Styx

by Bavo Dhooge

  Delvaux sputtered, “This is—”

  He seemed unable to find the word he was searching for, and Delacroix provided it: “Surreal?”

  “Precisely!”

  “I understand. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you report to the station for further questioning.”

  Delacroix couldn’t really see the retired banker slashing the organs from a dead body in his expensively casual haute couture blazer and €100 manicure, but that was just the point: anything was possible in the world of Surrealism.

  And what he could see, as he allowed the man to usher him briskly through the living room toward the elevator, was a pair of dark-green Crocs shoved almost out of sight beneath the leather sofa. They didn’t seem to fit Delvaux’s idea of style. Delacroix only saw them for a second, but it looked like the soles were caked with dried sand.

  “You’ll get your answers.” Delvaux bit each word off individually. “All in good time. But now you need to be on your way, or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, sir? Lose your temper?”

  “Quite.”

  The elevator was halfway to the street when Delacroix realized there was something else of importance he’d seen, perhaps even more interesting than the Crocs.

  The locations where the Stuffer’s victims had been discovered were all visible from Delvaux’s terrace.

  The Mu.ZEE, where Reinhilde Debels had been posed in the sculpture garden like the original Delvaux’s nude by the railroad tracks, lay to the southwest. The Kapellestraat, where Elisa Wouters was surrounded by early morning shoppers like Ensor’s old woman ringed by masks, was directly below. The breakwater, where Madeleine Bohy had been planted on the beach like Magritte’s limbless, headless torso, was to the north. And the art academy, where poor Heloise Pignot had, for reasons they had yet to discover, broken several of the Stuffer’s patterns, could just be seen in the distance, to the south. Even the cabana where Raphael Styx’s bullet-riddled corpse had reanimated was within sight.

  You could stroll around that terrace, Delacroix thought, and have the whole city under your watchful eye.

  Like a sniper.

  Raphael Styx did something he should never have dared to do: under cover of darkness, he left his hiding place and returned to the land of the living, cloaked in the camouflage of Joachim Delacroix’s ridiculous clothing.

  Styx had never felt much need for human companionship. He’d always been satisfied with an inner circle of two: Isabelle and Victor.

  Leaning heavily on his stick, he made his way haltingly in the direction of the dunes behind the Milho complex. From the dunes he could observe the back of his own apartment, where his wife and son still lived.

  He’d tried to wait for news from Joachim Delacroix but had finally reached the limit of his patience. He needed his family. Just the sight of them would be as restorative as a blood transfusion. And he had to know how they were dealing with his absence. Had Isabelle already found his note?

  He thought back to the early days of their courtship, before they married, before Victor was born. How long had that romantic idyll lasted? Two years? Three? Afterward, all their passion drained gradually away.

  From his vantage point in the dunes, he saw her pass before the apartment’s back window.

  “Isabelle,” he whispered.

  Her face was made up, and she wore a black summer dress with an open collar. Was she in mourning? Was this how she would dress for his funeral? Had those arrangements been made?

  “Isabelle.”

  When was the last time he’d pronounced her name? He sat half-hidden behind a mound of grassy sand, a voyeur stalking his own family.

  Victor wasn’t in the living room. Where was he? Hiding from the world in the privacy of his bedroom? Or had he gone to a friend’s house for the evening? Styx had lost track of what day it was. In death, every day was Sunday. Or Monday, or Tuesday—what difference did it make?

  He saw her again. She held something in her hands. A dish? A tray? Christ, he could almost reach out and touch her, she was so close. And so very familiar.

  His house. His family. Everything he’d worked for. Tears welled in his eyes, and he wondered how that was even possible in his state.

  It was torture to see her. His heart no longer beat, yet he seemed to feel it pounding in his chest.

  He lay on his belly to ease the ache in his hip and reached out his four-fingered hand toward her. If he closed one eye—the goatish eye he could barely see out of, anyway—her body fit neatly between his thumb and middle finger, and he could pretend to hold her.

