The Exorcist

THE EXORCIST

William Peter Blatty

To my brothers and sisters, Maurice, Edward and Alyce, and in loving memory of my parents.

'Now when [Jesus] stepped ashore, there met him a certain man who for a long time was possessed by a devil.... Many times it had laid hold of him and he was bound with chains.... but he would break the bonds asunder.... And Jesus asked him, saying, "What is thy name?" And he said Legion....'

--Luke 8: 27-30

James Torello: Jackson was hung up on that meat hook. He was so heavy he bent it. He was on that thing three days before he croaked.

Frank Buccieri (giggling): Jackie, you shoulda seen the guy. Like an elephant, he was, and when Jimmy hit him with that electric prod...

Torello (excitedly): He was floppin' around on that hook, Jackie.

We tossed water on him to give the prod a better charge, and he's screamin'....

--Excerpt from FBI wiretap of Cosa Nostra telephone conversation relating to murder of William Jackson ...

There's no other explanation for some of the things the Communists did. Like the priest who had eight nails driven into his skull.... And there were seven little boys and their teacher. They were praying the Our Father when soldiers came upon them. One soldier whipped out his bayonet and sliced off the teacher's tongue. The other took chopsticks and drove them into the ears of the seven little boys. How do you treat cases like that?

Dr. Tom Dooley

Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald

AUTHOR'S NOTE I Have taken a few liberties with the current geography of Georgetown University, notably with respect to the present location of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. Moreover, the house on Prospects Street does not exist, nor does the reception room of the Jesuit residence halls as I have described it.

The fragment of prose attributed to Lankester Merrin is not my creation, but is taken from a sermon of John Henry Newman entitled 'The Second Spring'.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My special thanks to Herbert Tanney, M. D.; Mr. Joseph E. Jeffs, Librarian, Georgetown University; Mr. William Bloom; and Mrs. Ann Harris, my editor at Harper & Row, for their invaluable assistance and generosity in the preparation of this work. I would also like to thank the Rev. Thomas V. Bermingham, S. J., Vice-Provincial for Formation of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, for suggesting the subject matter of this novel; and Mr. Marc Jaffe of Bantam Books for his singular (and lonely) faith in its eventual worth. To these mentions I would like to add Dr. Bernard M. Wagner of Georgetown University, for teaching me to write, and the Jesuits, for teaching me to think.

PROLOGUE

Northern Iraq

The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man's brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them. He could not shake the premonition. It clang to his back like chill wet leaves.

The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beds and pendants; glyptics; phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian ivory toilet box. And man. The bones of man. The brittle remnants of cosmic torment that once made him wonder if matter was Lucifer upward-groping back to his God. And yet now he knew better. The fragrance of licorice plant and tamarisk tugged his gaze to poppied hills; to reeded plains; to the ragged, rock-strewn bolt of road that flung itself headlong into dread. Northwest was Mosul; east, Erbil; south was Baghdad and Kirkuk and the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar. He shifted his legs underneath the table in front of the lonely roadside chaykhana and stared at the grass stains on his boots and khaki pants. He sipped at his tea. The dig was over. What was beginning? He dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find but he could not tag it.

Someone wheezed from within the chaykhana: the withered proprietor shuffling toward him, kicking up dust in Russian-made shoes that he wore like slippers, groaning backs pressed under his heels. The dark of his shadow slipped over the table.

"Kaman chay, chawaga?"

The man, in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other.

The shadow shifted. The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt. The old man in khaki looked up into eyes that were damply bleached as if the membrane of an eggshell had been pasted over the irises. Glaucoma. Once he could not have loved this man.

He slipped out his wallet and probed for a coin among its tattered, crumpled tenants: a few dinars; an Iraqi driver's license; a faded plastic calendar card that was twelve years out of date. It bore an inscription on the reverse: WHAT WE GIVE TO THE POOR IS WHAT WE TAKE WITH US WHEN WE DIE. The card had been printed by the Jesuit Missions. He paid for his tea and left a tip of fifty fils on a splintered table the color of sadness.

He walked to his jeep. The gentle, rippling click of key sliding into ignition was crisp in the silence. For a moment he waited, feeling at the stillness. Clustered on the summit of a towering mound, the fractured rooftops of Erbil hovered far in the distance, poised in the clouds like a rubbled, mud-stained benediction. The leaves clutched tighter at the flesh of his back.

Something was waiting.

"Allah ma'ak, chawaga."

Rotted teeth. The Kurd was grinning, waving farewell. The man in khaki groped for a warmth in his pit of his being and came up with a wave and a mustered smile. It dimmed as he looked away. He started the engine, turned in a narrow, eccentric U and headed toward Mosul. The Kurd stood watching, puzzled by a heart- dropping sense of loss as the jeep gathered speed. What was it that was gone? What was it he had felt in the stranger's presence? Something like safety, he remembered; a sense of protection and deep well-being. Now it dwindled in the distance with the fast-moving jeep. He felt strangely alone.

The painstaking inventory was finished by ten after six. The Mosul curator of antiquities, an Arab with sagging cheeks, was carefully penning a final entry into the ledger on his desk. For a moment he paused, looking up at his friend, as he dipped his penpoint into an inkpot. The man in khaki seemed lost in thought. He was standing by a table, hand in his pockets, staring down at some dry, tagged whisper of the past. The curator observed him, curious, unmoving; then returned to the entry, writing in a firm, very small neat script. Then at last he sighed, setting down the pen as he noted the time. The train to Baghdad left at eight. He blotted the page and offered tea.

The man in khaki shook his head, his eyes still fixed upon something on the table. The Arab watched him, vaguely troubled. What was in the air? There was something in the air. He stood up and moved closer; then felt a vague prickling at the base of his neck as his friend at last moved, reaching down for an amulet and cradling it pensively in his hand. It was a green stone head of the demon Pazuzu, personification of the southwest wind. Its dominion was sickness and disease. The head was pierced. The amulet's owner had worn it as a shield.

"Evil against evil," breathed the curator, languidly fanning himself with a French scientific periodical, an olive-oil thumbprint smudged on the cover.

His friend did not move; he did not comment.

"Is something wrong?"

No answer.

"Father?"

The man in khaki still appeared not to hear, absorbed in the amulet, the last of his finds. After a moment he set it down, then lifted a questioning look to the Arab. Had he said something?

"Nothing."

They murmured farewells.

At the door, the curator took the old man's hand with an extra firmness. "My heart has a wish, Father: that you would not go."

His friend answered softly in terms of tea; of times; of something to be done.

"No, no, no, I meant home."

The man in khaki fixed his gaze on a speck of boiled chick-pea nestled in a corner of the Arab's mouth; yet his eyes were distant. "Home," he repeated. The word had the sound of an ending: "The States," the Arab curator added, instantly wondering why he had.

The man in khaki looked into the dark of the other's concern. He had never found it difficult to love this man.

"Good-bye;" he whispered; then quickly turned and stepped into the gathering gloom of the streets and a journey home whose length seemed somehow undetermined.

"I will see you in a year!" the curator called after him from the doorway. But the man in khaki never looked back. The Arab watched his dwindling form as he crossed a narrow street at an angle, almost colliding with a swiftly moving droshky. Its cab bore a corpulent old Arab woman, her face a shadow behind the black lace veil draped loosely over her like a shroud. He guessed she was rushing to some appointment. He soon lost sight of his hurrying friend.

The man in khaki walked, compelled.. Shrugging loose of the city, he breached the outskirts, crossing the Tigris. Nearing the ruins, he slowed his pace, for- with every step the inchoate presentiment took firmer, more horrible form. Yet he had to know. He would have to prepare.

A wooden plank that bridged the Khosr, a muddy stream, creaked under his weight. And then he was there; he stood on the mound where once gleamed fifteen-gated Nineveh, feared nest of Assyrian hordes. Now the city lay sprawled in the bloody dust of its predestination. And yet he was here, the air was still thick with him, that Other who ravaged his dreams.

A Kurdish watchman, rounding a corner, unslung his rifle and began to run toward him, then abruptly stopped and grinned with a wave of recognition and proceeded on his rounds.

The man in khaki prowled the ruins. The Temple of Nabu. The Temple of Ishtar. He sifted vibrations. At the palace of Ashurbanipal he paused; then shifted a sidelong glance to a limestone statue hulking in situ: ragged wings; taloned feet; bulbous, jutting, stubby penis and a mouth stretched taut in a feral grin. The demon Pazuzu.

Abruptly he sagged.

He knew.

It was coming.

He stared at the dust. Quickening shadows.. He heard dim yappings of savage dog packs prowling the fringes of the city. The orb of the sun was beginning to fall below the rim of the world. He rolled his shirt sleeves down and buttoned them as a shivering breeze sprang up. Its source was southwest.

He hastened toward Mosul and his train, his heart encased in the icy conviction that soon he would face an ancient enemy.

I: The Beginning

CHAPTER ONE

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. It was difficult to judge.

The house was a rental. Brooding. Tight. A bride colonial gripped by ivy in the Georgetown section of Washington, D. C. Across the street was a fringe of campus belonging to Georgetown University; to the rear, a sheer embankment plummeting steep to busy M Street and, beyond, the muddy Potomac. Early on the morning of April 1, the house was quiet. Chris MacNeil was propped in bed, going over her lines for the neat day's filming; Regan, her daughter, was sleeping down the hall; and asleep downstairs in a room off the pantry were the middle-aged housekeepers, Willie and Karl. At approximately 12: 25 A. M., Chris glanced from her script with a frown of puzzlement. She heard rapping sounds. They were odd. Muffed. Profound. Rhythmically clustered. Alien code tapped out by a dead man.

Funny.

She listened for a moment; then dismissed it; but as the rappings persisted she could not concentrate. She slapped down the script on the bed.

Jesus, that bugs me!

She got up to investigate.

She went out to the hallway and looked around. It seemed to be coming from Regan's bedroom.

What is she doing?

She padded down the hall and the rappings grew suddenly louder, much faster, and as she pushed on the door and stepped into the room, they abruptly ceased.

What the heck's going on?

Her pretty eleven-year-old was asleep, cuddled tight to a large stuffed round-eyed panda. Pookey. Faded from years of smothering; years of smacking, warm, wet kisses.

Chris moved softly to her bedside and leaned over for a whisper. "Rags? You awake?"

Regular breathing. Heavy. Deep.

Chris shifted her glance around the room. Dim light from the hall fell pale and splintered on Regan's paintings; on Regan's sculptures; on more stuffed animals.

Okay, Rags. Old mother's ass is draggin'. Say it. "April Fool!"

And yet Chris knew it wasn't like her. The child had a shy and very diffident nature. Then who was the trickster? A somnolent mind imposing order on the rattlings of heating pipes or plumbing? Once, in the mountains of Bhutan, she had stared for hours at a Buddhist monk who was squatting on the ground in meditation. Finally, she thought she had seen him levitate. Perhaps. Recounting the story to someone, she invariably added "perhaps." And perhaps her mind, that untiring raconteur of illusion, had embellished the rappings.

Bullshit! I heard it!

Abruptly, she flicked a quick glance to the ceiling. There! Faint scratchings.

Rats in the attic, for pete's sake! Rats!

She sighed. That's it. Big tails. Thump, thump. She felt oddly relieved. And then noticed the cold. The room. It was icy.

She padded to the window. Checked it. Closed. She touched the radiator. Hot.

Oh, really?

Puzzled, she moved to the bedside and, touched her hand to Regan's cheek. It was smooth as thought and lightly perspiring.

I must be sick!

She looked at her daughter, at the turned-up nose and freckled face, and on a quick, warm impulse leaned over the bed and kissed her cheek. "I sure do love you," she whispered, then returned to her room and her bed and her script.

For a while, Chris studied. The film was a musical comedy remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. . A subplot had been added dealing with campus insurrections. Chris was starring. She played a psychology teacher who sided with the rebels. And she hated it. It's dumb! This scene is absolutely dumb! Her mind, though untutored, never mistook slogans for truth, and like a curious bluejay she would peck relentlessly through verbiage to find the glistening, hidden fact. And so the rebel cause, to her, was "dumb." It didn't make sense. How come? she now wondered. Generation gap? That's a crock; I'm thirty-two. It's just plain dumb, that's all, it's...!

Cool it. One more week.

They'd completed the interiors in Hollywood. All that remained were a few exterior scenes on the campus of Georgetown University, starting tomorrow. It was Easter vacation and the students were away.

She was getting drowsy. Heavy lids. She turned to a page that was curiously ragged. Bemused, she smiled. Her English director. When especially tense, he would tear, with quivering, fluttering hands, a narrow strip from the edge of the handiest page and then chew it, inch by inch, until it was all in a ball in his mouth.

Dear Burke.

She yawned, then glanced fondly at the side of her script. The pages looked gnawed. She remembered the rats. The little bastards sure got rhythm. She made a mental note to have Karl set traps for them in the morning.

Fingers relaxing. Script slipping loose. She let it drop. Dumb. It's dumb. A fumbling hand groping out to the light switch. There. She sighed. For a time she was motionless, almost asleep; and then kicked off her covers with a lazy leg. Too freaking hot.

A mist of dew clung soft and gentle to the windowpanes.

Chris slept. And dreamed about death in the staggering particular, death as if death were still never yet heard of while something was ringing, she gasping, dissolving, slipping off into void, thinking over and over, I am not going to be, I will die, I won't be, and forever and ever, oh, Papa, don't let them, oh, don't let them do it, don't let me be nothing forever and melting, unraveling, ringing, the ringing--- The phone!

She leaped up with her heart pounding, hand to the phone and no weight in her stomach; a core with no weight and her telephone ringing.

She answered. The assistant director.

"In makeup at six, honey."

"Right."

"How ya feelin'?"

"If I go to the bathroom and it doesn't burn, then I figure I'm ahead."

He chuckled. "I'll see yon.'

"Right. And thanks."

She hung up. And for moments sat motionless, thinking of the dream. A dream? More like thought in the half life of waking. That terrible clarity. Gleam of the skull. Non-being. Irreversible. She could not imagine it. God, it can't be!

She considered. And at last bowed her head. But it is.

She went to the bathroom, put on a robe, and padded quickly down to the kitchen, down to life in sputtering bacon.

"Ah, good morning, Mrs. MacNeil."

Gray, drooping Willie, squeezing oranges, blue sacs beneath her eyes. A trace of accent. Swiss, like Karl's. She wiped her hands on a paper towel and started moving toward the stove.

"I'll get it, Willie." Chris, ever sensitive, had seen her weary look, and as Willie now grunted and turned back to the sink, the actress poured coffee, then moved to the breakfast nook. Sat down. And warmly smiled as she looked at her plate. A blush-red rose. Regan. That angel. Many a morning, when Chris was working, Regan would quietly slip out of bed, come down to the kitchen and place a flower, then grope her way crusty-eyed back to her sleep. Chris shook her head; rueful; recalling: she had almost named her Goneril. Sure. Right on. Get ready for the worst. Chris chuckled at the memory. Sipped at her coffee. As her gaze caught the rose again, her expression turned briefly sad, large green eyes grieving in a waiflike face. She'd recalled another flower. A son. Jamie. He had died long ago at the age of three, when Chris was very young and an unknown chorus girl on Broadway. She had sworn she would not give herself ever again as she had to Jamie; as she had to his father, Howard MacNeil. She glanced quickly from the rose, and as her dream of death misted upward from the coffee, she quickly lit a cigarette. Willie brought juice and Chris remembered the rats.. "Where's Karl?" she asked the servant.

"I am here, madam!"

Catting in lithe through a door off the pantry. Commanding. Deferential. Dynamic. Crouching. A fragment of Kleenex pressed tight to his chin where he'd nicked himself shaving. "Yes?" Thickly muscled, he breathed by the table. Glittering eyes. Hawk nose. Bald head.

"Hey, Karl, we've got rats in the attic. Better get us some traps."

"Where are rats?"

"I just said that."

"But the attic is clean."

"Well, okay, we've got tidy rats!"

"No rats."

"Karl, I heard them last night," Chris said patiently, controlling.

"Maybe plumbing," Karl probed; "maybe boards."

"Maybe rats! Will you buy the damn traps and quit arguing?"

"Yes, madam!" Bustling away. "I go now!"

"No not now, Karl! The stores are all closed!"

'They are closed!" chided Willie.

"I will see."

He was gone.

Chris and Willie traded glances, and then Willie shook her head, turning back to the bacon. Chris sipped at her coffee. Strange. Strange man. Like Willie, hard-working; very loyal; discreet. And yet something -about him made her vaguely uneasy. What was it? His subtle air of arrogance? Defiance? No. Something else. Something hard to pin down. The couple had been with her for almost six years, and yet Karl was a mask---a talking, breathing, untranslated hieroglyph running her errands on stilted legs. Behind the mask, though, something moved; she could hear his mechanism ticking like a conscience. She stubbed out her cigarette; heard the front door creaking open, then shut.

"They are closed," muttered Willie.

Chris nibbled at bacon, then returned to her room, where she dressed in her costume sweater and skirt. She glanced in a mirror and solemnly stared at her short red hair, which looked perpetually tousled; at the burst of freckles on the small, scrubbed face; then crossed her eyes and grinned idiotically. Hi, little wonderful girl next door! Can I speak to your husband? Your lover? Your pimp? Oh, your pimp's in the poorhouse? Avon calling! She stuck out her tongue at herself. Then sagged. Ah, Christ, what a life! She picked up her wig box, slouched downstairs, and walked out to the piquant tree-lined street.

For a moment she paused outside the house and gulped at the morning. She looked to the right. Beside the house, a precipitous plunge of old stone steps fell away to M Street far below. A little beyond was the upper entry to the Car Barn, formerly used for the housing of streetcars: Mediterranean, tiled roof; rococo turrets; antique brick. She regarded it wistfully. Fun. Fun street. Dammit, why don't I stay? But the house? Start to live? From somewhere a bell began to toll. She glanced toward the sound. The tower clock on the Georgetown campus. The melancholy resonance echoed on the river; shivered; seeped through her tired heart. She walked toward her work; toward ghastly charade; toward the straw-stuffed, antic imitation of dust.

She entered the main front gates of the campus and her depression diminished; then grew even less as she looked at the row of trailer dressing rooms aligned along the driveway close to the southern perimeter wall; and by 8 A. M. and the day's first shot, she was almost herself: She started an argument over the script.

"Hey, Burke? Take a look at this damned thing, will ya?"

"Oh, you do have a script, I see! How nice!" Director Burke Dennings, taut and, elfin, left eye twitching yet gleaming with mischief, surgically shaved a narrow strip from a page of her script with quivering fingers "I believe I'll munch," he cackled.

