Something prodding at his hand. He looked down. 'That's her,' Chris was saying 'that's Regan.' She was giving him a photograph. He took it. Young girl. Very pretty. Sweet smile.
'That was taken four months ago,' Chris said numbly. She took back the photo and motioned with her head at the bedroom door. 'Now you go and take a look at her now.' She leaned against the wall beside Karl. 'I'll wait here.'
'Who's in there with her?' Karras asked her.
'No one.'
He held her steady gaze and then turned with a frown to the bedroom door. As he grasped the doorknob, the sounds from within ceased abruptly. In the ticking silence, Karras hesitated, then entered the room slowly, almost flinching backward at the pungent stench of moldering excrement that hit him in the face like a palpable blast.
Quickly reining back his revulsion, he closed the door. Then his eyes locked, stunned, on the thing that was Regan, on the creature that was lying on its back in the bed, head propped against a pillow while eyes bulging wide in their hollow sockets shone with mad cunning and burning intelligence, with interest and with spite as they fixed upon his, as they watched him intently, seething in a face shaped into a skeletal, hideous mask of mind-bending malevolence. Karras shifted his gaze to the tangled, thickly matted hair; to the wasted arms and legs; the distended stomach jutting up so grotesquely; then back to the eyes: they were watching him... pinning him... shifting now to follow as he moved to a desk and chair near the window.
'Hello, Regan, ' said the priest in a warm, friendly tone. He picked up the chair and took it over by the bed.
'I'm a friend of your mother's. She tells me that you haven't been feeling too well.' He sat down. 'Do you think you'd like to tell me what's wrong? I'd like to help you.'
The eyes gleamed fiercely, unblinking and a yellowish saliva dribbled down from a corner of her mouth to her chin. Then her lips stretched taut into a feral grin, into bow-mouthed mockery.
'Well, well, well,' gloated Regan sardonically, and hairs prickled on the back of Karras' neck, for the voice was an impossibly deep bass thick with menace and power. 'So it's you... they sent you! Well, we've nothing to fear from you at all.'
'Yes, that's right. I'm your friend. I'd like to help,' said Karras.
'You might looses these straps, then,' Regan croaked. She had tugged up her wrists so that now Karras noticed that they were bound with a double set of restraining straps.
'Are they uncomfortable for you?' he asked her.
'Extremely. They're a nuisance. An infernal nuisance.' The eyes glinted slyly with secret amusement.
Karras saw the scratch marks on her face; the cuts on her lips where apparently she'd bitten them. 'I'm afraid you might hurt yourself, Regan.'
'I'm not Regan,' she rumbled, still with the hideous grin that now seemed to Karras to be her permanent expression. How incongruous, the braces on her teeth looked, he reflected.
'Oh, I see. Well, then, maybe we should introduce ourselves. I'm Damien Karras,' said the priest. 'Who are you?'
'I'm the devil.'
'Ah, good, very good.' Karras nodded approvingly.
'Now we can talk.'
'A little chat?'
'If you like.'
'Very good for the soul. However, you will find that I cannot talk freely while bound with these straps. I'm accustomed to gesturing.' Regan drooled. 'As you know, I've client much of my time in Rome, dear Karras. Now kindly undo the straps!'
What precocity of language and thought, mused Karras. He leaned forward in his chair with professional interest 'You say you're the devil?' he asked.
'I assure you.'
'Then why don't you just make the straps disappear?'
'That's much too vulgar a display of power, Karras. Too crude. After all, I'm a prince!' A chuckle. 'I much prefer persuasion, Karras; togetherness; community involvement. Moreover, if I loosen the straps myself, my friend, I deny you the opportunity of performing a charitable act.'
'But a charitable act,' said Karras, 'is a virtue and that's what the devil would want to prevent; so in fact I'd be helping you now if I didn't undo the straps. Unless, of course'---he shrugged---'you're really not really the devil. And in that case, perhaps I would undo the straps.'
'How very foxy of you, Karras. If only dear Herod were here to enjoy this.'
'Which Herod?' asked Karras with narrowed eyes. Was she punning on Christ's calling Herod 'that fox'? 'There were two. Are you talking about the King of Judea?'
'The tetrarch of Galilee!' she blasted him with anger and scorching contempt; then abruptly she was grinning again, cajoling in that sinister voice: 'There, you see how these damnable straps have upset me? Undo then. Undo them and I'll tell you the future.'
'Very tempting.'
'My forte.'
'But then how do I know that you can read the future?'
