“ ‘… I humbly…’ ”
“Liar! Lying bastard! Tell us, where is your humility, Merrin? In the desert? in the ruins? in the tombs where you fled to escape your fellowman? to escape from your inferiors, from the halt and the lame of mind? Do you speak to men, you pious vomit?…”
“ ‘… deliver…’ ”
“Your abode is in a nest of peacocks, Merrin! Your place is within yourself! Go back to the mountaintop and speak to your only equal!”
Merrin continued with the prayers, unheeding, as the torrent of abuse raged on. “Do you hunger, Saint Merrin? Here, I give you both nectar and ambrosia, I give to you the daily bread of your God!” croaked the demon mockingly as Regan excreted diarrhetically. “For this is my body! Now consecrate that, Saint Merrin!”
Repelled, Karras focused his attention on the text as Merrin read a passage from Saint Luke:
… “My name is Legion,” answered the man, for many demons had entered into him. And they begged Jesus not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a herd of swine was there, feeding on the mountain-side. And the demons kept entreating Jesus to let them enter into them. And he gave them leave. And the demons came out from the man and entered into the swine, and the herd rushed down the cliff and into the lake and were drowned. And…
“Willie, I bring you good news!” croaked the demon. Karras glanced up and saw Willie near the door, stopping short with an armload of towels and sheets. “I bring you tidings of redemption!” it gloated. “Elvira is alive! She lives! She is…”
Willie stared in shock and now Karl turned and shouted at her, “No, Willie! No!”
“… a drug addict, Willie, a hopeless—”
“Willie, do not listen!” cried Karl.
“Shall I tell you where she lives?”
“Do not listen! Do not listen!” Karl was rushing Willie out of the room.
“Go and visit her on Mother’s Day, Willie! Surprise her! Go and—”
Abruptly the demon broke off and fixed its eyes on Karras. He had again checked Regan’s pulse and, finding it strong enough to give her more Librium, he was moving to Sharon to instruct her to prepare another injection. “Karras, do you want her?” leered the demon. “She is yours! Yes, the stable whore is yours! You may ride her as you wish! Why, she fantasizes nightly concerning you, Karras! Yes, you and your long, thick, priestly cock!”
Sharon crimsoned and kept her eyes averted as Karras told her it was safe to give Regan the Librium. “And a Compazine suppository in case there’s more vomiting,” he added.
Sharon nodded at the floor and started stiffly away. As she walked by the bed with her head still lowered, Regan croaked at her, “Slut!” and then jerked up and hit her face with a flung bolt of vomit, and while Sharon stood paralyzed and in shock, the Dennings personality appeared, rasping, “Stable whore! Cunt!”
Sharon bolted from the room.
The Dennings personality now grimaced with distaste, glanced around and asked, “Would someone crack a window open, please? It bloody stinks in this room! It’s simply—no no no, don’t!” it then amended. “No, for heaven’s sake, don’t, or someone else might wind up bloody well dead!” And then it cackled, winked monstrously at Karras and vanished.
“ ‘It is He who expels you…’ ”
“Oh, does he, Merrin? Does he?”
The demonic entity had returned and Merrin continued the adjurations, the applications of the stole and the constant tracings of the sign of the cross while the entity lashed him again obscenely.
Too long, Karras worried: the fit was continuing far too long.
“Now the sow comes! The mother of the piglet!”
Karras turned and saw Chris coming toward him with a swab and a disposable syringe. She kept her head down as the demon hurled abuse, and Karras went to her, frowning.
“Sharon’s changing her clothes,” Chris explained, “and Karl’s—”
Karras cut her short with a brusque “All right,” and together they approached the bed.
“Ah, yes, come see your handiwork, sow-mother! Come!”
Chris tried not to listen, not to look, while Karras pinned Regan’s unresisting arms.
“See the puke! See the murderous bitch!” the demon raged. “Are you pleased? It is you who has done it! Yes, you with your career before anything, your career before your husband, before her, before…”
Karras glanced around. Chris stood paralyzed. “Go ahead!” he told her firmly. “Don’t listen! Go ahead!”
“… your divorce! Go to priests, will you? Priests will not help! The piglet is mad! Don’t you understand that? You have driven her to madness and to murder and…”
“I can’t!” Face contorted, Chris was staring at the quivering syringe in her trembling hand. She shook her head. “I can’t do it!”
Karras plucked the syringe from her fingers. “All right, swab it! Swab the arm! Over here!”
“… in her coffin, you bitch, by…”
“Don’t listen!” Karras cautioned Chris again, and at this the demonic entity jerked its head around, its red-laced eyes bulging fury. “And you, Karras! Yes! About you!”
Chris swabbed Regan’s arm. “Now, get out!” Karras ordered as he poked the hypodermic needle into wasted flesh.
Chris fled from the room.
