'Minimal...' Karras repeated dully. Well, that's the ball game. 'And what about the gibberish?' he asked without hope. 'Is it any kind of language?'
Frank chuckled.
'What's funny?' asked the Jesuit moodily.
'Was this really some sneaky psychological testing, Father?'
'I don't know what you mean, Frank.'
'Well, I guess you got your tapes mixed around or something. It's---'
'Frank, is it a language or not?' cut in Karras.
'Oh, I'd say it was a language, all right.'
Karras stiffened. 'Are you kidding?'
'No, I'm not.'
'What's the language?' he asked, unbelieving.
'English.'
For a moment, Karras was mute, and when he spoke there was an edge to his voice. 'Frank, we seem to have a very poor connection; or would you like to let me in on the joke?'
'Got your tape recorder there?' asked Frank.
It was sitting on his desk. 'Yes, I do.'
'Has it got a reverse-play position?'
'Why?'
'Has it got one?'
'Just a second.' Irritable, Karras set down the phone and took the top off the tape recorder to check it. 'Yes, it's got one. Frank, what's this all about?'
'Put your tape on the machine and play it backward.'
'What?'
'You've got gremlins.' Frank laughed, 'Look, play it and I'll talk to you tomorrow. Good night, Father.'
'Night, Frank.'
'Have fun.'
Karras hung up. He looked baffled. He hunted up the gibberish tape and threaded it onto the recorder. First he ran it forward, listening. Shook his head. No mistake. It was gibberish.
He let it run through to the end and then played it in reverse. He heard his voice speaking backward. Then Regan---or someone---in English!
... Marin marin karras be us let us...
English. Senseless; but English! How on earth could she do that? he marveled.
He listened to it all, then rewound and played the tape through again. And again. And then realized that the order of speech was inverted.
He stopped the tape and rewound it. With a pencil and paper, he sat down at the desk and began to play the tape from the beginning while transcribing the words, working laboriously and long with almost constant stops and starts of the tape recorder. When finally it was done, he made another transcription on a second sheet of paper, reversing the order of the words. Then he leaned back and read it: ... danger. Not yet. [indecipherable] will die. Little time. Now the [indecipherable]. Let her die. No, no, sweet! it is sweet in the body! I feel! There is [indecipherable]. Better [indecipherable] than the void. I fear the priest. Give us time. Fear the priest! He is [indecipherable]. No, not this one: the [indecipherable], the one who [indecipherable]. He is ill. Ah, the blood, feel the blood, how it [sings?].
Here, Karras asked, 'Who are you?' with the answer: I am no me. I am no one.
Then Karras: 'Is that your name?' and then: I have no name. I am no one. Many. Let us be. Let us warm in the body. Do not [indecipherable] from the body into void, into [indecipherable]. Leave us. Leave us. Let us be. Karras. [Marin?
Marin?]...
Again and again he read it over, haunted by its tone, by the feeling that more than one person was speaking, until finally repetition itself dulled the words into commonness. He set down the tablet on which he'd transcribed them and rubbed at his face, at his eyes, at his thoughts. Not an unknown language. And writing backward with facility was hardly paranormal or even unusual. But speaking backward: adjusting and altering the phonetics so that playing them backward would make them intelligible;. wasn't such performance beyond the reach of even a hyperstimulated intellect? The accelerated unconscious referred to by Jung? No. Something...
He remembered. He went to his shelves for a book: Jung's Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena. Something similar here, he thought. What?
He found it: an account of an experiment with automatic writing in which the unconscious of the subject seemed able to answer his questions and anagrams.
Anagrams!
He propped the book open on the desk, leaned over and read an account of a portion of the experiment: 3rd DAY What is man? Tefi hasl esble lies.
