This is what I remember:

*Flash*

A courtyard ringed in fire, in which a man dressed as a devil jumped around, letting out deep-throated shrieks. A group of men in rags stood before him, chained, and let out soft moans.

*Flash*

A tiny room lit by candlelight, with a figure dressed as Quetzacoatl, in shimmering gold and colorful feathers. He leaned over a stone slab, a golden knife poised ready to cut out the heart of a maybe-naked woman who lay with her long black hair splayed out behind her. As he brought the knife down, the candle went out. The woman screamed.

*Flash*

Antony standing over the body of Cleopatra, holding a live asp. Or maybe it was a boa constrictor. I don’t know my snakes as well as my Shakespeare. And I think Cleopatra was a mannequin in a black wig.

*Flash*

A room full of Puritans, standing watch over a gallows lit by a spotlight. It looked as if we were back in the Firefly Room. There were three women hanging with nooses around their necks, black bags tied over their faces. I’d have thought they were fakes, but their feet were twitching….

*Flash*

There were hands on my shoulders, walking me down the hall, but whoever placed the blindfold over my face after the Salem room wasn’t too careful. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a tiny flash. Light, bouncing off metal zippers. They removed the blindfold to view the next tableau—something about a bowl full of fruit and the groaning of ghostly souls in torment—but I was too interested in those zippers, and the person wearing them. It was George Harrison Prescott in the hall outside the room, and he was being stripped of his offensive jacket and—yes, shoved into a smallish plywood coffin. They’d clearly staggered our entrances and were amusing each of us in turn with the various aspects of the initiation. I wondered what still lay in store.

*Flash*

They shoved me into a seat and secured my hands behind my back. Something was placed over my face before the blindfold was yanked down. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was looking through tiny eyeholes in a mask. At first I thought I’d been placed in front of a mirror, because before me I saw another masked figure tied to a chair. Her mask was elaborate and golden, with an elegant bird’s beak and shimmering jewels that suggested arched brows and a cruel, predatory mouth. But she struggled against her bonds while I remained still. At last her hands came free and she pulled her mask off her face.

Clarissa Cuthbert.

I gasped and she reached across to snatch my mask away. I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. A crone.

She frowned. “So you are here,” she said, before they took her away. My blindfold was replaced before my hands were released or my mouth remembered how to work.

*Flash*

A vampire rising from his coffin, blood dripping down his chin.

*Flash*

A pale young man sat on a toilet seat in his underwear. He had a gun pointed to his head, and he was repeating the same phrase over and over again. In Latin.

*Flash*

George Harrison Prescott turned to me, in a room where Othello was strangling Desdemona, and said in a tone entirely unsuited to the bizarre situation, “The matches didn’t work, by the way. I had enough sulfur on me to bring down half a dozen Diggers.” I was hurried away before I had a chance to ask him what he meant.

*Flash*

The scenes began to blur together after a while, and over everything there were voices screaming phrases in other languages, shouting obscenities, chanting in gibberish, shrieking, “The President Is Dead!” “The End Has Come!” “The Devil Has Risen!” and other dire warnings. I felt a strange headiness, and wondered if there had been alcohol in the “blood” or if I was just succumbing to the magic of the evening. The downtimes seemed to float by as if in a dream and I stopped counting steps from room to room. I don’t know how many times I made the circuit, or how many costume changes the players underwent. But at last I was shoved in a room, and I heard a door slam behind me as the racket was suddenly cut off.

By this point, I was so used to the tableaux being revealed that it was several heartbeats before I reached up to remove my own blindfold.

Before me stood the Grim Reaper in his black robe. He carried a scythe in his hand, and a grinning death’s head hung with flaps of rotted flesh stared out at me from beneath the hood. I glanced around, but we were the only people in the room. The Reaper turned toward a cabinet that contained two skeletons.

“Wer war der Thor, wer Weiser, wer Bettler oder Kaiser?”

He pointed at each of the skeletons in turn, then handed me a crown. It was heavy in my hands, and I wondered for a moment if the jewels and gold around the red velvet base were real.

“Wer war der Thor, wer Weiser, wer Bettler oder Kaiser?” he said again, a little more insistently.

“I never took German,” I replied helplessly.

He pointed at the crown, then at the two skeletons.

He wanted me to put the crown on one of their heads? Ah! Kaiser. “Kaiser” meant king in German. Enlightenment hit, and with it, another little lesson from history class. The Dance of Death from the Middle Ages. Alas, poor Yorick, and all that Hamlet jazz. The king was not either of the skeletons, but the force that had defeated them both.

I stepped forward and placed the crown on the head of the Reaper.

“Gut! Ob Arm, ob Reich, im Tode gleich.”*[3] He captured my hands in his. “Nice move, Neophyte. You’ll learn yet.” He pulled me forward until my face was inches from his putrid one, and for a very scary moment, I was afraid the thing was going to kiss me, which was a little too Goth for my taste. I locked my elbows and resisted, and he released me, triumph glinting in his pale eyes.

I stumbled backward as the light went off, and I felt myself being whisked away once again.

This time, when the blindfold was removed, I was standing before a long wooden door, with two tall men flanking me. Before me was a knocker engraved with the Rose & Grave seal. The hooded figure to my right reached up and thumped the knocker three times, then once, then twice again.

“The Neophyte approaches!” someone inside yelled, and a bone-chilling din began beyond the doors. They screamed and shouted, hooted and groaned. Finally, beneath it, I could make out a chant that soon overwhelmed every other element of the noise. “Who is it? Who is it! Who is it? WHO IS IT?”

“Amy Maureen Haskel.” I smiled. “Neophyte Haskel!”

The doors flew open and I blinked. This was by far the most elaborate of all of the tableaux. It looked like a carnival inside, and it was obvious I was the main attraction. The round room had a domed ceiling painted dark blue and dotted with tiny golden stars. Around me stood players, all masked, in the most outlandish costumes. They were all shouting my name.

The two hooded figures shoved me against a carved teak desk and pushed my head toward a piece of parchment.

A man in a gold, jewel-encrusted robe put down wizened hands on either side of the page. His half mask had hexagonal eyeholes and was covered in real roses, and above it his hair was gray. “Read it! Read it! Read it now, or look your last upon the Inner Temple!”

This is the vow I took:

I, Amy Maureen Haskel, Barbarian-So-Called, do hereby most solemnly avow, within the Flame of Life and beneath the Shadow of Death, never to reveal, by commission or by omission, the existence of, the knowledge considered sacred by, or the names of the membership of the Order of Rose & Grave.