If you could travel the streets of the neighborhood at night or in the early morning, you would hear the radios of people who can’t sleep without music or voices, and some fans, plus the nightmare cries and footsteps of insomniacs. In general, though, the neighborhood is very silent, and the sounds begin mainly in the morning, when those who work far away leave their houses in cars, or else on foot to wait for the bus on the corner.

The wee small hours are the most silent time.

And on some early mornings you might see Juan Peterson emerge from his house, close the door without locking it, and walk two blocks, all alone, to the bricked-up house on Calle Villarreal. The cool night breeze ruffles his hair and reveals a wound on his scalp, a fresh wound that drips blood down his neck to his shoulder. The door of the house has a padlock and the lock is filled with cement, but when Juan steps on to the burned grass of the abandoned front yard, when he advances down the yellow-tiled path, kneels down, touches his wound and smears his blood on the door, just a little blood, the door vibrates and opens for him. The house is expecting him.

Juan enters without looking behind him; from inside—if someone could see, though no one does, as no one is following him—a tenuous light shines. The door closes behind him, and if anyone were to try to push it open, the attempt would be futile. It’s not the padlock or cement that keeps the door sealed.

It’s impossible to see inside the house. The windows are bricked up. Even if the bricks could be knocked out, there would be only darkness.

It is possible to hear, just a little, from outside. First, it’s a vibration. The house is trembling: it’s like an insect trapped inside a room, and the buzzing grows as it gets closer to the listening ear, fades when it pauses in a corner or flies more slowly or lands on the wall. Juan emerges before first light and staggers back to his house; if anyone saw him, they would think he was drunk, but no one sees him, the house protects him, at least until he reaches his own, and usually he collapses as soon as he opens the door. But he doesn’t always return destroyed, panting, from the abandoned house. Sometimes he walks home easily, undisturbed, and locks himself in his room.