CHAPTER TWO

Karras threaded tape to an empty reel in the office of the rotund, silver-hair director of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. Having carefully edited sections of his tapes onto separate reels, he was about to play the first. He started the tape recorder and stepped back from the table. They listened to the fever voice croaking its gibberish. Then he turned to the director. "What is that, Frank? Is it a language?"
    The director was sitting on the edge of his desk. By the time the tape ended, he was frowning in puzzlement. "Pretty weird. Where'd you get that?"
    Karras stopped the tape. "Oh, it's something that I've had for a number of years from when I worked on a case of dual personality. I'm doing a paper on it."
    "I see."
    "Well, what about it?"
    The director pulled off his glasses and chewed at the tortoise frame. "No, it isn't any language that I've ever heard. However..." He frowned. And then looked up at Karras. "Want to play it again?"
    Karras quickly rewound the tape and played it over. "Now what do you think?" he asked.
    "Well, it does have the cadence of speech."
    Karras felt a quickening of hope. Fought it down. "Yes, that's what I thought," he agreed.
    "But I certainly don't recognize it, Father. Is it ancient or modern? Or do you know?"
    "No, I don't."
    "Well, why not leave it with me, Father? I'll check it with some of the boys."
    "Could you make up a copy of it, Frank? I'd like to keep the original myself."
    "Oh, yes, surely."
    "In the meantime, I've got something else. Got the time?"
    "Yes, of course. Go ahead. What's the problem?"
    "Well, what if I gave you fragments of ordinary speech by what are apparently two different people. Could you tell by semantic analysis whether just one person might have been capable of both modes of speech?"
    "Oh, I think so."
    "How?"
    "Well, a 'type-token' ratio, I suppose, is as good a way as any. In samples of a thousand words or more, you could just check the frequency of occurrence of the various parts of speech."
    "And would you call that conclusive?"
    "Oh, yes. Well, pretty much. You see, that sort of test would discount any change in the basis vocabulary. It's not words but expression of the words: the style. We call it 'index of diversity.' Very baffling to the layman, which, of course, is what we want." The director smiled wryly. Then he nodded at the tapes in Karras' hands. "You've got two different people on those, is that it?"
    "No. The voice and the words came out of the mouth of just one person, Frank. As I said, it was a case of dual personality. The words and the voices seem totally different to me but both are from the mouth of just one person. Look, I need a big favor from you..."
    "You'd like me to test them out? I'd be glad to. I'll give it to one of the instructors."
    "No, Frank, that's the really big part of the favor: I'd like you to do it yourself and as fast as you can do it. It's terribly important."
    The director read the urgency in his eyes. He nodded. "Okay. Okay. I'll get on it."
    The director made copies of both the tapes, and Karras returned to the Jesuit residence hall with the originals. He found a message slip in his room. The records from the clinic had arrived.
    He hurried to Reception and signed for the package. Back in his room, he began to read immediately; and was soon convinced that his trip to the Institute had been wasted.
    "... indications of guilt obsession with ensuing hysterical-somnambulistic..."
    Room for doubt. Always room. Interpretation. But Regan's stigmata... Karras buried his weary face in his hands. The skin stigmata that Chris had described had indeed been reported in Regan's fife. But it also had been noted that Regan had hyperreactive skin and could herself have produced the mysterious letters merely by tracing them on her flesh with a finger a short time prior to their appearance. Dermatographia.
    She did it herself, brooded Karras. He was certain. For as soon as Regan's hands had been immobilized by restraining straps, the records noted, the mysterious phenomena had ceased and were never repeated.
    Fraud. Conscious or unconscious. Still fraud.
    He lifted his head and eyed the phone. Frank. Call him off? He picked up the receiver. There was no answer and he left word for him to call. Then, exhausted, he stood up and walked slowly to the bathroom. He splashed cold water an his face. "The exorcist will simply be careful that none of the patent's manifestations are left...." He looked up at himself in the mirror. Had he missed something? What? The sauerkraut odor. He turned and slipped a towel off the rack and wiped his face. Autosuggestion, he remembered. And the mentally ill, in certain instances, seemed able unconsciously to direct their bodies to emit a variety of odors.
    Karras wiped his hands. The poundings... the opening and closing of the drawer. Psychokinesis? Really? "You believe in that stuff?" He paused as he set back the towel; grew aware that he wasn't thinking clearly. Too tired. Yet he dared not give Regan up to guess; to opinion; to the savage betrayals of the mind.
    He left the hall and went to the campus library. He searched through the Guide to Periodical Literature: Po... Pol... Polte... He found what he was looking for and sat down with a scientific journal to read an article on poltergeist-phenomena investigations by the German psychiatrist Dr. Hans Bender.
    No doubt about it, he concluded when he finished: psychokinetic phenomena existed; had been thoroughly documented; filmed; observed in psychiatric clinics. And in none of the cases reported in the article was there any connection to demonic possession. Rather, the hypothesis was mind-directed energy unconsciously produced and usually---and significantly, Karras saw---by adolescents in stages of "extremely high inner tension, frustration and rage."
    Karras rubbed his tired eyes. He still felt remiss. He ran back through the symptoms, touching each like a boy going back to touch slats on a white picket fence. Which one had ha missed? he wondered. Which?
    The answer, he concluded wearily, was None.
    He returned the journal to the desk.
    He walked back to the MacNeil house. Willie admitted him and led him to the study. The door was closed.
    Willie knocked. "Father Karras," she announced.
    "Come in."
