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 seances, 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 seance, 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