They were standing on the esplanade that fronted the administration building and were knotted in the center of actors; lights; technicians; extras; grips. Here and there a few spectators dotted the lawn, mostly Jesuit faculty. Numbers of children. The cameraman, bored, picked up Daily Variety as Dennings put the paper in his mouth and giggled, his breath reeking faintly of the morning's first gin.

"Yes, I'm terribly glad you've been given a script."

A sly, frail man in his fifties, he spoke with a charmingly broad British accent so clipped and precise that it lofted even crudest obscenities to elegance, and when he drank, he seemed always on the verge of guffaw; seemed constantly struggling to retain his composure.

"Now then, tell me, my baby. What is it? What's wrong?"

The scene in question called for the dean of the mythical college in the script to address a gathering of students in an effort to squelch a threatened "sit-in." Chris would then run up the steps to the esplanade, tear the bullhorn away from the dean and then point to the main administration building and shout, "Let's tear it down!"

"It just doesn't make sense," said Chris.

"Well, it's perfectly plain," lied Dennings.

"Why the heck should they tear down the building, Burke? What for?"

"Are you sending me up?"

"No, I'm asking 'what for?' "

"Because it's there, loves!"

"In the script?"

"No, on the grounds!"

"Well, it doesn't make sense, Burke. She just wouldn't do that."

"She would."

"No, she wouldn't."

"Shall we summon the writer? I believe he's in Paris!"

"Hiding?"

"Fucking!"

He'd clipped it off with impeccable diction, fox eyes glinting in a face like dough as the word rose crisp to Gothic spires. Chris fell weak to his shoulders, laughing. "Oh, Burke, you're impossible, dammit!"

"Yes." He said it like Caesar modestly confirming reports of his triple rejection of the crown. "Now then, shall we get on with it?"

Chris didn't hear. She'd darted a furtive, embarrassed glance to a nearby Jesuit, checking to see if he'd heard the obscenity. Dark, rugged face. Like a boxer's. Chipped. In his forties. Something sad about the eyes; something pained; and yet warm and reassuring as they fastened on hers. He'd heard. He was smiling. He glanced at his watch and moved away.

"I say, shall we get on with it!"

She turned, disconnected. "Yeah, sure, Burke, let's do it."

"Thank heaven."

"No, wait!"

"Oh, good Christ!"

She complained about the tag of the scene.. She felt that the high point was reached with her line as opposed to her running through the door of the building immediately afterward.

"It adds nothing," said Chris. "It's dumb."

"Yes, it is, love, it is," agreed Burke sincerely. "However, the cutter insists that we do it," he continued, "so there we are. You see?"

"No, I don't."

"No, of course not. It's stupid. You see, since the following scene"---he giggled---"begins with Jed coming at us through a door, the cutter feels certain of a nomination if the scene preceding ends with you moving off through a door."

"That's dumb."

"Well, of course it is! It's vomit! It's simply cunting puking mad! Now then, why don't we shoot it and trust me to snip it from the final cut. It should make -a rather tasty munch."

Chris laughed. And agreed. Burke glanced toward the cutter, who was known to be a temperamental egotist given to time-wasting argumentation. He was busy with the cameraman. The director breathed a sigh of relief.

Waiting on the lawn at the base of the steps while the lights were warming, Chris looked toward Dennings as he flung an obscenity at a hapless grip and then visibly glowed. He seemed to revel in his eccentricity. Yet at a certain point in his drinking, Chris knew, he would suddenly explode into temper, and if it happened at three or four in the morning, he was likely to telephone people in power, and viciously abuse them over trifling provocations. Chris remembered a studio chief whose offense had consisted in remarking mildly at a screening that the cuffs of Dennings' shirt looked slightly frayed, prompting Dennings to awaken him at approximately 3 A. M. to describe him as a "cunting boor" whose father was "more that likely mad!" And on the following day, he would pretend to amnesia and subtly radiate with pleasure when those he'd offended described in detail what he had done. Although, if it suited him, he would remember. Chris thought with a smile of the night he'd destroyed his studio suite of offices in a gin-stoked, mindless rage, and how later, when confronted with an itemized bill and Polaroid photos detailing the damage, he'd archly dismissed them as "Obvious fakes, the damage was far, far worse than that!" Chris did not believe that Dennings was either an alcoholic or a hopeless problem drinker, but rather that he drank because it was expected of him: he was living up to his legend.

Ah, well, she thought; I guess it's a kind of immortality.

She turned, looking over her shoulder for the Jesuit who had smiled. He was walking in the distance, despondent, head lowered, a lone black cloud in search of the rain.

She had never liked priests. So assured. So secure. And yet this one...

"All ready, Chris?" Dennings.

"Yeah, ready."

"All right, absolute quiet!" The assistant director "Roll the film," ordered Burke.

"Speed."

"Now action!"

Chris ran up the steps while extras cheered and Dennings watched her, wondering what was on her mind. She'd given up the arguments far too quickly. He turned a significant look to the dialogue coach, who padded up to him dutifully and proffered his open script like an aging altar boy the missal to his priest at solemn Mass.

They worked with intermittent sun. By four, the overcast of roiling clouds was thick in the sky, and the assistant director dismissed the company for the day.

Chris walked homeward. She was tired. At the corner of Thirty-sixth and O she signed an autograph for an aging Italian grocery clerk who had hailed her from the doorway of his shop. She wrote her name and "Warm Best Wishes" on a brown paper bag. Waiting to cross, she glanced diagonally across the street to a Catholic church. Holy Something-or-other. Staffed by Jesuits. John F. Kennedy had married Jackie there-, she had heard; had worshiped there. She tried to imagine it: John F. Kennedy among the votive lights and the pious, wrinkled women; John F. Kennedy bowed in prayer; I believe... a detente with the Russians; I believe, I believe... Apollo IV among the rattlings of the beads; I believe... the resurrection and the life ever--- That. That's it. That's the grabber.

She watched as a beer truck lumbered by with a clink of quivering warm, wet promises.

She crossed. As she walked down O and passed the grade-school auditorium, a priest rushed by from behind her, hands in the pockets of a nylon windbreaker. Young. Very tense. In need of a shave. Up ahead, he took a right, turning into an easement that opened to a courtyard behind the church.

Chris paused by the easement, watching him, curious. He seemed to be heading for a white frame cottage. An old screen door creaked open and still another priest emerged. He looked glum; very nervous. He nodded curtly toward the young man, and with lowered, eyes, he moved quickly toward a door that led into the Church. Once again the cottage door was pushed open from within. Another priest. It looked---Hey, it is! The one who was smiling when Burke said "fuck"! Only now he looked grave as he silently greeted the new arrival, his arm around his shoulder in a gesture that was gentle and somehow parental. He led him inside and the screen door closed with a slow, faint squeak.

Chris stared at her shoes. She was puzzled. What's the drill? She wondered if Jesuits went to confession.

Faint rumble of thunder. She looked up at the sky. Would it rain?... the resurrection of the...

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Next Tuesday. Flashes of lightning crackled in the distance. Don't call us, kid, we'll call you.

She tugged up her coat collar and slowly moved on. She hoped it would pour.

In a minute she was home. She made a dash for the bathroom. After that, she walked into the kitchen.

"Hi, Chris, how'd it go?"

Pretty blonde in her twenties sitting at the table. Sharon Spencer. Fresh. From Oregon. For the last three years, she'd been tutor to Regan and social secretary to Chris.

"Oh, the usual crock." Chris sauntered to the table and began to sift message. "Anything exciting?"

"Do you want to have dinner next week at the White House?"

"Oh, I dunno, Marty; whadda you feel like doin'?"

"Eating candy and getting sick."

Chris chuckled. "Where's Rags, by the way?"

"Downstairs in the playroom."

"'What doin'?"

"Sculpting. She's making a bird, I think. It's for you."

"Yeah, I need one," Chris murmured. She moved to the stove and poured a cup of hot coffee. "Were you kidding me about that dinner?" she asked.

"No, of course not," answered Sharon. "It's Thursday."

"Big party?"

"No, I gather it's just five or six people."

"No kidding!"

She was pleased but not really surprised. They courted her company: cab drivers; poets; professors; kings. What was it they liked about her? Life? Chris sat at the table. "How'd the lesson go?"

Sharon lit a cigarette, frowning. "Had a bad time with math again."

"Oh? Gee, that's funny."

"I know; it's her favorite subject," said Sharon.

"Oh, well, this 'new math,' Christ, I couldn't make change for the bus if---"

"Hi, Mom!"

She was bounding through the door, slim arms outstretched. Red ponytail. Soft, shining face full of freckles.

"Hi ya, stinkpot!" Beaming, Chris caught her in a bearhug, squeezing, then kissed the girl's cheek with smacking ardor. She could not repress the full flood of her love. "Mmum-mmum-mmum!" More kisses. Then she held Regan out and probed her face with eager eyes. "What'djya do today? Anything exciting?"

"Oh stuff."

"So what kinda stuff?"

"Oh, lemme see." She had her knees against her mother's, swaying gently back and forth. "Well, of -course, I studied."

"Uh-huh."

"An' I painted."

"Wha'djya paint?"

"Oh, well, flowers, ya know. Daisies? Only pink. An' then---Oh, yeah! This horse!" She grew suddenly excited, eyes widening. "This man had a horse, ya know, down by the river? We were walking, see, Mom, and then along came this horse, he was beautiful! Oh, Mom, ya should've seen him, and the man let me sit on him! Really! I mean, practically a minute!"

Chris twinkled at Sharon with secret amusement. "Himself?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. On moving to Washington for the shooting of the film, the blonde secretary, who was now virtually one of the family, had lived in the house, occupying an extra bedroom upstairs. Until she'd met the "horseman" at a nearby stable. Sharon needed a place to be alone, Chris then decided, and had moved her to a suite in an expensive hotel and insisted on paying the bill.

"Himself." Sharon smiled in response to Chris.

"It was a gray horse!" added Regan. "Mother, can't we get a horse? I mean, could we?"

"We'll see, baby."

"When could I have one?"

"We'll see. Where's the bird you made?"

Regan looked blank for a moment; then turned around to Sharon and grinned, her mouth full of braces and shy rebuke. "You told." Then, "It was a surprise," she snickered to her mother.

"You mean...?"

"With the long funny nose, like you wanted!"

"Oh, Rags, that's sweet. Can I see it?"

"No, I still have to paint it. When's dinner, Mom?"

"Hungry?"

"I'm starving."

"Gee, it s not even five. When was lunch?" Chris asked Sharon.

"Oh, twelvish," Sharon answered.

"When are Willie and Karl coming back?"

She had given their the afternoon off.

"I think seven," said Sharon.

"Mom, can't we go to the Hot Shoppe?" Regan pleaded. "Could we?"

Chris lifted her daughter's hand; smiled fondly; kissed it. "Run upstairs and get dressed and we'll go."

"Oh, I love you!"

Regan ran from the room.

"Honey, wear the new dress!" Chris called out after her.

"How would you like to be eleven?" mused Shalom.

"That an offer?"

Chris reached for her mail, began listlessly sorting through scrawled adulation, "Would you take it?" asked Sharon.

"With the brain I've got now?" All the memories?"

"Sure."

"No deal."

"Think it over."

"I'm thinking." Chris picked up a script with a covering letter clipped neatly to the front of it. Jarris. Her agent. "Thought I told them no scripts for a while."

"You should read it," said Sharon.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes, I read it this morning."

"Pretty good?"

"It's great."

"And I get to play a nun who discovers she's a lesbian, right?"

"No, you get to play nothing."

"Shit, movies are better than ever. What the hell are you talking about, Sharon? What's the grin for?"

"They want you to direct," Sharon exhaled coyly with the smoke from her cigarette.

"What!"

"Read the Letter."

"My God, Shar, you're kidding!"

Chris pounced on the letter with eager eyes snapping up the words in hungry chunks: "... new script... a triptych... studio wants Sir Stephen Moore... accepting role provided---"

"I direct his segment!"

Chris flung up her arms, letting loose a hoarse, shrill cry of joy. Then with both her hands she cuddled the letter to her chest. "Oh, Steve,- you angel, you remembered!" Filming in Africa. Drunk. In camp chairs. Watching the blood-hush end of day. "Ah, the business is bunk! For the actor it's crap, Steve!"

"Oh, I like it."

"It's crap! Don't you know where it's at in this business? Directing!"

"Ah, yes."

"Then you've done something, something that's yours; I mean, something that lives!"

"Well, then do it."

"I've tried; they won't buy it."

"Why not?"

"Oh, come on, you know why: they don't think I can cut it." Warm remembrance. Warm smile. Dear Steve...

"Mom, I can't find the dress!" Regan called from the landing.

"In the closet!" Chris answered.

"I looked!"

"I'll be up in a second!" Chris called. For a moment she examined the script. Then gradually wilted. "So its probably crap."

"Oh, come on, now. I really think it's good."

"Oh, you thought Psycho needed a laugh track."

Sharon laughed.

"Mommy?"

"I'm coming!"

Chris got up slowly. "Got a date, Shar?"

"Yes."

Chris motioned at the mail. "You go on, then. We can catch all this stuff in the morning."

Sharon got up.

"Oh, no, wait," Chris amended, remembering something. "There's a letter that's got to go out tonight."

"Oh, okay." The secretary reached for her dictation pad.

"Moth-therrr!" A whine of impatience.

"Wait'll I comes down," Chris told Sharon. She started to leave the kitchen, but stepped as Sharon eyed her watch.

"Gee; it's time for me to meditate, Chris," she said.

Chris looked at her narrowly with mute exasperation. In the last six mouths, she had watched her secretary suddenly turn "seeker after serenity." It had started in Los Angeles with self-hypnosis, which then yielded to Buddhistic chanting. During the last few weeks that Sharon was quartered in the room upstairs, the house had reeked of incense, and lifeless dronings of "Nam myoho renge kyo" ("See, you just keep on chanting that, Chris, just that, and you get your wish, you got everything you want...") were heard at unlikely and untimely hours, usually when Chris was studying her lines. "You can turn on TV," Sharon had generously told her employer on one of these occasions, "It's fine. I can chant when there's all kinds of noise. It won't bother me a bit." Now it was transcendental meditation.

"You really think that kind of stuff is going to do you any good, Shar?" Chris asked tonelessly.

"It gives me peace of mind," responded Sharon.

"Right," Chris said dryly. She turned away and said good-night. She said nothing about the letter, and as she left the kitchen, she murmured, "Nam myoho renge kyo."

"Keep it up about fifteen or twenty minutes," said Sharon. "Maybe for you it would work."

Chris halted and considered a measured response. Then gave it up. She went upstairs to Regan's bedroom, moving immediately to the closet. Regan was standing in the middle of the room staring up at the ceiling.

"What's doin'?" Chris asked her, hunting for the dress. It was a pale-blue cotton. She'd bought it the week before, and remembered hanging it in the closet.

"Funny noises," said Regan.

"I know. We've got friends."

Regan looked at her. "Huh?"

"Squirrels, honey; squirrels in the attic." her daughter was squeamish and terrified of rats. Even mice upset her.

The hunt for the dress proved fruitless.

"See, Mom, it's got there."

"Yes, I see. Maybe Willie picked it up with the cleaning."

"It's gone."

"Yeah, well, put on the navy. It's pretty."

They went to the Hot Shoppe. Chris ate a salad while Regan had soup, four rolls, fried chicken, a chocolate shake, and a helping and a half of blueberry pie with coffee ice cream. Where does she put it, Chris wondered fondly, in her wrists? The child was slender as a fleeting hope.

Chris lit a cigarette over her coffee and looked through the window on her right. The river was dark and currentless, waiting.

"I enjoyed my dinner, Mom."

Chris turned to her, and as often happened, caught her breath and felt again that ache on seeing Howard's image in Regan's face. It was the angle of the light. She dropped her glance to Regan's plate.

"Going to leave that pie?" Chris asked her.

Regan lowered her eyes. "I ate some candy."

Chris stubbed out her cigarette and chuckled. "Let's go."

They were back before seven. Willie and Karl had already returned. Regan made a dash for the basement playroom, eager to finish the sculpture for her mother. Chris headed for the kitchen to pick up the script. She found Willie brewing coffee; coarse; open pot. She looked irritable and sullen.

"Hi, Willie, how'd it go? Have a real nice time?"

"Do not ask." She added an eggshell and a pinch of salt to the bubbling contents of the pot. They had gone to a movie, Willie explained. She had wanted to see the Beatles, but Karl had insisted on an art-house film about Mozart. "Terrible," she simmered as she lowered the flame. "That dumbhead!"

"Sorry 'bout that." Chris tucked the script underneath her arm. "Oh, Willie, have you seen that dress that I got for Rags last week? The blue cotton?"

"Yes, I see it in her closet. This morning."

"Where'd you put it?"

"It is there."

"You didn't maybe pick it up by mistake with the cleaning?"

"It is there."

"With the cleaning?"

"In the closet."

"No, it isn't. I looked."

About to speak, Willie tightened her lips and scowled at the coffee. Karl, had walked in.

"Good evening, madam." He went to the sink for a glass of water.

"Did you set those traps?" asked Chris.

"No rats."

"Did you set them?"

"I set them, of course; but the attic is clean."

"Tell me, how was the movie, Karl?"

"Exciting." His back, like his face, was a resolute blank.

Chris started from the kitchen, humming a song made famous by the Beatles. But the she turned. Just one more shot!

"Did you have any trouble getting the traps, Karl?"

"No; no trouble."

"At six in the morning?"

"All-night market."

Jesus!

Chris took a long and luxurious bath, and why she went to the closet in her bedroom for her robe, she discovered Regan's missing dress. It lay crumpled in a heap on the floor of the closet.

Chris picked it up. What's it doing in here?

The tags were still on it. For a moment, Clues thought back. Then remembered that the day that she'd purchased the dress, she had also bought two or three items for herself. Must've put 'em all together.

Chris carried the dress into Regan's bedroom, put it on a hanger and slipped it on the rack. She glanced at Regan's wardrobe. Nice. Nice clothes. Yeah, Rags, look here, not there at the daddy who never writes.

As she turned from the closet, she stubbed her toe against the base of a bureau. Oh, Jesus, that smarts! As she lifted her foot and massaged her toe, she noticed that the bureau was out of position by about three feet. No wonder I bumped it, Willie must have vacuumed.

She went down to the study with the script from her agent.

Unlike the massive double living room with its large bay windows and view, the study had a feeling of whispered density; of secrets between rich uncles. Raised brick fireplace; oak paneling; crisscrossed beams of a wood that implied it had once been a drawbridge. The room's few hints of a time that was present were the added bar, a few bright pillows, and a leopardskin rug that belonged to Chris and was spread on the pinewood floor by the fire where she now stretched out with her head and shoulders propped on the front of a downy sofa.