  But then a second figure entered the living room.

  A man.

  Did she have a date? So soon? He wasn’t even cold and buried, and she had another man in the house? He could barely believe it. The unexpected visitor had his back to the window, but Styx knew at once who it was.

  “Delacroix?”

  The flashy pink suit, the light-blue cuffs and collar, the nonchalant strut of the sapeur . . .

  Perhaps there was something he’d forgotten to ask? Or, no, wait: Perhaps Isabelle had invited him over to show him the mysterious note she’d found? Sure, that was it. He could appreciate her need for a confidant, since the message he’d written was cryptic at best:

  My darling, some day you’ll realize that death does not exist. I won’t just live on figuratively in your memories. Sometimes love can reach across the raging river. I’ll be waiting for the moment when I will see you again, in all your . . .

  And so on. He couldn’t remember it all verbatim. He’d told Delacroix that he’d borrowed some of the language from Lord Byron, but he’d only said that in case the dandy read the letter and wound up thinking Styx had gone soft in his old age. In fact, he’d written every word himself. Maybe he had gone soft. The hard-boiled Raphael Styx, reborn as a romantic poet.

  Apparently Isabelle had invited the sapeur to dinner. Styx crept around the dune and inched closer to the window. He couldn’t see any sign of his note.

  “You fucking hypocrite,” he muttered.

  They were sitting at the dining table. At his table. And they were eating—no, not just eating. They were dining. Isabelle had outdone herself. This wasn’t police business. Isabelle was doing most of the talking, and Delacroix listened attentively, nodding at whatever it was she was saying.

  Something inside his body stirred. He still had feelings. He was not entirely dead.

  He waited until Isabelle carried their empty appetizer plates into the kitchen, then dialed Delacroix’s cell.

  “Come on, you fuck, pick up!”

  From his hiding place, he saw Delacroix take his phone from his pocket and check the screen, saw him turn toward the kitchen and call something out to Isabelle.

  “Answer the phone, you cocksucker!”

  Delacroix stood up and walked over to the plateglass window. He punched a button.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Styx.”

  “I know who it is. What’s up?”

  Styx swallowed uncomfortably. “Where are you?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Just answer the question, Styx thought.

  “At the office?”

  “No,” said Delacroix, “it’s late.”

  “I thought you were coming by.”

  “I was going to, but something came up. Maybe I can still make it. Probably not till midnight.”

  “I might be asleep by then.”

  “Bullshit.” He saw Delacroix cup his free hand around the phone and heard him lower his voice. “You don’t sleep, Styx, remember? Listen, I’m hanging up. I’m with people.”

  People, Styx thought. He watched the sapeur stand there at the window.

  “I just wanted to know if you got to see Paul Delvaux,” he said quickly.

  “Yeah, I was there this afternoon. He’s a remarkable man. You could be right. We’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

  “What happened?”

  �
�He’s got some pretty strong ideas,” Delacroix said. “He thinks we all ought to go back in time to when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.”

  “Get rid of the social-welfare state, that sort of thing?”

  “Well, he didn’t say it in so many words, but he came off as pretty radical.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing,” said Delacroix. “I’ll see you later. Or else tomorrow.”

  Isabelle came back from the kitchen, and Delacroix turned to face her. She was carrying a covered serving platter and wearing a pair of matching oven mitts, the last gift Raphael Styx had ever given her—and that was years ago. It was typical of the old Styx: those mitts were like handcuffs, intended to chain her to the stove, though he’d wound up being the one who used them the most, since she rarely cooked.

  “I have to go,” said Delacroix.

  “No other news?”

  “No.”

  “What about my note?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m working on it,” Delacroix said flatly.

  Right, I can see that. “It’s just,” he said, and watched Delacroix return to his place at the table as Isabelle took the lid from the platter. It was obvious he wanted to get off the phone so he could help her. “It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  “I really miss her,” Styx admitted. “I never thought I’d say something like that, but I do, I miss her. Weird, isn’t it? When I was still alive, I wouldn’t give her the time of day, and now that I’m dead, she’s all I can think about.”

