Karras stopped scrolling and looked up at him. “She was certainly disordered when you ran this graph; is that right?”

“Yes, I’d say so. Yes. Yes, she was.”

“Well then, isn’t it curious that she tested so perfectly? Even subjects in a normal state of mind can influence their brain waves at least within the normal range, and as Regan was disturbed at the time, wouldn’t it seem there’d be some fluctuations. If—”

“Doctor, Mrs. Simmons is getting impatient,” a nurse interrupted, cracking open the door.

“Okay, I’m coming,” Klein told her. As the nurse hurried off, he took a step toward the hallway but then turned with his hand gripping the edge of the door. “Speaking of hysteria,” he commented dryly. “Sorry. Got to run.”

He closed the door behind him. Karras heard his footsteps heading down the hall, the opening of a door, then “Well now, how are we feeling today, Mrs…” The closing of the door shut off the rest. Karras went back to his study of the graph, and when he’d finished, he folded it up and banded it, then returned it to the nurse in Reception. Something. It was something he could use with the Bishop as an argument that Regan was not a hysteric and therefore conceivably could be possessed. And yet the EEG had posed still another mystery: why no fluctuations, none at all?

Karras drove back toward Chris’s house, but at a stop sign at the corner of Prospect and Thirty-Fifth he froze behind the wheel: sitting in the driver’s seat of a car that was parked between Karras and the Jesuit residence hall was Kinderman, his elbow out the window as he fixedly stared straight ahead. Karras took a right before the homicide detective could see him. He quickly found a space, parked and locked the car, and then walked around the corner as if heading for the residence hall. Is he watching the house? Karras worried. The specter of Dennings rose up again to haunt him. Was it possible that Kinderman thought Regan had…?

Easy, boy! Easy! Slow down!

He walked up beside the car and leaned his head through the window on the passenger side. “Hello, Lieutenant,” he said pleasantly. “Come to visit me or just goofing off for a while?”

The detective turned quickly, looking surprised, and then he flashed a beaming smile. “Why, Father Karras! So there you are! So nice to see you!”

Off key, Karras thought. What’s he up to? Don’t let him know that you’re worried! Play it light! “Don’t you know you’ll get a ticket?” Karras pointed to a sign. “Weekdays, no parking between four and six.”

“Never mind,” growled Kinderman. “I’m talking to a priest. Every meter maid in Georgetown is a Catholic.”

“How’ve you been?”

“Speaking plainly, Father Karras, only so-so. And yourself?”

“Can’t complain. Did you ever solve that case?”

“Which one?”

“You know, the movie director?”

“Oh, that one.” The detective made a gesture of dismissal. “Don’t ask! Listen, what are you doing tonight? Are you busy? I’ve got passes for the Biograph. It’s Othello.”

“That depends on who’s in it.”

“Who’s in it? John Wayne, Othello, and Desdemona, Doris Day. You’re happy? This is freebies, Father Marlon Annoyingly Particular! This is William F. Shakespeare! Doesn’t matter who’s starring, who’s not! Now, you’re coming?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I’m snowed under.”

“I can see that,” the detective said dolefully as he searched the Jesuit’s face. “You’re keeping late hours? You look terrible.”

“I always look terrible.”

“Only now more than usual. Come on now! Get away for one night! You’ll enjoy!”

Karras decided to test; to touch a nerve. “Are you sure that’s what’s playing?” he asked. His eyes were probing steadily into the detective’s. “I could have sworn there was a Chris MacNeil film at the Biograph.”

The detective missed a beat, and then said quickly, “No, you’re wrong. It’s Othello.”

“Oh. And so what brings you to the neighborhood?”

“You! I came only to invite you to the film!”

“Yes, it’s easier to drive than to pick up a phone, I suppose.”

The detective’s eyebrows lifted in a dismally unconvincing stab at looking innocent. “Your telephone was busy.”

The Jesuit stared at him silently and gravely.