She took another look at the letter from her agent. Faith, Hope and Charity: three distinct segments, each with a different cast and director. Hers would be Hope. She liked the idea. And she liked the title. Possibly dull, she thought; but refined. They'll probably change it to something like "Rock Around the Virtues."

The doorbell chimed. Burke Dennings. A lonely man, he dropped by often. Chris smiled ruefully, shaking her head, as she heard him rasp an obscenity at Karl, whom he seemed to detest and continually baited.

"Yes, hullo, where's a drink!" he demanded crossly, entering the room and moving to the bar with eyes averted, hands in the pockets of his wrinkled raincoat.

He sat on a barstool. Irritable. Shifty-eyed. Vaguely disappointed.

"On the prowl again?" Chris asked.

"What the hell do you mean?" he sniffed.

"You've got that funny look. " She had seen it before when they'd worked on a picture together in Lausanne. On their first night there, at a staid hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, Chris had difficulty sleeping. At 5 A. M., she flounced out of bed and decided to dress and go down to the lobby in search of either coffee or some company. Waiting far an elevator out in the hall, she glanced through a window and saw the director walking stiffly along the lakeside, hands deep in the pockets of his coat against the glacial winter cold. By the time she reached the lobby, he was entering the hotel. "Not a hooker in sight!" he snapped bitterly, passing her with eyes cast down; and then entered the elevator and went up to bed. When she'd laughingly mentioned the incident later, the director had, grown furious and accused her of promulgating "gross hallucinations" that people were "likely to believe just because you're a star!" He had also referred to her as "simply canting mad," but then pointed out soothingly, in an effort to assuage her feelings, that "perhaps" she had seen someone after all, and had simply mistaken him for Dennings. "After all," he'd pointed out at the time, "my great-great-grandmother happens to have been Swiss."

Chris moved behind the bar now and reminded him of the incident.

"Oh, now, don't be so silly!" snapped Dennings. "It so happens that I've spent the entire evening at a bloody tea, a faculty tea!"

Chris leaned on the bar. "You were just at a tea?"

"Oh, yes, go ahead; smirk!"

"You got smashed at a tea," she said dryly, "with some Jesuits."

"No, the Jesuits were sober."

"They don't drink?"

"Are you out of your cunting mind?'" he shouted. "They swilled! Never seen such capacities in all my life!"

"Hey, come on, hold it down, Burke! Regan!"

"Yes, Regan," Dennings whispered "Where the hell is my drink?"

"Will you tell me what you were doing at a faculty tea?"

"Bloody public relations; something you should be doing."

Chris handed him a gin on the rocks.

"God, the way we've been mucking their grounds," the director muttered; pious; the glass to his lips. "Oh, yes, go ahead, laugh! That's all that you're good for, laughing and showing a bit of bum."

"I'm just smiling."

"Well, someone had to make a good show."

"And how many times did you say 'fuck,' Burke?"

"Darling, that's crude," he rebuked her gently. "Now tell me, how are you?"

She answered with a despondent shrug.

"Are you glum? Come on, tell me."

"I dunno."

"Tell your uncle."

"Shit, I think I'll have a drink," she said, reaching for a glass.

"Yes, it's good for the stomach. Now, then, what?"

She was slowly pouring vodka. "Ever think A dying?"

"I beg your---"

"Dying," she interrupted. "Ever think about it, Burke? What it means? I mean, really what it means?"

Faintly edgy, he answered, "I don't know. No, I don't. I don't think about it at all. I just do it. What the hell'd you bring it up for?"

She shrugged. "I don't know," she answered softly. She plopped ice into her glass; eyed it thoughtfully. "Yeah... yeah, I do," she amended. "I sort of... well, I thought about it this morning... like a dream... waking up. I don't know. I mean, it just sort of hit me... what it means. I mean, the end---the end!---like I'd never even heard of it before." She shook her head. "Oh, Jesus, did that spook me! I felt like I was falling off the goddamn planet at a hundred million miles an hour."

"Oh, rubbish. Death's a comfort," Dennings sniffed.

"Not for me it isn't, Charlie."

'Well, you live through your children."

"Oh, come off it! My children aren't me."

"Yes, thank heaven. One's entirely enough."

"I mean, think about it, Burke! Not existing---forever! It's---"

"Oh, for heaven sakes! Show your bum at the faculty tea next week and perhaps those priests can give you comfort!"

He banged down his glass. "Let's another."

"You know, I didn't know they drank?"

"Well, you're stupid."

His eyes had grown mean. Was he reaching the point of no return? Chris wondered. She had the feeling she had touched a nerve. Had she?

"Do they go to confession?" she asked him.

"How would I know!" he suddenly bellowed.

"Well, weren't you studying to be a---"

"Where's the bloody drink!"

"Want some coffee?"

"Don't be fatuous. I want another drink."

"Have some coffee."

"Come along, now. One for the road."

"The Lincoln Highway?"

"That's ugly, and I loathe an ugly drunk. Come along, dammit, fill it!"

He shoved his glass across the bar and she poured more gin.

"I guess maybe I should ask a couple of them over," Chris murmured.

"Ask who?"

"Well, whoever." She shrugged. 'The big wheels; you know, priests."

"They'll never leave; there fucking plunderers," he rasped, and gulped his gin.

Yeah, he's starting to blow, thought Chris and quickly changed the subject: she explained about the script and her chance to direct.

"Oh, good," Dennings muttered.

"It scares me."

"Oh, twaddle. My baby, the difficult thing about directing is making it seem as if the damned thing were difficult. I hadn't a clue my first time out, but here I am, you see. It's child's play."

"Burke, to be honest with you, now that they've offered me my chance, I'm really not sure I could direct my grandmother across the street. I mean, all of that technical stuff."

"Come along; leave all that to the editor, the cameraman and the script girl, darling. Get good ones and they’ll see you through. What's important is handling the cast, and, you'd be marvelous, just marvelous at that. You could not only tell them how to move and read a line, my baby, you could show them. Just remember Paul Newman and Rachel, Rachel and don't be so hysterical."

She still looked doubtful. "Well, about this technical stuff," she worried. Drunk or sober, Dennings was the best director in the business. She wanted his advice.

"For instance," he asked her.

For almost an hour she probed to the barricades of minutiae. The data were easily found in tests, but reading tended to fray her patience. Instead; she read people. Naturally inquisitive, she juiced them; wrung them out. But books were unwringable. Books were glib. They said "therefore" and "clearly" when it wasn't clear at all, and their circumlocutions could never be challenged. They could never be stopped for a shrewdly disarming, "Hold it, I'm dumb. Could I have that again?"

They could never be pinned; made to wriggle; dissected. Books were like Karl.

"Darling, all you really need is a brilliant cutter," the director cackled, rounding it off. "I mean someone who really knows his doors."

He'd grown charming and bubbly, and seemed to have passed the threatened danger pointy.

"Beg pardon, madam. You wish something?"

Karl stood attentively at the door to the study.

"Oh, hullo, Thorndike," Dennings giggled. "Or is it Heinrich? I can't keep it straight."

"It is Karl."

"Yes, of course it is. Damn. I'd forgotten. Tell me, Karl, was it public relations you told me you did for the Gestapo, or was it community relations? I believe there's a difference."

Karl spoke politely. "Neither one, sir. I am Swiss."

"Oh, yes, of course." The director guffawed. "And you never went bowling with Goebbels, I suppose."

Karl, impervious, turned to Chris.

"And never went flying with Rudolph Hess!"

"Madam wishes?"

"Oh, l don't know. Burke, you want coffee?"

"Fuck it!"

The director stood up abruptly and strode belligerently from the room and the house.

Chris shook her head, and then turned to Karl. "Unplug the phones," she ordered expressionlessly.

"Yes, madam. Anything else?"

"Oh, maybe some Sanka. Where's Rags?"

"Down in playroom. I call her?"

"Yeah, it's bedtime. Oh, no, wait a second, Karl. Never mind. I'd better go see the bird. Just get me the Sanka, please."

"Yes, madam."

"And for the umpty-eighth time, I apologize for Burke."

"I pay no attention."

"I know. That's what bugs him."

Chris walked to the entry hall of the house, pulled open the door to the basement staircase and started downstairs.

"Hi ya, stinky, whatchya doin' down there? Got the bird?"

"Oh, yes, come see! Come on down, it's all finished!"

The playroom was paneled and brightly decorated. Easels. Paintings. Phonograph. Tables for games and a table for sculpting. Red and white bunting left over from a party for the previous tenant's teenaged son.

"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed Chris as her daughter handed her the figure. It was not quite dry and looked something like a "worry bird," painted orange, except for the beak, which was laterally striped in green and white. A tuft of feathers was glued to the head.

"Do you like it?" asked Regan.

"Oh, honey, I do, I really. do. Got a name for it?"

"Uh-uh."

"What's a good one?"

"I dunno," Regan shrugged.

"Let me see, let me see." Chris tapped fingertips to teeth. "I don't know. Whaddya think? Whaddya think about 'Dumbbird'? Huh? just 'Dumbbird.' "

Regan was snickering, hand to her mouth to conceal the braces. Nodding.

" 'Dumbbird' by a landslide! I'll leave it here to dry and then I'll put him in my room."

Chris was setting flown the bird when she noticed the Ouija board. Close. On the table. She'd forgotten she had it. Almost as curious about herself as she was about others, she'd originally bought it as a possible means of exposing clues to her subconscious. It hadn't worked. She'd used it a time or two with Sharon, and once with Dennings, who had skillfully steered the plastic planchette ("Are you the one who's moving it, ducky?") so that all of the "messages" were obscene, and then afterward blamed it on the "fucking spirits!"

"You playin' with the Ouija board?"

"Yep."

"You know how?"

"Oh, well, sure. Here, I'll show you." She was moving to sit by the board.

"Well, I think you need two people, honey."

"No ya don't, Mom; I do it all the time."

Chris was pulling up a chair. "Well, let's both play, okay"

Hesitation. "Well, okay." She had her fingertips positioned on the white planchette and as Chris reached out to position hers, the planchette made a swift, sudden move to the position on the board marked No.

Chris smiled at her slyly. "Mother, I'd rather do it myself? Is that it? You don't want me to play?"

"No, I do! Captain Howdy said 'no.' "

"Captain who?"

"Captain Howdy."

"Honey, who's Captain Howdy?"

"Oh, ya know. I make questions and he does the answers."

"Oh?"

"Oh, he's nice."

Chris tried not to frown as she felt a dim and sudden concern. The child had loved her father deeply, yet never had reacted visibly to her parents' divorce. And Chris didn't like it. Maybe she cried in her room; she didn't know. But Chris was fearful she was repressing and that her emotions might one day erupt in some harmful form. A fantasy playmate. It didn't sound healthy. Why "Howdy"? For Howard? Her father? Pretty close.

"So how come you couldn't even come up with a name for a dum-dum bird, and then you hit me with something like 'Captain Howdy'? Why do you call him 'Captain Howdy'?"

" 'Cause that's his name, of course," Regan snickered.

"Says who?"

"Well, him."

"Of course."

"Of course."

"And what else does he say to you?"

"Stuff."

"What stuff?"

Regan shrugged. "Just stuff."

"For instance."

"I'll show you. I'll ask him some questions."

"You do that"

Her fingertips on the planchette, Regan stared at the board with eyes drawn tight in concentration. "Captain Howdy, don't you think my mom is pretty?"

A second... five... ten... twenty...

"Captain Howdy?"

More seconds. Chris was surprised. She'd expected her daughter to slide the planchette to the section marked Yes. Oh, for pete's sake, what now? An unconscious hostility? Oh, that's crazy.

"Captain Howdy, that's really not very polite," chided Regan.

"Honey, maybe he's sleeping."

"Do you think?"

"I think you should be sleeping."

"Already?"

"C'mon, babe! Up to bed!" Chris stood up.

"He's a poop," muttered Regan, then followed her mother up the stairs.

Chris tucked her into bed and then sat on the bedside. "Honey, Sunday's no work. You want to do somethin'?"

"What?"

When they'd first come to Washington, Chris had made an effort to find playmates for Regan. She'd uncovered only one, a twelve-year-old girl named Judy. But Judy's family was away for Easter, and Chris was concerned now that Regan might be lonely.

"Oh, well, I don't know," Chris replied. "Somethin'. You want to go see the sights? Hey, the cherry blossoms, maybe! That's right, they're out early! You want to go see 'em?"

"Oh, yeah, Mom!"

"And tomorrow night a movie! How's that?"

"Oh, I love you!"

Regan gave her a hug and Chris hugged her back with an extra fervor, whispering, "Oh, Rags, honey, I love you."

"You can bring Mr. Dennings if you like."

Chris pulled back for an appraisal. "Mr. Dennings?"

"Well, I mean, it's okay."

Chris chuckled. "No, it isn't okay. Honey, why would I want to bring Mr. Dennings?"

"Well, you like him."

"Oh, well, sure I like him, honey; don't you?"

She made no answer.

"Baby, what's going on?" Chris prodded her daughter.

"You're going to many him, Mommy, aren't you." It wasn't a question, but a sullen statement.

Chris exploded into a laugh. "Oh, my baby, of course not! What on earth are you talking about? Mr. Dennings? Where'd you get that idea?"

"But you like him."

"I like pizzas, but I wouldn't ever marry one! Honey, he's a friend, just a crazy old friend!"

"You don't like him like Daddy?"

"I love your daddy, honey; I'll always love your daddy. Mr. Dennings comes by here a lot 'cause he's lonely, that's all; he's a friend."

"Well, I heard..."

"You heard what? Heard from who?"

Whirling slivers of doubt in the eyes; hesitation; then a shrug of dismissal "I don't know. I just thought."

"Well, it's silly, so forget it."

"Okay."

"Now go to sleep."

"Can I read? I'm not sleepy."

"Sure. Read your new book, hon, until you get tired."

"Thanks, Mommy."

"Good night, hon."

"Good night."

Chris blew her a kiss from the door and them closed it. She walked down the stairs. Kids! Where do they get their ideas! She wondered if Regan connected Dennings to her filing for divorce. Oh, come on, that's dumb. Regan knew only that Chris had filed. Yet Howard had wanted it. Long separations. Erosion of ego as the husband of a star. He'd found someone else. Regan didn't know that. Oh, quit all this amateur psychoanalyzing and try to spend a little more time with her!

Back to the study. The script. Chris read. Halfway through, she saw Regan coming toward her.

"Hi, honey. What's wrong?"

"There's these real funny noises, Mom."

"In your room?"

"It's like knocking. I can't go to sleep."

Where the hell are those traps!

"Honey, sleep in my bedroom and I'll see what it is."

Chris led her to the bedroom and tucked her in.

"Can I watch TV for a while till I sleep?"

"Where's your book?"

"l can't find it. Can I watch?"

"Sure; okay." Chris tuned in a channel on the bedroom portable. "Loud enough?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Try to sleep."

Chris turned out the light and went down the hall. She climbed the narrow, carpeted stairs that led to the attic. She opened the door and felt for the light switch; found it; flicked it, stooping as she entered.

She glanced around. Cartons of clippings and correspondence on the pinewood floor. Nothing else, except the traps. Six of them. Baited. The room was spotless. Even the air smelled clean and cool. The attic was unheated. No pipe. No radiator. No little holes in the roof.

"There is nothing."

Chris jumped from her skin. "0h, good Jesus!" she gasped, turning quickly with her hand to a fluttering heart. "Jesus Christ, Karl, don't do that!"

He was standing on the steps.

"Very sorry. But you see? It is clean."

"Yeah, it's clean. Thanks a lot."

"Maybe cat better."

"What?"

"To catch rats."

Without Waiting for an answer, he nodded and left.

For a moment, Chris stared at the doorway. Either Karl hadn't any sense of humor whatever, or he had one so sly it escaped her detection. She couldn't decide which one it was.

She considered the rappings again, then glanced at the angled roof. The street was shaded by various trees, most of them gnarled and interwined with vines; and the branches of a mushrooming, massive basswood umbrellaed the entire front third of the house. Was it squirrels after all? It must be. Or branches. Right. Could be branches. The nights had been windy."

"Maybe cat better."

Chris glanced at the doorway again. Pretty smartass? Abruptly she smiled, looking pertly mischievous.

She went downstairs to Regan's bedroom, picked something up, brought it back to the attic, and then after a minute went back to her bedroom. Regan was sleeping. She returned her to her room, tucked her Into her bed, then went back to her own bedroom, turned off the television set and went to sleep.

The house was quiet until morning.

Eating her breakfast, Chris told Karl in an offhand way that she thought she'd heard a trap springing shut during the night.

"Like to go and take a look?" Chris suggested, sipping coffee and pretending to be engrossed in the morning paper. Without any comment, he went up to investigate.

Chris passed him in the hall on the second floor as he was returning, staring expressionlessly at the large stuffed mouse he was holding. He'd found it with its snout clamped tight in a trap.

As she walked toward her bedroom, Chris lifted an eyebrow at the mouse.

"Someone is funny," Karl muttered as he passed her. He returned the stuffed animal to Regan's bedroom.

"Sure a lot of things goin' on," Chris murmured, shaking her head as she entered her bedroom. She slipped off her robe and prepared to go to work. Yeah, maybe cat better, old buddy. Much better. Whenever she grinned, her entire face appeared to crinkle.

The filming went smoothly that day. Later in the morning, Sharon came by the set and during breaks between scenes, in her portable dressing room, she and Chris handled items of business: a letter to her agent (she would think about the script); "okay" to the White House; a wire to Howard reminding him to telephone on Regan's birthday; a call to her business manager asking if she could afford to take off for a year; plans for a dinner party April twenty-third.

Early in the evening, Chris took Regan out to a movie, and the following day they drove around to points of interest in Chris's Jaguar XKE. The Lincoln Memorial. The Capitol. The cherry blossom lagoon. A bite to eat. Then across the river to Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Regan turned solemn, and later, at the grave of John F. Kennedy, seemed to grow distant and a little sad. She stared at the "eternal flame" for a time; them mutely reached for Chris's hand. "Mom, why do people have to die?"

The question pierced her mother's soul. Oh, Rags, you too? You too? Oh, no! And yet what could she tell her? Lies? Slue couldn't. She looked at her daughter's upturned face, eyes misting with tears. Had she sensed her own thoughts? She had done it so often... so often before. "Honey, people get tired," she answered Regan tenderly.

"Why does God let them?"

For a moment, Chris stared. She was puzzled.

Disturbed. An atheist, she had never taught Regan religion. She thought it dishonest "Who's been telling you about God?" she asked.

"Sharon."

"Oh." She would have to speak to her.

"Mom, why does God let us get tired?"

