The Third Eyelid

I flew from New York to Manaus two weeks after my guide, Senhor Almeida, died. He was the one who, thirty years ago, took me up the Rio Negro to meet the Yanonami elders who remembered my grandmother. Without him, I would never have touched that world. So when his niece, Mariana, sent word that he had passed, I dropped everything.

The funeral was in a small village called Santa Luzia, a cluster of stilt houses on the river’s edge, smelling of mud and diesel. The church was a whitewashed shack with a tin roof, and the casket was a simple pine box. The air was thick with the scent of sweat and candle wax. Mariana wept softly by the altar. I stood in the back, watching the procession of strangers—fishermen, farmers, a few in dark suits—pay their respects.

When my turn came, I approached the coffin. I did not want to see his face, for fear of losing my composure. I stared at his hands, folded over his chest, the knuckles swollen from a lifetime of gripping ropes and paddles. Then, as I lifted my gaze, I saw it—a thin, dark line above his own closed lids. I thought at first it was a shadow from the candlelight, but no. It was a third eyelid, translucent like a fish scale, half-closed over his left eye. His right eye was normal.

I stumbled back, nearly knocking over a chair. Mariana caught my arm. ‘What is it, Theo?’ she asked. I pointed, but she looked at me with confusion. ‘I don’t see anything,’ she said. I looked again—the eyelid was gone. His face was as it should be, lined and peaceful. I told her I was lightheaded, and she led me outside.

That night, I could not sleep. I kept seeing that eyelid. I told myself it was a delusion from grief, a trick of the light. But in the morning, Mariana brought me coffee and said, ‘Uncle had a strange request. He wanted to be buried with a certain object. He said it belonged to your grandmother.’ She handed me a small leather pouch, worn and soft. Inside was a pendant made of dark wood, carved with a spiral pattern—the same symbol I had seen on the walls of the Yanonami maloca, the communal house.

I asked if I could visit his house before the burial. Mariana agreed. The house was a modest hut on stilts, cluttered with nets, maps, and old photographs. On a shelf near his hammock, I found a journal. The last entry, dated a week before his death, read: ‘The water remembers. Tonight, it called. I saw the one with the silver eye. He wants to come back. I cannot let him, but I am afraid.’

I took the journal and returned to the church. The burial was at sunset, under a ceiba tree. As the priest spoke, I noticed the river, usually sluggish, seemed to pulse, as if something were moving beneath its surface. A young Yanonami man, whom I recognized as one of the elders’ grandsons, stood apart, watching me. He wore a necklace of seeds, and around his neck, a small glass vial with a dark liquid. He caught my gaze and nodded, then pointed at the river, then at the casket.

After the burial, I approached him. ‘What did you mean?’ I asked. He replied in broken Portuguese, ‘The old man carried something in his head. He could see the other side. Now it is free. The water beast has been waiting.’ He showed me the vial. Inside, suspended in oil, was a small translucent eyelid, like the one I had seen. ‘From a piranha,’ he said. ‘My grandfather gave it to me. It lets you see what hides.’ He uncorked it and held it to my eye. The world shimmered, then changed.

The river was no longer muddy brown but a deep, ink-like black, and from its depths rose a shape—half-human, half-catfish, with a face that was a hollow mask of Almeida’s own. Its mouth opened, and I heard a voice, not in my ears but in my skull: ‘You have seen. Now you must choose.’

I tore the vial away, gasping. The young man’s face was grave. ‘He is called Yapirí,’ he said. ‘Your grandmother’s people knew him. He was a shaman who drowned, and his spirit was trapped in the river. He needs a body to return. Your friend Almeida was his keeper, but now he is dead. Yapirí will come for you.’

I stumbled back, shaking my head. But as I walked away, I felt a cold draft behind me, and in the corner of my eye, I saw a black fin break the surface of the river. That night, as I lay in Mariana’s spare room, I heard the water lapping against the stilts, and a whisper, like the current, curling around my name.

I left Santa Luzia the next morning, but the pendant was heavy in my pocket. On the boat back to Manaus, I looked at it, and the spiral seemed to turn at the edges. I tried to throw it into the river, but my hand would not let go. When I finally got home to New York, I locked it in a drawer. But every night, I hear it—a faint hum, like a river a thousand miles away. And sometimes, when I blink, I feel a thin membrane flicker across my left eye, and the darkness in my room takes on a shimmering, living quality, as if something is waiting just beneath the surface.