The Book of Skulls Read online

  twenty-three

  ned

  We have something to stew about, now, but at least they’re letting us do our stewing in style. A private room for each of us, austere but handsome, quite comfortable. The skullhouse is much bigger than it seemed from outside: the two rear wings are extremely long, and there may be as many as fifty or sixty rooms in the entire complex, excluding the possibility of more subterranean vaults. No room that I’ve seen has a window. The central chambers, what I think of as “the public rooms,” are open-roofed, but the side units in which the fraters live are completely enclosed. If there’s an air-conditioning system, I’m unaware of it, having seen no vents or pipes, but when you pass from one of the roofless rooms to an enclosed one you are conscious of a sharp and definite drop in temperature, from desert-hot to motelroom-comfortable. The architecture is simple: bare rectangular rooms, the walls and ceilings made of rough, unplastered tawny sandstone, uninterrupted by moldings or visible beams or other decorative contrivances. All the floors are of dark slate; there are no carpets or rugs. There seems to be little in the way of furniture; my room offers only a low cot made of logs and thick rope and a short squat storage chest, I suppose for my belongings, fashioned quite superbly from a hard black wood. What does break up the prevailing starkness is a fantastic collection of bizarre pre-Columbian (I guess) masks and statuettes, mounted on walls, standing in corners, set into recessed niches—terrifying faces, all angles and harsh planes, gorgeous in their monstrosity. The imagery of the skull is ubiquitous. I have no idea what led that newspaper reporter to think that this place was occupied by “monks” practicing Christianity; the clipping Eli has speaks of the decor as “a combination of medieval Christian style and what seems to be Aztec motifs,” but, though the Aztec influence is obvious enough, where is the Christian? I see no crosses, no stained glass windows, no images of the saints or the Holy Family, none of the proper paraphernalia. The whole texture of the place is pagan, primitive, prehistoric; this could be a temple to some ancient Mexican god, even to a Neanderthal deity, but Jesus simply isn’t on the premises, or I’m not Boston Irish. Perhaps the clean cold austere refinement of the place gave the newspaperman the feel of a medieval monastery—the echoes, the hint of Gregorian chant in the silent hallways—but without the symbolism of Christianity there can’t be Christianity, and such symbols as are on display here are alien ones. The total effect of the place is one of strange luxury combined with immense stylistic restraint: they have understated everything, but a sense of power and grandeur bursts from the walls, the floors, the endlessly receding corridors, the bare rooms, the sparse and lean furnishings.

  Cleanliness is evidently important here. The plumbing arrangements are extraordinary, with bubbling fountains everywhere in the public rooms and the larger halls. My own room has a capacious sunken tub lined with rich green slate, which looks suitable for a maharajah or a Renaissance Pope. As he delivered me to my room, Frater Antony suggested that I might like to take a bath, and his polite statement had the force of an order. Not that I needed much urging, for the hike through the desert had coated me miserably with grime. I treated myself to a long voluptuous soaking, wriggling on the glossy slate, and when I came out I discovered that my filthy, sweaty clothing had disappeared, every scrap, shoes and all. To replace it I found on my cot a pair of worn-looking but clean blue shorts of the sort Frater Antony was wearing. Very well: the philosophy here seems to be that less is more. Good riddance to shirts and sweaters; I’ll settle for shorts over my naked loins. We have come to an interesting place.

  The question of the moment is, Does this place have any connection with Eli’s medieval manuscript and with the supposed cult of immortality? I think it does, but I can’t yet be sure of that. It was impossible not to admire the frater’s sense of theatricality, his wondrously ambiguous handling of the moment when Eli sprang the Book of Skulls on him a few hours ago. His delicious, reverberating curtain line; The Book of Skulls? What, I wonder, is the Book of Skulls? And a fast exit, allowing him to take possession of all sides of the situation at once. Did he genuinely not know about the Book of Skulls? Why, then, did he seem so jarred, just for an instant, when Eli mentioned it? Can the fondness for skull imagery here be just a coincidence? Has the Book of Skulls been forgotten by its own adherents? Is the frater playing with us, trying to induce uncertainty in us? The esthetics of teasing: how much great art is built on that principle! So we will be teased for a while. I would like to go down the hall and confer with Eli; his mind is quick, he interprets nuances well. I want to know if he was thrown into perplexity by Frater Antony’s response to his statement. But I suppose I’ll have to wait till later to talk to Eli. Just now my door appears to be locked.

  twenty-four

  timothy

  Creepier and creepier. That mile-long hallway. Those skulls all over the place, the Mexican-looking death-masks. Figures who’ve been flayed and still can grin, faces with skewers jabbed through their tongues and cheeks, bodies with flesh below and skulls on top. Lovely. And that weird old man, speaking to us in a voice that could have come out of a machine. I almost think he’s some kind of robot. He can’t be real, with that smooth tight skin of his, that bald head that looks as if it’s never had any hair, those peculiar glossy eyes—sheesh!

