Immortown Read online

  The Beginning that Starts to Make Sense at the End

  1. Poisons for Every Taste

  2. Nice Morning Cup of Corpses

  3. The Last Shelter: All-Inclusive

  4. Ghost Jobs

  5. Amnesia

  6. The Antirchitect

  7. Falling Planes

  ∞.

  Dear Reader, welcome to Immortown!

  Enjoy your eternal stay.

  —Kai

  Dear Reader,

  Be kind to your demons

  and try to remain sane.

  —Freya

  Art is the very god that promises us eternal life

  in exchange for our sufferings.

  Art is the very devil that enslaves our souls,

  dooming them to burn,

  endlessly.

  —Kai Skarsen

  Prologue, or

  the Beginning that Starts to Make Sense at the End

  A paintbrush flies up to the canvas.

  His fingers freeze above the piano keys.

  In her green eyes, the reflection of the stars fades away.

  ***

  The abandoned lighthouse is tall, and Astra is insane, in love, and dying. She knows if she looks up now, the dusty winding stairs will still be coiling infinitely skyward, their loops a dizzy snail shell overheard. She doesn’t look up—if she did, she’d fall.

  Her bruised legs—the heavy brown boots make them seem skeletal—are ready to give way; her chalky fingers covered in deep fresh cuts clutch at the railing more and more weakly. From the uncorked bottle almost slipping out of her other hand, black liquid trickles onto the stairs. Its pungent smell is giving her a ticking headache. She has to get there, before—

  The poison is scorching her lips, throat, and insides beyond all bearing. A single drop was enough to set every blood vessel, every cell in her body on fire. The space around her distorts and doubles before her eyes. Hold on a little longer. This will be over soon.

  At last the flimsy wooden door at the top of the tower swirls, blurring, into view. The knob yields, and the door sighs open. The only piece of furniture in the dimly lit circular room is a shabby white table, a handset dangling from it by the curly cord. The short beeps merge into one continuous sound, like an ICU heart monitor, when there’s no point in hoping anymore and the lamps go out, one by one, to the thunder of the quiet words: “We did everything we could.”

  Cowering under the table is a handsome but exhausted-looking young man, rocking back and forth as he stares at the bobbing receiver. Why, why won’t anyone pick up? He raises his distraught eyes to Astra, who falls to her knees in front of him. The bottle rolls across the floor, spilling the remainder of its dark contents all around them. Soon her hands are cupped around his sunken cheeks, and her colorless lips touch his, passing on their lethal gift.

  “I took care of everything,” she says, stroking his hair. “We will be fine now.”

  “What have you done?” He repeats these words over and over, staring through her with unseeing eyes as the poison gathers speed in his veins. “What have you done to them? My sister, is she—?”

  “Hush. There’s no need to be frightened. From now on, I will look after you, always. No one will ever come between us again.”

  “You need help,” he says, knocking her hands away. “You are sick!”

  She cannot resist the poison’s effects any longer. Her cracked lips manage a tender smile with the last bit of strength. “Nothing else matters now. Now, it’s just you and—”

  Unable to even speak anymore, she rests her head on his chest. The young man closes his eyes and slumps against the wall—the poison is claiming his worn-out system much faster than hers. Barely conscious, Astra draws a lighter from her pocket and lifts it to her face, but her fingers refuse to obey her.

  “CUT!”

  She is still trembling and trying to get the lighter to work when her partner sits up, lively once more, and covers her hand with his.

  “Easy there. Freya, you all right?”

  “Alex?” says Astra, peering into his face in confusion.

  “No, no, Freya. Look at me. It’s me, Mitch. Get back to reality, okay? Looks like you, uh—your personality switch is malfunctioning again.”

  An assistant hastens to offer Freya a glass of water. The film crew scurry around, fiddling with the props and equipment. The director pinches the bridge of his nose and seems to be mentally counting to at least ten.

