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.

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 blase, 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 stride 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?”