The Exorcist

  “Yes, you go!” echoed Willie as she entered and snatched away the pan from Karl’s grasp. She pushed him irritably toward the pantry.

  Karl briefly eyed Karras and Chris and then left.

  “Sorry, Father,” Chris murmured. She reached for a cigarette. “He’s had to take an awful lot lately.”

  “You were right,” said Karras gently. He picked up a packet of matches. “You should all make an effort to get out of the house.” He lit her cigarette, fanned out the match and placed it in an ashtray as he added, “You too.”

  “Yeah, I know. And so this Burkething—whatever—I mean, what did it say?” Chris was eyeing the priest intently.

  Karras shrugged. “Just obscenities.”

  “That’s all?”

  The priest caught the faint pulse of fear in her tone. “Pretty much,” he responded. Then he lowered his voice. “Incidentally, does Karl have a daughter?”

  “A daughter? No, not that I know of. Or if he does, he’s never mentioned it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Chris turned to Willie, who was scouring at the sink. “Say, you don’t have a daughter, do you, Willie?”

  Willie kept stolidly scouring as she answered, “Yes, Madam, but she die long before.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Willie.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chris turned back to Karras. “That’s the first I ever heard of her,” she whispered. “Why’d you ask? How’d you know?”

  “Regan mentioned it.”

  Chris stared at him incredulously, and whispered, “What?”

  “She did. Has she ever shown signs before of having—well—ESP?”

  “ESP, Father?”

  “Yes.”

  Hesitant, Chris looked aside with a frown. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I mean, there have been lots of times when she seems to be thinking the same things that I’m thinking, but doesn’t that happen with people who are close?”

  Karras nodded and said, “Yes. Yes, it does. Now this other personality, the third one that I mentioned—that’s the one that showed up when she was hypnotized?”

  “Talks gibberish?”

  “Talks gibberish. Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not familiar at all?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Have you sent for Regan’s medical records?”

  “They’ll be here this afternoon. They’re coming straight to you, Father. That’s the only way I could get them loose, and even at that I had to raise hell.”

  “Yes, I thought there might be trouble.”

  “There was. But they’re coming.”

  “Good.”

  Folding her arms across her chest, Chris leaned back in her chair and stared at Karras gravely. “Okay, Father, so where are we now? What’s the bottom line?”

  “Well, your daughter—”

  “No, you know what I mean,” Chris interrupted. “I mean, what about getting permission for an exorcism?”

  Karras cast his eyes down and gently shook his head. “I’m just not very hopeful I could sell it to the Bishop.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not very hopeful’? How come.”

  Karras dipped into a pocket, extracted the holy-water vial and held it out to Chris. “See this?” he asked.

  “What about it?”

  “I told Regan it was holy water,” Karras said softly, “and when I started to sprinkle it on her, she reacted very violently.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good, Father. Isn’t it?”

  “No. This really isn’t holy water. It’s just ordinary tap water.”

  “So? So what’s the difference, Father?”

  “Holy water’s blessed.”

  “Oh, well, I’m happy for it, Father! I really am!” Chris shot back with a rising frustration and annoyance. “And so maybe some demons are dumb!”

  “You really believe there’s a demon inside her?”

  “I believe that there’s something inside of her that’s trying to kill her and whether it knows piss from Seven-Up doesn’t seem to have very much to do with it, don’t you think so, Father Karras? I mean, sorry, but you asked my opinion!” Chris irritably tamped out her cigarette in the ashtray. “And so what are you telling me now—no exorcism?”

  “Look, I’ve only just begun to dig into this,” Karras retorted, beginning to match Chris’s heat. “But the Church has criteria that have to be met and they have to be met for very good reasons, like not doing more harm than good, as well as trying to keep clear of the superstitious garbage that people keep pinning on us year after year! I give you ‘levitating priests,’ for example, and statues of the Blessed Mother that supposedly cry blood on Good Fridays and feast days! Now I think I can live without contributing to that!”