  “I know,” said Delacroix, and Styx saw him as his own mirror image, the living man taking the place of the dead one, at his table, in his house, with his wife, with his son. “Try to think of something else. The case. The Stuffer.”

  “I’m not having a lot of luck,” said Styx. Unlike some people, he stopped himself from adding.

  Truth be told, part of him was glad to see Isabelle freed of him at last. In life, he’d been a ball and chain, dragging her down. Now that he was gone, she would have a chance to float back to the surface.

  And she deserved it. Why should she go on being miserable when she had a right to so much more?

  “I’ll see you,” Delacroix said.

  “Okay,” Styx sighed. “Bon appétit.”

  They broke the connection simultaneously, and Styx wondered if he’d heard those last two words.

  It was time to go.

  As he struggled to his feet, a light winked on upstairs, in Victor’s room.

  The curtains were shoved aside, and there stood his son in the window, looking out. Had the boy spotted him, out in the dunes, hunched over his cane like a crippled leper? It would be so easy to raise a hand and wave to him, give him a sign that his dad was still looking out for him.

  Still?

  When had he ever put his son’s interests before his own?

  Not for years.

  I’m sorry, Victor, he thought. I’m so sorry.

  He stood there, motionless as a scarecrow.

  He didn’t see me. He doesn’t see me.

  Victor turned away and disappeared from the window, and another character made his entrance: Shelley, who propped his forepaws on the windowsill and howled. The dog’s reflection in the pane turned him into Cerberus, the three-headed hellhound.

  No sound reached Styx through the thick glass, but he could see his old friend barking wildly. Was it possible that Shelley had smelled him?

  Isabelle rose from the table and went upstairs. He saw her at Victor’s window, trying to calm Shelley down. When that didn’t work, she pulled him downstairs by his collar and closed him up in the kitchen.

  Styx had had enough.

  He’d already died once over the last few days, and now he died yet again.

  This second death was even more painful than the first.

  Styx couldn’t stand the thought of going back to his father-in-law’s deserted house, so he decided to walk a while. He half expected to be transported back to La Belle Époque, but the city remained as it was. The locals were asleep in their beds. Tomorrow was a workday. The tourists were tucked in at their hotels and B&Bs.

  He wandered through the entertainment district, where a bit of life still ebbed and flowed. He came to a halt before the entrance to a club whose bright-red neon sign identified it as The Groove. The front door was open, and a soulful voice wafted out on the breeze over a hypnotic backbeat.

  “I want you the right way, baby . . .”

  It was the voice of Marvin Gaye, the doomed soul singer who’d washed up in Ostend a few short years before he was shot to death by his own father. Whoever was deejaying tonight had excellent taste, Styx thought, and he shambled through the door, along a narrow entry hall with velour walls and into the main room, which—luckily for him—was almost completely dark. A disco ball hanging from the ceiling spun slowly, and the four pinpoint spotlights that hit it turned the dance floor into a swirling galaxy of stars.

  The place was packed. Styx pushed through the crowd to the bar.

  “Whiskey,” he said, raising his voice above the music and the din of a hundred shouted conversations. “Rocks.”

  The bartender, a ponytailed giant with a snake tattooed on his right arm, looked at him strangely.

  “Please,” said Styx. “I’m dying here.”

  He’d given up feeling embarrassed about the way he looked. When he got his drink, he tossed it off in a single swallow. The place was mobbed, and he wanted to turn around and leave, but the crowd somehow absorbed him, swallowed him whole, enfolded him in a whirling mass of strangers, drunkards, and crazies, the freaks of the night.

  Surrounded, Styx felt his palsied, creaky body begin—almost against his will—to sway in time to the Marvin Gaye song. As he dipped and twirled, the others backed off and gave him room, until he was dancing solo in the middle of the floor, ringed by a throng of intoxicated spectators who clapped in time to the music and cheered him on.