    Karras entered and closed the door behind him. Chris was standing with her back to him, brow in her hand, an elbow on the bar. "Hello, Father."
    Her voice was a husky and despairing whisper. Concerned, he went over to her. "You okay?" he asked softly.
    "Yeah, I'm fine."
    Her voice held tension. He frowned. Her hand was obscuring her face. The hand trembled. "What's doin'?" she asked him.
    "Well, I've looked at the records from the clinic." He waited. She made no response. He continued. "I believe..." He paused. "Well, my honest opinion right now is that Regan can best be helped by intensive psychiatric care."
    She shook her head very slowly back and forth.
    "Where's her father?" he asked her.
    "In Europe," she whispered.
    "Have you told him what's happening?"
    She had thought about telling him so many times. Had been tempted. The crisis could bring them back together. But Howard and priests... For Regan's sake, she'd decided he mustn't be told.
    "No," she answered softy.
    "Well, I think it would help if he were here."
    "Listen, nothing's going to help except something out of sight!" Chris suddenly erupted, lifting a tear-stained face to the priest. "Something way out of sight."
    "I believe you should send for him."
    "It would---"
    "I've asked you to drive a demon out, goddammit, not ask another one in!" she cried at Karras in sudden hysteria. Her features were contorted in anguish. "What happened to the exorcism all of a sudden?"
    "Now---"
    "What in the hell do I want with Howard?"
    "We can talk about it---"
    "Talk about it now, goddammit! What the hell good is Howard right now? What's the good?"
    "There's a strong probability that Regan's disorder is rooted in a guilt over---"
    "Guilt over what?" she cried, eyes wild.
    "It could---"
    "Over the divorce? All that psychiatric bullshit?"
    "Now---"
    "She's guilty because she killed Burke Dennings!" Chris shrieked at him, hands crushing hard against her temples. "She killed him! She killed him and they'll put her away; they're going to put her away! Oh, my God, oh, my..."
    Karras caught her up as she crumpled, sobbing, and guided her toward the sofa. "It's all right," he kept telling her softly, "it's all right..."
    "No, they'll put... her away," she was sobbing. '"They'll put... put... ohhhhhhh! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
    "It's all right..."
    He eased her down and stretched her out on the sofa. He sat down on the edge and took her hand in both of his. Thoughts of Kinderman. Dennings. Her sobbing. Unreality. "All right... its all right... take it easy... it's all right..."
    Soon the crying subsided and he helped her sit up. He brought her water and a box of tissues he'd found -on a shelf behind the bar. Then he sat down beside her.
    "Oh, I'm glad," she said, sniffling and blowing her nose. "God, I'm glad I got it out."
    Karras was in turmoil, his own shock of realization increasing, the calmer she grew. Quiet sniffles now. Intermittent catches in the throat. And now the weight was on his back again, heavy and oppressive. He inwardly stiffened. No more! Say no more! "Do you want to tell me more?" he asked her gently.
    Chris nodded. Exhaled. She wiped at an eye and spoke haltingly, in spasms, of Kinderman; of the book; of her certainty that Dennings had been up in Regan's bedroom; of Regan's great strength; of the Dennings personality that Chris thought she had seen with the head turned around and facing backward.
    She finished. Now she waited for Karras' reaction. For a time he did not speak as he thought it all over. Then at last he said softly, "You don't know that she did it."
    "But the head turned around," said Chris.
    "You'd hit your own head pretty hard against the wall," Karras answered. "You were also in shock. You imagined it."
    "She told me that she did it," Chris intoned without expression.
    A pause. "And did she tell you how?" Karras asked.
    Chris shook her head. He turned and looked at her. "No," she said. "No."
    "Then it doesn't mean a thing," Karras told her. "No, it wouldn't mean a thing unless she gave you details that no one else could conceivably know but the killer."
    She was shaking her head in doubt. "I don't know," she answered. "I don't know if I'm doing what's right. I think she did it and she could kill someone else. I don't know...." She paused. "Father, what should I do?" she asked him hopelessly.
    The weight was now set in concrete; in drying, it had shaped itself to his back.
    He rested an elbow on his knee and closed his eyes. "Well, you've told someone now," he said quietly. "You've done what you should. Now forget it. Just put it away and leave it all up to me."
    He felt her gaze on him and looked at her. "Are you feeling any better now?"
    She nodded.
    "Will you do me a favor?" he asked her.
    "What?"
    "Go out and see a movie."
    She wiped at an eye with the back of her hand and smiled. "I hate 'em."
    "Then go visit a friend."
    She put her hands in her lap and looked at him warmly. "Got a friend right here," she said at last.
    He smiled. "Get some rest," he advised her.
    "I will."
    He had another thought. "You think Dennings brought the book upstairs? Or was it there?"
    "I think it was already there," Chris answered.
    He considered this. Then he stood up. "Well, okay. You need the car?"
    "No, you keep it."
    "All right, then. I'll be back to you later."
    "Ciao, Father."
    "Ciao."
    He walked out in the street brimming turmoil. Churning. Regan. Dennings. Impossible! No! Yet there was Chris's near conviction, her reaction, her hysteria. And that's just what it: hysterical imagining. And yet... He chased certainties like leaves in a knifing wind.