“So what’s wrong?” asked Kinderman. “What?”

Karras reached a hand inside the car, lifted Kinderman’s eyelid and examined the eye. “I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “You look terrible. You could be coming down with a case of mythomania.”

“I don’t know what that means. Is it serious?”

“Yes, but not fatal.”

“What is it? The suspense is now driving me crazy!”

“Look it up,” Karras told him.

“Listen, don’t be so snotty. You should render unto Caesar just a little now and then. I’m the law. I could have you deported, you know that?”

“What for?”

“A psychiatrist shouldn’t piss people off, plus also the goyim, plainly speaking, would love it. You’re a nuisance to them, Father. No, really, you embarrass them. Who needs it? a priest who wears sweatshirts and sneakers!”

Smiling faintly, Karras nodded. “Got to go. Take care.” He tapped a hand on the window frame twice in farewell, and then turned and walked slowly toward the entry of the residence.

“See an analyst!” the detective called after him hoarsely. Then his warm look yielded to one of deep concern. He glanced up through his windshield at the house, then started the engine and drove up the street. Passing Karras, he honked his horn and waved. Karras waved back, and when Kinderman’s car turned the corner at Thirty-Sixth Street, he stopped and stood motionless for a time, rubbing gently at his brow with a trembling hand. Could she really have done it? Could Regan have murdered Burke Dennings so horribly? With feverish eyes, Karras turned and looked up at Regan’s window, thinking, What in God’s name is in that house? And how much longer before Kinderman demanded to see Regan? Had a chance to see the Dennings personality? To hear it? How much longer before Regan would be institutionalized? Or die?

He had to build the exorcism case for the Chancery.

He walked quickly across the street to the Chris MacNeil house, rang the doorbell and waited for Willie to let him in.

“Missiz taking little nap now,” she said.

Karras nodded. “Good. That’s good.” He walked by her and then upstairs to Regan’s bedroom. He was seeking a knowledge he must clutch by the heart.

He entered and saw Karl in a chair by the window. Silent and present as a dense, dark wood, he was sitting with folded arms and with his stare pinned steadily on Regan.

Karras walked up beside the bed and looked down. The whites of the eyes like milky fog; the murmurings, incantations from some other world. Karras slowly leaned over and began to unfasten one of Regan’s restraining straps.

“No, Father! No!”

Karl rushed to the bedside and vigorously yanked back the Jesuit’s arm. “Very bad, Father! Strong! It is strong!”

In Karl’s eyes there was a fear that Karras recognized as genuine. And now he knew that Regan’s extraordinary strength was a fact. She could have done it. Could have twisted Dennings’s neck around. Come on, Karras! Hurry! Find some evidence! Think!

And then a voice from beneath him. On the bed.

“Ich möchte Sie etwas fragen, Herr Engstrom!”

With a stab of discovery and surging hope, Karras jerked around his head and looked down at the bed to see Regan’s demonic visage grinning at Karl. “Tanzt Ihre Tochter gern?” it taunted, and then burst into mocking laughter. German. It had asked if Karl’s club-footed daughter liked to dance! Excited, Karras turned to Karl and saw that his cheeks were flushing crimson. Hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, he was glaring at Regan with fury as the laughter continued.

“Karl, you’d better step outside,” Karras cautioned him.

The Swiss shook his head. “No, I stay!”

“You will go, please,” the Jesuit said firmly, his gaze holding Karl’s implacably until, after a moment or two more of resistance, the houseman turned and hurried out of the room. When the door closed, the laughter abruptly ceased, to be replaced by that thick and airless silence.

Karras turned his gaze to the bed. The demon was watching him. It looked pleased. “So you’re back,” it croaked. “I’m surprised. I would think that embarrassment over the holy water might have discouraged you from ever returning. But then I forget that a priest has no shame.”

