The Exorcist

  “They were what?”

  “Taken over by a demon. You know, something like a superstitious version of split personality.”

  Closing her eyes, Chris lowered her forehead onto a fist. “Listen, tell me something good,” she huskily murmured.

  “Well, now, don’t be alarmed. If it is a lesion, in a way she’s lucky. Then all we’d have to do is remove the scar.”

  “Oh, swell.”

  “Or it could be just pressure on the brain. Look, I’d like to have some X-rays taken of her skull. There’s a radiologist here in the building, and perhaps I can get him to take you right away. Shall I call him?”

  “Shit, yes; go ahead; let’s do it.”

  Klein called and set it up. They would take her immediately, they told him. He hung up the phone and began writing a prescription. “Room twenty-one on the second floor. Then I’ll probably call you tomorrow or Thursday. I’d like a neurologist in on this. In the meantime, I’m taking her off the Ritalin. Let’s try her on Librium for a while.”

  He ripped the prescription sheet from the pad and handed it over. “I’d try to stay close to her, Mrs. MacNeil. In these walking trance states, if that’s what it is, it’s always possible for her to hurt herself. Is your bedroom close to hers?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “That’s fine. Ground floor?”

  “No, second.”

  “Big windows in her bedroom?”

  “Well, one. What’s the deal?”

  “Well, I’d try to keep it closed, even have them put a lock on it, maybe. In a trance state, she might fall through it. I once had a—”

  “Patient,” Chris finished with the trace of a wry, weary smile.

  Klein grinned. “I guess I do have a lot of them, don’t I?”

  “Yeah, a couple.”

  She propped her face on her hand and leaned pensively forward. “You know, I thought of something else just now.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Well, like after a fit, you were saying that she’d right away fall dead asleep. Like on Saturday night. I mean, didn’t you say that?”

  “Well, yes.” Klein nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  “Well then, how come those other times when she said that her bed was shaking, she was always wide awake?”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Well, that’s how it was. She looked fine. She’d just come to my room and then ask to get in bed with me.”

  “Any bed-wetting? Vomiting?”

  Chris shook her head. “She was fine.”

  Klein frowned and gently chewed on his lip. “Well, let’s look at those X-rays,” he finally told her.

  Feeling drained and numb, Chris shepherded Regan to the radiologist; stayed at her side while the X-rays were taken; took her home. She’d been strangely mute since the second injection, and Chris made an effort now to engage her.

  “Want to play some Monopoly or somethin’, sweetheart?”

  Slightly shaking her head, Regan stared at her mother with unfocused eyes that seemed to be retracted into infinite remoteness. “I’m feeling real sleepy,” she said. The voice belonged to the eyes. Then, turning, she climbed up the stairs to her bedroom.

  Worriedly watching her, Must be the Librium, Chris reflected.

  Then at last she sighed and went into the kitchen. She poured coffee and sat down at the breakfast nook table with Sharon.

  “How’d it go?” Sharon asked her.

  “Oh, Christ!”

  Chris fluttered the prescription slip onto the table. “Better call and get that filled.” she said, and then explained what the doctor had told her. “If I’m busy or out, keep a real good eye on her, would you, Shar? Klein told me that—” Dawning. Sudden. “That reminds me.”

  Chris got up from the table and went up to Regan’s bedroom, where she found her asleep underneath her bedcovers. Chris moved to the window, tightened the latch and then stared down below. Facing out from the side of the house, the window directly overlooked the precipitous public staircase that plunged down to M Street far below.

  Boy, I’d better call a locksmith right away!

  Chris returned to the kitchen and added the chore to the list from which Sharon sat working, gave Willie the dinner menu, returned a call from her agent concerning the film she’d been asked to direct.

  “What about the script?” he wanted to know.

  “Yeah, it’s great, Ed; let’s do it. When does it go?”

  “Well, your segment’s in July, so you’ll have to start preparing right away.”

  “You mean now?”