  A girl who’d been standing alone against the wall wormed her way through the crowd and joined him. She was young and blond, but her hair was stringy, her teeth were yellowed by nicotine, and she stank of sweat. Her short skirt was stained and she wore tattered espadrilles on her feet.

  “You come here often?” she asked, eyes half-closed, fully under the spell of the music.

  “No,” said Styx, bobbing his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a zombie.”

  He waited for her scream, but what he heard was a peal of delighted laughter. “Who isn’t, man?”

  Before he knew what was happening, her arms were around him and they were slow dancing. He couldn’t understand it. Didn’t she see how ghastly he was? Wasn’t she repelled by his unholy stench? Or could she actually be attracted to his degenerate flesh, as Eros was drawn insatiably to Thanatos?

  “Shhh,” she soothed him, her hand on the back of his neck.

  “You have no idea who I am,” Styx whispered in her ear.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter.”

  Her hands dropped to his backside and pulled him closer. She ground her crotch against him. Styx felt his bones about to shatter, but at the same time he felt the old hunger stir within him. His body had been stiff with death for days, but now, that one last limp organ—his penis, his dick, his cock, his tool—was stiffening with life. He wondered how that was even possible.

  “If you’re a zombie,” the girl laughed, grabbing him, “how come this thing’s not dead?”

  “Maybe it’s like hair and nails,” Styx moaned. “They keep growing after you die, don’t they?”

  “No, they don’t. They just look like they’re growing, because the rest of the body starts shrinking after death.”

  One hand holding him tightly, the other crushing his mouth to hers. Her tongue flickered across his crusted lips. Styx tasted the sweetness of lust through the toxicity of his own fetid breath.

  It’s gonna fall righ
t off, he thought, like my finger.

  But before he could do anything about it, the girl released him and pushed him off her.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  She stuck out her tongue and plucked a rotted tooth from the tip of it, held it up to catch the sparkle from the disco ball and stared at it in horror. Styx thought she might faint or scream, but she simply dropped the tooth to the dance floor and slapped him, as if she were punishing him for having having told her the truth. He actually was a zombie, the bastard. She turned away and disappeared into the crowd.

  Probably a good thing she split, thought Styx. For just a moment there he had felt the glimmer of deep desire, and not for sex. No, this was a more primal, more unquenchable hunger.

  Tongue to tongue, teeth to skin. However unappetizing her appearance, he had wanted her. What would have happened if she hadn’t fled? Would he have sunk his teeth into the soft flesh of her neck? No, that was vampires, they were after the blood. Her brains, then? But, Jesus, she was such a skank! And yet, to him, she had looked . . . delicious, that was the only word for it.

  Was it possible that death was not an ending but a beginning, a gateway to new experiences Styx would much rather avoid?

  He checked Marc Gerard’s pocket watch, found it still running, then shut his eyes and went into a trance, barely feeling his uncontrollable tics and twitches melt seamlessly into dance moves. Eyes still closed tightly, a frown spread across his battered face, an expression of both physical and spiritual pain that stretched into a grimace as he reached skyward like a sleeper awakening from a century’s slumber. He rose on his toes and grabbed for the ceiling, jerking spasmodically within an imaginary prison of regret, self-pity, pain.

  “Hey,” a deep male voice whispered in his ear. “What’s goin’ on, brother?”

  He opened his eyes and saw that he was almost alone in the club. A knot of stragglers lingered at the bar, but he and the stranger were the only two people left on the dance floor.

  “When did she stop lovin’ you?” the deep voice asked.

  In the dark Styx saw that the bearded man was none other than Marvin Gaye himself. He was wearing the Adidas tracksuit and Jamaican knit cap Styx knew he’d worn every morning to jog through the Ostend dunes as he fought his way free from his drug addiction. He was probably on his way to the dunes now for his morning run.