The Ninth Configuration

by William Peter Blatty

  “But—”

  “Prove that it isn’t!”

  Kane looked down and examined his thoughts. Then he looked up at Cutshaw and said, “All right. A shipwreck survivor in the middle of the ocean finds out that she has meningitis and deliberately goes over the side of the lifeboat, drowning herself to keep the others in the boat from contracting the disease. Now, what do you call that? Reflex action?”

  “No, I call that suicide.”

  “Suicide and giving up your life are not the same.”

  “You’re so dumb you’re adorable.”

  “The essence of suicide is despair.”

  “The essence of suicide,” Cutshaw rebutted, “is nobody gets to collect the insurance.” Kane started to reply, but Cutshaw argued over his voice: “All the examples you’re trying to give me or are going to give me can be explained.”

  “Like the way you explained that woman in the lifeboat?”

  “She might have had children in that lifeboat, which makes her performance maternal instinct. Maybe somebody pushed her over the side.”

  “Not so,” said Kane with a shake of his head.

  “How the hell do you know? Were you there?”

  “No, of course not; it’s just an example.”

  “Right! That’s exactly my point! That’s what I’m getting at:

  Who the hell knows whether all the examples we keep on hearing about aren’t bullshit, or don’t have some bullshit, basically selfish explanation?”

  “I know,” Kane asserted firmly.

  “I don’t! Now give me one-just one-example that you know of personally!”

  Kane was silent, his eyes on Cutshaw’s, burning, mysterious.

  “Just one! That guy with the grenade, maybe?”

  Kane stared down at the desk.

  Cutshaw’s tone became forlorn. “I thought as much,” he muttered. Then quickly he was animated, manic. “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he announced. “I want you to take me to Mass.”

  “But your God is dead,” said Kane.

  “That’s right. But I have a deep and trenchant interest in the study of primitive cults. Besides, I love to worship statues just as long as I don’t have to look at their feet. Have you ever seen anything as tawdry as the feet of an old St. Joseph statue with the faded paint and the crummy old plaster chipped away on the toes? You want to talk about sleazy? Holy Christ! Listen, take me to Mass tomorrow. I’m serious. I’ll be quiet and good, Hud, I swear it. Please? I’ll just sit and think pious thoughts. Okay?”

  Kane was silent, considering.

  “Okay, fronds? Can I think about fronds? Or I’ll sit there and quietly think about pianos!” He leaned his face in close to Kane’s. “I want to go,” he said softly. “Really.”

  Kane agreed to take him. Cutshaw loped from the room, euphoric. He ran out to the courtyard, clapping his arms around his chest as a chilling breeze sprang up and the vivid orange ball of the sun slipped down below the tree line into darkness. Groper stood at his office window, watching him. He saw Krebs and Christian enter the courtyard. The two sergeants were dressed in Nazi Storm Trooper uniforms, each with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a German shepherd in tow. They took up positions a distance apart at the outer perimeter of the yard and began pacing off a sentry watch. When Cutshaw saw them he let out a yipping cheer. Groper shook his head. He would check Kane’s file again. He remembered a paragraph dealing with his psychiatric methods. A word eluded him. Was it “novel”? “Erratic”? He asked a clerk-typist to dig out the file, and to put in another tracer on Fell’s, which had never arrived. He shuffled the papers on his desk and noted that a new inmate was due to arrive. He buzzed for an orderly and told him to get a bed ready.

  Krebs and Christian patrolled until eleven, when the lights were turned out. Once, earlier, they had approached each other from opposite ends of the courtyard and halted briefly at close quarters and Krebs had intoned, “I’ll bet my savage dog can lick your savage dog.” Christian refused to be lured into answering, and the sergeants continued walking and were never observed to converse again the entire evening.

  13

  The following morning just before seven, Kane sat waiting in his staff car, having sent Krebs to go and fetch Cutshaw. When the astronaut finally appeared, he was dressed in a clean khaki uniform, stiff with starch. His hair was thick with Vaseline and his face was cleanly shaven, but he still wore his sneakers and his tattered college blazer, and affected a bold, high Buster Brown collar tied with a bright-red bow. Kane at first insisted that he remove the collar and sneakers, but relented when Cutshaw argued, “Would Foot give a shit about what I’m wearing?” They drove to the church, a modest A-frame in the seacoast town of Bly. They were a few minutes late.

