by Lily Markova
I manage a wry smile and shake my head.
“And you accused me of being creepy. I only gave my mom a call, while you’ve been stalking your living girlfriend for three years, watching her from the other side.”
The girl rises from the windowsill and closes her book. For a moment or two, she stares at us without seeing, then draws the curtains, and the light in the room goes out. The snow is still swirling around me, but I can no longer feel its cold touch on my skin.
“Is it ever summer here?” I ask Chase, returning to Immortown with its dampness and wind. It gets dark early here, and the blue and green birdlike lamps are already waking up in the cages of the streetlights.
“No. Always fall,” says Chase grimly. “I’m going back to the hotel.”
4.Ghost Jobs
Kai
Some four yards beneath my feet, there is a bunch of tipsy students unaware that Immortown peers into their very souls as they stroll around the streets of Levengleds. I can sense them, and each is woven of cries and sharp edges seeking to tear through the bravery-feigning flesh. They all suffer.
To me, misery is just as powerful and valuable as happiness—only happiness seems fleeting, and misery doesn’t seem to ever end, which is why to me, the latter is preferable. But they all want, oh-so desperately, to be happy—without bothering to exert themselves much, though. Decorative friends, indifferent lovers. . . . Most residents of Levengleds spend one-third of their lives sleeping, one more third being wasted, and the last one on the Internet. The Internet is the worst. It knows everything about them and one day will surely use that against them. I won’t be surprised if tomorrow they have their brain cells caught in the web, happy to be robotized and digitalized. They’re going to have to implant anti-virus chips right into their skulls. Still, one day some genius will hack into them all anyway and give the order to sink their teeth into one another’s throats. What? That’s exactly what I would do.
Look at me—all grumbling and ranting like an old man unable to keep up with the rushing world. But who am I if not an old man? I’m older than Levengleds, that’s for sure. I’m older than Immer, even, the way it was back when nobody called it Immortown. If life hadn’t stopped here, it would be high time for me to be lying in bed, complaining of achy joints and blind eyes, beckoning my grandchildren over, and bequeathing them some junk. And yet, I never gained enough of that wisdom that should come with old age and experience—nothing particularly interesting has happened to me since I burned to death. I haven’t aged for over half a century now, but I’m still an unversed youth studying life through someone else’s dreams, as teenagers do through movies.
Everything changes, comes into the world, and turns to dust, and I feel as though I were immured inside a brick wall. I can’t see anything; I can’t hear anything. I can’t move; I can’t fall asleep. I can only think, remember, feel. And I will never die; I will stay here forever, in the darkness, in the crampedness, in loneliness and despair. A child’s voice screams inside my head—it calls for help, and it will do so for centuries, unheard.
“Remy, isn’t this supposed to be fun?” I say, allowing the smoke to leave my lungs.
It’s mind-meltingly hot here. My T-shirt sticks to my back. Remy has set up this greenhouse on the third floor of my house. The entire surface of the floor is covered with grass; the lamps hanging from the clear summer sky painted on the ceiling shine so bright we need to wear our sunglasses when here. Along the perimeter of the room, there are numerous flower beds containing odorous herbs, and Remy tends them zealously every day. He and I are lying on the lawn and smoking the fruits of his botanical research. India is spinning, around and around, barefoot and purring to herself, her arms upraised toward the improvised heaven. Our artificial paradise.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Remy says blearily, slurring his words, “it would be great to receive your statistics after you die. Like, ten of the people you gave up your bus seats to were murderers. Or, a hundred and twenty-five people wanted your babies. Eighty-three of them were girls. Two of them actually succeeded.”
“Or,” India croons, “your wife came up with a thousand and eight ways to kill you with especial cruelty.”
“Luckily, I wasn’t married while alive.” Remy shoots an imaginary gun at India and continues, in the tone of a preacher, “Wives are the henchmen of chaos. You, for one thing, have killed me three times: once before the wedding and twice after. Ask yourself: What would Jesus do if he existed?”
