Styx

by Bavo Dhooge

  She sat there in the armchair, beginning to feel comfortable, her feet tucked beneath her, watching as he slowly, in time to the music, as if enacting some ancient ritual, removed the lid from a large container he set atop one of the drawing tables. He dipped his hand into the pot and scooped out a clump of some gray substance.

  “What’s that?” said Heloise dreamily.

  “Clay,” he replied. “I like to work with my hands.”

  “I thought you said you were a painter?”

  “I am, but I’ve decided to branch out, try something different. Tonight, I haven’t made up my mind between painting and sculpting. It may sound crazy, but I like getting my hands dirty. I’m like a child: the more dirt under my fingernails, the better.”

  He laughed. She saw the emotion in his eyes and was herself moved by it. This was a man who knew how to give himself over to passion. She was intrigued. “Have you done sculpted figures before?”

  “Yes,” came his response. “A few times.”

  “How did they turn out?”

  “Let’s just say I’m still searching for my own style. My voice. Like every artist.”

  “I can’t wait to see what it looks like,” said Heloise.

  To be honest, she couldn’t wait to get out of her clothes. She saw the sparkle in the artist’s eyes. She could tell from the way he considered the mass of clay on the table that he was ready to begin.

  “You don’t want to put on a smock?”

  “No, we’ll just see what happens. Sometimes I go into a sort of trance, and I don’t even notice till it’s all over that my clothes are covered in . . . clay.”

  “Well, I’m not going to make you wait any longer.”

  “Yes, let’s get started,” he said.

  She unbuttoned her blouse and removed it slowly, stepped out of her skirt, folded them both neatly and laid them beside her on the platform. She untied her sneakers, unhooked her bra, pulled off her panties. It happened almost automatically, felt completely natural. She didn’t think she could have done it in front of any other man.

  “Okay,” she said enthusiastically. “Now what?”

  “Now we need to find the perfect pose,” he said.

  He turned away from the block of clay and took a pencil from a leather case, held it point up before him, and used it as a sort of measuring stick, moving it from side to side to estimate the proper proportions.

  “What should I do?” asked Heloise.

  “I don’t know. Just move. We’ll see.”

  “I really don’t have much experience.”

  “That’s the beauty of it. Just be yourself. That’s what I need.”

  Heloise tried an array of poses. Heloise Pignot resting her cheek on the back of her hand and gazing out into space. Heloise Pignot sprawled across the chair, one hand cupping the back of her head. Heloise Pignot in lotus position.

  “Nice,” he said. “Yes, lovely. We’re almost there.”

  “I’ll have to sit still for a long time, right?”

  “As long as possible,” the man said. “It’s going to take us quite a while.”

  “But I can have a break if I need one? If I get a cramp or something?”

  “Oh, you won’t,” he said. “We’ll make sure of that.”

  “How about this?” She was lying on her side, one hand resting on her thigh, the other stretched above her head, as if she was swimming.

  “Beautiful. That’s perfect!”

  “I don’t know how long I can hold it, but—”

  “It’s exactly what I want,” he said. “Just relax and lie there, and I’ll get started.”

  Heloise breathed deeply, like her doctor had her do when he was checking her lungs. She closed her eyes and let Debussy’s piano music carry her off.

  When she opened her eyes again, he was standing right beside her. She almost jumped to see him so close. He was still holding the pencil.

  “Can you put your other arm next to your body, too? That’ll look more natural. Like you washed up on some deserted island.”

  Heloise did what he asked. “Like this?”

  “Yes, terrific,” he said.

  She watched him return to the drawing table, his head half-hidden behind the easel. The clay was ready for him. He took a few more items from his leather case: a box cutter, a pocket knife, a scalpel, and a sort of dagger with a long curved blade.

  “What is all that?”

  “Tools, for shaping the clay.”

  He selected the scalpel, bent over the table, and began carving. With short, quick movements, he shaved the sides of the brick, smoothing them, bringing form out of formlessness. He seemed to be creating a cube.

  “You’re good with that knife.”

  “This is just the rough work,” he said, not looking up. “The details come later.”

  He dropped to his knees, so his chin rested on the edge of the table, and began shaping the cube into a suggestion of something more human. And now he began pricking holes in the clay with the point of the scalpel. He poked, prodded, punched the blade into the yielding earthy flesh. From her vantage on the platform, Heloise watched bits of clay fly in all directions as he worked.

  “You really know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer her. Soon there was more clay on the floor than on the table. Heloise saw that he was unsatisfied. Frustrated.

  “Should we take a break?”

  “Stay where you are,” he snapped.

  He stepped away and looked back and forth between his sculpture and the girl. For the first time, Heloise felt he saw her more as an object than a person, and she didn’t like the feeling. Sculpting didn’t seem to be working for him. Maybe he should go back to painting, although she had no idea if he was any better in that medium than this one.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked. “Is it me?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said.

  He came out from behind the drawing table, the scalpel held loosely in his hand. He let it tremble between his fingers. He was thinking. Heloise knew she should be quiet, not upset him, but the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: “I can try another pose, if you’d rather.”

  “No,” the man said, still deep in thought.