Karras took a few breaths as he forced himself to concentrate, to think clearly. He knew that the language test for possession required intelligent conversation as proof that whatever was said was not traceable to buried linguistic recollections. Easy! Slow down! Remember that girl? A Parisian teenage servant, allegedly possessed, while in delirium had quietly babbled a language that finally was recognized to be Syriac. Karras forced himself to think of the excitement it had caused, of how finally it was learned that the girl had at one time been employed in a boardinghouse where one of the lodgers was a student of theology who, on the eve of examinations, would pace in his room and walk up and down stairs while reciting his Syriac lessons aloud. And the girl had overheard them.

Take it easy. Don’t get burned.

“Sprechen Sie deutsch?” asked Karras.

“More games?”

“Sprechen Sie deutsch?” the Jesuit repeated, his pulse still throbbing with that distant hope.

“Natürlich,” the demon answered, leering. “Mirabile dictu, wouldn’t you agree?”

The Jesuit’s heart leaped up. Not only German, but Latin! And in context! “Quod nomen mihi est?” he asked quickly: what is my name?

“Karras.”

And now the priest rushed on with excitement.

“Ubi sum?” Where am I?

“In cubiculo.” In a room.

“Et ubi est cubiculum?” And where is the room?

“In domo.” In a house.

“Ubi est Burke Dennings?” Where is Burke Dennings?

“Mortuus.” He is dead.

“Quomodo mortuus est?” How did he die?

“Inventus est capite reverso.” He was found with his head turned around.

“Quis occidit eum?” Who killed him?

“Regan.”

“Quomodo ea occidit ilium? Dic mihi exacte!” How did she kill him? Tell me in detail!

“Ah, well, that’s sufficient excitement for now,” said the demon with a grin. “Yes, sufficient altogether, I would think. Though of course it will occur to you, I suppose—I mean, you being you—that while you were asking your questions in Latin, you were mentally formulating answers in Latin.” It laughed. “All unconscious, of course. Yes, whatever would we do without unconsciousness, Karras? Do you see what I’m driving at? I cannot speak Latin at all! I read your mind! I merely plucked the responses from your head!”

Karras felt an instant dismay as his certainty crumbled; felt tantalized and frustrated now by the nagging doubt that had been planted in his brain.

The demon chuckled. “Yes, I knew that would occur to you, Karras,” it croaked. “That is why I’m so fond of you, dear morsel; yes, that is why I cherish all reasonable men.”

The demon’s head tilted back in a wild spate of laughter.

The Jesuit’s mind raced rapidly, desperately, formulating questions to which no single answer was correct, but rather many. But maybe I’d think of them all! he realized. Then ask a question that you don’t know the answer to! he reasoned. He could check the answer later to see if it was correct.

He waited for the laughter to ebb and then spoke:

“Quam profundus est imus Oceanus Indicus?” What is the depth of the Indian Ocean at its deepest point?

The demon’s eyes glittered. “La plume de ma tante.”

“Responde Latine.”

“Bon jour! Bonne nuit!”

“Quam—”

Karras broke off as the eyes rolled upward into their sockets and the gibberish entity appeared. Impatient and frustrated, Karras demanded, “Let me speak to the demon again!”

No answer. Only the breathing from an alien shore.

“Quis es tu?” he snapped hoarsely in a fraying voice.

Only silence. The breathing.

“Let me speak to Burke Dennings!”

A hiccup. Sputtery breathing. A hiccup.

“Let me speak to Burke Dennings!”

The hiccupping, regular and wrenching, continued. Karras lowered his head and shook it, then trudged to an overstuffed chair where he sat, leaned back and closed his eyes. Tense. Tormented. And waiting…

Time passed. Karras drowsed. Then jerked his head up. Stay awake! And then with blinking, heavy lids, he looked over at Regan. Not hiccupping now. Eyes closed. Was she asleep?

