Текст книги "The Exorcist"

Автор книги: William Peter Blatty

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    She was staring in unblinking incredulity. "Father, that's so far out of sight that I think its almost easier to believe in the devil!"

    "Well–"

    "Look, I don't know about all these theories and stuff," she interrupted in a low, intense voice. "But I'll tell you something, Father; you show me Regan's identical twin: same face, same voice, same smell, same everything down to the way she dots her i's, and still I'd know in a second that it wasn't really her! I'd know it! I'd know it in my gut and I'm telling you I know that thing upstairs is not my daughter! I know it! I know!"

    She leaned back, drained. "Now you tell me what to do," she challenged. "Go ahead: you tell me that you know for a fact there's nothing wrong with my daughter except in her head; that you know for a fact that she doesn't need an exorcism; that you know it wouldn't do her any good. Go ahead! You tell me! You tell me what to do!"

    For long, troubled seconds, the priest was still. Then he answered softly, "Well, there's little in this world that I know for a fact."

    He brooded, sunk back in his chair. Then he spoke again. "Does Regan have a low-pitched, voice?" he asked. "Normally?"

    "No. In fact, I'd say it's very light."

    'Would you consider her precocious?"

    "Not at all."

    "Do you know her IQ?"

    "About average."

    "And her reading habits?"

    "Nancy Drew and comic books, mostly."

    "And her style of speech, right now: how much different would you say it is from normal?"

    "Completely. She's never used half of those words."

    "No, I don't mean the content of her speech; I mean the style."

    "Style?"

    "The way she puts words together."

    "Gee, I'm really not sure I know what you mean."

    'Would you have any letters she's written? Compositions? A recording of her voice would be–"

    "Yes, there's a tape of her talking to her father," she interrupted. "She was making it to send to him as a letter but she never got it finished. You want it?"

    "Yes, I do, and I'll also need her medical records, especially the file from Barringer."

    "Look, Father, I've been that route and I–"

    "Yes, yes, I know, but I'll have to see the records for myself."

    "So you're still against an exorcism."

    "I'm only against the chance of doing your daughter more harm than good."

    "But you're talking now strictly as a psychiatrist, right?"

    "No, Im talking now also as a priest. If I go to the Chancery Office, or wherever it is I have to go, to get their permission to perform an exorcism, the first thing I'd have to have is a pretty substantial indication that your daughter's condition isn't a purely psychiatric problem. After that, I'd need evidence that the Church would accept as signs of possession."

    "like what?"

    "I don't know. I'll have to go and look it up."

    "Are you kidding? I thought you were supposed to be an expert."

    "You probably know more about demonic possession right now than most priests. In the meantime, when can you get me the Barringer records?"

    "I'll charter a plane if I have to!"

    "And that tape?"

    She stood up. "I'll go see if I can find it."

    "And just one other thing," he added. She paused beside his chair. "That book you mentioned with the section on possession: do you think you can remember now if Regan ever read it prior to the onset of the illness?"

    She concentrated, fingernails scraping at teeth. "Gee, I seem to remember her reading something the day before the shi–before the trouble really started," she amended, "but I really just can't be sure. But she did it sometime, I think. I mean, I'm sure. Pretty sure."

    "I'd like to see it. May I have it?'

    '

    "It's yours. It's overdue at your library. I'll get it." She was moving from the study. "That tape's in basement, I think. I'll look. Be right back in a second."

    Karras nodded absently, staring at a pattern in the rug, and then after many minutes he got up, walked slowly to the entry hall and stood motionless in the darkness, stood without expression, in another dimension, staring into nothing with his hands in his pockets as he listened to the grunting of a pig from upstairs, to the yelping of a jackal, to hiccups, to hissing.

    "Oh, you're there! I went looking in the study."

    Karras turned to see Chris flicking on the light.

    "Are you leaving?" She came forward with the book and the tape.

    "I'm afraid I've got a lecture to prepare for tomorrow."

    "Oh? Where?"

    "At the med school." He accepted the book and the tape from her hands. "I'll try to get by here sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. In the meantime, if anything urgent develops, you be sure that you call me, no matter what time. I'll leave word at the switchboard to let your ring through." She nodded. The Jesuit opened the door. "Now how are you fixed for medication?" he asked.

    "Okay," she said. "It's all on refillable prescription."

    "You won't call your doctor in again?"

    The actress closed her eyes and very slightly shook her head.

    "You know, I'm not a GP," he cautioned.

    "I can't," she whispered. "I can't."