  “Would you like a little Librium, Father?”

  “I’m sorry, but you asked my opinion.”

  “I think I pretty much got it.”

  Karras reached for the cigarette pack.

  “Me too,” Chris said.

  Karras extended the pack. Chris took one, then Karras, who lit them both and together they dragged and then exhaled smoke with audible sighs of relief at the return of calm and peace.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Karras, looking down at the table.

  “Yeah, those nonfilter cigarettes’ll kill ya.”

  After that there was quiet as Chris looked off to the side and through a floor-to-ceiling window at Key Bridge traffic. Then a sound of something softly and intermittently thumping. Chris turned and saw Karras staring down at the cigarette pack as he slowly kept turning it end over end. Abruptly he looked up and met Chris’s moist and demanding stare. “Okay, listen,” he said; “I’m going to give you the signs that the Church might accept before authorizing a formal rite of exorcism.”

  “Yeah, good. I want to hear them.”

  “One is speaking in a language that the subject has never known before; never studied. That one I’m working on. We’ll see. After that there’s clairvoyance, although nowadays it might be ruled out as just telepathy or ESP.”

  “You believe in that stuff?”

  Karras studied her, the grimace of disbelief, the frown. She was serious, he decided. “It’s undeniable these days,” he told her, “although, as I said, it isn’t at all supernatural.”

  “Good grief, Charlie Brown!”

  “Oh, so you do have a skeptical side.”

  “What other symptoms?”

  “Well, the last that the Church might accept is—quote—‘powers beyond her ability and age.’ That’s a catchall; it means anything inexplicably paranormal or occult.”

  “Oh, really? Well, then, what about those poundings in the wall and the way she was flying up and down off the bed?”

  “By themselves, they mean nothing.”

  “Well, then, what about those things on her skin?”

  “What things?”

  “I didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Oh, well, it happened at Barringer Clinic,” Chris explained. “There were—well…” She traced a finger on her chest. “You know, like writing? Just letters. They’d show up on her chest, then disappear. Just like that.”

  Karras frowned. “You said ‘letters.’ Not words?”

  “No, no words. Just an M once or twice. Then an L.”

  “And you saw this?” Karras asked her.

  “Well, no. But they told me.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Shit, the doctors at the clinic!” Chris said irritably. Then, “Okay, sorry,” she said. “Look, you’ll see it in the records. It’s for real.”

  “But it, too, could be a natural phenomenon.”

  “Where? In Transylvania?” Chris erupted again, incredulous.

  Karras shook his head. “Look, I’ve come across cases of that in the journals and the Bishop could bring it up against us. There was one, I remember, where a prison psychiatrist reported that a patient of his—an inmat
e—could go into a self-induced state of trance and make the signs of the zodiac appear on his skin.” He made a gesture at his chest. “Made the skin raise up.”

  “Boy, miracles sure don’t come easy with you, do they?”

  “What can I tell you? Look, there was once an experiment in which the subject was hypnotized, put into trance; and then surgical incisions were made in each arm. He was told his left arm was going to bleed, but that the right arm wouldn’t. Well, the left arm bled and the right arm didn’t.”

  “Whoa!”

  “Yes, whoa! The power of the mind controlled the blood flow. How? Who knows. But it happens. So in cases of stigmata—like the one with that prisoner I mentioned, or maybe even with Regan—the unconscious mind is controlling the differential of blood flow to the skin, sending more to the parts that it wants raised up. And so then you have letters, or images, maybe even words. It’s mysterious, but hardly supernatural.”

  “You’re a real tough case, Father Karras, do you know that?”

  “I’m not the one who sets the rules.”

  “Well, you’ve sure got your heart into enforcing them.”

  Pensive, the priest lowered his head and touched the end of a thumb to his lips; then he dropped it and looked up at Chris. “Listen, maybe this will help you to understand,” he said slowly and gently. “The Church—not me; the Church—once published a warning to would-be exorcists. I read it last night. What it said was that most of the people who think they’re possessed or are thought to be possessed—and now I’m quoting word for word—‘are far more in need of a doctor than of a priest.’ Now can you guess when that warning was issued?”

