Immortown Read online

  He’s here too, only a couple of miserable steps away from me. The last time he called me was on the twenty-ninth of November. He played me his latest song. It was so devastating, so perfect. As I listened, invisible fingers clenched around my throat; I twitched and disappeared.

  Today’s November thirtieth, but he didn’t call me yesterday, even though it does feel like it. It’s been an endless and colorless year, and yet I wonder if this year never really happened. Maybe I’ve simply been standing here, all those hundreds of days, unmoving, trying to understand why.

  Why?

  He’s only nineteen, but between his eyebrows there’s already a thoughtful wrinkle because he frowns too much. Tries to concentrate on something important, tries to keep an eye on some battle that is burgeoning inside him. Tries not to let the outer world interfere. He’s had this short, deep scar on his right cheek since he was little. It reminds me of the dimples that appear in some people’s cheeks when they smile. Because of this scar, it seems as though he were smiling all the time, unarmed and disarming. This illusion of a smile and his frowning eyebrows make him look as if he were constantly in pain but didn’t want any curious eyes to notice.

  “So,” I begin finally. “I never gave my farewell speech.”

  As I say it, the wind picks up again, and my long hair, dark red like that maple leaf, seems to try to reach out and touch his face. The fresh-and-salty smell of the ocean is peppered with the corrosive smell of smoke.

  “I’ve been thinking. . .” I continue. “About what I should tell you if I ever brought myself to face you. I wanted to tell you that I didn’t bring you flowers. That I won’t crumble. I won’t fall on my knees before you, and I won’t drown in tears.”

  In the dead silence, my voice sounds like an echo, as if I were singing these words at the other end of the world and nothing but the final sad notes could reach him. He’s silent, of course, looking at me the way a seen-it-all cat would look at a silly intrusive puppy that wants to play and won’t let him lounge in the sun.

  “Look what you’ve done,” I say. “Look what you’ve done to me—that’s what I meant to tell you. Tell you that you robbed me, you took away every good thing that could’ve happened to me. You took me from me. I’ve got nothing to wait for anymore. I fall asleep hoping that my blanket will turn into a gravestone. I can’t live, and I can’t die, and it’s all because of you.”

  His thoughts are far away from here and me; he’s silent. The wind ceases, and my hair falls lifelessly onto my shoulders. The world around us becomes once more a breathtakingly beautiful, though apathetic decoration. The only thing that’s still moving is the faint steamy breath curling up from my mouth.

  “I forced myself to hate you for what you’d done. I really tried, but. . . How could I? But I can’t forgive you, either. I wanted you to know that I had needed you and you’d disfigured my heart. This is the first and the last time I visit you.”

  He looks at me with a timid smile. He’s sorry. I keep waiting for him to sigh, shake that chin-length dark hair out of his face, knit his brows, and close his eyes so he can be alone with his war. No, I can’t be this cruel.

  “You see, it’s easier this way,” I explain, “trying to be mad at you. When you’re bitter, you can at least keep living. It urges you on, even, feeds your strength. But if all you’re left with is guilt and anguish, you’re not just pathetic; you’re as good as dead.”

  There’s something devilishly cynical about the fact that life must always go on. Here you are killing someone, here you are losing someone, here there’s nothing left for you, here there’s nothing left of you. And life must go on.

  “I really wish you could talk to me now. . . . I did something horrible. Unforgivable. I think I’m losing my mind.” My voice drops to a strained whisper, but it still feels as if my confession dispersed over the grove, mist-like, and slithered into every house in Levengleds, making all those sleeping open their eyes wide.

  Mitch’s face, distorted with incomprehension and terror. . . . His arms pushing me away. . . . The stifling smell of smoke, the dizziness of the burning-hot air. . . . I drive the flashback away, hide it inside the black box of my memory.

  “You know, forget it. I’m here to finally say—”

  The name, a name I haven’t spoken in three hundred and sixty-six days. It clings to the walls of my throat, unwilling to be set free, resilient in its desire to stay inside me. Please don’t break now. Please, don’t crumble, don’t fall on your knees, don’t drown in tears. Please.

