The Black Monastery

by Stav Sherez

  Petrakis sits slumped in his armchair like he’s a part of the design. Over the years his snarled body has moulded itself to fit into this tatty rattan chair.

  His mother sits in an old wheelchair at the other end of the room. She doesn’t move. She hasn’t moved for eight years since the stroke. She’s catatonic like sculpture. Nikos can smell the unchanged diapers and death stink. Despite being Mayor, the old man has chosen to live like this. He has a villa on the other side of the island, but he spends his nights here.

  Petrakis had sent him to the mainland that day. Petrakis had wanted him off the island.

  ‘Thought you might come.’ The old man says. His features seem to have dwindled since Nikos saw him a few days before. It’s as if they were made to fit a much smaller face. Petrakis looks mummified, and, with all the ouzo and armchair residence, he may as well be.

  ‘You have any idea what’s going on?’ There’s no time to waste on formalities. They were never friends.

  Petrakis snorts. His shoulders involuntarily jump. It’s not a shrug but a sign of something Nikos can’t decipher. Perhaps just nerve damage, old age.

  ‘Yeah. I killed those tourists. Priest too. Can’t wait to get up off my armchair and do another.’ His ensuing laugh is filled with a sinewy up-gust of phlegm and tar. He sounds more like a broken-down machine than a man.

  ‘They burned down the library.’ Nikos says, watching for surprise to etch itself on the old man’s face but there’s no movement at all.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Your wife smoking in there all the time.’

  ‘She was on her day off.’

  ‘Lucky for her.’ Petrakis snorts.

  Nikos wants to leave. The room suddenly closes in on him with its miasma of decrepitude: the unwashed clothes and spoiled food; the stink and fog of stale smoke.

  ‘Why did you send me to the mainland?’ It’s out. The first time he’s asked this to someone other than his wall. The things you suspect are often the last things you want to know.

  Petrakis leans forward. It’s an effort for him and a sign the old man’s upset. ‘To pick up the city detectives.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ It comes out with more force than he intends but he’s glad. He wonders if he’d asked this question years ago, would the recent murders still have occurred? He can see Petrakis’s face shade with uncertainty. ‘What happened when I was on the mainland? What did you do at the camp?’

  The old man leans back. Takes another long gulp of the misty liquid. ‘You think I can remember? That was thirty-three years ago. We did what we did. That’s the way it’s always been on the island. You would have done the same.’ The sarcasm makes the sentence sound like a slap in the face. ‘You need to investigate the present not the past. The killer isn’t a ghost. Someone’s got it in for us. They’re using this to bring back memories of ’74. They want to tear this island apart. Force tourists to stop coming. None of us wants that, not even you.’

  Nikos moves forward. The smell of the room fills his nostrils. He looms over the old man. ‘That’s bullshit. None of this makes sense.’

  ‘What? After all these years you still think things make sense?’ Petrakis laughs loudly.

  Nikos spools back to what the Professor told him in Athens.

  ‘You had a bunch of middle-class European kids who suddenly decide to kill two boys and then commit group suicide? This isn’t how cults operate,’ he pauses. ‘Had they been threatened by the locals?’

  ‘They did what they did. No one bothered them.’

  ‘I talked to someone who knows about these things. He couldn’t understand it either.’

  ‘You really think you can ever understand what lies deep in another man’s heart?’

  ‘No, but we’re talking about cults, not individuals; there are patterns and structures. They turn inwards, close in upon themselves. They don’t murder kids. These were normal European teenagers. What made them change so quickly?’

  Petrakis smiles. ‘Maybe it was the deep interior that called to them. You know the tales, Nikos, you know the forest isn’t what it seems. There have always been things we can’t explain on this island.’

  Nikos leans back. ‘I’m going to find out what happened that night.’

  ‘Find out what? There’s nothing to find out and a lot to lose.’

  Nikos ignores the taunt, is about to leave, come back later when the old man’s not so sozzled, when the front door opens.

  Dimitri, Petrakis’s son, walks in. First thing he does is notice Nikos. Just stares at him. Nikos smiles.

  ‘What the hell are you doing with my father?’ Dimitri’s hand reaches down, settles into a back pocket.

  ‘Just catching up on the good old days, weren’t we?’

  The look Petrakis gives him could be from a 1940s B-movie; all overplayed malevolence and spitting hate.

  ‘Your father was just telling me some interesting things.’

  Dimitri moves forward, crowding Nikos’s space, his jaw weirdly angled and solid. ‘I think it would be better if you leave. Papa’s drunk. He doesn’t want to talk to you.’

  He’s always drunk; he never wants to talk. Nikos is about to say these things when his nose wrinkles. He coughs and smells the air again. For sure.

  ‘It was good of you to help put out the fire,’ Nikos says.

  Dimitri looks towards his dad, but the old man is staring out the window.

  ‘The fire in town. You weren’t one of the men putting it out?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any fire,’ Dimitri says.

  Nikos smiles. ‘No, of course not.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  There’s something about Jason that makes her uneasy. As they walk up the cracked and broken street towards his hotel, she can’t understand why he seems so distant, so uncaring. And then she can’t understand why she expects him to be these things.

