The Exorcist

  His earphones off as well, Miranda was sitting on the edge of his desk, his arms folded as he stared at the floor and frowned in puzzlement. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Pretty weird.” He glanced up at Karras. “Where’d you get that?”

  “I’m working on a case of dual personality.”

  “You’re kidding me! A priest?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Yes, of course. I understand.”

  “Well, what about it, Frank? You’ll do it?”

  Staring off thoughtfully, Miranda gently lifted off his tortoiseshell reading glasses, absently folding and then slipping them into the slim lapel pocket of his seersucker jacket. “No, it isn’t any language that I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “However…” Slightly frowning, he glanced up at Karras. “Want to play it again?”

  Karras rewound the tape, replayed it, turned off the recorder and said, “Any ideas?”

  “Well, I must say, it does have the cadence of speech.”

  A sudden quickening of hope arose in the Jesuit, brightening his eyes for an instant, and then dimming as he reflexively fought down the hope.

  “But I don’t recognize it, Father,” the director continued. “Is it ancient or modern?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, why not leave it with me, Father? I’ll check it much more thoroughly with some of the boys. Maybe one of them will know what it is.”

  “Could you please make a copy of it, Frank? I’d like to keep the original myself.”

  “Oh, well, sure.”

  “In the meantime, I’ve got another tape. Got the time?”

  “Yes, of course. A tape of what?”

  “Let me ask you something first.”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Frank, what if I were to give you samples of ordinary speech by what are apparently two different people. Could you tell by semantic analysis whether just one person might have been capable of both modes of speech?”

  “Oh, I think so. Yeah. Oh, well, sure. A ‘type-token’ ratio, I suppose, would be as good a way as any to work that out, and with samples of a thousand words or more, you could just check the frequency of occurrence of the various parts of speech.”

  “And would you call that conclusive?”

  “Pretty much. You see, that sort of test would discount any change in the basic vocabulary. It’s not the words but the expression of the words; the style. We call it ‘index of diversity.’ Very baffling to the layman, which, of course, is what we want.” The director smiled wryly. Then he nodded at the tape in Karras’s hands. “And so this other person’s voice is on that one?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “The voices and the words on both tapes came out of the mouth of one and the same person.”

  The director’s eyebrows rose. “The same person?”

  “Yes. As I said, it was a case of dual personality. Could you compare them against one another for me, Frank? I mean, the voices sound totally different, but I’d still like to see what a comparative analysis would show.”

  The director looked intrigued, even pleased. He said, “Fascinating! Yes. Yes, we’ll run the analysis. I’m thinking maybe now I’ll give it to Paul, he’s my top instructor. Brilliant mind. I think he dreams in Indian ‘code talk.’ ”

  “Another favor. It’s a big one.”

  “What?”

  “I’d prefer it if you did the comparison yourself.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. And as quickly as possible. Please?”

  The director read the urgency in Karras’s voice and in his eyes. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “I’ll get on it.”

  Returning to his room in the Jesuit residence hall, Karras found a message slip under his door: Regan’s records from Barringer Clinic had arrived. Karras hurried to reception, signed for the package, then returned to his room, sat down at his desk and started avidly reading, but at the end, as he read the conclusion of the clinic’s psychiatric team, his mood of hopeful anticipation had slipped into one of disappointment and defeat: “… indications of guilt obsession with ensuing hysterical-somnambulistic…” Needing to read no more, Karras stopped, propped his elbows on the desk and, with a sigh, slowly lowered his face into his hands. Don’t give up. Room for doubt. Interpretation. But in the matter of Regan’s skin stigmata, which, according to the records, had recurred again repeatedly while Regan had been under observation at Barringer, the clinic’s summary analysis had noted that Regan had hyperreactive skin and could herself have produced the mysterious letters by tracing them on her flesh with a finger a short time prior to their appearance, by a process known as dermatographia, a theory buttressed by the fact that as soon as Regan’s hands had been immobilized by restraining straps, the mysterious phenomena ceased.

