In the Darkness, Juan’s body rose just a few inches: there wasn’t enough room, but he hung suspended in a black stain that grew. Laura took a few steps forward and Stephen ran to stop her, throwing her to the floor. I heard the thud as she fell.

The Darkness became so large and pulsating that we could no longer see the walls or the stairs, nothing. It was hungry, I could feel it in my body. Stephen was the one who guided the bodyguards. Dumbfounded, they stopped very close to Juan, and Stephen told them c’mon, go, and they did, of course, because they no longer belonged to this world and they never thought to escape. They accepted the blow. The Darkness stretched out like a whip to take what it wanted. They didn’t even have time to scream. In an instant they were no more, swallowed in one bite. The assistant walked on his own toward the embrace of the blackness, attracted by a force he would have been unable to explain. Juan’s face showed no change. I prayed that the assistant would be the last, because if the Darkness wanted more, nothing would be able to stop it and we couldn’t escape. We couldn’t see the front door anymore. But the Darkness was content with the bait. It wavered for a few seconds, then slowly returned to form an outline around Juan and set him back on the floor, standing up but still surrounded by the black halo. Stephen approached him before I did and laid him on the floor, gently and assuredly. There was a reason Juan had given him his mark of trust all those years ago. With his own shirt he gently dried the sweat from Juan’s chest and neck. Then he sat beside him. If he didn’t wake up soon, we’d have to go and find Graciela. I took his pulse and was surprised: it was very fast, but regular; his breathing was anxious, but not desperate. By the time Laura finally dared approach, Juan was almost quiet, though still unconscious. He didn’t have a fever, either. It wasn’t necessary to take him to the hospital or summon the doctor. Between the three of us, we got him outside and back into our own house.

Later, Laura told us she had heard the voice of the Darkness. She opened a bottle of whiskey and drank straight from it before adding that she hadn’t understood anything, not in any language, that it had seemed like a completely unknown language. No one understands it, my friend, said Juan, who was resting with his eyes closed but was completely lucid. The question is not whether it’s impossible to understand it. The question is whether it’s talking to us or just speaking inside its abyss, whether what speaks is merely hunger in the void. Whether it has anything more than the intelligence of the storm or the earth when it shakes. Whether it’s anything more than another blindness, and it only seems illuminated because we don’t know it.