He stood up, walked over to the bed, reached down and felt Regan’s pulse, then, stooping over, he examined her lips. They were parched. He straightened up and waited a little time, and then at last he left the room and went down to the kitchen in search of Sharon. He found her at the table eating soup and a sandwich. “Can I fix you something to eat, Father Karras?” she asked him. “You must be hungry.”

“No, I’m not,” Karras answered. “Thanks.” Sitting down, he reached over and picked up a pencil and pad by Sharon’s typewriter. “She’s been hiccupping,” he told her. “Have you had any Compazine prescribed?”

“Yes, we’ve got some.”

He was writing on the pad. “Then tonight give her half of a twenty-five-milligram suppository.”

“Okay.”

“She’s beginning to dehydrate,” Karras continued, “so I’m switching her to intravenous feedings. First thing in the morning, call a medical-supply house and have them deliver these right away.” He slid the pad across the table to Sharon. “In the meantime, she’s sleeping, so you could start her on a Sustagen feeding.”

Sharon nodded. “Right. I will.” Spooning soup, she turned the pad around and looked at the list. Karras watched her. Then he frowned in concentration. “You’re her tutor?” he said.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Have you taught her any Latin?”

“Latin? No, I don’t know any Latin. Why?”

“Any German?”

“Only French.”

“What level? La plume de ma tante?”

“Pretty much.”

“But no German or Latin.”

“No.”

“But the Engstroms—don’t they sometimes speak German?”

“Oh, well, sure.”

“Around Regan?”

Standing up, Sharon shrugged. “Oh, well, sometimes, I suppose.” She started toward the kitchen sink with her plates as she added, “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure.”

“Have you ever studied Latin?” Karras asked her.

Sharon giggled as she answered, “Me, Latin? No, I haven’t.”

“But you’d recognize the general sound?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She rinsed the soup bowl and put it in the rack.

“Has she ever spoken Latin in your presence?”

“Regan?”

“Yes. Since her illness.”

“No, never.”

“Any language at all?”

Sharon turned off the faucet, looking thoughtful. “Well, I might have imagined it, I guess, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, I think…” Sharon frowned. “Well, I could have sworn I heard her talking in Russian once.”

Karras stared, his throat dry. “Do you speak it?” he asked.

“Oh, well, so-so. I took two years of it in college, that’s all.”

Karras sagged. Then Regan did pick the Latin from my brain! Staring bleakly, he lowered his brow into his hand and into doubt: Telepathy more common in states of great tension: speaking always in a language known to someone in the room: “… thinks the same things I’m thinking…”: “Bon jour…”: “La plume de ma tante…”: “Bonne nuit…” With thoughts such as these, Karras sadly watched blood turning back into wine.

What to do? Get some sleep. Then come back and try again … try again … He stood up and looked blearily at Sharon. She was leaning with her back against the sink, her arms folded, as she pensively and curiously watched him. “I’m going over to the residence,” he told her. “As soon as Regan’s awake, I’d like a call.”

“Yes, I’ll call you.”

“And the Compazine. Okay? You won’t forget?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll take care of it right away.”

Karras nodded and with his hands in hip pockets, he looked down, trying to think of what he might have forgotten to tell Sharon. Always something to be done; always something overlooked when even everything was done.

“Father, what’s going on?” he heard the secretary asking him somberly. “What is it? What’s really going on with Rags?”

Karras lifted up eyes that were haunted and seared. “I don’t know,” he said emptily; “I really don’t know.”

He turned and walked out of the kitchen.

As he passed through the entry hall, Karras heard footsteps coming up rapidly behind him. “Father Karras!”

Karras turned and saw Karl with his sweater.

“Very sorry,” said the houseman as he handed it over. “I was thinking to finish much before. But I forget.”

He handed the sweater to Karras. The vomit stains were gone and it had a sweet smell. “That was thoughtful of you, Karl,” the priest said to him gently. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Father Karras,” said Karl with a tremor in his voice, his eyes full. “Thank you for your helping Miss Regan.” Then averting his head, self-conscious, Karl turned and walked swiftly away.