Looking down at those sensitive eyes and that pain, Chris surrendered; couldn't tell her what she believed. "Well, after a while God gets lonesome for us, Rags. He wants us back."

Regan folded herself into silence. She stayed quiet during the drive home, and her mood persisted all the rest of the day and through Monday.

On Tuesday, Regan's birthday, it seemed to break. Chris took her along to the filming and when the shooting day was over, the cast and crew sang "Happy Birthday" and brought out a cake. Always a kind and gentle man when sober, Dennings had the lights rewarmed and filmed her as she cut it. He called it a "screen test," and afterwards promised to make her a star. She seemed quite gay.

But after dinner and the opening of presents, the mood seemed to fade. No word from Howard. Chris placed a call to him in Rome, and was told by a clerk at his hotel that he hadn't been there for several days and couldn't be reached. He was somewhere on a yacht.

Chris made excuses.

Regan nodded, subdued, and shook her head to her mother's suggestion that they go to the Hot Shoppe for a shake. Without a word, she went downstairs to the basement playroom, where she remained until time for bed.

The following morning when Chris opened her eyes, she found Regan in bed with her, half awake.

"Well, what in the.... What are you doing here?" Chris chuckled.

"My bed was shaking."

"You nut." Chris kissed her and pulled up her covers. "Go to sleep. It's still early."

What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night.

CHAPTER TWO

He stood at the edge of the lonely subway platform, listening for the rumble of a train that would still the ache that was always with him. Like his pulse. Heard only in silence. He shifted his bag to the other hand and stared down the tunnel. Points of light. They stretched into dark like guides to hopelessness.

A cough. He glanced to the left. The gray-stubbled derelict numb on the ground in a pool of his urine was sitting up. With yellowed eyes he stared at the priest with the chipped, sad face.

The priest looked away. He would come. He would whine. Couldjya help an old altar boy, Father? Wouldjya? The vomit-flaked hand pressing down on the shoulder. The fumbling for the medal. The reeking of the breath of a thousand confessions with the wine and the garlic and the stale mortal sins belching out all together, and smothering... smothering...

The priest heard the derelict rising.

Don't come!

Heard a step.

Ah, my God, let me be!

"Hi ya, Faddah."

He winced. Sagged. Couldn't turn. He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. In absent gesture, he felt at his sleeve as if for an unseen band of mourning. He dimly remembered another Christ.

"Hey, Faddah!"

The hum of an incoming train. Then sounds of stumbling. He looked to the tramp. He was staggering. Fainting. With a blind, sudden rush. the priest was to him; caught him; dragged him to the bench against the wall.

"I'm a Cat'lic," the derelict mumbled. "I'm Cat'lic."

The priest eased him down; stretched him out; saw his train. He quickly pulled a dollar from out of his wallet and placed it in the pocket of the derelict's jacket. Then decided he would lose it. He plucked out the dollar and stuffed it into a urine-damp trouser pocket, then he picked up his bag and boarded the train.

He sat in a corner and pretended to sleep. At the end of the line he walked to Fordham University. The dollar had been meant for his cab.

When he reached the residence hall for visitors, he signed his name on the register. Damien Karras, he wrote. Then examined it. Something was wrong. Wearily he remembered and added, S. J.

He took a room in Weigel Hall and, after an hour, was able to sleep.

The following day he attended a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. As principal speaker, he delivered a paper entitled "Psychological Aspects of Spiritual Development." At the end of the day, he enjoyed a few drinks and a bite to eat with some other psychiatrists. They paid. He left them early. He would have to see his mother.

He walked to the crumbling brownstone apartment building on Manhattan's East Twenty-first Street. Pausing by the steps that led up to the door, he eyed the children on the stoop. Unkempt. Ill-clothed. No place to go. He remembered evictions: humiliations: -walking home with a seventh-grade sweetheart and encountering his mother as she hopefully rummaged through a garbage can on the corner. He climbed the steps and opened the door as if it were a tender wound.

An odor like cooking. Like rotted sweetness. He remembered the visits to Mrs. Ghoirelli and her tiny apartment with the eighteen cats. He gripped the banister and climbed, overcome by a sudden, draining weariness that he knew was caused by guilt. He should never have left her. Not alone.

Her greeting was joyful A shout. A kiss. She rushed to make coffee. Dark. Stubby, gnarled legs. He sat in the kitchen and listened to her talk, the dingy walls and soiled floor seeping into his bones. The apartment was a hovel. Social Security. Each month, a few dollars from a brother.

She sat at the table. Mrs. This. Uncle That. Still in immigrant accents. He avoided those eyes that were wells of sorrow, eyes that spent days staring out of a window.

He should never have left her.

He wrote a few letters for her later. She could neither read nor write any English Then he spent time repairing the tuner on a crackling, plastic radio. Her world. The news. Mayor Lindsay.

He went to the bathroom. Yellowing newspaper spread on the tile. Stains of rust in the tub and the sink. On the floor, an old corset. Seeds of vocation. From these he had fled into love. Now the love had grown cold. In the night, he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost, crying wind.

At a quarter to eleven, he kissed her good-bye; promised to return jest as soon as he could. He left with the radio tuned to the news.

Once back in his room in Weigel Hall, he gave some thought to writing a letter to the Jesuit head of the Maryland province. He'd covered the ground with him once before: request for a transfer to the New York province in order to be loser to his mother; request for a teaching post and relief from his duties. In requesting the latter, he'd cited as a reason "unfitness" for the work.

The Maryland Provincial had taken it up with him during the course of his annual inspection tour of Georgetown University, a function that closely paralleled that of an army inspector general in the granting of confidential hearings to those who had grievances or complaints. On the point of Damien Karras' mother, the Provicial had nodded and expressed his sympathy; but the question of the priest's "unfitness" he thought contradictory on its face. But Karras had pursued it: "Well, it's more than psychiatry, Torn. You know that. Some of their problems come down to vocation, to the meaning of their lives. Hell, it isn't always sex that's involved, it's their faith, and I just can't cut it, Tom, it's too much. I need out. I'm having problems of my own. l mean, doubts"

"What thinking man doesn't, Damien?"

A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. My mother's nine First Fridays. Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in the paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop; set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. No. Too emotional. Vague. Existential. More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil. And much of the evil resulted from doubt; from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not reveal Himself? Not speak?"

"Lord, give us a sign...."

The raising of Lazarus was dim in the distant past. No one now living had heard his laughter.

Why not a sign?

At various times the priest would long to have lived-with Christ: to have sin; to have touched; to have probed His eyes. Ah, my God, let me see You! Let me know! Come in dreams!

The yearning consumed him.

He sat at the desk now with pen above paper. Perhaps it wasn't time that had silenced the Provincial. Perhaps he understood that faith was finally a matter of love.

The Provincial had promised to consider the requests, but thus far nothing had bees done. Karras wrote the letter and went to bed.

He sluggishly awakened at 5 A. M. and went to the chapel in Weigel Hall, secured a Host, then returned to his room and said Mass.

" 'Et clamor meus ad te veniat,' " he prayed with murmured anguish. " 'Let my cry come unto Thee...' "

He lifted the Host in consecration with an aching remembrance of the joy it once gave him; felt once again, as he did each morning, the pang of an unexpected glimpse from afar and unnoticed of a longlost love.

He broke the Host above the chalice.

" 'Peace I leave you. My peace I give you....' "

He tucked the Host inside his mouth and swallowed the papery taste of despair.

When the Mass was over, he polished the chalice and carefully placed it in his bag. He rushed for the seven-ten train back to Washington, carrying pain in a black valise.

CHAPTER THREE

Early on the morning of April 11, Chris made a telephone call to her doctor in Los Angeles- and asked him for a referral to a local psychiatrist for Regan.

"Oh? What's wrong?"

Chris explained. Beginning on the day after Regan's birthday---and following Howard's failure to call---she had noticed a sudden and dramatic change in her daughter's behavior and disposition. Insomnia.

Quarrelsome. Fits of temper. Kicked things. Threw things. Screamed. Wouldn't eat. In addition, her energy seemed abnormal. She was constantly moving, touching, turning; tapping; running and jumping about. Doing poorly with schoolwork. Fantasy playmate. Eccentric attention-getting tactics.

"Such as what?" the physician inquired.

She started with the rappings. Since the night she'd investigated the attic, she'd heard them again on two occasions. In both of these instances, she'd noticed, Regan was present in the room; and the rappings would tease at the moment Chris entered. Secondly, she told him, Regan would "lose" things in the room: a dress; her toothbrush; books; her shoes. She complained about "somebody moving" her furniture. Finally, on the morning following the dinner at the White House, Chris saw Karl in Regan's bedroom pulling a bureau back into place from a spot that was halfway across the room. When Chris had inquired what he was doing, he repeated his former "Someone is funny," and refused to elaborate any further, but shortly thereafter Chris had found Regan in the kitchen complaining that someone had moved all her furniture during the night when she was sleeping.

This was the incident, Chris explained, that had finally crystallized her suspicions. It was clearly her daughter who was doing it all.

"You mean somnambulism? She's doing it in her sleep?"

"No, Marc, she's doing it when she's awake. To get attention."

Chris mentioned the matter of the shaking bed, Which had happened twice more and was always followed by Regan's insistence that she sleep with her mother.

"Well, that could be physical," the internist ventured.

"No, Marc, I didn't say the bed is shaking. I said that she says that it's shaking."

"Do you know that it isn't shaking?"

"No"

"Well, it might be clonic spasms; he murmured.

"Who?"

"Any temperature?"

"No. Listen, what do you think?" she asked. "Should I take her to a shrink or what?"

"Chris, you mentioned her schoolwork. How is she doing with her math?"

'Why'd you ask?"

"How's she doing?" he persisted.

"Just rotten. I mean, suddenly rotten."

He grunted.

"Why'd you ask?" she repeated "Well, it's part of the syndrome."

"Of what?"

'Nothing serious. I'd rather not guess about it oven the phone. Got a pencil?"

He wanted to give her the name of a Washington internist.

"Marc, can't you come out here and check her yourself?" Jamie. A lingering infection. Chris's doctor at that time had prescribed a new, broad-spectrum antibiotic. Refilling a prescription at a local drugstore, the pharmacist was wary. "I don't want to alarm you, ma'am, but this... Well, it's quite new on the market, and they've found that in Georgia it's been causing aplastic anemia in..." Jamie. Jamie. Dead. And ever since, Chris had never trusted doctors. Only Marc. And that had taken years. "Marc, can't you?" Chris pleaded.

"No, I can't, but don't worry. This man is brilliant. The best. Now get a pencil."

Hesitation. Then, "Okay."

She wrote down the name.

"Have him look her over and then tell him to call me," the internist advised. "And forget the psychiatrist for now."

"Are you sure?"

He delivered a blistering statement regarding the readiness of the general public to recognize psychosomatic illness, while failing to recognize the reverse: that illness of the body was often the cause of seeming illness of the mind.

"Now what would you say," he proposed as an instance, "if you were my internist, God forbid, and I told you I had headaches, recurring nightmares, nausea, insomnia and blurring of the vision; and also that I generally felt unglued and was worried to death about my job? Would you say I was neurotic?"

"I'm a bad one to ask, Marc; I know that you're crazy."

"Those symptoms I gave you are the same as for brain tumor, Chris. Check the body. That's first. Then well see."

Chris telephoned the internist and made an appointment for that afternoon. Her time was her own now. The filming was over, at least for her. Burke Dennings continued, loosely supervising the work of the "second unit;" a generally less expensive crew that was filming scenes of lesser importance, mostly helicopter shots of various exteriors around the city; also stunt work; scenes without any of the principal actors.

But he wanted each foot of film to be perfect.

The doctor was in Arlington. Samuel Klein. While Regan sat crossly in an examining room, Klein seated her mother in his office and took a brief case history. She told him the trouble. He listened; nodded; made copious notes. When she mentioned the shaking of- the bed, he appears to frown. But Chris continued: "Marc seemed to think it was kind of significant that Regan's doing poorly with her math. Now why was that?"

"You mean schoolwork?"

"Yes, schoolwork, but math in particular, though. What's it mean?"

"Well, let's wait until I've looked at her, Mrs. MacNeil."

He then excused himself and gave Regan a complete examination that included taking samples of urine and her blood. The urine was for testing of her liver and kidney functions; the blood for a number of checks: diabetes; thyroid function; red-cell blood count looking for possible anemia, White-cell blood count looking for exotic diseases of the blood.

After he finished, he sat for a while and talked to Regan, observing her demeanor, and then returned to Chris and started writing a prescription.

"She appears to have a hyperkinetic behavior disorder."

"A what?"

"A disorder of the nerves. At least We think it is. We don't know yet exactly how it works, but its often seen in early adolescence. She shows all the symptoms: the hyperactivity; the temper; her performance in math."

"Yeah, the math. Why the math?"

"It affects concentration." He ripped the prescription from the small blue pad and handed it over, "Now this is for Ritalin."

"What?"

"Methylphenidate."

"Oh."

"Ten milligrams, twice a day, I'd recommend one at eight A. M., and the other at two in the afternoon."

She was eyeing the prescription.

"What is it? A tranquilizer?"

"A stimulant."

"Stimulant? She's higher'n a kite right now."

"Her condition isn't quite what it seems," explained Klein. "It's a form of overcompensation. An overreaction to depression."

"Depression?"

Klein nodded.

"Depression..." Chris murmured. She was thoughtful.

"Well, you mentioned her father," said Klein.

Chris looked up. "Do you think I should take her to see a psychiatrist?"

"Oh, no. I'd wait and see what happens with the Ritalin. I think that's the answer. Wait two or three weeks."

"So you think it's all nerves."

"I suspect so."

"And those lies she's been telling? This'll stop it?"

His answer puzzled her. He asked her if she'd ever known Regan to swear or use obscenities.

"Never," Chris answered.

"Well, you see, that's quite similar to things like her lying---uncharacteristic, from what you tell me, but in certain disorders of the nerves it can---"

"Wait a minute," Chris interrupted, perplexed. "Where'd you ever get the notion she uses obscenities? I mean, is that what you were saying or did I misunderstood?"

For a moment, he eyed her rather curiously; considered; then cautiously ventured, "Yes, I'd say that she uses obscenities. Weren't you aware of it?"

"I'm still not aware of it. What are you talking about?"

"Well, she let loose quite a string while I was examining her, Mrs. MacNeil."

"You're kidding! Like what?"

He looked evasive. "Well, I'd say her vocabulary's rather extensive."

"Well, what, for instance? I mean, give me an example!"

He shrugged.

"You mean 'shit?' Or 'fuck'?"

He relaxed. "Yes, she used those words," he said.

"And what else did she say? Specifically."

"Well, specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised and to keep my goddamn finger away from her cunt."

Chris gasped with shock. "She used those words?"

"Well, it isn't unusual, Mrs. MacNeil, and I really wouldn't worry about it at all. It's a part of the syndrome."

She was shaking her head, looking down at her shoes. "It's just hard to believe."

"Look, I doubt that she even understood what she was saying," he soothed.

"Yeah, I guess," murmured Chris. "Maybe not"

'Try the Ritalin," he advised her, "and we'll see what develops. And I'd like to take a look at her again in two weeks."

He consulted a calendar pad on his desk. "Let's see; let's make it Wednesday the twenty-seventh. Would that be convenient?" he asked, glancing up.

"Yeah, sure," she murmured, getting up from the chair. She crumpled the prescription in a pocket of her coat. "The twenty-seventh would be fine."

"I'm quite a big fan of yours," Klein said, smiling as he opened the door leading into the hall.

She paused in the doorway, preoccupied, a fingertip pressed to her lip. She glanced to the doctor.

"You don't think a psychiatrist, huh?"

"I don't know. But the best explanation is always the simplest one. Let's wait. Let's wait and see." He smiled encouragingly. "In the meantime, try not to worry."

"How?"

She left him.

As they drove back home, Regan asked her what the doctor had said.

"That you're nervous."

Chris had decided not to talk about her language. Burke. She picked it up from Burke.

But she did speak to Sharon about it later, asking if she'd ever heard Regan use that kind of obscenity.

"Why, no," replied Sharon. "I mean, not even lately. But you know, I think her art teacher made a remark." A special tutor who came to the house.

"You mean recently?" Chris asked.

"Yes, it was just last week. But you know her. I just figured maybe Regan said 'damn' or 'crap.' You know, something like that."

"By the way, have you been talking to her much about religion, Shar?"

Sharon flushed.

"Well, a little; that's all. I mean, it's hard to avoid. You see, she asks so many questions, and---well... " She gave a helpless little shrug. "It's just hard. I mean, how do I answer without telling what I think is a great big lie?"

"Give her multiple choice."

In the days that preceded her scheduled party, Chris was extremely diligent in seeing that Regan took her dosage of Ritalin. By the night of the party, however, she had failed to observe any noticeable improvement.

There were subtle signs, in fact, of a gradual deterioration: increased forgetfulness; untidiness; and one complaint of nausea. As for attention-getting tactics, although the familiar ones failed to recur, there appeared to be a new one: reports of a foul, unpleasant "smell" in Regan's bedroom. At Regan's insistence, Chris took a whiff one day and smelled nothing.

"You don't?"

"you mean, you smell it right now?" Chris had asked her.

"Well, sure!"

"What's it smell like?"

She'd wrinkled her nose. "Well, like something burny."

"Yeah?" Chris had sniffed.

"Don't you smell it?"

"Well, yes, hon," she'd lied. "Just a little. Let's open up the window for a while, get some air in."

In fact, she'd smelled nothing, but had made up her mind that she would temporize, at least until the appointment with the doctor. She was also preoccupied with a number of other concerns. One was arrangements for the dinner party. Another had to do with the script. Although she was very enthusiastic about the prospect of directing, a natural caution had prevented her from making a prompt decision. In the meantime, her agent was calling her daily. She told him she'd given the script to Dennings for an opinion, and hoped he was reading and not consuming it.

The third, and the most important, of Chris's concerns was the failure of two financial ventures: a purchase of convertible debentures through the use of prepaid interest; and an investment in an oil-drilling project in southern Libya. Both had been entered upon for the sheltering of income that would have been subject to enormous taxation. But something even worse had developed: the wells had come up dry and rocketing interest rates had prompted a sell-off in bonds.

These were the problems that her gloomy business manager flew into town to discuss. He arrived on Thursday. Chris had him charting and explaining through Friday. At last, she decided on a course of action that the manager thought wise. He nodded approval. But he frowned when she brought up the subject of buying a Ferrari.

"You mean, a new one?"

"Why not? You know. I drove one in a picture once. If we write to the factory, maybe, and remind them, it could be they'd give us a deal. Don't you think?"

He didn't. And cautioned that he thought a new car was improvident.

