Who are you? Clelia.
Are you a woman? Yes.
Have you lived on earth? No.
Will you come to life? Yes.
When? In six years.
Why are you conversing with me? E if Cledia el.
The subject interpreted this answer as an anagram for "I Clelia feel."
4TH DAY
Am I the one who answers the questions? Yes.
Is Clelia there? No.
Who is there, then? Nobody.
Does Clelia exist at all? No.
Then with whom was I speaking yesterday? With nobody.
Karras stopped reading. Shook his head. Here was no paranormal performance: only the limitless abilities of the mind.
He reached for a cigarette, sat down and lit it. "I am no one. Many." Eerie. Where did it come from, he wondered, this content of her speech?
"With nobody."
From the same place Clelia had come from? Emergent personalities?
"Marin... Marin..." "Ah, the blood..." "He is ill...."
Haunted, he glanced at his copy of Satan and moodifly leafed to the opening inscription: "Let not the dragon be my leader...."
He exhaled smoke and closed his eyes. He coughed. His throat felt raw and inflamed. He crushed out the cigarette, eyes watering from smoke. exhausted. His bones felt like iron pipe.
He got up and put out a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, then he flicked out the room light, shuttered his window blinds, kicked off his shoes and collapsed on the bed. Fragments. Regan.
Dennings. Kinderman. What to do? He must help. How? Try the Bishop with what little he had? He did not think so. He could never convincingly argue the case.
He thought of undressing, getting under the covers. Too tired. This burden. He wanted to be free.
"...Let us be!"
Let me be, he responded to the fragment. He drifted into motionless, dark granite sleep.
**********
The ringing of a telephone awakened him. Groggy, he fumbled toward the light switch. What time was it? A few minutes after three. He reached blindly for the telephone. Answered.
Sharon. Would he come to the house right away? He would come. He hung up the telephone, feeling trapped again, smothered and enmeshed.
He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, dried off and then started from the room, but at the door, he turned around and came back for his sweater. He pulled it over his head and then went out into the street.
The air was thin and still in the darkness. Some cats at a garbage can scurried in fright as he crossed toward the house.
Sharon met him at the door. She was wearing a sweater and was draped in a blanket. She looked frightened. Bewildered. "Sorry, Father," she whispered as he entered the house, "but I thought you ought to see this."
"What?"
"You'll see. Let's be quiet, now. I don't want to wake up Chris. She shouldn't see this." She beckoned.
He followed her, tiptoeing quietly up the stairs to Regan's bedroom. Entering, the Jesuit felt chilled to the bone. The room was icy. He frowned in bewilderment at Sharon, and she nodded at him solemnly. "Yes. Yes, the heat's on," she whispered. Then she turned and stared at Regan, at the whites of her eyes glowing eerily in lamplight. She seemed to be in coma. Heavy breathing. Motionless. The nasogastric tube was in place, the Sustagen seeping slowly into her body.
Sharon moved quietly toward the bedside and Karras followed, still staggered by the cold.
When they stood by the bed, he saw beads of perspiration on Regan's forehead; glanced down and saw her hands gripped firmly in the restraining straps.
Sharon. She was bending, gently pulling the top of Regan's pajamas wide apart, and an overwhelming pity hit Karras at the sight of the wasted chest, the protruding ribs where one might count the remaining weeks or days of her life.
He felt Sharon's haunted eyes upon him. "I don't know if it's stopped," she whispered. "But watch: just keep looking at her chest."
She turned and looked down, and the Jesuit, puzzled, followed her gaze. Silence. The breathing.
Watching. The cold. Then the Jesuit's brows knitted tightly as he saw something happening to the skin: a faint redness, but in sharp definition; like handwriting. He peered down closer.