  “Freya, sunshine, you know how much I adore you, but what in the hell did you pull out that lighter for?” he says finally. “What is this about? Are you trying to follow the original version of the screenplay again? A version that, may I remind you, we discarded months ago? There will be no fire! No romantic ‘let-us-combust-together’! You—I mean, Astra—die here in this lighthouse, finished off by the poison, but Mitch—I mean, Alex—survives. It’s only in the hospital that he finds out what you—I mean to say, Astra—did to his family. And only then do we allow him to do away with himself. Deal? All right, come to yourself, and we start anew.”

  “Mr. Nylander, guys—I’m so sorry I got carried away again. I’ll behave myself—I mean, Astra. I’m fine, fine, thanks,” mumbles Freya, flushing in embarrassment, when Mitch tries to help her up.

  He chuckles. “No better cure for loneliness than a good old split personality, huh?”

  With an apologetic smile, Freya slips the lighter back into her pocket.

  ***

  The light from the tall half-draped window is pouring down on the canvas in streaks, so the left eye of the young woman in the portrait stays in shadow, the embers of a dying fire glowing in its black pupil, while the iris of the right one shimmers emerald, mirroring the ocean’s waves like a faceted gemstone.

  The young artist, whose once-white shirt is splashed heavily with paint, contemplates her face and scowls. After a moment, he presses his forehead against the canvas, compressing his lips as if to keep from vocalizing his frustration. Scarcely had he learned how to hold a pencil when she stole her way inside his drawing pads. All his efforts not to draw them are futile: The green eyes with flecks of blue look back at him sadly out of almost every portrait. Lately, it’s been happening more and more often, and they seem closer and more real than ever.

  This time, it is as if the owner of these eyes were standing on the shore, less than half a mile from this tiny den where he’s running his fingers through his short gray hair, making it even more ruffled, and scrutinizing just another of his many failures. He always knew that she existed, that she would come. There are no doubts left: She will knock on his door, and soon. And it’s his fault.

  She will be miserable and lost, just like everything else he’s ever painted. She won’t stand a chance against this wolfish ennui that’s gnawing at him himself. Whether he wants that or not, what’s captured by his brush belongs from then onward to him and his murky world, and in this world, there’s no hope for anyone.

  A quick, cursory knock at the door—a notification, rather than a request for permission—causes the artist to flinch, unsettling the flow of his thoughts. He rolls up the canvas, unconcerned that the paint is still wet, and shoves it into the bottom drawer of the nearby chest, which is already cram-full of other paintings and sketches. He pushes the drawer closed with his foot, just before the door opens.

  “Kai?” calls the intruder. Her wary gaze pauses on the paint stain embellishing the forehead of the young man, who remains still with a most innocent look. Her eyes rummage briefly through the paintings and drawings that occupy all the visible surfaces of the walls and even the floor, through the flasks and tubes, brushes and pencils, ashtrays and olive-green bottles, fragments of broken picture frames and assorted unidentifiable junk. . . . Nothing new catches her atten
tion, so the girl’s frown relaxes a little, even though she still watches Kai with suspicion.

  “Something the matter, India?” he asks impatiently. “I told you I wanted to be left alone.”

  “And I told you I would keep an eye on you—you know, in case you got tired of your moping, decided you’re not creepy enough as you are, and went and messed something up for everyone else again. Oh, speaking of creepy—we have a guest.”

  Kai tenses, wondering if the guest’s eyes are green.

  “He’s from Levengleds—well, of course he is, where else could he be from? I bet it’s Krystle who called him here.” India winces. “I mean, he won’t stop yammering about ‘an angel of death.’ Poor thing, he believes he’s gone mad. Remy was happy to confirm him in that idea with those stupid tricks of his. Argh. Anyway, a welcome party would be nice, and I think he might harm himself, so we should put him in the picture.”

  “You know he can’t actually harm himself,” says Kai, indifferent again. “Do whatever you think is necessary, but enough with the turning of my home into a lunatic asylum. Let him find himself a ward somewhere else.”

