The Book of Skulls

So I blew it. Yes, I stripped, and yes, we scampered to the bed, and yes, I couldn’t get it up, and yes, Margo helped me, and at last libido triumphed over mortification and I became properly stiff and throbbing, and then, wild bull of the pampas, I flung myself at her, clawing, grappling, frightening her with my ferocity, practically raping her, only to have the wick soften at the critical instant of insertion, and then — oh, yes, blunder upon blunder, gauch-erie upon gaucherie, Margo alternately terrified and amused and solicitous, until at last came consummation, followed almost Instantly by eruption, followed by chasms of self-contempt and craters of revulsion. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I rolled free, hid in the pillows, reviled myself, reviled Timothy, reviled D. H. Lawrence. “Can I help you?” Margo asked, stroking my sweaty back. “Please go,” I said. “Please. And don’t say anything to anyone.” But of course she did. They all knew. My clumsiness, my absurd incompetence, my seven varieties of ambiguity culminating eventually in seven species of impotence. Eli the schmeggege, blowing his big chance with the grooviest wench he’ll ever touch. Another in his long series of lovingly crafted fiascos. And we might have had another here, slogging through cactusville to ultimate disappointment, and the three of them might well have said, at the end of our trek, “Well, what else should we have expected from Eli?” But the skullhouse was there.

The pathway wound up a gentle grade, taking us through ever more dense thickets of cholla and mesquite, until, abruptly, we came to a broad sandy clearing. From left to right stretched a series of black basalt skulls, similar to the one we had seen farther back but much smaller, about the size of basketballs, set in the sand at intervals of perhaps twenty inches. On the far side of the row of skulls, some fifty yards beyond, we saw the House of Skulls crouching like a sphinx in the desert: a fairly large one-story building, flattopped, with coarse yellow-brown stucco walls. Seven columns of white stone decorated its windowless facade. The effect was one of stark simplicity, broken only by the frieze ru

The building appeared to be U-shaped, with two long subordinate wings sprouting behind the main section. I saw no doors. Perhaps fifteen yards in front of the facade, though, the entrance to a stone-lined vault could be seen at the center of the clearing: it yawned, dark and mysterious, like the gateway to the underworld. Immediately I realized that this must be a passage leading into the House of Skulls. I walked toward it and peered in. Darkness within. Do we dare enter? Should we not wait for someone to emerge and summon us? But no one emerged; and the heat was brutal. I felt the skin over my nose and cheeks already stiffening and swelling, going red and glossy from sunburn, winter’s paleness exposed to this desert sun for half a day. We stared at each other. The Ninth Mystery was hot in my mind and probably in theirs. We may go in, but we shall not all come forth. Who to live, who to die? I found myself unwillingly contemplating candidates for destruction, weighing my friends in the balance, quickly surrendering Timothy and Oliver to death and then pulling back, reconsidering that too ready judgment, substituting Ned for Oliver, Oliver for Timothy, Timothy for Ned, myself for Timothy, Ned for myself, Oliver for Ned, around and around, inconclusively, indecisively. My faith in the truth of the Book of Skulls had never been stronger. My sense of standing at the brink of infinity had never been greater or more terrifying. “Let’s go,” I said hoarsely, my voice splitting, and took a few uneasy steps forward. A stone staircase led steeply down into the vault. Five, six, seven feet underground, and I found myself in a dark tu

He was a short, stocky man, no more than five feet five, who wore only a pair of faded blue denims cut to midthigh. His skin was deeply ta