The Death of Israel Leventhal

by Boom Baumgartner

  "Don't be childish," Israel said, quickening his step as he tried to suppress a smile.

  "Go!" Rose grinned at him, his teeth white as his fingers touched the shoulder of the first corpse.

  Instantly, Israel darted out his own hand to feel the cold, clammy skin of one of the unknown men.

  He had only gotten the name of his third corpse when Rose finished the fifth and final one.

  "You didn't say they were all cultists," Rose said, grimacing.

  Israel tried to keep his face neutral. He knew he was going to lose the race, but not this badly. "Why else do you think there were so many at one time?"

  "Crazy motherfuckers. The cop who hired us is going to look very good for figuring out who they all are."

  "You wrote down their names?"

  Rose held up a list on a crinkled piece of notepaper, smiling. "And I won, by the way."

  "I'm not surprised," said Israel, grabbing the piece of paper and pocketing it.

  "You wound me." Dramatically, Rose put his hand on his chest. "Weren't you trying?"

  Israel didn't want to admit that he was. But before he could think of a response, Rose was looking past him, his eyes wide, and nostrils flaring. Cautiously, Israel turned around. They still had fifteen minutes. There shouldn't have been anyone there.

  There was nothing there but dead bodies, the cold steel doors of the refrigeration units, and white tile. "What is it, Rose?"

  "Nothing, nothing," he muttered. "Let's just go."

  Whatever Rose saw, it raised the hairs on the back of Israel's neck. The job was easy as he thought it would be. In and out, no trouble whatsoever. But something was off with Rose.

  Rose's breath came hard and fast, and his eyes darted about the alleyway.

  "Seriously, Rose, what is wrong?"

  Rose just shook his head. "Nothing. It's nothing."

  Israel couldn't take him at his word as Rose looked behind his shoulder every few seconds. Sometimes he would stop, and edge around pieces of sidewalk as if they were booby-trapped.

  "Rose!" Israel said as Rose slammed his back against the wall, pressing his fingers into the brick as his head rolled slowly from side to side. "What the hell?"

  "It's… sorry. It's really nothing, mate."

  "If we are being followed, you need to tell me now."

  "No. I mean we are, just… look, I just need some Nyquil."

  "What?"

  "I may have been… it might've been a bad idea to race. The void..."

  "What?"

  "You're standing on my brother's corpse." Rose's eyes trailed down toward Israel's feet.

  Slowly, Israel looked down. There were nothing but his loafers. "Fuck, Rose. Are you in the void still?"

  Rose swallowed.

  "Goddamnit. Where's your hotel?"

  "Best Western."

  "You cheap asshole. There's like nine of them."

  "Downtown."

  "Fine. Let's go. I'll get you enough Nyquil to knock out an elephant."

  Rose did not move.

  "Rose, come on." When the other man still did not move, Israel shouted. "George!"

  Rose's eyes darted over to him.

  As gently as he could, Israel said, "Let's go." On impulse, he grabbed Rose's hand and pulled closer. He thought Rose would fight it, but he followed Israel like a toddler afraid to cross the street.

  Rose's touch haunted him as they walked through the streets, the void visibly weakening for Israel. He could see faint glimmers of shadows moving, drawing Rose's attention until he began to build up his wall to the void.

  Briefly, he considered leaving Rose in his hotel while he got the Nyquil from the Walgreen's down the street, but there was nothing in the way Rose acted that made Israel feel safe.

  Even with the fear of keeping Rose together, the thought of what the two must have looked like worried him. Israel had never dated anyone before, but he was certain that people didn't hold hands shopping for cough syrup, nor did they continue to hold hands while they purchased it. What did it look like? A suicide pact? An overly codependent relationship? Two men who superglued their hands together on accident?

  What it did not look like was one gravedigger keeping the other out of the void by forcibly surrounding them both with his own walls.

  It didn't matter. What did was that they had the Nyquil which Rose knocked back like a shot the second they got into his room.

