Come Closer (6 page)

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Authors: Sara Gran

Tags: #Mystery, #Fantasy, #Horror, #Thriller

BOOK: Come Closer
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THE DAY after I burned Edward, I took
Demon Possession Past and Present
down from the bookshelf and took the little quiz again. Not that I took it seriously. Not that I for a moment believed anything so ridiculous as that a demon or devil was influencing my life.
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.
 
This time I scored a five.
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.
 
I read a bit more:
Some other signs of possession include a change in appearance and changes in personality that may be so subtle even those close to the victim may not be able to pinpoint the difference. Generally speaking, an overall increase in aggressive behavior is to be expected. However, until the very late stages of possession, the victim continues with his daily life largely intact ... A sudden psychic ability is almost always present, and is in fact one of the first definite signs to look for when in doubt. Another common characteristic is the insatiable need to be desired by members of the opposite sex.
 
LEAVING MY hairdresser’s the next afternoon, I ran into a woman I knew. Bernadette Schwartz worked at Ed’s company. She had been a model when she was younger and she still looked like one, tall and stunning with perfect long chestnut hair. I knew her a little, through company Christmas parties, and we stopped to say hello. She gave me a good hard look.
“What is it?” she asked. She peered at me with huge brown eyes, now ugly and accusatory.
“What’s what?”
“You. Did you get work done?”
“Work?”
“An eye lift or something. Or maybe your teeth. You look different.”
“Huh.” I looked at myself in a mirror across from us. A mirror behind us was reflected into the first and I saw a fun-house, an infinite number of mirrors, each with a picture of me. I did look different; as if I had had a good night’s sleep, or even a year’s worth of good nights. My skin was bright and my eyes shiny. My whole face was plumped up, all the little lines of thirty-four smooth as satin.
“I know,” said Bernadette, “you’re
regnant!”
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head and then looked back at the mirror. My own true face, a little haggard, now looked back at me. Bernadette frowned.
“New haircut?” she ventured, less sure of herself now.
“Just a trim,” I said. “Must be the weather. This humidity, it’s always good for my skin.”
 
WHEN I got out of the train station that evening the German shepherd was waiting as usual, sitting quietly as I’d trained him to do. The routine was he wouldn’t stand up to give me a kiss (the one untoward act I allowed him) until I had given him his first biscuit. I went to the corner where he sat waiting. Usually his tail would be wagging by now and there would be a big drooling smile on his face. But he sat, moping, as if I hadn’t shown up at all. He looked away from me and then right through me. I took a biscuit, shaped like a cartoon bone, out of my purse and held it out to him.
He sniffed at the biscuit and looked up at me with his big watery eyes, but he didn’t take it. Instead he stiffened his back and shoulders and snarled at me, baring a row of yellow plaque-covered teeth. I dropped the biscuit and ran home.
When Ed got home I told him what had happened.
“Well,” he said, “I told you not to mess around with strays.”
Ed didn’t believe that just because something was alive, that meant you had to love it.
 
 
I
didn’t OBSESS ABOUT the incident with the cigarette. I didn’t make much of the book. Ed had forgotten easily enough. So I’d twitched. I’d slipped. I’d spasmed. It was summer and with the sun so bright it was hard to think about demons, hard to think about pain.
But two weeks later, at the Fitzgerald house, I had a little twitch again.
I had decided to become an architect when I was twenty. I had moved to the city when I was eighteen, to go to college, and I started with a major in art. I was in love—with my school, with the city, with the snow. I had come from a southern suburb where every star was brightly visible at night and the thermometer never dropped below fifty. I had spent eighteen years in continual boredom. Then when I was twenty my father and Noreen had died and left me nothing. Everything that could have and should have been mine had been eaten up by Noreen’s fur coats and facial treatments. I went through the labyrinthine process of applying for financial aid and as part of the deal, got a job in the Department of Architecture office. One thing I noticed about the architects was that they dressed a hell of a lot better than the art professors. And they drove better cars. And they seemed a lot more likely to have spouses and even children, too. So I switched to the architecture program. After graduation I worked for one of my professors for a year, then moved to a big firm for a few years where I never even met three of the four partners, and then on to Fields & Carmine, where I had been for the past three years.
The Fitzgerald house was my largest project to date. I had high hopes; if all went according to plan I had a chance at an A.I.A. award and maybe a spread in
Design Monthly,
plus recommendations from the Fitzgeralds and their rich friends. If all went well, then the larger plan, to open my own firm, could be accelerated by years.
The job reminded me of Michelangelo’s line about sculpting a block of stone; he chipped away everything that wasn’t
David.
The Fitzgeralds, a nice millionaire couple my own age, had bought an old Victorian mansion in a run-down part of town. Even with an unlimited budget they couldn’t find the space they wanted anywhere else. The huge Victorian had been converted first into three apartments, and then divided up further into a twelve-unit rooming house. You could get lost for hours imagining who had roomed there, but never mind. The task at hand was to turn the rooming house back into a mansion. I was working with a team of designers, decorators, plumbers, electricians, painters, air-conditioning specialists, woodworkers, and carpenters, and we would chip away all the divisions, additions, and ornament that weren’t the Fitzgeralds’ house.
On a Wednesday morning I stopped by on my way to the office to see how the work was coming along. No one else was there. It was only eight-thirty and the workers wouldn’t come in until nine or ten. The house was chilly inside. Only a few streaks of light filtered in through the shuttered windows. It was quiet and smelled like dust and plaster. I walked through the first floor. Half the rooming house partitions were torn down. They hadn’t started to clean up yet and rubble was piled around empty door frames and steel beams. Eventually all the walls would come down and the first floor would be like a loft within the house—kitchen, dining room, living room, all in one open space.
I climbed the stairs, avoiding the thick dust on the mahogany bannisters. The house was filthy. My footsteps echoed off the endless yards of white drywall. Upstairs we would rebuild the original bedrooms, four of them, for a nice balance of openness and privacy. It would be great when they had kids. For now, each bedroom was still split into two lonely cubicles. A few odds and ends from the house’s previous incarnations were still lying around: a yo-yo with a broken string sat in one corner; a stained brown tie hung over a hook on the wall; one worn black shoe lingered in a hallway.
Everything looked fine. I walked down to the first floor and was about to leave when I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. A red glass doorknob on the living room door.
I could swear it hadn’t been there earlier. In fact, I could swear I had never seen one like it. I had noticed a few pretty, clear cut glass doorknobs around the house, and even one that was violet. Nothing special. But a smooth ruby red glass doorknob, without a scratch or a chip—I was sure I had never seen one like it before. In this sad white house here was a perfect round of red.
I want it,
I thought. I took out the small tool kit I carried in my purse, released the tiny screws from the steel base, turned it out of its hole, and had the doorknob off in two minutes. I stuck it in my purse and left.
I didn’t give it another thought until half an hour later. I was waiting for a train to take me to the office when I realized with horror that I had stolen a piece of my clients’ house. What if I was found out? What if the Fitzgeralds noticed their doorknob missing? My career shot to hell over a doorknob. I thought about throwing it out. I knew I should bring it back.
But I did neither. I wanted it, and I kept it.
At home I installed my beautiful new ruby on the bathroom door. Ed came home later that evening, after I was in bed, and didn’t see the new doorknob until the next morning. I told him I picked it up at a design showroom. We stood in front of the bathroom door, still in our underwear. He scrunched his brow.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you think it goes?”

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