The Exorcist (28 page)

Moodily the Jesuit walked back to his desk, where he picked up a package of cigarettes; lit one. So okay. She's got the syndrome of demonic possession. Now how do you cure it?

He fanned out the match. That depends on what caused it. He sat on the edge of his desk. Considered. The nuns at the convent of Lille. Possessed. In early-seventeenth-century France. They'd confessed to their exorcists that while helpless in the state of possession, they had regularly attended Satanic orgies; had regularly varied their erotic fare: Mondays and Tuesdays, heterosexual copulation; Thursdays, sodomy, fellatio and cunnilingus, with homosexual partners; Saturday, bestiality with domestic animals and dragons. And dragons!... The Jesuit shook his head. As with Lille, he thought the causes of many possessions were a mixture of fraud and mythomania. Still others, however, seemed caused by mental illness: paranoia; schizophrenia,; neurasthenia; psychasthenia; and this was the reason, he knew, that the Church had for years recommended that the exorcist work with a psychiatrist or a neurologist present. Yet not all possessions had causes so clear. Many had led Oesterreich to characterize possession as a separate disorder all its own; to dismiss the explanatory "split personality" label of psychiatry as no more than an equally occult substitution for the concepts of "demon" and "spirit of the dead."

Karras rubbed a finger in the crease beside his nose. The indications from Barringer, Chris had told him, were that Reagan's disorder might be caused by suggestion; by something that was somehow related to hysteria. And Karras thought it likely. He believed the majority of the cases he had studied had been caused by precisely these two factors. Sure. For one thing, it mostly hits women. For another, all those outbreaks of possession epidemics. And then those exorcists... Karras frowned. They often themselves became the victims of possession. He thought of Loudun. France. The Ursuline Convent of nuns. Of four of the exorcists sent there to deal with an epidemic of possession, three--- Fathers Lucas, Lactance and Tranquille--- not only became possessed, but died soon after, apparently of shock. And the fourth, Père Surin, who was thirty-three years old at the time of his possession, became insane for the subsequent twenty-five years of his life.

He nodded to himself. If Regan's disorder was hysterical; if the onset of possession was the product of suggestion, then the source of the suggestion could only be the chapter in the book on witchcraft. The chapter on possession. Did she read it?

He pored over its pages. Were there striking similarities between any of its details and Regan's behavior? That might prove it. It might.

He found some correlations:

...The case of an eight-year-old girl who was described in the chapter as "bellowing like a bull in thunderous, deep bass voice." (Regan's lowing like a steer.)

...The case of Helen Smith, who'd been treated by the great psychologist Flournoy; his description of her changing her voice and her features with "lightning" rapdity" into those of a variety of personalities. (She did that with me. The personality who spoke with a British accent. Quick change. Instanttaneous.)

...A case in South Africa, reported by the noted ethnologist Junod; his description of a woman who'd vanished from her dwelling one night being found on the following morning "tied to the top" of a very tall tree by "fine lianas," and then afterward "gliding down the tree, head down, while hissing and rapidly flicking her tongue in and out like a snake. She then hung suspended, for a time, and proceeded to speak in a language that no one had ever heard." (Regan gliding like a snake when she was following Sharon. The gibberish. An attempt at an "unknown language.")

...The case of Joseph and Thiebaut Burner, aged eight and ten; description of them "lying on their backs and suddenly whirling like tops with the utmost rapidity." (Sounds pretty close to her whirling like a dervish.)

There were other similarities; still other reasons for suspecting suggestion: mention of abnormal strength; of obscenity of speech; and accounts of possession from the gospels, which perhaps were the basis, thought Karras, of the curiously religious content of Regan's ravings at Barringer Clinic. Moreover, in the chapter there was mention of the onset of possession in stages: "...The first, infestation, consists of an attack through the victim's surroundings; noises--- odors--- the displacement of objects; and the second, obsession, consists in a personal attack on the subject designed to instill terror through the kind of injury that one man might inflict on another through blows and kicks." The rappings. The flingings. The attacks by Captain Howdy.