  She’s told him about the fire. She can still smell it on her hair and skin, despite two hot showers, but it serves as a reminder. This is not some story you’re concocting nor some Nancy Drew kick. This is everything that’s just happened.

  He’d tried to talk her into going to see a doctor, held her hand when that hadn’t worked, told her how sorry he was for getting her involved in all this.

  As she’d landed outside, shuddering and smoke-choked, she finally realised the fire was no accident. Someone wanted her dead.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ he says, and she can tell he’d prefer it to be an accident. That facing up to the danger they’re in is something he’s trying to avoid. He can smell the smoke on her but not the need to be unburdened.

  George shakes his head, spitting out some loose tobacco. ‘Wynn was looking for you.’

  The word is like a stake driven through Jason’s lungs. ‘What did he want?’ He hates the way his voice sounds, wonders if Kitty’s picked up on it.

  George’s eyes look sad and weary, ‘I don’t know. He seemed … he seemed different. Desperate somehow. Maybe this would be a good time for you to leave the island.’

  ‘I can’t leave yet.’ He watches the older man’s face crumple like a handkerchief pushed quickly back into a pocket. George shakes his head. ‘Last ferry’s at five. Then everything closes down. Biggest night of the year tonight. Christmas and New Year rolled into one.’

  The world spins again. The humidity drops from the sky like an anvil. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ George doesn’t wait for an answer, ‘Tonight the island celebrates its release from captivity. Our own local independence day. You know this was the first island to become independent from the Ottoman Empire?’

  Jason shakes his head, not at all sure what this has to do with him and Kitty. He stares at the tablecloth as George continues. ‘This night, of all nights, is in memory of the last night of the battle. The burning of the Ottoman fleet in the harbour.

  ‘The sultan had sent ships to ring the bay, to stop the untaxed trade. Firebrands and militia from this island
, from the deep interior, swam in the dark waters and boarded the galleons. They primed them and blew them. The Turks flew into the air like sparks. Cannons were erected and set upon the Ottoman army garrisoned inland. They buried the captured Turks on the beach. Buried them so that only their heads stuck up out of the ground. They left them to die and rot, a line of heads blistering in the sun. A warning to any others who thought the island was up for grabs. Tonight is not a good night to be in town. Tonight is for the locals. There will be a lot of men from the deep interior. They do not like tourists. They understand what will eventually happen to them.’

  * * *

  They walk through the winding main street. Kitty feels as if she’s in a daze. The lights and colours seem to bounce off the beautiful dying blue sky. The sun’s over to the west, disappearing blood red and baleful behind the dark torn teeth of the Peloponnesian mountains. There’s still an hour of light left but soon it will be shadowed by the encroaching night.

  ‘What do we know for certain?’

  He stares at her, the sun a backdrop isolating her face as if it were superimposed on the landscape, the red lips and fire-hazard eyes. They’re sitting in a waterfront taverna watching the people gather, the intent faces and hungry eyes.

  ‘That the current murders seem to exhibit the same MO as those from 1974,’ he says.

  She swivels her fingers like an ex-smoker whose amputated limb of a cigarette still holds a phantom twinge. She puts both hands on the table. Spreads the fingers like the opening of a Chinese fan. He’s staring at the newly polished nails, wondering when she had time to do them, were they for him, or just something she did for herself?

  ‘We know that thirty-three years ago, hippies, mainly from Europe and the States, settled in the interior of the island. Then two local boys are found murdered. The hippies are blamed. There’s whispers of a cult and evidence of mutilated animals strewn across the island’s interior.’

  He’s surprised at how confident he sounds narrating this story when his own words fail him constantly.

  ‘The day after the discovery of the bodies, the police and some of the village elders climb up the mountain to confront the cult. I think we can safely assume they were armed. Furthermore, I think we can assume they went up there for a very different reason than to arrest the cult.’

  ‘You think they went up there to kill them?’ Kitty sounds surprised, but she’s not. She’s considered this theory herself and found it the most plausible. But she likes the feeling of surprise which comes from finding out your co-conspirator’s thinking along the same lines, and she pretends this is new to her.

  ‘Yes. But when they got there, the job was already done. They find the whole cult in their beds, neatly dead with a single bullet hole in their skulls. This must be a shock to them. The obvious one, of course, these dead kids, the vast number of them, but more than this it must leave them with a feeling of unresolved matters. Some might think justice was done, but others, I’m sure, felt justice was cheated. These islands always liked to enforce laws themselves, and the hippies took that prerogative out of their hands.

  ‘Then the bodies are taken down the hill into town. They’re bagged and shipped to the mainland. The case is closed. The two boys are dead, but so are the killers. Everything goes back to normal.’

  It makes more sense when he puts it into words; the seduction of narrative pulls him along, making him see things clearer than before. He signals the waiter for another Coke and continues, ‘Then, thirty-two years pass. … there’s another murder with a similar MO to that of the two boys. Specifically the centipedes. The ritual mutilation. The carvings on the rocks nearby. But the victim is a young tourist, probably involved in the drug trade.’

