The Exorcist

  “Did you sleep?” he asked with concern.

  “Oh, a little.”

  Karras shook his head in admonishment. “Chris.”

  “Well, I couldn’t,” Chris told him, motioning with her head at the door to Regan’s bedroom. “She’s been doing that all night.”

  “Any vomiting?”

  “No.” Chris took hold of the sleeve of his cassock as if to lead him away. “C’mon, let’s go downstairs where we can—”

  “No, I’d like to see her,” Karras said firmly.

  “Right now?”

  Something’s wrong here, Karras reflected. Chris looked tense. Afraid. “Why not?” he asked.

  She glanced furtively at Regan’s bedroom door. From within shrieked the hoarse, mad British voice: “Damned Naa-zi! Nazi bastard!” Chris looked down and aside. “Go ahead,” she said softly. “Go on in.”

  “Got a tape recorder here in the house? You know, a little one; a portable?” asked Karras.

  Chris looked up. “Yeah, we do, Father. Why?”

  “Could you have it brought up to the room with a blank reel of tape, please?”

  Abruptly, Chris frowned with incipient alarm. “What for? Hey, wait a minute, now. You mean, you want to tape Regan?”

  “It’s important.”

  “No way, Father! Absolutely not!”

  “Look, I need to make comparisons of patterns of speech,” Karras said to her earnestly. “It could prove to the Church authorities that your daughter is really possessed!”

  They both turned to the suddenly loud sound of an excoriating stream of obscenities directed at Karl as the house-man opened Regan’s bedroom door and emerged with a laundry sack filled with soiled diapers and bedding. His face ashen, he closed the door behind him, muting the continuing tirade.

  “Get a fresh one on her, Karl?” Chris asked.

  The manservant’s fearful glance went from Karras, then to Chris. “They are on,” he said tersely. He turned and walked quickly down the hallway to the staircase. Chris listened to his thumping, quick steps going down, and when the sounds had dwindled into silence, Chris turned to Karras, and with her shoulders slumping, looking downcast, she said quietly and submissively, “Okay, Father. I’ll have it sent up.”

  And abruptly she was hurrying away down the hall.

  Karras watched her. What was she hiding? he wondered. Something. Then noticing the sudden silence within, he moved to the bedroom door, opened it, entered, closed the door behind him quietly, and turned front. And stared. At the horror; at the emaciated, skeletal thing on the bed that was watching intently with mocking eyes that were filled with cunning and with hate and, most unsettling of all, with a posture of towering authority.

  Karras moved slowly to the foot of the bed, where he stopped and then listened to the quiet rumbling of diarrhetic voiding into plastic pants.

  “Why, hello, Karras!” Regan greeted him cordially.

  “Hello,” the priest answered calmly. “Tell me, how are you feeling?”

  “At the moment, very happy to see you. Yes. Very glad.” And now a long, furred tongue lolled out of the mouth while the eyes appraised Karras with naked insolence. “Flying your colors, I see. Very good.” Another rumbling. “You don’t mind a bit of stink, do you, Karras?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What a liar!”

  “Does lying bother you?”

  “Mildly.”

  “But the Devil likes liars.”

  “Only good ones, my dear Karras; only good ones. Moreover, who told you I’m the Devil?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I might have. I might. I’m not well. By the way, did you believe me?”

  “Oh, I did.”

  “Then my apologies in case I misled you. In fact, I’m just a poor struggling demon. A devil. A subtle distinction, but one not entirely lost upon Our Father in Hell. Nasty term, that—Hell. I’ve been mentioning we ought to think of changing it to the Scottish Dimension, but he never seems to listen. You won’t mention my slip of the tongue to him, Karras, now will you? Eh? When you see him?”

  “See him? Is he here?”

  “In the piglet? No such luck. We’re just a poor little family of wandering souls. By the way, you don’t blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home.”

  “And how long are you planning to stay?”

  Face contorted in sudden rage, Regan jerked up from the pillow as she shouted in fury, “Until the piglet dies!” and then as suddenly, she settled back onto her pillows with a thick-lipped, drooling grin, saying, “Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism.”

  The book! She must have read that in the book!

