Body Surfing

made a few changes to your body,” Jasper said as he ran to the door at the far end of the room.
    What do you me—
    Michaela broke off when Jasper kicked the door open. It exploded from its hinges.
    Jesus!
    He dressed quickly, grabbed her phone from the dresser. Q. answered on the first ring.
    “Michaela?” There was a question in his voice. A big question.
    “It’s me, Q.”
    It’s both of us , Michaela said, but whatever. You take charge, Mr. Man .
    “Jasper?” Q. said. “Where the hell have you been? It’s been three hours.”
    “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll explain when you get here. Just pick me up at Michaela’s. No wait, her mom might come home.”
    “Her mom’s here.”
    “Where—at the hospital?” An image of Eric’s body hurling itself through the window flashed through his mind, followed by a stabbing pain of guilt and revulsion. It’s not your fault , he told Michaela. To Q., he said, “Is he…?”
    “Eric? He’s okay. A few broken bones, nothing life-threatening. I’m afraid to ask what happened.”
    Don’t tell him! Michaela almost screamed in his mind.
    “Ow!” Jasper said out loud. Then, in a quieter voice: “I’ll let Michaela explain. Right now you’d better come get me.”
    “Just one thing,” Q. said. “I know where Leo is.”

5
    T he demon slammed into him so hard that Van Arsdale actually fell forward and dropped the hose. Gunther started and jumped out of the way as his master twitched and writhed and beat at his head.
    “Go away!” he screamed. “Get out of me! Get out of my head!”
    Inside him, Leo was shocked by the vehemence of Jasper’s father’s resistance. It was almost as if his host had been expecting him, had been prepared to fight him.
    But it wasn’t the demon’s presence that Van Arsdale was fighting. It was the sudden, electric wave of hatred for his own son that flooded into him. All his guilt and feelings of inadequacy as a father erupted inside him, even as his beleaguered paternal love screamed out against the charge. He felt as if his brain had been ripped in half, that a pair of cosmic hands were smacking the two sides into each other over and over again in an effort to stick them back together.
    “No! I do not believe! I do not believe!”
    It was a valiant effort, but doomed to fail. Leo snapped synapses ruthlessly, slowly but efficiently cutting his host off from himself, imprisoning him in his own body, his own mind. Van Arsdale’s limbs slackened and his twitching took on a lazy, swaying quality, as if he were a marionette whose puppeteer had laid down his strings. Leowas so busy trying to assume control of his host’s mind that he could barely keep him on his feet. Such a fight he was putting up!
    The demon chased the last remaining shreds of his host’s free will down one mental back alley after another. At one point he caught a trace of the unborn child, found the comfort his host had taken in her presence and called on those old feelings.
    Daddy , he whispered. Daddy, it’s me .
    Van Arsdale was confused. “Baby—baby girl?”
    If Van Arsdale had picked out a name for his daughter, Leo’s trick might’ve worked. But Leo had been hasty, and Van Arsdale was confused: his daughter had never called him Daddy, just as he’d never given her a name. In a flash of purely instinctual insight, Van Arsdale realized he couldn’t defeat the thing that was inside him. Realized also that if he gave in it would somehow cause irreparable harm to his son. The pleading eyes of the stranger in his kitchen flashed before him one last time. With a final, supreme effort, John Van Arsdale did the only thing he could think of: he threw himself down the stone steps that led from the top of the hill all the way down to the river.
    Four hundred ninety-two steps. They—Leo and John—were about a hundred steps from the top, but still, there was more than a quarter mile of hill to fall down. Almost four hundred sharp-ended pieces of bluestone to slam and slice their way into Van Arsdale’s flesh. Leo had been too caught up in the mental effort of assuming control, hadn’t had a chance to do anything with his host’s body. Couldn’t protect him—couldn’t protect himself. Ribs broke, his hip, his right humerus, the tibia in his left ankle. His skull fractured above his right ear and bits of bone pressed through the meninges into the soft tissue of the brain. It was Van Arsdale’s bones that broke, but it was Leo who screamed in pain and