Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [141]
“When should we do this?” I had asked Miller after recovering in the Dorseah Diner. “As soon as possible” was his answer. Outside, standing in the gravel-strewn parking lot (which was slowly becoming a carpet of beach sand), Miller made a series of calls as I watched a new line of palm trees rising in the distance. He followed me back to the Four Seasons, where a valet parked his van, and as we went up to the suite to pick up the keys to the house a fee was discussed. If the house was infested and I wanted to retain his services, a check would have to be written for $30,000, which to me seemed like a bargain. When he asked if I had access to that much money, I assured him, gravely, that I did. But I would have agreed to any amount since I was staring at the ashy footprints that had circled my bed in the hotel suite while I was cringing in a booth at the Dorseah Diner (they had come from nowhere) and then I saw the gray handprint on a pillow and almost broke down again and said that I wouldn’t go back to the house, but Miller told me that because I was the focus of the infestation I needed to be there. When I was about to protest again, and offer him a larger fee so I could stay away from the house, Miller had already guided me outside, where a van much larger than Miller’s was waiting for us, and as I stepped into that van my world—already drifting away from me—became inverted.
Miller was explaining what the various pieces of equipment were for, and I strained to pay attention but couldn’t focus on anything except the fact that we were heading back to the house. There were infrared digital cameras and motion detectors and electromagnetic field meters (EMFs as the crew referred to them); there was something called a laser thermometer as well as an audio recorder that could be fed into a frequency analyzer and read off a laptop. I tried to steady myself by asking questions—but this was just a way to pretend that we weren’t rolling toward a situation the writer had already witnessed and was calling, with chilling ambiguity, complicated. I heard samples of Miller’s dialogue skipping through my mind. Vaguely gesturing at something, I asked, “What does that do?”
“An EMF,” I heard. “It filters out normal electromagnetic frequencies.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired dreamily.
“Like from a computer or a TV or a phone or even a human body—all of which can give a false reading.” Miller’s voice had a rubbery quality and it was bouncing around inside the van, moving away from me, echoing.
“And what’s that?” I found myself pointing at a large, bulky machine that resembled an oversized air-conditioning unit.
“A galvanometer. It registers unexplained energy flow.”
Of course. Of course that’s what it is. You knew that, Bret.
I was now hunched over and about to lose it again as the van was gliding around the corner of Bedford and onto Elsinore.
The house sat innocently in daylight, but even in daylight the house seemed menacing.
I was scowling with fear because I couldn’t help studying it as the van pulled into the driveway.
“Here goes,” one of the guys said. They both eagerly exited the van. They had been filled in on the various particulars of “the situation” and they were ready to party. They moved to the doors at the back of the van and started unloading equipment with frat-boy expectancy.
I wasn’t aware I had left the van and was floating toward the