  “Good-bye, Iver.”

  Everything around me is mildly glowing, so ruthlessly alive. The white stone bearing his photograph and two dates engraved beneath his name remains unresponsive. The top of the tombstone is dusted with yesterday’s snow, which makes it look even colder against the backdrop of the grove radiating such bright, warm colors. It doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t belong here.

  I close my eyes, inhale the cocktail of smoke and salt, and let go. That’s it, period. Now I just have to turn around and leave, and never look back, and never return to this town.

  “A bit pretentious, a bit awkward,” says a derisive voice behind me, “but touching, on the whole, I’ll give you that.”

  I guess I was supposed to give a start or a cry of surprise, sure as I was that solely the headstones could overhear my monologue. And yet, the scenery is so surreal and I’m so tired all I can do is turn back slowly and look at her.

  She’s standing close to me; young, tall, and beautiful. Her flaxen locks gleaming in the lilac light of the rising sun should make her come off as warm-hearted and gentle, but instead, they only contrast with the porcelain coldness of her features, making it stand out even more.

  “What did his lifeless little body do to upset you, anyway?” she says. “Oh, let me guess. He cheated on you. No? He was the one who told you to get this awful hair dye? No, seriously, you’d better do something about your hair, love. For a second there, I thought you’d set your head on fire. That would have been quite a gesture.”

  Has she really been standing here all this time, listening to me pour my soul out in the town cemetery? This radiant apparition scrutinizes me too, and judging by the way her honey-brown eyes narrow, she finds me ridiculous. Ah, right. Before coming here, I used a black marker pen to paint a plausible smile on my face.

  “He didn’t cheat on me,” I say. “He was my brother, and he killed himself. Things like that tend to upset people.” I turn away from her. “And you are—?”

  Half a year from now, I will be older than my older brother.

  Three years ago, he moved to Levengleds, a small town by the ocean. A year ago, on the floor of his rented apartment, they found a mocking suicide note and, beside it, my brother, who was smiling serenely, visibly unharmed, dead.

  “I see.” She steps closer and drops a playful curtsy. “I’m Iver’s girlfriend. Krystle.”

  Was his girlfriend. Instead of correcting her out loud, I introduce myself too—I don’t even know why. This feels like an absurd dream, and I wish I could wake up right now.

  “Hmm, you know, it’s funny,” she says. “He didn’t say he had a sister. And I don’t remember seeing you here before. So why are you here? What happened?”

  A mixture of confusion and rage starts swirling in my lungs, corroding them like mercury vapor. I can’t imagine why she’s lying, but she couldn’t have known my brother. Of course he didn’t say he had a sister. He didn’t say anything, not since he turned nine.

  “A car crash?” Krystle won’t stop taunting me. “A festive glass of sulfuric acid? A bath full of fragrant foam and hair dryers? What happened?”

  “He made his heart stop.” At the thought of it, I feel as though an ice crust were spreading over my skin.

  He made his heart stop. He lay down on the floor, put his favorite song on repeat, and ceased to contract his heart muscle.

  Krystle tilts her head to one side, her eyes reduced to suspicious slits. “No, I wasn�
��t talking about—how come you’re here?”

  She must have recognized me. Everyone’s probably already looking for me, and I shouldn’t be revealing my identity to random strangers. Run, run while there’s still time, and stay alert.

  “I—I’m actually in a hurry. I have to go. Have a nice—oh, never mind.”

  Krystle breaks out in sincere, merry laughter, something I never expected to hear in a graveyard.

  “A hurry? Here? Where could you possibly—?

  “I just need to get out of here,” I mutter, more to myself than her. Somehow Krystle manages to burst out laughing still more shamelessly.

  “Good luck with that, hon! I’ve been trying to get out of here for years.”

