“We never should have come in,” said Pablo, and just then Adela took off running to the next room. Gaspar tried to grab her, but she slipped away. They followed her. It was a little hard to run in the house, as if it were poorly ventilated or lacked oxygen. No one shouted at her to stop, but they didn’t let her go alone. The next room was a kind of kitchen: at the back they saw the remains of a rusted-out stove. There was no table. And what was there didn’t make any sense. A medical book with satiny pages, open on the floor. A mirror hung near the ceiling—who could see their reflection way up there? A stack of white laundry, apparently clean, neatly folded. Sheets. Adela started to pick one up and Gaspar stopped her firmly, about to slap her. We can’t touch anything, he thought. It’s like it’s all radioactive. Like Chernobyl. If we touch the house, it will never let us leave, it’ll stick to us. He said it aloud; though he was afraid the presence in the house would hear his voice, he had no choice. It was impossible to hide.

“Don’t touch anything. Seriously, I’m telling you.”

I just have to get her out of here, he thought. I’ll drag her out if I have to. He felt the attraction, too, not as strongly as Adela did, but he felt it: they had to leave but they didn’t want to, or something was holding them there.

“But why?” she asked. “There could be things of my dad’s!”

“You don’t know your dad.”

“Maybe those teeth were his. Maybe they had a lot of people in here. A lot of people. We’ve both read about how the army used regular houses to torture people. Maybe they used this one and no one knew. There are parts of a lot of people here.”

Adela spoke in a tone that terrified Gaspar. He thought of Omaira in the mud, her eyes like cockroaches; he remembered his father’s fixed pupils, and he thought of a world of black and shining crystals. There are parts of a lot of people here. It wasn’t Adela who had said that, though someone had used her voice. Who was speaking through her?

“We have to get out,” said Gaspar.

Adela shimmered under that artificial light. Gaspar felt like they were in a theatre: he knew he was being watched. And when she darted toward a hall that was just past the rusty stove in that house that from inside seemed to never end, he stopped her. He threw her down and heard her chin hit the floor. She wriggled under his weight and with an inexplicable strength managed to extricate her only arm and stick two fingers in his eyes. In a second she was free. Gaspar couldn’t believe it. He must be at least fifteen kilos heavier than Adela and he was strong, he swam, he knew how to fight. Still, he was no match for her.