" '...deliver...' "

"Your abode is in a nest of peacocks, Merrin! your place is within youself! Go back to the mountaintop and speak to your only equal!"

Merrin continued with the prayers, unheeding, as the torrent of abuse raged on. "Do you hunger, Saint Merrin? Here, I give to you nectar and ambrosia, I give to you the food of your God!"

croaked the demon. It excreted diarrhetically, mocking, "For this is my body! Now consecrate that, Saint Merrin!"

Repelled, Karras focused his attention on the text as Merrin read a passage from Saint Luke:

" '..."My name is Legion," answered the man, for many demons had entered into him. And they begged Jesus not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a herd of swine was there, feeding on the mountain-side. And the demons kept entreating Jesus to let them enter into them.

And he gave them leave. And the demons came out from the man and entered into the swine, and the herd rushed down the cliff and into the lake and were drowned. And...' "

"Willie, I bring you good news!" croaked the demon. Karras glanced up and saw Willie near the door, stopping short with an armload of towels and sheets. I bring you tidings of redemption!" it gloated. "Elvira is alive! She lives! She is..."

Willie stared in shock and now Karl turned and shouted at her, "No, Willie! No!"

"...a drug addict, Willie, a hopeless---" "Willie, do not listen!" cried Karl.

"Shall I tell you where she lives?"

"Do not listen! Do not listen!" Karl was rushing Willie out of the room.

"Go and visit her on Mother's Day, Willie! Surprise her! Go and---"

Abruptly the demon broke off and fixed its eyes on Karras. He had again checked the pulse and found it strong, which meant it was safe to give Regan more Librium. Now he moved to Sharon to instruct her to prepare another injection. "Do you want her?" leered the demon. "She is yours! Yes, the stable whore is yours! You may ride her as you wish! Why, she fantasizes nightly concerning you, Karras! She masturbates, dreaming of your great priestly..."

Sharon crimsoned and kept her eyes averted as Karras gave instructions for the Librium.

"And a Compazine suppository is use there's more vomiting," he added.

Sharon nodded at the floor and started stiffly away. As she walked by the bed with her head still lowered, Regan croaked at her, "Slut!" then jerked up and hit her face with a flung bolt of vomit, and while Sharon stood paralyzed and dripping, the Dennings personality appeared, rasping, "Stable whore! Cunt!" Sharon bolted from the room.

The Dennings personality now grimaced with distaste, glance around and asked, "Would someone crack a window open, please? It bloody stinks in this room! Its simply---!

"No no no, don't!" it then amended. "No for heaven's sake, don't, or someone else might be bloody well dead!" And then it cackled, winked monstrously at Karras and vanished.

" 'It is He who expels you...' "

"Does he, Merrin? Does he?"

Now the demon returned and Merrin continued the adjurations, the applications of the stole and the constant tracings of the sign of the cross while it lashed him again obscenely. Too long, worried Karras: the fit was continuing far too long.

"Now the saw comes! The mother of the piglet!" mocked the demon.

Karras turned and saw Chris coming toward him with a swab and disposable syringe. She kept her head down as the demon hurled abuse, and Karras went to her, frowning. "Sharon's changing her clothes," Chris explained, "and Karl's---"

Karras cut her short with "All right," and they approached the bed.

"Ah, yes, come see your handiwork, sow-mother! Come!"

Chris tried desperately not to listen, not to look, while Karras pinned Regan's unresisting arms.

"See the puke! see the murderous bitch!" the demon raged. "Are you pleased? It is you who have done it! Yes, you with your career before anything; your career before your husband, before her, before..."

Karras glanced around. Chris stood paralyzed, "Go ahead!" he ordered. "Don't listen! Go ahead!"

"...your divorce! Go to priests, will you? Priest will not help!" Chris's hand began to shake,

"She mad! She is mad! The piglet is mad! You have driven her to madness and to murder and..."

"I can't!" Face contorted, Chris was staring at the quivering syringe. Shook her head. "I can't do it!"

Karras plucked it from her fingers. "All right, swab it! Swab the arm! Over here!" he told her firmly.

"...in her coffin, you bitch, by..."

"Don't listen!" cautioned Karras again, and now the demon jerked its head around, its eyes bulging fury, "And you, Karras!"

Chris swabbed Regan's arm. "Now, get out!" Karras ordered her, flicking the needle into wasted flesh.

She fled.

"Yes, we know of your kindness to mothers, dear Karras!" croaked the demon. The Jesuit blenched and for a moment did not move. Then slowly he drew the needle out and looked into eyes that rolled upward into their sockets. Out of Regan's mouth came a slow, lilting singing, almost chanting, in a sweet clear voice like a choirboy's. " 'Tantum ergo sacramentum veneremur cerniu...' "

It was a hymn sung at Catholic benediction. Karras stood bloodlessly as it continued. Weird and chilling, the singing was a vacuum into which Karras felt the horror of the evening rushing with a horrible clarity. He looked up and saw Merrin with a towel in his hands. With weary, tender movements he wiped away the vomit from Regan's face and neck.

" '...et antiquum documentum...' "

The singing. Whose voice? wondered Karras. And then fragments: Dennings... The window...

Haunted, he saw Sharon come back in and take the towel from Merrin. "I'll finish that, Father,"

she told him. "I'm all right now. I'd like to change her and get her cleaned up before I give her the Compazine; all right? Could you both wait outside for awhile?"

The two priests stepped into the warmth and the dimness of the hall and leaned wearily against the wall.

Karras listened to the eerie, muffled singing from within. After some moments, he spoke softly to Merrin. "You said--- you said earlier there was only... one entity."

"Yes."

The hushed tones, the lowered heads, were confessional.

"All the others are but forms of attack," continued Merrin. "There is one... only one. It is a demon." There was a silence. Then Merrin stated simply, "I know you doubt this. But you see, this demon... I have met once before. And he is powerful... powerful...."

A silence. Karras spoke again. "We say the demon... cannot touch the victim's will."

"Yes, that is so... that is so... There is no sin."