"I want Mom!" wept Regan.
"She's coming. Do you hurt, dear?"
She nodded, the tears streaming down.
"Where?"
"just every place!" sobbed Regan. "I feel all achy!"
"Oh, my baby!"
"Mom!"
Chris ran to the bed and hugged her. Kissed her. Comforted and soothed. Then Chris herself began to weep. "Oh, Rags, you're back! It's really you!"
"Oh, Mom, he hurt me!" Regan sniffled. "Make him stop hurting me! Please? Okay?"
Chris looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced to the doctors with a pleading question in her eyes.
"She's heavily sedated," the psychiatrist said gently.
"You mean...?"
He cut her off. "We'll see." Then he turned to Regan. "Can you tell me what's wrong, dear?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know why he does it to me." Tears rolled down from her eyes. "He was always my friend before!"
"Who's that?"
"Captain Howdy! And then it's like somebody else is inside me! Making me do things!"
"Captain Howdy?"
"I don't know!"
"A person?"
She nodded.
"Who?"
"I don't know!"
"Well, all right, then; let's try something, Regan. A game." He was reaching in his pocket for a shining bauble attached to a silvery length of chain. "Have you ever seen movies where someone gets hypnotized?"
She nodded.
"Well, I'm a hypnotist. Oh, yes! I hypnotize people all the time. That's, of course, if they let me. Now I think if I hypnotize you, Regan, it will help you get well. Yes, that person inside you will come right out. Would you like to be hypnotized? See, your mother's right here, right beside you"
Regan looked questioningly to Chris.
"Go ahead, honey, do it," Chas urged her. "Try It."
Regan turned, to the psychiatrist and nodded "Okay," she said softly. "But only a little."
The psychiatrist smiled and glanced abruptly to the sound of pottery breaking behind him. A delicate vase had fallen to the floor from the top of a bureau where Dr. Klein was now resting his forearm. He looked at his arm and then down at the shards with an air of puzzlement; then stooped to pick them up.
"Never mind, doc, Willie'll get it," Chris told him.
"Would you close those shutters for me, Sam?" the psychiatrist asked him. "And pull the drapes?"
When the room was dark, the psychiatrist gripped the chain in his fingertips and began to swing the bauble back and forth with an easy movement. He shone a penlight on it. It glowed. He began to intone the hypnotic ritual. "Now watch this, Regan, keep watching, and soon you'll feel your eyelids growing heavier and heavier...."
Within a very short time, she seemed to be in trance.
"Extremely suggestible," the psychiatrist murmured.
Then he spoke to the girl. "Are you comfortable, Regan?"
"Yes." Her voice was soft and whispery.
"How old are you, Regan?"
"Twelve."
"Is there someone inside you?"
"Sometimes."
"When?"
"Different times."
"It's a person?"
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know."
"Captain Howdy?"
"I don't know."
"A man?"
"I don't know."
"But he's there."
"Yes, sometimes."
"Now?"
"I don't know."
"If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid!"
"Of what?"
"I don't know!"
"If he talks to me, Regan, I think he will leave you. Do you want him to leave you?"
"Yes."
"Let him speak, then. Will you let him speak?"
A pause. Then, "Yes."
"I am speaking to the person inside of Regan now," the psychiatrist said firmly. "If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions." For a moment he paused to allow the suggestion to enter her bloodstream. Then he repeated it: "If you are there, then you are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer, now: Are you there?"
Silence. Then something curious happened: Regan's breath turned suddenly foul. It was thick, like a current. The psychiatrist smelled it from two feet away. He shone the penlight on Regan's face.
Chris stifled a gasp. Her daughter's features were contorting into a malevolent mask: lips pulling tautly into opposite directions, tumefied tongue lolling wolfish from her mouth.
"Oh, my God!" breathed Chris.
"Are you the person in Regan?" the psychiatrist asked.
She nodded.
"Who are you?"
"Nowonmai," she answered gutturally.
"That's your name?"
She nodded.
"You're a man?"
She said, "Say."
"Did you answer?"
"Say"
"If that's 'yes,' nod your head."
She nodded.
"Are you speaking in a foreign language?"
"Say."
"Where do you come from?"
"Dog."
"You say that you come from a dog?"
"Dogmorfmocion," Regan replied.
The psychiatrist thought for a moment, then attempted another approach. "When I ask you questions now, you will answer by moving your head: a nod for 'yes,' and a shake for 'no.' Do you understand that?"
Regan nodded.
"Did your answers have meaning?" he asked her.
"Yes."
"Are you someone whom Regan has known?" No.
"That she knows of?" No.
"Are you someone she's invented?" No.
"You're real?" Yes.
"Part of Regan?" No.