    As he passed by the long flight of steps near the house, he heard a sound from below, by the river. He stopped and looked down toward the C&O Canal. A harmonica. Someone playing "Red River Valley," since boyhood Karras' favorite song. He listened until traffic noise drowned it out, until his drifting reminiscence was shattered by a world that was now and in torment, that was shrieking for help, dripping blood on exhaust fumes. He thrust his hands into his pockets. Thought feverishly. Of Chris. Of Regan. Of Lucas aiming kicks at Tranquille. He must do something. What? Could he hope to outguess the clinicians at Barringer? "... go to Central Casting!" Yes; yes, he knew that was the answer; the hope. He remembered the case of Achille. Possessed. Like Regan, he had called himself a devil; like Regan, his disorder had been rooted in guilt; remorse over marital infidelity. The psychologist Janet had effected a cure by hypnotically suggesting the presence of the wife; who appeared to Achille's hallucinated eyes and solemnly forgave him. Karras nodded. Suggestion could work for Regan. But not through hypnosis. They had tried that at Barringer. No. The counteracting suggestion for Regan, he believed, was the ritual of exorcism. She knew what it was; knew its effect. Her reaction to the holy water. Got that from the book. And in the book, there were descriptions of successful exorcisms. It could work! It could! It could work! But how to get permission from the Chancery Office? How to build up a case without mention of Dennings? Karras could not lie to the Bishop. Would not falsify the facts. But you can let the facts speak for themselves!
    What facts?
    He ran a hand across his brow. Needed sleep. Could not sleep. He felt his temples pound in headache. "Hello, Daddy?"
    What facts?
    The tapes at the Institute. What would Frank find? Was there anything he could find? No. But who knew? Regan hadn't known holy water from tap water. Sure. But if supposedly she's able to read my mind, why is it she didn't know the difference between them? He put a hand to his forehead. The headache. Confusion. Jesus, Karras, wake up! Someone's dying! Wake up!
    Back in his room, he celled the institute. No Frank. He put down the telephone. Holy Water. Tap water. Something. He opened up the Ritual to "Instructions to Exorcists": "... evil spirits... deceptive answers... so it might appear that the afflicted one is in no way possessed..." Karras pondered. Was that it? What the hell are you talking about? What "evil spirit"?
    He slammed shut the book and saw the medical records. He reread them, scanning quickly for anything that might help with the Bishop.
    Hold it. No history of hysteria. That's something. But weak. Something else. Some discrepancy. What was it? He dredged desperately through memories of his studies. And then he recalled it. Not much. But something.
    He picked up the phone and called Chris. She sounded groggy.
    "Hi, Father."
    "Were you sleeping? I'm sorry."
    "It's okay."
    "Chris, where's this Doctor...." Karras ran a finger down the records. "Doctor Klein?"
    "In Rosslyn."
    "In the medical building?"
    "Yes."
    "Please call him and tell him Doctor Karras will be by and that I'd like to take a look at Regan's EEG. Tell him Doctor Karras, Chris. Have you got that?"
    "Got It."
    "I'll talk to you later."
    When he'd hung up the phone, Karras snapped off his collar and got out of his clerical robe and black trousers, changing quickly into khaki pants and a sweatshirt. Over these he wore his priest's black raincoat, buttoning it up to the collar. He looked in a mirror and frowned. Priests and policemen, he thought, as he quickly unbuttoned the raincoat: their clothing had identifying smells one couldn't hide. Karras slipped off his shoes and got into the only pair he owned that were not black, his scuffed white tennis shoes.
    In Chris's car, he drove quickly toward Rosslyn. As he waited on M Street for the light to cross the bridge, he glanced right through the window and saw something disturbing: Karl getting out of a black sedan on Thirty-fifth Street in front of the Dixie Liquor Store. The driver of the car was Lieutenant Kinderman.
    The light changed. Karras gunned the car and shot forward, turning onto the bridge, then looked back through the mirror. Had they seen him? He didn't think so. But what were they doing together? Pure chance? Had it something to do with Regan? with Regan and...?
    Forget it! One thing at a time!
    He parked at the medical building and went upstairs to Dr. Klein's suite of offices. The doctor was busy, but a nurse handed Karras the EEG and very soon he was standing in a cubicle, studying it, the long narrow band of paper slipping slowly through his fingers.
    Klein hurried in, his glance brushing in puzzlement over Karras' dress. "Doctor Karras?"
    "Yes. How do you do?"
    They shook hands.
    "I'm Klein. How's the girl?"
    "Progressing."
    "Glad to hear it." Karras looked back to the graph and Klein scanned it with him, tracing his finger over patterns of waves. "There, you see? It's very regular. No fluctuations whatsoever."
    "Yes, I see." Karras. frowned. "Very curious."
    "Curious?"
    "Presuming that we're dealing with hysteria."
    "Don't get it."
    "I suppose it isn't very well known," murmured Karras, pulling paper through his hands in a steady flow, "but a Belgian---Iteka---discovered that hysterics seemed to cause some rather odd fluctuations in the graph, a very minuscule but always identical pattern. I've been looking for it here and I don't find it."
    Klein grunted noncommittally. "How about that."
    Karras glanced at him. "She was certainly disordered when you ran this graph; is that right?"
    "Yes, she was. Yes, I'd say so. She was."
    "Well, then, isn't it curious that she tested so perfectly? Even subjects in a normal state of mind can influence their brain waves at least within the normal range, and Regan was disturbed at the time. It would seem there would be some fluctuations. If---"
    "Doctor, Mrs. Simmons is getting impatient," a nurse interrupted, cracking open the door.
    "Yes, I'm coming," sighed Klein. As the nurse hurried off, he took a step toward the hallway then turned with his hand on the door edge. "Speaking of hysteria," he commented dryly. "Sorry. Got to run."