  With one last glance at Iver’s black-and-white photo, I turn up the collar of my coat and walk away from his final cradle as fast as I can, my feet sinking in the leaves. I try to convince myself that I don’t want to know anything about Krystle, nor do I want to hear anything about the part of Iver’s life he apparently didn’t wish to share with me. I won’t attempt to find out if she has the answer to the question I fall asleep and wake up with every day. The truth won’t change the fact that now he smiles only at the six feet of earth above him. It won’t fix the fact that he will never write another song, a song so flawless it could make kind hearts tremble faster in triumph and evil ones shrivel up and stop ticking.

  It’s not easy for me to admit, but there are few things I fear more than getting the wrong answer to my question. I have this need to believe that there was a weighty external reason, although deep down, I know: No broken heart, no sneers or attacks of the outside world could have made him— He just did it. There was no reason. It’s just that that morning the war in his head was over.

  Levengleds. No word in the entire world is as loathsome to me as Levengleds. A young town built in the nineties to welcome anyone willing to sacrifice themselves to a muse. Libraries, workshops, art galleries, student quarters, theaters, picturesque parks. . .and the highest suicide rate in the country. Of course, neither Iver nor I was aware of that when he got accepted into the local conservatory. And even if we had known, that would hardly have bothered us. In a town full of writers and violinists, it’s quite natural that every day should begin with someone tipping their hat and walking gracefully out of the window. Isn’t any self-respecting artistic person obliged to try, at least once in their life, to rid the world of themselves and rid themselves of the world?

  Each time I visited Iver here, Levengleds was different somehow, driving me crazy with all those new buildings that seemed to spring up out of nowhere only to be gone without trace the next day. And yet, back then, we were both in love with this town and its atmosphere of unceasing, giddy celebration of everything reckless.

  Last fall, I came here in between filming. Iver played for me. We went to the movie theater to see a new much-talked-about indie drama. The soundtrack was his—my brother’s. He was so happy, and I was so proud of him. . . . We wandered the quaint narrow streets that always smelled of mulled wine, where we met kids stuck in creative blocks and gray-haired withering geniuses claiming they were about to gain universal recognition. We attended theatricals, too, where in the midst of the performance someone would pull me on stage and I would have to invent a character on the spot. We had fun. In the mornings, we drank rum; in the evenings, we drank coffee. I told him that next year, when I’d finished my studies, I’d move to Levengleds too.

  The undeniable advantage of suicide is you get to choose how you die. I choose to stop my heart today. I realized it’s as easy as clenching my fist or closing my eyes. If I’m not mistaken, on occasions like this, one is allowed to make three (dying) wishes.

  I wish to be buried in Levengleds.

  I wish everyone who comes to say good-bye to me to wear a smile. There is no tragedy; I simply go a little sooner than you do.

  I wish Freya to never come here and live a long and fulfilling life.

  That’s what my brother wrote a few days after I left, before he lay down on the floor and rid himself of the world. I don’t want Freya to come. And so I didn’t. I didn’t go to his funeral, that theatrical where the leading actor lay smiling in a coffin and the spectators covered him with earth, gave speeches about how he had been too young, cheerful, and talented, and avoided raising their eyes to one another for fear of stumbling across one of those eerie painted smirks. Bravo, Iver. I thought I’d never be able to smile again.

  All these months, I’ve felt as though the film about me might end at any moment—fade to black, cue the scant closing credits. But I keep waking up every morning, only to ruin another day-long take.

  I rub the remainder of the black-markered joy off my face. Cut. Last night, I used the same marker pen to edit the “You are now leaving Levengleds” lettering on the frosty road sign at the entrance to the town. “You are now leaving Levengleds, the suicide capital of the country.” Much better. The reverse side of the sign, “Welcome to Levengleds,” now displays a couple of way more insulting remarks. Those coming here have a right to know that this town will tear their loved ones from their arms, too.

  The narrow path leading to a country road and the gas station where I left my car yesterday looks like a tunnel. Its floor is covered with an orange-and-red carpet of leaves, and the trees’ mossy trunks and intertwined branches serve as its ceiling and walls.

