"Father Lankester Merrin died in Georgetown, near Washington, D.C., while attempting to exorcise a 12-year-old child, Regan MacNeil. The name of the spirit that possessed her was Pazuzu, an Assyrian demon traditionally known as the king of the evil spirits of the air. Father Merrin had first encountered this demon in Ethiopia forty years earlier, when it possessed a young African boy. Father Merrin believed the human spirit was on the threshold of a great leap forward—either into goodness or evil. His teachings inspired many disciples, of which I was one, and his death dispirited us deeply. So it was that four years later, I climbed a hill in South America with a heavy heart, for it had fallen to me to carry on Father Merrin's struggle."