India dodges the invisible bullet and blows Remy an air kiss. “A mere three times! Got to marvel at my self-control! And by the way, it wasn’t me who killed you the first time. It was Kai. He knew I liked you, so he killed you for me. Doesn’t everyone dream of having such a thoughtful older brother?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “We’ve been through this enough times already, okay?” Her never-ending fault-finding makes my gums itch. “I didn’t want you to feel lonely. Remy doesn’t mind, do you, Remy?”
“Nope, all good, man.” Remy grins from ear to ear, rolling another cigarette. “Haven’t noticed any difference anyway. Living, dying. . . . What a drag.”
“Well, I mind!” No strength left in her, India drops to her back between us and sighs. “Now I’m bound to be the spouse of this socially unacceptable character until our planet explodes. Although, I predict that Immortown will withstand that too, and we will be drifting across the Universe in our ghostly spaceship, and we won’t even know.”
There she goes again. India used to be outright ecstatic about Remy’s stupidest pranks until he became her husband, and now she’s annoyed by his mere existence.
“Hey,” I say, “we’re trying to have a good time here. Could you please interject your remarks with your mouth closed? Nobody asked you to marry him.”
“Well, to be fair, I did,” Remy corrects me, “but that was only a formality.”
“Here’s to romance!” yells India, raising her glass. “Speaking of romance, Kai—don’t you dare draw Freya. Should you affect her in any way, try to mess with her head even once—”
“What? What will you do then, huh?” I say sluggishly, my right thumb running routinely back and forth across the silver ring constricting my fourth finger. It’s so tight I can’t even twist it.
“I won’t have to do anything,” says India. “I’ll just tell her what you did. She’ll never even look at you again!”
“Oh, right. I bet Freya will be keen to hear you out. An obsessed fangirl who tried to stab her, or whatever it was you were doing to her there.” Not without some satisfaction, I watch the militant look on India’s face give way to a whipped one.
She’s my sister, and I do love her, but over the past half a century, she’s squeezed all the juice out of me.
“Freya will understand, eventually,” India says, not sounding very confident. She snatches the cigarette from Remy’s mouth. “Give me that, I’m sad.”
“What else is new?” says Remy, and he reaches over me for another portion of ground leaves.
India takes a deep drag, pushes her red-framed sunglasses up on her forehead, staring into the painted sky with suddenly brilliant eyes as if she were seeing it for the first time, and calms down.
“I’ve spoken to Krystle,” she says. “She swears she didn’t call Freya here. They’ve already met—Freya came to the spot where Iver’s grave is in Levengleds.”
“Does he know?” I ask. “That his sister’s dead?”
“Yeah, Krystle says he was devastated when she told him. He doesn’t want Freya to know he’s here. He seems to blame Krystle.”
“And rightly so,” Remy says, stretching. “Krystle’s one bilious snake.”
“Don’t say that!” At the sound of Remy’s voice, India bristles again. “She was like a sister to me, until Kai got bored with her.”
“Hello-o?” says Remy. “The witch locked me in a basement, where I had to spend three days before Kai found me. If it hadn’t been for hi
m, I would have been fading away there bit by bit for decades. You, by the way, wouldn’t have lasted long without me either, so—”
“You’re flattering yourself,” sneers India. “You’d be forgotten and gone in a half-year, tops. And maybe if you didn’t keep calling her a snake—”
“I don’t think Freya’s here because she was called by someone,” I interrupt before they can start scratching each other’s eyes out. “We can’t make a healthy, determined person commit suicide. We always look for the weak, unhappy, lost, don’t we? They just need a gentle push. . . . Deep down, they beg for that. The only thing that’s stopping them is their fears and prejudices. If Iver had been happy, he wouldn’t have heard Krystle calling his name. If Remy hadn’t been so deadly bored, he’d have suggested I go to hell.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” says Remy. “Freya seems strong. Not the type to blindly do as recurring nightmares and depression tell her to, even if we intensify those. I sensed this need in her, almost like an obligation to stay alive. For someone or instead of someone. . . . Especially when she stuck that piece of glass into my throat, I sensed that very distinctly. She’s a fighter.”
