The Exorcist (15 page)

"Where've you been?" asked Chris when she'd finished.

"Oh, didn't he tell you?"

"Oh, didn't who tell me?"

"Burke. Isn't he here? Where is he?"

"He was here?"

"You mean he wasn't when you got home?"

"Listen, start all over," said Chris.

"Oh, that nut," Sharon chided with a headshake. "I couldn't get the druggist to deliver, so when Burke came around, I thought, fine, he can stay here with Regan while I go get the Thorazine." She shrugged. "I should have known."

'Yeah, you should've. And so what did you buy?"

"Well, since I thought I had the time, I went and bought a rubber drawsheet for her bed." She displayed it.

"Did you eat?"

"No, I thought I'd fix a sandwich. Would you like one?"

"Good idea. Let's go and eat."

"What happened with the tests?" Sharon asked as they walked slowly to the kitchen.

"Not a thing. All negative. I'm going to have to get her a shrink," Chris answered dully.

**********

After sandwiches and coffee, Sharon showed Chris how to give an injection.

"The two main things," she explained, "are to make sure that there aren't any air bubbles, and then you make sure that you haven't hit a vein. See, you aspirate a little, like this"--- she was demonstrating--- "and see if there's blood in the syringe."

For a time, Chris practiced the procedure on a grapefruit, and seemed to grow proficient. Then at 9:28, the front doorbell rang. Willie answered. It was Karl. As he passed through the kitchen, en route to his room, he nodded a good evening and remarked he'd forgotten to take his key.

"I can't believe it," Chris said to Sharon. "That's the first time he's ever admitted a mistake."

They passed the evening watching television in the study.

At 11:46, Chris answered the phone. The young director of the second unit, He sounded grave.

"Have you heard the news yet, Chris?"

'No, what?"

"Well, it's bad."

"What is it?" she asked.

"Burke's dead."

He'd been drank. He had stumbled. He had fallen down the steep flight of steps beside the house, fallen far to the bottom, where a passing pedestrian on M Street watched as he tumbled into night without end. A broken neck. This bloody, crumpled scene, his last.

As the telephone fell from Chris's fingers, she was silently weeping, standing unsteadily. Sharon ran and caught her, supported her, hung up the phone and led her to the sofa.

"Burke's dead," Chris sobbed.

"Oh, my God!" gasped Sharon. "What happened?"

But Chris could not speak yet. She wept.

Then, later, they talked. For hours. They talked. Chris drank. Reminisced about Dennings. Now laughed. Now cried. "Ah, my God," she kept sighing. "Poor Burke... poor Burke..."

Her dream of death kept coming back to her.

At a little past five in the morning, Chris was standing moodily behind the bar, her elbows propped, head lowered, eyes sad. She was waiting for Sharon to return from the kitchen with a tray of ice.

She heard her coming.

"I still can't believe it," Sharon was sighing as she entered the study.

Chris looked up and froze.

Gliding spiderlike, rapidly, close behind Sharon, her body arched backward in a bow with her head almost touching her feet, was Regan, her tongue flicking quickly in and out of her mouth while she hissed sibilantly like a serpent.

"Sharon?" Chris said numbly, still staring at Regan.

Sharon stopped. So did Regan. Sharon turned and saw nothing. And then screamed as she felt Regan's tongue snaking out at her ankle.

Chris whitened. "Call that doctor and get him out of bed! Get him now!"

Wherever Sharon moved, Regan would follow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Friday, April 29. While Chris waited in the hall outside the bedroom, Dr. Klein and a noted neuropsychiatrist were examining Regan.

The doctors observed for half all hour. Flinging. Whirling. Tearing at the hair. She occassionally grimaced and pressed her hands against her ears as if blotting out sudden, deafening noise. She bellowed obscenities. Screamed in pain. Then at last she flung herself face downward onto the bed and tucked her legs up under her stomach. She moaned incoherently.

The psychiatrist motioned Klein away from the bed.

"Let's get her tranquilized," he whispered. "Maybe I can talk to her."

The internist nodded and prepared an injection of fifty milligrams of Thorazine. When the doctors approached the bed, however, Regan seemed to sense them and quickly turned over, and as the neuropsychiatrist attempted to hold her, she began to shriek in malevolent fury. Bit him. Fought him. Held him off. It was only when Karl was called in to assist that they managed to keep her sufficiently rigid for Klein to administer the injection.

The dosage proved inadequate. Another fifty milligrams was injected. They waited.

Regan grew tractable. Then dreamy. Then stared at the doctors in sudden bewilderment. "Where's Mom? I want my Mom!" she wept.

At a nod from the neuropsychiatrist, Klein left the room to go and get Chris.

"Your mother will be here in just a second, dear," the psychiatrist told Regan. He sat on the bed and stroked her head. "There, there, it's all right, dear, I'm a doctor."

"I want Mom!" wept Regan.

"She's coming. Do you hurt, dear?"

She nodded, the tears streaming down.

"Where?"

"just every place!" sobbed Regan. "I feel all achy!"

"Oh, my baby!"

"Mom!"

Chris ran to the bed and hugged her. Kissed her. Comforted and soothed. Then Chris herself began to weep. "Oh, Rags, you're back! It's really you!"

"Oh, Mom, he hurt me!" Regan sniffled. "Make him stop hurting me! Please? Okay?"