  At least the bath was good. Although they’ve taken my clothes. My wallet, my credit cards, everything. I don’t like that angle much, though I suppose there isn’t much they can do with my things here. Maybe they just mean to launder them. I don’t mind wearing these shorts instead. A little tight around the ass, maybe—I guess I’m bigger than their usual run of guests—but in this heat it’s all right to cut down on clothes.

  What I do mind is being locked in my room. That bit reminds me of too many horror movies out of TV. Now a secret panel opens in the floor, yeah, and the sacred cobra comes slithering up, hissing and spitting. Or the poison gas enters by way of a hidden vent. Well, I don’t mean that seriously. I don’t think any harm’s going to come to us. Still, it’s offensive to be locked up, if you’re a guest. Is this the hour for some very special prayer that they don’t want us to interrupt? Could be. I’ll wait an hour, and then I’ll try to force the door. Looks pretty fucking solid, though, a big burly slab of wood.

  No television set in this motel. Nothing much to read, except this booklet they’ve left on the floor next to my cot. And that’s something I’ve read before. The Book of Skulls, no less. Typewritten, in three languages, Latin, Spanish, English. Cheerful decoration on the front cover: skull and crossbones. Hi ho for the Jolly Roger! But I’m really not amused. And inside the booklet, there’s all the stuff Eli read us, that melodramatic crap about the eighteen Mysteries. The phrasing’s different from his translation, but the meaning’s the same. Much talk of eternal life, but much talk of death, too. Too much.

  I’d like to get out of this place, if they ever unlock the door. A gag is a gag is a gag, and maybe it seemed a fun idea last month to go tear-assing out west on Eli’s say-so, but now that I’m here I can’t understand what could have led me to get into this. If they’re for real, which I continue to doubt, I don’t want any part of them, and if they’re just a bunch of ritual-happy fanatics, which seems quite likely, I still don’t want any part of them. I’ve had two hours here and I think that’s about enough. All these skulls blow my mind. The locked-door number, too. The weird old man. Okay, boys, that’ll do. Timothy’s ready to go home.

  twenty-five

  eli

  No matter how many times I replayed the little exchange with Frater Antony, I couldn’t come to terms with it. Was he putting me on? Pretending ignorance? Pretending knowledge that he doesn’t in fact have? Was that a sly smile of the initiate, or a dumb smile of bluffing?

  It was possible, I told myself, that they might know the Book of Skulls under some other name. Or that in the course of their migration from Spain to Mexico to Arizona they had undergone some fundamental reshuffling of their theological symbology. I
was convinced, despite the frater’s oblique reply, that this place had to be the direct successor to the Catalonian monastery in which the manuscript I had discovered had been written.

  I took a bath. The finest bath of my life, the ultimate in baths, the acme. I emerged from the splendiferous tub to discover that my clothes had disappeared and my door was locked. I put on the pair of faded, frayed, tight shorts they had left for me. (They?) And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Nothing to read, nothing to look at except a fine stone mask of a goggle-eyed skull, mosaic work, an infinity of bits of jade and shell and obsidian and turquoise, a treasure, a masterpiece. I considered taking a second bath just to consume the time. Then my door opened—I heard no key, no click of a lock—and someone who at first glance seemed to be Frater Antony entered. Second glance told me he was someone else: a shade taller, a shade narrower through the shoulders, a shade lighter of skin, but otherwise the same sun-burnished sturdy stocky pseudo-Picassoid physique. In a curious quiet voice, furry-sounding, a Peter Lorre voice, he said, “I am Frater Bernard. Please accompany me.”

