The Exorcist (32 page)

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...."