“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 meant, 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 billy-dubs 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, and, 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 heie, 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.”

So we’re here and it’s real and we’re inside it and they’ll take us on as candidates. Life eternal we offer thee. That much is established. It’s real. But is it? If you go to church faithfully every Sunday and say your prayers and lead a blameless life and put two bucks in the tray, you’ll go to heaven and live forever among the angels and apostles, so they say, but do you really go? Is there a heaven? Are there angels and apostles? What good is all that diligent churchgoing if none of the rest of the deal is real? And so there really is a House of Skulls, there really is a Brotherhood of the Skulls, there are Keepers — Frater Antony is a Keeper — and we are a Receptacle, there is to be a Trial, but is it real? Is any of it real? Life eternal we offer thee, but do they? Or is it all just a pipe dream, like the stories of how you’ll go to live among the angels and apostles?

Eli thinks it’s real. Ned seems to think it’s real. Timothy is amused by the whole thing, or perhaps irritated by it; hard to tell. And I? And I? I feel like a sleepwalker. This is a waking dream.

I constantly wonder, not just here but wherever I go, whether things are real, whether I’m experiencing anything genuine. Am I truly connected, am I plugged in to things? What if I’m not? What if the sensations I feel are just the dimmest faintest echoes of what others feel? How can I tell? When I drink wine, do I taste all that there is to taste in it, what they taste? Or do I get only the ghost of the flavor? When I read a book, do I understand the words on the page, or do I only think I do? When I touch a girl’s body, do I truly feel the texture of her flesh? Sometimes I think all my perceptions are too weak. Sometimes I believe that I’m the only one in the world who isn’t feeling things in full, but I have no way of telling that, any more than a color-blind man is able to tell if the colors he sees are the true ones. Sometimes I think I’m living a motion picture. I’m just a shadow on a screen, drifting from episode to meaningless episode in a script somebody else has written, some moron has written, some chimpanzee, some berserk computer, and I have no depth, no texture, no tangibility, no reality. Nothing matters; nothing is real. It’s all a big picture-show. And this is how it has to be for me, forever. A kind of desperation comes over me at times like that. I can’t believe in anything, then. Words themselves lose their meanings and become empty sounds. Everything becomes abstract, not just cloudy words like love and hope and death, but even the concrete ones, words like tree, street, sour, hot, soft, horse, window. I can’t trust anything to be what it’s supposed to be, because its name is only a noise. All content gets washed out of nouns. Life. Death. Everything. Nothing. They’re all the same, aren’t they? So what’s real and what’s unreal, and does it make any difference? Isn’t the whole universe just a bundle of atoms, which we arrange into meaningful patterns by means of our abilities to perceive? And can’t the packets of perception that we assemble be disassembled just as easily, by our ceasing to believe in the whole process? I simply have to withdraw my acceptance of the abstract notion that what I see, what I think I see, really is there. So that I could walk through the wall of this room, once I succeeded in denying that wall. So that I could live forever, once I denied death. So that I could die yesterday, once I denied today. I get into a mood like this and I go spiraling down and down on the whirlpool of my own thoughts, until I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost forever.