William Blatty - The Exorcist

"Ich möchte Sie etwas fragen, Engstrom!"

With a stab of discovery and hot-surging hope, Karras jerked around his head and looked down at the bed. The demon grinned mockingly at Karl. "Tanzt Ihre Tochter gern?"

German! It had asked if Karl's daughter liked to dance! His heart pounding, Karras turned and saw that the servant's cheeks had flushed crimson; that he trembled, that his eyes glared with fury. "Karl, you'd better step outside," Karras advised him.

The Swiss shook his head, his hands squeezed into white-knuckled fists. "No, I stay!"

"You will go, please," the Jesuit said firmly. His gaze held Karl's implacably.

After a moment of dogged resistance, Karl gave way and hurried from the room.

The laughter had stopped. Karras turned back. The demon was watching him. It looked pleased. "So you're back," it croaked. "I'm surprised. I would think that embarrassment over the holy water might have discouraged you from ever returning. But then I forget that a priest has no shame."

Karras breathes shallowly and forced himself to rein his expectations, to think clearly. He knew that the language test in possession required intelligent conversation as proof that whatever was said was not traceable to buried linguistic recollections. Easy! Slow down! Remember that girl? A teen-age servant. Possessed. In delirium, she'd babbled a language that finally was recognized to be Syriac. Karras forces himself to think of the excitement it had caused, of how finally it was learned that the girl had at one time been employed in a boardinghouse where one of the lodgers was a student of theology. On the eve of examinations, he would pace in his room and walk up and down stairs while reciting his Syriac lessons aloud. And the girl had overheard them. Take it easy. Don't get burned.

"Sprechen Sie deutsch?" asked Karras warily.

"More games?"

"Sprechen Sie deutsch?" he repeated, his pulse still throbbing with that distant hope.

"Natürlich," the demon leered at him. "Mirabile dictu, wouldn't you agree?"

The Jesuit's heart leaped up. Not only German, but Latin! And in context!

"Quad nomen mihi est?" he asked quickly. What is my name?

"Karras."

And now the priest rushed on with excitement.

"Ubi sum?" Where am I?

"In cubiculo." In a room.

"Et ubi est cubiculum?" And where is the room?

"In domo." In a house.

"Ubi est Burke Dennings?" Where is Burke Den-nings?

"Mortuus." He is dead.

"Quomodo mortuus est?" How did he die?

"Inventus est capite reverso." He was found with his head turned around.

"Quis occidit eum?" Who killed him?

"Regan."

"Quomodo ea occidit illum? Dic mihi exacte!" How did she kill him? Tell me in detail!

"Ah, well, that's sufficient excitement for the moment," the demon said, grinning. "Sufficient. Sufficient altogether. Though of course it will occur to you, I suppose, that while you were asking your questions in Latin, you were mentally formulating answers in Latin." It laughed. "All unconscious, of course. Yes, whatever would we do without unconsciousness? Do you see what I'm driving at, Karras? I cannot speak Latin at all. I read your mind. I merely plucked the responses from your head!"

Karras felt an instant dismay as his certainty crumbled, felt tantalized and frustrated by the nagging doubt now planted in his brain.

The demon chuckled. "Yes, I knew that would occur to you, Karras," it croaked at him. "That is why I'm fond of you. That is why I cherish all reasonable men." Its head tilted back in a spate of laughter.

The Jesuit's mind raced rapidly, desperately; formulating questions to which there was no single answer, but rather many. But maybe I'd think of them all! he realized. Okay! Then ask a question that you don't know the answer to! He could check the answer later to see if it was correct.

He waited for the laughter to ebb before hd spoke: "Quam profundus est imus Oceanus Indicus?" What is the depth of the Indian Ocean at its deepest point?

The demon's eyes glittered: "La plume de ma tante," it rasped.

"Responde Latine."

"Bon jour! Bonne nuit!"

"Quam---"

Karras broke off as the eyes rolled upward into their sockets and the gibberish entity appeared.

Impatient and frustrated, Karras demanded, "Let me speak to the demon again!"

No answer. Only the breathing from another shore.

"Quis es tu?'" he snapped hoarsely. Voice frayed.

Still the breathing.

"Let me speak to Burke Dennings!"

A hiccup. Breathing. A hiccup. Breathing.

"Let me speak to Burke Dennings!"

The hiccupping, regular and wrenching, continued. Karras shook his head. Then he walked to a chair and sat on its edge. Hunched over. Tense. Tormented. And waiting...

Time passed. Karras drowsed. Then jerked his head up. Stay awake! With blinking, heavy lids, he looked over at Regan. No hiccupping. Silent.

Sleeping?

He walked over to the bed and looked down. Eyes closed. Heavy breathing. He reached down and felt her pulse, then stooped and carefully examined her lips. They were parched. He straightened up and waited. Then at last he left the room.

He went down to the kitchen in search of Sharon; and found her at the table eating soup and a sandwich. "Can I fix you something to eat, Father Karras?" she asked him. "You must be hungry."

"

"Thanks, no, I'm not," he answered. Sitting down, he reached over and picked up a pencil and pad by Sharon's typewriter. "She's been hiccupping," he told her. "Have you had any Compazine prescribed?"

"Yes, we've got some."

He was writing on the pad. "Then tonight give her half of a twenty-five-milligram suppository."

"Right."

"She's beginning to dehydrate," he continued, "so I'm switching her to intravenous feedings. First thing in the morning, call a medical-supply house and have them deliver these right away." He slid the pad across the table to Sharon. "In the Meantime, she's sleeping, so you could start her on a Sustagen feeding."

"Okay." Sharon nodded. "I will." Spooning soup, she turned the pad around and looked at the list."

Karras watched her. Then he frowned in concentration.

"You're her tutor."

"Yes, that's right."

"Have you taught her any Latin?"

She was puzzled. "No, I haven't.-"

"Any German?"

"Only French."

"What level? La plume de ma tante?"

"Pretty much."

"But no German or Latin."

"Huh-nh, no."

"But the Engstroms, don't they sometimes speak German?"

"Oh, sure."

"Around Regan?"

She shrugged. "I suppose." She stood up and took her plates to the sink. "As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure."

"Have you ever studied Latin?" Karras asked her.

"No, I haven't."

"But you'd recognize the general sound."

"Oh, I'm sure." She rinsed the soup bowl and put it in the rack.

"Has she ever spoken Latin in your presence?"

"Regan?"

"Since her illness."

"No, never."

"Any language at all?" probed Karras.

She tuned off the faucet, thoughtful. "Well, I might have imagined it, I guess, but..."

"What?"

"Well, I think..." She frowned. "Well, I could have sworn I heard her talking in Russian."

Karras stared. "Do you speak it?" he asked her, throat dry.

She shrugged. "Oh, well, so-so." She began to fold the dishcloth: "I just studied it in college, that's all. "

Karras sagged. She did pick the Latin from my brain. Staring bleakly; he lowered his brow to his hand, into doubt, into torments of knowledge and reason: Telepathy more common in states of great tension: speaking always in a language known to someone in the room: "... thinks the same things I'm thinking...": "Bon jour...": "La plume de ma tante...": "Bonne nuit..." With thoughts such as these, he slowly watched blood turning back into wine.