  “I mean now. This isn’t acting, Chris. You’re involved in a lot of the preproduction. You’ve got to work with the set designer, the costume designer, the makeup artist, the producer. And you’ll have to pick a cameraman and a cutter and block out your shots. C’mon, Chris, you know the drill.”

  “Oh, shit!” Chris breathed out disconsolately.

  “You’ve got a problem?”

  “Yeah, I do, Ed. It’s Regan. She’s very, very sick”

  “Hey, I’m sorry, kid.”

  “Sure.”

  “Chris, what is it?”

  “They don’t know yet. I’m waiting for some tests. Listen, Ed, I can’t leave her.”

  “So who says to leave her?”

  “No, you don’t understand, Ed. I need to be at home with her. She needs my attention. Look, I just can’t explain it, Ed, it’s too complicated, so why don’t we hold off for a while?”

  “We can’t. They want to try for the Music Hall over Christmas, Chris, and I think that they’re pushing it now.”

  “Oh, for chrissakes, Ed, they can wait two weeks! Now come on!”

  “Look, you’ve bugged me that you want to direct, and now all of a—”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, I want it, Ed, I really want it bad, but you’ll just have to tell ’em that I need some more time.”

  “And if I do, we’re going to blow it. Now that’s my opinion. Look, they don’t want you anyway, that’s not news. They’re just doing this for Moore, and I think if they go back to him now and say she isn’t too sure she wants to do it yet, he’ll have an out. Look, you do what you want. I don’t care. There’s no money in this thing unless it hits. But if you want it, I’m telling you: I ask for a delay and I think we’re going to blow it. Now then, what should I tell them?”

  Chris sighed. “Ah, boy!”

  “Yeah, I know it’s not easy.”

  “No, it isn’t. Okay, listen, Ed, maybe if—” Chris thought. Then shook her head. “Never mind, Ed. They’ll just have to wait,” she said. “Can’t be helped.”

  “Your decision.”

  “Let me know what they say.”

  “Of course. Meantime, sorry about your daughter.”

  “Thanks, Ed.”

  “Take care.”

  “You too.”

  Chris hung up the phone in a state of depression, lit up a cigarette, then mentioned to Sharon, “I talked to Howard, by the way, did I tell you?”

  “Oh, when? Did you tell him about Regan?”

  “Yeah, I told him he ought to come see her.”

  “Is he coming?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Chris answered.

  “You’d think he’d make the effort.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Chris sighed. “But you’ve got to understand his hang-up, Shar.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, the whole ‘Mr. Chris MacNeil’ thing! Rags was a part of it. She was in and he was out. Always me and Rags together on the magazine covers; me and Rags in the layouts; mother and daughter, pixie twins.” She moodily tapped ash from her cigarette with a finger. “Ah, nuts, who knows. It’s all mixed up, it’s a mess. But it’s hard to get hacked with him, Shar; I just can’t.” She reached out for a book by Sharon’s elbow. “So what are you reading?”

  “Oh, I forgot. That’s for you. Mrs. Perrin dropped it by.”

  “She was here??
??

  “Yes, this morning. Said she’s sorry she missed you and she’s going out of town, but she’ll call you as soon as she’s back.”

  Chris nodded and glanced at the title of the book: A Study of Devil Worship and Related Occult Phenomena. She opened it and found a penned note:

  Dear Chris:

  I happened by the Georgetown University Library book store and picked this up for you. It has some chapters about Black Mass. You should read it all, however; I think you’ll find the other sections particularly interesting. See you soon.

  Mary Jo

  “Sweet lady,” said Chris.

  “Yes, she is.”

  Chris riffled through the pages of the book. “What’s the scoop on Black Mass? Pretty hairy?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Sharon. “I haven’t read it.”

  “Did your guru tell you not to?”

  Sharon stretched. “Oh, that stuff turns me off.”

  “Oh, really? And so what happened to your Jesus complex?”

  “Oh, come on!”

  Chris slid the book across the table to Sharon. “Here, read it and tell me what happens.”

  “And get nightmares?”

  “What do you think you get paid for?”

  “Throwing up.”

