The Exorcist (25 page)

Again, he was answering crisply, unthinking: "Look, if Christ had said those people who were supposedly possessed had schizophrenia, which I imagine they did, they would probably have crucified him three years earlier."

"Oh, really?" Chris put a shaking hand to her sunglasses, deepening her voice in an effort at control. "Well, it happens, Father Karras, that someone very close to me is probably possessed. She needs an exorcism. Will you do it?"

To Karras, it suddenly seemed unreal: Key Bridge; across the river, the Hot Shoppe; traffic; Chris MacNeil, the movie star. As he stared at her, groping for an answer, she slipped off the glasses and Karras felt momentary, wincing shock at the redness, at the desperate pleading in those haggard eyes. The woman was serious, he realized.

"Father Karras; it's my daughter," she told him huskily, "my daughter!"

"Then all the more reason," he at last said gently, "to forget about exorcism and---"

"Why? God, I don't understand!" she burst out in a voice that was cracking and distraught.

He took her wrist in a comforting hand. "In the first place," he told her in soothing tones, "it could make things worse."

"But how?"

"The ritual of exorcism is dangerously suggestive. It could plant the notion of possession, you see, where it didn't exist before, or if it did, it could tend to fortify it. And secondly, Miss MacNeil, before the Church approves an exorcism, it conducts an investigation to see if it's warranted. That takes time. In the meantime, your---"

"Couldn't you do the exorcism yourself?" she pleaded, her lower lip starting to tremble. Her eyes were filling up with tears.

"Look, every priest has the power to exorcise, but he has to have Church approval, and frankly, it's rarely ever given, so---"

"Can't you even look at her?"

"Well, as a psychiatrist, yes, I could, but---"

"She needs a priest!" Chris suddenly cried out, her features contorted with anger and fear. "I've taken her to every goddam, fucking doctor, psychiatrist in the world and they sent me to you; now you send me to them!"

"But your---"

"Jesus Christ won't somebody help me?" The heart-stopping shriek bolted raw above the river. Startled birds shot up screeching from its banks. "Oh, my God, someone help me!" Chris moaned as she crumpled to Karras' chest with convulsive sobs. "Please help me! Help me! Please! Please, help!..."

The Jesuit looked down at her, lifted up comforting hands to her head as the riders in traffic-locked automobiles glanced out windows to watch them wig passing disinterest.

"It's all right," Karras whispered as he patted her shoulder. He wanted only to calm her; to humor; Stem hysteria. "...my daughter''? It was she who needed psychiatric help. "It's all right. I'll go see her," he told her. "I'll see her."

**********

He approached the house with her in silence, with a lingering sense of unreality, with thoughts of the next day's lecture at the Georgetown Medical School. He had yet to prepare his notes.

They climbed the front stoop. Karras glanced down the street at the Jesuit residence hall and realized he would now miss dinner. It was ten before six. He looked at Chris as she slipped the key in the lock. She hesitated, turned to him. "Father... do you think you should wear your priest clothes?"

The voice: how childlike it was; how naïve."Too dangerous," he told her.

She nodded and started opening the door, and it was then that Karras felt it: a chill, tugging warning. It scraped through his bloodstream like particles of ice.

"Father Karras?"

He looked up. Chris had entered. She was holding the door.

For a hesitant moment he stood unmoving; then abruptly he went forward, stepping into the house with an odd sense of ending.

Karras heard commotion. Upstairs. A deep, booming voice was thundering obscenities, threatening in anger, in hate, in frustration.

Karras glanced at Chris. She was staring at him mutely. Then she moved on ahead. He followed her upstairs and along the hall to Regan's bedroom, where Karl leaned against the wall just opposite her door, his head sagging low over folded arms. As the servant looked slowly up at Chris, Karras saw bafflement and fright in his eyes. The voice from the bedroom, this close, was so loud that it almost seemed amplified electronically. "It wants no straps, still," Karl told Chris in an awed, cracking voice.

