Come Closer

Amanda is a 34-year-old architect living with her husband, Ed, in a converted factory loft she designed in a desolate former industrial neighborhood. The first sign that something is wrong comes when Amanda delivers a proposal to her boss, Leon Fields, at her firm, Fields & Carmine. Leon confronts her in a rage: Someone has replaced her document with a page of vulgar insults. Three coworkers confirm they saw Amanda print and deliver it, though she has no memory of doing so. Privately, she notes that the crude insults are ones she secretly agrees with.

That evening, Amanda and Ed hear a rhythmic tapping in their apartment, always in pairs or fours, with a dragging, scratching quality. The sound migrates from room to room and resists investigation. They blame old pipes, but a pattern emerges: The tapping follows Amanda, not Ed. Around Valentine's Day, the couple fights with disproportionate intensity while the tapping reaches a crescendo. That night, Amanda dreams of a beautiful woman with matted black hair and pointed teeth on a shore of crimson sand beside a blood-red ocean. The woman asks to stay. Amanda spells "YES" in the sand. The woman writes her name: Naamah.

Amanda connects Naamah to Pansy, an imaginary friend she invented at age five as a substitute for her mother, who died of a heart attack when Amanda was three. Her father quickly remarried Noreen, a woman who never wanted children, and Pansy filled the void. At nine, Amanda encountered a real woman on a street corner who looked exactly like Pansy, addressed her by name, and vanished when she blinked. Amanda buried the memory. Her father and Noreen later died in a scuba diving accident while Amanda was in college, leaving her alone in the world. Ed dismisses Amanda's dream as stress, but Amanda remains certain that Naamah and Pansy are the same entity.

Amanda's behavior begins changing in ways she cannot control. Her mouth forms words she did not choose, asking a stranger for a cigarette despite having quit years ago. Then a wrongly delivered book, Demon Possession Past and Present, arrives at the apartment containing a diagnostic quiz. Amanda scores four out of ten, placing her in the range of early possession. The book describes "obsession," the preliminary stage in which the demon manipulates the victim's senses and mind while the victim remains alone in their body. Amanda dreams of Naamah again; the demon tells her not to fight, promises never to leave, and embraces her so tightly their spines press together. After this dream, the tapping permanently stops, suggesting Naamah has moved inside Amanda.

Escalating incidents follow. Amanda is caught shoplifting a red lipstick, spends hours drinking with a stranger, and watches her own hand stab a lit cigarette into Ed's leg with deliberate force. A stray German shepherd who had been her loyal companion for months no longer recognizes her and bites her hand, forcing a series of rabies shots. An acquaintance remarks that Amanda looks dramatically different. When Amanda catches her reflection in a limousine's tinted glass, she sees longer, darker hair and red lips. She develops psychic ability: Touching people produces vivid flashes of their inner lives. She also experiences her first blackout near a newsstand. Days later, she learns from the news that the newsstand owner was stabbed to death that same afternoon. The thought that she killed him crosses her mind, but she suppresses it.

At a park outing, six-year-old Claire, the daughter of Ed's friends Alex and Sophia, speaks to an invisible figure beside Amanda, claiming "the lady" told her it was safe to approach a swan. Amanda retakes the quiz and scores seven, firmly in the "possessed" range. She visits Sister Maria, a spiritual counselor, who immediately sees the demon and gives her a cleansing wash. The wash has no effect. At a beach house, Amanda grabs a small girl in the ocean and repeatedly holds her underwater, releasing her only when the child's screams attract attention. Amanda researches Naamah in The Encyclopedia of Demons and learns the demon is a figure from the Kabala, the Jewish mystical texts. Naamah was Adam's second wife, created from dust in front of him. Revolted by watching her construction, Adam rejected her, and she was banished to the Red Sea with Lilith. Naamah is strengthened by salt water, sexual desire, and impure thoughts, and her secondary goal after seduction is the destruction of children not her own.

Ed suggests Amanda see a therapist, and she embraces the idea, preferring insanity to possession as a diagnosis. The psychiatrist recommended by Amanda's doctor, Dr. Gerald Fenton, knows details Amanda never shared and seizes her wrist when she reaches for her medical file; Amanda flees. A guided depossession at a strip-mall center run by Ray Thomas also fails: Naamah fills the visualization with darkness and blood, and Amanda's voice, no longer her own, tells Thomas the session succeeded. Amanda returns to Sister Maria, who refuses to see her, saying the demon is too strong. A stronger potion fails when Naamah seizes control and leaves Amanda laughing in a gutter. The demon destroys every book on possession Amanda obtains and renders her physically unable to enter churches, synagogues, or bookstores.

Amanda can no longer speak her own words: "I'm possessed" emerges as "I'm tired," and her screams for help come out as dry coughs. At a dinner, Sophia briefly transforms before Amanda's eyes, her features contorting into something demonic, confirming that other such entities exist. Amanda's work deteriorates, and James Cronin, a competitive coworker, takes over her most important project. Weeks later, Naamah lures James out for a drink. Amanda blacks out and wakes standing over his body in a park tunnel, his neck broken. Police attribute his death to a mugging.

The demon consumes more of Amanda's life, using new credit cards for compulsive shopping and pursuing sexual encounters with strangers while Amanda is unconscious. Ed discovers Amanda in bed with a stranger, packs a suitcase, and leaves. Amanda laughs uncontrollably as he goes. With Ed gone, blackouts swallow entire days. Amanda wakes in unfamiliar locations with no memory.

During a snowstorm, Ed returns to say he is filing for divorce. For the first time in weeks, Amanda finds her own voice and embraces him, but Naamah locks her throat before she can speak. Amanda falls into the red haze. On the crimson beach, Naamah lies beside her and writes two words in the sand: I WIN. Amanda wakes on the sofa surrounded by police. The bedroom is drenched in blood: the sheets, the pillows, the flea-market quilt. Above the bed, finger-painted on the wall, are the same two words: I WIN.

In a chapter narrated from Naamah's perspective, the demon insists she cannot enter anyone who does not want her and that Amanda invited her in. Amanda pleads insanity and is committed indefinitely to a psychiatric hospital, where Naamah thrives, commanding other patients and committing further violence. In rare lucid moments, Amanda tries to remember Ed but finds the dominant image is always the blood-soaked bedroom. In the novel's final passage, Amanda acknowledges she belongs entirely to Naamah, seeing the world only in rare slices through eyes that used to be hers. At night on the crimson beach, Naamah holds her and promises never to leave. Amanda reflects that this, someone to love her and never leave her alone, is all she has ever wanted.