  “I can do that for myself,” Chris muttered as she picked up the evening paper. “All you have to do is stick your business manager’s advice down your throat and you’re vomiting blood for a week.” Chris abruptly put the paper aside. “Would you turn on the radio, Shar? Get the news.”

  Sharon had dinner at the house with Chris, and then left for a date. She forgot the book. Chris saw it on the table and thought about reading it, but in the end she felt too weary. She left it on the table and walked upstairs. She looked in on Regan, who was under the covers and apparently sleeping through the night. She then checked the window again. Locked shut. Leaving the room, Chris made sure to leave the door wide open and before getting into bed that night she did the same with her own. She watched part of a television movie, then slept. The next morning the devil worship book had mysteriously vanished from the table. No one noticed.

  Chapter Three

  The consulting neurologist pinned up the X-rays again and searched for indentations that would look as if the skull had been pounded like copper with a tiny hammer. Dr. Klein stood behind him with folded arms. They had both looked for lesions and collections of fluid; for a possible shifting of the pineal gland. They were probing now for Lückenshadl Skull, the telltale depressions that would indicate chronic intracranial pressure. They did not find it. The date was Thursday, April 28.

  The consulting neurologist removed his glasses and carefully tucked them into the left breast pocket of his jacket. “There’s just nothing there, Sam. Nothing I can see.”

  Klein frowned at the floor and shook his head.

  “Doesn’t figure,” he said.

  “Want to run another series?”

  “I don’t think so. I think I’ll try an LP.”

  “Good idea.”

  “In the meantime, I’d like you to see her.”

  “How’s today?”

  “Well, I’m—” Telephone buzzer. “Excuse me.” He picked up the telephone. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. MacNeil on the phone. Says it’s urgent.”

  “What line?”

  “She’s on three.”

  He punched the extension button. “Dr. Klein here.”

  Chris’s voice was distraught and on the brim of hysteria.

  “Oh, Christ, Doc, it’s Regan! Can you come right away?”

  “Well, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Doc, I just can’t describe it! Please come over right away! Come now!”

  “I’m on the way!”

  He disconnected and buzzed his receptionist. “Susan, tell Dresner to take my appointments.” He hung up the phone and started taking off his jacket. “That’s her, Dick,” he said. “Want to come? It’s only just across the bridge.”

  “I’ve got an hour, I’d say.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  They were there within minutes, and at the door, where a frightened-looking Sharon greeted them, they heard moans and screams of terror from Regan’s bedroom. “I’m Sharon Spencer,” she told them. “Come on in. She’s upstairs.”

  Sharon led them to the door of Regan’s bedroom, then cracked it open slightly and called in, “Chris, doctors!”

  Chris instantly came to the door, her face contorted in a vise of fear. “Oh, my God, come on in!” she said in a quavering voice. “Come on in and take a look at what she’s doing!”

  “This is Dr.—”

  In the middle of the introduction, Klein broke off as he caught sight of Regan. Shrieking hysterically and flailing her arms, her body seemed to fling itself up horizontally into the air above her bed and then be slammed down savagely onto the mattress. It was happening rapidly, again and again.

  “Oh, Mother, make him stop!” Regan was screeching. “Stop him! He’s trying to kill me! Stop him! Stooopppppp hiiiiiimmmmmmmm, Motherrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

  “Oh, my baby!” Chris whimpered as she jerked up a fist to her mouth and bit it. She turned a beseeching look to Klein. “What’s happening, Doc? What is it?”

  Klein shook his head, his gaze fixed on Regan as the phenomenon continued. She would lift about a foot each time and then fall with a wrenching of her breath, as if unseen hands had picked her up and thrown her down. Chris pressed both her hands to her mouth, staring wildly as the up-and-down movements abruptly ceased and Regan started twisting feverishly from side to side with her eyes rolled upward into their sockets so that only the whites were exposed. “Oh, he’s burning me … burning me!” she was moaning as her legs began rapidly crossing and uncrossing.

