Come Closer

by Sara Gran

  Ed came back from the beach that afternoon in a wonderful mood. He wanted us to drive out to a seafood restaurant on the bay that he had seen the day before.

  “I still don’t feel well,” I told him. “I want to stay in bed.” He pouted. “Hon, come on, this is supposed to be our vacation.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “I feel like shit. Ed, I think I—”

  Ed, I think I’m going crazy, I was going to say. I think I’m possessed. But he cut me off.

  “Christ!” he said. “Can’t we ever have any fun anymore? Can’t we even have one fucking nice weekend at the beach?”

  He scowled. The demon’s voice screamed in my head, and the next thing I knew I was screaming at Ed.

  “You want to have fun!” I shouted. “LOOK at me!”

  “I just wanted—”

  “YOU wanted! All you think about is yourself! Can’t you see I’m sick, can’t you see there’s something WRONG WITH ME? YOU’RE SO FUCKING SELFISH!”

  By now I was standing on top of the bed, and I caught sight of myself in the mirror on top of the bureau across the room. My arms were flailing like an animal’s, my eyes were wide, my lips dark pink, and my hair in knots, almost dreadlocks.

  I looked just like her.

  Ed stood in the doorway, disgusted. He turned and walked out of the house.

  I collapsed on the bed and started to sob. You see, the satiny voice told me, this is how much he cares. This is the huge love you were so proud of. The one you thought would last forever.

  Ed, however, suffered from no confusion whatsoever. He came back late that night, hours after I had been pretending to be asleep, and went to bed on the sofa without even checking the bedroom to see if I was alive.

  When I woke up the next morning he was already awake, sheepishly drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. I sheepishly joined him.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi.”

  “I love you.” He said it first.

  “I love you too.” I started to cry.

  “Oh honey,” he said. He scooted his chair closer to mine and put his arm around my shoulder. “Honey, did you ever think—I mean, you just seem so unhappy lately—maybe it’s me, it just seems—I just think—well, maybe you could find someone to talk to. You know, like a therapist or something.”

  I looked up at Edward and saw his worried face and a strong love swelled in my belly and spread through me. For a moment the love eclipsed the demon’s snaking thoughts. A therapist! I loved the idea. I wasn’t possessed—I was insane! I would go to a shrink, maybe even to a mental institution for a while, but that was preferable to the alternative. A mental disorder I could handle. I could work with it, accept it, and eventually cure it.

  “You’re right,” I told Ed with a smile. “I think I’m going crazy.”

  “No, honey, I didn’t mean crazy, I just meant—”

  “No, it’s okay You’re right, call it whatever you want. I’ll call Dr. Flynn tomorrow and get the name of a shrink.”

  Ed smiled. I smiled. There we were, husband and wife, one crazy, we thought, and one sane, as happy as happy could be.

  THE NEXT MORNING I called Dr. Flynn first thing, and without giving her the details told her I needed an immediate visit with a psychiatrist. She gave me the phone number of Dr. Gerald Fenton, a personal friend of hers who, she assured me, was the best psychotherapist she knew.

  “Tell him I sent you,” she said before she hung up. “He’s very selective. Booked for years. Tell him I sent you.”

  Dr. Fenton’s receptionist told me he wouldn’t have an appointment free for a new patient for at least a month, and I almost gave up before I remembered the magic words.

  “Dr. Flynn sent me,” I told her.

  “Well that’s different,” she said. “Let’s see ... Come in today.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Whatever,” she said. “You can come right now, if you like.”

  I liked it, and I went right away.

  Dr. Fenton’s office was in a prewar apartment building in a quiet part of town near the park. The streets were lined with trees and women with baby carriages. I smiled at the babies. None smiled back. No living creature looked at me favorably anymore—babies scowled, dogs growled, cats hissed, even chipmunks and squirrels ran away. And other adult humans—well, forget about that. Yet here I was on my way to a psychiatrist’s office, trying to convince myself that I had a regular psychological problem.

  At Dr. Fenton’s building I got buzzed in by a doorman and was then ushered into his office by a young, fashionable receptionist. I was told Dr. Fenton would be with me in a moment. The room looked like I had always imagined a psychiatrist’s office would: a leather and wood Eames armchair for the doctor, a leather department store sofa where the patient could sit or recline. An oak bookshelf with psychiatric texts was interspersed with pre-Columbian reproductions and a few African masks propped up on stands. A nice botanical print, lavender, on the wall. A window that looked out to the apartment building across the street.

  In a moment or two the doctor arrived with a smile and a warm handshake. Like the office, he fit well with my preconceived notions. Bearded, fortyish, bifocals, plainly dressed in a beige cardigan, white button-down shirt, and black slacks.

  “I’m Dr. Fenton.”

  “I’m Amanda.”

  He smiled. I smiled. We beamed at each other.

  “So Amanda,” he said. “Tell me about why you’re here today.”