  The hallway seemed to grow longer as we traversed it. Onward we plodded, Frater Bernard leading the way, my eyes fixed for the most part on the oddly conspicuous ridge of his backbone. Bare feet against the smooth stone floor, a good feeling. Mysterious doors of sumptuous wood standing shut along both sides of the corridor: rooms, rooms, rooms, rooms. A million dollars’ worth of grotesque Mexican artifacts mounted on the walls. All the gods of nightmare peered owlishly down at me. The lights had been turned on, and a soft yellow glow streamed from widely spaced skull-shaped sconces, another little melodramatic touch. As we neared the front section of the building, the crossbar of the U, I glanced past Frater Bernard’s right shoulder and had a quick, startling glimpse of an unmistakably female figure some forty or fifty feet ahead of me. I saw her step out of the last room in this dormitory wing, unhurriedly cross my path—she seemed to be floating—and vanish into the main section: a short, slender woman wearing a kind of clinging minidress, barely thigh-length, of some soft, pleated white fabric. Her hair was dark and glossy, Latin hair, and hung well below her shoulders. Her skin was deeply tanned, offering a strong contrast to her white garment. Her breasts jutted forward spectacularly; I was in no doubt about her sex. I did not clearly see her face. It surprised me that there should be sorors as well as fraters in this House of Skulls, but perhaps she was a servant, for the place was impeccably clean. I knew there was no point in asking Frater Bernard about her; he wore silence as others might wear armor.

  He ushered me into a large room of ceremonial nature, apparently not the same one in which Frater Antony had greeted us, for I saw no sign of a trapdoor leading to the tunnel. The fountain appeared to be of a different shape here, taller, more tulip-shaped, though the figure from which the water flowed looked much like the one in the other room’s fountain. Through the openwork beams of the ceiling I saw the slanting light of very late afternoon. The air was hot but not so stifling as it had been before.

  Ned, Oliver, and Timothy were already present, each clad only in shorts, all three looking tense and uncertain. Oliver had that peculiar glazed expression that comes over him at moments of great stress. Timothy was trying to look blasé, and was failing at it. Ned gave me a quick hard wink, perhaps congratulatory, perhaps in scorn.

  There were about a dozen fraters also in the room.

  They seemed all to have been stamped from one mold: if not in literal truth brothers, they must at least be cousins. Not one of them was taller than five-feet-seven, and some were five-feet-four or less. Bald. Deep-chested. Tanned. Durable-looking. Naked except for those shorts. One, who I thought I recognized to be Frater Antony—he was—wore a small green pendant on his breast; three of the others had similar pendants, but of a darker stone, perhaps onyx. The woman who had crossed my path was not in the room.

  Frater Antony indicated that I should stand with my companions. I took up a position next to Ned. Silence. Tension. An impulse to burst out laughing, which I barely choked back. How absurd all this was! Who did these pompous little men think they were? Why this rigmarole of skulls, this ritual of confrontations? Solemnly Frater Antony studied us, as if judging us. There was no sound but that of our breathing and the merry dribble of the fountain. A little serious music in the background, please, maestro. Mors stupebit et natura, cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura. Death and Nature stand amazed, when all Creation rises again, to answer the Judge. To answer the Judge. And are you our Judge, Frater Antony? Quando Judex est venturus, cuncta stricte discussurus! Will he never speak? Must we remain eternally suspended between birth and death, womb and grave? Ah! They’re following the script! One of the lesser fraters, pendantless, goes to a niche in the wall and takes out a slender book, elaborately bound in glittering red morocco, which he hands to Frater Antony. Without needing to be told, I know what the book must be. Liber scriptus proferetur, in quo totum continetur. The written book will be brought forth, in which all is contained. Unde mundus judicetur. Whence the world is to be judged. What can I say? King of tremendous majesty, who saves freely those to be saved, save me, O fount of mercy! Frater Antony now was looking directly at me. “The Book of Skulls,” he said, gently, quietly, resonantly, “has few readers these days. How did it come to pass that you encountered it?”

  “An old manuscript,” I said. “Hidden and forgotten in a university library. My studies—an accidental discovery—curiosity led me to translate—”

  The frater nodded. “And then to come to us? How was this?”