  India leaves, slamming the door shut with such force that the canvases on the walls flutter. Kai pulls all the paintings out of the chest’s bottom drawer and hangs them on the walls, over the portraits of morose young people, various building designs, and oceanscapes mostly depicting storms. He sits down cross-legged in the middle of the room, and emerald eyes are now looking at him from everywhere.

  There is something elusive about these faces he has borrowed from some surreal movies or his own bizarre dreams. Though at first glance they seem to bear little resemblance to one another, shared features show through, and it is clear that all these paintings portray the same person.

  ***

  In the center of the spacious, tastefully furnished drawing room, on the maroon carpet, there is a hazelnut-colored piano adorned with a malachite tracery.

  “You may look now,” says the young woman in a long turquoise dress, full of delighted anticipation as she removes the black ribbon from the eyes of the young man standing before her. “Do you like it?”

  She holds her breath as he runs his fingers over the closed lid of the instrument, cautiously, as though the piano could be an illusion that might vanish the moment he tries to touch it. He turns around, giving her a faint smile and a frown at once. “It’s the one I used to play in Levengleds,” he says, and there is the sort of hoarseness to his voice one may develop after being silent for too long.

  The young woman nods, beaming. Her wrists, fingers, neck, and elegant updo are spattered with pearls, emphasizing her likeness to the fairy-tale Snow Queen.

  “Krystle. . . . But how? How did you bring it here?”

  “I persuaded someone to burn it down. You’re not angry, I hope? Your music, too.” She passes him a velvet folder.

  He takes a seat, lays the sheets out in front of him, and brushes his chestnut hair out of his eyes.

  While he flexes his fingers, she stands behind him and places her hands on his shoulders. “I’ve wanted to do this for a while now, but I was worried I might upset you by reminding you of the past.”

  “It’s not the past that upsets me,” he replies in a low voice. “I liked my past.”

  “You weren’t a happy person, Iver.” She leans in and kisses him on the temple. “I granted you the peace you’d craved. One day you’ll forgive me. One day, you’ll trust me.”

  “You did it for you.” There is a shade of regret in his tone, but no spite. “You didn’t bring me here to save me. You simply needed something to take your mind off the hollowness of your existence—a distraction, if a tenuous and temporary one.”

  Unfazed by his words, Krystle lets out a quiet laugh. “There’s no such thing as temporary for you and me anymore. There is only this moment, which will last as long as we wish.”

  And Iver begins to play.

  1.Poisons for Every Taste

  Kai

  I feel as though I’m about to fall asleep, about to fall off the bar’s roof. Rain’s lashing down. I could, say, accidentally slip on the wet tiles. It’s not that I want to die—not too badly, anyway. To live—now, that would be nice, for a change. To die or to live—for me, both options are equally unattainable. Cheerful music is rumbling downstairs so hard the almost emptied bottle of whiskey vibrates and tinkles plaintively at my feet. I wish I could get so wasted it’s finally quiet in my head, but it seems the more I drink, the soberer I get.

  Below, a figure in a billowing white dress shoots out of the bar. She raises her hand clutching my favorite glass and finishes off the muddy drink in one great swallow. India. Lazily, I watch my sister as she swings her arm out sideways, unclasps her fingers from around the glass, and listens, smirking, to the sound of its splinters bouncing off the cobblestones. She lies down on her back, and the streamlets of rainwater running down the street start licking her fine, fair hair. She looks up at me, her nearly translucent lips quivering with the cold. Her hand gropes around for a large piece of glass. Her eyes are still fixed on me when she brings the shard to her throat and slashes it in one abrupt movement.

  As she wheezes and thrashes around in pain, stretching out her splayed fingers toward me, the streamlets beneath her fill with crimson. I reach for my whiskey, but the bottle is gone. Annoying, but not altogether unexpected. Things disappear a lot around here. Oh, well, I guess I’m lucky the bottle didn’t choose to vanish while I was still holding on to it, or else my whiskey would have taken me with it. My hands would have come slowly unraveled, and then the rest of me would have been gone, too. I light a cigarette and wait for India to stop writhing and slapping the cobbles. At last, she is silent and still, in a twisted pose. I really liked that glass.

