City of Ghosts

by Ben Creed

‘And you did not think to check it?’

  ‘God is not interested in names, only souls.’

  ‘How long did he stay here with you?’

  ‘About three years in all. Initially, he was very much a perfect novice. Always first to appear for prayer. Always obviously fervent in his devotions. But then, after a while, the incidents began.’

  ‘Incidents?’

  The archimandrite closed his eyes for a moment. In the flickering light and relentless cold Rossel could see the old man’s breath forming streams of vapour from his nose. Pimen opened his eyes again and looked straight at Rossel.

  ‘It became obvious that he no longer took communion.’

  ‘Obvious, how?’

  Pimen picked up his carving knife. Two sharp stabs of the little knife cut ridges deep into the table.

  ‘Our day is well described by a line from Psalm 119: “Seven times a day do I praise Thee because of Thy righteous judgments.” Tikhon began to pray incessantly, even when alone. He was constantly muttering the Troparia and prayers for intercession by Angelic Hosts. And one night one of our novices heard him muttering something else. An unholy prayer.’

  ‘And what did this prayer say?’

  The priest rose and bent towards a tiny desk next to the wall. He reached into the drawer in his desk and took out a file.

  ‘We kept his records,’ said Pimon.

  ‘You keep records of your monks? I thought they were supposed to leave their old lives behind and start anew,’ said Rossel. ‘I thought God was not interested in names.’

  ‘God is not interested in names but the Kremlin is very interested in paperwork, and everyone who starts a new life here starts a new file. Especially if they encounter disciplinary issues. When they told me a militsioner was coming, I had them dig this out. There is little information in it – we do, indeed, start the file from scratch, but we see no need to be too assiduous. But there is one piece of paper you should see.’

  He pushed the file across the bench towards Rossel, who picked it up. Opening it, he saw there were only two pieces of paper, both small. A barebones personal history listed the exact date of Father Tikhon’s arrival and the exact date of his departure from the monastery.

  The other piece of paper was yellowing and slightly crumpled, with scrawling and erratic writing on it – small dots of black ink dripped between the words.

  My appetite was sin, and of that sin I made a feast.

  And through that feast I came to know you.

  You are the Master of the Shadows

  And now, for all eternity, I must sit at the foot of your bountiful table.

  Rossel picked it up and placed it on the bench top. The old monk stared at it.

  ‘We searched his cell and found a large number of pieces of the communion bread. They were black with mould. He had been taking the host into his mouth but then refusing to swallow it. Secreting them into a handkerchief and hiding them in his room. A terrible sin. That prayer was exactly what the novice had heard him chanting in the Greek. I had this piece of paper he had written it down on confiscated but it made no difference. He became relentless in his incantations. Other strange rhymes, too. In the end I had to consult Patriarch Nikon in Moscow and he recommended expulsion from the monastery.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Why, blasphemy, of course. The Master of the Shadows is not a name that would sit lightly on the shoulders of any member of the church. Amongst the novices, gossip is commonplace and it had already become a testament of faith with them that Father Tikhon was making obsessive pleas to some kind of devil of his own invention.’

  The monk stopped whittling and turned the little wooden piece face up on the table. It wasn’t a bird at all. It was a winged angel holding a tiny harp. The archimandrite tapped a curling, yellow fingernail on the harp.

  ‘My sense is that it was his love of our chanting that brought Father Tikhon to us and held him here. Music was the only thing I saw that made him smile. And yet weep, too – sometimes when I observed him during vespers, I saw tears rolling down his face as he mouthed the words of the plainchant. He had an all-consuming passion for religious music.’

  ‘You have no idea, then, what happened to make such a devout man turn away from his God?’

  The old priest shook his head. As he did so, the straggly piece of beard he had tried to smooth earlier popped out from his head and became crooked again.

  ‘No, but we came to believe that Father Tikhon had purposefully cultivated the mould we found on the consecrated Eucharist.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Why?’ The archimandrite’s eyes grew misty but what they saw was hidden by the flames of the candles.