    He could feel her anxiety pounding like waves on an unknown beach. "Well, now, sooner or later, I'm going to have to tell one of my superiors what I'm up to, especially if I'm going to be coming by here at various unusual hours of the night."

    "Do you have to?" She frowned at him worriedly.

    "Well, otherwise, it might look a little bit odd, don't you think?"

    She looked down. "Yeah, I see what you mean," she murmured.

    "Do you mind? I'll tell him only what I have to. Don't worry," he assured her. "It won't get around."

    She lifted a helpless; tormented face to the strong, sad eyes; saw strength; saw pain.

    "Okay," she said weakly.

    She trusted the pain.

    He nodded. "We'll be talking."

    He started outside, but then hung in the doorway for a moment, thinking, a hand to his lips. "Did your daughter know a priest was coming over?"

    "No. No, nobody knew but me."

    "Did you know that my mother had died just recently?– 'Yes. I'm very sorry."

    "Is Regan aware of it?"

    "Why?"

    "Is she aware of it?"

    "No, not at all."

    He nodded.

    "Why'd you asks" Chris repeated, her brows slightly puckered with curiosity.

    "Not important." He shrugged. "I just wondered." He examined her features with a faint look of worry. "Are you getting any sleep?"

    "Oh, a little."

    "Get pills, then. Are you taking any Librium?"

    "Yes."

    "How much?" he asked.

    "Ten milligrams, twice a day."

    Try twenty, twice a day. In the meantime, try to keep away from your daughter. The more you're exposed to her present behavior, the greater the chance of some permanent damage being done to your feelings about her. Stay clear. And slow down. You'll be no help to Regan, you know, with a nervous breakdown.

    She nodded despondently, eyes lowered.

    "Now please go to bed," he said gently. "Will you please go to bed right now?"

    "Yeah, okay," she said softly. "Okay. I promise." She looked at him with the trace of a smile. "Goodnight, Father. Thanks. Thanks a lot."

    He studied her for a moment without expression; then quickly moved away.

    Chris watched from the doorway. As he crossed the street, it occurred to her that he'd probably missed his dinner. Then briefly she worried that he might be cold. He was rolling his shirt sleeve down.

    At the corner of Prospect and P, he dropped the book and stooped quickly to retrieve it, then rounded the corner and vanished from sight. As she watched him disappear, Chris abruptly was aware of a feeling of lightness. She didn't see Kinderman sitting alone in the unmarked car.

    She closed the door.

Half an hour later, Damien Karras hurried back to his room in the Jesuit residence hall with a number of books and periodicals taken from the shelves of the Georgetown library. Hastily he dumped them on top of his desk and then rummaged through drawers for a package of cigarettes. Finding a half-empty pack of stale Camels, he lit one, puffed deep and held the smoke in his lungs while he thought about Regan.

    Hysteria. He knew that it had to be hysteria. He exhaled the smoke, hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked down at the books. He had Oesterreich's Possession; Huxley's The Devils of Loudun; Parapraxis in the Haizman Case of Freud; McCasland's Demon Possession and Exorcism in Early Christianity in the Light of Modern Views of Mental Illness; and extracts from psychiatric journals of Freud's "A Neurosis of Demoniacal Possession in the 17th Century," and "The Demonology of Modern Psychiatry."

    "Couldya help an old altar boy, Faddah?"

    The Jesuit felt at his brow, and then looked at his fingers, rubbing a sticky sweat between them. Then he noticed that his door was open. He crossed the room and closed it, and then event to a shelf for his redbound copy of The Roman Ritual, a compendium of rites and prayers. Clamping the cigarette between his lips, he squinted through smoke as he turned to the "General Rules" for exorcists, looking for the signs of demonic possession. He scanned and then started to read more slowly: ... The exorcist should not believe too rapidly that a person is possessed by an evil spirit; but he ought to ascertain the signs by which a person possessed can be distinguished from one who is suffering from some illness, especially one of a psychological nature. Signs of possession may be the following: ability to speak with some facility in a strange language or, to understand it when spoken by another; the faculty of divulging future and hidden events; display of powers which are beyond the subject's age and natural condition; and various other conditions which, when taken together as a whole, build up the evidence.

    For a time Karras pondered, then he leaned against the bookshelf and read the remainder of the instructions. When he had finished, he found himself glancing back up at instruction number 8: Some reveal a crime which has been committed and the perpetrators thereof– He looked up at the door as he heard a knock. "Damien?"

    "Come in."

