Excerpt: The Ishmael diaries

BONGGGG! The giant bell tower clanged and reverberated through Bray’s startled awake skull like the vibrations felt when striking a crowbar against a metal railing. He discovered in that moment that the wind-up alarm clock his hosts had so graciously provided him was not at all necessary. He looked at it anyway, once he had gotten over the shock of being awakened suddenly. The clanging of the bells continued. Bray fought hard to see through bleary eyes and, by the time the bells stopped pealing, confirmed by the tiny clock that it was, in fact, midnight, one of the many times throughout the day that Christian monks gather to pray. The silence that had rushed in after the bells was itself even more deafening than the bells themselves had been. Bray wondered how the neighborhood was able to function with those bells going off eight times during the day, but then he remembered that Manila is always a city bustling with life.
Soon enough he heard the quiet sounds of the monks proceeding from their cells to the chapel for the service of prayer. Click, a door opened. Swish, swish, swish, went the fabric of their habits as they moved to and fro. Click, the door closed again. Swish, swish, swish, quiet noises getting quieter as those who had emerged disappeared again, down the maze of lefts and rights that earlier that day (yesterday? this morning? The rude awakening combined with jet lag were really affecting Bray’s reasoning powers) on to where they were going. They knew where it was, and as it clearly wasn’t important for Bray to know, they had not bothered to tell him.
As he continued to shake the cobwebs of sleep from his brain, it suddenly occurred to him why Father Anselmo had called him at three in the morning Manila time. At three, even the mostly sleepless monks would be asleep, which is why Anselmo was so worried about the possibility of waking them up. He lay back down on the cot, and as he drifted back off to sleep again he was thinking about bells and the chiming of the hour, chanting and calling on the name of God to come and save us. And he wondered what he was supposed to be doing there. It would not be long before he would find out.
Some time later, Bray was again awakened by a small sound. It was not the BONGGGG of the clock, but a knock at his door. It was not really a knock, more of a tap, such that he felt like he had been interrupted poring over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, such that he would surely be able to find if he took a glance through Benavides Library just across the way. He was on edge having been startled by the midnight mass, but this time there were no bells. He found it a bit easier to adjust his eyes to the darkness and rub the sleep out of them this time. He looked at the small clock. Three in the morning. The familiarity of that time made him suddenly fully awake. He threw off the sheet that had been covering him. Clad in only a pair of blue cotton shorts, he crossed the three feet to the door of his cell.
The door was heavy and a bit difficult to open. Bray swung it inward and his eyes were immediately drawn to something on the stone floor that should not have been there. He looked first to the left, then to the right down the hall and saw nothing or no one. He supposed that whoever had knocked or scratched or whatever on his door had left this thing here, wanting to wake him up so that he would see it. But that person was gone now, again being more adept at navigating the intricate passageways in the monastery than he. Part of being more knowledgeable about how the place was laid out helped to confuse visitors like Bray, but the other part was being able to slip quickly out of sight when it was necessary to do so. Bray stooped down and picked up what he discovered by feel to be a slip of paper, folded over twice into a three-inch square.
Feeling now like he was a bad episode of The twilight zone, Bray went back into the cell and closed the door behind him. He ran his fingers through his thinning brown—well, brown and gray; well, gray—hair and bent down again to pick up the t-shirt he had deposited on the floor when he had gone to sleep the night before (last night? this morning? he was still confused). He put the t-shirt on. Thankfully, he had slept with socks on his feet just because he expected his feet would be cold when touching the stone floor. He hadn’t expected to be standing on it twice during the night (morning?), but nevertheless it was good to have a little protection. He sat down at the desk and switched on the small lamp. He thought briefly about the light getting out under the door and alerting some vigilant soul across or down the hall that something was going on in his cell, but he did not allow the thought to detain him. Though still sleepy, and still feeling the hangover from nearly a full twenty-four hours in planes and airports his energies were being excited. Bad Twilight zone or no, this trip was getting interesting.
He unfolded the note and spread it on the little desk before him. His pulse began to race as he read the contents of the note. A nervous bit of sweat immediately appeared at his right temple and trailed its way down the side of his face through his three days’ worth of beard. He suddenly craned his neck around, convinced he would see someone standing there, watching him. You’re just paranoid, argued the rational side of his brain. It’s three in the morning, you have flown halfway around the world, you have been asleep for only about six hours. Go back to bed and figure it out in the morning. But the irrational, adventurous, romantic side of his brain gleefully reported, No, don’t go back to bed! Go, do what the note says, right now! It will be FUN! And then came the fearful side of his brain, But what if the OTHER part of the note is true? What if they really did do that? What if they really intend to do that? I say get on a bus and get out of this place, now. This inner dialogue went on and on for some time in Bray’s mind before he eventually lost focus, stumbled back over to bed, and drifted off to sleep once again.