    He closed the door behind him. Karras heard his footsteps heading down the hall; heard the opening of a door; heard, "Well, now, how are we feeling today, Mrs...."
    Closing of the door. Karras went back to his study of the graph, finished, then folded it up and banded it. He returned it to the nurse in Reception. Something. It was something he could use with the Bishop as an argument that Regan was not a hysteric and therefore conceivably was possessed. And yet the EEG had posed still another mystery: why no fluctuations? why none at all?

He drove back toward Chris's house, but at a stop sign at the corner of Prospect and Thirty-fifth he froze behind the wheel: parked between Karras and the Jesuit residence hall was Kinderman. He was sitting alone behind the wheel with his elbow out the window, looking straight ahead.
    Karras took a right before Kinderman could see him in Chris's Jaguar. Quickly he found a space, parked and locked the car. Then he walked around the corner as if heading for the residence hall. Is he watching the house? he worried. The specter of Dennings rose up again to haunt him. Was it possible that Kinderman thought Regan had...?
    Easy. Slow down. Take it easy.
    He walked up beside the car and leaned his head through the window on the passenger side. "Hello, Lieutenant."
    The detective turned quickly and looked surprised. Then beamed. "Father Karras."
    Off key, thought Karras. He noticed that his hands were feeling dampish and cold. Play it light! Don't let him know that you're worried! Play it light! "Don't you know you'll get a ticket? Weekdays, no parking between four and six."
    "Never mind that,'" wheezed Kinderman. "Im talking to a priest. Every cop in this neighborhood is Catholic or passing."
    "How've you been?"
    "Speaking plainly, Father Karras, only so-so. Yourself?"
    "Can't complain. Did you ever solve that case?"
    "Which case?"
    "The director."
    "Oh, that one." He made a gesture of dismissal. "Don't ask. Listen, what are you doing tonight? Are you busy? I've got passes for the Crest. It's Othello."
    "Who's starring?"
    "Molly Picon, Desdemona, and Othello, Leo Fuchs. You're happy? This is freebies, Father Marlon Particular! This is William F. Shakespeare! Doesn't matter who's starring, who's not! Now, you're coming?"
    "I'm afraid I'll have to pass. I'm pretty snowed under."
    "I can see. You look terrible, you'll pardon my noticing. You're keeping late hours?"
    "I always look terrible."
    "Only now more than usual. Come on! Get away for one night! We'll enjoy!"
    Karras decided to test; to touch a nerve. "Are you sure that's what's playing?" he asked. His eyes were probing steadily into Kinderman's. "I could have sworn there was a Chris MacNeil film at the Crest."
    The detective missed a beat, and then said quickly, "No, I'm certain. Othello. It's Othello."
    "What brings you to the neighborhood, incidentally?"
    "You! I came only to invite you to the film!"
    "Yes, it's easier to drive than to pick up a phone," said Karras softly.
    The detective's eyebrows lifted in unconvincing innocence. "Your telephone was busy!" he whispered hoarsely, poising an upraised palm in midair.
    The Jesuit stared at him, expressionless.
    "What's wrong?" asked Kinderman after a moment.
    Gravely Karras reached a hand inside the car and lifted Kinderman's eyelid. He examined the eye. "I don't know. You look terrible. You could be coming down with a case of mythomania."
    "I don't know what that means," answers Kinderman as Karras withdrew his hand. "Is it serious?"
    "Not fatal."
    "What is it? The suspense is now driving me crazy!"
    "Look it up," said Karras.
    "Listen, don't be so snotty. You should render unto Caesar just a little, now and then. I'm the law. I could have you deported, you know that?"
    "What for?"
    "A psychiatrist shouldn't make people worry. Plus also the goyim, plainly speaking, would love it. You're a nuisance to them altogether anyway, Father. No, frankly, you embarrass them. They would love to get rid of you. Who needs it? a priest who wears sweatshirts and sneakers!"
    Smiling faintly, Karras nodded. "Got to go. Take care." He tapped a hand on the window frame, twice, in farewell, and then turned and walked slowly toward the entry of the residence.
    "See an analyst!" the detective called after him hoarsely. Then his warm look gave way to worry. He glanced through his windshield up at the house, then started the engine and drove up the street. Passing Karras, he honked his horn and waved.
    Karras waved back; watching Kinderman round the corner of Thirty-sixth. Then he stood motionless for a while on the sidewalk, rubbing gently at his brow with a trembling hand. Could she really have done it? Could Regan have murdered Burke Dennings so horribly? With feverish eyes, he looked up at Regan's window. What in God's name is in that house? And how much longer before Kinderman demanded to see Regan? had a chance to see the Dennings personality? to hear it? How much longer before Regan would be institutionalized?
    Or die?
    He had to build the case for the Chancery.
    He walked quickly across the street at an angle to Chris's house. He rang the doorbell.
    Willie let him in.
    "Missiz taking little nap now," she said.
    Karras nodded. "Good. Very good." He walked by her and upstairs to Regan's bedroom. He was seeking a knowledge he must clutch by the heart.
    He entered and saw Karl in a chair by the window, his arms folded, watching Regan. He was silent and present as a dense, dark wood.
    Karras walked up beside the bed and looked down. The whites of the eyes like milky fog. The murmurings. Spells from some other world. Karras glanced at Karl. Then slowly he leaned over and began to unfasten one of Regan's restraining straps.
