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.
“Oh, it’s terrible,” it whined at the specialist. “Just awful! Oh, I do hope there’s something you can do! Is there something? We’ll have no place to go, you see, otherwise, and all because … Oh, damn the stubborn devil!” As the specialist stared with wide eyes while taking Regan’s blood pressure, Dennings looked to Karras and complained, “What the hell are you doing! Can’t you see the little bitch should be in hospital? She belongs in a madhouse, Karras! Now you know that! For heaven’s sakes, why can’t we stop all this cunting mumbo-jumbo! If she dies, you know, the fault will be yours! Yes, all yours! I mean, just because God’s self-anointed second son is being stubborn doesn’t mean that you have to behave like a snot! You’re a doctor! You should know better, Karras! Now come along, dear heart, have compassion. There’s just a terrible shortage of housing these days!”
And now back came the demon, howling like a wolf. Expressionless, the specialist undid the sphygmomanometer wrapping and, still a little wide-eyed and bewildered, he nodded at Karras. He was finished.
They went out into the hall, where the specialist looked back at the bedroom door before turning back to Karras and asking, “What the hell is going on in there, Father?”
The Jesuit averted his glance. “I can’t say,” he said softly.
“You can’t or you won’t?”
Karras turned his gaze back to him.
“Maybe both,” he said. “So what’s the story with her heart?”
The specialist’s manner was somber. “She’s got to stop that activity. To sleep … to sleep before her blood pressure drops.”
“Is there anything I can do, Mike?”
“Pray.”
As the specialist walked away, Karras watched him, his every artery and nerve begging rest, begging hope, begging miracles, even though he felt certain that there would be none. And then shutting his eyes, he winced as he remembered, “You should not have given her the Librium!” He put a fist to his mouth as his throat made a soft, convulsive sound of regret and stinging self-recrimination. He took a deep breath, then another, and then, opening his eyes and moving forward, he pushed open the door to Regan’s bedroom with a hand less heavy than his soul.
Merrin stood by the bedside, watching while Regan neighed shrilly like a horse. He heard Karras enter and turned to look at him inquiringly, and Karras somberly shook his head. Merrin nodded. There was sadness in his face; then acceptance; and as he turned back to Regan, there was grim resolve.
Merrin knelt by the bed. “Our Father…,” he began.
Regan splattered him with dark, stinking bile, and then croaked, “You will lose! She will die! She will die!”
Karras picked up his copy of The Roman Ritual. Opened it. Looked up and stared at Regan.
“ ‘Save your servant,’ ” prayed Merrin.
“ ‘In the face of the enemy.’ ”
Go to sleep, Regan! Sleep! shouted Karras’s will.
But Regan did not sleep.
Not by dawn.
Not by noon.
Not by nightfall.
And not even by Sunday, when her pulse rate was one hundred and forty and ever threadier, while the fits continued unremittingly, and while Karras and Merrin kept repeating the ritual, never sleeping, Karras feverishly groping for remedies: a restraining sheet to hold Regan’s movements to a minimum; keeping everyone out of the bedroom for a time to see if lack of provocation might terminate the fits. Neither method was successful. And Regan’s shouting was as draining as her movements. Yet the blood pressure held. But how much longer? Karras agonized. Ah, God, don’t let her die! The aching prayer of his mind was repeated so often it was almost a litany.
Don’t let her die! Let her sleep! Let her sleep!
At approximately 7 P.M. that Sunday, Karras sat mutely next to Merrin in the bedroom, exhausted and racked by the demon’s scathing attacks: his lack of faith; his medical incompetence; his flight from his mother in search of status. And Regan! Regan! His fault!
“You should not have given her the Librium!”
The priests had just finished a cycle of the ritual and were resting, listening to Regan singing “Panis Angelicus” in that same sweet choirboy’s voice. They rarely left the room; Karras once to change clothes and to shower. But in the cold it was easier to stay wakeful, even in the stench that since early morning had altered in character to the gorge-raising odor of decayed, rotted flesh.