“Yes, we know of your kindness to mothers, dear Karras!” croaked the demon. The Jesuit blenched and for a moment did not move. Then slowly he drew out the needle and looked into the whites of Regan’s eyes as out of her mouth came a slow, lilting singing in a sweet, clear voice like that of a very young choirboy, “ ‘Tantum ergo sacramentum veneremur cernui…’ ”
It was a hymn sung at Catholic benediction. Karras stood bloodlessly as it continued. Weird and chilling, the singing was a vacuum into which Karras felt the horror of the evening rushing with a horrible clarity. He looked up and saw Merrin with a towel in his hands. With weary, tender movements he wiped away the vomit from Regan’s face and neck.
“ ‘… et antiquum documentum…’ ”
The singing. Whose voice? wondered Karras. And then fragments: Dennings … The window … Drained, he saw Sharon come back into the room and take the towel from Merrin’s hands. “I’ll finish that, Father,” she told him. “I’m all right now. I’d like to change her and get her cleaned up before I give her the Compazine. Okay? Could you both wait outside for a while?”
The priests left the room, stepping into the warmth and the dimness of the hall, where they both leaned wearily against the wall, their heads down and arms folded as they listened to the eerie, muffled singing from within. It was Karras who at last broke their silence. “You—you said earlier, Father, there was only one entity we’re dealing with.”
“Yes.”
The hushed tones, the lowered heads, were confessional.
“All the others are but forms of attack,” continued Merrin. “There is one … only one. It is a demon.” There was a silence. Then Merrin stated simply, “I know you doubt this. But this demon I have met once before. And he is powerful, Damien. Powerful.”
A silence. Then Karras spoke again.
“We say the demon cannot touch the victim’s will.”
“Yes, that is so. There is no sin.”
“Then what would be the purpose of possession? What’s the point?”
“Who can know?” answered Merrin. “Who can really hope to know? And yet I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us … the observers … every person in this house. And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.”
Merrin paused, then continued more slowly and with an air of introspection: “Again, who really knows. But it is clear
—at least to me—that the demon knows where to strike. Oh, yes, he knows. Long ago I despaired of ever loving my neighbor. Certain people … repelled me. And so how could I love them? I thought. It tormented me, Damien; it led me to despair of myself and from that, very soon, to despair of my God. My faith was shattered.”
Surprised, Karras turned and looked at Merrin with interest. “And what happened?” he asked.
“Ah, well … at last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.” Merrin lowered his head and spoke even more softly. “I know that all of this must seem very obvious to you, Damien. I know. But at the time I could not see it. Strange blindness. How many husbands and wives,” Merrin uttered sadly, “must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds. Ah, dear God!” He shook his head. And then he nodded. “There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves.”
The lilting singing in the bedroom could still be heard, drawing Merrin to look up at the door with a distant stare. “And yet even from this—from evil—there will finally come good in some way; in some way that we may never understand or even see.” Merrin paused. “Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness,” he brooded. “And perhaps even Satan—Satan, in spite of himself—somehow serves to work out the will of God.”
Merrin said no more, and for a time they stood in silence while Karras reflected; until another objection came to his mind. “Once the demon’s driven out,” he asked, “what’s to keep it from coming back in?”
“I don’t know,” Merrin answered. “And yet it never seems to happen. No, never.” Merrin put a hand to his face, pinching tightly at the corners of his eyes. “ ‘Damien’ … what a wonderful name,” he murmured. Karras heard exhaustion in his voice. And something else. Some anxiety. Something like repression of pain.
Abruptly, Merrin pushed himself away from the wall, and with his face still hidden in his hand, he excused himself and hurried down the hall to a bathroom. What was wrong? wondered Karras. He felt a sudden envy and admiration for the exorcist’s strong and simple faith. Then he turned toward the door. The singing. It had stopped. Had the night at last ended?
Some minutes later, Sharon came out of the bedroom with a foul-smelling bundle of bedding and clothing. “She’s sleeping now,” she said, and then she looked away quickly and moved off down the hall.
Karras took a deep breath and reentered the bedroom. Felt the cold. Smelled the stench. He walked slowly to the bedside. Regan. Asleep. At last. And at last, Karras thought, he could rest. He reached down, gripped Regan’s thin wrist and then, lifting his other arm, he stared at the sweep-second hand of his watch.
“Why you do dis to me, Dimmy?”
The Jesuit’s heart froze over.
“Why you do dis?”
Karras did not move, did not breathe, did not dare to glance over to that sorrowful voice to see whether those eyes were really there. Eyes accusing. Eyes lonely. His mother’s. His mother’s!
“You leave me to be priest, Dimmy; send me institution…”
Don’t look!
“Now you chase me away?”
It’s not her!
“Why you do dis?”
His head throbbing, his heart in his throat, Karras shut his eyes tightly as the voice grew imploring, grew frightened and tearful. “You always good boy, Dimmy. Please! I am ’fraid! Please no chase me outside, Dimmy! Please!”
You’re not my mother!
“Outside nothing! Only dark, Dimmy! Lonely!”
“You’re not my mother!” Karras vehemently whispered.
“Dimmy, please!”
“You’re not my mother!” Karras shouted in agony.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Karras!”
The Dennings personality had appeared.