  The music from the bar becomes even more optimistic. A streetlamp spills muted warm light on India’s body. Can’t help noticing she looks utterly lousy. Her dress and hair are drenched in blood, her glassy eyes bulging. Raindrops smear her mascara all over her face and trickle into her wide-open mouth that only a moment ago was so greedily searching for air.

  Art transforms everything, wraps faults in neon perfection. In the movies that I’ve seen, books I’ve read, songs I heard, death is enigmatic, grievously beautiful, and even, I have to admit, inviting. It makes one want to bow to it. The death I just witnessed was inexpressive, revolting, and pointless. I’ve tried to paint a life’s finale that would look as bland and ugly as I know it, but invariably, my brush just seems to turn death into a dark, yet alluring adventure each time.

  The bar’s front door bursts open again, and a guy stumbles out. From my high position, I have a good view of the oblique blue stripe crossing the top of his otherwise clean-shaven head and of the strange angle at which his freshly broken nose is protruding out of his face. For a minute or so, he contemplates the soul-rending sight spread out before him, then flops down into the puddle of blood beside India. His back is turned to me, so I can’t see his face, but I know for sure he’s admiring those large, bluish stars. Remy, this leather-jacket-wearing Atlas, is such a romantic when drunk.

  With a vile whistling sound, India’s lungs start to function again. She inhales convulsively, sits up, cranes her blood-coated neck, and hisses at me. “Damn, I hate you, Kai. Hate you so Kai-damn much.”

  Remy whips his head around and waves at me with a cordial grin. “Hey, Kai! Everyone’s been looking for you.”

  “Aaargh! I can’t even decide,” India yells, “which one of you is more insufferable!”

  She scrambles to her feet, adjusts her dress, and sets off up the street, her heels hammering on the stones. After a few steps, one of them breaks—I’m surprised her scraggy legs don’t. The drama princess plops to one knee, throws off her shoes, and without collecting them, gets up again and resumes the stomping away, proud and barefoot.

  “I think she’s a bit blue,” says Remy, following India with musing eyes. “Are you going to work tonight, though? Without the
bartender, they might sober up and become wretched.”

  Rainy days are good, for they wash off the smell this town’s filled with, the smell of ashes. Remy picks up my favorite glass, which is once more intact, and stares at me through its gory bottom. For half a minute longer, I let the rain pour down under the collar of my shirt. Then I nod at him moodily and jump off the roof.

  Freya

  My head thrown back, I watch a dark red maple leaf wander in the air, getting closer to the flaming sky. Charred at the edge, it floats above the sleepy outskirts of the town, above the grove, which the fall has dyed bright orange and the dawn illuminated with a ghostly lilac haze. The leaf pauses for a moment above me—from its perspective, I must be such a lonely, tiny figure down here—and starts losing altitude. But before it can descend comfortingly on my shoulder, an invisible hand snatches it—the merciless fingers clench, and the leaf twitches and disappears.

  Now I seem to be the only living fragment in this frozen picture. The distant sounds of the ocean’s swishing waves have died down. The wind is no longer rustling through the fiery crowns of the trees, and their black stooped trunks have stopped creaking. Even the strained cries of those oddly huge seabirds that circled above the town last night have ceased. I myself have been standing here motionless for so long that my legs are now buried knee-deep in the fallen leaves. Yesterday, all of Levengleds was covered in snow, but here, it looks as though the colorful early fall has never left.

  The place is so quiet I find myself trying to slow down my breathing and heartbeat. In my head, a panicked thought pulses like a mantra: “I’m alive, I’m alive.” I want to shout it to make sure it’s true, but an inexplicable fear of being exposed keeps me silent, as if I knew that this noiselessness could never put up with anything breathing, beating, agonizing inside it.