Lunar Park

26. the meeting

Robert Miller called the cell phone I held in my hand as I slept. The ringing was so muffled that it was the vibration that woke me. I automatically flipped the phone open and said “Yes” without checking to see who it was. The conversation was brief. I was barely paying attention because I was lying in a bed in a strange hotel room and it was nine o’clock in the morning and from where I was squinting through my open door I could see Marta dressing Sarah for school while Robby sat in front of a TV with his uniform already on, both of them seemingly unfazed—an image that had the gauzy quality of a clichéd dream. Someone was telling me over the phone that he had received an e-mail and had typed in my name on Google (the writer reminded me that this suggestion was his idea, and I had sent it along in order to legitimize myself) and that he believed I was, in fact, the man I claimed to be. He told me my “case” was intriguing to him. The voice suggested we meet at the Dorseah Diner in Pearce. The voice gave me an address that I scribbled down. And then last night came back. This happened when Robert Miller asked me to bring a diagram of 307 Elsinore Lane so I could point out where the “major haunting sites” were located within the house. We agreed to meet at ten o’clock.

I had grabbed about three hours of dreamless sleep, and as I hobbled into the sitting room wearing only boxer shorts and a white T-shirt stained with droplets of red wine I tried smiling for the kids but the smile and the concerned, subsequent “Hey, how’s everything this morning?” were nonsense: Robby seemed relaxed and Sarah was blank-faced—until they both saw my bruise. Marta noticed the questions the bruise was raising—the memories of last night began trembling around the children—and immediately Marta made small talk about how she had called a cab from the lobby of the hotel last night that took her back to Elsinore Lane so she could pick up her car (and I panicked and had to restrain myself from asking if she went into the house and what color was it now?) so I could use the Range Rover today, and I thanked her. (She had also contacted Rosa to explain that her services would not be needed until Ms. Dennis got back from Toronto.) I asked the kids how they were again. Robby shrugged and tried to smile sincerely as he pulled his eyes away from my face. “Okay, I guess.” Sarah was, luckily, lost in her meds and had trouble pulling on a sweater. Marta would take the kids to school—regardless of last night, they needed the return of routine—and bring them back to the hotel late that afternoon. Marta said this firmly, as if she expected disagreement, but since Jayne had made this demand there was nothing I could do to alter it. Both Sarah and Robby wanted to visit Victor in the kennel before heading to Buckley, and Marta assured them they could. I wanted Marta to deal with the kids since I was clearly in no shape to do so. My assumption was that the longer they stayed away from me, the better off they were. After everyone left I got up the nerve to look at my face in a mirror. I gasped.

The Dorseah Diner in Pearce sat off a bleak section of the interstate where the surrounding land was dead and flat—except for the huge eucalyptus trees that had burst up from the ground—trees that I was positive hadn’t existed the day before. (I estimated the diner was about five miles from the field where the doll had been discarded and killed the horse.) The diner was small and had a gravel parking lot consisting of maybe twelve spaces that were empty at ten o’clock on the sixth of November. Only six booths lined the plate-glass windows, with twelve blue and white stools rimming the counter, where the only customer sat: an old man in a raincoat, reading the local paper. I fell into a booth that seemed the farthest away from everything and ordered a cup of coffee, ignoring the frayed menu the waitress placed in front of me. I was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap I had picked up at the gift shop in the hotel lobby, and sweatpants and the stained T-shirt under a Kenneth Cole leather jacket. The side of my face ached from the bruise, and I had to be careful about my lip since it felt like it was on the verge of splitting. I was hungover, and my body was sore and battered, and I kept chewing Klonopin in the hope it would take effect. I glanced back at the field because it was watching me, and in the distance I noticed haystacks and beyond the haystacks a line of palm trees swayed.