  The sardonic eyes were staring piercingly.

  “Do begin it soon, Karras. Very soon.”

  “You would like that?”

  “Intensely.”

  “But wouldn’t that drive you out of Regan?”

  “It would bring us together.”

  “You and Regan?”

  “You and us, my dear morsel. You and us.”

  Karras stared. At the back of his neck, he felt hands, icy cold and lightly touching. And then abruptly they were gone. Caused by fear? wondered Karras. Fear of what?

  “Yes, you’ll join our little family,” Regan continued. “You see, the trouble with signs in the sky is that, once having seen them, one has no excuse. Have you noticed how few miracles one hears about lately? Not our fault, dear Karras. We try!”

  Karras jerked around his head at a sudden loud banging sound. A bureau drawer had popped open, sliding out its entire length, and the priest felt a quick-rising thrill as he watched it abruptly bang shut. There it is! A verifiable, paranormal event! And then as suddenly, the emotion dropped away like a rotted chunk of bark from an ancient tree as the priest remembered psychokinesis and its various natural explanations. Hearing a low, sustained chuckling, he turned back to Regan. She was grinning. “How pleasant to chat with you, Karras,” she told him in that guttural voice; “I feel free. Like a wanton, I spread my great wings. In fact, even my telling you this will serve only to increase your damnation, my doctor, my dear and inglorious physician.”

  “You did that? You made the dresser drawer move just now?”

  The creature called Regan wasn’t listening. It had glanced toward the door, to the sound of someone rapidly approaching down the hall, and now its features turned to those of the other personality that had once before appeared. “Damned butchering bastard!” it shrieked in that hoarse, British-accented voice. “Cunting Hun!”

  Through the door came Karl, moving swiftly with the tape recorder. Eyes averted from the bed, he handed it to Karras and then, ashen-faced, rapidly retreated from the room.

  “Out, Himmler! Out of my sight! Go and visit your club-footed daughter! Bring her sauerkraut! Sauerkraut and heroin, Thorndike! She will love it! She will—!”

  Karl had slammed the door shut behind him, and now abruptly the thing within Regan turned cordial. “Oh, yes, hullo hullo hullo! What’s up?” it said cheerily as it watched Karras setting down the tape recorder on a small round end table next to the bed. “Are we going to record something, Padre? How fun! Oh, I do love to playact, you know! Oh, yes, immensely!”

  “Oh, good!” responded Karras, pushing down on the tape recorder’s red RECORD button with his index finger, causing a tiny red light to come on. “I’m Damien Karras, by the way. And who are you?”

  “Are you asking for my credits now, ducks?” it said with a giggle. “Oh, well, I did play Puck in the junior class play.” It glanced around. “Where’s a drink, incidentally? I’m parched.”

  “If you’ll tell me your name, I’ll try to find one.”

  “Yes, of course,” it said, giggling again. “And then drink it all yourself, I suppose.”

  “Why not tell me your name?” Karras asked.

  “Fucking plunderer!”

  With this, the British-accented identity vanished and was insta
ntly replaced by the demonic Regan. “And so what are we doing now, Karras? Oh, I see. We’re recording. How quaint.”

  Karras pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down.

  “Do you mind?” he said.

  “Not at all. Read your Milton and you’ll see that I like infernal engines. They block out all those damned silly messages from ‘him.’ ”

  “Who is ‘him’?”

  The creature loudly broke wind. “There’s your answer.”

  Abruptly a powerful stench assailed Karras. It was an odor like…

  “Sauerkraut, Karras? Have you noticed?”

  It does smell like sauerkraut, the Jesuit marveled. It seemed to be coming from the bed, from Regan’s body, and then it was gone, replaced by the putrid stench of before. Karras frowned. Did I imagine it? Autosuggestion? “Who’s the person I was speaking to before?” Karras asked.

  “Merely one of the family.”

  “A demon?”

  “You give far too much credit. The word demon means ‘wise one.’ He is stupid.”

  The Jesuit grew tautly alert. “Oh, really? In what language does demon mean ‘wise one’?” he asked.

  “Why, in Greek.”

  “You speak Greek?”

