His father takes his cigarette from his lips and lifts it to Jack’s left eye. Jack struggles to get free, but he’s too weak. He feels the heat of the smoldering coal. Is his father really going to stub it out on his eyeball?

Jack wakes up panting and coated in sweat. Sitting up, he twists a fist against his eye. Looking around in the dead silence of an unknown room, eyes blinking the blurry haze away, he focuses, follows the mud walls to Fabiola, standing in the doorway and sipping coffee from a clay cup.

“That musta been some dream. You been in here talking and yelling in your sleep.”

Jack’s body aches, joints inflamed, his shirt damp, feet resting on the tiles. Feeling the cool stone beneath the arches of his Smartwool-socked feet. Off to the side of the bed lay his Merrell hiking boots, coated with orange dirt. His heart still rushing behind the bones of his chest. He can not say for certain what was real. Maybe he is still dreaming. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asks. “I was having a terrible dream.”

Smiling, Fabiola tells him, “Not my place to wake you. In my family, we are taught that our dreams hold meaning.”

Running a trembling hand through his gray locks—Jack’s nervous tick; he is lucky he still has any hair—he slows his breath. “How did I get into this room from the kitchen and into this bed?” he asks. “I have no recollection of walking in here last night.”

“That’s what you did. You walked.” Fabiola chuckles. “You were in a relaxed but odd way. Kept calling me ‘Mother.’ ”

He has no memory of walking to this room, getting into this bed. It is nothing more than a rectangular wooden frame about sixteen inches off the floor, with a cushion and sheets and a blanket and pillow. The air in the room is fresh. Breathing in deep through his nose, expanding his lungs. Out a square window, he can see hints of a clear blue sky. Eyeing Fabiola, he recalls the wine. How it released this kaleidoscope of emotions and remembered images. The wine was like a shovel in a cemetery, digging deep into the soil of his existence, resurrecting the dead of his past.

He asks her, “What was in that wine you gave me?”

Sipping her coffee, Fabiola swallowed and told him, “Shori. In Ecuador, they call it natem. Maybe you have heard it called ayahuasca.”

“Hallucinogenic wine. You fed me drugs?”

“Yes. It’s a family recipe.”

“But you’re telling me that you drugged me? In the States, we call that getting a roofie. That is dangerous and illegal.”

“No, Jack, I helped you open your mind.”

“Feeding a crime victim drugs is called ‘help’?”

“You have demonios, Jack. That’s why you’re here. You’re running from them.”