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there seem to be three.”
“There is only one.”
“You’re coming in?” “You think I shouldn’t?” “Please don’t,”
“Don’t. You’d be making a mistake.”
Wary.
The lowing grew louder, tearing at flesh and shivering through bone.
“Now follow his teaching, Merrin! Do it! Put your sanctified cock in the piglet’s mouth and cleanse it, swab it with the wrinkled relic and she will be cured, Saint Merrin! Yes, a miracle! A—”
“Hypocrite! You care nothing at all for the pig. You care nothing! You have made her a contest between us!”
“My name is Legion,”
And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.”
“Ah, well … at last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.”
How many husbands and wives,” Merrin uttered sadly, “must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds.
“There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves.”
“And yet even from this—from evil—there will finally come good in some way; in some way that we may never understand or even see.” Merrin paused. “Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness,” he brooded. “And perhaps even Satan—Satan, in spite of himself—somehow serves to work out the will of God.”
I’m going to call in a cardiac specialist!”
“And I will pray.”
“You will lose! She will die! She will die!”
his lack of faith; his medical incompetence; his flight from his mother in search of status. And Regan! Regan! His fault!
“Today Muddir Day, Dimmy.”
A key to the Playboy Club has been found on the chapel kneeler in front of the votive lights. Is it yours? You can claim it at Reception. Joe
“And I’m your closet now?
Glory be to God for dappled things, For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-fire-coal chestnut falls; finches’ wings… He fathers forth whose beauty is past change. Praise Him.
“Oh, Lord,”
“I have loved the beauty of Thy house.”
If instead of just clay I could take all the prettiest things Like a rainbow, Or clouds or the way a bird sings, Maybe then, dearest Mommy, If I put them all together, I could really make a sculpture of you.
chance meeting.
“If instead of just clay…”
“… all the prettiest things…”
“… or the way a bird sings.”
“Saintly flatulence! Die, will you? Die? Karras, heal him!”
“Even worms will not eat your corruption, you…!”
“… homosexual…”
“Now put his cock in his hands!”
“The last rites!”
“You’re a loser! You’ve always been a loser!”
saw the eyes filled with peace; and with something else: something like joy at the end of heart’s longing.