  Karras lifted his head and eyed the telephone. Frank. Was there really any point now in running a comparison of the voices on the tapes? Call him off? Yes, I should, the priest concluded. He picked up the receiver. Dialed. No answer. He left word for the institute director to call, and then, exhausted, he stood up and walked slowly to his bathroom, where he splashed cold water onto his face. “The exorcist will simply be careful that none of the patient’s manifestations are left unexplained.” Karras worriedly looked up at himself in the mirror. Had he missed something? What? The sauerkraut odor? He turned and slipped a towel off the rack and wiped his face. No, autosuggestion would explain that, he recalled, as well as reports that, in certain instances, the mentally ill seemed able to unconsciously direct their bodies to emit a variety of odors.

  Karras wiped his hands. The poundings. The opening and closing of the drawer. Was that psychokinesis? Really? “You believe in that stuff?” Becoming suddenly aware that he wasn’t thinking clearly, Karras set the damp towel back on its bar. Tired. Too tired. Yet the core of his being refused to give up, to surrender this child to sinuous theories and speculations, to the blood-drenched history of betrayals of the human mind.

  He left the residence hall and walked swiftly up Prospect Street to the gray stone walls of Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library, entered and searched through the Guide to Periodical Literature, running a finger down subjects beginning with a P, and after finding what it was that he’d been looking for, he sat down at a long, oaken reading table with a scientific journal containing an article about poltergeist phenomena, written by the eminent German psychiatrist Dr. Hans Bender. No doubt about it, the Jesuit concluded when he’d finished reading the article: having for many years been thoroughly documented, filmed and observed in psychiatric clinics, psychokinetic phenomena were real. But! In none of the cases reported in the article was there any connection to demonic possession; rather, the favorite hypothesis explaining the phenomenon was “mind-directed energy” unconsciously produced and usually—and significantly, Karras noted—by adolescents in stages of “extremely high inner tension, rage and frustration.”

  Karras lightly rubbed his knuckles into the corners of his moist and tired eyes, and, still feeling remiss, he ran back through Regan’s symptoms, touching each like a schoolboy making sure that he taps every slat as he walks along a white picket fence. Karras wondered which one he had missed.

  The answer, he wearily concluded, was none.

  He walked back to the MacNeil house, where Willie admitted him and led him to the door of the study. It was closed. Willie knocked. “Father Karras,” she announced, and from within Karras heard a subdued “Come in.”

  Karras entered and closed the door behind him. Standing with her back to him, Chris had an elbow propped on the bar top and her forehead lowered into a hand. Without turning, she greeted him, “Hello, Father,” in a voice that was husky, yet soft and despairing.

  Concerned, the priest went to her side. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, Father. Really.”

  Karras frowned, his worry deepening: Chris’s voice had held tension, and the hand that was obscur
ing her face was trembling. Lowering her arm, she turned and looked up at Karras, revealing a haggard-eyed, tearstained face. “So what’s doin’?” she said. “What’s new?”

  Karras studied her before answering, “Well, the latest is I’ve looked at the records from Barringer Clinic and—”

  “Yes?” Chris interjected tensely.

  “Well, I believe…”

  “You believe what, Father Karras? What?”

  “Well, my honest opinion right now is that Regan can best be helped by intensive psychiatric care.”

  Chris stared at Karras mutely and with her eyes a little wider as she very slowly shook her head back and forth. “No way!”

  “Where’s her father?” Karras asked her.

  “In Europe.”

  “Have you told him what’s happening?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I think it would help if he were here.”

  “Listen, nothing’s going to help except something out of sight!” Chris erupted in a voice that was loud and quavery.

  “I believe you should send for him.”

  “Why?”

  “It would—”

  “I’ve asked you to drive a demon out, goddammit, not ask another one in!” Chris cried out, her features contorted in anguish. “What happened to the exorcism all of a sudden?”

  “Look—”

  “What in the hell do I want with Howard?”