Maybe... maybe she read it. But Karras wasn't convinced. Not at all... not at all. And Chris. She had seemed so uncertain about it.

He walked to the window again. What's the answer, then? Genuine possession? A demon? He looked down and shook his head. No way. No way. Paranormal happenings? Sure. Why not? Too many competent observers had reported them. Doctors. Psychiatrists. Men like Junod. But the problem is how do you interpret the phenomena? He thought back to Oesterreich. Reference to a shaman of the Altai. Siberia. Voluntarily possessed and examined in a clinic while performing an apparently paranormal action: levitation. Just prior, his pulse rate had spurted to one hundred, then, afterward, leaped to an amazing two hundred. Marked changes in temperature as well. Its respiration. So his paranormal action was tied to physiology. It was caused by some bodily energy or force. But as proof of possession the Church wanted clear and exterior phenomena that suggested....

He'd forgotten the wording. Looked it up. Traced a finger down the page of a book on his desk. Found it: "...verifiable exterior phenomena which suggest the idea that they are due to the extraordinary intervention of an intelligent cause other than man." Was that the case with the shaman? Karras asked himself. No. And is that the case with Regan?

He turned to a passage he had underlined in percil: "The exorcist will simply be careful that none of the patient's manifestations are left unaccounted for..."

He nodded. Okay, then. Let's see. Pacing, he ran through the manifestations of Regan's disorder along with their possible explanations. He ticked them off mentally, one by one:

The startling change in Regan's features.

Partly her illness. Partly undernourishment. Mostly, he concluded, it was due to physiognomy being an expression of psychic constitution. Whatever the hell that means! he added wryly.

The startling change in Regan's voice.

He had yet to hear the original voice. And even if that had been light, as reported by her mother, constant shrieking would thicken the vocal cords, with a consequent deepening of the voice. The only problem here, he reflected, was the massive volume of that voice, for even with a thickening of the cords this would seem to be physiologically impossible. And yet, he considered, in states of anxiety or pathology, displays of paranormal strength in excess of muscular potential were known to be a commonplace. Might not vocal cords and voice box be subject to the same mysterious effect?

Regan's suddenly extended vocabulary and knowledge.

Cryptomnesia: buried recollections of words and data she had once been exposed to, even in infancy, perhaps. In somnambulists--- and frequently in people at the point of death--- the buried data often came to the surface with almost photographic fidelity.

Regan's recognition of him as a priest.

Good guess. If she had read the chapter on possession, she might have expected a visit by a priest. And according to Jung, the unconscious awareness and sensitivity of hysterical patients could at moments be fifty times greater than normal, which accounted for seemingly authentic "thought reading" via table-tapping by mediums, for what the medium's unconscious was actually "reading" were the tremors and vibrations created in the table by the hands of the person whose thoughts were supposedly being read. The tremors formed a pattern of letters or numbers. Thus, Regan might conceivably have "read" his identity merely from his manner; from the look of his hands; from the scent of sacramental wine.

Regan's knowledge of the death of his mother.

Good guess. He was forty-six.

"Couldjya help an old altar boy, Faddah?"

Textbooks in use in Catholic seminaries accepted telepathy as both a reality and a natural phenomenon.

Regan's precocity of intellect.

In the course of personally observing a case of multiple personality involving alleged occult phenomena, the psychiatrist Jung had concluded that in states of hysterical somnambulism not only were unconscious perceptions of the senses heightened, but also the functioning of the intellect, for the new personalities in the case in question seemed clearly more intelligent than the first. And yet, puzzled Karras, did merely reporting the phenomenon explain it?

Abruptly he stopped pacing and hovered by his desk, for it suddenly dawned upon him that Regan's pun on Herod was even more complicated than at first it had appeared: when the Pharisees told Christ of Herod's threats, he remembered, Christ had answered them: "Go and tell that fox that I cast out devils..."

