Page 67 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

town. But a talk from a front-line battler with su- pernatural forces beat all of this. Nobody had paid attention in classes that morning, including the un- easy teachers. We were waiting for the word to come across the PA that it was time to file into the first- floor chapel, an ornate, crowded space with tacked- down carpet and stained-glass arch behind the altar, that minutely lingering aroma of incense, and take either a pew or a fold-out chair. If we wished, while waiting, we could pray.
“Iremember the cold fingers crinkling
up my chest. She had Carolyn’s copy of The Exorcist in an iron skil- let, into which she had poured lighter fluid. She was burning it.”
In researching this article, I found myself speaking to a number of classmates with whom I hadn’t commu- nicated in years, asking what memories they had of the day a demonologist came to call. One expressed relief that anybody was talking about it, as he often wondered whether he had dreamed the whole thing. There was uncertainty as to whether this cleric ap- peared in the movie (two Jesuits did; one Gonzaga teacher may be seen in a crowd shot), or perhaps had performed the real-life exorcism on which the novel was based, or simply knew about “those things”— servants of evil, scratching in the walls, heavy wooden furniture that dances across the floors after midnight, as if over ice. Another classmate, now a retired Merchant Marine and solidly built as a crank- case, admitted the whole lecture had unnerved him so badly he begged other kids to ride home with him that afternoon so as not to be alone in his car.
I personally remember that I sat in the chapel that morning with my right hand firmly over my left, sig- nifying, it seemed to me, an assertion of the triumph of God over the Devil in my own teenage soul. (A childhood in the Catholic Church predisposes one to magical thinking.) Then I intentionally put my left over my right, making it clear that I wasn’t troubled by such meaningless gestures. Then in a flurry I put my right hand back on top. I think I was scared out of my wits.
Here is what I remember from the day the exorcist made his appearance:
1. He was shorter than I expected.
2. He was square-faced and silver-haired, with heavy black glasses, in his early fifties, and somewhat husky, a bit like a football coach in retirement. His physique contrasted oddly with the staid clericals and collar.
3. He spoke in a rapid, stentorian clip, as if impatient with both adolescents and a nation that routinely disregarded the peril they were in.
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