The Exorcist

by William Peter Blatty

In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. —Aeschylus

little bit smart-ass?” “Mea culpa,”

Standing silent and motionless in the dank, graffitied tomb of his hopes, the Swiss manservant stared without sight for long moments until at last he slowly lowered his head in grief.

by her and then upstairs to Regan’s bedroom. He was seeking a knowledge he must clutch by the heart. He entered and saw Karl in a chair by the window. Silent

Mental Closeout Sale! he bannered at himself: Moving to New Conclusions! Everything Must Go! Then, Positively! he added sternly, and with that the detective opened his eyes and examined afresh the bewildering data.

We have familiar experience of the order, the constancy, the perpetual renovation of the material world which surrounds us. Frail and transitory as is every part of it, restless and migratory as are its elements, still it abides. It is bound together by a law of permanence, and though it is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. Dissolution does but give birth to fresh modes of organization, and one death is the parent of a thousand lives.

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.

“See the puke! See the murderous bitch!” the demon raged. “Are you pleased? It is you who has done it! Yes, you with your career before anything, your career before your husband, before her, before…” Karras glanced around. Chris stood paralyzed. “Go ahead!” he told her firmly. “Don’t listen! Go ahead!”

And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.” Merrin

“Ah, well … at last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.”

How many husbands and wives,” Merrin uttered sadly, “must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds. Ah, dear God!” He shook his head. And then he nodded. “There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien:

between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves.”

“And yet even from this—from evil—there will finally come good in some way; in some way that we may never understand or even see.” Merrin paused. “Perhaps evil is the crucible of goodness,” he brooded. “And perhaps even Satan—Satan, in spite of himself—somehow serves to work out the will of God.”

Where was he? He turned to ask Sharon and glimpsed her disappearing down the basement steps. He went looking for the houseman in the kitchen. He wasn’t there. Only Chris. Her elbows propped and hands cupped at her temples, she was sitting at the breakfast table looking down at … What was it? Karras quietly moved closer. Stopped. A photo album. Scraps of paper. Pasted

But he could not, and as he listened to the thumping and bubbling of the percolating coffee, his hands began trembling again as compassion swelled suddenly and blindly into rage at disease and at pain, at the suffering of children and the frailty of the body and the monstrous and outrageous corruption of death. “If instead of just clay…”

Dyer stared at her with fondness for a moment, then said quietly, “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?”