Dimiter by William Peter Blatty Page A

and deprived of water for twenty-four, was placed on his back atop a gurney cart, strapped down with leather restraints, and wheeled to a narrow, white-tiled room. Immaculately clean and brightly lit by surgical spotlights affixed to the ceiling, this was the so-called “Magic Room.” Here tricks could be played on top of tricks. First Sodium Pentothal was injected. After that the hypnosis began and the illusions: “Your hand is beginning to feel very warm,” recalcitrant subjects had often been told; thisto convince them they had entered the hypnotic state and that further attempts at resistance were useless, when in fact the subject’s hand was responding to the current from a hidden diathermy machine. Or concealed holographic projectors were invoked: “Do you see the solid wall there in front of you?” “Yes.” “Look through it. You’ll see roses that are floating in midair.” These were the games. When they were done, methamphetamine was injected to create an irresistible, driving urge to pour out speech, ideas, and memories, giving the subject no time to think; and then there sometimes came forth, at the end of it all, a bruised and slurry thing called truth.
    “Come, begin! What’s the problem?”
    Exhausted and driven, impatient, consumed, Vlora glared in consternation at Tsu, who was standing across from him at the gurney. Leaning down to inject the Pentothal, he had inexplicably hesitated: the syringe held poised in midair, he stood motionless, studying the Prisoner’s face.
    Vlora looked worried. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    Tsu shook his head, remained still, then said, “Nothing.”
    He bent lower and administered the injection.
    “For a moment I thought I might have seen this man before.”
    A polygraph expert shuffled into the room. Short and middle-aged with close-set eyes, he wore a threadbare suit several sizes too large so that the trousers bagged in folds at his feet. “I’m here,” he muttered sourly in greeting. Pulled away from his breakfast, sullen and begrudging, he noisily unfolded a metal table and chair and banged each of them down near the head of the gurney. After setting his polygraph machine on the table, he wired the Prisoner to the device, then settled into the chair looking wounded and abused. Snuffling, heslipped on his earphones and nodded, as he murmured in a tone of patient suffering, “I’m ready.”
    “If you will help us just a little, you may drink this.”
    Tsu held a frost-covered glass of iced water to the Prisoner’s cheek. “Fresh water from a spring,” he told the Prisoner amiably. “If you obey my next command you may drink it. All right? Nothing onerous. Just open your eyes.”
    Vlora shook his head. “This will not work,” he said. “It won’t work.” Staring intently at the Prisoner’s face, an incredible and chilling suspicion had just occurred to him concerning the enigma’s identity.
    The Prisoner opened his eyes.
    Vlora took a quick step back from the gurney.
    Propping up the Prisoner’s head with his hand, Tsu held the water to his lips with the other. “Just a sip or two for now,” he cautioned gently. Then he made a quiet promise: “More later.”
    The Prisoner spoke. He said, “Thank you.”
    Startled, Vlora flinched while Tsu met his look of amazement with a smile. And so began the series of steps and events that would lead to the belief that the Prisoner had weakened, an impression that would finally come to be viewed, when the annals of the “Magic Room” were completed, as surely its most incredible and lethal illusion.
    All of the early moves were routine: the lights were dimmed down to a ghostly murk, the usual “road hypnosis” begun: the application of a steady, repetitive rhythm, in this instance an illuminated metronome blade which the Prisoner watched as it tocked back and forth. Such had always been shown to be highly effective against the desire not to be hypnotized and to retain one’s alertness of will.