  “Very fluently.”

  One of the signs! Karras thought with excitement. Speaking in an unknown tongue! It was more than he’d hoped for. “Pos egnokas hoti piesbyteros eimi?” he asked quickly in classical Greek.

  “I am not in the mood now, Karras.”

  “Oh, I see. Then you really can’t—”

  “I said, I am not in the mood!”

  Karras looked aside, then back and asked amiably, “Was it you who made the drawer come sliding out?”

  “Oh, most assuredly, Karras.”

  Karras nodded. “Most impressive. You must be a very, very powerful demon.”

  “Oh, I am, my dear morsel; I am. Incidentally, do you like it that at times I sound exactly like my older brother Screwtape?” A burst of high-pitched guffaws and raucous laughter. Karras waited for it to subside. “Yes, I do find that interesting,” he said; “but in the meantime, the drawer trick?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s incredible! I was wondering if you’d do it again.”

  “In time.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Why, we must give you some reason for doubt! Yes, just enough to assure the final outcome.” The demonic personality chuckled maliciously. “Ah, how novel to attack through the truth! Yes, ‘surprised by joy,’ indeed!”

  Karras stared, icy fingers once again touching lightly at the back of his neck. Why the fear again? he wondered. Why?

  Hideously grinning, Regan said, “Because of me.”

  Karras stared, feeling wonder again, and then promptly chipped it down: In this state, she just might be telepathic.

  “Can you tell me what I’m thinking now, devil?”

  “My dear Karras, your thoughts are too dull to entertain.”

  “Oh, then you can’t read my mind. That what you’re saying?”

  Regan looked away, her hand pinching distractedly at her bedsheet, idly lifting and then lowering a tiny linen cone. “You may have it as you wish,” she then said dully; “as you wish.”

  Then silence. Karras listened to the squeaking of the tape-recorder mechanism, Regan’s fluttery and whistling, heavy breathing. Thinking he needed more of a sampling of her speech in this state, he leaned forward, hunching over, as if with keen interest. “You’re such a fascinating person,” he said warmly.

  Regan turned to him, sneering. “You mock!”

  “Oh, no, really! I would love to know more about your background. You’ve never told me who you are, for example.”

  “Are you deaf? I have told you! I’m a devil!”

  “Yes, I know, but which devil? What’s your name?”

  “Ah, now what’s in a name, Karras? Really! But all right, call me Howdy if that makes you more comfortable.”

  “Ah, I see! You’re Captain Howdy, Regan’s friend!”

  “Her very close friend, Karras.”

  “Oh, really? But then why do you torment her?”

  “Because I am her friend! The piglet likes it!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Captain Howdy. Why on earth would Regan like to be tormented?”

  “Ask her!”

  “Would you allow her to answer?”

  “I would not!”

  “Well, then what would be the point in my asking?”

  “None!” The eyes glinted with mockery and spite.

  “Who’s the person I was speaking to earlier?” asked Karras.

  “Come, you’ve asked me that before.”

  “Yes, I know, but you never gave an answer.”

  “Just another good friend of the sweet honey piglet.”

  “May I speak to this person?”

  “No. He is busy with your mother. She is sucking his cock to the bristles, Karras! to the root!” Low and deep chuckling; and then, “Marvelous tongue. Soft lips.”

  Karras felt a rage sweeping through him, and then realized with a start that his anger was directed not at Regan, but at the demon! The demon! He tightly gripped calm by its shoulders, breathed deeply and then, standing up, he slipped a slender glass vial from a pocket and uncorked it.

  Regan stared at it warily. “What’s that in your hand?” she rasped, drawing back rigidly, her eyes apprehensive.

  “Don’t you know? Why it’s holy water, devil!” answered Karras, and as Regan immediately began whimpering and straining against her straps, he began shooting sprinkles of the vial’s content at her. “Oh, it burns! It burns!” Regan cried out gutturally, as she thrashed about, writhing in terror and in pain. “Stop it, stop it, priest bastard!” she wailed. “Stop iiiiiiitttttttttt!”

