The Black Monastery

by Stav Sherez

  He caught the change in her expression, brief as it was, when he mentioned writing.

  In the silence which followed, it came to him. He remembered what George had said and knew he had to tell her. She wrote about it all the time, but here it was – real and unsolved. He wondered how she would react. A part of him wanted to shock her. To see her feel such utter hopelessness in the face of death she wouldn’t write another happy ending ever again.

  ‘What murders?’ she replied, and something in her perked up, blood rushed to her cheeks, blushing them. She leaned forward. Her eyes lit up. The coldness of a few minutes before completely forgotten.

  ‘Last year, a girl was found by the ruins, mutilated, her internal organs missing, her face peeled off. Two months later, the same thing, except a boy this time. They arrested someone and the case was closed.’ She was nodding, her hair falling in and out of her face. Jason continued, snared by her stare. ‘Last month, a local boy was found dead in the ruins near the monastery. No face. Another girl last week. Same MO. They believe it’s a cult. The bodies had centipedes sealed inside them.’

  He thought she would look horrified. He thought she would be shocked, but a strange kind of smile cut across her face. ‘Now? This, what you’re talking about, happened now?’

  ‘That’s what I was told. Why?’

  ‘I heard something happened here with a cult in the early seventies. Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe they meant this.’

  And that’s when he began to invent. He told her about the state of the bodies. The orange tinge to the skin. The altar. The things painted on it. The nights of terror and supplication. Finding it easy. Rolling off the tongue. Watching her draw in. The language of pain and disposal. The wonder of horror and death.

  ‘I saw missing posters around town. You think …?’

  He looked up at her. He understood his time with her now relied on this. ‘Yes.’

  She took it all in, the sun dazzling her face. A smile formed. ‘Where did you say the murders happened?’

  He could see she was hooked. He wasn’t sure where this story, this plot he was spinning, would lead them. ‘There’s an old monastery up on the mountain. Somewhere on its grounds, by some ruins.’

  ‘There was a photo of ruins on the incident board at the police station. They looked really creepy.’ She took a sip of her drink. Her eyes blazed. ‘It would be kind of fun to go up there, don’t you think?’

  ELEVEN

  It’s one of the smaller clubs on the island. The dance floor only holds a hundred twirling bodies. The bar is badly stocked and overpriced. The space-age motif is at least twenty years out of date.

  Nikos stands at the counter, waiting for the owner. He cracks open a bottle of Thai beer. It’s only ten in the morning. He never used to drink this early. But the heat is already unbearable. The thought of having to go from club to club, asking his questions, flashing his photos. He tells himself the bartenders and managers will be more likely to talk to him if they see him breaking the rules.

  He wipes the foam from his moustache and looks out across the dance floor. The cleaning squad hasn’t arrived yet. There’s the smell of stale beer, unwashed bodies, salt and vomit. There are crushed cans of lager dotting the floor and empty bottles standing sentry on tables. He rings the buzzer again and heads towards the booths. The soles of his shoes squelch and stick to the black and white chequered floor. He navigates around the broken bottles, lost earrings and cigarette butts. It looks more like a battlefield the morning after than a place where people came to have fun. He remembers the sole nightclub that was around when he was a teenager. People came to sit and sip wine. To dance the local and national dances. There was often a live band playing, bouzoukis and fiddles vying with the cicadas and wind.

  He approaches the booths, and the smell of cheap leatherette floods his senses. It’s the only thing that’s the same as forty years ago.

  He finds the fine sprinkle of granules along most of the tables. Snowflakes of coke and meth lodged in the cracks and folds of the wood. People get careless as the night goes on. He takes out his penknife, inserts the blade into one such crack. He puts his finger to the fine powder that emerges and dabs his tongue. Not coke but meth. The bitter taste burns and mixes badly with the beer.

  ‘Hey! What you think you’re doing?’