  "I'll sleep it off, Iz," he slurred. "You don't have to worry."

  But Israel did worry. "I'll go when I know you're not going to freak out more."

  Rose narrowed his eyes, focusing on something just behind Israel's shoulder. Then he locked his gaze on Israel. "You doing this because you're my friend?" His voice was halting, and cautious. "Or because we're business partners?"

  "Why do you ask questions you already know the answers to?"

  Rose snorted, and his eyelids began to droop as he sat on the edge of the bed. "But I don't."

  "Just lay down on the bed."

  "I can't."

  "Why not?"

  "What if you're Charles? I keep seeing his face where yours should be."

  Israel grabbed Rose's face, concentrating on the void that was opening up on Rose, and anchoring him to reality. He had never had to do this before. Never needed to. And if this had ever happened to Rose before, he had certainly hid it from Israel. "Whose face do you see now?"

  "Yours."

  "What's my name?"

  "Izzy."

  "Go to sleep, Mr. Rose."

  Rose shifted and moved his long legs onto the bed. He laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling while Israel went to the other side of the bed and sat down on it. He leaned against the bed frame and looked down at Rose, noting that his breaths were evening out.

  "Who was your first?" murmured Rose.

  Israel stiffened. He could not look at Rose as he growled, "This isn't a slumber party where we gossip about our sex lives, Rose." Truth be told, he never had a first and for some reason he was embarrassed to admit that now. It had never bothered him before.

  "I meant your first grave."

  Heat seared across his cheeks as he blushed. "Why?"

  Rose ignored his question. "Mine was my brother."

  Israel did not know what to do with the intervening silence. What did someone say to that?

  "We were out drinking to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. Then we split up to go to our own flats. He was too drunk." Rose squeezed his eyes tightly, as if trying not to see it. "It was winter, and he got his flat number wrong so he couldn't get in. He fell asleep on his neighbor's' doorstep and froze to death."

  "That's..." Israel shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he should reach for Rose's hand; wondering if Rose was seeing it now. "That's awful."

  "I talked to him at his funeral. That was my first."

  Rose went silent, but his breathing quickened again. His eyes popped open, and stared at something on the ceiling that Israel could not see.

  Israel grabbed his hand, and concentrated on keeping the walls up. "Mine was my roommate in college." Israel frowned as he spoke. It was not a memory he liked to revisit.

  Rose did not say anything, but he inclined his head.

  "We had a house party," Israel continued, "And he ODed on something. I don't know what. I woke up the next morning to vomit and found him in the bathtub. He talked to me. Said he was worried that he couldn't move his neck. I thought he was sick so I called an ambulance. When they got there, they told me he'd been dead for hours." Israel inhaled deeply, not pleased to be reliving the memory. "That was my first."

  However much Rose heard, Israel did not know. He had already fallen asleep.

  Squeezing his hand, Israel reinforced the walls. Dreams were where the void always came in. It rarely happened to Israel, but he now knew it happened to others. He didn't know he fell asleep until he woke up the next morning, still holding Rose's hand. Rose's body was curled toward him like an ocean does a peninsula.

 
; Chapter Six

  The void was coming on, tearing at the edges of George's psyche as he tamped down the urge to reach for an Izzy that could not be reached. Nothing could stop the ghost of him, lurking in the furthest corners of his periphery.

  George was used to seeing dead men do a bit more than be dead, but not when they were Izzy. Not when he saw Izzy's corpse, the right half of his skull blown away.

  George thought it was a ghost, and he didn't believe in those. Never could. Yes, his job was about talking to dead people; getting their secrets. But ghosts? That's just ridiculous. Anything he saw was his mind making things up in the void.

  But Izzy appeared to him as he was sticking his suitcase into the boot of a taxi. It was undeniably him with his curly hair, only now it was cut short into a sort of faux-hawk, and coifed ridiculously over one eye. Over-sized glasses consumed his face. He was large-lipped, and larger than life as he read a newspaper on the corner of Browning and Vine.

