THE LAST MONK 8

THE LAST MONK

8

“Well, Betty dear, we’ll have this all sorted in a shake of a rat’s tail,” the Inspector assured me, not that the shake of a rat’s tail had any significance to me at all. I knew what rats are, of course, there are loads of them in the monastery and I’ve never been particularly fond of them or tried to shake their tails. I remember how August used to almost run away if he saw one, which didn’t make me in any way fond of them even though sometimes I was happy that he’d trotted off somewhere else to hide from them, away from me.

But what did the Inspector want sorted with or without a rat’s tail?

I had been transported from the hospital to a place referred to as “the station”, a building that confirmed a growing conviction in me that I didn’t really know much about the world at all. There were people everywhere, and some were sitting at machines with screens that flickered whenever they touched what I subsequently learned was called a keyboard. I was now sitting in an office, that’s what the Inspector said it was, in a chair, and not a comfortable chair at that, close to a table. He was sitting at the other end of that table, facing me.

“What do you know of religion?” he asked me, and that was a question I could make a stab at answering.

“In the olden days,” I said, “quite lot of the people who are now long dead believed that an evil god ruled them. That was religion.”

“Almost,” he acknowledged, “though the people would have argued about the word evil. They might have suggested that their god was extremely good. In fact, quite a few still do.”

“Then they’re wrong,” I said, firmly. The monks had made it quite plain that the only good in the world was given us by Satan. They had said that to me for as long as I can remember, and probably longer than that.

“What makes you think that the people, thousands, millions even, of them, might be wrong?”

Such numbers! Thousands, millions, my mind couldn’t cope with them, specially when all my world had consisted of was just three old monks, and me.

“I don’t know,” I stammered, “but I know, I understand, what I believe to be true.

“Because, my dear, in the tiniest possible world, that of a broken down old monastery long deserted by those who had it built, a trio of lost souls told you so?”

“I… I don’t understand…” I stammered.

“Well, what do you know of the building you lived in?”

“The monastery…” I stammered.

”Exactly. At least, that’s what it was built as many, many years ago, and well regarded it was. It was even visited by the king of the day, I believe. And then, one by one, the monks who lived there slowly died, like people do when they reach old age, until in the end there were none left. And no more youngsters were recruited to replace them, and the place was left to decay into the dust of ages. Did you know that?”

I was lost, so I shook my head, but I had a nasty feeling deep down inside me that what I was hearing might, in some way, be the truth. My own cell back in the only home I have ever had was far from whole. A wall was crumbling and when the weather was really bad the ceiling leaked and Celestial had said that it was beyond repair, but the gods would come one day and stop the leak he was sure of that. Or said he was..

“The gods will come…” I muttered defensively, wanting it to be true.

“They’ll have a big job on,” grinned the Inspector, “because at this very moment the whole place is being lowered to the ground and next time you go that way, if you ever do, that is, you will see gardens, little gardens cared for by people who love gardens. And every stone, every brick, that was the monastery will be gone, except, maybe, for a few that have been rescued by gardeners and used to decorate their allotments.”

“I… I don’t understand…” I stammered.

“You will,” he assured me, “you shared the place with three men, I believe?”

“Monks. They were monks. Men of Satan,” I nodded.

He shook his head. “Not monks, exactly, but you may be right about the Satan bit” he said, smiling at me, “and it doesn’t matter what you call them, they were refugees from justice and somehow have managed to live their lives out for at least thirty years, maybe longer, in what had once been a monastery but was deserted, and was becoming little more than rubble. Their real names were Charles Lee, Craig Smith and Adam Jones. Adam was the oldest and his remains were found in the tomb-like affair outside the building. In fact, all three were found in there. They were all dead, of course, Charles Lee being little more than a cadaver in an early state of decay. We were able to take samples of all three, though, and can confirm that they were the so-called Saviours of Youth, a sickening trio of men who get their thrills by molesting innocent children.”

I could see light in the darkness of his words, and I shuddered. But something inside me some long familiarity with the only three men, human beings even, that I have ever known, wanted me to defend them.

“There weren’t any innocent children in the monastery, or I would have known,” I said, and even as I finished the sentence a revolting thought crossed my mind.

“It was girls they preferred,” he said, “little girls, and they did everything they could to turn you into a boy, I suppose to make you safe.”

“But I am!” I gasped, but even then seeing a glint of truthful light in the darkness of my life.

“They were already past it when you came along,” sighed the Inspector, “and well beyond taking precautions. We have been able to establish by taking samples of their bodies… have you ever hard of DNA?”

I shook my head. I had been taught my alphabet, Celestial had taught me that, had delighted in it, had spent long hours of long days until I knew it, but the letters DNA arranged like that meant nothing to me.

“Deoxyribonucleic acid,” he said, “a long name I know, and hard to get your tongue around, but it contains details of everyone, every individual human being. And other creatures too, I seem to remember from my school days. Anyway, we’ve managed to test the DNA of the three remains in the strange tomb-like place, and we know exactly who they were before they dressed in the habit of monks.”

“You mean… they weren’t real monks?” I asked, shocked.

“Of course they weren’t Living in a broken down old building that hadn’t been a monastery for decades! No, they were who we suspected they were. Men who have got their thrills by molesting children, mostly little girls…”

“But no!” I gasped.

“Just be steady, Betty,” he said, trying to look reassuring as he smiled at me. “They did everything they could to confuse you! They needed you to believe you were a boy, and they needed to believe it as well. So they made you into a male child, and convincing themselves that’s what you were, they brought you up from babyhood, ageeing you were to kept innocent. But one of them Betty, was your real biological father.”

“One was?” This was so far beyond me its a miracle he didn’t seem to notice my confusion. But if he did he ploughed on anyway.

“Your biological father, Betty, was one Adam Jones, deceased.”

So what? The name Adam Jones meant very little to me. How could it? So someone with that name couldn’t be my father, could he?

But the Inspector ploughed on.

“Of course,” he said, “you will have known him as August. He gave himself that name, probably so that he had a handy way of remembering your birth month!”

TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson, 12.08.23

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[Ruthies]

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