“Don’t tell me again I’m not Margaret Dorn.”

He smiled wanly. “Well, you’re not now at any rate.”

“Didn’t I really change this time?”

“Your personality surely changed.”

“Goddamn it, my features, my hair, my body. My complexion is lighter, I’m shorter, my tits are smaller than hers!”

“That’s what you see. I saw only a person who seemed demented.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Maggie, what difference does it make? I agree there’s something wrong with you.”

“And will you agree that it could be caused by an outside source?”

“Oh, I don’t know—”

“Peter, how could such things possibly happen to two persons in the same family at the same time? Wouldn’t the odds be astronomical on the same thing happening to Duff and me?”

“Well, we have only your word about things happening to Duff.”

“Goddamn you, Jackson, go to the high school, go to the police in Ashland! Go and ask his father!”

“Still, no one but you has seen the General!”

I flew at him and hammered his chest. He caught me and held me tightly. He was stronger than I had expected him to be. After a while I was exhausted, and then I just stood there sobbing and letting him hold me.

“Stay with me. I mean stay in the house tonight, Peter.”

“But I can’t—” He hesitated and then said, “All right. If it’s all right with your husband. I’ll have to think of some excuse to give Father Fogarty.”

“Tell him the truth. Tell him I’m possessed.”

“He’d love that. That’s what he’d like to hear. Why do you want me to stay tonight?”

“I just feel that something might happen and someone who knows about me ought to be around. I haven’t been able to talk to Jack about it.”

“I think you should.”

“I can’t. You’re the only one I can trust, Peter.”

He realized he had been holding me for a long time and he released me then. Was there still something of Margaret Dorn in me? I think even when she wasn’t in complete control of me, she had begun by that time to influence me greatly.

We went into the house and I told Jack that Father Jackson was going to spend the night. His bedroom at the rectory was being painted, I said, and paint fumes always made him ill. Peter looked uncomfortable during this but he didn’t protest.

“Where will he bunk?” Jack asked. “Maybe you could move downstairs with me, Maggie, and Father Jackson could have your room.”

“The sofa here is good enough,” Father Jackson said. “I’m small. I can manage all right for one night.”

“It could be more than one night,” I said. “It takes a while for a newly painted room to air out.”