    It was Dyer. "Hey, Chris MacNeil was trying to reach you. She ever get hold of you?"

    "When? You mean, tonight?"

    "No, this afternoon."

    "Oh, yes, I spoke to her."

    "Good," said Dyer. "Just wanted to be sure you got the message."

    The diminutive priest was prowling the room now, picking at objects like an elf in a thrift shop.

    "What do you need, Joe?" Karras asked him.

    "Got any lemon drops?"

    "What?"

    "I've looked all through the hall for some lemon drops. Nobody's got any. Boy, I really crave one," Dyer brooded, still prowling. "I once spent a year hearing children's confessions, and I wound up a lemon-drop junkie. I got hooked. The little bastards keep breathing it on you along with all that pot. Between the two, it's addictive, I think." He lifted the lid of a pipe-tobacco humidor where Karras had stored some pistachio nuts. "What are these–dead Mexican jumping beans?"

    Karras turned to his bookshelves, looking for a title. "Listen, Joe, I've got a–"

    "Isn't that Chris really nice?"' interrupted Dyer, flopping on the bed. He stretched full length with his hands clasped comfortably behind his head. "Nice lady. Have you met her?"

    "We've talked," answered Karras, plucking out a green-bound volume called Satan, a collection of articles and Catholic position papers by various French theologians. He carried it back with him toward the desk, "Look I've really got to–"

    "Plain. Down-to-earth. Unaffected," continued Dyer. "She can help us with my plan for when we both quit the priesthood."

    "Who's quitting the priesthood?"

    "Faggots. In droves. Basic black has gone out. Now, I– "Joe, I've got a lecture to prepare for tomorrow," said Karras as he set down the books on his desk.

    "Yeah, okay. Now my plan is we go to Chris MacNeil–got the picture?–with this notion that I've got for a screenplay based on the life of Saint Ignatius Loyola. The title is Brave Jesuits Marching, and–"

    "Would you get your ass out of here, Joe?" prodded Karras, tamping out his cigarette butt in an ashtray.

    "Is this boring?"

    "I've got work to do."

    "Who the hell's stopping you?"

    "Come on, now, I mean it." Karras had started to unbutton his shirt. "I'm going to jump in the shower and then I've got to work."

    "Didn't see you at dinner, by the way," said Dyer, rising reluctantly from the bed. "Where'd you eat?"

    "I didn't"

    "That's foolish. Why diet when you only wear frocks?" He had come to the desk add was smiling at a cigarette. "Stale."

    "Is there a tape recorder here in the hall?"

    'There isn't even a lemon drop here in the hall. Use the language lab."

    "Who's got a key? Father President?"

    "No. Father Janitor. You need it tonight?"

    "Yes, I do," said Karras, as he draped his shirt on the back of the desk chair. "Where do I find him?"

    "Want me to get it for you?"

    "Could you do that? I'm really in a bind."

    "No sweat, Great Beatific Jesuit Witch Doctor. Coming." Dyer opened the door and walked out.

Karras showered and then dressed in a T-shirt and trousers. Sitting down to his desk, he discovered a carton of Camel nonfilters, and beside it a key that was labeled LANGUAGE LAB and another tagged REFECTORY REFRIGERATOR. Appended to the latter was a note: Better you than the rats. Karras smiled at the signature: The Lemon Drop Kid. He put the note aside, then unfastened is wristwatch and plated it in front of him on the desk. The time was 10: 58 P. M. He began to read. Freud. McCasland. Satan. Oesterreich's exhaustive study. And at a little after 4 A. M., he had finished. Was rubbing at his face. At his eyes. They were smarting. He glanced at the ashtray. Ashes and the twisted butts of cigarettes. Smoke hanging thick in the air. He stood up and walked wearily to a window. Slid it open. He gulped at the coolness of the moist morning air and stood there thinking. Regan had the physical syndrome of possession. That much he knew. About that he had no doubt. For in case after case, irrespective of geography or period of history, the symptoms of possession were substantially constant. Some Regan had not evidenced as yet: stigmata; the desire for repugnant foods; the insensitivity to pain; the frequent loud and irrepressible hiccupping. But the others she had manifested clearly: the involuntary motor excitement; foul breath; furred tongue; the wasting away of the frame; the distended stomach; the irritations of the skin and mucous-membrane. And most significantly present were the basic symptoms of the hard core of cases which Oesterreich had characterized as "genuine" possession: the striking change in the voice and in the features, plus the manifestation of a new personality.

