"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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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. 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 a.s.sistance." He paused. "These are souls in distress, Mr. Ellis."

"Why are they . . . distressed?"

"There are a couple of reasons. Some of them haven't realized yet that they are dead." He paused again. "And some of them want to impart information to the living."

It was my turn to pause. "And you resolve this problem . . . for them?"

"It depends." He shrugged.

"On what?"

"Well, on whether it's a demon, or whether it's a ghost or, in your case, whether the things you created-these tortured ent.i.ties-have somehow manifested themselves into your reality."

"But I don't understand," I was saying. "What's the difference between a ghost and a demon?"

By the time this question was asked the diner had disappeared. It was only Miller and myself in a booth suspended outside of whatever the real world now meant to me.

"Demons are malicious and powerful. Ghosts are just confused-lost, vulnerable." Miller abruptly reached into his denim jacket and pulled out a cell phone that had been vibrating. He checked the incoming number and then clicked the phone shut. During this movement he continued talking as if he had given this information a million times before. "Ghosts draw their energy from any number of sources: light, fear, sadness, anguish-these are the things that make the spirit precedent. Ghosts are not violent."

You have demons, the writer whispered. the writer whispered.

"Demons are a manifestation of evil, and they haunt people who have carelessly let them into their lives. Remember what I said about antagonism? A demon appears when it feels it has been antagonized, and what it wants to do, its purpose, is to return this antagonism. Demons are angry."

"You have to help me," I was saying. "You have to help us."

"You don't need to convince me that you're a frightened man anymore, Mr. Ellis," Miller said. "I know you are."

"Okay, okay, okay, now what?"

"I'll come to your house and determine the nature of the haunting."

"And then what?" I asked hopefully before saying, "Thank you."

"If a demonic presence is in your house-and it sounds like it-then you're in for a battle."

"Why?"

"Because whatever this is draws on your fear. They draw on the collective fear that is in the house. And depending on the amount of fear, the damage some of these spirits cause can be catastrophic."

"Why did this happen to me? Why is this happening to me?"

"It sounds as if you're being haunted by a messenger." Miller paused. "By your father and by Patrick Bateman and by something you created in your childhood."

"But what is the message? What does it want to tell me?"

"It could be any number of things."

The world no longer existed. I was just staring at him. I didn't feel anything anymore. Everything was gone except for Miller's voice.

"Sometimes these spirits become whoever you you are." are."

Miller studied me for a reaction. There wasn't one.

"Do you understand that, Mr. Ellis? That these spirits might be projections from your inner self?"

"I think . . . that I'm being warned . . ."

"By what?"

"By . . . my father? I think my father wants to tell me something."

"From the information you've supplied, this might be very likely."

"But . . . something is . . . seems to be stopping him . . . like the . . ." I trailed off.

Miller paused. "Who brought the doll into the house, Mr. Ellis?"

"I did," I whispered. "It was me."

"And who created Patrick Bateman?"

In a whisper: "I did."

"And the thing you saw in the hall?"

Another whisper: "Me."

I was brought back when Miller pushed his pad across the table.

There was something on it he wanted me to see.

I noticed a word spelled in capital letters: T E R B Y.

Below this, the word spelled backward: Y B R E T.

Why, Bret?

I finally hitched a breath.

"What's your birthdate, Mr. Ellis?" I heard Miller asking.

"It's March the seventh."

Miller tapped the bottom of the notepad with his pen.

Miller had drawn a slash between two numbers.

In red ink: 3/07 Elsinore Lane.

"Could we just move to another house?"

I was panting.

"Can we just get out of the house?"

I couldn't control it.

"Can we just move somewhere else?"