    "Father, no!"
    Karl rushed to the bedside and vigorously yanked back the priest's arm. "Very bad, Father! Strong! It is strong! Leave on straps!"
    In the eyes there was a fear that Karras recognized as genuine, and now he knew that Regan's strength was not theory; it was a fact. She could have done it. Could have twisted Dennings' neck around. My God, Karras! Hurry! Find some evidence! Think! Hurry before...!
    "Ich möchte Sie etwas fragen, Engstrom!"
    With a stab of discovery and hot-surging hope, Karras jerked around his head and looked down at the bed. The demon grinned mockingly at Karl. "Tanzt Ihre Tochter gern?"
    German! It had asked if Karl's daughter liked to dance! His heart pounding, Karras turned and saw that the servant's cheeks had flushed crimson; that he trembled, that his eyes glared with fury. "Karl, you'd better step outside," Karras advised him.
    The Swiss shook his head, his hands squeezed into white-knuckled fists. "No, I stay!"
    "You will go, please," the Jesuit said firmly. His gaze held Karl's implacably.
    After a moment of dogged resistance, Karl gave way and hurried from the room.
    The laughter had stopped. Karras turned back. The demon was watching him. It looked pleased. "So you're back," it croaked. "I'm surprised. I would think that embarrassment over the holy water might have discouraged you from ever returning. But then I forget that a priest has no shame."
    Karras breathes shallowly and forced himself to rein his expectations, to think clearly. He knew that the language test in possession required intelligent conversation as proof that whatever was said was not traceable to buried linguistic recollections. Easy! Slow down! Remember that girl? A teen-age servant. Possessed. In delirium, she'd babbled a language that finally was recognized to be Syriac. Karras forces himself to think of the excitement it had caused, of how finally it was learned that the girl had at one time been employed in a boardinghouse where one of the lodgers was a student of theology. On the eve of examinations, he would pace in his room and walk up and down stairs while reciting his Syriac lessons aloud. And the girl had overheard them. Take it easy. Don't get burned.
    "Sprechen Sie deutsch?" asked Karras warily.
    "More games?"
    "Sprechen Sie deutsch?" he repeated, his pulse still throbbing with that distant hope.
    "Natürlich," the demon leered at him. "Mirabile dictu, wouldn't you agree?"
    The Jesuit's heart leaped up. Not only German, but Latin! And in context!
    "Quad nomen mihi est?" he asked quickly. What is my name?
    "Karras."
    And now the priest rushed on with excitement.
    "Ubi sum?" Where am I?
    "In cubiculo." In a room.
    "Et ubi est cubiculum?" And where is the room?
    "In domo." In a house.
    "Ubi est Burke Dennings?" Where is Burke Den-nings?
    "Mortuus." He is dead.
    "Quomodo mortuus est?" How did he die?
    "Inventus est capite reverso." He was found with his head turned around.
    "Quis occidit eum?" Who killed him?
    "Regan."
    "Quomodo ea occidit illum? Dic mihi exacte!" How did she kill him? Tell me in detail!
    "Ah, well, that's sufficient excitement for the moment," the demon said, grinning. "Sufficient. Sufficient altogether. Though of course it will occur to you, I suppose, that while you were asking your questions in Latin, you were mentally formulating answers in Latin." It laughed. "All unconscious, of course. Yes, whatever would we do without unconsciousness? Do you see what I'm driving at, Karras? I cannot speak Latin at all. I read your mind. I merely plucked the responses from your head!"
    Karras felt an instant dismay as his certainty crumbled, felt tantalized and frustrated by the nagging doubt now planted in his brain.
    The demon chuckled. "Yes, I knew that would occur to you, Karras," it croaked at him. "That is why I'm fond of you. That is why I cherish all reasonable men." Its head tilted back in a spate of laughter.
    The Jesuit's mind raced rapidly, desperately; formulating questions to which there was no single answer, but rather many. But maybe I'd think of them all! he realized. Okay! Then ask a question that you don't know the answer to! He could check the answer later to see if it was correct.
    He waited for the laughter to ebb before hd spoke: "Quam profundus est imus Oceanus Indicus?" What is the depth of the Indian Ocean at its deepest point?
    The demon's eyes glittered: "La plume de ma tante," it rasped.
    "Responde Latine."
    "Bon jour! Bonne nuit!"
    "Quam---"
    Karras broke off as the eyes rolled upward into their sockets and the gibberish entity appeared.
    Impatient and frustrated, Karras demanded, "Let me speak to the demon again!"
    No answer. Only the breathing from another shore.
    "Quis es tu?'" he snapped hoarsely. Voice frayed.
    Still the breathing.
    "Let me speak to Burke Dennings!"
    A hiccup. Breathing. A hiccup. Breathing.
    "Let me speak to Burke Dennings!"
    The hiccupping, regular and wrenching, continued. Karras shook his head. Then he walked to a chair and sat on its edge. Hunched over. Tense. Tormented. And waiting...
    Time passed. Karras drowsed. Then jerked his head up. Stay awake! With blinking, heavy lids, he looked over at Regan. No hiccupping. Silent.
    Sleeping?
    He walked over to the bed and looked down. Eyes closed. Heavy breathing. He reached down and felt her pulse, then stooped and carefully examined her lips. They were parched. He straightened up and waited. Then at last he left the room.
    He went down to the kitchen in search of Sharon; and found her at the table eating soup and a sandwich. "Can I fix you something to eat, Father Karras?" she asked him. "You must be hungry."