  Then he came to a decision. He nodded, strode up to Heloise Pignot, and slit her throat with one fluid swipe of the blade. Hot blood spurted from her neck, painted her naked body, soaked the platform. She twitched convulsively, and, as she lay there dying, not understanding what had happened and how quickly the world could change, the Stuffer said, “It’s better if you lie completely still. Just a few minutes more. We’re almost finished.”

  When she was dead, lying there with open eyes staring blindly at the misted windows, he wiped the scalpel clean on his trouser leg.

  He said, “I like you better when you’re quiet.”

  He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and moved her into a slightly different position. He had no intention of sculpting her in clay. She herself was now ready to be molded into art. Her death was a necessary step along that path. He adjusted her arms and legs a bit more, until she was exactly the way he wanted her. Then he backed away and eyed her contemplatively.

  Now what?

  He could cut her open with the sica. He could excise her organs and dump them in the sink. He could fill her empty shell with the silica sand the ceramics classes used on their kiln shelves and sew her back together.

  It was almost one AM, and he was the only living soul in the atelier. He would have plenty of time.

  Or perhaps he should show everyone how angry their mistake had made him.

  The article in the newspaper, announcing that a suspect had been detained in connection with the serial killings, had made him sick to his stomach. The fools!

  Tobias Ornelis? Who the hell was that? Some ridiculous morgue attendant? How could they insult him like this?

  “I’ll show them,” he said aloud. “I’ve got to make a statement, move my work
in a whole new direction.”

  That was why he had decided to present his newest piece indoors. He’d broken in through the back door a little after eleven, after the last of the students and instructors had gone, and unlocked the front door from the inside, so that at midnight he could pretend to let himself and the unwitting Heloise Pignot in.

  Now that the time had come, he realized that making a break from his original style meant making a break from sand as well.

  What else, then? What would be his new medium?

  Ah, of course.

  Clay.

  That would show the world his creative spark flamed more brightly now than ever before.

  He approached the girl’s body, the curved dagger in his hand. He would unburden her of her useless old soul and deliver unto her a new one, a soul he would design purely and only for her.

  No imitation, this time, but a completely original work.

  She would be his finest creation, a demonstration of his undeniable artistic authenticity.

  “I am reborn,” he said.

  It was the flies that woke Raphael Styx late the next morning, hundreds of them, thousands of them, skittering all over him, in his eyes, in his mouth, burrowing into his ears and nostrils.

  He bolted upright, screaming.

  The metal shutters were closed, so the room was pitch dark. He fumbled for the table lamp and felt insects crawling up and down the lengths of his fingers.

  When the light winked on, he saw that they weren’t flies after all.

  They were maggots, not thousands but dozens of them, little white grubs wriggling in and out of a ragged tear in his left arm. He was rotting, and his hand was barely recognizable. The tips of his fingers tingled and he jumped in disgust when he saw that there were only four of them. His index finger was gone. The realization shocked him less than he would have expected. This was just a part of the process of decay. Something he’d have to learn to, well, “live” with.

  He’d known this next step was coming, and in fact it had taken longer than he would have guessed. Slowly, he stuck his head beneath the blanket. There, where it was still dark, his four surviving fingers searched for their wayward brother. They found blood and slime and more maggots, but the finger was gone.

  “Goddammit!”

  He finally threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the sofa. His index finger was on the floor, half-hidden beneath the end table. It looked like one of Shelley’s turds. He bent down, cursing his hip, and picked it up. It had shriveled to half its usual size.

  He tried to stick it back where it belonged, but the stump was black and crusty and the finger wouldn’t stay put. He stuck it in the pocket of his father-in-law’s pajama pants and was brushing off the top layer of bugs when the shutters rattled noisily.

  There was someone outside who wanted in.

  “Delacroix,” Styx tried to call, because who else in Ostend knew where he was? But his voice caught in his throat, blocked by clotted blood and his blistered gums.

  He hobbled to the front door and opened it.

  “Ta-da!” said Delacroix. He held up a blindingly colorful suit on a hanger. “Good morning, Chief Inspector. This’ll be a lot more comfortable than those rags you were wearing yesterday.”

  He bustled inside like a Meals on Wheels deliveryman.

  “Sure,” said Styx, limping along behind him. “Give me five minutes to change. We can go parade up and down the dike like a couple of pimps. Why do you wear this shit?”

  “I’m not a pimp,” said Delacroix. “I’m a sapeur.”

  “I’ve heard you say that before, but I have no fucking idea what it means.”

  “I’m a member of La Sape. The Society for Ambiance and Personal Elegance.”

  Styx looked him up and down. “You just made that up,” he decided.

  “Why would I? It’s a real thing, started in Brazzaville, where my father came from, and it spread from there to Brussels. Look it up, if you don’t believe me.”

  Delacroix crossed to the couch and bent over to lay out the suit, then jumped back when he saw the pillow infested with grubs. “What the fuck?”

  “Never mind,” said Styx.

  “Jesus, it’s getting worse.”

  “You think death is the end of the road?” said Styx. “It’s just the start of a whole new level of misery. Set it down over there.”