“We should throw a party for her,” says India. “Put her in the picture. I could get her something nice to wear from Levengleds. And—oh, how could I forget! I have to tell Freya what I read in a magazine today! Her Moth Madness partner was hospitalized, badly burned. At first, everyone thought she’d died in the fire at the lighthouse, but then her car was found in Levengleds, and now reporters and the police are looking for her. . . .”
“Well, they won’t find her,” I say, smirking. “Unless, of course, we call them over. . . .”
“About the party—she won’t even talk to us,” Remy tells India. It’s obvious from his tone that he himself doesn’t worry about that much.
But she will. She will come around. I just want to give Freya a little more time. I want it to be her own choice. Should she make the wrong decision. . . Well. One floor below, there are a couple of empty canvases and plenty of green paint. I sure can put her in the picture.
“I’ll try to convince her,” India says. “And if I fail, somebody’s going to have to draw his sister a new best friend.”
“What happened to ‘don’t you dare draw, don’t you dare affect?’ ” I ask vindictively.
“You owe me,” she retorts. “You will always owe me.”
Freya
“Tell me about Aria?” I ask Chase, as we walk his friend to university, unbeknownst to her.
The subdued light of the December sun plays on the icy glass of Levengleds windows. I clench my cold-whitened hands into fists inside my pockets. Now and then, I switch to Immortown, as if swapping between two TV channels: I just need to want to see one of the towns and refocus my sight, like looking alternately at an object right in front of you and then the horizon.
“Oh, come on,” answers Chase, his face all screwed up as if his mouth were full of lemon juice, the contents of his backpack rattling with his every step.
“Well, since I’m doomed to spend eternity with you—I mean, chatting with you, for eternity, not what it sounded like—”
“Why, why does it have to be me?”
“I don’t know. It’s just—you contrive to create this impression somehow, like everything’s all right, like we’re normal people. Alive.”
I return to Immortown. In the ghost town, it’s still October, but I feel colder here than in Levengleds anyway. A light frost is nothing compared to the chill that slithers under my skin each time my mind flicks back to the notion that everyone here is dead, including me. I pretend, for the sake of not going completely insane, that everything that’s happening to me is a game. I didn’t die, didn’t become a ghost; I’m just acting in another wacky movie, and it’s about to come to an end.
Chase is trailing after Aria, whom I stopped being able to see the moment I fixed my eyes on Immortown. He keeps his head down but looks straight ahead, which makes his stare seem surly under the flaxen eyebrows. What he’s trailing into is a gray wall, ruby flowers with small dewy petals growing out of its cracks. Casually, without the slightest hesitation, Chase walks right through it. Like everything’s all right. Like we’re normal people.
I tune my sight to the town of the living again to avoid any uncomfortable direct confrontations between my face and the wall.
“Seriously,” I say, catching up with Chase, “we’re going to have to tell each other stories to kill boredom.”
“All right, then why don’t you start by telling me how come you’re haunted by your nine-year-old brother, who’s not so nine-year-old after all?”
I nearly choke on my ice cream (which Chase simply took from a freezer in a Levengleds supermarket) and hasten to change the subject.
“Why do we even eat?”
Chase appears a little embarrassed as he mutters, “Technically, we’re not supposed to eat. Nobody in Immortown does, to be honest. They only drink tons, because alcohol wears off lightning-fast when you’re a ghost. . . . You want to eat out of habit, I guess. Should pass soon.”
“What about you? Sugar cravings still going strong after three years?”
“Uh-huh,” Chase says evasively, glowering from under his eyebrows at the young man who links arms with Aria and proceeds to prattle on about how unexpected it was for him to win this awesome literary award, as they march through spirited morning Levengleds. “Yannis,” Chase spits, sending the humble-bragger’s way what can only be described as the deadliest of ghostly death stares.