  "Izzy!" he called out, running across the street, and two cars narrowly missed him. He ignored the honking, the feeling of air rush as the vehicles sped past. By the time his feet touched the other curb, Izzy's ghost had disappeared into the indistinct milling of commuters.

  George stood there looking for Izzy's ghost, his mind turning with contradictions.

  He saw Izzy. No, his ghost. Ghosts weren't real. Izzy was dead. Izzy was dead. Izzy was dead. He saw Izzy.

  Izzy was dead.

  Those thoughts repeated in his mind as he walked back across the street. The cab driver was half out of his car, clearly confused. Without a word, George got in. "Someone you know?" the driver asked in a Polish accent.

  George stared out the window, barely registering anything but the place on the corner where he could have sworn he saw Izzy. "I'm sorry, what?"

  "Someone you know?"

  "No. Thought it was. Let's just get going, all right, mate? Don't want to miss me flight."

  The taxi driver shrugged. "Whatever you say," he replied and pulled into traffic. George stared at the place Izzy had been until it was out of view. He templed his fingers, rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward.

  Izzy was dead.

  *~*~*

  "Izzy!" Israel's blood froze in his veins as walked to the stoplight on the corner of Browning and Vine. His attention was torn from the headline about Longphrama's price fixing to see the familiar tall figure of George Rose, his usual dapper style looking disheveled and wrinkled. What the fuck was he doing in Washington DC?

  He took advantage of two taller men walking by him to cover his escape down a nearby alley. His heart racing, he blindly walked down two other side streets, and ducked behind a dumpster. When he did not hear footsteps, he sighed and leaned his head against the grimy brick wall.

  Without thinking about it, his hand went to his pocket and traced the edge of the postcard he was never going to send.

  Chapter Seven

  George wondered if he was looking for any excuse to kill Charles. He had hated that bastard for longer than time itself, he felt. He certainly hated him before Izzy died, though it was hard to remember any time that was like that. George almost thought that he was born to fulfill one destiny: destroy Charles Hastings.

  Charles and George had grown up two counties from each other, but their dislike for each other must have started at their birth. Or at least, so George thought. There was a time he trusted him… wasn't there? How did they even know each other?

  Right. It was a rainy day. The shit kind in November that plagued all British. The kind that almost seemed to justify England's empire building if only it meant it had some land with some decent weather. The kind where umbrellas were no good because the water just sort of misted around and soaked a person to the bone unless they were encased in a HAZMAT suit.

  It was inevitable the two would meet. Two gravediggers in Oxfordshire? Of course they were going to meet. They were Carthage and Rome; two great powers that were destined to butt heads. One would triumph, and the other would be left to tend its salted fields.

  Maybe.

  Or was George really just Dido, cursing the descendents of Hastings?

  It was raining when George met Charles, in any case.

  "Hello, old chap," he had greeted in a way George wasn't sure was real, or just him making fun of George's idea of him. Charles was like that. He was a reflection of what you thought he was, and that was always changing.

  To George, their meeting was as inevitable as Carthage and Rome. Sometimes, it changed to Aeneas and Dido. He could never really know.

  "Hi," George had responded uneasily. He had just come back from a body mangled in a traffic accident, and was trying to explain to his client why he couldn't contact that person's soul on account of its body's condition. He ended up out of pocket, and out of jobs. His stomach felt tight with hunger.

  "So I hear you're the bloke who's trying to set up shop here."

  George didn't know how to take this, so he stood up a bit taller, and let his looming height do the intimidation work for him. It was Rome and Carthage. Surely it was.

  "No need to get worried, I was just thinking… You are doing a sloppy job of getting clients, and I realize that it might be good to take you under my wing. A young gravedigger like you out here on their lonesome needs guidance. A mentor, like."

  "I'm sure." George let his voice rumble out like thunder. Even at eighteen, George knew he looked terrifying. People crossed the street when he frowned to get away from him.

