The 1987 geography book has on page 114 a correction traced in blue ink. Someone added a road that does not exist in the printed version, a road that cuts diagonally across the plain and ends abruptly, without explanation, at the edge of a small, hatched rectangle.
Theame memorizes the correction in the train station, under the flickering light of a neon she cannot track. Then she boards the first train east.
Upon disembarking, she buys a newspaper.
"Watch out for the policeman in the station," the clerk says. "He's dangerous. He oils his gun with things you can only find in that red shop."
Not far from the station stands a store painted bright red, full of posters, blue lights, and cheap souvenirs.
Upstairs, a blind magician dreams of a world he will never see, throwing knives at a figure hanging on a nail, perfecting a gesture only he understands.
Theame walks nearly two hours along a dirt path until the manor appears in the distance.
The manor has three stories. Its facade, made of unevenly polished local stone, bears windows arranged without any rule—some near the ground, others high up, near the cornice, as if the building were raised in leaps.
Fifty meters from the manor, the remnants of a farm are visible: a barn with a collapsed roof, a woven fence, a well without a pulley.
Theame caresses the wall before entering. In complicated situations, she uses all her senses.
She enters through the front door. The latch is missing, leaving an oval hole through which air whistles freedom.
The first room has walls covered in embossed wallpaper resembling microscopic cells: hexagons repeated to infinity, some cracked, others swollen.
In the next room, paintings cover every wall.
She steps forward and stops before the first row.
The details become clear.
Strange details, more disturbing than the faces themselves: small snakes coiled, emerging from wounds. Fat worms crawling with oversized red eyes. Yellow swellings growing on prisoners' skin. Contours of threatening beasts and indecipherable words, written in different languages, scattered everywhere.
She studies the drawing of a little girl.
She seems familiar.
She approaches.
The girl reaches out her hand to her and then descends from the wall.
"Mommy," says the girl. "Get me out. Let me out. Please."
"Where do you want to go?" Theame asks.
"I'm scared. Father said to hide in the closet under the stairs until the screams stop. But they didn't. And it smells like smoke. They found me. There are many here. Unfinished stories, drawn on the walls and drowned in glasses of water. Someone collects them and pours them into my ears."
The voice shifts.
It becomes that of an older woman, harsh and weary.
"My eyes adjust slowly to light. I was locked in a dark room with old shoes and suitcases. The cobwebs scared me, and the face, like a ghost from a story, of a little girl. Somewhere above me, a door slammed open."
"How did you get here?"
"My name is Liorana. I walked to the end of the collapsed bridge, just as I did in childhood, wishing each time to leave the past behind. The child is there, I see him. But I dare not look. His eyes are my father's. He draws a boat. I was pushed. I fell from the bridge into the boat."
"Did you stay long in the dark room?"
"Years. Many years. I ate only canned food. Perhaps I would have died of boredom if I hadn't found there a talking cat named Dorothy. Do you want to hurt me? Or maybe it would be better if I killed you."
A vertical hollow opens in the wide wall to the left, rising several meters at an oblique angle.
As it widens, Theame discerns a rounded window cut into the wall.
Inside the wall, she sees faces of people pointing and laughing. The faces, though distorted, are familiar.
From behind the edge of a distant, tilted pillar, a face and a faded hat appear. The mouth is wide open, in a scream.
"Theame Seste!"
A hairy hand settles on the window and closes it in front of her.
She hurries to the next window, larger, a few meters away.
Beyond it, she sees the hall, at the end of which a figure lies collapsed against the far wall.
It is Liorana.
She tries to leave.
The door she entered through is three meters behind.
Then thirty.
She turns: the door is there where it should be, at the correct distance.
But when she takes three steps, the distance doubles.
She manages to get out anyway.
She walks toward the back farm, toward the barn, the fence, the cellar.