William Blatty - The Exorcist

"Will you do another picture this year?' he asked her.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Do I have to?"

"Yes, l think you'd better."

She cupped her face in both her hands and eyed him moodily. "What about a Honda?"

He made no reply.

Later that evening, Chris tried to put all of her worries aside; tried to keep herself busy with making preparations for the next night's party.

"Let's serve the curry buffet instead of sit-down," she told Willie and Karl. "We can set up a table at the end of the living room. Right?"

"Very good, madam," Karl answered quickly.

"So what do you think, Willie? A fresh fruit salad for dessert?"

"Yes, excellent!" said Karl.

"Thanks, Willie."

She'd invited an interesting mixture. In addition to Burke ("Show up sober, dammit!") and the youngish director of the second unit, she expected a senator (and wife); an Apollo astronaut (and wife); two Jesuits from Georgetown; her next-door neighbors; and Mary Jo Perrin and Ellen Cleary.

Mary Jo Perrin was a plump and gray-headed Washington seeress whom Chris had met at the White House dinner and liked immensely. She'd expected to find her austere and forbidding, but "You're not like that at all!" she'd been able to tell her. Bubbly-warm and unpretentious.

Ellen Cleary was a middle-aged State Department secretary who'd worked in the U. S. Embassy in Moscow when Chris toured Russia. She had gone to considerable effort and trouble to rescue Chris from a number of difficulties and encumbrances encountered in the course of her travels, not the least of which had been caused by the redheaded actress' outspokenness. Chris had remembered her with affection over the years, and had looked her up on coming to Washington.

"Hey, Shar," she asked, "which priests are coming?"

"I'm not sure yet. I invited the president and the dean of the college, but I think that the president's sending an alternate. His secretary called me late this morning and said that he might have to go out of town."

"Who's he sending?" Chris asked with guarded interest.

"Let me see." Sharon rummaged through scraps of notes. "Yes, here it is, Chris. His assistant- Father Joseph Dyer."

"You mean from the campus?"

"Well, I'm not sure."

"Oh, okay"

She seemed disappointed.

"Keep an eye on Burke tomorrow night," She instructed.

"I will."

"Where's Rags?"

"Downstairs."

"You know, maybe you should start to keep your typewriter there; don't you think? I mean, that way you can watch her when you're typing. Okay? I don't like her being alone so much."

"Good idea."

"Okay, later. Go home. Meditate. Play with horses."

The planning and preparations at an end, Chris again found herself turning worried thoughts toward Regan. She tried to watch television. Could not concentrate. Felt uneasy. There was a strangeness in the house. Like settling stillness. Weighted dust.

By midnight, all in the house were asleep.

There were no disturbances. That night.

CHAPTER FOUR

She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants. Her shoes were comfortable. They reflected her hope far the evening.

The first to arrive was Mary Jo Perrin, who came with Robert, her teen-age son. The last was pink-faced Father Dyer. He was young and diminutive, with fey eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. At the door, he apologized for his lateness. "Couldn't find the right necktie," he told Chris expressionlessly. For a moment, she stared at him blankly, then burst into laughter. Her day-long depression began to lift.

The drinks did their work. By a quarter to ten, they were scattered about the living room eating their dinners in vibrant knots of conversation.

Chris filled her plate from the steaming buffet and scanned the room for Mary Jo Perrin. There. On a sofa with Father Wagner, the Jesuit dean. Chris had spoken to him briefly. He had a bald, freckled scalp and a dry, soft manner. Chris drifted to the sofa and folded to the floor in front of the coffee table as the seeress chuckled with mirth.

"Oh, come on, Mary Jo!" the dean said, smiling as he lifted a forkful of curry to his mouth.

"Yeah, come on, Mary Jo," echoed Chris.

"Oh, hi! Great curry!" said the dean.

"Not too hot?"

"Not at all; it's just right. Mary Jo has been telling me there used to be a Jesuit who was also a medium."

"And he doesn't believe me!" chuckled the seeress.

"Ah, distinguo," corrected the dean. "I just said it was hard to believe."

"You mean medium medium?" asked Chris.

"Why, of course," said Mary Jo. "Why, he even used to levitate!"

"Oh, I do it every morning," said the Jesuit quietly.

"You mean he held séances?" Chris asked Mrs. Perrin.

"Well, yes," she answered. "He was very, very famous in the nineteenth century. In fact, he was probably the only spiritualist of his time who wasn't ever clearly convicted of fraud."

"As I said, he wasn't a Jesuit," commented the dean.

"Oh, my, but was he!" She laughed.: "When he turned twenty-two, he joined the Jesuits and promised not to work anymore as a medium, but they threw him out of France"---she laughed even harder---"right after a séance that he held at the Tuileries. Do you know what he did? In the middle of the séance he told the empress she was about to be touched by the hands of a spirit child who was about to fully materialize, and when they suddenly turned all of the lights on"---she guffawed---"they caught him sitting with his naked foot on the empress' arm! Now, can you imagine?"

The Jesuit was smiling as he set down his plate.

"Don't come looking for discounts anymore on indulgences, Mary Jo."

"Oh, come on, every family's got one black sheep."

"We were pushing our quota with the Medici popes."

"Y'know, I had an experience once," began Chris."

But the dean interrupted. "Are you making this a matter of confession?"

Chris smiled and said, "No, I'm not a Catholic."

"Oh, well, neither are the Jesuits." Mrs. Perrin chuckled.

"Dominican slander," retorted the dean. Then to Chris he said, "I'm sorry, my dear. You were saying?'

"Well, just that I thought I saw somebody levitate once. In Bhutan."

She recounted the story.

"Do you think that's possible?" she ended. "I mean, really, seriously."

"Who knows?" He shrugged. "Who knows what gravity is. Or matter, when it comes to that."

"Would you like my opinion?" interjected Mrs. Perrin.

The dean said, "No, Mary Jo; I've taken a vow of poverty."

"So have I," Chris muttered.

"What was that?" asked the dean, leaning forward.

'"Oh, nothing. Say, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. Do you know that little cottage that's back of the church over there?" She pointed in the general direction.

"Holy Trinity?" he asked.

"Yes, right. Well, what goes on in there?"

"Oh, well, that's where they say Black Mass," said Mrs. Perrin.

"Black who?"

"Black Mass."

"What's that?"

"She's kidding," said the dean.

"Yes, I know," said Chris, "but I'm dumb. I mean, What's a Black Mass?"

"Oh, basically, it's a travesty on the Catholic Mass," explained the dean. "It's connected to witchcraft. Devil worship."

"Really? You mean, there really is such a thing?"

"I really couldn't say. Although I heard a statistic once about something like possibly fifty thousand Black Masses being said every year in the city of Paris."

"You mean now?" marveled Chris.

"It's just something I heard."

"Yes, of course, from the Jesuit secret service," twitted Mrs. Perrin.

"Not at all. I hear voices," responded the dean.

"You know, back in L. A.," mentioned Chris, "you hear an awful lot of stories about witch cults being around. I've often wondered if it's true."