    "
    "Thanks, no, I'm not," he answered. Sitting down, he reached over and picked up a pencil and pad by Sharon's typewriter. "She's been hiccupping," he told her. "Have you had any Compazine prescribed?"
    "Yes, we've got some."
    He was writing on the pad. "Then tonight give her half of a twenty-five-milligram suppository."
    "Right."
    "She's beginning to dehydrate," he continued, "so I'm switching her to intravenous feedings. First thing in the morning, call a medical-supply house and have them deliver these right away." He slid the pad across the table to Sharon. "In the Meantime, she's sleeping, so you could start her on a Sustagen feeding."
    "Okay." Sharon nodded. "I will." Spooning soup, she turned the pad around and looked at the list."
    Karras watched her. Then he frowned in concentration.
    "You're her tutor."
    "Yes, that's right."
    "Have you taught her any Latin?"
    She was puzzled. "No, I haven't.-"
    "Any German?"
    "Only French."
    "What level? La plume de ma tante?"
    "Pretty much."
    "But no German or Latin."
    "Huh-nh, no."
    "But the Engstroms, don't they sometimes speak German?"
    "Oh, sure."
    "Around Regan?"
    She shrugged. "I suppose." She stood up and took her plates to the sink. "As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure."
    "Have you ever studied Latin?" Karras asked her.
    "No, I haven't."
    "But you'd recognize the general sound."
    "Oh, I'm sure." She rinsed the soup bowl and put it in the rack.
    "Has she ever spoken Latin in your presence?"
    "Regan?"
    "Since her illness."
    "No, never."
    "Any language at all?" probed Karras.
    She tuned off the faucet, thoughtful. "Well, I might have imagined it, I guess, but..."
    "What?"
    "Well, I think..." She frowned. "Well, I could have sworn I heard her talking in Russian."
    Karras stared. "Do you speak it?" he asked her, throat dry.
    She shrugged. "Oh, well, so-so." She began to fold the dishcloth: "I just studied it in college, that's all. "
    Karras sagged. She did pick the Latin from my brain. Staring bleakly; he lowered his brow to his hand, into doubt, into torments of knowledge and reason: Telepathy more common in states of great tension: speaking always in a language known to someone in the room: "... thinks the same things I'm thinking...": "Bon jour...": "La plume de ma tante...": "Bonne nuit..." With thoughts such as these, he slowly watched blood turning back into wine.
    What to do? Get some sleep. Then come back es»d try again... try again... try again.
    He stood up and looked blearily at Sharon. She was leaning with her back against the sink, arms folded, watching him thoughtfully. "I'm going over to the residence," he told her. "As soon as Regan's awake, I'd like a call."
    "Yes, I'll call you."
    "And the Compazine," he reminded her. "You won't forget?"
    She shook her head. "No, I'll take care of it right away," she said.
    He nodded. With hands in hip pockets, he looked down, trying to think of what he might have forgotten to tell Sharon. Always something to be done. Always something overlooked when even everything was done.
    "Father, what's going on?" he heard her ask gravely. "What is it? What's really going on with Rags?"
    He lifted up eyes that were haunted and seared. "I really don't know," he said emptily.
    He turned and walked out of the kitchen.
    As he passed through the entry hall, Karras heard footsteps coming up rapidly behind him.
    "Father Karras!"
    He turned. Saw Karl with his sweater.
    "Very sorry," said the servant as he handed it over. "I was thinking to finish much before. But I forget."
    The vomit stains were gone and it had a sweet smell. "That was thoughtful of you, Karl," the priest said gently. "Thank you."
    "Thank you, Father Karras."
    There was a tremor in his voice and his eyes were full.
    "Thank you for your helping Miss Regan," Karl finished. Then he averted his head, self-conscious, and swiftly left the entry.
    Karras watched, remembering him in Kinderman's car. More mystery. Confusion. Wearily he opened the door. It was night. Despairing, he stepped out of darkness into darkness.
    He crossed to the residence, groping toward sleep, but as he entered his room he looked down and saw a message slip pink on the floor. He picked it up. From Frank. The tapes. Home number. "Please call...."
    He picked up the telephone and requested the number. Waited. His hands shook with desperate hope.
    "Hello?" A young boy. Piping voice.
    "May I speak to your father, please."
    "Yes. just a minute." Phone clattering. Then quickly picked up. Still the boy. "Who is this?"
    "Father Karras."
    "Father Karits?"
    His heart thumping, Karras spoke evenly, "Karras. Father Karras..."
    Down went the phone again.
    Karras pressed digging fingers against his brow.
    Phone noise.
    "Father Karras?"
    'Yes, hello, Frank. I've been trying to reach you."
    "Oh, I'm sorry. I've been working on your tapes at the house."
    "Are you finished?"
    "Yes, I am. By the way, this is pretty weird stuff."
    "I know." Karras tried to flatten the tension in his voice. "What's the story, Frank? What have you found?"
    "Well, this 'type-token' ratio, first..."
    "Yes?"
    "Well, I didn't have enough of a sampling to be absolutely accurate, you understand, but I'd say it's pretty close, or at least as close as you can get with these things. Well, at any rate, the two different voices on the tapes, I would say, are probably separate personalities."
    "Probably?"
    "Well, I wouldn't want to swear to it in court. In fact, I'd have to say the variance is really pretty minimal."
    "Minimal..." Karras repeated dully. Well, that's the ball game. "And what about the gibberish?" he asked without hope. "Is it any kind of language?"