  ‘I do not know why. But for some reason known only to himself, he began to first corrupt the body of our blessed Lord and then consume it alone, in secret, as he declaimed his perverse prayer. May God have mercy upon his soul.’

  *

  Rossel’s guide, a novice, was barely out of his teens. Apart from the wispy, apologetic beard that all young priests and monks had to endure, he had pale skin, blond hair, light blue eyes and a sprinkling of pockmarking across his brow and cheeks. Archimandrite Pimen had given Rossel permission to see where Father Tikhon had lived and worked and, beyond that, any part of the monastery he cared to examine. They had no secrets, said the archimandrite. Rossel rather doubted it.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary about Tikhon’s cell. Bleak, spartan and cold, like every other cell in the brothers’ living quarters. As for where he had worked, that was apparently in the field beyond the monastery walls, growing vegetables and herbs for the refectory. And all the fields were deep under snow.

  The novice reached down into the pocket of his black cassock and took out a heavy bunch of iron keys. Then selected the biggest and fitted it into the large and ancient lock that opened the gatehouse door that led back outside the monastery walls.

  Rossel fished into his own pocket as he waited and pulled out his cigarettes. He was trying a new type, Jubilee. He took one out and pushed it between his lips.

  ‘Not while you are on the monastery grounds,’ said the novice. ‘It is forbidden.’

  Rossel put the cigarette back into the cardboard pack, wondering if the power of prayer and some religious observance might lead to divine inspiration. He still knew almost nothing. This Father Tikhon might well be the tattooed body on the slabs back at Vosstaniya Street, but either the archimandrite, who was clearly a practised politician, was not being truthful about checking the past lives of those who were accepted into the brotherhood, or for some reason he did not understand, no one really had bothered to find out Tikhon’s true identity. The monastic life was not for everyone and perhaps they took who they could get. Either way, time was passing quickly and the trip to Pechory had barely taken him forward. If only Father Tikhon had confessed his secret. Sanctity of the sacrament or not, he was sure the archimandrite would have revealed it to him. The Orthodox Church had been almost entirely destroyed after the revolution but Stalin had seen its potential – history, nationalism and religious fervour. Just what the troops needed. He offered an ultra-pragmatic reprieve during the war to lift morale. After that, well, the MGB had its fingers everywhere. He sensed the old monk was a practical man who knew who to call if he needed his own guidance. And what it took to keep the MGB off the monastery’s back.

  The boy’s key was sticking in the lock.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant, sometimes it won’t turn. I will only be a moment.’

  ‘Did you know Father Tikhon, when he was here?’ Rossel asked.

  The novice’s hands fumbled at the lock. There was a click as the key turned. He stood back, turned the iron handle, pushed at the door and it opened.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew him well?’

  The novice sighed. Then nodded.

  ‘We even shared a cell at one point.’

  Rossel was startled. Then he realised the shrewd old arc
himandrite had not chosen his guide at random.

  ‘Did you notice the tattoos on his body?’ he asked.

  The boy shook his head. ‘He never undressed in front of me. He was careful about that. He usually slept fully clothed in his black cassock. The other monks thought him eccentric and would comment on his crumpled robes but, at least for a while, the archimandrite seemed to put up with it. People just thought he was a little odd but I wasn’t so sure. I think he was hiding something.’

  ‘Hiding what?’

  ‘I never found out.’

  ‘Did you and Father Tikhon get on?’

  ‘Fine, at first. He was quiet, devout, kept himself to himself.’

  ‘At first?’

  Even in the late afternoon, even under the lowering clouds, it was lighter once they were out of the shadow of the monastery walls. The novice did not head down the road into the town of Pechory but instead followed the line of the fortifications, into a ravine. The darkness returned. He stepped behind some trees and stopped.

  ‘May I have a cigarette?’ he asked Rossel. ‘It is forbidden but I am still getting used to life here and, well, I pray God will forgive me in exchange for helping the militia with uncovering the truth about a truly diabolical man.’ He crossed himself three times.