    Karras looked up and stared darkly down the street. Through the branches of trees he could see the house and the large bay window of Regan's bedroom. When possession was voluntary, as with mediums, the new personality was often benign. Like Tia, brooded Karras. Spirit of a woman who'd possessed a man. A sculptor. Briefly. An hour at a time. Until a friend of the sculptor fell desperately in love. With Tia. Pleaded with the sculptor to permit her to permanently remain in possession of his body. But in Regan, there's no Tia, Karras reflected grimly. The invading personality was vicious. Malevolent. Typical of cases of demonic possession where the new personality sought the destruction of the body of its host. And frequently achieved it.

    Moodily the Jesuit walked back to his desk, where he picked up a package of cigarettes; lit one. So okay. She's got the syndrome of demonic possession. Now how do you cure it?

    He fanned out the match. That depends on what caused it. He sat on the edge of his desk. Considered. The nuns at the convent of Lille. Possessed. In early-seventeenth-century France. They'd confessed to their exorcists that while helpless in the state of possession, they had regularly attended Satanic orgies; had regularly varied their erotic fare: Mondays and Tuesdays, heterosexual copulation; Thursdays, sodomy, fellatio and cunnilingus, with homosexual partners; Saturday, bestiality with domestic animals and dragons. And dragons!... The Jesuit shook his head. As with Lille, he thought the causes of many possessions were a mixture of fraud and mythomania. Still others, however, seemed caused by mental illness: paranoia; schizophrenia,; neurasthenia; psychasthenia; and this was the reason, he knew, that the Church had for years recommended that the exorcist work with a psychiatrist or a neurologist present. Yet not all possessions had causes so clear. Many had led Oesterreich to characterize possession as a separate disorder all its own; to dismiss the explanatory "split personality" label of psychiatry as no more than an equally occult substitution for the concepts of "demon" and "spirit of the dead."

    Karras rubbed a finger in the crease beside his nose. The indications from Barringer, Chris had told him, were that Reagan's disorder might be caused by suggestion; by something that was somehow related to hysteria. And Karras thought it likely. He believed the majority of the cases he had studied had been caused by precisely these two factors. Sure. For one thing, it mostly hits women. For another, all those outbreaks of possession epidemics. And then those exorcists... Karras frowned. They often themselves became the victims of possession. He thought of Loudun. France. The Ursuline Convent of nuns. Of four of the exorcists sent there to deal with an epidemic of possession, three–Fathers Lucas, Lactance and Tranquille–not only became possessed, but died soon after, apparently of shock. And the fourth, Père Surin, who was thirty-three years old at the time of his possession, became insane for the subsequent twenty-five years of his life.

    He nodded to himself. If Regan's disorder was hysterical; if the onset of possession was the product of suggestion, then the source of the suggestion could only be the chapter in the book on witchcraft. The chapter on possession. Did she read it?

    He pored over its pages. Were there striking similarities between any of its details and Regan's behavior? That might prove it. It might.

    He found some correlations: ... The case of an eight-year-old girl who was described in the chapter as "bellowing like a bull in thunderous, deep bass voice." (Regan's lowing like a steer.)

    ... The case of Helen Smith, who'd been treated by the great psychologist Flournoy; his description of her changing her voice and her features with "lightning" rapdity" into those of a variety of personalities. (She did that with me. The personality who spoke with a British accent. Quick change. Instanttaneous.)

    ... A case in South Africa, reported by the noted ethnologist Junod; his description of a woman who'd vanished from her dwelling one night being found on the following morning "tied to the top" of a very tall tree by "fine lianas," and then afterward "gliding down the tree, head down, while hissing and rapidly flicking her tongue in and out like a snake. She then hung suspended, for a time, and proceeded to speak in a language that no one had ever heard." (Regan gliding like a snake when she was following Sharon. The gibberish. An attempt at an "unknown language.")

    ... The case of Joseph and Thiebaut Burner, aged eight and ten; description of them "lying on their backs and suddenly whirling like tops with the utmost rapidity." (Sounds pretty close to her whirling like a dervish.)

    There were other similarities; still other reasons for suspecting suggestion: mention of abnormal strength; of obscenity of speech; and accounts of possession from the gospels, which perhaps were the basis, thought Karras, of the curiously religious content of Regan's ravings at Barringer Clinic. Moreover, in the chapter there was mention of the onset of possession in stages: "... The first, infestation, consists of an -attack through the victim's surroundings; noises–odors–the displacement of objects; and the second, obsession, consists in a personal attack on the subject designed to instill terror through the kind of injury that one man might inflict on another through blows and kicks." The rappings. The flingings. The attacks by Captain Howdy.

