"Tell me what?"

"Oh, it happened at the clinic," Chris explained. "There were--- well..." She traced a finger on her chest. "You know, like writing? Just letters. They'd show up on her chest, then disappear.

Just like that."

Karras frowned. "You said 'Letters.' Not words?" "No, no words. Just an M once or twice. Then an L." "And

you saw this?" he asked her.

"Well, no. But they told me."

"Who told you?"

"The doctors at the clinic. Look, you'll see it in the records. It's for real."

"Yes, I'm sure. But again, that's a natural phenomenon." "Where?

Transylvania?" Chris said, incredulous.

Karras shook his head. "No, I've come across cases of that in the journals. There was one, I remember, where a prison psychiatrist reported that a patient of his--- an inmate--- could go into a self-induced state of trance and make the signs of the zodiac appear on his skin." He made a gesture at his chest. "Made the skin raise up."

"Boy, miracles sure don't come easy with you, do they?"

"There was once an experiment," he explained to her gently, "in which the subject was hypnotized, put into trance; and then surgical incisions were made is each arm. He was told that his left arm was going to bleed, but that the right arm would not. Well, the left arm bled and the right arm didn't. The power of the mind controlled the blood flow. We don't know how, of course; but it happens. So in cases of stigmata--- like the one with that prisoner I mentioned, or with Regan the unconscious mind is controlling the differential of blood flow to the skin, sending more to the parts that it wants raised up. And so then you have drawings, or letters, or whatever. Mysterious, but hardly supernatural."

"You're a real tough case, Father Karras, do you know that?"

Karras touched a thumbnail to his teeth. "Look, maybe this will help you to understand," he said finally. "The Church--- not me--- the Church--- once published a statement, a warning to exorcists. I read it last night. And what it said was that most of the people who are thought to be possessed or whom others believe to be possessed--- and now I'm quoting--- 'are far more in need of a doctor than of an exorcist.' " He looked up into Chris's eyes. "Can you guess when that warning was issued?"

"No, when?"

"The year fifteen eighty-three."

Chris stared in surprise; thought. "Yeah, that sure was one hell of a year," she muttered. She heard the priest rising from his chair. "Let me wait and check the records from the clinic," he was saying.

Chris nodded.

"In the meantime," he continued, "I'll edit the tapes and then take them to the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. It could be this gibberish is some kind of a language. I doubt it.

But maybe. And comparing the patterns of speech... Well, then you'll know. If they're the same, you'll know for sure she s not possessed."

"And what then?" she asked anxiously.

The priest probed her eyes. They were turbulent. Worried that her daughter is not possessed!

He thought of Dennings. Something wrong. Very wrong. "I hate to ask, but could I borrow your car for a while?"

She looked bleakly at the floor. "You could borrow my life for a while," she murmured. "Just get it back by Thursday. You never know; I might need it."

With an ache, Karras stared at the bowed, defenseless head. He yearned to take her hand and say that all would be well. But how?

"Wait, I'll get you the keys," she said.

He watched her drift away like a hopeless prayer.

When she'd given him the keys, Karras walked back to his room at the residence hall. He left the tape recorder there and collected the tape of Regan's voice. Then he went back across the street to Chris's parked car.

Climbing in, he heard Karl calling out from the doorway of the house: "Father Karras!" Karras looked. Karl was rushing down the stoop, quickly throwing on a jacket. He was waving. "Father Karras! One moment!"

Karras leaned over and cranked down the window on the passenger side. Karl leaned his head in. "You are going which way, Father Karras?"

"Du Pont Circle."

"Ah, yes, good! You could drop me, please, Father? You would mind?"

"Glad to do it. Jump in."

Karl nodded. "I appreciate it, Father!"

Karras started up the engine. "Do you good to get out"

"Yes, I go to see a film. A good film."

Karras put the car in gear and pulled away.

For a time they drove in silence. Karras was preoccopied, searching for answers. Possession.

Impossible. The holy water. Still...

"Karl, you knew Mr. Dennings pretty well, wouldn't you say?"

Karl stared through the windshield; then nodded stiffly. "Yes. I know him."

"When Regan... when she appears to be Dennings, do you get the impression that she really is?"

Long pause. And then a flat and expressionless "Yes."

Karras nodded, feeling haunted.

There was no more conversation until they reached Du Pont Circle, where they came to a traffic signal, and stopped. "I get off here, Father Karras," Karl said, opening the door. "I can catch here the bus." He climbed out, then leaned his head in the window. "Father, thank you very much. I appreciate. Thank you."

He stood back on the safety island and waited for the light to change. He smiled and waved as the priest drove. away. He watched the car until at last it disappeared around the bend at the mouth of Massachusetts Avenue. Then he ran for a bus. Boarded. Took a transfer. Changed buses. Rode in silence until finally he debarked at a northeast tenement section of the city, where he walked to a crumbling apartment building and entered.

Karl paused at the bottom of the gloomy staircase, smelling acrid aromas from efficiency kitchens. From somewhere the sound of a baby crying. He lowered his head. A roach scuttled quickly from a baseboard and across a stair in jagging darts. He clutched at the banister and seemed on the verge of turning back, but then shook his head and began to climb. Each groaning footfall creaked like a rebuke.

On the second floor, he walked to a door in a murky wing, and for a moment he stood there, a hand on the door frame. He glanced at the wall: peeling paint; Nicky and Ellen in penciled scrawl and below it, a date and a heart whose core was cracking plaster. Karl pushed the buzzer and waited, head down. From within the apartment, a squeaking of bedsprings. Irritable muttering. Then someone approaching: a sound that was irregular: the dragging clump of an orthopedic shoe. Abruptly the door jerked partly open, the chain of a safety latch rattling to its limit as a woman in a slip scowled out through the aperture, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, it's you," she said huskily. She took off the chain.