“Superb balance, Jack. I see that darkness is your friend. I am also fond of it.” The colonel’s eyes gleam like a cat’s in the blackness. “Do you believe in an afterlife? I don’t. Once you die, you’re mud.”

Suddenly light starts to come back on. But not from overhead. From the sides of the pool. It’s a strange light, a purplish glow that fluoresces in from the edges.

“But while you’re alive, you’re almost akin to a god,” the colonel whispers. “And how especially sweet to be young and in love. This girl cares for you very deeply, Jack. Aware that you were to blame for her captivity, even in her moments of deepest misery, she would not renounce you. Now you can reward her. Tell me everything you know and I’ll let you both go. You can live another sixty years together in bliss. Where is Kidah?”

“Don’t you think I would tell you if I knew?” I plead, and fear shakes like a white flag in my voice. “I don’t even know him. I’ve never met him. I don’t owe him anything. I don’t owe my father anything. He betrayed me and lied to me. I hate them all. But I do love P.J. I beg you to spare us. I’ll do anything you say. But I can’t tell you something if I don’t know it.”

The pulsing purple light has now radiated from the edges of the pool to its center. And in that center, directly beneath me, I glimpse a churning mass. It looks like a giant knot, trying very hard to untie itself.

“You might still be holding back from me,” the colonel growls. “Your father was capable of such strength. But we all have limits. The most primal human fear, Jack, is not being torn apart or even devoured. It’s being invaded by a foreign entity, being eaten from the inside out. The candirú is the only vertebrate that parasitizes humans. We’re not its primary food source. It likes to lodge inside the gill flap of fish. It erects a sharp spine to hold itself in place. Then it feeds on the blood in the gills. When it has sucked sufficient blood, it detaches and swims out, and sinks into the river mud to digest its feast. The fish host swims away, not greatly harmed.”

As the purple pulse-glow intensifies, I see that the knotted mass is really the shadowy reflection of a thousand tiny fish, swarming together and breaking apart. They’re not swimming in the corners of the pool. They’re hanging out right beneath me. Somehow, they know where I am.