    Frank chuckled.
    "What's funny?" asked the Jesuit moodily.
    "Was this really some sneaky psychological testing, Father?"
    "I don't know what you mean, Frank."
    "Well, I guess you got your tapes mixed around or something. It's---"
    "Frank, is it a language or not?" cut in Karras.
    "Oh, I'd say it was a language, all right."
    Karras stiffened. "Are you kidding?"
    'No, I'm not."
    "What's the language?" he asked, unbelieving.
    "English."
    For a moment, Karras was mute, and when he spoke there was an edge to his voice. "Frank, we seem to have a very poor connection; or would you like to let me in on the joke?"
    "Got your tape recorder there?" asked Frank.
    It was sitting on his desk. "Yes, I do."
    "Has it got a reverse-play position?"
    "Why?"
    "Has it got one?"
    "Just a second." Irritable, Karras set down the phone and took the top off the tape recorder to check it. "Yes, it's got one. Frank, what's this all about?"
    "Put your tape on the machine and play it backward."
    "What?"
    "You've got gremlins." Frank laughed, "Look, play it and I'll talk to you tomorrow. Good night, Father."
    "Night, Frank."
    "Have fun."
    Karras hung up. He looked baffled. He hunted up the gibberish tape and threaded it onto the recorder. First he ran it forward, listening. Shook his head. No mistake. It was gibberish.
    He let it run through to the end and then played it in reverse. He heard his voice speaking backward. Then Regan---or someone---in English!
    ... Marin marin karras be us let us...
    English. Senseless; but English! How on earth could she do that? he marveled.
    He listened to it all, then rewound and played the tape through again. And again. And then realized that the order of speech was inverted.
    He stopped the tape and rewound it. With a pencil and paper, he sat down at the desk and began to play the tape from the beginning while transcribing the words, working laboriously and long with almost constant stops and starts of the tape recorder. When finally it was done, he made another transcription on a second sheet of paper, reversing the order of the words. Then he leaned back and read it: ... danger. Not yet. [indecipherable] will die. Little time. Now the [indecipherable]. Let her die. No, no, sweet! it is sweet in the body! I feel! There is [indecipherable]. Better [indecipherable] than the void. I fear the priest. Give us time. Fear the priest! He is [indecipherable]. No, not this one: the [indecipherable], the one who [indecipherable]. He is ill. Ah, the blood, feel the blood, how it [sings?].
    Here, Karras asked, "Who are you?" with the answer: I am no me. I am no one.
    Then Karras: "Is that your name?" and then: I have no name. I am no one. Many. Let us be. Let us warm in the body. Do not [indecipherable] from the body into void, into [indecipherable]. Leave us. Leave us. Let us be. Karras. [Marin?
    Marin?]...
    Again and again he read it over, haunted by its tone, by the feeling that more than one person was speaking, until finally repetition itself dulled the words into commonness. He set down the tablet on which he'd transcribed them and rubbed at his face, at his eyes, at his thoughts. Not an unknown language. And writing backward with facility was hardly paranormal or even unusual. But speaking backward: adjusting and altering the phonetics so that playing them backward would make them intelligible;. wasn't such performance beyond the reach of even a hyperstimulated intellect? The accelerated unconscious referred to by Jung? No. Something...
    He remembered. He went to his shelves for a book: Jung's Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena. Something similar here, he thought. What?
    He found it: an account of an experiment with automatic writing in which the unconscious of the subject seemed able to answer his questions and anagrams.
    Anagrams!
    He propped the book open on the desk, leaned over and read an account of a portion of the experiment: 3rd DAY What is man? Tefi hasl esble lies.
    Is that an anagram? Yes.
    How many words does it contain? Five.
    What is the first word? See.
    What is the second word? Eeeee.
    See? Shall I interpret it myself? Try to!
    The subject found this solution: "The life is less able." He was astonished at this intellectual pronouncement, which seemed to him to prove the existence of an intelligence independent of his own. He therefore went on to ask: Who are you? Clelia.
    Are you a woman? Yes.
    Have you lived on earth? No.
    Will you come to life? Yes.
    When? In six years.
    Why are you conversing with me? E if Cledia el.
    The subject interpreted this answer as an anagram for "I Clelia feel."


4TH DAY

Am I the one who answers the questions? Yes.
    Is Clelia there? No.
    Who is there, then? Nobody.
    Does Clelia exist at all? No.
    Then with whom was I speaking yesterday? With nobody.
    Karras stopped reading. Shook his head. Here was no paranormal performance: only the limitless abilities of the mind.
    He reached for a cigarette, sat down and lit it. "I am no one. Many." Eerie. Where did it come from, he wondered, this content of her speech?
    "With nobody."
    From the same place Clelia had come from? Emergent personalities?
    "Marin... Marin..."
    "Ah, the blood..."
    "He is ill...."
    Haunted, he glanced at his copy of Satan and moodily leafed to the opening inscription: "Let not the dragon be my leader...."
    He exhaled smoke and closed his eyes. He coughed. His throat felt raw and inflamed. He crushed out the cigarette, eyes watering from smoke. exhausted. His bones felt like iron pipe. He got up and put out a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, then he flicked out the room light, shuttered his window blinds, kicked off his shoes and collapsed on the bed. Fragments. Regan. Dennings. Kinderman. What to do? He must help. How?
    Try the Bishop with what little he had? He did not think so. He could never convincingly argue the case.
    He thought of undressing, getting under the covers. Too tired. This burden. He wanted to be free.
