They looked at one another again. They gave me the feeling
that they were struggling to keep from laughing. I told them
that all I knew about Eligio was what dona Soledad had told
me. She had said that Eligio had gone to the other world to
join the Nagual and Genaro. To me that sounded as if the
three of them had died.
Why do you talk like that. Maestro? Nestor asked with a
tone of deep concern. Not even Pablito talks like that.
I thought Pablito was going to protest. He almost stood up,
but he seemed to change his mind.
Yes, that’s right, he said. Not even I talk like that.
Well, if Eligio didn’t die, where is he? I asked.
Soledad already told you, Nestor said softly. Eligio went
to join the Nagual and Genaro.
I decided that it was best not to ask any more questions. I
did not mean my probes to be aggressive, but they always
turned out that way. Besides, I had the feeling that they did
not know much more than I did.
Nestor suddenly stood up and began to pace back and forth
in front of me. Finally he pulled me away from the table by
my armpits. He did not want me to write. He asked me if I
had really blacked out like Pablito had at the moment of jump-
ing and did not remember anything. I told him that I had had
a number of vivid dreams or visions that I could not explain
and that I had come to see them to seek clarification. They
wanted to hear about all the visions I had had.
After they had heard my accounts, Nestor said that my
visions were of a bizarre order and only the first two were of
great importance and of this earth; the rest were visions of
alien worlds. He explained that my first vision was of special
value because it was an omen proper. He said that sorcerers
always took a first event of any series as the blueprint or the
map of what was going to develop subsequently.
In that particular vision I had found myself looking at an
outlandish world. There was an enormous rock right in front
of my eyes, a rock which had been split in two. Through a
wide gap in it I could see a boundless phosphorescent plain,
a valley of some sort, which was bathed in a greenish-yellow
light. On one side of the valley, to the right, and partially cov-
ered from my view by the enormous rock, there was an un-
believable domelike structure. It was dark, almost a charcoal
gray. If my size was what it is in the world of everyday life,
the dome must have been fifty thousand feet high and miles
and miles across. Such an enormity dazzled me. I had a sensa-
tion of vertigo and plummeted into a state of disintegration.
Once more I rebounded from it and found myself on a very
uneven and yet flat surface. It was a shiny, interminable sur-
face just like the plain I had seen before. It went as far as I
could see. I soon realized that I could turn my head in any
direction I wanted on a horizontal plane, but I could not look
at myself. I was able, however, to examine the surroundings
by rotating my head from left to right and vice versa. Never-
theless, when I wanted to turn around to look behind me, I
could not move my bulk.
The plain extended itself monotonously, equally to my left
and to my right. There was nothing else in sight but an endless,
whitish glare. I wanted to look at the ground underneath my
feet but my eyes could not move down. I lifted my head up to
look at the sky; all I saw was another limitless, whitish surface
that seemed to be connected to the one I was standing on. I
then had a moment of apprehension and felt that something
was just about to be revealed to me. But the sudden and
devastating jolt of disintegration stopped my revelation. Some
force pulled me downward. It was as if the whitish surface
had swallowed me.
Nestor said that my vision of a dome was of tremendous
importance because that particular shape had been isolated by
the Nagual and Genaro as the vision of the place where all of
us were supposed to meet them someday.
Benigno spoke to me at that point and said that he had heard
Eligio being instructed to find that particular dome. He said
that the Nagual and Genaro insisted that Eligio understand
their point correctly. They always had believed Eligio to be
the best; therefore, they directed him to find that dome and to
enter its whitish vaults over and over again.
Pablito said that all three of them were instructed to find
that dome if they could, but that none of them had. I said then,
in a complaining tone, that neither don Juan nor don Genaro
had ever mentioned anything like that to me. I had had no
instruction of any sort regarding a dome.
Benigno, who was sitting across the table from me, suddenly
stood up and came to my side. He sat to my left and whispered
very softly in my ear that perhaps the two old men had in-
structed me but I did not remember, or that they had not said
anything about it so I would not fix my attention on it once I
had found it.
Why was the dome so important? I asked Nestor.
Because that’s where the Nagual and Genaro are now, he
replied.
And where’s that dome? I asked.
Somewhere on this earth, he said.
I had to explain to them at great length that it was impossi-
ble that a structure of that magnitude could exist on our planet.
I said that my vision was more like a dream and domes of that
height could exist only in fantasies. They laughed and patted
me gently as if they were humoring a child.
You want to know where Eligio is, Nestor said all of a
sudden. Well, he is in the white vaults of that dome with the
Nagual and Genaro.
But that dome was a vision, I protested.
Then Eligio is in a vision, Nestor said. Remember what
Benigno just said to you. The Nagual and Genaro didn’t tell
you to find that dome and go back to it over and over. If they
had, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be like Eligio, in the dome
of that vision. So you see, Eligio did not die like a man in the
street dies. He simply did not return from his jump.
His claim was staggering to me. I could not brush aside the
memory of the vividness of the visions I had had, but for some
strange reason I wanted to argue with him. Nestor, without
giving me time to say anything, drove his point a notch fur-
ther. He reminded me of one of my visions: the next to the
last. That particular one had been the most nightmarish of
them all. I had found myself being chased by a strange, unseen
creature. I knew that it was there but I could not see it, not
because it was invisible but because the world I was in was so
incredibly unfamiliar that I could not tell what anything was.
Whatever the elements of my vision were, they were certainly
not from this earth. The emotional distress I experienced upon
being lost in such a place was almost more than I could bear.
At one moment, the surface where I stood began to shake. I
felt that it was caving in under my feet and I grabbed a sort of
branch, or an appendage of a thing that reminded me of a tree,
which was hanging just above my head on a horizontal plane.
The instant I touched it, the thing wrapped around my wrist,
as if had been filled with nerves that sensed everything. I felt
that I was being hoisted to a tremendous height. I looked down
and saw an incredible animal; I knew it was the unseen crea-
ture that had been chasing me. It was coming out of a surface
that looked like the ground. I could see its enormous mouth
open like a cavern. I heard a chilling, thoroughly unearthly
roar, something like a shrill, metallic gasp, and the tentacle that
had me caught unraveled and I fell into that cavernous mouth,
I saw every detail of that mouth as I was falling into it. Then
it closed with me inside. I felt an instantaneous pressure that
mashed my body.
You have already died, Nestor said. That animal ate you.
You ventured beyond this world and found horror itself. Our
life and our death are no more and no less real than your short