  The owner’s crossing the dance floor, swinging a baseball bat. His face is twisted with rage and incredulity. He stops in front of Nikos, feet placed wide apart, muscles tensed. ‘I said what the hell you think …’ and then he sees the badge.

  Nikos watches the owner sway behind the bar. It’s still early in the morning, and there’s no music, just the intermittent buzzing of a broken fluorescent. The owner, Milos, cracks open a bottle of beer, pours it for Nikos. ‘On the house,’ he smiles, his teeth gold and capped and crooked. Nikos takes the beer, sips, watches the owner. He’s not nervous, that’s for sure. He’s propped up against the bar smoking a cigar, nodding his head, making small talk. His gold medallion hangs flat on his chest. His white suit is crumpled and torn. There’s the red swirl of lipstick decorating the collar. An almost-closed door leading to an office behind him. The bronzed legs of a young girl under a huge poster trumpeting the club’s recent residencies. Nikos doesn’t recognise any of the DJs’ names. He watches as the owner tries to surreptitiously close the door with his foot, but Nikos can see the girl’s painted toenails, the gold ankle bracelet, the impatient tapping of her foot.

  This is his fifth bar in a row. So far there’s been nothing. Blank-faced stares and rebuttals. Amnesia and total blindness. Being Chief of Police doesn’t seem to impress the owners. The fact that the previous chief was currently sitting at home, wearing an electronic bracelet, doesn’t help things.

  The owner slides a dirty white envelope across the table. The seal is broken, and Nikos can see the red and green plumed euros nestled within. He places his hand flat on the envelope. The owner smiles.

  ‘Last time I checked,’ Nikos says, ‘it was a minimum of five years for trying to bribe a police officer.’

  Milos stares at Nikos. His face hardens and then cracks into laughter. ‘Very funny,’ he slaps the surface of the bar with his hand. ‘Your predecessor had no sense of humour. I like a man who can laugh.’

  Nikos reaches for the photos in his jacket pocket. He takes them out and lays each one flat on the bar. The owner looks down at the faces of the teenagers. He looks back up at Nikos waiting for the punch line.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘This is what you’re going to tell me about. I want to know how often these kids were in your bar. Whether they hung out together. Who they associated with and what they sold.’

  ‘This isn’t that kind of place.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see that by the state of your booths.’

  Milos looks uneasily over Nikos’s shoulder. ‘I never seen them before,’ he says.

  ‘Look again.’

  The American couple’s revelation about Caroline had opened things up. When they’d found her body, they’d thought she was another tourist, her long legs and blonde hair enough to snare her in the sights of some psycho. But the fact she was involved in the drugs trade. This was something that had to be checked out. All he needs is one connection and the pattern will begin to reveal itself.

  ‘Maybe I see them. Maybe not. The young people all look the same to me these days.’

  The flickering fluorescent makes Nikos dizzy. The beer in his hand is empty before he realises it. The teenage girl in the other room is tapping her feet to an imagined beat.

  Nikos points towards the back room. ‘Maybe she saw them.’

  Milos looks back towards the door. ‘She knows nothing. What’s your problem? You have nothing better to do than harass innocent businessmen? It’s us who pay your salary. We never had a problem before, why you want to make trouble?’

  ‘Things have changed. You better get used to that.’

  The owner spits onto the floor. ‘Nothing ch
anges. You’ll find out soon enough. You’re just a hiccup. The world goes on the way it always did.’

  He walks to the docks. The first boats are coming in from Athens. Disgorging more pleasure-seeking tourists, their smiles and tans luminous in the early morning light. They walk past the churches and local stalls and head straight for the faux pubs, the English breakfasts and watered-down beers. He wishes he was still in Athens. Wishes he’d never come back to Palassos, never accepted Spiros’s invitation … but it’s too late. There’s nothing he can do to make the island what it once was.

  He talks to stewards and old men sitting in booths selling tickets for the ferries. He flashes photos of the dead teenagers. Most of the old men shake their heads, foreigners all look the same to them, or comment on the beauty of the two girls, their blonde hair and dazzling smiles. And then he gets lucky.