He glanced at the tape of Regan's voice for a moment, then sat wearily at the desk. He lit another cigarette... exhaled... thought again of the Burner boys; of the case of the eight-year-old girl who had manifested symptoms of full-blown possession. What book had this girl read that had enabled her unconscious mind to simulate the symptoms to such perfection? And how did the unconscious of victims in China communicate the symptoms to the various unconscious minds of people possessed in Siberia, in Germany, in Africa, so that the symptoms were always the same?

"Incidentally, your mother is here with us, Karras..."

He stared unseeing as smoke from his cigarette rose like whispered curls of memory. The priest leaned back, looking down at the bottom left-hand drawer of the desk. For a time, he kept staring. Then slowly he leaned down, pulled open the drawer and extracted a faded language exercise book. Adult education. His mother's. He set it on the desk and thumbed the pages with a tender care. Letters of the alphabet, over and over. Then simple exercises:

LESSON VI

MY COMPLETE ADDRESS

Between the pages, an attempt at a letter.

     
***(INSERT Dear_Dimmy_Writing.jpg HERE)

Then another beginning. Incomplete. He looked away. Saw her eyes at the window... waiting....

" 'Domine, non sum dignus....' "

The eyes became Regan's... eyes shrieking... eyes waiting....

" 'Speak but the word...' "

He glanced at the tape of Regan's voice.

He left the room. Took the tape to the language lab. Found a tape recorder. Sat down. He threaded the tape to an empty reel. Clamped on earphones. Turned on the switch. Then leaned forward and listened. Exhausted. Intense.

For a time, only tape hiss. Squeaking of the mechanism. Suddenly, a thumping sound of activation. Noises. "Hello..." Then a whining feedback. Chris MacNeil, tone hushed, in the background: "Not so close to the microphone, honey. Hold it back." "Like this?" "No, more." "Like this?" "Yeah, okay. Go ahead now, just talk." Giggling. The microphone bumping a table. Then the sweet, clear voice of Regan MacNeil:

"Hello, Daddy? This is me. Ummm..." Giggling; then a whispered aside: "I can't tell what to say!" "Oh, just tell him how you are, honey. Tell about all of the things you've been doing." More giggling, then: "Umm, Daddy... Well, ya see... I mean, I hope you can hear me okay, and, umm--- well, now, let's see. Umm, well, first we're--- No, wait, now.... See, first we're in Washington, Daddy, ya know? I mean, that's where the President lives; and this house--- ya know. Daddy?--- it's--- No, wait, now; I better start over. See, Daddy, there's..."

Karras heard the rest only dimly, from afar, through the roaring of blood in his ears, like the ocean, as up through his chest and his fate swelled an overwhelming intuition: The thing that I saw in that room wasn't Regan!

He returned to the Jesuit residence hall. Found a cubicle. Said Mass before the rush. As he lifted the Host in consecration, it trembled in his fingers with a hope he dared not hope, that he fought with every particled fiber of his will. " 'For this is My Body...' " he whispered tremulously.

No, bread! This is nothing but bread!

He dared not love again and lose. That loss was too great, that pain too keen. He bowed his head and swallowed the Host like lost illusion. For a moment it stuck in the dryness of his throat.

After Mass, he skipped breakfast. Made notes for his lecture. Met his class at the Georgetown University Medical School. Threaded hoarsely through the ill-prepared talk: "...and in considering the symptoms of manic mood disorders, you will..." "Daddy, this is me... this is me..."

But who was "me"?

Karras dismissed the class early and returned to his room, where immediately he hunched over his desk, palms of his hands pressed flat, and intently reexamined the Church's position on the paranormal signs of demonic possession. Was I being too hard-nosed? he wondered. He scrutinized the high points in Satan: "telepathy... natural phenomenon... movement of objects from a distance now suspect... from the body there may emanate some fluid... our forefathers... science... nowadays we must be more cautious. The paranormal evidence notwithstanding, however..." He slowed the pace of his reading. "...all conversations held with the patient must be carefully analyzed, for if they present the same system of association of ideas and of logicogrammatical habits that he exhibits in his normal state, the possession must then be held suspect."