    Maybe... maybe she read it. But Karras wasn't convinced. Not at all... not at all. And Chris. She had seemed so uncertain about it.

    He walked to the window again. What's the answer, then? Genuine possession? A demon? He looked down and shook his head. No way. No way. Paranormal happenings? Sure. Why not? Too many competent observers had reported them. Doctors. Psychiatrists. Men like Junod. But the problem is how do you interpret the phenomena? He thought back to Oesterreich. Reference to a shaman of the Altai. Siberia. Voluntarily possessed and examined in a clinic while performing an apparently paranormal action: levitation. Just prior, his pulse rate had spurted to one hundred, then, afterward, leaped to an amazing two hundred. Marked changes in temperature as well. Its respiration. So his paranormal action was tied to physiology. It was caused by some bodily energy or force. But as proof of possession the Church wanted clear and exterior phenomena that suggested....

    He'd forgotten the wording. Looked it up. Traced a finger down the page of a book on his desk. Found it: "... verifiable exterior phenomena which suggest the idea that they are due to the extraordinary intervention of an intelligent cause other than man." Was that the case with the shaman? Karras asked himself. No. And is that the case with Regan?

    He turned to a passage he had underlined in percil: "The exorcist will simply be careful that none of the patient's manifestations are left unaccounted for..."

    He nodded. Okay, then. Let's see. Pacing, he ran through the manifestations of Regan's disorder along with their possible explanations. He ticked them off mentally, one by one: The startling change in Regan's features.

    Partly her illness. Partly undernourishment. Mostly, he concluded, it was due to physiognomy being an expression of psychic constitution. Whatever the hell that means! he added wryly.

    The startling change in Regan's voice.

    He had yet to hear the original voice. And even if that had been light, as reported by her mother, constant shrieking would thicken the vocal cords, with a consequent deepening of the voice. The only problem here, he reflected, was the massive volume of that voice, for even with a thickening of the cords this would seem to be physiologically impossible. And yet, he considered, in states of anxiety or pathology, displays of paranormal strength in excess of muscular potential were known to be a commonplace. Might not vocal cords and voice box be subject to the same mysterious effect?

    Regan's suddenly extended vocabulary and knowledge.

    Cryptomnesia: buried recollections of words and data she had once been exposed to, even in infancy, perhaps. In somnambulists–and frequently in people at the point of death–the buried data often came to the surface with almost photographic fidelity.

    Regan's recognition of him as a priest.

    Good guess. If she had read the chapter on possession, she might have expected a visit by a priest. And according to Jung, the unconscious awareness and sensitivity of hysterical patients could at moments be fifty times greater than normal, which accounted for seemingly authentic "thought reading" via table-tapping by mediums, for what the medium's unconscious was actually "reading" were the tremors and vibrations created in the table by the hands of the person whose thoughts were supposedly being read. The tremors formed a pattern of letters or numbers. Thus, Regan might conceivably have "read" his identity merely from his manner; from the look of his hands; from the scent of sacramental wine.

    Regan's knowledge of the death of his mother.

    Good guess. He was forty-six.

    "Couldjya help an old altar boy, Faddah?"

    Textbooks in use in Catholic seminaries accepted telepathy as both a reality and a natural phenomenon.

    Regan's precocity of intellect.

    In the course of personally observing a case of multiple personality involving alleged occult phenomena, the psychiatrist Jung had concluded that in states of hysterical somnambulism not only were unconscious perceptions of the senses heightened, but also the functioning of the intellect, for the new personalities in the case in question seemed clearly more intelligent than the first. And yet, puzzled Karras, did merely reporting the phenomenon explain it?

    Abruptly he stopped pacing and hovered by his desk, for it suddenly dawned upon him that Regan's pun on Herod was even more complicated than at first it had appeared: when the Pharisees told Christ of Herod's threats, he remembered, Christ had answered them: "Go and tell that fox that I cast out devils..."

    He glanced at the tape of Regan's voice for a moment, then sat wearily at the desk. He lit another cigarette... exhaled... thought again of the Burner boys; of the case of the eight-year-old girl who had manifested symptoms of full-blown possession. What book had this girl read that had enabled her unconscious mind to simulate the symptoms to such perfection? And how did the unconscious of victims in China communicate the symptoms to the various un-conscious minds of people possessed in Siberia, in Germany, in Africa, so that the symptoms were always the same?

