The Exorcist

    What facts?

    He ran a hand across his brow. Needed sleep. Could not sleep. He felt his temples pound in headache. "Hello, Daddy?"

    What facts?

    The tapes at the Institute. What would Frank find? Was there anything he could find? No. But who knew? Regan hadn't known holy water from tap water. Sure. But if supposedly she's able to read my mind, why is it she didn't know the difference between them? He put a hand to his forehead. The headache. Confusion. Jesus, Karras, wake up! Someone's dying! Wake up!

    Back in his room, he celled the institute. No Frank. He put down the telephone. Holy Water. Tap water. Something. He opened up the Ritual to "Instructions to Exorcists": "... evil spirits... deceptive answers... so it might appear that the afflicted one is in no way possessed..." Karras pondered. Was that it? What the hell are you talking about? What "evil spirit"?

    He slammed shut the book and saw the medical records. He reread them, sca

    Hold it. No history of hysteria. That's something. But weak. Something else. Some discrepancy. What was it? He dredged desperately through memories of his studies. And then he recalled it. Not much. But something.

    He picked up the phone and called Chris. She sounded groggy.

    "Hi, Father."

    "Were you sleeping? I'm sorry."

    "It's okay."

    "Chris, where's this Doctor...." Karras ran a finger down the records. "Doctor Klein?"

    "In Rosslyn."

    "In the medical building?"

    "Yes."

    "Please call him and tell him Doctor Karras will be by and that I'd like to take a look at Regan's EEG. Tell him Doctor Karras, Chris. Have you got that?"

    "Got It."

    "I'll talk to you later."

    When he'd hung up the phone, Karras snapped off his collar and got out of his clerical robe and black trousers, changing quickly into khaki pants and a sweatshirt. Over these he wore his priest's black raincoat, buttoning it up to the collar. He looked in a mirror and frowned. Priests and policemen, he thought, as he quickly unbuttoned the raincoat: their clothing had identifying smells one couldn't hide. Karras slipped off his shoes and got into the only pair he owned that were not black, his scuffed white te

    In Chris's car, he drove quickly toward Rosslyn. As he waited on M Street for the light to cross the bridge, he glanced right through the window and saw something disturbing: Karl getting out of a black sedan on Thirty-fifth Street in front of the Dixie Liquor Store. The driver of the car was Lieutenant Kinderman.

    The light changed. Karras gu

    Forget it! One thing at a time!

    He parked at the medical building and went upstairs to Dr. Klein's suite of offices. The doctor was busy, but a nurse handed Karras the EEG and very soon he was standing in a cubicle, studying it, the long narrow band of paper slipping slowly through his fingers.

    Klein hurried in, his glance brushing in puzzlement over Karras' dress. "Doctor Karras?"

    "Yes. How do you do?"

    They shook hands.

    "I'm Klein. How's the girl?"

    "Progressing."

    "Glad to hear it." Karras looked back to the graph and Klein sca

    "Yes, I see." Karras. frowned. "Very curious."

    "Curious?"

    "Presuming that we're dealing with hysteria."

    "Don't get it."

    "I suppose it isn't very well known," murmured Karras, pulling paper through his hands in a steady flow, "but a Belgian---Iteka---discovered that hysterics seemed to cause some rather odd fluctuations in the graph, a very minuscule but always identical pattern. I've been looking for it here and I don't find it."

    Klein grunted noncommittally. "How about that."

    Karras glanced at him. "She was certainly disordered when you ran this graph; is that right?"

    "Yes, she was. Yes, I'd say so. She was."

    "Well, then, isn't it curious that she tested so perfectly? Even subjects in a normal state of mind can influence their brain waves at least within the normal range, and Regan was disturbed at the time. It would seem there would be some fluctuations. If---"

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

    "Yes, I'm coming," sighed Klein. As the nurse hurried off, he took a step toward the hallway then turned with his hand on the door edge. "Speaking of hysteria," he commented dryly. "Sorry. Got to run."

    He closed the door behind him. Karras heard his footsteps heading down the hall; heard the opening of a door; heard, "Well, now, how are we feeling today, Mrs...."

    Closing of the door. Karras went back to his study of the graph, finished, then folded it up and banded it. He returned it to the nurse in Reception. Something. It was something he could use with the Bishop as an argument that Regan was not a hysteric and therefore conceivably was possessed. And yet the EEG had posed still another mystery: why no fluctuations? why none at all?

He drove back toward Chris's house, but at a stop sign at the corner of Prospect and Thirty-fifth he froze behind the wheel: parked between Karras and the Jesuit residence hall was Kinderman. He was sitting alone behind the wheel with his elbow out the window, looking straight ahead.

    Karras took a right before Kinderman could see him in Chris's Jaguar. Quickly he found a space, parked and locked the car. Then he walked around the corner as if heading for the residence hall. Is he watching the house? he worried. The specter of De