  It’s the last of the booths selling ferry tickets. The youth behind the counter sits reading a lurid mystery, cigarette clamped between yellow fingers.

  ‘These two I see a lot.’ He points to the photos of the two local boys, nodding his head.

  ‘What do you mean a lot?’ Nikos keeps the tremble out of his voice.

  ‘Once a week, twice a week, they bought tickets.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Different islands. Angelos’ – he points to the boy found by the ruins two months earlier – ‘I kind of knew from school. That’s why I remember. We always had a catch-up chat.’

  ‘And you never saw the girls?’

  The ticket-taker shakes his head, ‘No, that I would remember, no doubt. Very pretty. You see this?’ He points to a small black hole at the top of the ticket stall. Nikos looks up. ‘I take photos. I put a camera there. Every time a beautiful girl comes up, I take a snap. Something to look at when I get home.’ He gives Nikos a smile that’s all teeth and tongue. ‘Those two I would remember.’

  ‘You don’t take pictures of the boys?’

  The man shakes his hand, ‘Of course not. What do you think I am?’

  ‘And the boys, how often did you say they bought tickets?’

  ‘Twice a week maybe. Every week.’

  ‘Did you see them get on board the ferries or were the tickets for someone else?’

  The man shrugs. ‘Why buy tickets for someone else?’

  Nikos thanks him and begins walking back towards the station. He’d questioned the ticket offices on the off-chance. It still didn’t mean anything but the fact that the two murdered boys travelled regularly between islands is interesting.

  He looks out towards the neighbouring islands, rising sleepily from the mist. The view is the same as it always was. Everything else has changed. When Spiros offered him the post he’d thought he’d come back to the island he knew. He thought thirty-three years was long enough to forget what happened.

  ‘Hey there!’

  Nikos turns around. A raven-haired girl is waving at him. She’s wearing a tight T-shirt that ends just above her midriff. Denim cut-offs the size of a handkerchief. It’s when he notices her painted toenails that he recognises her.

  ‘You were eavesdropping on us in the bar?’

  She smiles sweetly. ‘Milos doesn’t let me come out, talk to other men. He can be very possessive like that. I had to sneak out.’

  ‘You wanted to see me?’

  She nods. ‘Those photos you left with Milos? I recognise them.’

  Suddenly all of Nikos’s attention is on this small improbable girl. ‘Which ones?’

  ‘All four. The two girls used to spend a lot of time at the bar.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The girl nods. ‘Milos likes me to stay inside during club hours. There’s nothing much to do so I watch the CCTV. It’s like our own reality show.’

  ‘They were selling drugs?’

  ‘No, not seriously. Only to pay for their own stuff, I think. They were more like go-betweens.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘They would sit down at a table full of newly arrived tourists. Start to chat to them. As you can imagine, the boys loved them. Then they’d ask if they needed anything for the night. You see, the tourists might have been scared of getting it off a local but when a young girl like that offered them some, they stopped worrying about being busted.’

  ‘And the two boys?’

  ‘They were in and out. They used to go to other clubs too. I think they resupplied the dealers.’

  Nikos lets this information wash through him. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  The girl clicks her tongue. ‘Caroline. She was nice. We talked some when Milos wasn’t around. What happened to her … I still can’t believe it. People like that, it scares me. I don’t want to be scared every night I have to walk home alone.’

  Nikos takes out the last photo, playing a hunch. He shows it to the girl. She immediately nods. ‘The English guy, right?’ she says.

  Nikos takes back the photo of Wynn. ‘You ever see him with any of the others?’

  ‘Definitely the two girls. They seemed friendly. I think he was fucking them.’