  “No, when?”

  “The year fifteen eighty-three.”

  Chris stared in surprise at first, and then, lowering her gaze, she murmured, “Yeah, that sure was one hell of a year.” She heard the priest getting up from his chair. “Let me wait and check the records from the clinic,” he told her, “and in the meantime I’ll be taking Regan’s letter to her father tape plus the tape I just made to the Georgetown University Institute of Languages and Linguistics. It could be this gibberish is some kind of a language. I doubt it. But it’s possible. In the meantime, there’s a lot that could be riding on comparing Regan’s pattern of speech in her normal state with what I just recorded. If they’re the same, you’ll know for sure that she isn’t possessed.”

  “And what then?” Chris asked him.

  The priest probed her eyes. They were swirling with turbulence. My God, Karras thought, she’s worried that her daughter isn’t possessed! His nagging sense of some even deeper problem, something hidden, had returned. “Could I borrow your car for a while?” he asked.

  Chris looked bleakly aside. “You could borrow my life for a while. Just get it back by Thursday. You never know; I might need it.”

  With an ache, Karras stared at the bowed and defenseless head. He yearned to be able to take Chris’s hand and assure her that all would be well. But he couldn’t. He didn’t believe it.

  Chris stood up. “I’ll go get you the keys.”

  She drifted away like a hopeless prayer.

  Karras walked back to his room at the residence hall where he left Chris’s tape recorder, collected the tape of Regan’s voice, then went back across the street to Chris’s parked car. As he was settling into the driver’s seat, he heard Karl Engstrom calling out from the doorway of Chris’s house: “Father Karras!” Karras looked. Karl was rushing down the stoop. He was pulling on a black leather jacket and waving. “Father Karras! Just a moment, please!” he called as he trotted up to Chris’s car.

  Karras leaned over and cranked down the window on the passenger side, where Karl stooped down to look in at Karras and ask, “You are going which way, Father Karras?”

  “DuPont Circle.”

  “Ah, yes, good! You could drop me, please, Father? You would mind?”

  “Glad to do it, Karl. Get in.”

  “I appreciate it, Father!”

  Karl got into the car and closed the door. Karras started up the engine. “Mrs. MacNeil is quite right, Karl,” he said. “Do you good to get out.”

  “Yes, I think so. I go to see a film, Father.”

  “Perfect.”

  Karras put the car in gear and pulled away.

  For a time they drove in silence; Karras preoccupied, searching for answers. Possession? Impossible! The holy water!

  But still…

  “Karl, you knew Mr. Dennings pretty well?”

  Sitting stiffly erect and staring stoically straight ahead through the windshield, Karl said, “Yes. Yes, I know him.”

  “When Regan—I mean, when she appears to be Dennings—do you get the impression that she actually is?”

  A weighted silence.

  And then a flat and expressionless “I do.”

  Karras nodded and murmured, “I see.”

  After that, there was no more conversation until they reached DuPont Circle, where they came to a traffic signal and stopped. Karl opened his door. “I get off here, Father Karras.”

  “Really? Here?”

  “Yes, from here I take bus.” He climbed out of the car and with a hand gripping the edge of the open door, he leaned down and said, “Thank you, Father Karras. Very much.”

  “Are you sure I can’t take you all the way? I’ve got time.”

  “No, no, Father! This is good! Very good!”

  “Well, okay. Enjoy the movie.”

  “I will, Father! Thank you!”

  Karl closed the car door and stepped onto a safety island, where he waited for a traffic light to go green, and as Karras pulled away he stood stoically watching the bright red Jaguar coupe until at last it disappeared around the bend onto Massachusetts Avenue. Karl looked at the traffic light. It had changed and he ran for a bus that was now pulling into a bus stop. He boarded, took a transfer, changed buses and then finally debarked at a northeast tenement section of the city, where he walked three blocks and then entered a crumbling apartment building. At the bottom of a gloomy staircase, he paused, smelling acrid aromas from efficiency kitchens, heard from somewhere upstairs the soft crying of a baby as a roach scuttled quickly from out of a baseboard in erratic, zigzagging darts, and in that moment, the sturdy, stoic houseman’s entire being seemed to crumple and to sag; but then, gathering himself, he moved forward to a staircase, put a hand on the banister and started slowly climbing the creaking and groaning old wooden stairs. To his ears each footfall had the sound of a rebuke.

  On the second floor, Karl walked to a door in a murky wing, and for a moment he stood there, a hand on the door frame. He glanced at the wall: peeling paint; graffiti; Petey and Charlotte in a penciled scrawl, and, below it, a date and a drawing of a heart that was bisected by a thin, jagged line of cracking plaster. Karl pushed the buzzer and waited, head down. From within the apartment, a squeaking of bedsprings. Low muttering. Then someone approaching with a sound that was irregular—the dragging clump of an orthopedic shoe—and abruptly the door jerked partly open, the chain of a safety latch rattling to its limit as a woman in a stained pink paisley slip scowled out through the aperture, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said throatily. She unloosed the chain.

  Karl met the eyes that were shifting hardness, that were haggard wells of pain and blame; glimpsed briefly the dissolute bending of the lips and the ravaged face of a youth and a beauty buried alive in a thousand motel rooms, in a thousand awakenings from restless sleep with a stifled cry at remembered grace.

  “C’mon, tell ’im ta fuck off!”

  A coarse male voice from within the apartment.

  Slurred. The boyfriend.

  The girl turned her head. “Shut up, asshole, it’s Pop!” she scolded, and then turned back to Karl. “Listen, he’s drunk, Pop. Ya better not come in.”

  Karl nodded.

  The girl’s hollow eyes shifted down to his hand as it reached to a back trouser pocket for a
wallet. “How’s Mama?” she asked him, dragging on her cigarette, her eyes fixed now on the hands dipping into the wallet, the hands counting out ten-dollar bills.

  “She is fine.” Karl nodded tersely. “Your mother is fine.”

  As he handed her the money, the girl began coughing rackingly. She threw up a hand to her mouth. “Fuckin’ cigarettes!” she chokingly complained; “I’ve gotta quit, goddammit!” Karl stared at the puncture scabs on her arm, felt the ten-dollar bills being slipped from his fingers.

  “Thanks, Pop.”

  “Jesus, hurry it up!” growled the boyfriend from within.

  “Listen, Pop, we better cut this kinda short. Okay? Ya know how he gets sometimes.”

  “Elvira…!” Karl had suddenly reached through the opening in the door and grasped her wrist. “There is clinic in New York now!” he whispered to her pleadingly as she grimaced and struggled to break free from Karl’s grip. “Pop, let go!”

  “I will send you! They will help you! You don’t go to jail! It is—”

  “Jesus, come on, Pop!” Elvira screeched as she wrenched herself free.

  “No, no, please!”

  His daughter slammed shut the door.

  Standing silent and motionless in the dank, graffitied tomb of his hopes, the Swiss manservant stared without sight for long moments until at last he slowly lowered his head in grief.

  From within the apartment he could hear a muffled conversation that ended with a cynical, ringing woman’s laugh. It was followed by a spate of coughing. Karl turned away.

  And felt a sudden stab of shock.

  “Perhaps we could talk now,” said Kinderman breathily, hands in the pockets of his coat, his eyes sad. “Yes, I think that perhaps we could now have a talk.”

  Chapter Two

  Karras threaded tape to an empty reel on a table in the office of Frank Miranda, the rotund, silver-haired director of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. Having edited sections of both his tapes onto separate reels, Karras started the tape recorder, and the two men listened with headphones to the fevered voice croaking gibberish. When it ended, Karras slipped the headphones onto his shoulders and asked, “Frank, what is that? Could it possibly be a language?”