"I'll be back in a second, Father," Chris told the priest dully.

Karras watched her walk down the hall and into her own bedroom; then he glanced at Karl. The Swiss was looking at him fixedly.

"You are priest?" Karl asked.

karras nodded, then looked quickly back to the door of Regan's room. The raging voice had been displaced by the long, strident lowing of some animal that might have been a steer.

Something prodding at his hand. He looked down. "That's her," Chris was saying "that's Regan." She was giving him a photograph. He took it. Young girl. Very pretty. Sweet smile.

"That was taken four months ago," Chris said numbly. She took back the photo and motioned with her head at the bedroom door. "Now you go and take a look at her now." She leaned against the wall beside Karl. "I'll wait here."

"Who's in there with her?" Karras asked her.

"No one."

He held her steady gaze and then turned with a frown to the bedroom door. As he grasped the doorknob, the sounds from within ceased abruptly. In the ticking silence, Karras hesitated, then entered the room slowly, almost flinching backward at the pungent stench of moldering excrement that hit him in the face like a palpable blast.

Quickly reining back his revulsion, he closed the door. Then his eyes locked, stunned, on the thing that was Regan, on the creature that was lying on its back in the bed, head propped against a pillow while eyes bulging wide in their hollow sockets shone with mad cunning and burning intelligence, with interest and with spite as they fixed upon his, as they watched him intently, seething in a face shaped into a skeletal, hideous mask of mind-bending malevolence. Karras shifted his gaze to the tangled, thickly matted hair; to the wasted arms and legs; the distended stomach jutting up so grotesquely; then back to the eyes: they were watching him... pinning him... shifting now to follow as he moved to a desk and chair near the window.

"Hello, Regan, " said the priest in a warm, friendly tone. He picked up the chair and took it over by the bed.

"I'm a friend of your mother's. She tells me that you haven't been feeling too well." He sat down. "Do you think you'd like to tell me what's wrong? I'd like to help you."

The eyes gleamed fiercely, unblinking and a yellowish saliva dribbled down from a corner of her mouth to her chin. Then her lips stretched taut into a feral grin, into bow-mouthed mockery.

"Well, well, well," gloated Regan sardonically, and hairs prickled on the back of Karras' neck, for the voice was an impossibly deep bass thick with menace and power. "So it's you... they sent you! Well, we've nothing to fear from you at all."

"Yes, that's right. I'm your friend. I'd like to help," said Karras.

"You might looses these straps, then," Regan croaked. She had tugged up her wrists so that now Karras noticed that they were bound with a double set of restraining straps.

"Are they uncomfortable for you?" he asked her.

"Extremely. They're a nuisance. An infernal nuisance." The eyes glinted slyly with secret amusement.

Karras saw the scratch marks on her face; the cuts on her lips where apparently she'd bitten them. "I'm afraid you might hurt yourself, Regan."

"I'm not Regan," she rumbled, still with the hideous grin that now seemed to Karras to be her permanent expression. How incongruous, the braces on her teeth looked, he reflected.

"Oh, I see. Well, then, maybe we should introduce ourselves. I'm Damien Karras," said the priest. "Who are you?"

"I'm the devil."

"Ah, good, very good." Karras nodded approvingly. "Now we can talk."

"A little chat?"

"If you like."

"Very good for the soul. However, you will find that I cannot talk freely while bound with these straps. I'm accustomed to gesturing." Regan drooled. "As you know, I've client much of my time in Rome, dear Karras. Now kindly undo the straps!"

What precocity of language and thought, mused Karras. He leaned forward in his chair with professional interest "You say you're the devil?" he asked.

"I assure you."

"Then why don't you just make the straps disappear?"

"That's much too vulgar a display of power, Karras. Too crude. After all, I'm a prince!" A chuckle. "I much prefer persuasion, Karras; togetherness; community involvement. Moreover, if I loosen the straps myself, my friend, I deny you the opportunity of performing a charitable act."

