When he came, I knew he was different than the other healers. Legion was afraid, and he was never afraid. His fear covered me like a sheet, hiding for just a moment all the rationality I had left. But he retreated so far into his own fear that I suddenly was free of him, just for a moment, and I dropped the rock that I had been using to slice open my arm again. I stood, the blood streaking down my forearm as I ran naked from the tombs. Legion’s fear overtook me again and I found myself in his control again, falling to my face at this healer’s feet.

I heard my voice, but the words were not my own. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” I said. The other demons were stirring now, wailing, and their wails were also escaping my mouth. I pulled at my hair, and writhed at his feet.

“Come out of him,” this Jesus said. He said it with authority, with power. I could feel the demons loosening within me, being shaken loose from my soul. I laughed, the hope I thought was dead like a spring bursting from the ground. Legion shook me, my body flopping and bouncing hard enough to against the ground to bruise me. My arm was still steadily bleeding. I was not covered in blood.

“What is your name?” Jesus asked.

I tried to answer that my name was Dositheus, but Legion used my mouth to answer instead. “My name is Legion, for we are many.” The many others who inhabited me shrunk away from the admission. I grasped at Jesus’ cloak, in tears, nearly blinded with pain, feeling all the fear of each one of them as my own.

“Do not send us away!” Legion cried. I was weeping now, and the demons were also weeping, unable to resist the power of Jesus, this extraordinary healer, this magician, this Son of the Most High God. I wondered how Legion knew. I wondered if he had encountered Jesus before. But my mouth did not speak my own words. Legion cried out again to Jesus, this time begging, “Send us into the swine!”

Jesus stood over me, watching me writhe and wail. The power was flowing out of him and the demons could not resist it. They were slipping from me, but they were not yet gone. “You may go into the swine,” Jesus said.

The commotion had gathered a crowd. I screamed as the demons left me in a flood. It was agony. They poured out of me like oil, and when they were gone, I collapsed to the ground, weeping with relief.

I heard the swine squealing with rage. I had a momentary sense of pity for them, but the realization that they were no longer a part of me had me in tears again, this time of joy. I raised my head to watch them, swarming across the hill. The crowd watching was tense with surprise and fear. When the wine began to jump into the sea, the crowd went silent. I watched as the whole herd fled back into the sea from which the demons had first come.

I looked up into the face of Jesus. He was smiling at me. His eyes were kind and his smile was warm. “What is your name?” he asked again.

“Dositheus,” I whispered. I was ashamed of my nakedness, as I had not been in years. I did not rise from the ground, hiding myself from him and those who had gathered.

Jesus crouched next to me, and put his hand on my face. “Be well, Dositheus,” he said.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned to looked, I saw my mother. I embraced her with abandon, openly weeping into her shoulder. She cradled me in her arm, like she had when I was young. She whispered my name over and over as she stroked my hair. “Dositheus,” she said. “My son.” Her voice was a balm. I could hear it so clearly now that Legion and the demons were gone from me.

I pulled away from her, wiping my face with forearm. Now instead tears, there was blood on my face. My mother kissed my forehead, and then lifted a robe over my head. She dressed me and pulled me to my feet. “Come, I will take care of you,” she said.

She led me away from the tombs, and I could see Jesus at the bottom of the hill, the crowd pressing in around him as he began to climb into a boat. My mother and I moved through the crowd, to the very front where Jesus stood. He had launched the boat into the water already.

“Wait!” I called, as the lake began to carry him away. “Let me come with you!”

“Go home!” he called.

The crowd began to disperse, their interest in this mysterious healer gone now that he was leaving. But I stood watching until he was so far out on the lake that I could no longer see him. I contemplated how the sea had brought destruction to me, and how it has also mysteriously brought my salvation. My arm was still bleeding, though the flow was not a fierce as before. I pressed a hand to the cut, trying to staunch the flow.

“Come,” my mother said. “Come home with me.”

I went with her, wondering why Jesus had come, and where he was going next.