The Exorcist

Part I: The Beginning: Chapter Four

Chapter Four

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

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

The drinks did their work. By a quarter to ten, all 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 Mrs. 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 psychic 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," 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!" said the psychic with mirth.

"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 that 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 convicted of fraud."

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

"Oh, my, but was he ever!" The psychic 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's arm! Now, can you imagine?"

The Jesuit was smiling as he set down his plate. "Don't come looking for discounts any more 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," Chris began.

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," Perrin teased with a smile.

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