''What religion?'
'None; but I---'
'Why did you come to me, then? Who, advised it?'
'I came because I'm desperate!' she blurted excitedly. 'No one advised me!'
He stood with his back to her, fringes of the towel still lightly in his grip. 'You said earlier psychiatrists advised you to come to me.'
'Oh, I don't know what I was saying! I've been practically out of my head!'
'Look, I couldn't care less about your motive,' he answered with a carefully tempered intensity. 'All I care about is doing what's best for your daughter. I'll tell you right now that if you're looking for an exorcism as an autosuggestive shock cure; you're much -better off calling Central Casting, Miss MacNeil, because the Church won't buy it and you'll have wasted precious time.' Karras clutched at the towel rack to -steady his trembling hands. What's wrong? What's happened?
Incidentally, it's Mrs. MacNeil,' he heart Chris telling him drily.
He lowered his head and gentled his tone. 'Look, whether it's a demon or a mental disorder, I'll do everything I possibly can to help. But I've got to have -the truth. It's important for Regan. At the moment, I'm groping in a state of ignorance, which is nothing supernatural for me or abnormal, it's just my usual condition. Now why don't we both get out of this bathroom and go downstairs where we can talk.' He had turned back to her with a faint, warm smile of reassurance and reached out his hand to help her up. 'I could use a cup of coffee.'
'I could use a drink.'
While Karl and Sharon looked after Regan, they sat in the study, Chris on the sofa, Karras in a chair beside the fireplace, and Chris related the history of Regan's illness, though she carefully withheld any mention of phenomena related to Dennings.
The priest listened, saying very little: an occasional question; a nod; a frown.
Chris admitted that at first she'd considered exorcism as shock treatment. 'Now I don't know,' she said, shaking her head. Freckled, clasped fingers twitched in her lap. 'I just don't know.' She lifted a look to the pensive priest. 'What do you think, Father?'
'
'Compulsive behavior produced by guilt, perhaps, put together with split personality.'
'Father, I've had all that garbage! Now how can you say that after all you've just seen!'
'If you've seen as many patients in psychiatric wards as I have, you can say it very easily,' he assured her.
'Come on, now. Possession by demons, all right: let's assume it's a fact of life,, that it happens. But your daughter doesn't say she's a demon; she insists she's the devil himself, and that's the same thing as saying you're Napoleon Bonaparte! You see?'
'Then explain all those rappings and things.'
'I haven't heard them.'
'Well, they heard then at Barringer, Father, so it wasn't just here in the house.'
'Well, perhaps, but we'd hardly need a devil to explain them.'
'So explain them,' she demanded.
'Psychokinesis.'
'What?'
'Well, you have heard of poltergeist phenomena, haven't you?'
'Ghosts throwing dishes and things?'
Karras nodded. 'It's not that uncommon, and usually happens around an emotionally disturbed adolescent.
Apparently, extreme inner tension of the mind can sometimes trigger some unknown energy that seems to move objects around at a distance. There's nothing supernatural about it. Like Regan's strength. Again, in pathology it's common. Call it mind over matter, if you will.'
'I call it weird.'
'Well, in any case, it happens outside of possession.'
'Boy, isn't this beautiful,' she said wearily. 'Here I am an atheist and here you are a priest and---'
'The best explanation for any phenomenon,' Karras overrode her, 'is always the simplest one available that accommodates all the facts.'
'Well, maybe I'm dumb,' she retorted, 'but telling me an unknown gizmo in somebody's head throws dishes at a ceiling tells me nothing at all! So what is it? Can you tell me for pete's sake what it is?'
'No, we don't under---'
'What the hell's split personality, Father? You say it; I hear it. What is it? Am I really that stupid? Will you tell me what it is in a way I can finally get it through my head?' In the red-veined eyes was a plea of despairing confusion.
'Look, there's no one in the world who pretends to understand it,' the priest told her gently. 'All we know is that it happens, and anything beyond the phenomenon itself is only the purest speculation. But think of it this way, if you like: the human brain contains, say, seventeen billion cells.'