  About a hundred yards down the road from the gas station, there’s a hotel suitably named the Last Shelter. It was already dark when I drove into Levengleds, so I had to spend the night there—it was weird, but I’d expected nothing less from this town. The walls of the lobby were decorated with seascapes and tarnished silver candle sconces. I rang the undusted bell I’d found on a round oak coffee table, but nobody showed up. I decided to wait on a red sofa littered with gold-embroidered cushions; they were so soft I quickly fell asleep. Just before daybreak, a noise startled me awake—it sounded as if there were a scuffle somewhere upstairs. The lobby was still deserted apart from me, and I hastened to make myself scarce. Weird, weird place, just like everything else in the town.

  The path turns to the left, which means I’m almost there. Gray-and-yellow blurry spots begin to dance in front of my eyes—must be brought on by my uneasy, irregular sleep. Last night, I dreamed of flashes of fire again; they pounced on a collapsed white table like a hungry beast.

  I try to focus my eyes. Neither the gas station nor my car is anywhere in sight. I can only discern a cobblestone lane winding toward a town whose outlines don’t look at all like the simple and almost cozy alleys of Levengleds. I blink, and the blurred forms become more real—tall, slim towers and streetlights shaped like cages with bird-lamps glowing inside them. It starts to drizzle.

  Perfect. Apparently, I’ve lost my way, although I’m sure I’ve been following the same path that had led me to the cemetery before dawn. Granted, it had still been dark, but I was sure this was the same path. To make things worse, I left my phone in the car, and of course, it never occurred to me to bring a map. I look around, wondering if I should go back to Iver’s grave and try to find the right path from there, but then discard the idea. The thought of running into Krystle again makes me feel queasy.

  To my right, dense milky smoke prevents me from seeing anything beyond it; looks like a fire broke out in the woods nearby. Not exactly burning with a desire to be burned alive, I decide to ask a local for directions and head toward the unknown town.

  Little by little, my vision improves, and now I can make out the contours of the blackened ornamental stone gates ahead. A dark vine punctuated by ruby flowers twines in and out of them. At the top of the gates, a large, arched plaque sways in the breeze, suspended by two squeaky chains. Now I can read the tall silver letters forming the words: “Welcome to Immer.”

  I walk in through the gates and, fighting a sudden, unexplainable surge of awe, turn around. The ominous inscription on the other side of the plaque warns:

  2.Nice Morning Cup
of Corpses

  Kai

  I’m wiping bloodstains off the bar, ignoring a round-faced fellow on the crowdier side of the counter, who jumps up and down in an annoying attempt to get my attention. By the looks of his shaved-off eyebrows, he was imprudent enough to take a nap while his drinking buddies were still around. He’s pestering me for a Truth Serum—the sixth one this evening. That cocktail, despite the name, has never gotten anyone to reveal anything more mysterious than the contents of his stomach.

  India’s lounging on a sofa behind the clouds of violet smoke. The braided leather headband she never seems to take off (not since she turned thirteen, when she decided she was a hippie) has slipped over her eyes. Someone had better take the hookah away from her, or else soon I won’t be able to see my own hands in this smoke-filled nightmare and will mix someone an Internal Shrink instead of a Parting Gulp. After having a word with an Internal Shrink, patients tend to use their heads as battering rams; as for Parting Gulps, a practiced frequenter of my bar can easily down a dozen of those, pausing only to swallow a bitter Meaning of Life before passing out. (A Meaning of Life is a multilayered cocktail with, well, nothing at the bottom.)

  Tripping time and again over bodies, Remy’s dancing, or should I say, threshing like he’s a fish in a net and somebody keeps electrocuting him for good measure. “You can go grab your beer yourself,” he shouts back to the guys at the nearest table, “and if you keep badgering me, I’ll stick that glass up your—”

  Help Wanted:

  the Drunk Dead could really use a normal server.

  The front door opens, admitting some fresh air. . .and her. The girl from my paintings. I stand rooted to the spot, refusing to believe my own eyes. When Immortown happens to capture new prey, it still struggles in its jaws a while longer, and until the victim gives up and goes limp, I can sense them. And I’m not the only one: It seems as though everyone in the bar has pricked up their ears. Even those out of their skulls begin to toss and turn under the tables.