  ‘Here.’ Rossel lit a cigarette and handed it over. The novice placed it to his lips with reverence and exhaled with bliss. Rossel wondered what else he was finding difficult to give up.

  ‘How long have you been a novice?’ he asked.

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘And it’s the life for you?’

  The novice shook his head.

  ‘It’s hard,’ he said. ‘I admit it. I was studying literature at university. But I got kicked out for . . . well, never mind. So I came here. There is food, peace and the occasional drink. l keep my head down.’

  ‘You were going to tell me about Father Tikhon.’

  The boy took another puff and nodded.

  ‘After he left the monastery there were stories put about that he had set up his own parish out in the forest, on the shores of Lake Chudskoye, north of here. There’s a big flat granite outcrop near the lakeshore. The locals call it Nevsky’s Pillow because, some say, Alexander Nevsky slept on it when he came to Pskov. But I don’t think Father Tikhon was using it to sleep on.’

  ‘What then?’

  The boy was shivering. Rossel wasn’t sure if it was from nerves or from the cold.

  ‘The archimandrite has tried to hush everything up. He’s worried that the Patriarch in Moscow will get to know. The Church has to keep the Party happy. A scandal like this, they’re already shutting some monasteries down again.’

  ‘A scandal?’

  ‘There’s a cave near Nevsky’s Pillow. Tikhon took up residence there when he left here. Then he got some followers – a few at first. Some foolish girls, a boy, a teenage simpleton from one of the farms near Pechory. But the rumours started almost straightaway.’

  ‘Tell me about those rumours.’

  ‘People said Tikhon was using the place as some kind of altar. The boy, the simpleton, was found dead by the lake shore. He had eaten some wolfsbane in the forest. It was terrible, the things the other novices said after his body was discovered.’

  Rossel dropped his cigarette onto the snowy ground and stamped on it.

  ‘Go on.’

  The novice sucked on his own cigarette and then blew out a sharp puff of smoke.

  ‘I wasn’t there, Lieutenant, so all I can tell you is what people said.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘When they found the body, he’d been dead for at least week. He had some small cuts on his belly. Missing pieces of skin and muscle. The talk was that Father Tikhon had blessed these trophies on his altar and then offered his remaining followers a perverse Eucharist made from human flesh.’

  Rossel thought for a moment.

  ‘A dead body lying for a week like that in a wood would be disturbed by animals – wolves, foxes,’ he said. ‘The novices like to gossip, as you say. The archimandrite told me that. Your tale is a gory one, the kind people like to believe might be true. It appeals to their darker instincts. What makes you so certain there’s something in it?’

  The novice took one last draw on his cigarette. Then dropped it onto the ground between their feet. The hot tip glowed in the dark and began to melt a little of the snow around it. He looked straight into Rossel’s eyes. His pupils were dilated with fear.

  ‘We shared a cell, he and I, like I said. One night I awoke with a start. There was an atmosphere in the room. A pulse of strange electricity. I turned around and Tikhon was sitting bolt upright on his bed, staring at me. His robe was pulled down and I could see some of his tattoos. One of them was of Death. His eyes were like two dark moons and filled with desire.’

  ‘So, he was a queer?’

  The novice shook his head.

  ‘No, he wasn’t looking at me like that.’

  ‘What then?’

  The boy pulled up the collar of his cassock around his neck.

  ‘As if I was a side of pork hanging in a butcher’s window.’

  18

  Monday October 22

  The dark rings under Captain Lipukhin’s eyes put Rossel in mind of the giant panda that had arrived in Moscow a few weeks previously, a gift from the Maoists in China. There the similarity ended. The captain’s breath stank of stale tobacco and cheap vodka. Lipukhin sat on one side of his desk. Rossel, Grachev and Taneyev all sat on the other. Grachev and Taneyev had drawn their chairs together so there was a gap between them and Rossel. They were avoiding eye contact with him.

  The thin official militia file on Father Tikhon, which included his missing person’s report, lay on the desk. A thicker file on Nadya, the MGB agent, was underneath it.

