The Exorcist (34 page)

"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-conscioius, and swiftly left the entry.

Karras watched, remembering hin 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 moodifly 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.