  The doctors moved closer, one on either side of the bed, and still twisting and jerking, Regan arched her head back, disclosing a swollen, bulging throat as she muttered incomprehensibly in guttural tone: “… nowonmai … nowonmai…”

  Klein reached down to check her pulse.

  “Now, let’s see what the trouble is, dear,” he said gently.

  And abruptly he was reeling across the room, staggering backward from the force of a vicious swing of Regan’s arm as she suddenly sat up, her face contorted with a hideous rage.

  “The sow is mine!” she bellowed in a coarse and powerful voice. “She is mine! Keep away from her! She is mine!”

  A yelping laugh gushed up from her throat, and then she fell on her back as if someone had pushed her. She pulled up her nightgown, exposing her genitals. “Fuck me! Fuck me!” she screamed at the doctors, and with both her hands began masturbating frantically. Moments later Chris ran from the room with a stifled sob right after Regan put her fingers to her lips and licked them.

  Riveted, watching in shock, Klein approached the bedside again, this time warily, as Regan appeared to hug herself, her arms folded, her hands caressing them.

  “Ah, yes, my pearl…,” she crooned in that strangely coarsened voice and with both her eyes closed as if in ecstasy. “My child … my flower … my pearl…” Then again she was twisting from side to side, moaning meaningless syllables over and over, until abruptly she sat up with her eyes staring wide in helpless terror.

  She mewed like a cat.

  Then barked.

  Then neighed.

  And then, bending at the waist, started whirling her torso around in rapid, strenuous circles. She gasped for breath. “Oh, stop him!” she wept. “Please, stop him! It hurts! Make him stop! Make him stop! I can’t breathe!”

  Klein had seen enough. He fetched his medical bag to the window and quickly began to prepare an injection.

  The neurologist remained beside the bed and saw Regan fall backward as if from a shove while her eyes rolled upward into their sockets again, and with her body rolling from side to side, she began to mutter rapidly in guttural tones. The neurologist leaned closer and tried to make it out. Then he saw Klein bec
koning and he straightened up and went to him quickly.

  “I’m giving her Librium,” Klein told him guardedly, holding the syringe to the light of the window. “But you’re going to have to hold her.”

  The neurologist nodded, but seemed preoccupied, inclining his head to the side as if listening to the muttering from the bed.

  “What’s she saying?” Klein whispered.

  “I don’t know. Just gibberish. Nonsense syllables.” Yet his own explanation seemed to leave him unsatisfied. “She says it as if it means something, though. It’s got cadence.”

  Klein nodded toward the bed and the men approached quietly from either side. As they came, the tormented child went rigid, as if in the stiffening grip of tetany, and the doctors, who had stopped at the bedside, turned and looked at each other significantly. Then they looked again to Regan as she started to arch her body upward into an impossible position, bending it backward like a bow until the brow of her head had touched her feet. She was screaming in pain.

  The doctors eyed one another with baffled and questioning surmise. And then Klein gave a signal to the neurologist, but before the consultant could seize her, Regan fell limp in a faint and wet the bed.

  Klein leaned over and rolled up her eyelid. Checked her pulse. “She’ll be out for a while,” he murmured. “I think she convulsed. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, let’s take some insurance.”

  He deftly administered the injection.

  “Well, what do you think?” Klein asked as he pressed a circle of sterile tape against the puncture.

  “Temporal lobe. Sure, maybe schizophrenia’s a possibility, Sam, but the onset’s much too sudden. She hasn’t any history of it, right?”

  “No, she hasn’t.”

  “Neurasthenia?”

  Klein shook his head.

  “Then hysteria, maybe?”

  “I’ve thought of that,” said Klein.

  “Of course. Though she’d have to be a freak to get her body twisted up like she did voluntarily, now wouldn’t you say?” He shook his head. “No, I think it’s pathological, Sam—her strength; the paranoia; the hallucinations. Schizophrenia, okay; those symptoms it covers. But temporal lobe would also cover the convulsions. There’s one thing that bothers me, though…” He trailed off with a puzzled frown.