Immortown

by Lily Markova

  None of that means anything; none of that matters as long as I’m lying here on the beach with a planet on my back.

  I guess I deserted everyone, just as Iver had done. Amidst the murmuring and rustling of the waves, I think I can hear the song he played for me before deserting me and Mom and everybody else.

  I’m vulnerable to art. They say there is music that is so bad it can make your ears bleed. I say, there is also music that is so powerful it can cause bleeding somewhere inside your chest. There’s such beautiful music that listening to it is excruciating, and you want to scream and cry for the entire world, at least once, cry until you’re exhausted, cry because of everything that’s ever happened to someone somewhere and because of everything that will happen someday. You can’t keep listening, because it seems that if you do, this overwhelming will become perfect, and you will go insane; your heart won’t be able to hold all of that music and will burst, and you will fly apart into atoms, too, blending into the world. There are such beautiful people, such beautiful landscapes, poetry, photographs, movies. . . . There’s always something almost flawless that will blind you, deafen you, kill you with its beauty, and you want it more than anything, and you fear it just as much, and you will never dare give yourself up to it, not completely. That’s just beyond human power.

  I listen to the echo of Iver’s music and watch the waves embrace the great black cliffs sheltering the beach from either side and expose them again. I can’t take this. There’s not enough space for me here, and at the same time, I’m so tiny among these rocks—there’s not enough me for me to take this. My mind drifts away, and I say into the immenseness of the ocean,

  “You died in a beautiful place, Iver. This place is so beautiful I think it’s okay to die here.”

  3.The Last Shelter: All-Inclusive

  Freya

  “The subscriber you are trying to reach either has blacked out or is currently within an alcohol coverage area. Leave your message—for another time.”

  “Mom? Mom, I know we haven’t been in touch much lately. . . . You must be still. . .traveling. . . . I lost my phone, so if you tried to call. . . I just wanted to say I’m fine, and. . . I hope you are too. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you. Bye.”

  I hang up, and as soon as my hand loses its grip on the pay phone receiver, all the courage it took for me to leave that short message seems to speed away down the wire too. I’m in the lobby of the Last Shelter again; just like the last time, it’s empty.

  I look behind the reception desk in the hope that there might be a laptop with an Internet connection there so I will finally find out what I’ve gotten myself into, but the only items I find are a golden name badge belonging to “Terry Vox, receptionist,” and a thin file folder. I pick it up and flip through the papers. Nothing. These are just old-fashioned guest registration cards. Judging by how many of them are filled out, either Vox the receptionist is opposed to recordkeeping, or this hotel has never seen a single client—which is likely, considering that Vox himself never bothers to show up at work, it seems.

  Bearing in mind the unsettling sounds that were coming from upstairs when I stayed here two nights ago, I don’t venture up to the rooms, curling up instead on the familiar red sofa.

  So this is how it feels to be crazy, then. I used to imagine madness to be like a mental veil obscuring the world, a kaleidoscope through which you could only see disconnected pretty pieces of reality. No, it is before that my perception was clouded, and now it’s crystal clear, as transparent as the waters of a mountain river. I remember vividly all the wild and unnatural things I’d stumbled across while running around the prison that is Immortown until I found a hideout in this hotel. The faces of people who cannot possibly be here, faces that aren’t supposed to exist at all, buildings gone missing, and that dreadful, numbing void beyond the town limits. . . .

  It’s all those roles I played. . . . I had dozens of masks but not a single face of my own. I kept messing with my own mind, and now it’s punishing me. I wanted to stay true to myself and at the same time become someone new, someone the world hadn’t seen before. Such an ambivalent state was perhaps more dangerous than simply withdrawing into myself would have been. Someone would call one of my names, and I had to go back to one of the ends of that imaginary bridge, never really stepping ashore. It’s not healthy, always being dragged out of yourself like that—you don’t have enough time to pull yourself together, you dissipate. . . . Maybe I’ve become the soldier boy from Kids, Abandoned. That would explain my newfound ability to fight back and see things.

  I’m falling asleep, falling asleep curiously, as if all the sounds and colors around me were being gradually washed off, my lungs were running out of air, and my cells began to work more slowly, saving oxygen. An unpleasant tingling sensation in my throat—

  A few seconds later, I come to my senses and realize I’d been asleep for quite a while and would have probably slept longer if only someone hadn’t started to smother me. I kick the air, screaming into the cushion firmly pressed against my mouth, and try to wrestle it off my face; it keeps purposefully choking the life out of me.

  “Aaall right, dude, what is it now?” I hear a sleepy, burring voice; what sounds like jaw-dislocating yawns; and shuffling footsteps.

  The pressure eases. I fling the cushion away, panting and looking around for my attacker. There’s no one in the lobby apart from me and the lanky, angular guy dragging himself down the stairs and rubbing his eyes, but he’s not close enough to fall under suspicion.

  It’s as if Immortown could smell the anger that has been building inside me for months, as if it were provoking me on purpose, daring me to let it all out, feed the hungry town with my rage.

  “Everybody has to stop trying to kill me!” I say through gritted teeth.