  As they emerged from the staff car, Cutshaw looked suddenly terrified and gripped Kane’s hand. He would not let go until after they had entered the church.

  In the vestibule, Kane stopped to dip his hand into the holy-water font, and Cutshaw walked rapidly toward the front of the church, assuming a rapid, pigeon-toed gait and listing his shoulders from side to side. When he reached the front pew he paused and called to Kane in a loud stage whisper, “Hud, up here! Let’s see the statues!”

  Kane walked down the aisle, ignoring the curious looks of the parishioners. He genuflected outside

  the pew, then rose and knelt down next to Cutshaw. The astronaut was kneeling stiffly, staring piously at the priest, whose hands were upraised, his back to the parishioners. “Is that Edgar Cayce?” he asked in a voice that carried to the altar. The priest paused briefly and looked around, then resumed the saying of Mass.

  Cutshaw was quiet until the sermon, which concerned the Good Shepherd who was willing to “lay down his life for his sheep.” Whenever the priest made some trenchant point, Cutshaw applauded or murmured “Bravo!” The priest, a former missionary who had lived much of his life in China, decided that Cutshaw was drunk and certainly no more of a nuisance than squalling infants or belching warlords. When Cutshaw applauded he would raise his voice a notch and offer it up to God.

  When it came time for the collection, Cutshaw loudly demanded a nickel. Kane gave him a dollar. But when the collection basket was thrust at him, Cutshaw held it firmly and poked his nose in it, sniffing furiously; then he abruptly waved it by. He crumpled the dollar into his pocket.

  Kane turned his gaze to him as they knelt for the consecration. Cutshaw’s hands were clasped before him as he stared up at the altar, his pixie head awash in sunlight shafting narrowly through stained glass. He looked like a Christmas-card sketch of a choirboy.

  Cutshaw behaved with decorum through the remaining parts of the Mass, except once, when he stood up and said, “Infinite goodness is creating a being that you know in advance is going to complain.”

  As they walked back up the aisle, Cutshaw took hold of Kane’s hand once more. Outside, on the steps, he turned and said simply, “I dug it.” He was silent on the drive back until the car pulled up to the door of the mansion. Then he said in a childlike voice, “Thank you.”

  “Why did you keep the dollar?” Kane asked him.

  “For suckers,” said Cutshaw, and he glided into the mansion. He came out again quickly.

  “If you die first and there’s life after death, will you give me a sign?” he asked.

  “I’ll try.”

  “You’re terrific.” Cutshaw crouched away. A mist of rain began to descend. Kane looked up at the sound of distant thunder. He stepped into the mansion’s main hall and met Fell, who was buckling the belt of his trench coat. “Did Cutshaw behave himself?” he asked.

  “As usual,” answered Kane.

  “Why did you take him?”

  “He wanted to go.”

  “Stupid question.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Over to the beach.”

  “It’s cold and it’s raining,” Kane said.

  Fell glanced at him oddly. “I’m just going there to eat, not to swim, old sp
ort. There’s a diner there with great eggs Benedict. You want some? Come on.”

  “No, I think I’ll lie down for a while. I feel tired.” Fell gave him a searching look. “Excuse me,” said Kane. He walked past Fell toward the staircase.

  “Sure sorry,” said Fell. “I was hoping you’d come so you’d pick up the check.” Kane seemed oblivious, walking on. Fell shook his head. He changed his mind about going out. He headed for the mess in search of coffee and did not notice Krebs coming out of Kane’s office. The sergeant hurried after Kane.

  “Colonel? Colonel Kane, sir?”

  Kane stopped and turned at the head of the steps. There were heavy, dark sacs beneath his eyes. And pain. He waited for Krebs to reach him.

  “Colonel?”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s just the new man, sir.”

  “New man?”

  “The new inmate, Colonel. He got in about half an hour ago.

  I put him in your office. I’d thought you might not want him to be mixing with the others until you’d-well-sort of explained things to him. He seems-well-pretty straight, sir. Just combat fatigue, from the look of him. That’s as much as I know.”

  “I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  “Very good, sir.” Krebs retreated down the stairs.

  14

  Kane entered his bedroom. He locked the door and walked into the bathroom, where he plucked an aspirin bottle from the medicine cabinet and shook its contents into his hand until he reached the 100-milligram Demerol tablets he had pilfered from the drug chest. He took three of them: nothing less could allay the pain.

