Behind Door Number 12

Part 3: The monastery

I thought for a few hectic seconds. 'I can't share the place-name, or any names, not even with you.' 

I gazed at her long enough to show her I meant it. 'It's to protect people's privacy and livelihoods.'

Siska nodded. 'How long ago?' She had found my stash of peppermints, behind my laptop, and popped way too many of them behind her magenta lips.

'I was 24.' I inhaled sharply. 'Remember when I travelled to Bosnia Herzegovina?'

'Shit, the UN training scheme? That was a lifetime ago—yeah, I remember. I was near Rotterdam when you left. You know—' She shrugged.

'First lapse?'

After a nod and a moment of contemplation, Siska's cheeks stretched to reveal her dimples. 'When I visited home,' she said, peering into space, 'it was like mom and dad thought you might actually be fighting in a war. You! With a couple of machine guns!'

She propped imaginary Uzis against her sides and posed.

'War had been over for ten years. I swear,' I laughed. 'Mum and dad were so overbearing; I didn't want to come home!'

I sniggered one last time as I regained my composure. 'So...anyway...after the scheme was over, I stayed on a while and found myself a job in conservation. There were many villages around the country offering work to young people willing to clean and repair whatever post-war structures remained salvageable. I thought this was my chance to do something big, and not just for myself. My Serbian would benefit from this too, I thought. So, after I was hired, I rented a room in town and would travel for an hour, three days a week. My job was based in the foothills of the country's mountain range.'

I took a deep breath.

'Imagine an empty village, high in the mountains, where houses made of rough-cut stones were lined in an S-shape. Behind them, there was this tiny, pale building surrounded by gravestones going back to the 1200s. A brook ran next to the building, then travelled out of the village under a rail bridge, housing an abandoned ticket station. The brook joined streams that cascaded down the mountains and together they formed a fast-flowing river.

The water was dark-orange from the iron in the hills and the pine needles. And at sunset, for an hour or so, the entire world looked the colour of amber.'

'Sounds like a dream,' said Siska. She had wandered around the office and stopped in front of a world map, pinned behind the door.

'But every time I arrived in the village, it felt like there was an invisible layer that clung to my skin immediately off the train. Almost waxy, as if I could peel it off. On my first visit, I found a small restroom by the railway with a working tap and tried to rub this "layer" off, as best as I could, but it was always just there.

I worked a few miles further into the wilderness. To get there, I'd cross the village and walk on a country lane that twisted alongside the river. About halfway, there was a ford to the other bank. From that point, the trees were as tall as cathedrals and rolling hills surrounded me, pale green and carved up. This landscape stretched to a farm estate, owned by my boss's family. The estate was made up of several structures; a modern, open-plan office, home to my boss's HQ, a few outbuildings, and a restored monastery that had been converted into a functioning hotel. Business was good. They often hosted large events inside the hotel, to promote conservation; meaning it could survive despite its remote location.

Along with his family, my boss had settled into a small cottage, located roughly ten driving minutes away from the monastery. They were all tall and burly people who never stopped working. Maybe that's why I never questioned what looked like a permanent sunburn across my boss's face. Over the first couple of months, my hands had progressively developed the same colour, though I never felt any physical pain. So, I asked him one day: "Is there anything wrong here with the water?" I let him know about the strange, waxy feeling over my skin that I could never wash away...and how my hands had turned burnt-red over the course of my visits to work. I remember thinking; how can I tell him it's real, without any physical evidence? I wasn't sure how he'd respond but I went for it.

Right off the bat, he nodded. He then said that he and his wife had had a similar issue on moving to the area. He admitted this was the beginning of the lasting rash on his face. In tandem, his wife developed something similar on her feet, which swelled and looked like a case of prickly heat. The dermatologist they visited in the capital was left scratching his chin and nothing he came up with ever made the slightest bit of difference. His children, however—6-year-old twins born on his estate—had no such issue.

I mulled this over and eventually, I asked him if he ever suspected the problem could be in the water. He admitted he hadn't, since his supply streamed down from the abandoned village, but he agreed this was worth investigating. "There could be something leaking from the old homes," he said. I then began to question whether it was in fact the tap water at the train station that started my skin to feel different. Perhaps, after all this time, I'd imagined it was the atmosphere of the place.

My boss informed me that there was, in fact, a well that used to feed the monastery, but this was abandoned at some point, possibly because of the war. The water from it was black as soot and thick as paint...Alive with larvae.'

Below is a photo by Konstantin Finyuk and it is the closest thing I could find of the actual monastery that inspired the story. The flag is a red hearing as I can't compromise the real thing. Has your interest be piqued? Please vote to let me know!

Photo at the top by Julia Volk (Pexels)