Linear syzygies, flag complexes, and regularity

We show that for every positive integer R there exist monomial ideals generated in degree two, with linear syzygies, and regularity of the quotient equal to R. Such examples can not be found among Gorenstein ideals since the regularity of their quotients is at most four. We also show that for most monomial ideals generated in degree two and with linear syzygies the regularity grows at most doubly logarithmically in the number of variables.