  He went down to his office. As he opened the door, Cutshaw approached him. “Would you please talk to Reno?” the astronaut complained to him. “Could he get his fucking dogs the hell out of the tunnels? There’s slippage enough as it is down there.”

  “Yes, I’ll tell him,” said Kane. His voice was subdued.

  “I want to talk about Christ’s resurrection,” said Cutshaw. “Do you think it was bodily?”

  “We can talk about it later,” said Kane.

  “No, now!” Cutshaw threw open the door all the way. The new arrival, a Marine Corps lieutenant named Gilman, was sitting on the sofa, a rain-moist duffel bag at his feet. A Z-shaped scar was etched into his brow just above his right eye. He looked up at Kane, startled. “I don’t believe it,” said the lieutenant. “ ‘Killer’ Kane!”

  In the fall of 1967 he was in Vietnam in command of a Special Forces camp just south of the perilous demilitarized zone. Once, at the end of a particularly hazardous mission, a second lieutenant discovered him standing by a tree at the rendezvous point. He was staring vacantly into the dusk.

  “Colonel Kane!” the lieutenant whispered. “It’s me-Gilman!”

  Kane’s head was lowered. He did not answer.

  Gilman squinted into the gloom. He came closer and noticed the wet blood streaking the grease paint that covered Kane’s face. He followed Kane’s stare to the jungle floor and saw the frail and bleeding body of a black-pajama-clad Vietcong. It had no head.

  “You got a Charlie,” Gilman said tonelessly.

  “Just a boy.” Kane’s voice was dreamy. He lifted unseeing eyes to Gilman’s. “He spoke to me, Gilman.”

  Gilman stared uneasily. Kane was partially turned away from him. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “I cut off his head and he kept on talking, Gilman. He spoke to me after I killed him.”

  Gilman was alarmed. “Come on, sir, let’s go,” he urged. “It’s getting light.”

  “He told me I loved him,” Kane said dully.

  “Christ, forget about it, Colonel!” Gilman’s face was close to Kane’s.

  He squeezed his arm with heavy fingers.

  “He was only a boy,” said Kane. Then Gilman stared in horror as Kane raised his hands. Cradled in them was the severed head of a fourteen-year-old boy. “See?” Gilman stifled a scream. Savagely he knocked the head out of Kane’s hands. It rolled down an incline and finally thumped against a tree.

  “Oh, my Christ,” moaned Gilman.

  Eventually he got Kane back to the base. But when Kane was put to bed he was still in a trancelike state. A medical orderly recorded the incident, noting that Kane would bear further observation.

  The following morning Kane behaved normally and continued with his duties. He seemed to have no recollection of the head. In the days to come he was to wonder why Lieutenant Gilman eyed him oddly whenever he saw him. Kane made sure that Gilman never again accompanied him on a mission. He could not pin down his reason for this; somehow it just seemed more efficient.

  Some two weeks after the incident, Kane was standing by a window of his adjutant’s sandbagged shack. He was staring at the drumming torrential rain that had not ceased for the last four days. The adjutant, a dark-eyed captain named Robinson, was hovering by a TWX machine that spewed out messages a chattering inch per thrust. It mingled in ominous syncopation with the pounding of the rain.

  Kane suddenly started; then relaxed. He thought he’d heard a voice from the jungle: a single cry that sounded like “Kane!” Then he saw the bird taking off from the treetops and remembered the screech of its species.

  There was an unaccountable trembling in his fingers; a twitching in his bones: they had been his companions ever since first he had come to Vietnam; they and the sleeplessness. And when he slept he was haunted by dreams, chilling nightmares always forgotten. He tried to remember them but couldn’t. There were even times when he would tell himself in a dream that surely this time he would remember. But he never did. Each humid morning’s only legacy was sweat and the drone of mosquitoes. Yet the dreams, he knew, never left him: they still ran darkly through his bloodstream. Behind him he could sense vague tracks, feel menacing eyes that were fixed on some easy prey within him. He was nagged by a prescience of disaster.

  The TWX machine clicked its teeth without pause.

  “Can’t you turn that damned thing off!” snapped Kane.

