THE ISLAND OF CHARON
a novel in the series
"PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY"
CHAPTER 6. BLOOD WITH MILK
6.1. THE CONFECTIONER
I woke up from a phone call.
“Are you still trembling?” Sofia’s voice sounded quite optimistic. “The police arrested the Confectioner yesterday! He seems to be your ‘Beekeeper’!”
“Come on!” I exclaimed, still not fully awake.
“They say he became completely insane after his mother’s death. In fact, he hadn’t been adequate before that, either.”
“What was he arrested for? Because he went mad?”
“No, of course not! A friend of us filed a complaint against him for hacking into some email or website, I didn’t get into the details. Since the correspondence concerned business and rather large investments, the police…”
“But why… the Confectioner?” I interrupted Sofia.
“Because, firstly, in this particular case, outrageous should have been a man from our village.”
“There are many people in your village!”
“Yes, and here is the second reason. Only the Confectioner has a degree in programming of the Thessaloniki University. Perhaps, having returned to the village, at night, instead of communicating with women, he was constantly improving himself in the field of computer technology and, unnoticed by others, became a hacker!”
“Wow… the Confectioner!”
“By the way, during the search at his house they found, among other things, a lot of porno photos and videos!”
“So, you mean… the Confectioner hacked the late Beekeeper’s personal account on the social network to chat with me?”
“Why not? And who else, Alice? I’m sorry, but… due to force majeure, I shared your creepy story with my friends in the village, and we all agreed that it had been the Confectioner hiding himself under the Beekeeper’s hat. Do you think to be written to from the Other World by the spirit of the deceased?!”
“I don’t know, Sofia,” I breathed, shrugging.
“Believe me, we knew the Beekeeper very well! We were family friends. We went to visit each other on holidays. This man would never have written to you anything like that! Even if he had risen from the dead! Besides… I’m sorry, Alice, I don’t believe in zombies! You should fear the living, not the dead!”
“You should fear the living as well as the dead,” I twisted her words in my mind for some reason, but kept silent.
“By the way!” Sofia exclaimed. “The village of Megali Panagia, where our late friend lived, is right next to Skourje! Here it is, the real humanized Evil! The devil woke up in Chalkidiki when the ‘Holy’ Athos sold its soul to him! Perhaps the wave of murders is just the consequence.”
“So, the territory of Skourje belonged to Athos!”
“Yes, to one of the main monasteries. And when the largest foreign gold mining company came with a sack of money to the monastery, these ‘holy people’ didn’t even think about selling or not their Motherland! As soon as the ‘miners’ start washing the gold, not only Athos, but all three peninsulas will perish! What to say about our tiny Ammouliani!”
“Because of the water?”
“And because of the water, too! You should have seen the pictures of the land these barbarians left behind, a desert! Sorry, Alice! I immersed you in our local problems. However, now you can sleep and swim in peace, even on the wildest beach with a view of your beloved Mount Athos. Thank God, the Confectioner is in custody, and the Beekeeper is dead… God forgive me!”