Why was this passageway starting to smell like garlic? Surely, nobody would be cooking at this hour?

All had become clear. Perhaps. Had the young man fallen ill with some kind of fever that only now I was feeling, causing these hallucinations? Not that this would excuse his conduct, but I could begin to understand ... and know I had best get to a physician soon, lest I allow myself to join him in his madness. What a sight we would be, side by side on the floor, seeing who could trash about with the greatest fervor. Perhaps others, thinking a great revival was at hand, might join us in this new Shakerism.

It was too horrible to even think about. This would have to stop, and the young man would simply have to submit himself to the care of a competent physician. I was certain that the pastor could find the funds somewhere, and surely should, even had he to go to Rome itself to find them.

Did I know why he created such a scene in church? Of course I did, at this point, but as for why he thought he did, this question left me uneasy. Of course I didn't know, how could I know, and I didn't, couldn't believe that I wished to know. Could one truly, fully understand madness and not go mad onself? Why was I even here, sitting at this step? Because at every step, I had been outwitted, cleverly forced to go where the boy wished to go, and now I had to give him a hearing, bound by my word as I was.

Outwitted by a madman! That was a thought that I didn't want to ponder. I must have been tired. As I tried to speak, the words stuck in my throat. I could not speak, so I tried to shake my head, and found that I could not move. No safety in this helplessness. I knew that silence indicated assent, and the boy showed that he knew as much, smiling as peacefully as his fevered brain would allow. Closing the grap between us a little more, he dropped to his knees with a dreamy look on his face, before he began.

"There has never been a time in which I have felt convinced that I was alive, that I was real, truly a part of the world around me, more than a ghost flittering about unseen, a thought that God never thought to finish and bring to life. You see, awareness flees from me, always to return, but for how long? Always I long to catch a glimpse of things as they were, before they chose to show themselves to me, to see if they were as calm and beautiful and true as I was told they were. Others I have heard insisting that they were so, and how can I doubt them, for if I do not stand before them, why would they lie to a phantasm, a dream they never remembered that they had forgotten? Why would they try to pull the wool over the eyes of he who was himself nought but a delusion?"

What answer could I give to such a question that I had not already given just by standing where I did at the moment, more afraid that before, because ... but I wasn't going to think about that. He looked upward, as if seeing some recognition in my eyes that I would have kept hidden, and I wondered if I was now mad, as well, if he was finding his own understanding in them. How swiftly did this fever take hold, I wondered? Or was it a fever, at all? As he looked upward, I wasn't sure toward what, and his head turned ... how had I failed to see this before? A welt that crossed his scalp, faded scars along and beside it, memories of a wound that I wouldn't have imagined that he could have survived.

What had this boy gotten himself into?