  I selectively told him about my strange behavior over the past two months. I told him about arguing with Ed, about the new voice in my head, about the messiness and the new attitude at work. I left out the part about the dog. I left out the part about burning Ed with the cigarette. I especially left out the part about the girl at the beach, which I had already convinced myself could not have happened. In my new, psychiatric world view, these were unrelated coincidences, with no relevance to the topic at hand. The doctor took notes on a yellow legal pad as I spoke.

  “So,” he said when I was done. “What’s the problem?”

  I looked at him. “Huh?”

  “What is it about these changes that upsets you?”

  “This isn’t me. I mean of course it’s me, it’s not like it’s someone else. What I mean is, it’s not my usual personality. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Well,” he said, “it sounds to me like you’re coming into your own. You’re not a girl anymore, you’re an adult woman and you need to become more assertive.”

  “But I fight with my husband,” I said. “We’re fighting all the time.”

  He gave me a slightly condescending look. “Fighting,” he said, “is a part of any relationship. Fighting is a part of growth.”

  “But I’m not happy,” I said. The snaky voice in my head agreed with the doctor. Don’t argue, it said.

  “That’s a problem,” the doctor said. “But maybe the problem is that you’re resisting growth. The problem is that you’re not being open to change.”

  “But what if I don’t want to change like this? What if I don’t like what I’m becoming?”

  We’re growing, the voice said. We’re becoming better and better.

  “You can’t fight time,” the doctor said. “Amanda, you’re thirty-four years old. You’re coming into your own.”

  “But I burned my husband,” I blurted out.

  “That was an accident,” the doctor said. “You slipped. Maybe Edward’s not what you think he is, maybe you need to reevaluate you relationship.”

  I hadn’t told him about the incident with the cigarette. I also hadn’t told him my age.

  “How did you know?” I asked, getting nervous.

  “Amanda, relax,” he said. “Dr. Flynn sent over your records, it’s all in here.” He picked up an overstuffed manila folder from the table. “See?”

  “I didn’t tell Dr. Flynn about the cigarette.”

  He smiled. “Of course you did. It’s right here in your file.
”

  “Let me see that.” I reached out my hand. The doctor pulled back.

  “Confidential,” he said.

  “I never told her. Let me see that.” My heart was racing.

  The doctor scooted back in his chair. I stood up and reached for the file, but with his other hand he seized my wrist and held it, hard. I looked at his face. No smile. No friendly sparkling eyes. He was utterly, deathly serious. I stepped back and he eased his grasp on my wrist, not letting go completely until I was two steps away. I grabbed my coat and purse off the couch beside me and left the office.

  LATER, THOUGH, as I walked around the streets of the tree-lined neighborhood, I thought maybe I had been foolish. After all, Dr. Flynn could have told him everything that I hadn’t. There was no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going on. Still, I didn’t like him. What was all that talk about becoming myself? He didn’t think I was crazy, and if I wasn’t crazy, I was possessed. The next day, I would ask Dr. Flynn for a different recommendation, or get one from a friend.

  I walked through the park, embarrassed. The fact that I had run out of the doctor’s office like a baby didn’t exactly boost my self-esteem. What did I think, that the doctor was some kind of a voodoo priest? A satanist, maybe? Really, I was an idiot. I walked down a path that led into a little forest. How had I come to this? How had I—

  I heard a rustle of leaves from the trees on my left. I looked around and realized I was deep in the little forest. I didn’t see another soul. I shouldn’t have been there but it was too late to turn back now. There was nothing to do but go on to the other side. I picked up my pace and walked farther. I heard another rustle—this time on my right. And then a laugh. A woman’s laugh coming from the clump of trees on my left, and then again from the bushes on my right. I started to walk quickly, and then run. The rustling of the trees and the woman’s laugh followed. I ran until I couldn’t run any farther and I had to stop, panting, to catch my breath. I looked around—it didn’t seem like I had moved forward at all. Had I been running in place? The trees shook around me and the laughter rolled off them like ripe fruit. The noise was deafening. A thin sweat saturated my clothes.

  “Hello?” I said. “Hello?”

  But I already knew who it was. I would fight her, I told myself. I would find a way to fight her off, destroy her if I had to, first thing when I got home I would tell Ed and—

  The noise stopped. The forest was absolutely quiet, except for my own heavy breathing. The trees around me were perfectly still. My muscles burned. I could barely stand.

  I felt a hand on top of my head. I felt it ruffle my hair and softly brush down my right cheek and back up again. It worked its fingers through my hair and massaged my scalp.

  I started to cry. The hand started to push. It pushed me to my knees. Then it slid down to my lower back and shoved me onto my belly, grinding me into the rough concrete, until I moaned and gasped for air.

  “Amanda,” she whispered to me, “I really don’t think Edward needs to know about this.”

  THAT EVENING, Ed still at the office, I consulted the RESOURCES section of Demon Possession Past and Present again. The second closest spiritual counselor was Dr. Ray Thomas, director and CEO of the Ray of Hope Fellowship.

  “Located off Highway 55 North at Exit 12. Make a right at Domino’s and then look for the Wendy’s—The Ray of Hope Fellowship is in between Wendy’s and Coconuts in the Newton Heritage Strip Mall,” the book read.