  Staring blankly, both Karras’s body and soul seemed to sag. He stopped sprinkling and his arm and the vial dropped slowly and listlessly to his side. Hysteria. Suggestion. She did read the book! He glanced at the tape recorder, and then lowered his head and shook it. Why bother? But now he noticed the silence, so airless, so deep, and he looked up at Regan and instantly his eyebrows lowered and bunched together in perplexity. What’s this? he thought. What’s going on? The demonic personality had vanished and in its place were other features, which were similar, and yet different, with the eyes now rolled upward into their sockets so that only the whites balefully showed. Lips moving. A feverish gibberish. Karras came around to the side of the bed and leaned over to listen. It’s nothing, just nonsense syllables, he thought; and yet it’s got cadence, like a language. Could it possibly be? Karras wondered. Hoped. He felt a fluttering of wings in his chest. Swiftly gripped them. Held them still. Come on, don’t be an idiot, Damien!

  And yet…

  He checked the tape recorder’s volume monitor, dialed up the amplification knob and was listening intently with his ear held low above Regan’s lips when abruptly the gibberish ceased and was replaced by heavy breathing, raspy and deep. Something new. No. Someone new. Karras drew himself up and looked down at Regan in quiet wonder. Whites of eyes. Eyelids fluttering. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Nowonmai,” something answered him in pain and in a groaning whisper. “Nowonmai. Nowonmai.” The cracking, breathy voice seemed to come from afar, from some dark, cloistered space at the edge of the worlds, beyond time, beyond hope, beyond even the comfort of resignation and despair.

  Karras frowned. “Is that your name?”

  The lips moved. Fevered syllables. Slow. Unintelligible.

  And then abruptly they ceased.

  “Are you able to understand me?” asked Karras.

  Silence. Only breathing, long and deep. The sound of sleep in a hospital respirator. Karras waited. Hoped for more.

  Nothing came.

  Karras picked up the tape recorder, gave Regan a last, searching look and then left the room and went downstairs.

  He found Chris in the kitchen sitting somber
ly over coffee at the table with Sharon. As they saw him approach, the two women looked up at him with a questioning, anxious expectancy. “Better go check on Regan,” Chris said quietly to Sharon.

  “Yeah, sure.” Sharon took a final sip of coffee, gave Karras a little smile of acknowledgment and left. Karras watched her and when she was gone he sat down at the table.

  Anxiously searching his eyes, Chris asked, “So what’s doin’?” About to answer, Karras hesitated as Karl entered quietly from the pantry and went over to the sink to scrub pots.

  “It’s okay,” Chris said softly. “Go ahead, Father Karras. And so what happened upstairs? What do you think?”

  Karras clasped his hands together on the table. “There were two personalities,” he said; “one that I hadn’t ever seen before and another that I once might have gotten a glimpse of. Adult male. Sounds British. Is that anyone you know?”

  “Is that important?”

  Once again Karras noticed that certain sudden tension in Chris’s face. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “Yes, it’s important.”

  Chris looked down at the blue porcelain creamer on the table. Then, “Yeah,” she said; “I knew him.”

  “Knew?”

  Chris looked up and said quietly, “Burke Dennings.”

  “The director?”

  “Yes.”

  “The director who—”

  “Yes.”

  Pondering her answer, Karras looked down at her hands. Chris’s left index finger was slightly twitching.

  “Are you sure you don’t want coffee or anything, Father?” Karras looked up. “No, I’m okay” he said. “I’m fine,” and then, resting folded arms on the table, he leaned forward. “And so, was Regan acquainted with him?” he asked.

  “You mean Burke?”

  “Yes, Dennings.”

  “Well—”

  A sudden sound, a loud clattering. Startled, Chris flinched, then saw that Karl had dropped a roasting pan to the floor, and as he stooped to retrieve it, as he picked it up, he dropped it yet again.

  “God almighty, Karl!”

  “Sorry, Madam! Sorry!”

  “Go on, get out of here, Karl! Take a break! Go see a movie or something!”

  “No, Madam, maybe better if—”

  “Karl, I mean it!” Chris snapped at him edgily. “Get out! Just get out of this house for a while! We’ve all got to start getting out of here! Now go!”