The plot centers around four college students who, after finding and reading a dusty volume "The Book of Skulls", set out to find a secretive group of monks whose religous practice includes the key to immortality. We get brief sketches of Timothy, Oliver, Ned and Eli in the beginning, but as the boys find the monks and enter the monastery as postulants in this mysterious religion, we learn their most inner and dark secrets. When four come together and agree to test as a "receptacle" for the monks, they know, in advance, that one must be murdered by the group and one must commit suicide.