"Ben, I made eight hundred thou last year and you're saying I can't get a freaking car! Don't you think that's ridiculous? Where did it go?"

He reminder her that most of her money was in shelters. Then he listed the various drains on her gross; federal income tax; projected federal income tax; her state tax, tax on her real estate holdings; ten percent commission to her agent; five to him; five to her publicist; one and a quarter taken out as donation to the Motion Picture Welfare Fund; an outlay for wardrobe in tune with the fashion; salaries to Willie and Karl and Sharon and the caretaker of the Los Angeles home; various travel costs; and, finally, her monthly expenses.

"Will you do another picture this year?' he asked her.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Do I have to?"

"Yes, l think you'd better."

She cupped her face in both her hands and eyed him moodily. "What about a Honda?"

He made no reply.

Later that evening, Chris tried to put all of her worries aside; tried to keep herself busy with making preparations for the next night's party.

"Let's serve the curry buffet instead of sit-down," she told Willie and Karl. "We can set up a table at the end of the living room. Right?"

"Very good, madam," Karl answered quickly.

"So what do you think, Willie? A fresh fruit salad for dessert?"

"Yes, excellent!" said Karl.

"Thanks, Willie."

She'd invited an interesting mixture. In addition to Burke ("Show up sober, dammit!") and the youngish director of the second unit, she expected a senator (and wife); an Apollo astronaut (and wife); two Jesuits from Georgetown; her next-door neighbors; and Mary Jo Perrin and Ellen Cleary.

Mary Jo Perrin was a plump and gray-headed Washington seeress whom Chris had met at the White House dinner and liked immensely. She'd expected to find her austere and forbidding, but "You're not like that at all!" she'd been able to tell her. Bubbly-warm and unpretentious.

Ellen Cleary was a middle-aged State Department secretary who'd worked in the U. S. Embassy in Moscow when Chris toured Russia. She had gone to considerable effort and trouble to rescue Chris from a number of difficulties and encumbrances encountered in the course of her travels, not the least of which had been caused by the redheaded actress' outspokenness. Chris had remembered her with affection over the years, and had looked her up on coming to Washington.

"Hey, Shar," she asked, "which priests are coming?"

"I'm not sure yet. I invited the president and the dean of the college, but I think that the president's sending an alternate. His secretary called me late this morning and said that he might have to go out of town."

"Who's he sending?" Chris asked with guarded interest.

"Let me see." Sharon rummaged through scraps of notes. "Yes, here it is, Chris. His assistant- Father Joseph Dyer."

"You mean from the campus?"

"Well, I'm not sure."

"Oh, okay"

She seemed disappointed.

"Keep an eye on Burke tomorrow night," She instructed.

"I will."

"Where's Rags?"

"Downstairs."

"You know, maybe you should start to keep your typewriter there; don't you think? I mean, that way you can watch her when you're typing. Okay? I don't like her being alone so much."

"Good idea."

"Okay, later. Go home. Meditate. Play with horses."

The planning and preparations at an end, Chris again found herself turning worried thoughts toward Regan. She tried to watch television. Could not concentrate. Felt uneasy. There was a strangeness in the house. Like settling stillness. Weighted dust.

By midnight, all in the house were asleep.

There were no disturbances. That night.

CHAPTER FOUR

She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants. Her shoes were comfortable. They reflected her hope far the evening.

The first to arrive was Mary Jo Perrin, who came with Robert, her teen-age son. The last was pink-faced Father Dyer. He was young and diminutive, with fey eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. At the door, he apologized for his lateness. "Couldn't find the right necktie," he told Chris expressionlessly. For a moment, she stared at him blankly, then burst into laughter. Her day-long depression began to lift.

The drinks did their work. By a quarter to ten, they were scattered about the living room eating their dinners in vibrant knots of conversation.

Chris filled her plate from the steaming buffet and scanned the room for Mary Jo Perrin. There. On a sofa with Father Wagner, the Jesuit dean. Chris had spoken to him briefly. He had a bald, freckled scalp and a dry, soft manner. Chris drifted to the sofa and folded to the floor in front of the coffee table as the seeress chuckled with mirth.

"Oh, come on, Mary Jo!" the dean said, smiling as he lifted a forkful of curry to his mouth.

"Yeah, come on, Mary Jo," echoed Chris.

"Oh, hi! Great curry!" said the dean.

"Not too hot?"

"Not at all; it's just right. Mary Jo has been telling me there used to be a Jesuit who was also a medium."

"And he doesn't believe me!" chuckled the seeress.

"Ah, distinguo," corrected the dean. "I just said it was hard to believe."

"You mean medium medium?" asked Chris.

"Why, of course," said Mary Jo. "Why, he even used to levitate!"

"Oh, I do it every morning," said the Jesuit quietly.

"You mean he held séances?" Chris asked Mrs. Perrin.

"Well, yes," she answered. "He was very, very famous in the nineteenth century. In fact, he was probably the only spiritualist of his time who wasn't ever clearly convicted of fraud."

"As I said, he wasn't a Jesuit," commented the dean.

"Oh, my, but was he!" She laughed.: "When he turned twenty-two, he joined the Jesuits and promised not to work anymore as a medium, but they threw him out of France"---she laughed even harder---"right after a séance that he held at the Tuileries. Do you know what he did? In the middle of the séance he told the empress she was about to be touched by the hands of a spirit child who was about to fully materialize, and when they suddenly turned all of the lights on"---she guffawed---"they caught him sitting with his naked foot on the empress' arm! Now, can you imagine?"

The Jesuit was smiling as he set down his plate.

"Don't come looking for discounts anymore on indulgences, Mary Jo."

"Oh, come on, every family's got one black sheep."

"We were pushing our quota with the Medici popes."

"Y'know, I had an experience once," began Chris."

But the dean interrupted. "Are you making this a matter of confession?"

Chris smiled and said, "No, I'm not a Catholic."

"Oh, well, neither are the Jesuits." Mrs. Perrin chuckled.

"Dominican slander," retorted the dean. Then to Chris he said, "I'm sorry, my dear. You were saying?'

"Well, just that I thought I saw somebody levitate once. In Bhutan."

She recounted the story.

"Do you think that's possible?" she ended. "I mean, really, seriously."

"Who knows?" He shrugged. "Who knows what gravity is. Or matter, when it comes to that."

"Would you like my opinion?" interjected Mrs. Perrin.

The dean said, "No, Mary Jo; I've taken a vow of poverty."

"So have I," Chris muttered.

"What was that?" asked the dean, leaning forward.

'"Oh, nothing. Say, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. Do you know that little cottage that's back of the church over there?" She pointed in the general direction.

"Holy Trinity?" he asked.

"Yes, right. Well, what goes on in there?"

"Oh, well, that's where they say Black Mass," said Mrs. Perrin.

"Black who?"

"Black Mass."

"What's that?"

"She's kidding," said the dean.

"Yes, I know," said Chris, "but I'm dumb. I mean, What's a Black Mass?"

"Oh, basically, it's a travesty on the Catholic Mass," explained the dean. "It's connected to witchcraft. Devil worship."

"Really? You mean, there really is such a thing?"

"I really couldn't say. Although I heard a statistic once about something like possibly fifty thousand Black Masses being said every year in the city of Paris."

"You mean now?" marveled Chris.

"It's just something I heard."

"Yes, of course, from the Jesuit secret service," twitted Mrs. Perrin.

"Not at all. I hear voices," responded the dean.

"You know, back in L. A.," mentioned Chris, "you hear an awful lot of stories about witch cults being around. I've often wondered if it's true."

"Well, as I said, I wouldn't know," said the dean. "But I'll tell you who might---Joe Dyer. Where's Joe?"

The dean looked around.

"Oh, over there," he said, nodding toward the other priest, who was standing at the buffet with his back to them. He was heaping a second helping onto his plate. "Hey, Joe?"

The young priest turned, his face impassive.. "You called, great dean?"

The other Jesuit beckoned with his fingers.

"All right, just a second," answered Dyer, and resumed his attack on the curry and salad.

"That's the only leprechaun in the priesthood," said the dean with an edge of fondness. He sipped at his wine. "They had a couple of cases of desecration in Holy Trinity last week, and Joe said something about one of them reminding him of some things they used to do at Black Mass, so I expect he knows something about the subject."

"What happened at the church?" asked Mary Jo Perrin.

"Oh, it's really too disgusting," said the dean.

"Come on, we're all through with our dinners."

"No, please. It's too much," he demurred.

"Oh, come on!"

"You mean you can't read my mind, Mary Jo?" he asked her.

"Oh, I could," she responded, "but I really don't think that I'm worthy to enter that Holy of Holies!" She chuckled.

"Well, it really is sick," began the dean.

He described the desecrations. In the first of the incidents, the elderly sacristan of the church had discovered a mound of human excrement on the altar cloth directly before the tabernacle.

"Oh, that really is sick." Mrs. Perrin grimaced.

"Well, the other's even worse," remarked the dean; then employed indirection and one or two euphemisms to explain how a massive phallus sculpted in clay had been found glued firmly to a statue of Christ on the left side altar.

"Sick enough?" he concluded.

Chris noticed that Mary Jo seemed genuinely disturbed as she said, "Oh, that's enough, now. I'm sorry that I asked. Let's change the subject, please."

"No, I'm fascinated," said Chris.

"Yes, of course. I'm a fascinating human."

It was Father Dyer. He was hovering over her with his plate. "Listen, give me just a minute, and then I'll be back. I think I've got something going over there with the astronaut."

"Like what?" asked the dean.

Father Dyer raised his eyebrows in deadpan surmise. "Would you believe," he asked, "first missionary on the moon?"

They burst into laughter.

"You're just the right size," said Mrs. Perrin "They could stow you in the nose cone."

"No, not me," he corrected her solemnly, and then turned to the dean to explain: "I've been trying to fix it up for Emory."

"That's our disciplinarian on campus," Dyer explained in an aside to the women. "Nobody's up there and that's what he likes, you see; he sort of likes things quiet."

"And so who would he convert?" Mrs. Perrin asked.

"What do you mean?" Dyer frowned at her earnestly. "He'd convert the astronauts. That's it. I mean, that's what he likes: You know, one or two people. No groups. Just a couple."

With deadpan gaze, Dyer glanced toward the astronaut.

"Excuse me," he said and walked away.

"I like him," said Mrs. Perrin.

"Me too," Chris agreed. Then she turned to the dean. "You haven't told me what goes on in that cottage," she reminded him. "Big secret? Who's that priest I keep seeing there? You know, sort of dark? Do you know the one I mean?"

"Father Karras," said the dean in a lowered tone; with a trace of regret.

"What's he do?"

"He's a counselor." He put down his wineglass and turned it by the stem. "Had a pretty rough knock last night, poor guy."

"Oh, what?" asked Chris with a sudden concern.

"Well, his mother passed away."

Chris felt a melting sensation of grief that she couldn't explain. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said.

"He seems to be taking it pretty hard," resumed the Jesuit. "She was living by herself, and I guess she was dead for a couple of days before they found her."

"Oh, how awful," Mrs. Perrin murmured.

"Who found her?" Chris asked solemnly.

"The superintendent of her apartment building. I guess they wouldn't have found her even now except... Well, the next-door neighbors complained about her radio going all the time."

"That's sad," Chris murmured.

"Excuse me, please, madam."

She looked up at Karl. He held a tray filled with glasses and liqueurs.

"Sure, set it down here, Karl, that'll be fine."

Chris liked to serve the liqueurs to her guests herself. It added an intimacy, she felt, that might otherwise be lacking.

"Well, let's see now, I'll start with you," she told the dean and Mrs. Perrin; and served them. Then she moved about the room, taking orders and fetching for each of her guests, and by the time she had made the rounds, the various clusters had shifted to new combinations, except for Dyer and the astronaut, who seemed to be getting thicker. "No, I'm really not a priest," Chris heard Dyer say solemnly, his arm on the astronaut's chuckle-heaved shoulder. "I'm actually a terribly avant-garde rabbi." And not long after, she overheard Dyer inquiring of the astronaut. "What is space?" and when the astronaut shrugged and said he really didn't know, Father Dyer had fixed him with an earnest frown and said, "You should."

Chris was standing with Ellen Cleary afterward, reminiscing about Moscow, when she heard a familiar, strident voice ringing angrily through from the kitchen.

Oh, Jesus! Burke!

He was shrieking obscenities at someone.

Chris excused herself and went quickly to the kitchen, where Dennings was railing viciously at Karl while Sharon made futile attempts to hush him.

"Burke!" exclaimed Chris. "Knock it off!"

The director ignored her, continued to rage, the corners of his mouth flecked foamy with saliva, while Karl leaned mutely against the sink with folded arms and stolid expression, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on Dennings.

"Karl!" Chris snapped. 'Will you get out of here? Get out! Can't you see how he is?"

But the Swiss would not budge until Chris began actually to shove him toward the door.

"Naa-zi pig!" Dennings screamed at his back. And then he turned genially to Chris and rubbed his hands together. "What's dessert?" he asked mildly.

"Dessert!" Chris thumped at her brow with the heel of her hand.

"Well, I'm hungry," he whined.

Chris turned to Sharon. "Feed him! I've got to get Regan up to Bed. And, Burke, for chrissakes," she asked the director, "will you behave yourself! There are priests out there!" She pointed.

He creased his brow as his eyes grew intense with- a sudden and apparently genuine interest. "Oh, you noticed that too?" he asked without guile.

Chris left the kitchen and went down to check Regan in the basement playroom, where her daughter had spent the entire day. She found her playing with the Ouija board. She seemed sullen; abstracted; remote. Well, at least she isn't feisty, Chris reflected and hopeful of diverting her, she brought her to the living room and began to introduce her to her guests.

"Oh, isn't she darling!" said the wife of the senator.

Regan was strangely well behaved, except for a moment with Mrs. Perrin when she would neither speak nor accept her hand. But the seeress made a joke of it.

"Knows I'm a fake," She winked at Chris. But then, with a curious air of scrutiny, she reached forward and gripped Regan's hand with a gentle pressure, as if checking her pulse. Regan quickly shook her off and glared malevolently.

"Oh, dear, dear, dear, she must be tired," Mrs. Perrin said casually; yet she continued to watch Regan with a probing fixity, an anxiety unexplained.

"She's been feeling kind of sick," Chris murmured in apology. She looked down at Regan. "Haven't you, honey?"

Regan did not answer. She kept her eyes on the floor.

There was no one left for Began to meet except the senator and Robert, Mrs. Perrin's son, and Chris thought it best to pass them up. She took Regan up to bed and tucked her in.

"Do you think you can sleep?" Chris asked.

"I don't know," she answered dreamily. She'd turned on her side and was staring at the wall with a distant expression.

"Would you like me to read to you for a while?"

A shake of the head.

"Okay, then. Try to sleep."

She leaned over and kissed her, and then walked to the door and flicked the light switch.

"Night, my baby."

Chris was almost out the door when Regan called out to her very softly: "Mother, what's wrong with me?"

So haunted. The tone so despairing. So disproportionate to her condition. For a moment the mother felt shaken and confused. But quickly she righted herself.

"Well, it's just like I said, hon; it's nerves. All you need is those pills for a couple of weeks and I know you'll be feeling just fine. Now then, try to go to sleep, hon, okay?'

No response. Chris waited.

"Okay?" she repeated.

"Okay," whispered Regan.

Chris abruptly noticed goose pimples rising on her forearm. She rubbed it. Good Christ, it gets cold in this room. Where's the draft coming in from?

She moved to the window and checked along the edges. Found nothing. Turned to Regan. "'You warm enough, baby?"

No answer.

Chris moved to the bedside. "Regan? You asleep?" she whispered.

Eyes closed. Deep breathing.

Chris tiptoed from the room.

From the hall she heard singing, and as she walked down the stairs, she saw with pleasure that the young Father Dyer was playing the piano near the livingroom picture window and was leading a group that had gathered around him in cheerful song. As she entered the living room, they had just finished "Till We Meet Again."

Chris started forward to join the group, but was quickly intercepted by the senator and his wife, who had their coats across their arms. They seemed edgy.

"Are you leaving so soon?" Chris asked.

"Oh, I'm really so sorry, and my dear, we've had a marvelous evening," the senator effused "But poor Martha's got a headache."

"Oh, I am so sorry, but I do feel terrible," moaned the senator's wife. "Will you excuse us, Chris? It'd been such a lovely party."

"I'm really sorry you have to go," said Chris.

She accompanied them to the door and she could hear Father Dyer in the background asking, "Does anyone else know the words to 'I'll Bet You're Sorry Now, Tokyo Rose'?"

She bade them good night. On her way back to the living room, Sharon stepped quietly out from the study.

"Where's Burke?" Chris asked her.

"In there," Sharon answered with a nod toward the study. "He's sleeping it off. Say, what did the senator say to you? Anything?"

"What do you mean?" asked Chris. "They just left."

"Well, I guess it's as well."

"Sharon, what do you mean?"

"Oh, Burke," sighed Sharon. In a guarded tone, she described an encounter between the senator and the director. Dennings, had remarked to him, in passing, said Sharon, that there appeared to be "an alien pubic hair floating round in my gin." Then he'd turned to the senator and added in a tone that was vaguely accusatory, "Never seen it before in my life! Have you?"

Chris giggled as Sharon went on to describe how the senator's embarrassed reaction had triggered one of Dennings' quixotic rages, in which he'd expressed his "boundless gratitude" for the existence of politicians, since without them "one couldn't distinguish who the statesmen were, you see."

When the senator had moved away in a huff, the director turned to Sharon and said proudly, "There, you see? I didn't curse. Now then, don't you think I handled that rather demurely?"

Chris couldn't help laughing. "Oh, well, let him sleep. But you'd better stay in there in case he wakes up. Would you mind?"

"Not at all." Sharon entered the study.

In the living room, Mary Jo Perrin sat alone and thoughtful in a corner chair. She looked edgy; disturbed. Chris started to join her, but changed her mind when one of the neighbors drifted over to the corner.

Chris headed for the piano instead. Dyer broke off his playing of chords and looked up to greet her. "Yes, young lady, and what can we do for you today? We're running a special on novenas."

Chris chuckled with the others. "I thought I'd get the scoop on what goes on at Black Mass," she said,-"Father Wagner said you were the expert."

The group at the piano fell silent with interest.

"No, not really," said Dyer, lightly touching some chords. "Why'd you mention Black Mass?" he asked her soberly.

"Oh, well; some of us were talking before about----well... about those things that they found at Holy Trinity, and---"

"Oh, you mean the desecrations?" Dyer interrupted.

"Hey, somebody give us a clue. what' going on," demanded the astronaut.

"Me too," said Ellen Cleary. "I'm lost."

"Well, they found some desecrations at the church down the street," explained Dyer.