Staring feverishly at Regan with reddened eyes, Karras thought he heard a sound. Something creaking. Then again each time Karras blinked. And then he realized it was coming from his own crusted eyelids. He turned his head to look at Merrin. Through the hours, the elderly exorcist had said very little: now and then a homely story of his boyhood. Reminiscences. Little things. A story about a duck he once owned named Clancy. Karras was profoundly worried about him. His age. The lack of sleep. The demon’s verbal assaults. After Merrin closed his eyes and let his chin rest on his chest, Karras glanced around at Regan, and then wearily stood up and trudged over to the bed, where he checked her pulse and then began to take a blood pressure reading. As he wrapped the black sphygmomanometer cloth around her arm, he blinked repeatedly to clear away a blurring of his vision.
“Today Muddir Day, Dimmy.”
For a moment, the priest could not move as he felt his heart being wrenched from his chest; and then slowly, very slowly, he looked into eyes that didn’t seem to be Regan’s anymore, but rather eyes that were sadly rebuking. His mother’s.
“I not good to you? Why you leave me to die all alone, Dimmy? Why? Why you—”
“Damien!”
Merrin’s hand was clutching tightly at Karras’s arm. “Please go and rest for a little now, Damien.”
“Dimmy, please!”
“Do not listen, Damien! Go! Go now!”
With a lump rising dry to his throat, Karras turned and left the bedroom, and for a time he stood in the hallway, weak and irresolute. Coffee? He craved it. But a shower even more. But when he’d left the MacNeil house and returned to his room in the residence hall, it took only one look at his bed for Karras to change his priorities. Forget the shower, man! Sleep! Half an hour! As he reached for the telephone to ask Reception to give him a wake-up call, it rang.
“Yes, hello,” Karras answered hoarsely.
“Someone here to see you, Father Karras: a Mr. Kinderman.”
Karras briefly held his breath, and then he exhaled in resignation. “Okay, tell him I’ll be out in just a minute,” he said weakly. As he hung up the telephone, Karras saw a carton of nonfilter Camel cigarettes on his desk. A note from Dyer was attached.
A key to the Playboy Club has been found on the chapel kneeler in front of the votive lights. Is it yours? You can claim it at Reception.
Joe
With a fond expression, Karras set down the note, quickly dressed in fresh clothing and walked out of the room and to Reception, where Kinderman was standing at the telephone switchboard counter, delicately rearranging the composition of a vase full of flowers. As he turned and saw Karras, he was holding the stem of a pink camellia.
“Ah, Father! Father Karras!” Kinderman greeted him cheerfully, his expression quickly changing to concern when he saw the exhaustion in the Jesuit’s face. He replaced the camellia and came forward to meet him. “You look awful!” he said. “What’s the matter? That’s what comes of all this schlepping around the track? Give it up, Father, you’re going to die anyway. Listen, come!” He gripped Karras by the elbow and an upper arm and propelled him toward the exit to the street. “You’ve got a minute?” he asked as they passed through the door.
“Just barely,” Karras murmured. “What is it?”
“A little talk. I need advice, nothing more; just advice.”
“What about?”
“In just a minute. For now we’ll just walk. We’ll take air. We’ll enjoy.” He hooked his arm through the Jesuit’s and guided him diagonally to the other side of the street. “Ah, now, look at that! Beautiful! Gorgeous!” He was pointing to the sun sinking low on the Potomac, and in the stillness sudden laughter rang out, and then the talking-all-together of Georgetown undergraduates in front of a drinking hall near the corner of Thirty-Sixth Street. One punched another one hard on the arm, and the two began amicably wrestling. “Ah, college…,” breathed out Kinderman ruefully as he glanced at the lively gathering of young men. “I never went … but I wish…” Turning his gaze back to Karras, he frowned with concern. “I mean, seriously, you really look bad,” he said. “What’s the matter? You’ve been sick?”