  "Don't be so wary." Charles slapped him on the shoulder. "We gravediggers, we got to look out for each other. Besides, I'm finding that I'm needing help."

  What he failed to mention was that his form of gravedigging usually involved killing and then interrogating. He was a bodysnatcher. Where George had been a vulture, waiting for the corpses to come to him, Charles motto was always "Shoot first, ask questions later at your leisure in a secured warehouse."

  And George, he didn't know a criminal side to gravedigging existed before Charles. Hell, he didn't know that the word for his séances was actually "gravedigging". Once he learned, though, the worlds opened up.

  All he needed to do is drop the word gravedigger in the right places, and he'd be right flush with cash. He had never lived as large as he did when Charles taught his tongue how to speak the right words.

  Charles taught his tongue to do a whole lot of other things, but George chose not to dwell on those because in his mind the two were warring powers like Rome and Carthage. They were not the lovers Aeneas and Dido.

  Still, he thought he had hated Charles a little bit, with his cocky smile and the way he would just stab a person in the kidney to watch them die slowly. "Tell me what I need to know now, and you won't have to die," he'd say, or, "Go ahead, be silent. Your secrets taste best when your lips are blue and grey".

  Then he would let them slip into the void, and confirm what they said. He was a real arsehole that way.

  George supposed he was a bit of an arsehole to let it happen, but then again, did he really want to take a victim to the hospital and trust they wouldn't send the cops after him? No. Charles' way was better. Gruesome, but better.

  Before Charles, George was getting jobs from old ladies to ask their late husband's important questions like, "Where did you put the antique necklace?" and "Did you ever cheat on me?" and "Will you wait for me?"

  No one really believed him, and he started lying because sometimes the answers weren't pleasant. It felt better to say their loved ones were in heaven and happy than to say that they were never loved at all.

  At least, that's how George thought they met. He may have just walked in on Charles talking to a victim and he hung around to ask questions, and he narrowly avoided getting taken out himself. No, that happened. But that was not the day he truly met Charles Hastings.

  It was raining when he met Charles Hastings. After that, no matter how he followed him around, he always sort of privately knew that Charles was waiting for a cha
nce to sell George out.

  And he did.

  George always remembered it as the Wet Job.

  They were sent to talk to a victim of a gang battle whose friends were lucky enough to get his body and run before the cops came. They left him in a dumpster for Charles and George to find and converse with.

  It had been awkward, as George recalled, lounging casually against bin, pretending as if it was a normal place to hold a conversation.

  Then George realized that maybe the reason he thought they met in the rain was because when he first really knew Charles was on that night. There in the rain was when he came back from the void and discovered that Charles was gone. No. He came back from the void after promising the gangster to tell his mom he loved her, and then Charles knocked him out.

  Or he assumed it was Charles. Who else could it have been? His proof was that the money was gone, and so was Charles.

  George remembered walking back to the train station in the rain, his head throbbing, and the void pulling in monsters around every corner as his wall weakened.

  The truth was that George didn't care about the money or the loss of a partner he should never have had in the first place. No. He cared that Charles knew how vulnerable gravediggers were to the void, and he set George down into a hell of half-formed cannibals who chased him, their scrawny arms flailing behind them as they ran at supernatural speed. He couldn't tell what was real.

  It wasn't until he was on the train, drenched and soaking the chair with excess water that he was able to know what was the void and what was not.

  So, Charles must have known that George would play the part of Dido in their cold war, and he left George to sow revenge in his heart.

  When Dido's lover Aeneas left, she cursed their descendants to fight until only one side survived. So Dido's land Carthage warred against Aeneus' Rome.

  Rome had won that war.

  But George was going to win this one. From Dido's dust, he had arisen to avenge her.

  He found Charles in a motel in Florida with tacky neon lights and a parking lot up against the rooms. There, despite it being fall, everything was still hot and sticky. It was no place for an Englishman to die, and that thought pleased George immensely.