"Well, like what?" asked the astronaut.

"Forget it," Father, Dyer advised him. "Let's just say obscenities, okay?"

"Father Wagner says you told him it was like at Black Mass," prompted Chris, "and I wondered what went on at those things?"

"Oh, I really don't know all that much," he protested. "In fact, most of what I know is what I've heard -from another Jeb."

"What's a Jeb?" Chris asked.

"Short for Jesuit., Father Karras is the expert on all this stuff."

Chris was suddenly alert "Oh, the dark priest at Holy Trinity?"

"You know him?" asked Dyer.

"No, I just heard him mentioned, that's all."

"Well, I think he did a paper on it once. You know, just from the psychiatric side."

"Whaddya mean?" asked Chris.

"Whaddya mean, whaddya mean?"

"Are you telling me he's a psychiatrist?"

"Oh, well, sure. Gee, I'm sorry. I just assumed that you knew."

"Listen, somebody tell me something!" the astronaut demanded impatiently. "What does go on at Black Mass?"

"Let's just say perversions." Dyer shrugged. "Obscenities. Blasphemies. It's an evil parody of the Mass, where instead of God they worshiped Satan and sometimes offered human sacrifice."

Ellen Cleary shook her head and walked away. "This is getting too creepy for me." She smiled thinly.

Chris paid her no notice. The dean joined the group unobtrusively. "But how can you know that?" she asked the young Jesuit. "Even if there was such a thing as Black Mass, who's to say what went on there?"

"Well, I guess they got most of it," answered Dyer, "from the people who were caught and then confessed."

"Oh, come on," said the dean. "Those confessions were worthless, Joe. They were tortured."

"No, only the snotty ones," Dyer said blandly.

There was a ripple of vaguely nervous laughter. The dean eyed his watch. "Well, I really should be going," he said to Chris. "I've got the six-o'clock Mass in Dahlgren Chapel."

"I've got the banjo Mass." Dyer beamed. Then his eyes shifted to a point in the room behind Chris, and he sobered abruptly. "Well, now, I thick we have a visitor, Mrs. MacNeil," he cautioned, motioning with his head.

Chris turned. And gasped on seeing Regal in her nightgown, urinating gushingly onto the rug. Staring fixedly at the astronaut, she intoned in a lifeless voice, "You're going to die up there."

"Oh, my God!" cried Chris in pain, rushing to her daughter. "Oh, God, oh, my baby, oh, come on, come with me!"

She took Regan by the arms and led her quickly away with a tremulous apology over her shoulder to the ashen astronaut: "Oh, I'm so sorry! She's been sick, she must be walking in her sleep! She's didn't know what she was saying!"

"Gee, maybe we should go," she heard Dyer say to someone.

"No, no, stay," Chris protested, turning around for a moment. "Please, stay! It's okay! I'll be back in just a minute!"

Chris paused by the kitchen, instructing Willie to see to the rug before the stain became indelible, and then she walked Regan upstairs to her bates bathroom, bathed her and changed her nightgown. "Honey, why did you say that?" Chris asked her repeatedly, but Regan appeared not to understand and mumbled non sequiturs. Her eyes were vacant and clouded.

Chris tucked her into bed, and almost immediately Regan appeared to fall asleep. For a time Chris waited, listening to her breathing. Then left the room.

At the bottom of the stairs, she encountered Sharon and the young director of the second unit assisting Dennings out of the study. They had called a cab and were going to shepherd him back to his suite at the Sheraton-Park.

"Take it easy," Chris advised as they left the house with Dennings between them.

Barely conscious, the director said, "Fuck it," and slipped into fog and the waiting cab.

Chris returned to the living room, where the guests who still remained expressed their sympathy as she gave them a brief account of Regan's illness. When she mentioned the rappings and the other "attention-getting" phenomena, Mrs. Perrin stared at her intently. Once Chris looked at her, expecting her to comment, but she said nothing and Chris continued.

"Does she walk in her sleep quite a bit?" asked Dyer.

"No, tonight's the first time. Or at least, the first time I know of, so I guess it's this hyperactivity thing. Don't you think?"

"Oh, I really wouldn’t know," said the priest. "I've heard sleepwalking's common at puberty, except that---" Here he shrugged and broke off. "I don't know. Guess you'd better ask your doctor."

Throughout the remainder of the discussion, Mrs. Perrin sat quietly, watching the dance of flames in the living room fireplace: Almost as subdued, Chris noticed, was the astronaut, who was scheduled for a flight to the moon within the year. He stared at his drink with a now-and-then grunt meant to signify interest and attention. As if by tacit understanding, no one made reference to what Regan had said to him.

"Well, I do have that Mass" said the dean at last, rising to leave.

It triggered a general departure. They all stood up and expressed their thanks for dinner and the evening.

At the door, Father Dyer took Chris's hand and probed her eyes earnestly. "Do you think there's a part in one of your movies for a very short priest who can play the piano?" he asked.

"Well, if there isn't"---Chris laughed---"then I'll have one written in for you, Father."

"I was thinking of my brother," he told her solemnly.

"Oh, you!" she laughed again, and bade him a fond and warm good night.

The last to leave were Mary Jo Perrin and her son. Chris held them at the door with idle chatter. She had the feeling that Mary Jo had something on her mind, but was holding it back. To delay her departure, Chris asked her opinion on Regan's continued use of the Ouija board and her Captain Howdy fixation. "Do you think there's any harm in it?" she asked.

Expecting an airily perfunctory dismissal. Chris was surprised when Mrs. Perrin frowned and looked down at the doorstep. She seemed to be thinking, and still in this posture, she stepped outside and joined her son, who was waiting on the stoop.

When at last she lifted her head, her eyes were in shadow.

"I would take it away from her," she said quietly.

She handed ignition keys to her son. "Bobby, start up the motor," she instructed. "It's cold."

He took the keys, told Chris that he'd loved her in all her films, and then walked shyly away toward an old, battered Mustang parked down the street.

Mrs. Perrin's eyes were still in shadow.

"I don't know what you think of me," she said, speaking slowly. "Many people associate me with spiritualism. But that's wrong. Yes, I think I have a gift," she continued quietly. "But it isn't occult. In fact, to me it seems natural; perfectly natural. Being a Catholic, I believe that we all have a foot in two worlds. The one that were conscious of is time. But now and then a freak like me gets a flash from the other foot; and that one, I think... is in eternity. Well, eternity has no time. There the future is present. So now and again when I feel that other foot, I believe that I get to see the future. Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe all of it's coincidence." She shrugged. "But I think I do. And if that's so, why, I still say, it's natural, you see. But now the occult..." She paused, picking words. "The occult is something different. I've stayed away from that. I think dabbling with that can be dangerous. And that includes fooling around with a Ouija board."

Until now, Chris had thought her a woman of eminent sense. And yet something in her manner now was deeply disturbing. She felt a creeping foreboding that she tried to dispel.

"Oh, come on, Mary Jo." Chris smiled. "Don't you know how those Ouija boards work? It isn't anything at all but a person's subconscious, that's all."

"Yes, perhaps," she answered quietly. "Perhaps. It could all be suggestion.. But in story after story that I've heard about séances, Ouija boards, all of that, they always seem to point to the opening of a door of some sort. Oh, not to the spirit world, perhaps; you don't believe in that. Perhaps, then, a door in what you call the subconscious. I don't know. All I know is that things seem to happen. And, my dear, there are lunatic asylums all over the world filled with people why dabbled in the occult."

"Are you kidding?"

There was momentary silence. Then again the soft voice began droning out of darkness. "There was a family in Bavaria, Chris, in nineteen twenty-one. I -don't remember the name, but they were a family of eleven. You could check it in the newspapers, I suppose. Just a short time following an attempt at a séance, they went out of their minds. All of them. All eleven. They went on a burning spree in their house, and when they'd finished with the furniture, they started on the three-month-old baby of one of the younger daughters. And that is when the neighbors broke in and stopped them.

"The entire family," she ended, "was put in an asylum."

"Oh, boy!" breathed Chris as she thought of Captain Howdy. He had now assumed a menacing coloration. Mental illness. Was that it? Something. "I knew I should take her to see a psychiatrist!"

"Oh, for heaven sakes," said Mrs. Perrin, stepping into the light, "you never mind about me; you just listen to your doctor." There was attempted reassurance in her voice that was not convincing. "I'm great at the future"---Mrs. Perrin smiled---"but in the present I'm absolutely helpless." She was fumbling in her purse. "Now then, where are my glasses? There, you see? I've mislaid them. Oh, here they are right here." She had found them in a pocket of her coat. "Lovely home," she remarked as she put on the glasses and glanced up at the upper facade of the house. "Gives a feeling of warmth."

"God almighty, I'm relieved! For a second, there, I thought you were going to tell me it's haunted!"

Mrs. Perrin glanced down to her. "Why would I tell you a thing like that?"

Chris was thinking of a friend, a noted actress in Beverly Hills who had sold her home because of her insistence that it was inhabited by a poltergeist. "I -don't' know." She grinned wanly. "On account of who you are, I guess. I was kidding."

"It's a very fine house," Mrs. Perrin reassured her in an even tone. "I've been here before, you know; many times."

"Have yogi really?"

"Yes, an admiral had it; a friend of mine. I get a letter from him now and then. They've shipped him to sea again, poor dear. I don't know if it's really him that I miss or this house." She smiled. "But then maybe you'll invite me back."

"Mary Jo, I'd love to have you back. I mean it. You're a fascinating person."

"Well, at least I'm the nerviest person you know."

"Oh, come on. Listen, call me. Please. Will you call me next week?"

"Yes, I would like to hear how your daughter's coming on."

"Got the number?"

"Yes, at home in my book."

What was off? wondered Chris. There was something in her tone that was slightly off-center.

"Well, good night," said Mrs. Perrin, "and thanks again for a marvelous evening." And before Chris could answer her, she was walking rapidly down the street.

For a moment, Chris watched her; and then closed the front door. A heavy lassitude overcame her. Quite a night, she thought; some night... some night...

She went to the living room and stood over Willie, who was kneeling by the urine stain. She was brushing up the nap of the rug.

"White vinegar I put on," muttered Willie. "Twice."

"Comin' out?"

"Maybe now," answered Willie. "I do not know. We will see."

"No, you can't really tell until the damned thing dries."

Yeah, that's brilliant there, punchy. That's really a brilliant observation. Judas priest, kid, go to bed!

"C'mon, leave it alone for now, Willie. Get to sleep."

"No, I finish."

"Okay, then. And thanks. Good night."

-"Good night, madam."

Chris started up the stairs with weary steps. "Great curry, there, Willie. Everybody loved it."

"Yes, thank you, madam."

Chris looked in on Regan and found her still asleep. Then she remembered the Ouija board. Should she hide it? Throw it away? Boy, Perrin's really dingy when it comes to that stuff. Yet Chris was aware that the fantasy playmate was morbid and unhealthy. Yeah, maybe I should chuck it.

Still, Chris was hesitant. Standing by the bedside and looking at Regan, she remembered an incident when her daughter was only three: the night that Howard had decided she was much too old to continue to sleep with her baby bottle, on which she had grown dependent. He'd taken it away from her that night, and Regan had screamed until four in the morning, then acted hysterical for days. And now Chris feared a similar reaction. Better wait until I talk it all out with a shrink. Moreover, the Ritalin, she reflected, hadn't had a chance to take effect.

At the last, she decided to wait and see.

Chris retired to her room, settled wearily into bed, and almost instantly fell asleep. Then awakened to fearful, hysterical screaming at the rim of her consciousness.

"Mother, come here, come here, I'm afraid!"

"Yes, I'm coming, all right, hon, I'm coming!"

Chris raced down the hall to Regan's bedroom. Whimpering. Crying. Sounds like bedsprings.

"Oh, my baby, what's wrong?" Chris exclaimed as she reached out and flicked on the lights.

Good Christ almighty!

Regan lay taut on her back, face stained with tears and contorted with terror as she gripped at the sides of her narrow bed.

"Mother, why is it shaking?" she cried. "Make it stop! Oh, I'm scared! Make it stop! Mother, Please make it stop!"

The mattress of the bed was quivering violently back and forth.

II: The Edge

.... In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.... ---Aeschylus

CHAPTER ONE

They brought her to an ending in a crowded cemetery where the gravestones cried for breath.

The Mass had been lonely as her life. Her brothers from Brooklyn. The grocer on the corner who'd extended her credit. Watching them lower her into the dark of a world without windows, Damien Karras sobbed with a grief he had long misplaced.

"Ah, Dimmy, Dimmy..."

An uncle with an arm around his shoulder.

"Never mind, she's in heaven now, Dimmy, she's happy."

Oh, God, let it be! Ah, God! Ah, please! Oh, God please be!

They waited in the car while he lingered by the grave. He could not bear the thought of her being alone.

Driving to Pennsylvania Station, he listened to his uncles speak of their illnesses in broken, immigrant accents.

"... emphysema... gotta quit smokin'... I ohmos' died las' year, you know that?"

Spasms of rage fought to break from his lips, but he pressed them back and felt ashamed. He looked out the window: they were passing by the Home Relief Station where on Saturday mornings in the dead of winter she would pick up the milk and the sacks of potatoes while he lay in his bed; the Central Park Zoo, where she left him in summer while she begged by the fountain in front of the Plaza. Passing the hotel, Karras burst into sobs, and then choked back the memories, wiped at the wetness of stinging regrets. He wondered why love had waited for this distance, waited for the moment when he need not touch, when the limits of contact and human surrender had dwindled to the size of a printed Mass card tucked in his wallet: In Memoriam...

He knew. This grief was old.

He arrived at Georgetown in time for dinner, but had no appetite. He paced inside his cottage. Jesuit friends came by with condolences. Stayed briefly. Promised prayers.

Shortly after ten, Joe Dyer appeared with a bottle of Scotch. He displayed it proudly: "Chivas Regal!"

"Where'd you get the money for it---out of the poorbox?"

"Don't be an asshole, that would be breaking my vow of poverty."

"Where did you get it, then?"

"I stole it"

Karras smiled and shook his head as he fetched a glass and a pewter coffee mug. He rinsed them out in his tiny bathroom sink and said, "I believe you."

"Greater faith I have never seen."

Karras felt a stab of familiar pain. He shook it off and returned to Dyer, who was sitting on his cot breaking open the seal. He sat beside him.

"Would you like to absolve me now or later?"

"Just pour," said Karras, "and we'll absolve each other."

Dyer poured deep into glass and cup. "College presidents shouldn't drink," he murmured. "It sets a bad example. I figure I relieved him of a terrible temptation."

Karras swallowed Scotch, but not the story. He knew the president's ways too well. A man of tact and sensitivity, he always gave through indirection. Dyer had come, he knew, as a friend, but also as the president's personal emissary. So when Dyer made a passing comment about Karras possibly needing a rest," the Jesuit psychiatrist took it as hopeful omen of the future and felt a momentary flood of relief.

Dyer was good for him; made him laugh; talked about the party and Chris MacNeil; purveyed new anecdotes about the Jesuit Prefect of Discipline. He drank very little, but continually replenished Karras' glass, and when he thought he was numb enough for sleep, he got up from the cot and made Karras stretch out, while he sat at the desk and continued to talk until Karras' eyes were closed and his comments were mumbled grunts.

Dyer stood up and undid the laces of Karras' shoes. He slipped them off.

"Gonna steal my shoes now?" Karras muttered thickly.

"No, I tell fortunes by reading the creases. Now shut up and go to sleep."

"You're a Jesuit cat burglar."

Dyer laughed lightly and covered him with a coat that he took from a closet. "Listen, someone's got to worry about the bills around this place. All you other guys do is rattle beads and pray for the hippies down on M Street."

Karras made no answer. His breathing was regular and deep. Dyer moved quietly to the door and flicked out the light.

"Stealing is a sin," muttered Karras in the darkness.

"Mea culpa," Dyer said softly.

For a time he waited, then at last decided that Karras was asleep. He left the cottage.

In the middle of the night, Karras awakened in tears. He had dreamed of his mother. Standing at a window high in Manhattan, he'd seen her emerging from a subway kiosk across the street. She stood at the curb with a brown paper shopping bag, searching for him. He waved. She didn't see him. She wandered the street. Buses. Trucks. Unfriendly crowds. She was growing frightened. She returned to the subway and began to descend. Karras grew frantic; ran to the street and began to weep as he called her name; as he could not find her; as he pictured her helpless and bewildered in the maze of tunnels beneath the ground.

He waited for his sobbing to subside, and then fumbled for the Scotch. He sat on the cot and drank in darkness. Wet came the tears. They would not cease. This was like childhood, this grief.

He remembered a telephone call from his uncle: "Dimmy, da edema's affected her brain. She won't let a doctor come anywhere near her. Jus' keeps screamin' things. Even talks ta da goddam radio. I figure she's got ta go to Bellevue, Dimmy. A regular hospital won't put up wit' dat. I jus' figure a coupla months an' she's good as new; den we take her out again. Okay? Lissen, Dimmy, I tell you: we awready done it. Dey give her a shot an' den take her in da ambulance dis mornin'. We didn' wanna bodda you, excep' dere is a hearin' and you gotta sign da papers. Now... What?... Private hospital? Who's got da money, Dimmy? You?"

He didn't remember falling asleep.

He awakened in torpor, with memory of loss draining blood from his stomach. He reeled to the bathroom; showered; shaved; dressed in a cassock. It was five-thirty-five. He unlocked the door to Holy Trinity, put on his vestments, and offered up Mass at the left side altar.

"Memento etiam..." he prayed with bleak despair. "Remember thy servant, Mary Karras...."

In the tabernacle door he saw the face of the nurse at Bellevue Receiving; heard again the screams from the isolation room.

"You her son?"

"Yes, I'm Damien Karras"

"Well, I wouldn't go in there. She's pitchin' a fit."

He'd looked through the port at the windowless room with the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling; padded walls; stark; no furniture save for the cot on which she raved.

"... grant her, we pray Thee, a place of refreshment, light and peace...."

As she met his gaze, she'd grown suddenly silent; moved to the port with a baffled look.

"Why you do this, Dimmy? Why?"

The eyes had been meeker than a lamb's.

"Agnus Dei..." he murmured as he bowed and struck his breast. "Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant her rest...."

As he closed his eyes and held the Host, he saw his mother in the hearing room, her hands clasped gentle in her lap, her expression docile and confused as the judge explained to her the Bellevue psychiatrist's report.

"Do you understand that, Mary?"

She'd nodded; wouldn't open her mouth; they had taken her dentures.

"Well, what do you say about that, Mary?'

'

She'd proudly answered him: "My boy, he speak for me."