  But, afraid of what he might find inhabiting the table Styx was pointing to, Delacroix held on to the hanger and launched into a commentary:

  “Today’s special is the uniform of the true sapeur. A gray-green houndstooth blazer by Boss, paired with beige flannel trousers with a light-brown stripe by Lagerfeld and a wine-red vest by Hilfiger. Some people talk about a sound mind in a sound body, but we prefer a sound body in a sound suit. The shoes are by J.M. Weston, and they retail for about two thousand euros, so I want them back and please try not to mess them up.”

  Styx examined the outfit. He hadn’t understood half of what Delacroix had said, and couldn’t see himself wearing any of it, truly not.

  “Well?” said Delacroix.

  “You don’t actually expect me to put that shit on?”

  “Why not?” The rookie snapped his fingers. “Oh, of course, sorry. I forgot the pièces de résistance: silver cuff links by Armani and a gold tie clip by Gaultier.”

  Styx allowed himself to be nagged into trying the clothes on, and, while he changed, Delacroix found a whisk broom and dust pan under the kitchen sink and cleared the maggots from the couch. “Much better,” he said proudly, when the transformation was complete. “You may be dead, but at least you’re dressed well.”

  They got down to cases. Styx explained that he’d stayed awake most of the night. He’d gotten his father-in-law’s old computer up and running, and had done some research into Surrealism in old Ostend. By doing a search on the names Spilliaert, Ensor, Magritte, and Delvaux, he’d come across some interesting information—special exhibits at the Mu.ZEE on local Surrealist filmmaker Henri Storck and the sponsor of the first Surrealist expositions in Ostend, but nothing that seemed particularly relevant to the current investigation.

  “The city’s pretty much forgotten the grand old masters, except for those crazy Ensor masks,” he said.

  “You think the Stuffer might be upset about that?”

  “It could be a motive. Maybe he’s making some kind of statement. A protest.”

  “Couldn’t he just carry a picket sign?” said Delacroix. “Less deadly.”

  “Maybe we’re overthinking things,” said Styx, gently stroking the index finger he’d transferred from his pajamas to his jacket pocket for luck. “Maybe Surrealism’s not the point, or just one point.”

  “You’re the one who met Paul Delvaux.”

  Styx thought about it.

  “I’m betting it does have something to do with art,” said Delacroix.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “We found a fourth victim this morning.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yeah. Found her in an art school. He cut her throat. But here’s the weird part. There was plenty of sand there on the premises—they use it in their kilns—but he didn’t touch it. He tried to stuff her with potter’s clay instead. Total fail.”

  “You sure it was the Stuffer and not a copycat?”

  “Almost everything else matched. Concierge found the body early this morning and called it in. You can imagine what would have happened if the first class of the day had walked into that studio with her still there. Twelve-year-olds.”

  Styx shuddered. “Okay, but why clay?”

  “That’s what I want to know. Maybe he’s branching out, but maybe he’s starting to make mistakes.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes,” said Styx, thinking immediately of his life with Isabelle. Man, the mistakes he’d made in his marriage. You couldn’t count them on the fingers of both hands—not even if you included the one in his pocket.

  “Something else,” said Delacroix. �
��I guess we can let Tobias Ornelis go. He was in a cell at the time of the murder. The perfect alibi.”

  “I’ve been saying it all along: Ornelis is strange, but he’s not a killer. He’ll be glad to get back to his bodies. He’ll have a lot to tell them.” Styx frowned. “Wait a second. You said almost everything matched.”

  “Right. There was one other difference. He didn’t leave a greeting card this time. Instead, he painted a message directly onto the girl’s body.”

  “ ‘Number four in a series’?”

  “Right,” Delacroix said. “Then, after that, ‘Art for art’s sake.’ ”

  “Jesus.”

  “And this time he signed it.”

  Styx looked up hopefully. “He signed it?”

  “Not with a real name. With the name the newspapers gave him. The Stuffer.”

  Styx stared down at his €2000 shoes. He wiped up a splash of zombie slime that had already dripped onto the light-brown leather.

  “So where are we?” he asked.

  “Pretty much nowhere. The girl’s name was Heloise Pignot. She was twenty, in nursing school. No apparent connection to the other victims—at least, nothing we’ve found so far.”

  Styx tried to imagine what it must have been like to look the serial killer straight in the eyes. He was almost jealous of Heloise Pignot. Had the Stuffer worn the Ensor mask? Styx would give his life to unmask that scumbag. What was he thinking: he had given his life. His helplessness ate away at him, more ravenous than the post-death decay he was already undergoing.

  “I’ve made a few notes,” said Styx, handing over a sheet of blood-smeared paper. “Things you might be able to track down. I think the last item on the list might be the most promising.”

  “Paul Delvaux? Didn’t he die like twenty years ago? You’re not telling me he’s another—”

  “No, this is a different Paul Delvaux, still living. He’s fifty-five, has an apartment right here in Ostend, took early retirement a couple years ago. He worked in banking and got out with a golden parachute right before the downturn. Severance package, big bonus, and he sank a lot of it into art. He wound up getting named chairman of this fancy association, the SOB.”