Body Surfing

the Legion, myself included, continue to practice hypnosis, although I confess this is the first time I’ve ever used it on someone I suspected might have been possessed.”
    The doctor broke off. The two men had reached the corner of 70th. Tall trees shrouded the streetlights, and Dr. Thomas squinted into the shadows for several seconds. Q. had been so caught up in the doctor’s story that he’d almost forgotten what had occasioned it—what had happened at his parents’ apartment, what the doctor was carrying in the violin case. Now he too looked down the dark sidewalk.
    A single figure walked the street, so far ahead that it was impossible to tell if it was man or woman, or even if it was coming toward them. It was tall and broad-shouldered, with a head of wild hair, just like Larry Bishop. The two men stared at it until finally it stepped into the ray of a streetlight, and Q. saw that it was a woman. High heels added to her stature, and her shoulders came from pads sewn into her blazer. She crossed the street and headed off.
    “A-as I was saying.” The doctor’s voice shook slightly. “The members of the Legion didn’t just interview people who had been possessed. They also engaged in research, both archaeological and academic. An enormous amount of information about the Mogran exists in the public record, in monasteries and museums and even in libraries, but much of it has to be decoded, the speculative separated from the empirical to glean the truth. On some level, the Mogranyearn to be known, though their safety depends on their existence remaining secret. Hence Karena and her writers. In all of their books are journeys in which the body acquires new forms, new powers and perceptions, and then loses them again. A perfect metaphor for possession.”
    Q. glanced back at the woman, who was just disappearing around a corner. “I don’t know if I’d call them powers.”
    “Pardon me, Q., I don’t mean to belittle your experiences, but you got off lightly. Most experts within the Legion believe that Attila—the Scourge of God, as he styled himself—was possessed by a demon of the same name, although his massacres were nothing compared to those of Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Genghis, who slaughtered a million people when he conquered Baghdad in 1258.”
    “Shit.”
    “We believe Hulagu was under control of a demon known as Karnok. Before Karnok/Hulagu laid it waste, Baghdad had been the seat of the five-hundred-year-old Abbasid caliphate and was known as the prince of cities. After they were through, it was little more than a smoking ruin and open grave.”
    Q. laughed sarcastically. “Think Karnok’s come back in the Bushes?”
    “I have often wondered. Certainly something is possessing those men.”
    Q. had to look at the doctor’s face to see that he was joking. The older man winked, then continued.
    “In fact, demons do sometimes possess several people in a row in order to achieve a single goal. Take Karena, for example. Then there’s the case of Julian, who possessed the Roman emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero each in turn, giving the ancient world five decades of violence and debauchery that almost tore the Roman Empire apart.”
    Q.’s mind filled with an image of the destroyed Porsche. Of Sila and Jasper’s deaths. He knew it couldn’t compare to the destruction the doctor had just described, but still. They were his friends. It was his life.
    “But though the Mogran are usually given to base urges, to violence and sex particularly, they sometimes enter what we call the lull, when they inhabit a single human host for decades at a time. During these periods, they often dedicate themselves to work of enduring social, artistic, or scientific significance. Indeed—”
    The doctor broke off. They had reached his townhouse, and he paused on the steps.
    “What?” Q. said.
    “Well, your demon.”
    Q. had to force himself to say the name aloud.
    “Leo.”
    The doctor nodded. “We don’t know if that’s his real name or one he took for himself. For a time we thought he might’ve even been—”
    Q. cut him off. “No! The Leo? Da Vinci?”
    The doctor nodded. “I tend to think of this as a bit of misdirection on Leo’s part. Although da Vinci is found on many lists of history’s ‘virgins,’ the truth is simply that he was gay and, according to our best guesses, involved with a series of his most attractive—and, alas, least talented—students.”
    “Jesus