“How does that happen?” I was almost wailing. “How does that happen? What are you talking about? Jesus Christ—”

“Mr. Ellis, you would not be making fun of me if someone possessed by a demonic spirit had thrown you twenty-five feet across a room and then tried to slash you into a bloody pulp.”

Again it took me a long time to start breathing regularly.

I was reduced to: “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just very tired. I don’t know. I’m not making fun of you.”

Miller kept staring at me, as if deciding something. He asked if I had the diagram of the house. I had quickly drafted a crude one on Four Seasons stationery, and when I pulled it out of my jacket pocket my hand was shaking so badly that I dropped it on the table as I was handing it to him. I apologized. He glanced at the sketch and placed it next to his notepad.

“I need to ask you some things,” he said quietly.

I clasped my hands together to make them stop shaking.

“When do these manifestations take place, Mr. Ellis?”

“At night,” I whispered. “They take place in the middle of the night. It’s always around the time of my father’s death.”

“When is that? Specifically.”

“I don’t know. Between two and three in the morning. My father died at two-forty a.m. and this seems to be the time when . . . things happen.”

A long pause that I couldn’t stand and had to question. “What does that mean?”

“And do you know the time of your birth?”

Miller was scrawling notes along the pad. He didn’t look at me when he asked this.

“Yes.” I swallowed hard. “It was at two-forty in the afternoon.”

Miller was studying something he had written down.

“What does any of that mean?” I asked. “Beyond a coincidence?”

“It means this is something to take seriously.”

“Why is that?” I asked in the voice of a believer, in the voice of a student seeking answers from the teacher.

“Because spirits who show themselves between night and dawn want something.”

“I don’t know what that means. I don’t get it.”

“It means they want to frighten you,” he said. “It means they want you to realize something.”

I wanted to cry again but I was able to control it.

None of this is very comforting, is it? I heard the writer ask me.

“You mentioned in one of the interviews I glanced at that you based this fictional character, this Patrick Bateman, on your father—”

“Yes, I had, yes—”

“—and you say this Patrick Bateman has been contacting you?”

“Yes, yes, this is true.”

“Were you and your father close?”

“No. No. We weren’t.”

Miller was studying something on the notepad. It was bothering him.

“And there are children in the house? Whose are they?”

“Yes, I have two,” I said. “Well, actually, only one of them is mine.”

Miller looked up suddenly. He didn’t respond but was staring at me, clearly troubled.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“That’s strange,” Miller said. “I don’t feel from you that you do.”

“You don’t feel what?”

“That you have a child.”

My chest ached. I flashed on Robby holding me in the car after school, and how tightly he gripped me last night because he thought I would protect him. Because he thought that I was now his father. I didn’t know what to say.

Miller moved on. “Is there a fireplace in the house?” he asked suddenly.

Shamefully, I had to think about this. I had been in the house for five months and I had to think about whether there was a fireplace in the house. If there was one it had never been used. This forced me to realize that there were two of them.

“Yes, yes, we do. Why?”

Miller paused, studying the notepad, and murmured offhand, “It’s just an entrance point. That’s all.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Miller said yes while flipping a page in the notepad.

“What if . . . what if this unexplained presence . . . doesn’t want to leave?” I swallowed. “What happens then?”

Miller looked up. “I have to let them know that I am helping them move on to a better place. They are actually quite grateful for any assistance.” He paused. “These are souls in distress, Mr. Ellis.”