A beige van swung into the deserted lot and parked next to the Range Rover. Robert Miller appeared, belly first, dressed in faded jeans and a matching jacket and a turquoise shirt: a large man in his midfifties with a mustache and long graying hair tied back in a ponytail. Tired and drawn, he glanced at his watch, which moved me instinctively to clutch my wrist (it was numb). He walked into the diner holding a notepad, and at first I had no idea who this was. The man seemed to recognize me, though, as he hitched his pants up and hauled his way over to the booth I sat shivering in. When I looked up I saw a grizzled, wounded face that had experienced a lot.

“Are you Mr. Ellis?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Robert Miller.”

I just stared at him.

He wasn’t sure that his introduction had received the desired response.

“You contacted me early this morning? We spoke on the phone?”

“Yes, of course.” I stood shakily and offered my hand.

He took it in a businesslike fashion—he had a hard, callused grip, unlike the damp, soft, smooth hand of a writer—and after letting go of it he slid into the booth across from me. He calmly motioned to the lone waitress and ordered a cup of coffee and a glass of water and then he placed the notepad on the table. There was information about me on the notepad: the date of my birth, the titles of my books, the address of the house on Elsinore Lane.

I took a moment to arrange my thoughts. I had somewhat prepared myself in the fifteen minutes it took to drive to Pearce, and I thought the writer and I had constructed a fairly coherent story that would move Miller to help me. But now that I was actually here in front of him, I was embarrassed and I started stammering as soon as I opened my mouth. I began explaining what was happening in the house in a calm and linear fashion, but soon I was grabbing at everything I had witnessed and then the entire week rushed back to me all at once and I just kept haphazardly piling on the details—the Terby, the gravestone, the black hole in the field, the flickering lights, the intruder, the furniture that rearranged itself, the footprints stamped in ash, the dead animals, the video attachment, the wind, my father, how the house on Elsinore Lane was shifting into the house on Valley Vista—and, with my face straining, offered a muddled story that only I could make sense of. But Miller seemed to be taking me seriously. He kept jotting notes when a particular detail alerted him to, and he didn’t appear to be bothered by even the most outlandish claim. His expression wasn’t readable—he could have been drugged. He was taking the jagged, nonsensical plotline in stride. Where was the amazement? Where was the surprise? But then it hit me that, considering what Miller was here for, this was a common morning for him. I understood that his stance was routine, as was the gibbering of the frightened client. It did not relieve me to recount these events to someone.

I did not mention the missing boys or Aimee Light and the Orsic Motel, but I did tell him about the phone call from Patrick Bateman. At that point Miller interrupted me, looking up from the notepad.

“Who’s that?” Miller asked.

“Patrick Bateman? He’s a, um, fictional character . . . of mine.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. Yes, I remember.”

“I mean, he doesn’t actually exist. I made him up. I think someone is just, y’know, just impersonating him.”

“You think someone is impersonating him?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Yeah, I mean, y’know, what other explanation is there? I don’t know what other explanation there is.”

Miller offered a thoughtful nod but then asked me, “Do you think someone was impersonating that thing you saw in the hallway last night?”

I started walking off the path.

“Um . . . no . . . no . . . that was something I had created . . . also.”

I realized that lurking somewhere in Miller’s question there was a theory being built and in an oddly soothing way I also realized that I was finally sitting with someone who was a believer.

Miller kept studying me. I had not taken off my sunglasses.

“I’m not sure . . .” I started haltingly. “I’m . . . how the house and these physical manifestations of these . . . um . . . fictional creations . . . are tied together but . . . I think that maybe they are . . .” I said this with a whispered desperation that physically pained me. Saying this out loud into the empty air of the diner, I grasped at whatever dignity remained. I sat up.

The silence lengthened while Miller took me in. He had removed his mirrored sunglasses—his eyes were a plain and milky blue—in a gesture that implied I ought to do the same, but I couldn’t; my eyes had sunk too deeply into their sockets.

“It’s hard for me . . . to admit all of this and . . . it’s hard for me to believe that any of this is happening, I guess, and it just escalated into this . . . event last night and . . . I’m here—I mean, we’re here—because . . . because I want these events to stop.”