When would Kinderman come to the point? Karras wondered.
“No, just busy,” the Jesuit answered.
“Slow it down, then,” wheezed Kinderman. “Slow. You saw the Bolshoi Ballet, incidentally, at the Watergate?”
“No.”
“No, me neither. But I wish. They’re so graceful … so cute!”
They had come to the Car Barn’s low stone wall, where the view of the sunset was unimpeded, and they stopped, Karras resting a forearm on top of the wall and turning his glance from the sunset to Kinderman.
“Okay, what’s on your mind?” Karras asked him.
“Ah, well, Father,” said Kinderman, sighing. He turned, then, hunching forward with his hands clasped on top of the wall as he moodily stared across the river and said, “I’m afraid I’ve got a problem.”
“Professional?”
“Well, partly; only partly.”
“What is it?”
“Well, mostly it’s—” Kinderman hesitated, then continued: “Well, mostly it’s ethical, you could say, Father Karras. A question—” His voice trailing off, the detective turned around and, leaning his back against the wall, he looked down at the sidewalk and frowned. “There’s just no one I could talk to about it; not my captain in particular, you see. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him. So I thought…” Here, abruptly, the detective’s eyes lit up. “I had an aunt—you should hear this; it’s funny. She was terrified—terrified—for years of my uncle. The poor woman, she never dared to say a word to him—never!—much less to ever raise her voice. So whenever she got mad at him for something, right away, she’d run quick to the closet in her bedroom, and then there in the dark—you won’t believe this!—in the dark, by herself, with all the clothes hanging up and the moths, she would curse—she would curse!—at my uncle and tell him what she thought of him for maybe twenty minutes! Really! I mean, yelling! She’d come out, she’d feel better, she’d go kiss him on the cheek. Now what is that, Father Karras? That’s good therapy or not!”
“It’s very good,” Karras answered with a wan, bleak smile. “And I’m your closet now? Is that what you’re saying?”
“In a way,” the detective answered gravely. “But more serious. And the closet must speak.”
“Got a cigarette?”
Kinderman stared at Karras blankly, incredulous.
“A condition like mine and I would smoke?”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Karras murmured as he turned to face the river and clasped his hands atop the wall. It was to make them stop trembling.
“Some doctor! God forbid I should be sick in some jungle and instead of Albert Schweitzer, there is with me only you! You cure warts still with frogs, Doctor Karras?”
“It’s toads,” Karras answered, subdued.
Kinderman frowned. “You’re not smiling jaunty jolly today, Father Karras. Something’s wrong. Now what is it? Come on, tell me.”
Karras lowered his head and was silent. Then, “Okay,” he said softly. “Ask the closet whatever you want.”
Sighing, the detective faced out to the river. “I was saying…,” he began. He scratched his brow with a thumbnail, then continued: “I was saying—well, let’s say I’m working on a case, Father Karras. It’s a homicide.”
“Dennings?”
“No, you wouldn’t be familiar with it, Father. It’s something purely hypothetical.”
“Got it.”
“Like a ritual witchcraft murder, this looks,” the detective continued broodingly, picking his words very carefully and slowly. “And let us say that in this house—this hypothetical house—there are living five people, and that one must be the killer.” With his hand, he made flat, chopping motions of emphasis. “Now I know this. I know this—I know this for a fact.” Then he paused, slowly exhaling breath. “But then the problem—all the evidence—well, it points to a child, Father Karras; a little girl maybe ten, twelve years old … just a baby; she could maybe be my daughter. Yes, I know: sounds fantastic … ridiculous … but true. Now there comes to this house, Father Karras, a very famous Catholic priest, and this case being purely hypothetical, Father, I learn through my also hypothetical genius that this priest has once cured a very special type illness. An illness which is mental, by the way, a fact I mention just in passing for your interest.”
Karras mournfully lowered his head and nodded. “Yes, go on,” he said bleakly. “What else?”