  “We can talk about that later when—”

  “Talk about it now, goddammit! What the hell good is Howard right now?”

  “Well, there’s a strong probability that Regan’s disorder is rooted in a guilt over—”

  “Guilt over what?” Chris squalled, her eyes wild.

  “It could—”

  “Over the divorce? All that psychiatric bullshit?”

  “Now—”

  “Regan feels guilty because she killed Burke Dennings!” Chris shrieked, her hands lifted in fists pressed against her temples. “She killed him! She killed him and they’ll put her away; they’re going to put her away! Oh, my God, oh, my…”

  Karras caught her up as she crumpled, sobbing, and guided her toward the sofa. “It’s all right,” he kept telling her softly, “it’s all right…”

  “No, they’ll put … her away,” Chris kept sobbing. “They’ll put … put…!”

  “It’s all right.”

  Karras eased Chris down and helped her to stretch out on the sofa, then he sat on its edge and took her hand in both of his. Racing thoughts now. Of Kinderman. Of Dennings. Chris sobbing. Unreality. “All right … it’s all right … take it easy … it’s all going to be okay…”

  Soon the crying subsided and he helped her sit up. He brought her water and a box of tissues that he’d found on a shelf behind the bar and then he sat down beside her.

  “Oh, I’m glad,” Chris said, sniff ling and blowing her nose.

  “You’re glad?”

  “Yeah, I’m glad I got it out.”

  “Oh, well, yes—yes—yes, that’s good.”

  And now again the weight pressed heavily down on the Jesuit’s shoulders. No more! Say no more! he tried warning himself, yet “Do you want to tell me more?” he asked Chris gently.

  Chris nodded mutely, and then, weakly, she said, “Yes. Yes, I do.” She wiped at an eye and began to speak haltingly and in spasms: of Kinderman; of the narrow strips torn from the edges of the witchcraft book and of her certainty that Dennings had been up in Regan’s bedroom on the night he had died; of Regan’s abnormally great strength and of the Dennings personality Chris thought she had seen with its head turned around and facing backward. Finished, depleted, she waited for Karras’s reaction, and just as he was about to tell her his mind, he looked into her eyes and her beseeching expression, and instead said, “You can’t be really sure that she did it.”

  “But Burke’s head turned around? The things it says?”

  “You’d hit your own head pretty hard against a wall,” Karras answered. “You were also in shock. You imagined it.”

  Holding Karras’s gaze with dead eyes, Chris said quietly, “No. Burke told me that she did it. She pushed him out the window and she killed him.”

  Momentarily stunned, the priest stared at her blankly, but then gathered himself. “Your daughter’s mind is deranged,” he said, “and so her statements mean nothing.”

  Chris lowered her head and shook it. “I don’t know,” she said barely audibly. “I don’t know if I’m doing what’s right. I think she did it and so maybe she could kill someone else. I don’t know.” She turned a hopeless, hollow stare back to Karras and in a throaty, husky whisper asked him, “What should I do?”

  Karras inwardly sagged. The weight was now set in concrete, and, in drying, it had shaped itself to his back. “You’ve already done what you should do,” he said. “You’ve told someone, Chris. You’ve told me. So now just leave it up to me to decide what’s best to do. Will you do that, please? Just leave it to me.”

  Wiping at an eye with the back of her hand, Chris nodded, and said, “Yeah. Yeah, well, sure. That would be best.” Trying to muster a smile, she added weakly, “Thanks, Father. Thank you so much.”

  “Feeling better now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then will you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, anything. What?”

  “Go out and see a movie.”

  For a moment Chris stared blankly, and then she smiled and shook her head. “No, I hate ’em.”

  “Then go visit a friend.”

  Chris looked at him warmly. “Got a friend right here.”

  “You bet. Now get some rest, please. Will you promise?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  Karras had a thought, another question. “You think Dennings brought the book upstairs,” he asked, “or was it already there?”

  “I believe it was there.”