  He leans back, takes a drag of the hazy air, letting the facts fall into place. In the distance two ships pass by each other, honking greetings, then disappearing round the edge of the opposite island.

  ‘George told me that both the murdered locals were dealers.’ He watches Kitty take this in. ‘I think Wynn knows all about the 1974 cult murders. I think him and Dimitri, the guy with the jaw, are using the MO as cover to take over the drug trade. Maybe Vondas saw them committing one of the murders. He was always up there by the monastery, it makes sense. Wynn has to kill him. Maybe that’s why the priest doesn’t fit any pattern.’

  Kitty takes a swig of her drink and lets it roll around her mouth as she contemplates this. ‘I had another theory.’ Her chin lifts, catching a last gleam of sun which makes it seem made of marble. Jason nods, watches as her body swells with air and speculation.

  ‘What if Karelis never disappeared?’

  Jason stares at her. He’s not even considered this.

  ‘What if Karelis is behind the recent murders?’ Her breasts nudge the table, her hand shakes. Jason hasn’t seen her like this all holiday.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Revenge.’

  ‘Revenge for what?’

  She smiles, ‘For closing down the monastery. For turning away from God. What if Karelis blames the island for what happened in 1974? The murders. The closure of the monastery. The move away from belief and towards material pursuits. Doesn’t it strike you as weird how unreligious this island is compared to others? Normally there’s more churches, the streets are empty on Sundays. I remember thinking back when I was here as a student, how religious these islands still were, how they seemed trapped in a time warp.

  ‘Karelis sees the monastery close down. He’s helpless to do anything about it. At the same time, the developers move in. Money and expansion become the only goals. He wants to take revenge on the island. What better way than to replicate the centipede murders? On one level, these murders are all about ritual and the world behind the world. They’re a statement of faith even if that faith is a corrupted one. I think that would appeal to him. One the other hand, it’s the perfect way to get back at the island, at what he sees as its soulless heart. One murder is an accident, even adds to the allure of the place. Two murders is a place to avoid.’

  ‘So they framed a drifter.’

  ‘The island subsists on tourist revenue. They hate us coming here, but they have no choice, it’s either that or starvation. An arrest is made, and everyone goes back to sleeping peacefully.’

  Jason tries not to stare at her hands, the way they describe shapes in the air when she talks, the way they settle millimetres from his.

  ‘Karelis goes into hiding after the first two murders. Probably in the labyrinth. Then, when they frame the drifter, he realises he has to do it again. He resurfaces, and maybe Vondas sees him. He has to kill Vondas too now. Once you start along this path there’s no turning back.’

  Kitty takes his hand. Her smile is faded like a sun-scorched postcard. Silence envelops them even though the town is filling up; people are screaming and laughing, but they could be on another continent as far as Kitty and Jason are concerned. She leans forward, and, while normally he never picks up on these things, something about the air, the restaurant, the thrill of crime and detection makes his senses more aware, and he leans into her, and their lips touch once more across the red chequered table, and this time they hold, and her soft flesh presses against his, and he’s sure he can hear her heart beat, or is it his? And then her lips part ever so slightly, and he can feel the first tentative touch of her tongue, and he meets it with his, and there’s electricity there and heat and peace and bloodrush. And though they stick to that, the tracing of each other’s lips, it’s enough, and when they pull back simultaneously there’s no feeling of loss or divorce, just that this is a foretaste of things to come.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The harbour is crammed. Engorged by locals. Dressed in black. Carrying candles. Waiting for the last breath of the sun.

  All around them the crowd gathers.

  They leave the taverna and walk along the promenade, past the huddled groups of villagers, all eating the black candy symbolic to this festival, staring wide-eyed at the harbour, expectancy saturating
the air with fever and anticipation.

  They stand among the locals as the sun arcs down behind the mountain. The town is snuffed into darkness. Candles flicker on like torches. Everyone is holding them.

  They look around them. Trying to see a familiar face; Nikos, or at least some drunk British tourist to reassure them. But there’s no one.

  They’ve been hemmed in. The crowd has got denser, no longer a collection of discrete groups but an almost featureless mass. Kitty looks out towards the water. It’s only now she realises the boats she’s seen from far-off were not the usual yachts and pleasure-cruisers but older boats, wooden boats – schooners, she supposes they’re called.

  It’s getting fully dark. People are coming from all parts of town, spilling out of streets and alleys like black volcanic flow.

  They’re penned in. People crowd around them and press them nearer to the dock’s edge. Eyes lock onto theirs and don’t let go until they’ve passed. Kitty feels slivers of panic burn through her. Hands and fingers touching her legs and brushing her breasts.

  The crowd begins chanting. An old song. Words, archaeological and mysterious, the melody long and slow and sad. The wind wails and snaps around the harbour. The wooden schooners trail light like fishing lines as they circle the main boat. A loudspeaker from somewhere on the cliff begins intoning an eerie liturgical canto. On the bandstand a four-piece brass band punctuate the words with honks and snarls. Kitty looks at Jason. They smile, both acknowledging the absurdity of the situation.