An anguished moan escaped from Karras as he bowed his head above the Host. He struck his breast as if it were time and murmured, "Domine, no sum dignus.... I am not worthy... say but the word and my soul shall be healed."

Against all reason, against all knowledge, he prayed there was Someone to hear his prayer.

He did not think so.

After the Mass, he returned to the cottage and tried to sleep. Without success.

Later in the morning, a youngish priest that he'd never seen came by unexpectedly. He knocked and looked in the door.

"You busy? Can I see you for a while?"

In the eyes, the restless burden; in the voice, the tugging plea.

For a moment, Karras hated him.

"Come in," he said gently. And inwardly raged at this portion of his being that rendered him helpless; that he could not control; that lay coiled within him like a length of rope, always ready to fling itself unbidden at the cry of someone else's need. It gave him -no peace. Not even in sleep. At the edge of his dreams, there was often a sound like a faint, brief cry of someone in distress. It was almost inaudible in the distance. Always the same. And for minutes after waking, he would feel the anxiety of some duty unfulfilled.

The young priest fumbled; faltered; seemed shy. Karras led him patiently. Offered cigarettes. Instant coffee. Then forced a look of interest as the moody young visitor gradually unfolded a familiar problem: the terrible loneliness of priests.

Of all the anxieties that Karras encountered among the community, this one had lately become the must prevalent. Cut off from their families as well as from women, many of the Jesuits were also fearful of expressing affection for fellow priests; of forming deep and loving friendships.

"Like I'd like to put my arm around another guy's shoulder, but right away I'm scared he's going to think I'm queer. I mean, you hear all these theories about so many latents attracted to the priesthood. So I just don't do it. I won't even go to somebody's room just to listen to records; or talk; or smoke. It's not that I'm afraid of him; I'm just worried about him getting worried about me."

Karras felt the weight easing slowly from the other and onto him. He let it come; let the young priest talk. his knew he would return again and again; find relief from aloneness; make Karras his friend; and when he'd realized he had done so without fear and suspicion, perhaps he would go on to make friends among the others.

The psychiatrist grew weary; found himself drifting into private sorrow. He glanced at a plaque that someone had given him the previous Christmas. MY BROTHER HURTS. I SHARE HIS PAIN. I MEET GOD IN HIM, he read.

A failed encounter. He blamed himself. He had mapped the streets of his brother's torment, yet never had walked them; or so he believed. He thought that the pain which he felt was his own.

At last the visitor looked at his watch. It was time for lunch in the campus refectory. He rose and started to leave. Then paused to glance at a current novel on Karras' desk.

"Have you read it?" asked Karras.

The other shook his head. "No, I haven't. Should I?"

"I don't know. I just finished it and I'm not at all sure that I really understand it," Karras lied. He picked up the book and handed it over. "Want to take along? You know, I'd really like to hear someone else's opinion."

"Well, sure," said the Jesuit, examining the copy on the flap of the dust jacket. "I'll try to get it back to you in a couple of days."

His mood seemed brighter.

As the screen door creaked with his departure, Karras felt momentary peace. He picked up his breviary and stepped out to the courtyard, where he slowly paced and said his Office.

In the afternoon, he had still another visitor, the elderly pastor of Holy Trinity, who took a chair by the desk and offered condolences on the passing of Karras' mother.

"Said a couple of Masses for her, Damien. And one for you," he wheezed with the barest trace of a brogue.

"That was thoughtful of you, Father. Thank you very much."

"How old was she?"

"Seventy."

"A good old age."

Karras fixed his gaze on an altar card that the pastor had carried in with him. One of three employed in the Mass, it was covered in plastic and inscribed with a portion of the prayers that were said by the priest. The psychiatrist wondered what he was doing with it.

"Well, Damien, we've had another one of those things here today. In the church, y'know. Another desecration."

A statue of the Virgin at the back of the church had been painted like a harlot, the pastor told him. Then he handed the altar card to Karras. "And this one the morning after you'd gone, y'know, to New York. Was it Saturday? Saturday. Yes. Well, take a look at that. I just had a talk with a sergeant of police, and---well... well, look at this card, would you, Damien?"

As Karras examined it, the pastor explained that someone had slipped in a typewritten sheet between the original card and its cover. The ersatz text, though containing some strikeovers and various typographical errors, was in basically fluent and intelligible Latin and described in vivid, erotic detail an imagined homosexual encounter involving the Blesses Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene.

"That's enough, now, you don't have to read it all," said the pastor, snapping back the card as if fearing that it might be an occasion of sin. "Now that's excellent Latin; I mean, it's got style, a church Latin style. Well, the sergeant says he talked to some fellow, a psychologist, and he says that the person's been doin' this all---well, he could be a priest, y'know, a very sick priest. Do you think?"

The psychiatrist considered for a while. Then nodded. "Yes. Yes, it could. Acting out a rebellion, perhaps, in a state of complete somnambulism. I don't know. It could be. Maybe so."

"Can you think of any candidates, Damien?"

"I don't get you."

"Well, now, sooner or later they come and see you, wouldn't you say? I mean, the sick ones, if there are any, from the campus. Do y'know any like that? I mean with that kind of illness, y'know."

"No, I don't."

"No, I didn't think you'd tell me."

"Well, I wouldn't know anyway, Father. Somnambulism is a way of resolving any number of possible conflict situations, and the usual form of resolution is symbolic. So I really wouldn't know. And if it is a somnambulist, he's probably got a complete posterior amnesia about what he's done, so that even he wouldn't have a clue."

"What if you were to tell him?" the pastor asked cagily. He plucked at an earlobe, a habitual gesture, Karras had noticed, whenever he thought he was being wily.

"I really don't know," repeated the psychiatrist.

"No. No, I really didn't think that you'd tell me." He rose and moved for the door. "Y'know what you're like, you people? Like priests!" he complained.

As Karras laughed gently, the pastor returned and dropped the altar card on his desk. "I suppose yon should study this thing." he mumbled. "Something might come to you."

The pastor moved for the door.

"Did they check it for fingerprints?" asked Karras.

The pastor stopped and turned slightly. "Oh, I doubt it. After all, it's not a criminal we're after, now, is it? More likely it's only a demented parishioner. What do you think of that, Damien? Do you think that it could be someone in the parish? You know, I think so. It wasn't a priest at all, it was someone among the parishioners." He was pulling at his earlobe again. '"Don't you think?"

"I really wouldn't know," he said again.

"No, I didn't think you'd tell me."

Later that day, Father Karras was relieved of his duties as counselor and assigned to the Georgetown University Medical School as lecturer in psychiatry. His orders were to "rest."

CHAPTER TWO

Regan lay on her back on Klein's examining table, arms and legs bowed outward. Taking her foot in both his hands; the doctor flexed it toward her ankle. For moments he held it there in tension, then suddenly released it. The foot relaxed into normal position.

He repeated the procedure several times but without any variance in the result. He seemed dissatisfied. When Regan abruptly sat up and spat in his face; he instructed a nurse to remain in the room and returned to his office to talk to Chris.

It was April 26. He'd been out of the city both Sunday and Monday and Chris hadn't reached him until this morning to relate the happening at the party and the subsequent shaking of the bed.

"It was actually moving?"

"It was moving."

"How long?"

"I don't know. Maybe ten, maybe fifteen seconds. I-mean, that's all l saw. Then she sort of went stiff and wet the bed. Or maybe she'd wet it before. I don't know. But then all of a sudden she was dead asleep and never woke up till the next afternoon."

Dr. Klein entered thoughtfully.

"Well, what is it?" Chris asked in an anxious tone.

When she'd first arrived, he'd reported his suspicion that the shaking of the bed had been caused by a seizure of clonic contractions, an alternating tensing and relaxing of the muscles. The chronic form of such a condition, he'd told her, was clonus, and usually indicated a lesion in the brain.

"Well, the test was negative," he told her, and described the procedure, explaining that in clonus the alternate flexing and releasing of the foot would have triggered a run of clonic contractions. As he sat at his desk, he still seemed worried, however, "Has she ever had a fall?"

"Like on the head?" Chris asked.

"Well, yes."

"No, not that I know of."

"Childhood diseases?"

"Just the usual. Measles and mumps and chicken pox."

"Sleepwalking history?"

"Not until now."

"What do you mean? She was walking in her sleep at the party?"

"Well, yes. She still doesn't know what she did that night. And there's stuff, too, that she doesn't remember."

"Lately?"

Sunday. Regan still sleeping. An overseas telephone call from Howard.

"How's Rags?"

"Thanks a lot for the call on her birthday."

"I was stuck on a yacht. Now for chrissakes lay off me. I called her the minute I was back in the hotel."

"Oh, sure."

"She didn't tell you?"

"You talked to her?"

"Yes. That's why I thought I'd better call you. What the hell's going on with her?"

"What am you getting at?"

"She just called me a 'cocksucker' and hung up the phone."

Recounting the incident to Dr. Klein, Chris explained -that when Regan had finally awakened, she had no memory whatever of either the telephone call or what had happened on the night of the dinner.

"Then perhaps she wasn't lying about the moving of the furniture," Klein hypothesized.

"I don't get you."

"Well, she moved it herself, no doubt, but perhaps while in one of those states where she didn't really know what she was doing. It's known as automatism. Like a trance state. The patient doesn't know or remember what he's doing."

"But something just occurred to me, doc, you know that? There's a great big heavy bureau in her room made out of teakwood. It must weigh half a ton. I mean, how could she have moved that?"

"Extraordinary strength is pretty common in pathology."

"Oh, really? How come?"

The doctor shrugged "No one knows.

"Now, besides what you've told me," he continued, "have you noticed any other bizarre behavior?"

"Well, she's gotten zeal sloppy."

"Bizarre," he repeated.

"For her, that's bizarre. Oh, now wait! There's this! You remember that Ouija board she's been playing with? Captain Howdy?"

"The fantasy playmate."The internist nodded.

"Well, now she can hear him," Chris revealed.

The doctor leaned forward, folding his arms atop the desk. As Chris, continued, his eyes were alert and had narrowed to dart points of speculation.

"Yesterday morning," said Chris, "I could hear her talking to Howdy in her bedroom. I mean, she'd talk, and then seem to wait, as if she were playing with the Ouija board. When I peeked inside the room, though, there wasn't any Ouija board there; just Rags; and she was nodding her head, doc, just like she was agreeing with what he was saying."

"Did she see him?"

"I don't think so. She sort of had her head to the side, the way she does when she listens to records."

The doctor nodded thoughtfully, "Yes. Yes, I see. Any other phenomena like that? Does she see things? Smell things?"

"Smell," Chris remembered. "She keeps smelling something bad in her bedroom."

"Something burning?"

"Hey, that's right!" Chris exclaimed. "How'd you know that?"

"It's sometimes the symptom of a type of disturbance in the chemicoelectrical activity of the brain. In the case of your daughter, in the temporal lobe, you see." He put a hand to the front of his skull. "Up here, in the forward part of the brain. Now it's rare but it does cause bizarre hallucinations and usually just before a convulsion. I suppose that's why it's taken for schizophrenia so often; but it isn't schizophrenia. It's produced by a lesion in the temporal lobe. Now the test for clonus isn't conclusive, Mrs. MacNeil, so I think I'd like to give her an EEG."

"What's that?"

"Electroencephalograph. It will show us the pattern of her brain waves. That's usually a pretty good indication of abnormal functioning."

"But you think that's it, huh? Temporal lobe?"'

"Well, she does have the syndrome, Mrs. MacNeil. For example, the untidiness; the pugnacity; behavior that's socially embarrassing; the automatism, as well. And of course, the seizures that made the bed shake. Usually, that's followed by either wetting the bed or vomiting, or both, and then sleeping very deeply."

"You want to test her right now?" asked Chris.

"Yes, I think we should do it immediately, but she's going to need sedation. If she moves or jerks it will void the results, so may I give her, say, twenty-five milligrams of Librium?"

"Jesus, do what you have to," she told him, shaken.

She accompanied him to the examining room, and when Regan saw him readying the hypodermic, she screamed and filled the air with a torrent of obscenities.

"Oh, honey, it's to help you!" Chris pleaded in distress. She held Regan still while Dr. Klein gave the injection.

"I'll be back," the doctor said, nodding, and while a nurse wheeled the EEG apparatus into the room, he left to attend another patient. When he returned a short time later, the Librium still had not taken effect.

Klein seemed surprised. "That was quite a strong dose," he remarked to Chris.

He injected another twenty-five milligrams; left; came back; found Regan tractable and docile.

"What are you doing?" Chris asked him as Klein applied the saline-tipped electrodes to Regan's scalp.

"We put four on each side," he explained. "That enables us to take a brain-wave reading from the left and right side of the brain and then compare them."

"Why compare them?"

"Well, deviations could be significant. For example, I had a patient who used to hallucinate," said Klein. "He'd see things, he'd hear things, things that weren't actually there, of course. Well, I found a discrepancy in comparing the left and right readings of his brain waves and discovered that actually the man was hallucinating on just one side of his head."

"That's wild."

"The left eye and ear functioned normally; only the right side had visions and heard things.

"Well, all right, now, let's see." He had turned the machine on. He pointed to the waves on the fluorescent screen. "Now that's both sides together," he explained."What I'm looking for now are spiky waves"---he patterned in the air with his index finger---"especially waves of very high amplitude coming at four to eight per second. That's temporal lobe," he told her.

He studied the pattern of the brain wave carefully, but discovered no dysrhythmia. No spikes. No flattened domes. And when he switched to comparison readings, the results were also negative.

Klein frowned. He couldn't understand it. He repeated the procedure. And found no change.

He brought in a nurse to attend to Regan and returned to his office with her mother.

"So what's the story?" Chris inquired.

The doctor sat pensively on the edge of his desk. "Well, the EEG would have proved that she had it, but the lack of dysrhythmia doesn't prove to me conclusively that she doesn't. It might be hysteria, but the pattern before and after her convulsion was much too striking."

Chris furrowed her brow. "You know, you keep on saying that, doc---'convulsion.' What exactly is the name of this disease?"

"Well, it isn't a disease," he said quietly.

"Well, what do you call it? I mean, specifically."

"You know it as epilepsy, Mrs. MacNeil."

"Oh, my God!"

Chris sank to a chair.

"Now, let's hold it," soothed Klein. "I can see that like most of the general public your impression of epilepsy is exaggerated and probably largely mythical."

"Isn't it hereditary?" Chris said, wincing.

"That's one of the myths," Klein told her calmly "At least, most doctors seem to think so. Look, practically anyone can be made to convulse. You see, most of us are born with a pretty high threshold of resistance to convulsions; some with a low one; so the difference between you and an epileptic is a matter of degree. That's all. Just degree. It is not a disease."

"Then what is it---a freaking hallucination?"

"A disorder: a controllable disorder. And there are many, many types of it, Mrs. MacNeil. For example, you're sitting here now and for a second you seem to go blank, let's say, and you miss a little bit of what I'm saying. Well, now that's a kind of epilepsy, Mrs. MacNeil. That's right. It's a true epileptic attack."

"Yeah, well, that isn't Regan," Chris rebutted. "And how come it's happening just all of a sudden?"

"Look, we still aren't sure that's what she's got, and I grant you that maybe you were right in the first place; very possibly it's psychosomatic. However, I doubt it. And to answer your question, any number of changes in the function of the brain can trigger a convulsion in the epileptic: worry; fatigue; emotional stress; a particular note on a musical instrument. I once had a patient, for instance, who never used to have a seizure except on a bus when he was a block away from home. Well, we finally discovered what was causing it: flickering light from a white slat fence reflected in the window of the bus. Now at another time of day, or if the bus had been going at a different speed, he wouldn't have convulsed, you see. He had a lesion, a scar in the brain that was caused by some childhood disease. In the case of your daughter, the scar would be forward---up front in the temporal lobe---and when it's hit by a particular electrical impulse of a certain wavelength and periodicity, it triggers a sudden burst of abnormal reactions from deep within a focus in the lobe. Do you see?"

"I guess," Chris sighed, dejected. "But I'll tell you the truth, doc, I don't understand how her whole personality could be changed."

"In temporal lobe, that's extremely common, and can last for days or even weeks. It isn't rare to find destructive and even criminal behavior. There's such a big change, in fact, that two or three hundred years ago people with temporal lobe disorders were often considered to be possessed by a devil."

"They were what?"

"Taken over by the mind of a demon. You know, something like a superstitious version of split personality."

Chris closed her eyes and lowered her forehead onto a fist. "Listen, tell me something good," she murmured.

"Well, now, don't be alarmed. If it is a lesion, in a way she's fortunate. Then all we have to do is remove the scar."

"Oh, swell."

"Or it could be just pressure on the brain. Look, I'd like to have some X-rays taken of her skull. There's a radiologist here in the building, and perhaps I can get him to take you right away. Shall I call him?"

"God, yes; go ahead; let's do it."

Klein called and set it up. They would take her immediately, they told him.

He hung up the phone and began writing a prescription. "Room twenty-one on the second floor. Then I'll probably call you tomorrow or Thursday. I'd like a neurologist in on this. In the meantime, I'm taking her off the Ritalin. Let's try her on Librium for a while."

He ripped the prescription sheet from the pad and handed it over. "I'd try to stay close to her, Mrs.

MacNeil. In these walking trance states, if that's what it is, it's always possible for her to hurt herself. Is your bedroom close to hers?"

"Yeah, it is."

"That's fine. Ground floor?"

"No, second."

"Big windows in her bedroom?"

"Well, one. What's the deal?"

"Well, I'd try to keep it closed, maybe even put a lock on it. In a trance state, she might go through it. I once had a---"

"---Patient," Chris finished with a trace of a wry, weary smile.

He grinned. "I guess I do have a lot of them, don't I?"

"A couple."

She propped her face on her hand and leaned thoughtfully forward. "You know, I thought of something else just now."

"And what was that?"

"Well, like after a fit, you were saying, she'd right away fall dead asleep. Like on Saturday night. I mean, didn't you say that?"

"Well, Yes." Klein nodded. "That's right."

"Well, then, how come those other times she said that her bed was shaking, she was always wide awake?"

"You didn't tell me that."

"Well, its so. She looked just fine. She'd just come to my room and then ask to get in bed with me."

"Bed wetting? Vomiting?"

Chris shook her head. "She was fine."

Klein frowned and gently chewed on his lip for a moment. "Well, let's look at those X-rays," he finally told her.

Feeling drained and numb, Chris shepherded Regan to the radiologist; stayed at her side while the X-rays were taken; took her home. She'd been strangely mute since the second injection, and Chris made an effort now to engage her.

"Want to play some Monopoly or somethin'?"

Regan shook her head and then stared at her mother with unfocused eyes that seemed to be retracted into infinite remoteness. "I'm feeling sleepy," Regan said in a voice that belonged to the eyes. Then, turning, she climbed up the stairs to her bedroom.

