DC By the Book

Excerpt: The house was a rental. Brooding. Tight. A brick colonial gripped by ivy in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Across the street was a fringe of campus belonging to Georgetown University; to the rear, a sheet embankment plummeting steep to busy M Street and, just beyond it, the River Potomac. Early on the morning of April 1, the house was quiet. Chris MacNeil was propped in bed, going over her lines for the next day's filming. Regan, her daughter, was sleeping down the hall.... She heard rapping sounds. They were odd. Muffled. Profound. Rhythmically clustered. Alien code tapped out by a dead man. ---------- Published in 1971, The Exorcist tells the story of the demonic possession of twelve-year-old Regan MacNeil, the daughter of a famous actress, and the Jesuit psychiatrist priest who attempts to exorcise the demon. The novel was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University. The actual case took place just over the DC/MD line in Mt. Rainier off of Rhode Island Avenue. The “possessed” was a boy who lived in a house on the northwest corner of Bunker Hill Road and 33rd Street…torn down long ago and replaced by a park. Another house that was torn down to make way for the house that was used as the MacNeil residence, built in 1949, was the home of the most prolific female novelist of latter 19th century that you never heard of: Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth or E.D.E.N. Southworth (1819-1899). Author of more than 80 novels, Mrs. Southworth made her home at “Prospect Cottage.” She began to write stories to support herself and her children when her husband deserted her in 1844. A supporter of social change and women's rights, her best known work was The Hidden Hand, a serial novel first published in the New York Ledger in 1859 (later appearing in book form in 1888). Prospect Cottage was left to the National League of American Pen Women to serve as their headquarters and as a memorial to Mrs. Southworth. Alas, instead it was sold and 3600 Prospect was built, only to embody more fame due to the 1973 film The Exorcist than Mrs. Southworth will ever achieve (the NLAPW ‘s headquarters are located at 1300 17th Street, NW).

Excerpt: At 11:46 Chris answered the phone. The young director at the second unit. He sounded grave. -- "Have you heard the news yet, Chris?" -- "No, what?" -- "Well, it's bad." -- "What is it?" she asked. -- "Burke's dead." He'd been drunk. He had stumbled. He had fallen down the steep flight of steps beside the house, fallen far to the bottom, where a passing pedestrian on M Street watched as he tumbled into night without end. A broken neck. This bloody, crumpled scene, his last.

Excerpt: Cupped in the warm, green hollow of the Georgetown University campus, Damien Karras jogged alone around an oval, cinder-covered track in khaki shorts and a cotton t-shirt drenched with the cling of healing sweat. Up ahead, on a hillock, the lime-white dome of the astronomical observatory pulsed with the beat of his stride while behind him the medical school fell away with churned-up shards of earth and care. Since release from his duties, he came here daily, lapping the miles and chasing sleep. He had almost caught it; had almost eased the grief that clutched his heart with the grip of a deep tattoo. When he ran until he wanted to fall, exhausted, the grip grew much looser and at times disappeared. For a time.

Excerpt: "How do you know where I live?" he said. "It's not a Jesuit residence hall? You're not a Jesuit?" Karras turned his head and stared through the windshield as the squad car slowly headed for the campus front gates. "Yeah, right," he said softly. He had moved his quarters to the residence hall from his Holy Trinity courtyard location just a few days before in the hope it might encourage the men he had counseled to continue to seek his help.... Karras's new quarters in the Jesuit residence hall was sparely furnished: bookshelves built into one wall, a single bed, two comfortable chairs, plus a desk with a straight-backed wooden chair. On the desk was an early photo of his mother, and on the wall above his bed, in silent rebuke, hung a bronze-colored metal crucifix. For Karras, the narrow room was world enough.

Excerpt: "They've got an awful lot of hippie joints down around M Street and Wisconsin. Lots of potheads and occultists and stuff. The police call them 'hellhounds.'"

Excerpt: He left the residence hall and walked swiftly up Prospect Street to the gray stone walls of Georgetown University's Lauinger Library, entered and searched through the Guide to Periodical Literature, running a finger down subjects beginning with a P, and after finding what it was that he'd been looking for, he sat down at a long, oaken reading take with a scientific journal containing an article about poltergeist phenomena...

Excerpt: Chris got up from the table and went up to Regan's bedroom, where she found her asleep underneath her bedcovers. Chris moved to the window, tightened the latch and then stared down below. Facing out from the side of the house, the window directly overlooked the precipitous public staircase that plunged down to M Street far below. "Boy, I'd better call a locksmith right away!"

Excerpt: She was standing on the Key Bridge walkway, arms atop the parapet, fidgeting, waiting, while homeward-bound traffic stuttered thickly behind her as drivers with everyday cares honked horns and bumpers nudged bumpers with scraping indifference..... To Karras, it suddenly seemed unreal: Key Bridge, motor traffic, across the river, the Hot Shoppe with frozen milk shakes and beside him a movie star asking for an exorcism.