  TWELVE

  They caught the bus to Talos. They sat in the heat-drenched atmosphere, the only two passengers, struggling to get air in the close and cramped seats. They passed ruined yards and scorched fields. Farmers who looked plucked from another century. The terrain constantly puckered and folded, a landscape made for hiding. They climbed narrow roads away from the shoreline and into the mountains, the deep interior, the heart of the island.

  She’d read about it in her guidebook. A large, densely forested centre. Locals lived there. Tourists never visited. The guidebook mentioned that the deep islanders were suspicious of tourists and sometimes hostile. It warned against going without a local guide. It was easy to get lost, and help might not be forthcoming. But of the cult and what had happened on the island thirty-three years ago, there was no mention. Of course not, Kitty thought, it was a guidebook: they didn’t want to put people off.

  She stared at the map. The island was divided into two by a mountain. At its summit sat the monastery and ruins. The north side of the island was undeveloped, unreachable except by foot.

  They climbed steadily for half an hour, the open windows bringing no relief in the stifling air. The roads were narrow and looked only recently cut from the mountain. The forest swarmed around them, the trees green and unbelievably lush, rock breaking through the brown earth like a network of scars. Darkness eclipsed them many times as the overhangs of cliff blotted out the sun.

  * * *

  Jason had no idea where the girl was found, but he didn’t tell Kitty that. He’d been encouraged by her excitement and didn’t want to disappoint her. Besides, there would be nothing to see. Just a monastery. A picture-postcard view of the sea. It would be as if they had bumped into each other by chance, two lone tourists in the middle of nowhere.

  They passed no one on the way up, and the driver stopped where the road did. They were still some way from the monastery, but the rest had to be done by foot.

  They followed the path through the dense forest, lost from the light, canopied by trees. They climbed in silence until they found the trees clearing, the sun and sky suddenly spilling down on them. At the head of an outcrop of rock they could see the square stone monastery which perched like a vulture on the island’s shoulders.

  Kitty looked up at the massive granite cross. But she felt nothing. She wanted so much to believe in something greater than the world in front of her. A mystery beyond the numinous. The way her parents had. The way they tried to teach her. She yearned for it. But it was not enough, this yearning. And belief was so far away, like love when you’ve never felt it.

  ‘It’s not …’

  ‘Black?’ she finished his thought. ‘You expected it to actually be black?’

  The Black Monastery. She’d read about it in her guidebook. The phrase chilled her. The way certain words took on specific resonances. She loved reading about old places, spaces of devotion and faith. Roo
ms which held more than their occupants. The way architecture mirrored desire.

  The first monks had settled here five hundred years ago. She’d read about the sanctity which was so well preserved that trespassers were summarily executed. Then it had been sacked, like all monasteries had, and the bodies of the monks hung from the eaves. There was confusion over when it had next been anointed. There were legends of Satanic and pagan worship in the ruins of the old monastery. Demons and witchcraft. Her guidebook had laughed at that. Said these islands were full of superstition and dread. Isolation bred it. A changing world fed it.

  Eventually, the new structure had been built over the old one like a shroud. Monks came again, and the island blossomed as a trade centre. This lasted until the war. The Nazis took over the building and used it as an interrogation centre. Only in the sixties did it revert to a place where monks could once again prostrate themselves before God under the harsh sun. Then, abruptly, some ten years later, the monastery was desanctified and lay empty until it was redeveloped into a tourist attraction in the mid-nineties.

  When she’d read all that, she’d intended to visit, but that was for history; now she knew they were going up there to see the scene of a crime, and, although she didn’t expect to find anything – it had been cleared by the police, after all – she felt a snapcharge of excitement in this mission. Something which served as a salve from the slowly pulsating town below, finally waking up, going to the bars, preparing for another long night of dancing and drugging.

  A path ran up to a gate swinging lazily open. As Jason lit a cigarette, and she turned away to escape the smoke, something moved in the woods to her left. She saw a shadow, the size of a man, dart between two trees, and before she could get Jason to look, the shadow disappeared and the woods looked unmoved and untrampled as they had been for years.