The Exorcist

by William Peter Blatty

More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak?

“Look, if Christ had said those people who were supposedly possessed had schizophrenia, which I imagine they did, they would probably have crucified him three years earlier.”

Reining in his revulsion, he closed the door and then his eyes locked, stunned, on the thing that was Regan, on the creature that was lying on its back on the bed, head propped against a pillow while eyes bulging wide in their hollow sockets shone with mad cunning and burning intelligence, with interest and with spite, as they fixed upon his; as they watched him intently, seething in a face shaped into a skeletal mask of unthinkable malevolence.

The Jesuit was staring straight ahead, unseeing, wisps of smoke from the cigarette held between his fingers wafting up into life and then instant death like mistaken recognitions and one’s memory of dreams.

He started his engine and turned on the windshield wipers in time to see a tall old man stepping out of the cab. He paid the driver, then turned and stood motionless under a misty streetlamp’s glow, staring up at a window of the house like a melancholy traveler frozen in time.

Cue the exorcist theme

We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to wither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops—which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.

“But if all of the evil in the world makes you think that there might be a devil, Chris, how do you account for all of the good?”