  In response, the dusty bell from the coffee table in front of the sofa soars into the air and starts pealing just above my ear, hanging there all by itself. What the—ah, right. I’m insane. The insane are supposed to hallucinate. Failing to come up with a more practical solution, I vault over the back of the sofa and peek out gingerly from behind it. The bell falls back to the table in a dead faint, stripped of all signs of demonic possession.

  “Where are your manners, dude? Jeez.” The burring guy, who has finally made it over to the sofa, sighs and squints in my direction—his eyes must be still adjusting to the light. “You good there?”

  Disheveled, slouchy, puffy-eyed from sleep. . . . He seems harmless, but I still wish I hadn’t lost the shard of glass that saved my life yesterday. I actually meant to keep it close at hand until the end of my days, as a symbol of my being able to take care of myself, but it must have slipped out of my pocket, thus probably bringing the aforementioned end of my days closer.

  “Why are you calling me ‘dude’?” I ask him, still from behind the sofa.

  “Huh?” He stares at me, looking puzzled. “Ah. Wasn’t talking to you. Dude’s the one who attacked you.”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to suspect that my head separated from my body is worth half a kingdom here,” I grumble. “What was that thing, anyway? Where is it?”

  “Somewhere. . .” His eyes search the lobby, and he points, not in the least agitated, at a silver knife dancing five feet above the floor. “There! Here, kitty, kitty. Bad Dude! Drop the knife!”

  Dude is eager to obey. The knife swishes through the air, missing the pointy nose of my new acquaintance by inches, and sticks in the parquet floor. Behind the guy’s back, there’s something barely discernible hovering in midair, distorting all objects beyond it like heat haze.

  “Dude? Honestly?” I cram every bit of disbelief and disapproval I’m capable of into my tone.

  “Well, admittedly, I’m not the most inventive nicknamer in the world,” he says, scratching his nose as if to make sure it’s definitely still where it should be. “I had to call him something, though, didn’t I? He’s practically my pet.”

  “Couldn’t you have gotten a cat o
r, I don’t know, a bird?”

  “There are no birds in Immortown.” He shrugs. “No animals at all. I make do with what I have. You new in town or something? What happened to you?”

  Why does everybody keep asking me that?

  “Just passing through. Destination Levengleds. You wouldn’t happen to have a map, or some navigation device, maybe, would you?”

  “Passing through. . . . That’s funny.”

  Still chuckling, he goes over to the fireplace and puts a match to the kindling in the grate. I scramble out from behind the sofa and perch on its armrest, trying to determine Dude’s whereabouts in case he’s possessive of this particular piece of furniture. My head might explode if I don’t spill out all the crazy thoughts marching and drumming inside it.

  “Okay, listen—so first, I find myself at some sectarians’ house, then buildings go and disappear, and now this Dude. . . . Have you ever seen an entire building, like three stories high, just vanish as if it had never been there?” I ask him rather calmly, infected with his nonchalant manner—he speaks in such a relaxed, lulling tone it’s all I can do to refrain from asking him if I could have some of his nerve-soothing herbs.

  “That’s nothing,” he says, fanning the fire with some kind of blowpipe so that it roars and swirls and sputters orange sparks. “If a house starts to go all David Copperfield with you inside it, though, then you may want to throw a tantrum. ’Cause the building will come back eventually; you won’t.”

  I haven’t the faintest clue what he’s talking about, so I continue with my own nonsense, staring blankly at the flames. “I tried to leave, you know. But there, beyond the gates—there’s nothing. A void. I touched it, and it pushed me away. I mean, how can whatever that is even be tangible? There’s absolutely nothing there. As if the rest of the world hadn’t been painted yet.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t been.” He snickers as if I’d made a joke but weren’t getting it myself and he found that amusing. “Maybe somebody got hit by an untimely artist’s block.”

  Here he goes again, trying to out-nonsense me. But I’m not finished yet.

  “And I saw people. . . . There’s this guy, Mitch—he can’t be here, no way, but I saw him. He was upset with me for running away, leaving him in that lighthouse. And the kid! He was just staring at me and asking why.”

  “There are no kids in Immortown.”

  “He looked just like my brother back when he was nine,” I say, feeling as though my mind were dissolving in the depths of the brilliant fire.

  “Well, those must have been just your demons.” He lets out another huge yawn, covering his mouth with his sleeve. “At first they’re going to bother you quite a bit, but you’ll get used to it. They are just your guilt and other strong emotions taking the form of someone you think you’ve hurt. Nothing to worry about.”

  Not at all worrisome indeed.

  “Do you have a name?” I say. “Oh, but don’t answer. I don’t know why I’m talking to you—you don’t even exist.” Feeling shamelessly sorry for myself, I locate the cushion that so recently tried to kill me and hug it to my chest.

  “Why would you think that?” For the first time since we started talking, I think I can detect something that sounds like indignation in his voice. “I’ve got a name. It’s Chase. And I do exist. Here, I’ve lit the fire, even.”

  “If you’re so real, then why are you wearing these yellow-whale pajamas and this giant backpack? Only an imaginary person would sleep with a backpack on and hang out with bloodthirsty invisible dudes,” I assure him.