  Looking slightly aside, Karras nodded his head. “I see,” he said quietly. Then abruptly he stood up. “Well, okay. You need the car back, by the way?”

  “No, you can keep it.”

  “All right, then. I’ll be back to you later.”

  Lowering her head, Chris said softly, “Okay.”

  Karras left the house and walked out onto the street with thoughts that raced and tumbled recklessly in his mind. Regan killing Dennings? What madness! He envisioned her shoving him out through her bedroom window to hurtle down those long and steep stone steps, turning over and over and flailing helplessly until his world came to a sudden stop. Impossible! thought Karras. No! And yet Chris’s near conviction it was so! Her hysteria! And that’s exactly what it is! the priest tried telling himself. It’s nothing more than hysterical imagining! And yet…

  Karras chased after certainties like fallen leaves in a wind.

  As he was passing the precipitous steps beside the house, Karras heard a sound from below, by the river, and he stopped and looked down toward the C&O Canal. A harmonica. Someone playing “Red River Valley,” since boyhood the Jesuit’s favorite song. He stood and listened until a traffic light changed down below and the melancholy melody was crushed and overwhelmed by the sound of auto traffic starting up again on M Street, rudely shattered by a world that was now, of this moment, and in torment, dripping blood on exhaust fumes as it cried out for help. Staring down the steps unseeingly, Karras thrust his hands into his pockets, as once again he thought feverishly about the plight of Chris MacNeil and of Regan and of Lucas aiming kicks at the dead Tranquille. He must do something. What? Could he hope to outguess the clinicians at Barringer? “Oh, are you really a priest or from Central Casting!” Karras absently nodded, remembering the case of possession of a Frenchman named Achille who, like Regan, had called himself a devil, and like Regan his disorder had been rooted in guilt, in Achille’s case remorse over marital infidelity. The great psychologist Janet had effected a cure by hypnotically suggesting the presence of the wife, who appeared to Achille’s hallucinated eyes and solemnly forgave him. Kar
ras nodded. Yes, suggestion could work for Regan. Although not through hypnosis. They had tried that at Barringer. The counteracting suggestion for Regan, he believed, was what her mother had insisted on all along. It was the ritual of exorcism. Regan knew what it was and its intended effect. Her reaction to the holy water. She got that from a chapter in that book and in that chapter there were also descriptions of successful exorcisms. It could work! It really could! But then how to get permission from the Chancery Office? How to build up a case without mention of Dennings? Karras could not lie to the Bishop. And so what facts did he have that could possibly convince him? His temples beginning to pulse with headache, Karras lifted a hand to his brow. He knew he needed sleep. But he couldn’t. Not now. What facts? The tapes at the Institute? What would Frank find? Was there anything he could find? No. But who knew? Regan hadn’t known holy water from tap water. Sure. But if supposedly she’s able to read my mind, why is it that she didn’t know the difference between them? Karras again put a hand to his forehead. The headache. Confusion. Come on, kid! Somebody’s dying! Wake up!

  Once back in his room, Karras telephoned the Institute. No Frank. Pensive, he set down the receiver. Holy water. Tap water. Something. He opened up the Ritual to “Instructions to Exorcists” : “… evil spirits … deceptive answers … so it might appear that the afflicted one is in no way possessed.” Was that it? Karras wondered? But then instantly he bridled with impatience at the thought. What in the hell are you talking about? What “evil spirit?”

  He slammed shut the book and then reread the medical records, scanning through them in a hurried, fevered search for anything that might help him make the case for an exorcism. Here’s one. No history of hysteria. That’s something. But weak. There’s something else here, he remembered; some discrepancy. What was it? And then he recalled it. Not much. Still, it’s something. He telephoned Chris MacNeil. She sounded groggy.

  “Hi, Father.”

  “Were you sleeping? I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay, Father. Really. So what’s up?”

  “Chris, where can I find this…?” Karras ran a finger down the records. Stopped. “Doctor Klein,” he said; “Samuel Klein.”