“Otherwise known as the unexplained events.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, staring out at the flat and desolate land beyond the highway. “The unexplained events,” I murmured.

Sensing I was finished with my story, Miller shifted his girth around in the booth and said flatly, “Technically, Mr. Ellis, I’m a demonologist.”

I was nodding even though I didn’t want to. “Which is?”

“Someone who is an expert on the study and handling of demons.”

I stared at Miller for a long time before I asked, “Demons?”

This is not a good sign, the writer warned me.

Miller sighed. He had noted the disbelief in my grimace. “I also communicate with what you would call ghosts—if that works better for you, Mr. Ellis. In laymen’s terms, you could call me a ghost hunter as well as a psychic researcher.”

“So you basically study . . . anything that’s supernatural?” The words came out just as I had expected they would because the writer was telling me, You are in so over your head.

He nodded. I looked at him hard while trying to recall phrases I had drunkenly encountered on the Web sites last night.

“Can you . . . clean an infested house?” I finally removed my sunglasses.

Miller flinched and drew in a wince when he saw the side of my face and the extent of its bruising fully revealed. This jangled something in him. This was another blow that would convince.

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” I asked quickly.

“I’m making that decision as we speak,” he said, recovering. “That’s what this initial meeting is all about: trying to figure out if I believe you.”

I had closed my eyes and was talking over him. “I mean, I’m not an unstable individual. I mean, maybe I am but I’m not, like, um, trouble or anything.”

“I’m not so sure about that yet.” Miller sighed, sitting back in the booth and crossing his arms. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“I don’t know any more.” I helplessly raised my hands.

“Have you ever had a psychotic episode, Mr. Ellis?” Miller asked. “Have you ever been in any kind of delusional state?”

“I . . . I think I’m in one right now.”

“No. This is just fear,” Miller said. He marked something down on the notepad.

Pretend this is an interview, the writer whispered. You’ve done thousands. Just pretend this is another interview. Smile at the journalist. Tell him how nice his shirt is.

I suddenly guessed at what Miller was getting at.

“I had a drinking problem and . . . a problem with drugs and . . . but I don’t think that’s related . . . and . . .”

In that second everything fell apart.

“You know what? Maybe I’ve made a mistake. Maybe it was just some kids who were pulling a prank and I don’t know anymore and I’m a famous man and I’ve had stalkers and maybe someone is actually impersonating this fictional character of mine and maybe all of this—”

Miller interrupted what was becoming a rant by asking, “Are you the only target of these unexplained events?”

“I . . . guess I am . . . I guess I was . . . until last night happened.”

“Is there anything you’ve done to anger these spirits?” He asked this as if he casually wanted the opinion of a book I had recently read, but it implied something sinister to me.

“What are you saying? Do you think this is my fault or something?”

“Mr. Ellis, there’s no fault here,” Miller said with wary patience. “I’m just asking if you have perhaps antagonized—inadvertently in some way—the house itself.” He paused so this could sink in. “Do you think that your presence in this house—which according to you was not infested when you first arrived—has somehow caused the spirits to become angry—”

“Hey, listen, this thing last night, whatever the fuck it was, went after my kids, okay?”

“Mr. Ellis, I’m just saying you cannot antagonize the spirit world and expect them not to react.”

“I’m not antagonizing anyone—they’re antagonizing us.” This admission prodded a newfound nerve. “And the house wasn’t built on an ancient Indian burial ground either, okay? Jesus Christ.” This flash of anger—a release—calmed me down momentarily.

Miller noticed my hand trembling as I lifted the coffee cup to my mouth and then, remembering my lip, I placed it back on its saucer. I was about to start weeping at the pointlessness of this meeting.

“You seem very defensive. You seem angry.” Miller said this without any emotion. “I feel your fear, but I also sense anger and an antagonizing personality.”