  “A newspaper account,” I replied. “Something about the imagery, the symbolism—we chanced it, we were on holiday and we thought we’d come to see if—if—”

  “Yes,” said Frater Antony. No question implied. A serene smile. He faced me squarely, obviously waiting for me to say what came next. There were four of us. We had read the Book of Skulls, and there were four of us. A formal application seemingly was now in order. Exaudi orationem meam, ad te omnis caro veniet. I could not speak. I stood mute in the infinite blast of silence, hoping that Ned would utter the words that would not pass my lips, that Oliver would say them, even Timothy. Frater Antony waited. He was waiting for me, he would wait to the last trump if need be, to the clamor of the final music. Speak. Speak. Speak.

  I said, hearing my own voice from outside my body as though I were listening to the playback of a tape, “We four—having read and comprehended the Book of Skulls—having read and comprehended—wish to submit—wish to undergo the Trial. We four—we four offer ourselves—as candidates—we four offer ourselves as—” I faltered. Was my translation correct? Would he understand my choice of language? “As a Receptacle,” I said.

  “As a Receptacle,” said Frater Antony.

  “A Receptacle. A Receptacle. A Receptacle,” said the fraters in chorus.

  How very operatic the scene had become! Yes, suddenly I was singing tenor in Turandot, crying out to be asked the fatal riddles. It seemed preposterously stagy, a fatuous and overblown bit of histrionics, taking place against all reason in a world in which signals bounced off orbiting satellites, long-haired boys foraged for pot, and the billyclubs of the staatspolizei shattered the heads of demonstrators in fifty American cities. How could we be standing here chanting of skulls and receptacles? But stranger strangenesses lay ahead. Portentously Frater Antony beckoned to the one who had brought him the book, and again the other frater went to the niche. From it now he took a massive, carefully polished stone mask; he gave it to Frater Antony, who clapped it over his face, as one of the other fraters with pendants came forward to fasten a thong in the rear. The mask covered Frater Antony from the upper lip to the top of his head. It gave him the aspect of a living skull; his cool bright eyes glistened at me through deep stony sockets. Of course.

  He said, “You four are aware of the conditions imposed under the Ninth Mystery?”

  “Yes,” I said. Frater Antony waited: he got a yes apiece from Ned, Oliver, a
nd, distantly, Timothy.

  “You undertake this Trial in no frivolous spirit, then, cognizant of the perils as well as of the rewards. You offer yourselves fully and without inner reservations. You have come here to partake of a sacrament, not to play a game. You yield yourselves fully to the Brotherhood and especially to the Keepers. Are these things understood?”

  Yes, yes, yes, and—eventually—yes.

  “Come to me. Your hands to my mask.” We touched it, delicately, as if fearing electricity from the cold gray stone. “Not in many years has a Receptacle entered our company,” Frater Antony said. “We value your presence and extend to you our gratitude for your coming among us. But I must tell you now, if your motives in coming to us were trifling ones, that you may not leave this House until the completion of your candidacy. Our rule is one of secrecy. Once the Trial commences, your lives are ours, and we forbid any departure from these grounds. This is the Nineteenth Mystery, of which you cannot have read: if one of you leaves, the three who remain are forfeit to us. Is this fully understood? We can permit no second thoughts, and you will be each other’s guardians, knowing that if there is one renegade among you, the rest perish without exception. This is the moment for withdrawal. If the terms are too stringent, take your hands from my mask, and we will let the four of you go in peace.”

  I wavered. This was something I hadn’t expected: death the penalty for pulling out in mid-Trial! Were they serious? What if we found, after a couple of days, that they had nothing of value to give us? Were we bound, then, to remain here, month upon month upon month, until they told us at last that our Trial was ended and we were again free? Those terms seemed impossible; I nearly pulled my hand away. But I remembered that I had come here to make an act of faith, that I was surrendering a meaningless life in the hope of gaining a meaningful one. Yes. I am yours, Frater Antony, no matter what. I kept my hand to his mask. In any case, how could these little men harm us if we decided to walk out? This was merely more stage-ritual, like the mask, like the choral chanting. Thus I reconciled myself. Ned, too, seemed to have his doubts; warily I watched him and saw his fingers flicker momentarily, but they stayed. Oliver’s hand never budged from the rim of the mask. Timothy seemed the most hesitant; he scowled, glared at us and at the frater, burst into a sweat, actually lifted his fingers for perhaps three seconds, and then, with a what-the-hell gesture, clamped them to the mask so vehemently that Frater Antony nearly stumbled from the impact. Done. We were pledged. Frater Antony removed his mask. “You will dine with us now,” he said, “and in the morning it will begin.”