Come Closer (4 page)

It took him a while to see that. When he first found a pack of cigarettes in my purse he was pure disappointment. It was my health, he said, he was so worried about my health. When that didn’t work, it was the allergies, which I had long ago learned didn’t need quite as much coddling as Ed led one to believe. His arguments fell on deaf ears. I was enjoying smoking again. I felt more like myself. I thought I might keep smoking for the rest of my life. Next his campaign picked up a little cruelty; I smelled bad, my teeth were turning yellow, smoking was filthy, low class. These weren’t attributes that particularly bothered me, and I noticed they didn’t bother most of the men I met, either. He pleaded, he yelled, finally, he gave up.

I felt wonderful, like my old friend was back in town. Sort of like seeing Pansy again, after all those years.

T
HERE WAS THE TAPPING, and the fighting, and the smoking, and the dreams, and I never would have thought to link them if it hadn’t been for a mistake, or what seemed like a mistake at the time. I had ordered a book from a small publisher out of state—
Design Issues Past and Present
—that I was hoping would inspire me a bit with a project at work. I came home to the loft one rainy April night pleased to find a package waiting by the door. But when I got upstairs and opened the box I saw they had sent the wrong book—
Demon Possession Past and Present
—instead. A disappointment, but nothing to cry about. I put the book on the coffee table, forgot about it, and went about making dinner.

After dinner was made I sat on the sofa. Ed was late again. Out of boredom I picked up the accidental book,
Demon Possession Past and Present.

On the first page there was a little quiz:

Are YOU Possessed by a Demon?

1. I hear strange noises in my home, especially at night, which family members tell me only occur when I am present.
2. I have new activities and pastimes that seem “out of character,” and I do things that I did not intend and do not understand.
3. I’m short and ill-tempered with my friends and loved ones.
4. I can understand languages I’ve never studied, and have the ability to know things I couldn’t know through ordinary means.
5. I have blackouts not caused by drugs, alcohol, or a preexisting health condition.
6. I have unusual new thoughts, or hear voices in my head.
7. I’ve had visions or dreams of personalities who may be demons.
8. A psychic, minister, or other spiritualist has told me I’m possessed.
9. I have urges to hurt or kill animals and other people.
10. I have hurt or killed animals or people.

On the next page was an analysis of the quiz results. I had scored a four out of ten; there was the noise in our apartment, I had started smoking again, I had been fighting with Ed, and I had been having strange dreams.

0-3: You are probably not possessed. See a doctor or mental health professional for an evaluation. 3-6: You may be haunted, or in the early stages of possession. Do not be alarmed. Seek a spiritual counselor for assistance. 6-10: You are possessed. Consult with your spiritual counselor immediately. You may be a threat to the safety of yourself and your family

Possession usually begins with a preliminary stage called “obsession”—the obsession of the demon with the victim. In this stage the victim is still alone in his body but all five senses, and in addition the memory and mind, can be manipulated and disturbed by the Entity. The victim may feel lust, envy, greed, or urges towards any of the sins with stronger force than ever before. It is common for the victim to hear the demon in the form of rapping, tapping, or scratching that seems to follow them around; also common is for the victim to have their dreams infiltrated by the Possessing Entity.

I put the book down and picked up a fat biography of Frank Lloyd Wright I had been meaning to read for months. But just a few pages in, as quiet as a mouse and loud as a gunshot, there it was again.

Tap-tap.

That same annoying noise. But it was clearer tonight. Now that I listened to it carefully I was sure it wasn’t the pipes at all. And it was far too loud for a mouse.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

I was beginning to get uneasy. I stood up and walked around the apartment. Nothing. It was just like before; the sound was always close, but never exactly where I was looking. If I was in the kitchen, it was in the bedroom. If I went to the bedroom, it seemed to be coming from the bathroom. I gave up and went back to the sofa. I picked up a magazine from the coffee table. Miniskirts were coming back into style.

Tap-tap.

I was more and more uneasy. It had never been this loud before. The rain outside blew against the windows and I tried to tell myself the sound was just the rain, tapping on the glass. Or the pipes. Or a faucet.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Alone in the quiet apartment, I now heard that it wasn’t a tapping at all. More like a pitter-patter. It continued with a steady tattoo around and around the apartment. It sounded like footsteps, scratching steps like a dog or a cat running quickly over a wood floor, claws scraping on the wood.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

Of course it wasn’t footsteps. No one lived above us and there was obviously no one in the apartment with me. The sound got louder, closer. It couldn’t be footsteps. As much as it sounded like footsteps there was no way, it was absolutely impossible, I shouldn’t even let it cross my mind that the sound could be footsteps. I stared at the magazine. Slingbacks were the shoes to wear with the new miniskirts.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

The sound that wasn’t footsteps came closer. It circled around and around the sofa. I stopped pretending to read the magazine. It was in front of me, pacing back and forth in front of the sofa.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

It stopped right in front of me. I couldn’t move. I was sure I was hyperventilating. Just then I heard a noise to my left and I screamed.

Ed. Just Ed, coming home.

I SAW her again in a dream that night. I was sitting on the sofa, listening to the tap-tapping, like I had been that evening. I looked down at the floor and I saw a pair of feet. Small, perfect white feet that seemed to materialize from thin air.

I looked up. Above me I saw a bright, black eye. She was standing right in front of me, and yet it was as if I was looking through a keyhole. I couldn’t see her all at once. I saw a pert white nose, and then in a separate view the pink lips wrapped around pointed white teeth. If I looked down at her small white foot I lost sight of everything above the knee. If I looked at her hand all I saw was a hand, with long unpolished nails.

“Don’t fight, Amanda,” she said with her pink lips.

The room went black. I was falling, slipping down out of myself into a warm damp blackness. She took me to the crimson beach. We lay on the sand and watched the fish jump in and out of the ruby sea. Here I could see her clearly, as a whole.

“I choose you,” she said.

“You’ll never leave?” I asked.

“Never,” she said. “Nothing can get me out.”

She put her arms around me and pulled me tight against her. Our ribs crushed together and our hipbones slammed and she pulled me tighter until I couldn’t breathe, I was choking, and my spine met hers, vertebrae against vertebrae.

I
DIDN’T BOTHER TO READ the rest of
Demon Possession Past and Present
right then. But I did put it on the bookshelf instead of returning it like I had planned. It was too late, I reasoned, for the other book to be useful now anyway—the project was due in a few days, and it would never get here on time. Besides, maybe someday it would be good for a laugh.

AND ANOTHER funny little thing I noticed. After that night, that dream, I never heard the tapping in the apartment again, and neither did Ed.

ON SATURDAY morning we decided to drive downtown to run a few errands. Ed had run out of his allergy pills. He didn’t need them every day, but they were important to have on hand in case he came across an errant cat or a renegade strawberry. I needed a bottle of hair conditioner and had also been thinking about a new toothbrush. We had been meaning to start checking prices on dishwashers—the old one left a thin layer of grime inside the coffee cups. And there was a Tibetan restaurant nearby where we liked to get lunch. In the car we bickered over which drugstore to go to. Like all couples we had developed our own language, a shorthand of associations and memories.

“Are we going to the Italian?”

“Too expensive. Want to go to the crazy lady place?”

“They don’t have my conditioner there. How about the place with the socks?”

“I hate that place. How about the big place?”

“Which big place?”

“The new one, near the crappy French restaurant.”