“Look, it simply isn’t fair to drive us out of here!” it wheedled. “Look now, speaking for myself it’s only justice I should be here. I admit it. But the bitch destroyed my body and I think it only right that I ought to be allowed to stay in hers, don’t you think? Oh, for Christ’s sake look at me, Karras, now would you? Come along! I mean, it isn’t very often I get out to speak my piece. Just turn around now. I won’t bite you or spew vomit or anything else of that boorish sort. This is me, now.”
Karras opened his eyes and saw the Dennings personality.
“There, that’s better,” it continued. “Look, she killed me. Not our innkeeper, Karras—she! Oh, yes, indeed!” It was nodding affirmation. “She! I was minding my business at the bar, you see, when I thought I heard her moaning from upstairs in her bedroom. Well, now, I had to see what ailed her, after all, so up I went and don’t you know she bloody took me by the throat, the little cunt!” The voice was whiny now; pathetic. “Christ, I’ve never in my life seen such strength! Began screaming that I was diddling her mother or some such or that I caused the divorce. It wasn’t clear. But I tell you, love, she pushed me out the bloody fucking window!” The voice cracking now and high-pitched. “She fucking killed me! All right? Now you think it bloody fair to throw me out of her? I mean, really, Karras! Do you?”
Karras swallowed, then spoke hoarsely. “Well, if you’re really Burke Dennings—”
“I keep telling you I am! Are you cunting deaf?”
“Well, if you are, then tell me how did your head get turned around?”
“Bloody Jesuit!” it cursed beneath its breath
“What was that?”
It shifted its gaze around evasively. “Oh, well, the head thing. Freaky thing, that. Yes. Very freaky.”
“How did it happen?”
It turned away. “Oh, well, frankly, who gives a good damn? Front or back, it’s all sixes and sevens, you know; twiddles and twaddles.”
Looking down, Karras picked up Regan’s wrist again and glanced at his watch as he counted her pulse rate.
“Dimmy, please! Please no make me be all alone!”
His mother.
“If instead of be priest, you was doctor, I live in nice house, Dimmy, not wit’ da cockroach, not all by myself in da lousy apartment!”
His eyes on his watch, Karras strained to block it all out, as once again he heard the sound of weeping. “Dimmy, please!”
“You’re not my mother!”
“Oh, won’t you face the truth?” It was the demon. Seething. “You believe what Merrin tells you, you fool? You believe him to be holy and good? Well, he is not! He is proud and unworthy! I will prove it to you, Karras! I will prove it by killing the piglet! She will die and neither you nor Merrin’s God will save her! She will die from Merrin’s pride and your incompetence! Bungler! You should not have given her the Librium!”
Stunned, Karras looked up into eyes that were shining with triumph and with piercing spite, then looked down at his wristwatch again. “Noticing her pulse, are we, Karras? Are we?”
Karras frowned worriedly. The pulse beat was rapid and…
“Feeble?” croaked the demon. “Ah, yes. For the moment, just a bit. Just a trifle.”
Karras let go of Regan’s wrist, fetched his medical bag hurriedly to the bedside, plucked out a stethoscope and pressed the resonator to Regan’s chest as the demon rasped, “Listen, Karras! Listen! Listen well!”
Karras listened and grew even more concerned: Regan’s
heart tones sounded distant and inefficient.
“I will not let her sleep!”
Chilled, Karras flicked his glance up to the demon.
“Yes, Karras!” it croaked. “She will not sleep! Do you hear? I will not let the piglet sleep!”
As the demon put its head back in gloating laughter, Karras stared numbly. He did not hear Merrin come back into the room until the exorcist was standing beside him and intently and worriedly studying Regan’s face. “What is it?” Merrin asked.
“The demon,” Karras answered him dully; “it said it wouldn’t let her sleep.” He turned a vanquished stare up to Merrin. “Her heart’s begun to work inefficiently, Father. If she doesn’t get rest pretty soon, she’ll die of cardiac exhaustion.”
Merrin frowned, his expression grave. “Can’t you give her drugs?” he asked. “Some medicine to make her sleep?”
“No, that’s dangerous. She might go into coma.” Karras turned his gaze to Regan. She was clucking like a hen in a barnyard. “If her blood pressure drops any more…”
The priest’s voice trailed off.
“What can be done?” Merrin asked.
“Nothing,” Karras answered. “Nothing.” His anxious gaze returned to Merrin. “But I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t be sure. I mean, maybe there’ve been some recent new advances. I’m going to call in a cardiac specialist!”
Merrin nodded, and said, “Yes. That would be good.”
He watched as Karras closed the bedroom door behind him, and then added very softly, “And I will pray.”
Karras found Chris keeping vigil in the kitchen and from the room off the pantry he heard Willie sobbing, heard Karl’s consoling voice as he explained the urgent need for consultation while carefully not divulging the full extent of Regan’s danger. Chris gave him permission, and Karras telephoned a friend, a noted specialist at the Georgetown University Medical School, awakening him from sleep and then briefing him tersely.
“Be right there,” said the specialist.
In less than half an hour he arrived at the house, where, once in Regan’s bedroom, he reacted to the cold and the stench and Regan’s condition with bewilderment, horror and compassion. When he’d entered the room, Regan was quietly croaking gibberish, and while he examined her, she alternately sang and made animal noises. Then Dennings appeared.