could they do that, without some form of communication? Well, it seems as if they couldn't. So apparently each of these cells has a consciousness, maybe, of its own. Now imagine that the human body is a massive ocean liner, all right? and that all of your brain cells are the crew. Now one of these cells is up on the bridge. He's the captain. But he never knows precisely what the rest of the crew below decks is doing. All he knows is that the ship keeps running smoothly, that the job's getting done. Now the captain is you, it's your waking consciousness. And what happens in dual personality--- maybe--- is that one of those crew cells down below decks comes up on the bridge and takes over command. In other words, mutiny. Now--- does that help you understand it?"

She was staring in unblinking incredulity. "Father, that's so far out of sight that I think its almost easier to believe in the devil!"

"Well---"

"Look, I don't know about all these theories and stuff," she interrupted in a low, intense voice. "But I'll tell you something, Father; you show me Regan's identical twin: same face, same voice, same smell, same everything down to the way she dots her i's, and still I'd know in a second that it wasn't really her! I'd know it! I'd know it in my gut and I'm telling you I know that thing upstairs is not my daughter! I know it! I know!"

She leaned back, drained. "Now you tell me what to do," she challenged. "Go ahead: you tell me that you know for a fact there's nothing wrong with my daughter except in her head; that you know for a fact that she doesn't need an exorcism; that you know it wouldn't do her any good. Go ahead! You tell me! You tell me what to do!"

For long, troubled seconds, the priest was still. Then he answered softly, "Well, there's little in this world that I know for a fact."

He brooded, sunk back in his chair. Then he spoke again. "Does Regan have a low-pitched, voice?" he asked. "Normally?"

"No. In fact, I'd say it's very light."

'Would you consider her precocious?"

"Not at all."

"Do you know her IQ?"

"About average."

"And her reading habits?"

"Nancy Drew and comic books, mostly."

"And her style of speech, right now: how much different would you say it is from normal?"

"Completely. She's never used half of those words."

"No, I don't mean the content of her speech; I mean the style."

"Style?"

"The way she puts words together."

"Gee, I'm really not sure I know what you mean."

'Would you have any letters she's written? Compositions? A recording of her voice would be---"

"Yes, there's a tape of her talking to her father," she interrupted. "She was making it to send to him as a letter but she never got it finished. You want it?"

"Yes, I do, and I'll also need her medical records, especially the file from Barringer."

"Look, Father, I've been that route and I---"

"Yes, yes, I know, but I'll have to see the records for myself."

"So you're still against an exorcism."

"I'm only against the chance of doing your daughter more harm than good."

"But you're talking now strictly as a psychlatnst, right?"

"No, Im talking now also as a priest. If I go to the Chancery Office, or wherever it is I have to go, to get their permission to perform an exorcism, the first thing I'd have to have is a pretty substantial indication that your daughter's condition isn't a purely psychiatric problem. After that, I'd need evidence that the Church would accept as signs of possession."