  The next morning I drove out to Highway 55, Exit 12, and looked for a Wendy’s. The Ray of Hope Fellowship was a low one-story brick building recessed deep in the strip mall with a big sign in the lawn. WELCOME, the sign said. I parked in the lot out front and smoked a cigarette before I went in. It was a bright day and a group of boys were skateboarding in the Fellowship parking lot. MEGADEATH, their T-shirts said. METALLICA. ANTHRAX. I watched the boys and smoked for a few minutes before I got out of the car.

  The doors to the Fellowship were open. Inside it looked vaguely like a church, although it just as easily could have been a corporate conference room. Rows of pews, or what could have been benches, faced an altar, or maybe a presentation stand. I walked up the center aisle. No one was around. Nothing seemed to be going on.

  “Well, hey there.”

  I spun around. At the other end of the aisle was a man as nondescript as the building itself. His features were symmetrical and plain, not unattractive but not particularly engaging either.

  “You startled me,” I said. We walked towards each other and met in the center. “I’m looking for Ray Thomas.”

  “That’s me,” he said, extending a hand. He wore a plain gray suit. We shook. “Let’s have a seat.” We each sat in a pew on either side of the aisle.

  “So,” he said, loudly—the pews were a little too far apart for conversation—“Let me guess. You think you’re possessed by a demon.”

  I smiled and nodded. His tone of voice put it all in perspective. So you think you’re possessed, it said. Don’t we all, from time to time.

  “I suppose you took that quiz,” he continued. I nodded again. “And you answered yes to a few questions, and you got a little spooked, and now you think you’re involved in some sort of spiritual warfare.” He said the last two words with a flourish of his hands that implied hocus-pocus, circus tricks, voodoo. “Let me tell you, publishing that quiz was the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. I had no idea how many people there were out there with mental health conditions until the calls started flooding in. Not that you’re one of them,” he added. “Did you bring the book with you?”

  I reached into my purse and took out the book, folded open to the quiz page.

  “Now let’s take a look,” Ray Thomas said. We were both smiling, almost chuckling. He took the book and read my marked up 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. (I used to.)

  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. (Yes.)

  3. I’m short and ill-tempered with my friends and loved ones. (Yes.)

  4. I can understand languages I’ve never studied, and have the ability to know things I couldn’t know through ordinary means. (Yes.)

  5. I have blackouts not caused by drugs, alcohol, or a preexisting health condition. (Yes.)

  6. I have unusual new thoughts, or hear voices in my head. (All the time.)

  7. I’ve had visions or dreams of personalities who may be demons. (Yes.)

  8. A psychic, minister, or other spiritualist has told me I’m possessed. (Yes.)

  9. I have urges to hurt or kill animals and other people. (Yes.)

  10. I have hurt or killed animals or people. (Yes, definitely hurt, maybe killed.)

  Ray Thomas wasn’t smiling at all anymore. In fact he was frowning.

  “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  “Amanda,” I told him.

  “Amanda, what we have here is a ninety to one hundred percent chance that you’re plagued by an unwanted entity. At the very least we can be one hundred percent sure there’s some entity interference going on here. How do you feel about a depossession?”

  “Depossession?”

  “We don’t use the e-word around here,” said Ray Thomas. “Fills people’s heads with all kinds of ideas. Depossession is a simple process of visualization, separation, and healing. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  Ray Thomas smiled again, and nodded his head. “We have over a ninety percent success rate with our depossession treatments here at Ray of Hope.”

  “What about the other ten percent?” I asked.

  “Seven percent. Don’t worry about that now.”

  RAY THOMAS took me to an office where I signed a release form saying that the procedure I was about to undergo was fo
r entertainment purposes only. Then he led me into a small room behind the altar. The room was lit by fluorescent lights. There was a hospital-type bed made up with white linens and a blue blanket against one wall and a steel desk with a padded rolling desk chair against the opposite wall. He instructed me to lie on the bed. He sat in the rolling chair and scooted over to the bedside, then pulled a chain and turned out the overhead fluorescent.

  “We start by visualizing a clean, pure space. Can you visualize a clean, pure space, Amanda?”

  “Sure,” I said. I stared at the ceiling and thought of an empty white room. The room had tall windows with sheer white curtains, billowing in a sunny summer breeze.

  “We visualize with our eyes closed,” he said.

  “Oh.” I closed my eyes and the white room became much clearer.

  “You’re in your clean, pure space,” he said. “You’re relaxing in your space. You’re breathing deeply”

  I was lying on a feather bed on the floor of the white room in a pair of white pajamas. A little sunlight bled in from behind the curtains. The room smelled like honey and flowers. I was somewhat relaxed.

  “You’re completely safe and secure and comfortable. Nothing can hurt you and you have no fears while you’re in your space.”

  I felt moderately secure and relatively safe.

  “Now imagine your unwanted entity. Remember, your space is a safe space, and the entity is there as your guest. You are in control. He or she cannot hurt you in your space.”