    "Incidentally, your mother is here with us, Karras..."

    He stared unseeing as smoke from his cigarette rose like whispered curls of memory. The priest leaned back, looking down at the bottom left-hand drawer of the desk. For a time, he kept staring. Then slowly he leaned down, pulled open the drawer and extracted a faded language exercise book. Adult education. His mother's. He set it on the desk and thumbed the pages with a tender care. Letters of the alphabet, over and over. Then simple exercises: LESSON VI MY COMPLETE ADDRESS Between the pages, an attempt at a letter.

    Then another beginning. Incomplete. He looked away. Saw her eyes at the window... waiting....

    " 'Domine, non sum dignus....' "

    The eyes became Regan's... eyes shrieking... eyes waiting....

    " 'Speak but the word...' "

    He glanced at the tape of Regan's voice.

    He left the room. Took the tape to the language lab. Found a tape recorder. Sat down. He threaded the tape to an empty reel. Clamped on earphones. Turned on the switch. Then leaned forward and listened. Exhausted. Intense.

    For a time, only tape hiss. Squeaking of the mechanism. Suddenly, a thumping sound of activation. Noises. "Hello..." Then a whining feedback. Chris MacNeil, tone hushed, in the background: "Not so close to the microphone, honey. Hold it back."

    "Like this?"

    "No, more."

    "Like this?"

    "Yeah, okay. Go ahead now, just talk." Giggling. The microphone bumping a table. Then the sweet, clear voice of Regan MacNeil: "Hello, Daddy? This is me. Ummm..." Giggling; then a whispered aside: "I can't tell what to say!"

    "Oh, just tell him how you are, honey. Tell about all of the things you've been doing." More giggling, then: "Umm, Daddy... Well, ya see... I mean, I hope you can hear me okay, and, umm–well, now, let's see. Umm, well, first we're–No, wait, now.... See, first we're in Washington, Daddy, ya know? I mean, that's where the President lives; and this house–ya know. Daddy?–it's–No, wait, now; I better start over. See, Daddy, there's..."

    Karras heard the rest only dimly, from afar, through the roaring of blood in his ears, like the ocean, as up through his chest and his fate swelled an overwhelming intuition: The thing that I saw in that room wasn't Regan!

    He returned to the Jesuit residence hall. Found a cubicle. Said Mass before the rush. As he lifted the Host in consecration, it trembled in his fingers with a hope he dared not hope, that he fought with every particled fiber of his will. " 'For this is My Body...' " he whispered tremulously.

    No, bread! This is nothing but bread!

    He dared not love again and lose. That loss was too great, that pain too keen. He bowed his head and swallowed the Host like lost illusion. For a moment it stuck in the dryness of his throat.

    After Mass, he skipped breakfast. Made notes for his lecture. Met his class at the Georgetown University Medical School. Threaded hoarsely through the ill-prepared talk: "... and in considering the symptoms of manic mood disorders, you will..."

    "Daddy, this is me... this is me..."

    But who was "me"?

    Karras dismissed the class early and returned to his room, where immediately he hunched over his desk, palms of his hands pressed flat, and intently reexamined the Church's position on the paranormal signs of demonic possession. Was I being too hard-nosed? he wondered. He scrutinized the high points in Satan: "telepathy... natural phenomenon... movement of objects from a distance now suspect... from the body there may emanate some fluid... our forefathers... science... nowadays we must be more cautious. The paranormal evidence notwithstanding, however... " He slowed the pace of his reading. "... all conversations held with the patient must be carefully analyzed, for if they present the same system of association of ideas and of logicogrammatical habits that he exhibits in his normal state, the possession must then be held suspect."

    Karras breathed deeply, exhausted. Then exhaled. Dropped his head. No way. Doesn't cut it. He glanced to the plate on the facing page. A demon. His gaze flicked down idly to the caption: "Pazuzu." Karras shut his eyes. Something wrong. Tranquille... He envisioned the exorcist's death: the final agonies... the bellowing... the hissing... the vomiting... the hurlings to the ground from his bed by his "demons," who were furious because soon he would be dead and beyond their torment. And Lucas! Lucas. Kneeling by the bedside. Praying. But the moment Tranquille was dead, Lucas instantly assumed the identity of his demons, began viciously lucking at the still-warm corpse, at the shattered, clawed body reeking of excrement and vomit, while six strong men were attempting to restrain him, would not stop until the corpse had been carried from the room. Karras saw it. Saw it clearly.