Must be the Librium, Chris reflected as she watched her. Then at last she sighed and went into the kitchen. She poured some coffee and sat down at the breakfast-nook table with Sharon.

"How'd it go?"

"Oh, Christ!"

Chris fluttered the prescription slip onto the table. "Better call and get that filled," she said, and then explained what the doctor had told her. "If I'm busy or out, keep a real good eye on her, would you, Shar? He---" Dawning. Sudden. "That reminds me."

She got up from the table and went up to Regan's bedroom, found her under the covers and apparently asleep.

Chris moved to the window and tightened the latch. She staffed below. The window, facing out from the side of the house, directly overlooked the precipitous public staircase that plunged to M Street far below.

Boy, I'd better call a locksmith right away.

Chris returned to the kitchen and added the chore to the list from which Sharon sat working, gave Willie the dinner menu, and returned a call from her agent.

"What about the script?" he wanted to know.

"Yeah, it's great, Ed; let's do it," she told him. "When's it go?"

"Well, your segment's in July, so you'll have to start preparing right away."

"You mean now?"

"I mean now. This isn't acting, Chris. You're involved in a lot of the preproduction. You've got to work with the set designer, the costume designer, the makeup artist, the producer. And you'll have to pick a cameraman and a cutter and block out your shots. C'mon, Chris, you know the drill."

"Oh, shit."

"You've got a problem?"

"Yeah, I do; I've got a problem."

"What's the problem?"

"Well, Regan's pretty sick."

"Oh, I'm Sony. What's wrong?"

"They don't know yet. I'm waiting for some tests. Listen, Ed, I can't leave her."

"So who says to leave her?"

"No, you don't understand, Ed. I need to be at home with her. She needs my attention. Look, I just can't explain it, Ed, it's too complicated, so why don't we just hold off for a while?"

"We can't. They want to try for the Music Hall over Christmas, Chris, and I think that they're pushing it now."

"Oh, for chrissakes, Ed, they can wait two weeks. Now come on!"

"Look, you've bugged me that you want to direct and now all of a---"

"Right, Ed, I know," she interrupted. "Look, I want it; I really want it bad, but you'll just have to tell 'em that I need some more time!"

"And if I do, we're going to blow it. Now that's my opinion. Look, they don't want you anyway, that's not news. They're just doing this for Moore, and I think if they go back to him now and say she isn't too sure she wants to do it yet, he'll have an out. Now come on, Chris, talk sense. Look, You do what you want. I don't care. There's no money in this thing unless it hits. But if you want it, I'm telling you: I ask for a delay and I think we're going to blow it. Now then, what should I tell them?"

"Ahh, boy," sighed Chris.

"It's not easy. I know."

"No, it isn't. Well, listen..."

She thought. Then shook her head. "Ed, they'll just have to wait," she said wearily.

"Your decision."

"Okay, Ed. Let me know."

"I will. I'll be calling. Take it easy."

"You too, Ed. Good-bye."

She hang up the phone in a state of depression and lit up a cigarette. "I talked to Howard, by the way, did I tell you?" she said to Sharon.

"Oh, when? Did you tell him what's happening with Rags?"

"I told him. I told him he ought to come see her."

"Is he coming?"

"I don't know. I don't think so," Chris answered.

"You'd think he'd make the effort."

"Yeah, I know." Chris sighed. "But you've got to understand his hang-up, Shar. That's it. I know that's it."

"What's it?"

"Oh, the whole 'Mr. Chris MacNeil' thing. Rags was a part of it. She was in and he was out. Always me and Rags together on the magazine covers; me and Rags in the layouts; mother and daughter, pixie twins." She tipped ash from her cigarette with a moody forger. "Ah, nuts, who knows. It's all mixed up. But it's hard to get hacked with him, Spar; I Just can't."

She reached out for a book by Sharon's elbow. "So what are you reading?"

"What do you mean? Oh, that. That's for you. I forgot. Mrs. Perrin dropped it by."

"She was here?"

"Yes, this morning. Said she's sorry she missed you and she's going out of town, but she'll call you as soon as she's back."

Chris nodded and glanced at the title of the book: A Study of Devil Worship and Related Occult Phenomena. She opened it and found a penned note from Mary Jo Perrin: Dear Chris: I happened by the Georgetown University Library and picked this up for you. It has some chapters about Black Mass. You should read it all, however; I think you'll find the other sections particularly interesting. See you soon.

Mary Jo

"Sweet lady," said Chris.

"Yes, she is," agreed Sharon.

Chris riffled through the pages of the back, "What's the scoop on Black Mass? Pretty hairy?"

"I don't know," answered Sharon. "I haven't read it."

"No good for serenity?"

Sharon stretched and yawned. "Oh, that stuff turns me off."

"What happened to your Jesus complex?"

"Oh, come on."

Chris slid the book across the table to Sharon. "Here, read it and tell me what happens."

"And get nightmares?"

"What do you think you get paid for?"

"Throwing up."

"I can do that myself," Chris muttered as she pick up the evening paper. "All you have to do is stick your business manager's advice down your throat and you're vomiting blood for a week." Irritably, she put the paper aside. "Would you turn on the radio, Shar? Get the news."

Sharon had dinner at the house with Chris, and then left for a date. She forgot the book. Chris saw it on the table and thought about reading it, but finally she felt too weary. She left it on the table and walked upstairs.

She looked in on Regan, who still seemed to be asleep under the covers, and apparently sleeping through. She checked the window again. Leaving the room, Chris made sure to leave the door wide open and then did the same with her own before getting into bed. She watched part of a movie on television. Then slept.

The following morning, the book about devil worship had vanished from the table.

No one noticed.

CHAPTER THREE

The consulting neurologist pinned up the X-rays again and searched for indentations that would look as if the skull had been pounded like copper with a tiny hammer.

Dr. Klein stood behind him with folded arms. They had both looked for lesions and collections of fluid; for a possible shifting of the pineal gland. Now they probed for Lückenshadl Skull, the telltale depressions that would indicate chronic intracranial pressure.

They did not find it. The date was Thursday, April 28.

The consulting neurologist removed his glasses and carefully tucked them into the left breast poet of his jacket. "There's just nothing there, Sam, Nothing I can see."

Klein frowned at the floor with a shake of the head. "Doesn't figure."

"Want to run another series?"

"I don't think so. I'll try an LP."

"Good idea."

"In the meantime, I'd like you to see her."

"How's today?"

"Well, I'm---" Telephone buzzer. "Excuse me." He picked up the telephone. "Yes?"

"Mrs. MacNeil on the phone. Says it's urgent."

"What line?"

"She's on twelve."

He punched the extension button. "Dr. Klein, Mrs. MacNeil. What's the trouble?"

Her voice was distraught and on the brim of hysteria. "Oh, God, doc, it's Regan! Can you come right away?"

'Well, what's wrong?"

"I don't know, doc, I just can't describe it! Oh, for God's sake, come over! Come now!"

"Right away!"

He disconnected and buzzed his receptionist. "Susan, tell Dresner to take my appointments." He hung up the phone and started taking off his jacket. "That's her. You want to come? It's only just across the bridge."

"I've got an hour."

"Let's go."

They were there within minutes, and at the door, where Sharon greeted them, they heard moans and screams of terror from Regan's bedroom. She looked frightened. "I'm Sharon Spencer," she said. "Come on. She's upstairs."

She led them to the door of Regan's bedroom, where she cracked it open and called in, "Doctors, Chris!"

Chris immediately came to the door, her face contorted in a vise of fear. "Oh, my God, come in!" she quavered. "Come on in and take a look at what she's doing!"

"This is Dr.---"

In the middle of the introduction, Klein broke off as he stared at Regan. Shrieking hysterically, she was flailing her arms as her body seemed to fling itself up horizontally into the air above her bed and then slammed dawn savagely onto the mattress. It was happening rapidly and repeated.

"Oh, Mother, make him stop!" she was screeching "Stop him. He's trying to kill me! Stop him Stooopppppp hiiiiiimmmmmmmm, Motherrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

"Oh, my baby!" Chris whimpered as she jerked up a fist to her mouth and bit it. She turned a beseeching look to Klein. "Doc, what is it? What's happening?"

He shook his head, his gaze fixed on Regan as the odd phenomenon continued. She would lift about a foot each time and then fall with a wrenching of her breath, as if unseen hands had picked her up and thrown her down.

Chris shaded her eyes with a trembling hand. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus!" she said hoarsely. "Doc, what is it?"

The up and down movements ceased abruptly and the girl twisted feverishly from side to side with her eyes rolled upward into their sockets so that only the whites were exposed.

"Oh, he's burning me... burning me!" Regan was moaning. "Oh, I'm burning! I'm burning!..."

Her legs began rapidly crossing and uncrossing.

The doctors moved closer, one on either side of the bed. Still twisting and jerking, Regan arched her head back, disclosing a swollen, bulging throat. She began to mutter something incomprehensible in an oddly guttural tone.

"... nowonmai... nowonmai..."

Klein reached down to check her pulse.

"Now, let's see what the trouble is, dear," he said gently.

And abruptly was reeling, stunned and staggering, across the room from the force of a vicious backward swing of Regan's arm as the girl sat up, her face contorted with a hideous rage.

"The sow is mine!" she bellowed in a coarse and powerful voice. "She is mine! Keep away from her! She is mine!"

A yelping laugh gushed up from her throat, and then she fell on her back as if someone had pushed her. She pulled up her nightgown, exposing her genitals. "Fuck me! Fuck me!" she screamed at the doctors, and with both her hands began masturbating frantically.

Moments later, Chris ran from the room with a stifled sob when Regan put her fingers to her mouth and licked them.

As Klein approached the bedside, Regan seemed to hug herself, her hands caressing her arms.

"Ah, yes, my pearl..." she crooned in that strangely coarsened voice. Her eyes were closed as if in ecstasy. "My child... my flower... my pearl..."

Then again she was twisting from side to side, moaning meaningless syllables over and over. And abruptly sat up with eyes staring wide with helpless terror.

She mewed like a cat.

Then barked.

Then neighed.

And then, bending at the waist, started whirling her torso around in rapid strenuous circles. She gasped for breath. "Oh, stop him!" she wept. stop him! It hurts! Make him stop! Make him stop! I can't breathe!"

Klein had seen enough. He fetched his medical bag to the window and quickly began to prepare an injection.

The neurologist remained beside the bed and saw Regan fall backward as if from a shove. Her eyes rolled upward into their sockets again, and rolling from side to side, she began to mutter rapidly in guttural tones. The neurologist leaned closer and tried to make it out. Then he saw Klein gently beckoning. He moved to him.

"I'm giving her Librium," Klein told him guardedly, holding the syringe to the light of the window. "But you're going to have to hold her."

The neurologist nodded. He seemed preoccupied. He inclined his head to the side as if listening to the muttering from the bed.

"What's she saying?" Klein whispered.

"I don't know. Just gibberish. Nonsense syllables." Yet his own explanation seemed to leave him unsatisfied. "She says it as if it means something, though. it's got cadence."

Klein nodded toward the bed and they approached quietly from either side. As they come, she went rigid, as if in the stiffening grip of tetany, and the doctors -looked at each other significantly. Then looked again to Regan as she started to arch her body upward into an impossible position, bending it backward like a bow until the brow of her head had touched her feet. She was screaming in pain.

The doctors eyed each her with questioning surmise. Then Klein gave a signal to the neurologist. But before the consultant could seize her, Regan fell limp in a faint and wet the bed.

Klein leaned over and rolled up her eyelid. Checked her pulse. "She'll be out for a while," he murmured. "I think she convulsed. Don't you?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, let's take some insurance," said Klein.

Deftly he administered the injection.

"Well, what do you think?" Klein asked the consultant as he pressed a circle of sterile tape against the puncture.

"Temporal lobe. Sure, maybe schizophrenia's a possibility, Sam, but the onset's much too sudden. She hasn't any history of it, right?"

"No, she hasn't."

"Neurasthenia?"

Klein shook his head.

"Then hysteria, maybe," offered the consultant.

"I've thought of that."

"Sure. But she'd have to be a freak to get her body twisted up like she did voluntarily, now, wouldn't you say?" He shook his head. "No, I think it's pathological, Sam---her strength; the paranoia; the hallucinations. Schizophrenia, okay; those symptoms it covers. But temporal lobe would also cover the convulsions. There's one thing that bothers me, though..." He trailed off with a puzzled frown.

"What's that?"

"Well, I'm really not sure but I thought I heard signs of dissociation: 'my pearl'... 'my child'... 'My flower'... 'the sow.' I had the feeling she was talking about herself. Was that your impression too, or am I reading something into it?"

Klein stroked his lip as he mulled the question. "Well, frankly, at the time it never occurred to me, but then now that you point it out..." He grunted thoughtfully. "Could be. Yes. Yes, it could."

Then he shrugged off the notion. "Well, I'll do an LP right now while she's out and then maybe we'll know something."

The neurologist nodded.

Klein poked around in his medical bag, found a pill and tucked it in his pocket. "Can you stay?"

The neurologist checked his watch. "Maybe half an hour."

"Let's talk to the mother."

They left the room and entered the hallway.

Chris and Sharon were leaning, heads lowed, against the balustrade by the staircase. As the doctors approached them, Chris wiped her nose with a balled, moist handkerchief. Her eyes were red from crying.

"She's sleeping," Klein told her.

"Thank God," Chris sighed.

"And she's heavily sedated. She'll probably sleep right through until tomorrow."

"That's good," Chris said weakly. "Doc, I'm sorry about being such a baby."

"You're doing just fine," he assured her "It's a frightening ordeal. By the way, this is Dr. David."

"Hello," said Chris with a bleak smile.

"Dr. David's a neurologist."

"What do you think?" she asked them both.

"Well, we still think it's temporal lobe," Klein answered, "and---"

"Jesus, what in the hell are you talking about!" Chris erupted. "She's been acting like a psycho, like a split personality! What do you---"

Abruptly she pulled herself together and lowered her forehead into a hand.

"Guess I'm all up-tight." She exhaled wearily. "I'm sorry." She lifted a haggard look to Klein "You were saying?"

It was David who responded. "There haven't been more than a hundred authenticated cases of split personality, Mrs. MacNeil. It's a rare condition. Now I know the temptation is to leap to psychiatry, but any responsible psychiatrist would exhaust the somatic possibilities first. That's the safest procedure."

"Okay, so what's next?" Chris sighed.

"A Lumbar tap," answered David.

"A spinal?"

He nodded. "What we missed in the X-rays and the EEG could turn up there. At the least, it would exhaust certain other possibilities. I'd like to do it now, right here, while she's sleeping. I'll give her a local, of course, but it's movement I'm trying to eliminate."

"How could she jump off the bed like that?" Chris asked, her face squinting up in anxiety.

"Well, I think we discussed that before," said Klein. "Pathological states can induce abnormal strength and accelerated motor performance."

"But you don't know why," said Chris.

"Well, it seems to have something to do with motivation," commented David. "But that's all we know."

"Well, now, what about the spinal?" Klein asked Chris. "May we?"

She exhaled, sagging, staring at the floor.

"Go ahead," she murmured. "Do whatever you have to. Just make her well."

"We'll try," said Klein. "May I use your phone?"

"Sure, come on. In the study."

"Oh, incidentally," said Klein as she turned to lead them, "she needs to have her bedding changed."

"I'll do it," said Sharon. She moved toward Regan's bedroom.

"Can I make you some coffee?" asked Chris as the doctors followed down the stairs. "I gave the housekeepers the afternoon off, so it'll have to be instant."

They declined.

"I see you haven't fixed that window yet," noted Klein.

"No, we called," Chris told him. "They're coming out tomorrow with shutters you can lock."

He nodded approval.

They entered the study, where Klein called his office and instructed an assistant to deliver the necessary equipment and medication to the house.

"And set up the lab for a spinal workout," Klein instructed. "I'll run it myself right after the tap."

When he'd finished the call, he turned to Chris and asked what had happened since last he saw Regan.

"Well, Tuesday"---Chris pondered---"there was nothing at all. She went straight up to bed and slept right through until late the next morning, then---"

"Oh, no, no, wait," she amended. "No, she didn't. That's right. Willie mentioned that she'd heard her in the kitchen awfully early. I remember feeling glad that she'd gotten her appetite back. But she went back to bed then, I guess, because she stayed there the rest of the day."

"She was sleeping?" Klein asked her.

"No, I think she was reading," Chris answered. "Well, I started feeling a little better about it all. I mean, it looked as if the Librium was just what she needed. She was sort of far away, I noticed, and that bothered me a little, but still it was a pretty big improvement. Well, last night, again, nothing," Chris continued. "Then this morning it started."

She inhaled deeply.

"Boy, did it start!" She shook her head.

She'd been sitting in the kitchen, Chris told the doctors, when Regan ran screaming down the stairs and to her mother, cowering defensively behind her chair as she clutched Chris's arms and explained in a terrified voice that Captain Howdy was chasing her; had been pinching her; punching her; shoving her; mouthing obscenities; threatening to kill her. "There he is!" she had shrieked at last, pointing to the kitchen door. Then she'd fallen to the floor, her body jerking in spasms as she gasped and wept that Howdy was kicking her. Then suddenly, Chris recounted, Regan had stood in the middle of the kitchen with arms extended and had begun to spin rapidly "like a top," continuing the movements for several minutes, until she had fallen to the floor in exhaustion.

"And then all of a sudden," Chris finished distressfully, "I saw there was... hate in her eyes, this hate, and she told me..."

She was choking up.

"She called me a... Oh, Jesus!"

She burst into sobs, and shielded her eyes as she wept convulsively.

Klein moved quietly to the bar; poured a glass of water from the tap. He walked toward Chris.

"Oh, shit, where's a cigarette?" Chris sighed tremulously as she wiped at her eyes with the back of a finger.

Klein gave her the water and a small green pill. "Try this instead," he advised.

"That a tranquilizer?"

"Yes."

"I'll have a double."

"One's enough."

"Big spender," Chris murmured with a wan smile.

She swallowed the pill and their handed the empty glass to the doctor. "Thanks," she said softly, and rested her brow on quivering fingertips. She shook her head gently. "Yeah, then it started," she picked up moodily. "All of that other stuff. It was like she was someone else."

"Like Captain Howdy, perhaps?" asked David.

Chris looked up at him in puzzlement. He was staring so intently. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I don't knows." He shrugged. "Just a question."

She turned to the fireplace with absent, haunted eyes. "I don't know," she said dully. "Just somebody else."

There was a moment of silence. Then David stood up and explained he had to leave for another appointment, and after some reassuring statements, said goodbye.

Klein walked him to the door. "You'll check the sugar?" David asked him.