Chapter Four

FOUR

I met Hal when I was twenty-four and he was twenty-six. I had graduated college a few years prior and was in the middle of doing very little with my art history degree, while Hal was barely living off freelance-writing gigs. We met at a local gallery opening. He was writing a piece about the opening, and I had a single painting on display, which nobody looked at except for Hal, who doled out praise so liberally, it bordered on the disingenuous. He asked for my number and I gave it to him. We went out for a drink a few nights later.

I thought Hal was handsome. Some of my friends commented that he looked too thin, and they might have had a point; his too-big clothes draped off his lean body. But I liked his shaggy hair and his brown eyes and the way he smiled, crooked yet glowing. What I really liked was his excitement, his passion. He was the kind of person who could go on and on about anything—he could talk for hours, and I was happy just to sit and listen. He seemed to know a little bit about everything, which made me feel like I knew nothing about anything, but if I spent enough time with him, perhaps I could know a little bit about everything as well. I liked the way he laid claim to me after only a few dates, how when a male bartender complimented me on my blouse he wrapped his arm around me, as if to say, Move on, pal. This one is taken. And I suppose I was taken, in more ways than one.

For our third date, Hal took me to the movies. One of the theaters downtown was showing a rerelease of The Exorcist and Hal had never seen it. I had seen it once, several years back. I had never been much of a horror movie aficionado, but I remembered enjoying the movie in a general sense and feeling fairly entertained by it. Hal had a different opinion.

“Jesus,” Hal said as we walked out of the theater hand in hand, “that scared the shit out of me.”

I chuckled, focusing mostly on the feeling of his hand in mine. I liked when he intertwined our fingers and squeezed, as he had done just a moment ago. “I suppose it was sort of creepy.”

“Creepy?”Hal laughed. “That little girl was terrifying. When she vomited all over that priest? Did that not scare you?”

“You know,” I said, “they used split pea soup for that scene. The vomit.”

“That doesn’t make it less scary,” Hal said. “It just makes pea soup more disgusting.”

We turned left out of the theater and started walking down the street. It was late enough in the evening that most shops had closed, but the glow of signs and streetlights kept the sidewalk illuminated. It was late summer, and the nights were still warm. I hoped we could walk around forever, provided Hal kept his hand in mine.

“And the bit with the, um?.?.?. crucifix?” Hal gestured. “That was fucked-up.”

I laughed. “Definitely fucked-up.”

“Didn’t that scare you?”

I considered. “It bothered me,” I said, “but I wouldn’t say it scared me.”

Hal shook his head and shuddered. “I’m going to be seeing that little girl’s face in my sleep.”

I hoped Hal wouldn’t notice we had walked past our cars. I was afraid he would want to turn around, decide that the night was over, get in his car, leave. It was late—almost ten o’clock—but I wasn’t ready for the night to be over yet. We walked past a restaurant that shone with red neon, lighting up Hal’s thin face in the loveliest way.

“Also,” Hal said, “I can’t believe that priest died in the end. All that work he did for the little girl—”

“Regan,” I said.

“Regan. And what thanks does he get? Thrown out of a window.”

I swung our clasped hands together in between us like I was a child on a playground. “It was a sacrifice,” I said. “He sacrificed himself to save Regan. He took on her demon and killed himself so she wouldn’t come to any more harm.”

“Captain Howdy.” Hal exaggerated a shiver.

“Captain Howdy,” I repeated, taking the opportunity to tickle Hal’s side. He played along, shivering harder. We giggled. For the next few months, whenever we heard a noise in either of our apartments, I would say it was Captain Howdy coming to get us and Hal would fake a shiver and we would giggle and giggle. That joke faded with time, replaced over the next thirty or so years by new phrases and gags that only the two of us understood, but remembering it always brought a smile to my face.

I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course. I was smiling simply because Hal’s hand was still in mine. We walked in silence for a moment, grinning in the face of the future that unfolded before us.

“What I think is so neat about horror movies,” I said, “is that they shine a light on what we think is scary. Not just ghosts and demons, but what we find really scary.”

“How do you mean?” Hal asked. His eyes were on me, serious, dark spotlights that drowned out all the details in the periphery.

“These movies are so memorable because they play off things that we, as a society, find terrifying.” I had taken a film studies class in college and, as a result, believed I knew all there was to know about film.

“You mean the devil?” Hal said, a smile darting across his face. “Seems like low-hanging fruit.”

“Well, obviously, the devil.” I chuckled. “Everybody is scared of evil things attacking them when they aren’t going to church enough. I think this movie gets at a different kind of fear.”

“Which is?”

“The fear of losing a child,” I said. “Not physically, but emotionally. Captain Howdy has Regan. He’s taken her over completely, turned her into some wicked thing. All parents fear the loss of their child’s innocence—they’ll go through hell to keep it from happening. And her mother is powerless except to watch it torn to pieces.”

“It’s not like any of that was Regan’s fault,” Hal said.

“I think that’s what makes it the most terrifying,” I said, enjoying the rare moment when I seemed to know more about a subject than Hal. “The lack of control. Neither Regan nor her mother did anything to cause it, and they certainly can’t do anything to stop it.”

“Not without being thrown from a window, anyway,” Hal said.

“And I think that’s the point,” I said. “That’s the decision that the priest made. In the face of the great, uncontrollable evil, he knew that his options were to let the demon take over Regan or to let it take him. He chose the latter. To him, it was worth it to stand up to her demon, to take on the evil himself if it meant that she could go free. He wanted her to have the life that ought to have been ahead of her.”

“Regardless,” Hal said, “it scared the bejesus out of me.”

Hal and I arrived at a street corner. The light was red, so we waited to cross. This would have been a natural opportunity for Hal to suggest that we turn around and head back to our cars. Hal swung around to face me, taking both my hands in his. He smiled down at me—that crooked smile—and my heart sputtered.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking away from his gaze, the spotlights too bright for my eyes. “I’m prattling on.”

Hal smiled wider. “I like it,” he said. He squeezed my hands, bent down, and pressed his lips over mine. For a moment, the world flickered, a piece of film frozen on the projector in the moments before it starts to burn around the edges. Hal’s lips were dry and there was a faint hint of popcorn on his breath, and I swear to Christ I heard my heart sing. I must have forgotten to breathe the entire time, because when we separated, Hal’s hands still clutching mine, I was nearly gasping for air.

I had no idea what to say. I had forgotten all words. I looked up at him, smiling.

Hal smiled back. He squeezed my hands. “Do you want to go somewhere and get a drink?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” I said.