The psychiatrist smiled and glanced abruptly to the sound of pottery breaking behind him. A delicate vase had fallen to the floor from the top of a bureau where Dr. Klein was now resting his forearm. He looked at his arm and then down at the shards with an air of puzzlement; then stooped to pick them up.
'Never mind, doc, Willie'll get it,' Chris told him.
'Would you close those shutters for me, Sam?' the psychiatrist asked him. 'And pull the drapes?'
When the room was dark, the psychiatrist gripped the chain in his fingertips and began to swing the bauble back and forth with an easy movement. He shone a penlight on it. It glowed. He began to intone the hypnotic ritual. 'Now watch this, Regan, keep watching, and soon you'll feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier....'
Within a very short time, she seemed to be in trance.
'Extremely suggestible,' the psychiatrist murmured.
Then he spoke to the girl. 'Are you comfortable, Regan?'
'Yes.' Her voice was soft and whispery.
'How old are you, Regan?'
'Twelve.'
'Is there someone inside you?'
'Sometimes.'
'When?'
'Different times.'
'It's a person?'
'Yes.'
'Who is it?'
'I don't know.'
'Captain Howdy?'
'I don't know.'
'A man?'
'I don't know.'
'But he's there.'
'Yes, sometimes.'
'Now?'
'I don't know.'
'If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer?'
'No!'
'Why not?'
'I'm afraid!'
'Of what?'
'I don't know!'
'If he talks to me, Regan, I think he will leave you. Do you want him to leave you?'
'Yes.'
'Let him speak, then. Will you let him speak?'
A pause. Then, 'Yes.'
'I am speaking to the person inside of Regan now,' the psychiatrist said firmly. 'If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions.' For a moment he paused to allow the suggestion to enter her bloodstream. Then he repeated it: 'If you are there, then you are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer, now: Are you there?'
Silence. Then something curious happened: Regan's breath turned suddenly foul. It was thick, like a current. The psychiatrist smelled it from two feet away. He shone the penlight on Regan's face.
Chris stifled a gasp. Her daughter's features were contorting into a malevolent mask: lips pulling tautly into opposite directions, tumefied tongue lolling wolfish from her mouth.
'Oh, my God!' breathed Chris.
'Are you the person in Regan?' the psychiatrist asked.
She nodded.
'Who are you?'
'Nowonmai,' she answered gutturally.
'That's your name?'
