It was Stephen who closed the door behind us, I learned later. He didn’t want to witness his brother’s fate.

Eddie tried to get up, but Juan placed a foot on his chest. They must have been the same age, but Eddie looked like a teenager, or even a child. He tried to fight back but he was very scrawny, and Juan had an impossible advantage: the Other Place was on his side.

When did you get in here? Juan yelled at him. Eddie bit his leg and received a kick in the face that broke his nose and choked him with blood. The temperature of the Other Place had risen. It was a heat like breath. I finally understood why Laura said it was a mouth. Juan let go of Eddie, who tried to get up again but couldn’t: he collapsed, faceup and gasping. Juan approached him calmly and sat on his bony hips. Florence’s son: the one they had trained to be a medium as if that were possible, as if all the experiments over many years had not amply proven that the Darkness found the medium, and not the other way around. Why do you want to kill me? Juan asked, and he brought his mouth close to Eddie’s. It was an amorous scene. I couldn’t see them well through my tears. They were beautiful as they fought under the starless sky, with the heavy breath of the Other Place around them.

“She said you were in the first one, but it wasn’t true. Stupid girl, stupid.”

He meant the first bedroom, on the ground floor, where he’d started shooting.

“Who told you that?”

“The pregnant girl. She can’t see well! They burned out her eyes.”

“You knew this place?”

“Not this door, but I’ve been here before. In a different place. It’s endless. It shouldn’t be opened. She showed me the door. The pregnant girl. It shouldn’t be opened.”

I don’t know what language they were speaking, but I heard the conversation clearly. Eddie was making an effort to get up, and he opened his mouth: his fox-child’s teeth were all he had against Juan. “It has to end,” I heard at one point, and it was Eddie’s voice, calm and convincing.

“You’re right,” Juan replied. “It shouldn’t be opened. It has to end. But I can’t do it, because this is my land.”

Eddie kept fighting and gnashing his teeth at the air. I think he wasn’t afraid because he knew where he was. The Other Place accompanied Eddie’s bites with fetid panting: now everything stank like a hungry mouth. Juan kicked him, and in the silence of the valley I heard the crunch of his cheekbone as it broke. Eddie didn’t know how to fight; he was just tenacious and felt no pain.

“Why?” Juan yelled. With a single yank he dislocated Eddie’s shoulder. The Other Place seemed to applaud, to concur with the crack of the joint.