chapter thirty-six

Oliver

Timothy showed up as I was getting ready to go to sleep. He came slouching in, looking surly and sullen, and for an instant I didn’t understand why he was there. “Okay,” he said, flopping down against the wall. “Let’s get it over with fast, huh?”

“You look angry.”

“I am. I’m angry about this whole fucking pile of crap I’ve been forced to wallow in.”

“Don’t take it out on me,” I said.

“Am I?”

“That’s not exactly a friendly expression on your face.”

“I don’t exactly feel friendly, Oliver. I feel like getting the hell out of this place right after breakfast. How long have we been here, anyway? Two weeks, three weeks? Too fucking long, however long it is. Too fucking long.”

“You knew it was going to take time when you agreed to go into it,” I said. “There was no way that the Trial could have been a quickie deal, four days, in, out. If you pull out of it now you spoil it for the rest of us. And don’t forget that we swore—”

“We swore, we swore, we swore, we swore! Oh, Christ, Oliver, you’re starting to sound just like Eli now! Scolding me. Nagging me. Reminding me that I swore to something. Oh, Jesus, do I hate this whole crappy routine! it’s like the three of you are holding me prisoner in a booby-hatch.”

“So you are angry at me.”

He shrugged. “I’m angry at everyone and everything. Most of all I’m angry at myself, I guess^ For getting myself into this. For not having had the sense to tell you to count me out, right at the start. I thought it would be amusing, so I went along for the ride. Amusing! Sheesh!”

“You still believe it’s nothing but a waste of time?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I can feel myself changing day by day. Deepening my control over my body. Extending my range of perceptions. I’m tuning in on something big, Timothy, and Eli and Ned are, too, and there’s no reason why you can’t be doing it also.”

“Lunatics. Three lunatics.”

“If you’d try to be a little less uptight about it and actually do some of the meditations and spiritual exercises—”

“There you go. Nagging me again.”

“I’m sorry. Forget it, Timothy. Forget the whole bit.” I took a deep breath. Timothy was perhaps my closest friend, maybe my only friend, and yet suddenly I was sick of him, sick of his big beefy face, sick of his close-chopped hair, sick of his arrogance, sick of his money, sick of his ancestors, sick of his contempt for anything beyond the reach of understanding. I said, keeping my voice flat and frosty, “Look, if you don’t like it here, go. Just go. I don’t want you to think I’m the one who’s holding you. You go, if that’s what you want. And don’t worry about me, about the oath, any of that stuff. I can look after myself.”

“I don’t know what I want to do,” he muttered, and for an instant the cranky scowl left his face. The expression that replaced it was one I couldn’t easily associate with Timothy: a look of confusion, a look of vulnerability. It vanished and he gave me the scowl once more. “Another thing,” he said, sounding cranky again. “Why the crap do I have to tell secrets to anybody?”

“You don’t have to.”

“Frater Javier said we should.”

“What’s that to you? If you don’t want to spill anything, don’t spill it.”

“It’s part of the ritual,” said Timothy.

“But you don’t believe in the ritual. Anyway, if you’re leaving here tomorrow, Timothy, you don’t need to do anything Frater Javier says you should do.”

“Did I say I was leaving?”

“You said you wanted to.”

“I said I felt like leaving. I didnt say I was going to leave. That’s not the same thing. I haven’t made up my mind.”

“Stay or not, as you please. Confess or not, as you please. But if you aren’t going to do what Frater Javier sent you here to do, I wish you’d go away and let me get some sleep.”

“Don’t hassle me, Oliver. Don’t start pushing. I can’t move as fast as you want me to.”

“You’ve had all day to decide whether you’re going to tell me anything or not.”

He nodded. He bent forward until his head was between his knees and sat like that, silent, for a very long time. My annoyance faded. I could see he was in trouble. This was a whole new Timothy to me. He wanted to unbend, he wanted to get into the skullhouse thing, and yet he despised it all so much that he couldn’t. So I didnt push him. I let him sit there, and finally he looked up and said, “If I tell you what I have to tell you, what assurance do I have that you won’t repeat it?”

“Frater Javier instructed us not to repeat anything we hear in these confessions.”

“Sure, but will you really keep quiet about it?”

“Don’t you trust me, Timothy?”

“I don’t trust anybody with this. This could destroy me. The frater wasn’t kidding when he said that each of us must have something locked inside him that he doesn’t dare let out. I’ve done a lot of crappy things, yes indeed, but there’s one thing so crappy that it’s almost holy, almost a sacred sin, it’s so monstrous. People would despise me if they knew about it. You’ll probably despise me.” His face was gray with strain. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”

“If you don’t then don’t.”

“I’m supposed to let it out.”

“Only if you’re committed to the disciplines of the Book of Skulls. And you aren’t.”

“If I wanted to be, though, I’d have to do as Frater Javier says. I don’t know. I don’t know. You absolutely wouldn’t tell this to Eli or Ned? Or anybody else?”

“I absolutely wouldn’t,” I said.

“I wish I could really believe that.”

“I can’t help you on that score, Timothy. It’s like Eli says: some things you have to take on faith.”

“Maybe we could make a deal,” he said, sweating, looking desperate. “I’ll tell you my story, and then you tell me your story, and that way we’ll each have leverage. Well have something to hold against each other by way of guaranteeing that there’ll be no gossiping.”

“The person I’m supposed to confess to,” I said, “is Eli. Not you. Eli.”

“No deal, then?”

“No deal.”

He was silent again. An even longer time. At last he looked up. His eyes frightened me. He moistened his lips and moved his jaws, but no words came out. He seemed to be on the edge of panic, and some of his terror was bleeding through to me; I felt tense and jumpy, itchy, uncomfortably aware of the blanket of close, clinging heat.

Eventually he forced a few words out. “You’ve met my kid sister,” he said.

Yes, I had met his sister, several times, when I had gone home with Timothy for Christmas holidays. She was two or three years younger than Timothy, a leggy blonde, quite goodlooking but not especially bright: Margo without Margo’s personality, in fact. Timothy’s sister was a Wellesley girl, your stereotyped debutante-Junior League-charity tea kind of girl, your tennis-golf-horseback-riding kind of girl. She had a fine body, but otherwise I hadn’t found her attractive at all, because I was turned off by her smugness, her moneyedness, her air of don’t-touch-me virginity. I don’t think virgins are terribly interesting. This one gave a definite impression of being far above such coarse, vulgar things as sex. I could imagine her drawling to her fiance, as the poor freak tried to get his hand into her blouse, “Oh, darling, don’t be so crude!” I doubt that she cared for me very much more than I did for her: my Kansas background marked me as a clodhopper, and my daddy hadn’t belonged to the right clubs and I wasn’t a member of the right church. My total lack of upper-class credentials dumped me into that very large class of male human beings whom girls of that sort simply don’t consider as potential escorts, lovers, or husbands. For her I was just part of the furniture, like a gardener or a stable boy. “Yes,” I said, “I’ve met your kid sister.”