“Are they together now?” I ask, keeping my tone neutral, weirdly glad to be on the offensive end of the. . .ahem, spookiness specter-um—I’m amazed Yannis doesn’t seem inclined to be suddenly filled with dread, feeling as though someone is watching him.
“No. But I can see it coming.” Chase kicks the plastic bottle that has worked its way under his foot, and Aria chooses this moment to look back, her shock of curly hair bouncing up and down.
“Don’t you ever want to give her a sign that you’re still al—I mean that you exist, in a way. . . in a slightly unusual way?”
“Why?”
“Why haunt her?” I parry.
“I don’t haunt her,” says Chase, putting on a martyr’s face. “More like, look after her. Want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Have you thought of. . .calling her?” I say, watching him carefully.
“’Course I have.” Chase stops and blows a long stream of white breath.
Aria and her friend vanish inside one of the university buildings, which, being of different heights, stand in a row like a three-level podium. The tallest of them, the central one, is crowned by a wings-tipped spire, the symbol of Levengleds.
“I thought,” Chase continues, “that it would be the most selfish and cruelest thing I could do to her. She’s got a brilliant future ahead of her, and I sure won’t be the one to take it from her. This year, we’re—she is graduating. . . .”
“Let’s go to the beach,” I suggest, wishing I hadn’t upset him. “The ocean is real, right? Not a ghost? While we’re at it, you could also explain to me why we can’t just build a raft and sail away.”
“The ocean seems endless, but it does end, in an emptiness like the one you saw behind the Immortown gates. You can’t even drown in that ocean—many have tried. The waves will carry you back ashore, and everything will be as it was before.”
“Hey, could you wait here a moment?” I stop next to a gray, sandglass-shaped tower. The sign at the entrance reads, “Immer Archives. No Trespassing,” which doesn’t prevent the arched double-leaf door from being wide open.
After changing the channel to Levengleds, I sneak into the nearest clothes shop. Luckily for me, there are no customers this early in the day here, so I just wait until the only assistant in sight turns away, and grab the first couple of hats, scarf, and pair of gloves within reach. I make up for it by transplanting the last couple of banknotes from my pocket to the shop count
er on my way out; when I’m back outside and in Immortown, Chase is shifting from one foot to the other.
“What did you want in the arch-ch-ch—damn.”
I place a fur earflap cap on his puzzled head, complementing his image as a seedy free-wheeling vacationer.
“And is catching a cold considered a common side effect of ghostening?” I say, winding the ridiculous but warm fluffy scarf around my neck. “I think I’m getting sick.”
“Nope,” answers Chase with a suspicious snuffle and a still more suspicious sneeze, “it isn’t. The ghosts of Immortown can feel cold and everything, but I’ve never heard of anyone actually falling ill. . . . So, apparently, you weren’t in the archives. You learned how to get stuff from Levengleds. How on earth are you adjusting so quickly? It’s so creepy.”
I don’t know why it’s such a big deal to him, since that shoplifting stunt didn’t require any particular dexterity or ingenuity—it would certainly have been harder to pull off were I not invisible to the living. “Perhaps being a ghost has been my vocation all along?” I respond, trying not to sound rueful.
We get to the beach, and Chase wanders along the edge of the water, scooping bootfuls of ocean, while I sit about twenty yards from him, running my fingers over smooth, salt-coated pebbles. The stones bump into one another, rolling, clacking, and tapping—a nice, soothing sound. Fake sound, fake pebbles, fake ocean. . . .
“Have you met anyone called Iver here?” I shout so that the roaring of the waves and wind won’t drown my voice.
“No,” Chase shouts back. “Been quite a while since I talked to anyone apart from Dude. But I imagine most ghosts come by the Drunk Dead at some point—you should ask around there.”
The Drunk Dead is the last local attraction I want to set foot in again, but of course, if that’s what helps me find my brother, I will. Chase extricates a pair of clean socks and spare boots from the bottom of his backpack. After rubbing his blue feet for a while, he slips them into the new pair of shoes. If Chase were alive, he’d come down with a sky-high temperature by evening—the water in December is, to put it mildly, cool.