  “Whaat? What pajamas?” he says in surprise, making a show of stretching out and surveying his limbs.

  I bury my face in the cushion so that it muffles my cry of despair. “I don’t want to be mad! That’s not fair!” I protest.

  “Kidding. I am wearing pajamas. If I’m not real, why do you go around imagining invisible bloodthirsty dudes and me sleeping with my backpack on?”

  Chase points an accusatory finger at me. I find his argument convincing, so I change the subject to one of more immediate importance than the question of my sanity.

  “Is there any food in Immortown, at least?”

  “You still want to eat?” Chase asks warily, as if it were I who had devoured all local kids and animals and now demanded more.

  My stomach responds with a short but woeful song. Chase slides his apparently weighty khaki backpack off his shoulders and rummages in it, setting a rope, toothbrush, and yellowed newspaper aside on the coffee table. Finally, he fishes out a coffee thermos and a lunch box with a couple of sandwiches and an apple inside, hoisting the backpack onto his shoulders again as soon as the food is out.

  “Thank you so much,” I say, and after taking a sip from the thermos, try to keep my expression from changing. Despite all the acting classes, I seem to be failing miserably at that because Chase gives himself a smack on the forehead.

  “Must be the wrong one,” he says, blushing a little as he replaces the cognac thermos with actual coffee this time. The cognac nearly flies out of his hand, but Chase wins it back. “Dude seems to in a bad mood today. Ignore him; he hates that.”

  “He can hear and understand everything, can’t he?” I say, watching the rope, which Chase has forgotten to replace in his backpack, fashion itself into a noose and approach his neck with unambiguous intentions.

  But then the rope starts to quiver and flicker like an image on the screen of a malfunctioning TV, becoming more and more transparent, and vanishes completely before it can fall to the floor. Chase jerks forward to catch the noose but is left clutching only a fistful of air. From the annoyed look on his face, I gather that in Immortown, unscripted conjuring tricks like this aren’t something you celebrate with champagne and fireworks.

  “Dude?” calls Chase, spinning anxiously around and around. “Dude, this isn’t funny. If you’re still here, show yourself.”

  A red candle flits out of a sconce on the opposite wall, and a moment later, on the nearest decorative mirror appears a hot-wax message—a rather indecent one. Chase nods in relief and says, sounding blasé again, “Oof, shame the rope’s gone. I’m going to bed. You can sleep here or take any room you like, except room twenty-three—it’s mine—and sixteen—I suspect that that’s where Dude’s lair is. He can’t really harm you, but if you get scared, feel free to scream and wake me up. Again.”

  Stressing the last word so that I won’t get the misleading impression that his patience knows no bounds, Chase stomps off upstairs, air rippling in his wake—it looks as though Dude doesn’t feel like suffocating me again anytime soon.

  The writing on the mirror has already changed to “Feeling homesick, are we, girl?” Unbelievable—all I can think about right now is a hot shower and soft bed.

  ***

  “Freya, oh, Freya! If you hadn’t called, I would—I tried to call you back, but the operator said the number didn’t exist. . . .” I can barely make out Mom’s words for her violent sobbing.

  Her voice sounds higher than I remember—then again, it’s been a long time since we last spoke. Iver’s death hadn’t brought us closer together; it had turned us into almost strangers. We became to each other a constant reminder of what had happened. I was ready to rush off to the other side of the country at the first filming opportunity, and she would go even further, fleeing the continent “to travel.” And now she’s crying, as if that November had never ended. I’ve never heard a sound more heart-wrenching than my mother’s crying.

  “Mom, I’m fine. Please don’t. Don’t cry.”

  “That night, when you disappeared, there was a terrible fire in the lighthouse where you were shooting. Everyone thought—they still think—you were rehearsing there with that poor boy, we thought that you. . .you. . .”

  “Mom, please! I’m all right!”

  “I wouldn’t survive that, not again. . . . Where are you? I’m booking the first available flight.”

  “No, don’t! I mean—nothing bad is going to happen to
me here, I promise. I just need a little time to myself, you know, to make sense of things. I guess I’m going to travel for a bit, too.”

  “You’re in Levengleds, aren’t you?” It’s almost as if I could hear her heart sink.

  “No. . . . Not anymore.” I pluck up my own heart and say, “Mom, Mitch. . . Is he. . . ?”

  “Alive.”

  I breathe out.

  “He’s in a bad way, of course. Hasn’t woken up yet. But he will recover—I heard Richard say on the news that the boy was stabilized for now. He’s worried about both of you, you know. Darling, I want you to remember: I will always be on your side. Even if things went out of control that night. . . I know you never wanted anyone to get hurt. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

  Oh God, what is she talking about?

  “Mom! You don’t think that I—do you? Yes, I was at the lighthouse with Mitch that night. I’m not sure what happened, but it wasn’t my fault, it was an accident, I would never. . . Why would I do that? Please, you have to believe me!”

  “I know. Of course I believe you.”

  “Thanks. . . . Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m coming home soon. Maybe you should too. I miss you.”

  The words written in red wax swim through my mind, “Feeling homesick, are we, girl?”

  “Take care, sweetheart.”