“Jesus, you sound like my fucking shrink.”

“Mr. Ellis”—and now Miller leaned in and shattered everything by saying, “I have seen a person turn to ash because of their antagonism.”

My heart stopped, and then resumed beating faster than it had previously when Miller said this. I started crying softly. I put my sunglasses back on. I kept trying to stay calm, but if I believed what he just said I would get sick. The crying was magnified by the silence in the diner. Shame suddenly caused the crying to stop.

“Ash? You’ve seen this?” I grabbed a napkin from a dispenser and blew my nose. “What are you talking about?”

“One was a farmer. One was a lawyer.” Miller paused. “Did you read the journal on the site where I recounted these two incidents?”

“No.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t.”

I had to get out of the diner. I had to force myself to stand up and steadily make my way toward the Range Rover. I would drive back to the Four Seasons. I would climb under the covers of the bed. I would wait for whatever it was that wanted me and let it take hold. I would become unafraid of madness and death.

I could not understand why the Klonopin was not working this morning.

Every few seconds a semi would rumble past; the only hint that there was a reality outside of where I was sitting.

“These people just burst into flames.” Miller was not lowering his voice, and I glanced worriedly at the lone waitress sharing a conversation with the cook. Sometime during this conversation, the old man had disappeared from the counter and I thought that maybe he was a ghost too.

“How long have you been doing this?” I was asking him. “I mean, I don’t understand what you’re telling me. I mean, you say something like that and I think I’m cracking up and—”

“This information is all available on my Web site, Mr. Ellis—”

But I was lost in the anxiety of the moment. “I mean do you have a résumé or, like, recommendations because when you tell me that you’ve seen people burst into flame I feel like I’m going crazy—”

“Mr. Ellis, I was not handed a diploma. I did not go to ‘ghost college.’ I have only my experience. I have investigated over six thousand supernatural phenomena.”

I lost it again. I was crying and trying not to breathe too loudly. “What am I going to do?” I kept asking.

Miller began to console me. “If you want to hire me my job is to come to your home and invoke the physical manifestations of whatever is haunting your residence.”

“How . . . bad does that get? I mean, do I have to be there?” I forced myself to stop crying and was surprised that I had the power to accomplish this and I wiped my eyes and blew my nose with another napkin. I realized there were nearly a dozen of them crumpled and strewn in front of me.

“How bad does it get?” Miller actually said the following: “I once dealt with an accountant who said he was possessed. On the afternoon of the exorcism in his condominium, he began speaking backwards in Latin and then bled from his eyes and his head started to split open.”

The only way my shock dealt with this was to mumble, “Hey, I’ve been audited. I’ve been through worse.”

Such a tough guy, the writer muttered. So cool.

Miller didn’t understand that this was the normal response.

There was a stony silence during which Miller glared at me.

“I’m just kidding,” I whispered. “It was just a little joke. I was—”

“That incident, Mr. Ellis, gave me a heart attack. I was hospitalized. It was not a joke. I have this incident on tape.”

My exhaustion suddenly was forcing me to concentrate intently on Miller, and I was curious enough to ask, “What . . . do you do with that tape?”

“I show it at lectures.”

I was reflecting on the information. “What . . . was this person possessed by?”

“It was the spirit of what he told me was an animal that had scratched him.”

I wanted Miller to repeat this.

“He had been attacked by this animal, and after the attack he believed he was now the thing that had attacked him.”

“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.”

“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 entities—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.

“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 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?”

Miller grabbed my hand to calm me.

“Mr. Ellis, in this case I don’t think that’s an option.”

I couldn’t breathe anymore.

“Why not? Why isn’t it an option?”

“Because the house may not be the source of the haunting.”

I had started weeping again.

“If, if, but, if, the, house, is, is, not the source—”

“Mr. Ellis—”

I could hear Miller but he wasn’t visible.

“But if the house is not the source . . . what is the source of the haunting?”

Miller finally said it.

“You are.”