"But a charitable act," said Karras, "is a virtue and that's what the devil would want to prevent; so in fact I'd be helping you now if I didn't undo the straps. Unless, of course"--- he shrugged--- "you're really not really the devil. And in that case, perhaps I would undo the straps."

"How very foxy of you, Karras. If only dear Herod were here to enjoy this."

"Which Herod?" asked Kum with narrowed eyes. Was she punning on Christ's calling Herod "that fox"? "There were two. Are you talking about the King of Judea?"

"The tetrarch of Galilee!" she blasted him with anger and scorching contempt; then abruptly she was grinning again, cajoling in that sinister voice: "There, you see how these damnable straps have upset me? Undo then. Undo them and I'll tell you the future."

"Very tempting."

"My forte."

"But then how do I know that you can read the future?"

"I'm the devil."

"Yes, you say so, but you won't give me proof."

"You have no faith."

Karras stiffened. "In what?"

"In me, dear Karras; in me!" Something mocking and malicious danced hidden in those eyes. "All these proofs, all these signs in the sky!"

"Well, now, something very simple might do," offered Karras. "For example: the devil knows everything, correct?"

"No, almost everything, Karras--- almost. You see? They keep saying that I'm proud. I am not. Now, then, what are you up to, fox?" The yellowed, bloodshot eyes gleamed craftily.

"I thought we might test the extent of your knowledge."

"Ah, yes! The largest lake in South America," japed Regan, eyes bulging with glee, "is Lake Titicaca in Peru! Will that do it?"'

"No, I'll have to ask something only the devil would know. For example, where is Regan? Do you know?"

"She is here."

"Where is 'here' ?"

"In the pig."

"Let me see her."

"Why?"

"Why, to prove that you're telling me the truth."

"Do you want to fuck her? Loose the straps and I will let you go at it!"

"Let me see her."

"Very succulent cunt," leered Regan, her furred and lolling tongue licking spittle across cracked lips. "But a poor conversationalist, my friend. I strongly advise you to stay with me."

"Well, it's obvious you don't know where she is"--- Karras shrugged--- "so apparently you aren't the devil."

"I am!" Regan bellowed with a sudden jerk forward, her face contorting with rage. Karras shivered as the massive, terrifying voice boomed crackling off the walls of the room. "I am!"

"Well, then, let me see Regan," said Karras. "That would prove it."

"I will show you! I will read your mind!" it seethed furiously. "Think of a number between one and ten!"

"No, that wouldn't prove a thing. I would have to see Regan."

Abruptly it chuckled, leaning back against the headboard. "No, nothing would prove anything at all to you, Karras. How splendid. How splendid indeed! In the meantime, we shall try to keep you properly beguiled. After all, now, we would not wish to lose you."

"Who is 'we' ?" Karras probed with alert, quick interest.

"We are quite a little group in the piglet," it said, nodding. "Ah, yes, quite a stunning little multitude. Later I may see about discreet introductions. In the meantime, I am suffering from a maddening itch that I cannot reach. Would you loosen one strap for a moment, Karras?"

"No; just tell me where it itches and I'll scratch it."

"Ah, sly, very sly!"

"Show me Regan and perhaps I'll undo one strap," offered Karras. "If---"

Abruptly he flinched in shock as he found himself staring into eyes filled with terror, at a mouth gaping wide in a soundless shriek for help.

But then quickly the Regan identity vanished in a blurringly rapid remolding of features. "Won't you take off these straps?" asked a wheedling voice in a clipped British accent.

In a flash, the demonic personality returned. "Couldjya help an old altar boy, Faddah?" it croaked, and then threw back its head in laughter.

Karras sat stunned, felt the glacial hands at the back of his neck again, more palpable now, more firm. The Regan-thing broke off its laughter and fixed him with taunting eyes.