“I don’t think I ever heard heaven described quite like that. What about evil?”

“Every Yin has its Yang.”

“Are you saying you believe in the Devil?”

“The Devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, what’s in a name? You said you believed in God. Would you say that God’s presence in your life influences you to be a good person?”

“If I’m a good person, it’s because I chose to be a good person. I believe human beings have been given the freedom to choose.”

“And what influences those choices?”

“The usual suspects—family life, peer pressures, environment, life experiences. We all have certain predispositions, but in the end it’s our ability to understand what’s happening to us that allows our id to make decisions on a daily basis. If you want to segregate those decisions into good and evil—fine—but it’s still free choice.”

“Spoken like a true psychiatrist. But let me ask you something, Ms.Freud. What if this freedom to choose is not as free as we think? What if the world around us is exerting an influence on our behavior as a species that we can’t see or understand?”

“What do you mean?”

“Take the moon. As a psychiatrist, I’m sure you’re familiar with the moon’s effect on psychosis.”

“The effects of the moon are controversial. We can see the moon; therefore, its effect on the psyche could be self-induced.”

“Can you feel the Earth moving?”

“What?”

“The Earth. As we speak, it’s not only rotating, it’s soaring through space at a velocity of forty-eight miles per second. Can you feel it?”

“What’s your point?”

“There are things going on all around us that our senses can’t perceive, yet they still exist. What if these things are exerting an influence on our ability to reason, our ability to choose between right and wrong? You think you have free will, but what makes you really decide to do something? When I asked if you believed in evil, I was referring to evil as an unseen entity whose presence can blind our judgment.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you?”

“What influences a teenager to fire an Uzi into a crowded playground? Why does a desperate mother lock her young children in a car and push it into a lake? What causes a man to rape his stepchild, or … or to suffocate a loved one?”

She sees a tear form in the corner of his eye. “You think there’s an evil force that influences our behavior? Mick?”

“Sometimes … sometimes I think I can actually feel something.”

“What do you feel?”

“A presence. Sometimes I feel its icy fingers reaching out from a higher dimension. Whenever I get these feelings, terrible things seem to happen.”

“Mick, you were locked in solitary confinement for eleven years. It would be unusual if you didn’t hear voices—”