    "... Let us be!"
    Let me be, he responded to the fragment. He drifted into motionless, dark granite sleep.

The ringing of a telephone awakened him. Groggy, he fumbled toward the light switch. What time was it? A few minutes after three. He reached blindly for the telephone. Answered. Sharon. Would he come to the house right away? He would come. He hung up the telephone, feeling trapped again, smothered and enmeshed.
    He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, dried off and then started from the room, but at the door, he turned around and came back for his sweater. He pulled it over his head and then went out into the street.
    The air was thin and still in the darkness. Some cats at a garbage can scurried in fright as he crossed toward the house.
    Sharon met him at the door. She was wearing a sweater and was draped in a blanket. She looked frightened. Bewildered. "Sorry, Father," she whispered as he entered the house, "but I thought you ought to see this."
    "What?"
    "You'll see. Let's be quiet, now. I don't want to wake up Chris. She shouldn't see this." She beckoned.
    He followed her, tiptoeing quietly up the stairs to Regan's bedroom. Entering, the Jesuit felt chilled to the bone. The room was icy. He frowned in bewilderment at Sharon, and she nodded at him solemnly. "Yes. Yes, the heat's on," she whispered. Then she turned and stared at Regan, at the whites of her eyes glowing eerily in lamplight. She seemed to be in coma. Heavy breathing. Motionless. The nasogastric tube was in place, the Sustagen seeping slowly into her body.
    Sharon moved quietly toward the bedside and Karras followed, still staggered by the cold. When they stood by the bed, he saw beads of perspiration on Regan's forehead; glanced down and saw her hands gripped firmly in the restraining straps.
    Sharon. She was bending, gently pulling the top of Regan's pajamas wide apart, and an overwhelming pity hit Karras at the sight of the wasted chest, the protruding ribs where one might count the remaining weeks or days of her life.
    He felt Sharon's haunted eyes upon him. "I don't know if it's stopped," she whispered. "But watch: just keep looking at her chest."
    She turned and looked down, and the Jesuit, puzzled, followed her gaze. Silence. The breathing. Watching. The cold. Then the Jesuit's brows knitted tightly as he saw something happening to the skin: a faint redness, but in sharp definition; like handwriting. He peered down closer.
    "There, it's coming," whispered Sharon.
    Abruptly the gooseflesh on Karras' arms was not from the icy cold in the room; was from what he was seeing on Regan's chest; was from bas-relief script rising up in clear letters of blood-red skin. Two words: help me "That's her handwriting," whispered Sharon.
    At 9: 00 that morning, Damien Karras came to the president of Georgetown University and asks for permission to seek an exorcism. He received it, and immediately afterward went to the Bishop of the diocese, who listened with grave attention to all that Karras had to say.
    "You're convinced that it's genuine?" the Bishop asked finally.
    "I've made a prudent judgment that it meets the conditions set forth in the Ritual," answered Karras evasively. He still did not dare believe. Not his mind but his heart had tugged him to this moment; pity and the hope for a cure through suggestion.
    "You would want to do the exorcism yourself?" asked the Bishop.
    He felt a moment of elation; saw the door swinging open to fields, to escape from the crushing weight of caring and that meeting each twilight with the ghost of his faith. "Yes, of course," answered Karras.
    "How's your health?"
    "All right."
    "Have you ever been involved with this sort of thing before?"
    "No, I haven't."
    "Well, we'll see. It might be best to have a man with experience. There aren't too many, of course, but perhaps someone back from the foreign missions. Let me see who's around. In the meantime, I'll call you as soon as we know."
    When Karras had left him, the Bishop called the president of Georgetown University, and they talked about him for the second time that day.
    "Well, he does know the background," said the president at a point in their conversation. "I doubt there's any danger in just having him assist. There should be a psychiatrist present, anyway."
    "And what about the exorcist? Any ideas? I'm blank."
    "Well, now, Lankester Merrin's around."
    "Merrin? I had a notion he was over is Iraq. I think I read he was working on a dig around Nineveh."
    "Yes, down below Mosul. That's right. But he finished and came back around three or four months ago, Mike.
    He's at Woodstock."
    "Teaching?"
    "No, working on another book."
    "God help us! Don't you think he's too old, though? "How's his health?"
    "Well, it must be all right or he wouldn't still be running around digging up tombs, don't you think?"
    "Yes, I suppose so."
    "And besides, he's had experience, Mike."
    "I didn't know that."
    "Well, at least that's the word."
    "When was that?"
    "Oh, maybe ten or twelve years ago, I think, in Africa. Supposedly the exorcism lasted for months. I heard it damn near killed him."
    "Well, in that case, I doubt that he'd want to do another one."
    "We do what we're told here, Mike. All the rebels are over with you seculars."
    "Thanks for reminding me."
    "Well, what do you think?"
    "Look, I'll leave it up to you and the Provincial."
    Early that silently waiting evening, a young scholastic preparing for the priesthood wandered the grounds of Woodstock Seminary in Maryland. He was searching for a slender, gray-haired old Jesuit. He found him on a pathway, strolling through a grove. He handed him a telegram. The old man thanked him, serene, eyes kindly, then turned and renewed his contemplation; continued his walk through a nature that he loved. Now and then he would pause to hear the song of a robin, to watch a bright butterfly hover on a branch. He did not open and read the telegram. He knew what it said. He had known. He had read it in the dust of the temples of Nineveh. He was ready.
    He continued his farewells.