As Karras watched him, he remembered him in Kinderman’s car. Why? More mystery now; more confusion. Wearily, Karras turned around and opened the door. It was night. Despairing, he stepped out of darkness into darkness.

He crossed to the residence, groping toward sleep, but decided to stop by Dyer’s room. He knocked on the door, heard “Advance and be proselytized!” from within, and, entering, found Dyer typing on his IBM Selectric. Karras flopped down on the edge of Dyer’s cot as the younger Jesuit continued to type.

“Hey, Joe!”

“Yeah, I’m listening. What is it?”

“Do you happen to know of anyone who’s done a formal exorcism?”

“Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, June twenty-second, 1938.”

“Joe, get serious.”

“No, you get serious. Exorcism? Are you kidding me?”

Karras made no answer and for moments he watched expressionlessly as Dyer continued to type, until at last he got up and walked to the door. “Yeah, Joe,” he said, “I was kidding.”

“I thought so.”

“See ya round the campus.”

“Find funnier jokes.”

Karras walked down the hall and as he entered his room he looked down and saw a pink message slip on the floor. He picked it up. From Frank. A home number. “Please call…”

Karras picked up the telephone and requested that a call be put through to the Institute director’s number, and as he waited, he looked down at his free hand, the right one. It was trembling with desperate hope.

“Hello?” Piping voice. A young boy.

“May I speak to your father, please.”

“Yes. Just a minute.” Phone clattering. Then quickly picked up. Still the boy. “Who is this?”

“Father Karras.”

“Father Karits?”

“Karras. Father Karras…”

Down went the phone again.

Karras lifted the tremulous hand, lightly touching his finger-tips to his brow.

Phone noise.

“Father Karras?”

“Yes, hello, Frank. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve been working on your tapes at the house.”

“Are you finished?”

“Yes, I am. By the way, this is pretty weird stuff.”

“Yes, I know,” said Karras as he strained to flatten the tension in his voice. “So what’s the story so far? What have you found?”

“Well, this ‘type-token’ ratio, first…”

“Yes, Frank?”

“Now I didn’t have enough of a sampling to be absolutely accurate, you understand, but I’d say it’s pretty close, or at least it’s as close as you can get with these things. Well, at any rate, the two different voices on the tapes, I would say, are probably separate personalities.”

“Probably?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to swear to it in court; in fact, the variance is really pretty minimal.”

“Minimal…,” Karras repeated dully. Well, there goes the ball game. “And what about the gibberish?” he asked. “Is it any kind of language?”

Frank chuckled.

“What’s funny?” asked the Jesuit moodily.

“Was this really some sneaky psychological testing, Father?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I guess you got your tapes mixed around or something. It’s—”

“Frank, is it a language or not?” cut in Karras.

“Oh, I’d say it was a language, all right.”

Dumbfounded, Karras stiffened. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not.”

“What’s the language?”

“It’s English.”

For a moment, Karras stared blankly, and when he spoke there was an edge to his voice. “Frank, we seem to have a very poor connection; or would you like to let me in on the joke?”

“Got your tape recorder there?”

It was sitting on his desk. “Yes, I do.”

“Has it got a reverse-play position?”

“Why?”

“Has it got one?”

“Just a second.” Irritable, Karras set down the phone and took the top off the tape recorder to check it. “Yes, it’s got one. Frank, what’s this all about?”

“Put your tape on the machine and play it backward.”

“What?”

“You’ve got gremlins.” Frank chuckled good-naturedly. “Look, play it and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night, Father.”

“Night, Frank.”

“Have fun.”

“Yeah, right.”

Karras hung up. He looked baffled. He hunted up the gibberish tape and placed it into the recorder. First he ran it forward and nodded his head. No mistake. It was gibberish.

           

He let it run through to the end and then played it in reverse. He heard his voice speaking backward. And then Regan’s demon voice: