The Exorcist (8 page)

Ellen Cleary was a middle-aged State Department secretary who'd worked in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow when Chris toured Russia. She had gone to considerable effort and trouble to rescue Chris from a number of difficulties and encumbrances encountered in the course of her travels, not the least of which had been caused by the redheaded actress' outspokenness. Chris had remembered her with affection over the years, and had looked her up on coming to Washington.

"Hey, Shar," she asked, "which priests are coming?"

"I'm not sure yet. I invited the president and the dean of the college, but I think that the president's sending an alternate. His secretary called me late this morning and said that he might have to go out of town."

"Who's he sending?" Chris asked with guarded interest.

"Let me see." Sharon rummaged through scraps of notes. "Yes, here it is, Chris. His assistant- Father Joseph Dyer."

"You mean from the campus?"

"Well, I'm not sure."

"Oh, okay"

She seemed disappointed.

"Keep an eye on Burke tomorrow night," She instructed.

"I will."

"Where's Rags?"

"Downstairs."

"You know, maybe you should start to keep your typewriter there; don't you think? I mean, that way you can watch her when you're typing. Okay? I don't like her being alone so much."

"Good idea."

"Okay, later. Go home. Meditate. Play with horses."

The planning and preparations at an end, Chris again found herself turning worried thoughts toward Regan. She tried to watch television. Could not concentrate. Felt uneasy. There was a strangeness in the house. Like settling stillness. Weighted dust.

By midnight, all in the house were asleep.

There were no disturbances. That night.

CHAPTER FOUR

She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants. Her shoes were comfortable. They reflected her hope far the evening.

The first to arrive was Mary Jo Perrin, who came with Robert, her teen-age son. The last was pink-faced Father Dyer. He was young and diminutive, with fey eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. At the door, he apologized for his lateness. "Couldn't find the right necktie," he told Chris expressionlessly. For a moment, she stared at him blankly, then burst into laughter. Her day-long depression began to lift.

The drinks did their work. By a quarter to ten, they were scattered about the living room eating their dinners in vibrant knots of conversation.

Chris filled her plate from the steaming buffet and scanned the room for Mary Jo Perrin. There. On a sofa with Father Wagner, the Jesuit dean. Chris had spoken to him briefly. He had a bald, freckled scalp and a dry, soft manner. Chris drifted to the sofa and folded to the floor in front of the coffee table as the seeress chuckled with mirth.

"Oh, come on, Mary Jo!" the dean said, smiling as he lifted a forkful of curry to his mouth.

"Yeah, come on, Mary Jo," echoed Chris.

"Oh, hi! Great curry!" said the dean.

"Not too hot?"

"Not at all; it's just right. Mary Jo has been telling me there used to be a Jesuit who was also a medium."

"And he doesn't believe me!" chuckled the seeress.

"Ah, distinguo," corrected the dean. "I just said it was hard to believe."

"You mean medium medium?" asked Chris.

"Why, of course," said Mary Jo. "Why, he even used to levitate!"

"Oh, I do it every morning," said the Jesuit quietly.

"You mean he held séances?" Chris asked Mrs. Perrin.

"Well, yes," she answered. "He was very, very famous in the nineteenth century. In fact, he was probably the only spiritualist of his time who wasn't ever clearly convicted of fraud."

"As I said, he wasn't a Jesuit," commented the dean.

"Oh, my, but was he!" She laughed.: "When he turned twenty-two, he joined the Jesuits and promised not to work anymore as a medium, but they threw him out of France"--- she laughed even harder--- "right after a séance that he held at the Tuileries. Do you know what he did? In the middle of the séance he told the empress she was about to be touched by the hands of a spirit child who was about to fully materialize, and when they suddenly turned all of the lights on"--- she guffawed--- "they caught him sitting with his naked foot on the empress' arm! Now, can you imagine?"

The Jesuit was smiling as he set down his plate.

"Don't come looking for discounts anymore on indulgences, Mary Jo."

"Oh, come on, every family's got one black sheep."

"We were pushing our quota with the Medici popes."

"Y'know, I had an experience once," began Chris."

But the dean interrupted. "Are you making this a matter of confession?"

Chris smiled and said, "No, I'm not a Catholic."

"Oh, well, neither are the Jesuits." Mrs. Perrin chuckled.

"Dominican slander," retorted the dean. Then to Chris he said, "I'm sorry, my dear. You were saying?''

"Well, just that I thought I saw somebody levitate once. In Bhutan."

She recounted the story.

"Do you think that's possible?" she ended. "I mean, really, seriously."

"Who knows?" He shrugged. "Who knows what gravity is. Or matter, when it comes to that."

"Would you like my opinion?" interjected Mrs. Perrin.

The dean said, "No, Mary Jo; I've taken a vow of poverty."

"So have I," Chris muttered.

"What was that?" asked the dean, leaning forward.

'"Oh, nothing. Say, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. Do you know that little cottage that's back of the church over there?" She pointed in the general direction.

"Holy Trinity?" he asked.

"Yes, right. Well, what goes on in there?"

"Oh, well, that's where they say Black Mass," said Mrs. Perrin.

"Black who?"

"Black Mass."

"What's that?"

"She's kidding," said the dean.

"Yes, I know," said Chris, "but I'm dumb. I mean, What's a Black Mass?"

"Oh, basically, it's a travesty on the Catholic Mass," explained the dean. "It's connected to witchcraft. Devil worship."

"Really? You mean, there really is such a thing?"

"I really couldn't say. Although I heard a statistic once about something like possibly fifty thousand Black Masses being said every year in the city of Paris."

"You mean now?" marveled Chris.

"It's just something I heard."

"Yes, of course, from the Jesuit secret service," twitted Mrs. Perrin.

"Not at all. I hear voices," responded the dean.

"You know, back in L.A.," mentioned Chris, "you hear an awful lot of stories about witch cults being around. I've often wondered if it's true."

"Well, as I said, I wouldn't know," said the dean. "But I'll tell you who might--- Joe Dyer. Where's Joe?"

The dean looked around.

"Oh, over there," he said, nodding toward the other priest, who was standing at the buffet with his back to them. He was heaping a second helping onto his plate. "Hey, Joe?"

The young priest turned, his face impassive.. "You called, great dean?"

The other Jesuit beckoned with his fingers.

"All right, just a second," answered Dyer, and resumed his attack on the curry and salad.

"That's the only leprechaum in the priesthood," said the dean with an edge of fondness. He sipped at his wine. "They had a couple of cases of desecration in Holy Trinity last week, and Joe said something about one of them reminding him of some things they used to do at Black Mass, so I expect he knows something about the subject."

"What happened at the church?" asked Mary Jo Perrin.

"Oh, it's really too disgusting," said the dean.

"Come on, we're all through with our dinners."

"No, please. It's too much," he demurred.

"Oh, come on!"

"You mean you can't read my mind, Mary Jo?" he asked her.

"Oh, I could," she responded, "but I really don't think that I'm worthy to enter that Holy of Holies!" She chuckled.

"Well, it really is sick," began the dean.

He described the desecrations. In the first of the incidents, the elderly sacristan of the church had discovered a mound of human excrement on the altar cloth directly before the tabernacle.

"Oh, that really is sick." Mrs. Perrin grimaced.

"Well, the other's even worse," remarked the dean; then employed indirection and one or two euphemisms to explain how a massive phallus sculpted in clay had been found glued firmly to a statue of Christ on the left side altar.

"Sick enough?" he concluded.

Chris noticed that Mary Jo seemed genuinely disturbed as she said, "Oh, that's enough, now. I'm sorry that I asked. Let's change the subject, please."

"No, I'm fascinated," said Chris.

"Yes, of course. I'm a fascinating human."

It was Father Dyer. He was hovering over her with his plate. "Listen, give me just a minute, and then I'll be back. I think I've got something going over there with the astronaut."

"Like what?" asked the dean.

Father Dyer raised his eyebrows in deadpan surmise. "Would you believe," he asked, "first missionary on the moon?"

They burst into laughter.

"You're just the right size," said Mrs. Perrin "They could stow you in the nose cone."

"No, not me," he corrected her solemnly, and then turned to the dean to explain: "I've been trying to fix it up for Emory."

"That's our disciplinarian on campus," Dyer explained in an aside to the women. "Nobody's up there and that's what he likes, you see; he sort of likes things quiet."

"And so who would he convert?" Mrs. Perrin asked.

"What do you mean?" Dyer frowned at her earnestly. "He'd convert the astronauts. That's it. I mean, that's what he likes: You know, one or two people. No groups. Just a couple."

With deadpan gaze, Dyer glanced toward the astronaut.

"Excuse me," he said and walked away.

"I like him," said Mrs. Perrin.

"Me too," Chris agreed. Then she turned to the dean. "You haven't told me what goes on in that cottage," she reminded him. "Big secret? Who's that priest I keep seeing there? You know, sort of dark? Do you know the one I mean?"

"Father Karras," said the dean in a lowered tone; with a trace of regret.

"What's he do?"

"He's a counselor." He put down his wineglass and turned it by the stem. "Had a pretty rough knock last night, poor guy."

"Oh, what?" asked Chris with a sudden concern.

"Well, his mother passed away."

Chris felt a melting sensation of grief that she couldn't explain. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said.

"He seems to be taking it pretty hard," resumed the Jesuit. "She was living by herself, and I guess she was dead for a couple of days before they found her."

"Oh, how awful," Mrs. Perrin murmured.

"Who found her?" Chris asked solemnly.

"The superintendent of her apartment building. I guess they wouldn't have found her even now except... Well, the next-door neighbors complained about her radio going all the time."

"That's sad," Chris murmured.

"Excuse me, please, madam."

She looked up at Karl. He held a tray filled with glasses and liqueurs.

"Sure, set it down here, Karl, that'll be fine."

Chris liked to serve the liqueurs to her guests herself. It added an intimacy, she felt, that might otherwise be lacking.

"Well, let's see now, I'll start with you," she told the dean and Mrs. Perrin; and served them. Then she moved about the room, taking orders and fetching for each of her guests, and by the time she had made the rounds, the various clusters had shifted to new combinations, except for Dyer and the astronaut, who seemed to be getting thicker. "No, I'm really not a priest," Chris heard Dyer say solemnly, his arm on the astronaut's chuckle-heaved shoulder. "I'm actually a terribly avant-garde rabbi." And not long after, she overheard Dyer inquiring of the astronaut. "What is space?" and when the astronaut shrugged and said he really didn't know, Father Dyer had fixed him with an earnest frown and said, "You should."

Chris was standing with Ellen Cleary afterward, reminiscing about Moscow, when she heard a familiar, strident voice ringing angrily through from the kitchen.

Oh, Jesus! Burke!

He was shrieking obscenities at someone.

Chris excused herself and went quickly to the kitchen, where Dennings was railing viciously at Karl while Sharon made futile attempts to hush him.

"Burke!" exclaimed Chris. "Knock it off!"

The director ignored her, continued to rage, the corners of his mouth flecked foamy with saliva, while Karl leaned mutely against the sink with folded arms and stolid expression, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on Dennings.