Come Closer (13 page)
“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.”
I sat up from the feather bed. Someone was in the room with me. I turned around. Naamah was crouched on the floor behind me at the head of the bed. “Remember, you’re in control here. This is your space, and you’re in control of the situation.”
Naamah laughed and scurried away, towards a corner of the room that had fallen dark. I couldn’t see her but I knew she was there, in the shadows. I looked around the room. All the corners were dark now. She could be in any of them.
“Now imagine a thin silver cord connecting you to your entity.”
I felt a yank in my stomach, a twisting like cramps. I looked down and saw a thick black cord, greasy and wet, extending from my pajamas and leading to the far corner of the room.
“In your hand you have a pair of scissors. These are very sharp scissors, and they can cut through anything you want them to.”
In my hand I held a dull, old steak knife.
“And with your scissors you snip the cord. It’s in your hands. You are now cutting the cord that connects you to your entity.”
With the knife I tried to cut the cord, but the opposite happened—the cord cut the knife. The blade grew smaller and smaller until it fell away to nothing, and I was left with an empty plastic handle in my hand. The cord was swollen and hot where the knife rubbed against it.
“And now the cord is cut. I want you to see that the cord is cut, Amanda. I want you to see that you are now free from the entity.”
Naamah leapt out of the corner towards me, stopping my heart. The darkness had spread from the corners and now only the center of the room had any light at all, and this a dull dim gray. I saw, without surprise, that the other end of the cord connected to her navel. It dragged on the floor between us.
“Be in your clean, pure space. Feel how good it feels to be free. Be aware of the space inside you where the invader was. We need to fill that hole with healing.”
I was full of blood. It came out out of my throat and dribbled down my chin. It dripped down onto the floor and slid across the room. The smell was overwhelming.
“And now you’re full of the white light of healing. You’re a strong, independent person and you can forgive your invader. You can send your entity love and forgiveness, and send it on towards the white light.”
Naamah pushed me to the floor of the dark room, now slick with blood, and straddled me.
“Do you forgive me?’ she asked.
“And now we’re coming awake. We’re coming out of our safe, secure place and back into the Ray of Hope Fellowship Headquarters.”
My eyes popped open and I saw Ray Thomas standing above me.
“So how did we do, Amanda? Are we feeling free now?”
“Oh yes,” I answered, without intent, without my own voice. “I’m so much freer now. This has all been a tremendous learning experience.”
THE DEMON wrote a check for $250 and drove back towards the city. Almost there, close to the airport, she stopped at a hotel lounge and made the $250 back having sex with a businessman in the hotel bathroom.
THE NEXT day I saw Dr. Flynn for my last checkup after the rabies shots. The first thing she said was, “How was the beach?”
I hadn’t told her we were going to the beach. Nothing could be taken for granted anymore. No one could be trusted.
“You told me,” I said, “to eat more salt.” The book said that salt enhanced the demon’s power.
She smiled. “Yes, how’s that working for you?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “How was it supposed to work?”
She ignored my question and gave me the shot, still smiling.
“And how was Dr. Fenton?” she asked. “Did he help you figure out your problem?”
“Go to hell,” I told her. I got up off the table and walked out, leaving Dr. Flynn smirking behind me.
WHILE WAITING for a train to take me home from the doctor’s office, I saw a quick movement, like a jackrabbit, just to my right. I thought I was seeing things. But then the quick white blur rushed by again. Then again and again, zigzagging back and forth. I was sure I was seeing things. No one else looked. But then a small white hand reached out from behind me to knock the book I was reading,
Demon Possession
and You, out of my hand and onto the tracks. I felt her cheek against mine and saw her black hair falling over my shoulder.
Demon Possession
and You, out of my hand and onto the tracks. I felt her cheek against mine and saw her black hair falling over my shoulder.
“Amanda, why do you make it so hard?”
I TOLD Ed I didn’t like Dr. Fenton, but would find another therapist soon. We were sitting at the breakfast table. Ed was reading the paper. “Fine,” he said, nodding his head, and quickly went back to the paper.
This is how much you matter to him, she told me, a glance up from the paper, no hugs, no kisses, no questions.
This is how much you matter to him, she told me, a glance up from the paper, no hugs, no kisses, no questions.
IT ALL started to pick up speed. The joke was on me. Credit cards arrived for me in the mail, sometimes two or three a day. Not the usual schlock that you get, unasked for, like a virus, but high-end, mega-limit gold and platinum cards, a few I had even been rejected for in the past. When I first moved to the city as a teenager I had never even had a checking account before, and it took a few years and many mistakes before I learned how to handle money, which I now did very well. But those stains were still on my record, and as a result the best I could hack was a high-interest secured card with a thousand-dollar limit. Until now. I had no recollection of filling out the applications for these cards—let alone did I know why I had suddenly been approved—but the cards kept rolling in.
The cards were the kind of computer-generated error I could accept without too much trouble, and anyway, I was happy to have them. It was what she did with the cards that was disturbing: she used them. She wanted to shop. New items appeared in my closet daily, never anything I would have chosen myself, but nothing I was entirely unhappy with, either. Perfumes (she liked rich, heavy florals), a new Nepalese rug for the bedroom, crocodile pumps, and an alligator purse. My new credit cards went over their limit. She got more.
WHAT SHE wanted most of all, even more than shopping or cigarettes, was men. The men she wanted were not those whom I would have picked. I had always looked for men with kind sympathy in their faces. Men with soft eyelashes who looked away and acted busy when you caught them staring. Men who didn’t fidget with their wedding bands. Naamah, naturally, liked men who hocked their wedding bands in pawn shops. Men who caught your eyes and held them—and then winked. Of course, I only saw them afterwards, when Naamah would leave and I would sink back into consciousness, naked and shivering, in bed with a man I had never seen before.
She didn’t hesitate to deal with the men she didn’t want, either. I was waiting for a train, on my way back from the Fitzgerald house. It was a little too late to be there, waiting alone for a train. The platform was empty except for myself and one other person, a man. I didn’t like the look of him. He had the wrong expression on his face, and a moustache, and the wrong clothes—stained pants and a jacket that was cut-rate ten years ago. He was walking towards me. I wanted to turn around and leave, go back to the token booth and try to call a taxi, but I didn’t. Instead I walked towards the man, meeting him halfway.
“Just miss a train?” I heard myself ask. He shrugged. I could not believe I was engaging this man in conversation. He was disgusting up close, with mottled, pitted skin and a shaggy grown out haircut.
“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.”
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