The child wanted him aware of the game he was playing so that the effect would not be diluted by self-doubt or fear of madness. There was something terribly wrong with the child, and simply by crossing paths with him, Phil had caught his attention. He felt trapped in a bizarre otherworld in which everything was crooked, but the harder he fought to extricate himself, the more tangled he became. So, in the absence of better options, he stopped struggling.