Chris looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced to the doctors with a pleading question in her eyes.

"She's heavily sedated," the psychiatrist said gently.

"You mean...?"

He cut her off. "We'll see." Then he turned to Regan. "Can you tell me what's wrong, dear?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know why he does it to me." Tears rolled down from her eyes. "He was always my friend before!"

"Who's that?"

"Captain Howdy! And then it's like somebody else is inside me! Making me do things!"

"Captain Howdy?"

"I don't know!"

"A person?"

She nodded.

"Who?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, all right, then; let's try something, Regan. A game." He was reaching in his pocket for a shining bauble attached to a silvery length of chain. "Have you ever seen movies where someone gets hypnotized?"

She nodded.

"Well, I'm a hypnotist. Oh, yes! I hypnotize people all the time. That's, of course, if they let me. Now I think if I hypnotize you, Regan, it will help you get well. Yes, that person inside you will come right out. Would you like to be hypnotized? See, your mother's right here, right beside you"

Regan looked questioningly to Chris.

"Go ahead, honey, do it," Chas urged her. "Try It."

Regan turned, to the psychiatrist and nodded "Okay," she said softly. "But only a little."

The psychiatrist smiled and glanced abruptly to the sound of pottery breaking behind him. A delicate vase had fallen to the floor from the top of a bureau where Dr. Klein was now resting his forearm. He looked at his arm and then down at the shards with an air of puzzlement; then stooped to pick them up.

"Never mind, doc, Willie'll get it," Chris told him.

"Would you close those shutters for me, Sam?" the psychiatrist asked him. "And pull the drapes?"

When the room was dark, the psychiatrist gripped the chain in his fingertips and began to swing the bauble back and forth with an easy movement. He shone a penlight on it. It glowed. He began to intone the hypnotic ritual. "Now watch this, Regan, keep watching, and soon you'll feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier...."

Within a very short time, she seemed to be in trance.

"Extremely suggestible," the psychiatrist murmured. Then he spoke to the girl. "Are you comfortable, Regan?"

"Yes." Her voice was soft and whispery.

"How old are you, Regan?"

"Twelve."

"Is there someone inside you?"

"Sometimes."

"When?"

"Different times."

"It's a person?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Captain Howdy?"

"I don't know."

"A man?"

"I don't know."

"But he's there."

"Yes, sometimes."

"Now?"

"I don't know."

"If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"I'm afraid!"

"Of what?"

"I don't know!"

"If he talks to me, Regan, I think he will leave you. Do you want him to leave you?"

"Yes."

"Let him speak, then. Will you let him speak?"

A pause. Then, "Yes."

"I am speaking to the person inside of Regan now," the psychiatrist said firmly. "If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions." For a moment he paused to allow the suggestion to enter her bloodstream. Then he repeated it: "If you are there, then you are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer, now: Are you there?"

Silence. Then something curious happened: Regan's breath turned suddenly foul. It was thick, like a current. The psychiatrist smelled it from two feet away. He shone the penlight on Regan's face.

Chris stifled a gasp. Her daugther's features were contorting into a malevolent mask: lips pulling tautly into opposite directions, tumefied tongue lolling wolfish from her mouth.

"Oh, my God!" breathed Chris.

"Are you the person in Regan?" the psychiatrist asked.

She nodded.

"Who are you?"

"Nowonmai," she answered gutturally.

"That's your name?"

She nodded.

"You're a man?"

She said, "Say."

"Did you answer?"

"Say"

"If that's 'yes,' nod your head."

She nodded.

"Are you speaking in a foreign language?"

"Say."

"Where do you come from?"

"Dog."

"You say that you come from a dog?"

"Dogmorfmocion," Regan replied.

The psychiatrist thought for a moment, then attempted another approach. "When I ask you questions now, you will answer by moving your head: a nod for 'yes,' and a shake for 'no.' Do you understand that?"

Regan nodded.

"Did your answers have meaning?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Are you someone whom Regan has known?" No.

"That she knows of?" No.

"Are you someone she's invented?" No.

"You're real?" Yes.

"Part of Regan?" No.

"Were you ever a part of Regan?" No.

"Do you like her?" No.

"Dislike her?" Yes.

"Do you hate her?" Yes.

"Over something she's done?" Yes.

"Do you blame her for her parents' divorce?" No.

"Has it something to do with her parents?" No.

"With a friend?" No.

"But you hate her?" Yes.

"Are you punishing Regan?" Yes.

"You wish to harm her?" Yes.

"To kill her?" Yes.

"If she died; wouldn't you die too?" No.

The answer seemed to disquiet him and he lowered his eyes in thought. The bed springs squeaked as he shifted his weight. In the smothering stillness, Regan's breathing rasped as from a rotted, putrid bellows. Here. Yet far. Distantly sinister.

The psychiatrist lifted his glance again to that hideous, twisted face. His eyes gleamed sharply with speculation.

"Is there something she can do that would make you leave her?" Yes.

"Can you tell me what it is?"' Yes.

"Will you tell me?" No.

"But---"

Abruptly the psychiatrist gasped is startled pain as he realized with horrified incredulity that Regan was squeezing his scrotum with a hand that had gripped him like an iron talon. Eyes wide-staring he struggled to free himself. He couldn't. "Sam! Sam, help me!" he croaked.