Come Closer

by Sara Gran

You can’t blame this sophisticated, civilized man for not having the same instincts as a wild dog.

We could devote our lives to making sense of the odd, the inexplicable, the coincidental, but most of us don’t. And neither did I.

WE COULD DEVOTE our lives to making sense of the odd, the inexplicable, the coincidental. But most of us don’t, and I didn’t either.

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.

when it ran out, in mid-November, I went back to the same drugstore and stole another tube.

Ed didn’t believe that just because something was alive, that meant you had to love it.

It wasn’t until months later that I would look back and realize that, most likely, I had killed the magazine dealer myself.

“Can I help you?” It was the voice of an adult woman, not the usual bookstore clerk squeak. “No, thanks.” I looked up with a smile. But no one was there. I turned in a circle and looked through the whole aisle. No one.

“Are you looking for something?” I spun around as quickly as I could. No one. Over the top of the next shelf I saw the tip of a head, with thick dark hair, quickly darting through the next aisle. Behind me I heard a bang. I screamed and jumped, turning around. The crash was just a book that had fallen down from a top shelf and onto the floor. Immediately I felt like an idiot. Just a book. Two young clerks came running over, a boy and a girl. “Are you okay?” squeaked the boy. “Yes, I just—it fell. It surprised me. Sorry.” The girl bent down to pick up the book. The Encyclopedia of Demons.

NAAMAH.

Her name is thought to mean “charming” or “pleasant” in her native Aramaic, a reference to her desirability to men.

Like most of her type, she is made stronger by water (especially salt water), sexual desire, and other impure thoughts.

Adam’s first wife was Lilith. While Adam was made from pure earth she was made from filth and sediment, and she could not be a mate for Adam. Adam wanted Lilith to be submissive, but Lilith refused, and she went to live by the Red Sea and became the mother of all demons.

So God made a second wife, Naamah, and this one he made in front of Adam, starting from scratch, in order to meet Adam’s specifications. He started with the bones, then the organs, then the muscles, blood, et cetera, and by the time God was done, Adam was so disgusted he would have nothing to do her. And Naamah, along with Lilith, was banished to the banks of the Red Sea.

After Cain kills Abel, Adam is so horrified by his children that he refuses to sleep with Eve for over one hundred years. During this time, Naamah comes to him in his sleep and, preying...

But oddly enough, this Naamah married her brother, Tubal Cain, and then gave birth to a demon—Asmodeus, who we still know today.

Hence her reputation as a fierce and proud mother, whose secondary goal—after seduction—is to eliminate any children that are not her own.

The most common first sign is an unusual noise in the household, perhaps a scratching, a tapping, or footsteps . . . Once inside its victim the demon will usually start off with small mischief—petty theft, arguments, and the like. Its usual MO is to slowly work its way to a stronghold over the victim before revealing its true nature, thus insuring it will not be recognized and exorcised while its grip is still weak.

Unfortunately, we see and hear of too many cases where, by the time the demon is discovered, the victim is so far under its control that he or she cannot be brought in for a voluntary exorcism. The chances of recovery from possession in these cases are small.

“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!”

“I hate that,” I said. “Especially at night. Especially at night when you’re waiting for a train and there’s someone there. And you never know. I mean, in the city you just never know who you’re dealing with. They might have a knife, or a gun, or whatever. They might, I don’t know, be the kind of person who hates men who hang out in train stations, waiting for women. She might be the kind of person who takes men like that and rips them limb from fucking limb with her bare hands.” The man left the station without a word, and the train took me home safe and sound.

“No, Ed,” I told him. “You mean you didn’t make anything, you don’t even have a box of rice, and you have people coming over in one hour. And no, they can’t have my ice cream.” For the first time I couldn’t tell who was speaking, me or Naamah.

This is actually so fair. Your friends.. you deal with dinner.

“What’s different?” she asked. “What do you mean?” “You look different. Did you gain a few pounds? It looks good on you. You look healthier.” “No, I don’t think so.” Of course I knew perfectly well what she was talking about. “Huh. Well there’s something different.”

I learned nothing from these odd encounters except that there were others, and that I now had the misfortune of being able to see them. Naamah wasn’t particularly interested in them, and I wasn’t either.

By now the most shocking truth wasn’t that there were more like her and me, or that her ability to manipulate me was growing so rapidly—it was that, previously, I had been so stupid as to think I had any understanding of the universe at all.

I kept searching for Possession by K. L. Walker, the book Maria had told me to read. Missing in every library, sold out in every bookstore.

“I never made you do anything,” she said. “I only let you do what you wanted. I told you, Amanda, I can’t have fun without you.”

James had been mugged and killed in the park after leaving work on Tuesday. His body had been found the next morning but there had been a little mix-up with the ID. It was unlikely that the man who did it could be caught this long after the fact. So unlikely that the police made it perfectly clear it wasn’t worth putting a lot of time and money into the thing.

In better days he had called me at work twice a day but it was months now since either of us had called just to hear the other’s voice and say hello. By the time he even knew I had lost my job, it was the least of our concerns.

Christmas and New Year’s came and went. I missed them entirely. The days were short and cold and the nights far too long. Ed stopped asking where I had been. No longer expected me home for dinner, no longer responded when Naamah tried to pick her little fights. He was at the end of his rope now. He had tried kindness, understanding, suggestions, attempts at therapy, he had yelled at me, he had pleaded, ignored, and now, finally, he was going on with his life.

“No. I don’t know. I don’t think she’s going to the doctor anymore.” A pause for the woman on the other end to answer. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. No, not tonight, I’m already home. Tomorrow . . . Yeah, I know. It has to change . . . Of course I tried talking to her, I tried a million times. Look, just drop it, okay . . . No, I really don’t want to talk about it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow . . . All right, good night . . . I love you, too.”

They can’t say no. All I need is a way in. A dream is the easy way but then they never know, they never even know I had them. I need someone like Amanda. She says she didn’t know. She says she didn’t want me. But I couldn’t have gotten in if she didn’t want me. Everyone wanted me. Each and every one. Everyone except Ed.

SOMEONE IN THE building, I guess, called the police. His screams must have been unbearably loud—our nearest neighbor was two stories down. With the assistance of a public defender, who was obviously terrified of me, I pleaded to insanity and agreed to indefinite incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.

First I stabbed a girl with one of those homemade knives. I don’t know why. Then, in solitary, I grew my nails long and attacked one of the guards. Lucky for her she wasn’t pretty to begin with. So I got moved to high security. She has a grand old time here, she has all the girls following her orders, she’s sleeping with one of the guards and maybe one of the doctors. She’s like a fox in a chicken coop here in the hospital.

But as much as I try, mostly what I remember is the bedroom filled with blood.

I looked so different, older, but really more beautiful. My hair was thick and it was longer than before, and my skin was creamy and smooth. At night she takes me to the crimson beach by the red sea and we lie down and she wraps her arms around me. She tells me I’m beautiful, that she still loves me as much as she ever did, that she still wants us to be friends.

And that’s all I’ve ever wanted, really: someone to love me, and never leave me alone.