  ‘I assume you went out to this rock, Nevsky’s Pillow?’ the captain asked Rossel.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I contacted the local militia at Pskov and went out with them. We found little. The cave was empty, although there were signs of a campfire with some broken vodka bottles and empty tins of food around it. But nothing unusual, really, around the rock itself. All the members of this dark congregation of Tikhon’s – and no one seemed to have any idea how many there had been – had vanished. Probably several months ago.’

  Taneyev leaned forward in his chair and addressed Lipukhin.

  ‘You think it could be them, then, Captain? Our five bodies, all members of this cult that this Father Tikhon had started. He persuades the others to travel to the forest outside Pechory, kills them, and dumps them on the tracks a few hundred kilometres away as some kind of crazy sacrifice.’

  Grachev gave Taneyev a withering look.

  ‘Unlikely, don’t you think? Not unless he chopped his own face off afterwards and then lay down on the railway lines beside them.’

  Lipukhin dropped a couple of aspirin into a glass of water and sighed.

  ‘What do you think, Revol? You are the one who went out to Pskov.’

  Rossel pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘A death cult?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure. Tikhon had certainly scared the novice I talked to half to death. He looked like he would believe anything anyone told him about the things that were going on out at the cave. And then there was the case of the young lad who had died and been, so he said, partially eaten. I talked to the local militia about that, though, and they thought it more likely there were animal bites on his body. As for the wolfsbane, he wouldn’t be the first to eat the wrong root or plant in the forest and suffer the consequences. People talk. And from the foolish things they say, others make giant leaps of imagination which often turn out to be nonsense. That, at least, was my first thought.’

  Lipukhin drank down the glass of water with the aspirin in one gulp. Then slammed it down on the desk.

  ‘But?’

  Rossel’s tone was considered.

  ‘No one knows what happened to
Father Tikhon after he left the area. He sets up by the lake in early 1949, starts attracting followers that summer – although the local police say they drifted away when the weather turned cold. But he himself stays all the way through the winter. Who knows who visits him or how he survives? But he is there in the spring. Then the body turns up. More acolytes arrive and then – gone. Father Tikhon disappears in June this year, just when the days are long and the opportunities for deluded souls to enjoy themselves in the countryside are at their peak. Why should he have disappeared then?’

  Rossel took up position, right behind Grachev’s chair. The sergeant didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘Assuming the archimandrite was telling the truth, Father Tikhon had an obsession with the consumption of flesh. He starts fantasising at the monastery about perverting the communion process and does so, initially, by allowing the blessed host to moulder and then consuming it. But that is not enough for him. The incident with the novice shows a progression of his thinking – he now wishes to consume a Eucharist made of human flesh. So, when he is expelled from the monastery, he goes out to Nevsky’s Pillow and puts his plans into action. The simpleton is, perhaps, the first of his victims. Then finally, like a dark Moses, he leads his followers out to the railway line and disposes of them in some way.’

  Spoken aloud, the theory sounded even more far-fetched than it had in his mind. But he remembered the novice who shared a cell with Tikhon. The young monk’s fear had been genuine.

  Grachev snorted.

  ‘Now you are thinking like Taneyev. Unless this Tikhon was a real devil, there’s no way he killed himself. Not with those injuries.’

  Lipukhin sighed again.

  ‘Grachev is right, Revol. A man cannot cut off his own face somewhere else and then travel to the railway lines and lie down next to his victims.’

  ‘Then he gets a loyal acolyte to kill him, carve him up, and disappear,’ said Rossel, taking his hands off Grachev’s chair. ‘But it’s not that which bothers me.’ He leaned across the desk and picked up Nadya’s file.

  ‘I knew her. She wasn’t the kind to get involved in an occult death cult. Little Nadya was all about the real world and how to make her way in it. There is one link. The archimandrite said that Father Tikhon had a passion for religious music. That he actually cried during vespers. Music connects Father Tikhon and little Nadya, perhaps. But what else?’