  “Special orders coming in, sir,” Robinson told him. The machine fell silent. Robinson ripped away the message. When he looked up, the colonel was gone and rain splattered in through an open door. Robinson carried the message to the doorway and saw Kane walking toward the jungle; he was coatless, hatless, instantly drenched in the violent downpour. Robinson shook his head. “Colonel Kane, sir!” he called.

  Kane stopped dead, then turned around. His hands were cupped before him like a child’s catching the rain, and he was looking at them.

  The adjutant flourished the message. “It’s for you, sir!”

  Kane walked slowly back to the shack and stood staring silently at Robinson. Trickles of water plopped down from the bottoms of his trousers and sleeves and puddled on the floor.

  The TWX machine had received a set of special orders assigning Kane to the state of Washington. Robinson looked rueful as he handed them to Kane. “Oh, well, Christ, it’s an obvious mistake, sir. Some half-ass computer must have goofed.” The adjutant pointed to some wording. “See? Your serial number’s wrong, and it gives your MOS as ‘Psychiatrist.’

  There must be another Colonel Kane.”

  “Yes,” murmured Kane. He nodded his head. Then he took the TWX from Robinson and stared at its contents. His eyes were alive with struggle. Finally, he crumpled the TWX in his hand and went out into the rain again and walked until he disappeared from view. Robinson kept staring into the torrent. His heart was heavy. Kane’s recent behavior had been anomalous. It had not gone unwatched.

  Night fell suddenly. The adjutant paced in his quarters, chain-smoking

  nervously. Kane had been gone for hours. What should he

  do? Send out a patrol? He would like to avoid it if he could; avoid the necessity of explaining that “Colonel Kane took a walk in the rain without a hat, without a coat, but I thought it in keeping with his recent behavior, which has generally seemed unglued.” He was protective about the colonel. Everyone else regarded
Kane with a mixture of awe, dislike and fear; but he had treated Robinson gently, sometimes even with fondness, and had let him glimpse, from time to time, the sensitivity trapped within him.

  Robinson crushed out a cigarette, picked up his pipe and chewed on the stem. Then he saw Kane standing drenched in the open doorway. He was smiling faintly at his adjutant. “If we could scrub away the blood, do you think we could find where we’ve hidden our souls?” he asked. Before Robinson could answer, Kane had walked away and down the hall to his room. The adjutant listened to his footsteps, the opening and muted closing of his door.

  The following morning Kane told Robinson that in spite of the discrepancies in the orders, he thought them correct with respect to their substance. He would go to Washington.

  Robinson knew he would have to report it.

  “By the time he hit the States, they’d caught the mistake.” Fell sat against the edge of the clinic examining table. He popped a cigarette from a packet and with shaking hands struck a match. He inhaled smoke and then blew it out. “By then it was clear that he meant to go through with it.” Fell cupped the burned-out match in his hand and stared at an ad on the crumpled match-book, a technical training school promising employment; then he slowly turned his gaze on each of the grave, bewildered faces of the men he had gathered together in the clinic:

  Groper, Krebs, Christian, the medical orderlies-and Gilman. “They’d heard a lot of stories about him cracking. He seemed on the edge of a very bad breakdown. When he took the assignment, though, that was it. We knew that he’d had it.” Fell shook his head, and then continued. “But how do you tell a man with a record like that?”

  Groper looked down at a set of orders in his hand. He shookhis leonine head, amazed; then he thrust the orders out toward Fell.

  “These orders of yours,” he said to him. “They’re for real?”

  Fell nodded. “You can put it in the bank,” he said firmly. Then he pulled at the cigarette. “Kane didn’t pick his line of work.” The words came out softly, with exhaled smoke. “In World War II he was a fighter pilot. Then one time he bailed out behind enemy lines and had to fight his way back. That time he killed an even six. It happened again. And he killed five more. So headquarters figured he had a talent. And they made him a specialist. They’d drop him behind the lines on clandestine missions and let him get back as best he could. He always did. And he wasted a lot of the enemy. A lot. With a knife. With his hands. Most times with a wire. And it ripped him apart. He was good. A good man. We stuck that wire in his hands and said, ‘Get ‘em, boy! Get ‘em for God and country! It’s your duty!’ But part of him didn’t believe it; the good part. That’s the part that pulled the plug. Then some computer dropped a stitch and gave the poor bastard a halfway out: a way to find help without facing his illness; a way to hide, to hide from himself; and a way to wash away the blood: a way to do penance for the killing-by curing.