‘’’’’HKS heard to say, “is your baby still alive, Anna?”
In light of all that’s happened doesn’t this remard sound rather “strange”.’’’’
I think he is taunting “joking’ in his sick psycho mind about the doll as Anna was believing it was a real baby. This shows he knew she was zonked out of her mind and not ‘acting’. I also believe and always have that Anna would never scare that child like that for anything in the world if in her own mind. She had her faults but tormenting little children for a joke wasn’t one that I have ever seen over any of her years.
You missed the point. Howard is someone who had a grand plot in mind (a story line if you will) for how things were to progress in the ANS story he planned to sell to ET (and others). Think of it as a screenplay if that helps.
Foreshadowing is a key tool writers use to make the story more interesting to the audience. You might read many books where you don’t pay attention to the tools writers use to advance the story but that doesn’t mean those tools aren’t employed deliberately by the writer.
In no way do I think anything HKS was doing...especially WRT to videos and publicity releases was an accident including that comment about whether ANS’ baby was *still* alive. Everything he was doing was to advance public interest and to make the maximum amount of money from the production of his devious plot line and story.
In the case of the dead baby...HKS added a surprise twist to his ugly story. One might guess from ANS’physical condition on the Clown Video tape that DL might be the baby who would not live...but I believe HKS already knew which baby was really going to die in the next chapter.
I think that “still alive” comment was in reference to the “doll”...but it goes to frame of mind....”death on his mind!!! He said “your baby”..not “the baby”.