Pandemonium

wasn’t possessed, but there definitely seemed to be more than one person in there.

“Sorry,” I said, and moved sideways, nudging between a teenage boy wearing horns (the Piper?) and a chaps-wearing Lariat. I shifted the duffel to my front and used it like a bumper to plow through a sea of impersonators: a Pirate King; a pair of white-gowned, curly-haired Little Angels; a Smokestack Johnny in pinstriped overalls; a half dozen shield-carrying Captains; two more Truths; a Beggar (pockets stuffed with Monopoly money); a goggle-eyed Kamikaze; a bare-chested Jungle Lord. The religious protesters were outnumbered, but made up for it in noise and passion. They were stacked up behind a row of sawhorses, shouting back at the DemoniCon fans, singing hymns, and waving signs:

t h o u s h a l t n o t h av e a n y g o d b e f o r e m e l e t j e s u s i n t o y o u r h e a r t — n o t s a t a n s i m o n s a y s : n o a m e r i c a n i d o l o t a r s d o n ’ t b e d e m o n i - c o n n e d

The protesters could have been from any number of denominations, from Roman Catholics to Latter-day Saints, but the flavor of the signs struck me as distinctly fundamentalist. Possession was the perfect disease for the postmetaphorical wings of the church. Most Anabaptist strains of Protestantism incorporated possession into their theology, and quite a few used the disorder on both ends of the equation: demons could take you, true, but so could Jesus. “Asking Jesus into your heart” wasn’t just a turn of phrase—he took you. The Pentecostals favored the spiritual third of the Trinity over Jesus himself, with the Holy Ghost repossessing believers at regular intervals, overriding their vocal cords to inflict glossolalia, and then moving on, leaving the suddenly empty vessels to collapse in the pews.

A funkily dressed woman in hoop earrings—I never would have taken her for a fundamentalist—held a sign that said, the body is g o d s ’ t e m p l e . I smiled at the punctuation, and the woman took this as interest and flipped the sign over: not the devils playg r o u n d . She wore a gold brooch in the shape of two Christian fish intersecting like an eye:

I nodded—yes, very nice, have to be going now—and stepped past her. The brooch marked her as a Rapturist—and maybe they all were. It made sense for them to be here. The Rapturists saw possession as one more sign of the end days, clearly described in Revelations, and they’d taken possession logic a step further than most sects: Armageddon was being waged now, between angels and demons, with human bodies as the battlefield. To a Rapturist, DemoniCon attendees weren’t just misguided kids; they were plots of enemy territory to be captured.

I wondered what they’d make of me. To a Rapturist, I was fucking Iwo Jima.

A minute more of nudging and sidestepping got me past the last sawhorse, through the fundamentalists, and onto the mostly clear cement patio surrounding the Hyatt entrance. I pushed through the revolving door and stopped, dazed by the sudden absence of sunlight, bullhorns, and wind.

My eyes adjusted to the dimness. The atrium was an immense glass box. The furnishings projected a bland veneer of luxury, like a Ford Crown Victoria with deluxe trim. Gleaming floors, stiff couches, a long front desk in dark wood.

I