Styx (32 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“Your X-rays. Your hip. The results weren't pretty.”

“I don't—”

“It's not just arthritis, Styx. It's—”

“Stop it!”

“It's cancer. All over your bones and body.”

And now Styx knew why his hip still hurt, even though the attack on Tersago had brought him such relief.

He'd suspected it all along.

“You were dead, Styx. Even
before
you died. Even before I did you the favor of killing you.”

Styx remained silent.

“Don't you see? You were terminal, man! Ready to die! All I did was pull the trigger. I told you: I'm a doctor, not a murderer.” S. Vrancken's brow furrowed, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a sheepish smile. “You weren't part of the plan,” he admitted. “But look at the way it's worked out! Be honest: Would you really go back to your old life if you could? Aren't you better off like this?”

“Cut the shit, doctor. I'm asking you one more time: Where's Isabelle?” He threw all his weight against the stick, crushing it against Vrancken's windpipe.

“She's here!” he gasped. “I'll take you to her!”

Yet again, Styx let up.

“But do you really want her to see you like this?” the Stuffer panted. “Hasn't she been through enough? Do you actually think she'll want you back?”

The bastard. But it was a question that had to be answered.

“I'm not here to get her back,” Styx said. “I'm here to set her free—from both of us.”

“A noble sentiment,” said Vrancken. “I'm telling you, Styx, I made you a better man than you were. I wish you'd—”

“Shut up,” he commanded. “One more word and I'll—”

“You'll what? Believe me, Styx, without me you'll never find her.” He made a last desperate gamble. “If I take you to her, will you let me go? I'll leave Ostend, you'll never hear from me again. Give me twenty-four hours, Styx.”

A long minute passed.

And then Styx stepped back, and Vrancken sank to his knees, his hands massaging his damaged throat.

“Let's go,” said Styx, tapping the metal fish at the grip end of his cane impatiently.

The doctor struggled to his feet. He opened the door that led back to his office, and Styx limped after him. Halfway down the hallway Vrancken stopped at another door. Behind it was a storage closet or a consulting room, and somewhere in there was his poor Isabelle. He dreaded the thought of her horrified reaction when she laid eyes on him. But once he'd gotten her away from the Stuffer, he would leave her to her future.

“It's dark in there,” Vrancken said. “I'll have to get the light.”

“Just do it,” Styx spat.

The door creaked open, the doctor's hand slipped inside and felt around for the switch.

And came out holding a shotgun. He swung it into firing position, both barrels pointed straight at Styx's already bullet-riddled chest.

“I wasn't lying,” the doctor said, as matter-of-factly as if he were offering a diagnosis to a new patient. “She's here, and she's unharmed. But I'm afraid you won't be seeing her. You and I have unfinished business to conclude.”

Styx backed away. All he had to defend himself was his father-in-law's old stick.

“It's a shame about the buckshot,” sighed Vrancken. “It'll do a
lot
of damage. But I suppose it'll just make the final statue even more surreal.”

He welded his cheek to the stock and closed an eye.

There was nowhere for Styx to run, even if his hip would
let
him move any faster than an old man's hobble.

But what choice did he have? He'd taken three bullets already, but he wasn't sure he'd survive another one.

He turned and stumped back up the hallway, through the empty waiting room and out the door, expecting at any moment the blast that would blow his crumbling body to tatters.

Styx splashed through rain puddles and across the Dorpstraat and dodged around the side of the church. He could hear S. Vrancken behind him, but still the gun didn't fire.

The noise. Of course. If Vrancken pulled the trigger, the explosion would bring the neighbors—and the police.

Styx staggered through the sucking mud and pouring rain as fast as his limbs would carry him.

And the blackness of Our Lady of the Dunes' graveyard swallowed him whole.

Styx didn't have a chance. He made what headway he could across the swampy ground, pursued by an even more horrible monster than he himself had become, but there was no escape.

His hip gave way, and the muddy grass wrapped him in a wet embrace. Flailing helplessly, he rolled onto a square of canvas staked out on the ground. It pulled loose beneath his weight, and he almost tumbled into an empty grave, just managing to stop himself at the edge of the open pit.

He drove Marc Gerard's stick into the ground and hauled himself erect, but the mud sucked at his feet and held him there, imprisoned, a scarecrow in the night. He couldn't even turn around to face the shotgun's blast when it finally came. In this downpour he knew the Stuffer would no longer hesitate to pull the trigger: the
storm would swallow the double blast as easily as the wet dirt had swallowed his feet.

There was a rumble of thunder, and a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.

In the few brief seconds of illumination it gave him Styx saw a brick catafalque supporting a concrete coffin, with bronze letters on the end closest to him reading

“Styx!” The doctor's voice tore a hole in the night, and the moon came out from behind the clouds to reveal S. Vrancken standing over him in majestic silence, the shotgun pointed directly at his head.

“A perfect pose,” the doctor smiled. “And the perfect location for my next exhibit.”

Styx stood there next to the grave, frozen by the mud—and by fear.

“There are so many things I want to ask you,” Vrancken said conversationally. “What's it like, there on the Other Side? Is it as terrible as they say—or as wonderful? How did it feel to be given a second chance at life these last few days?”

He set the gun's recoil pad against his shoulder, laid his cheek to the stock, and closed his left eye.

“Seems like old times, Chief Inspector. You remember our last encounter on the beach?”

“I remember,” said Styx.

“You're awfully calm for a man staring eternity in the eye.”

“Been there,” Styx said simply. “Done that.”

“I suppose we mortals can get used to anything. Even death.”

The walking stick was hidden from Vrancken's view by the wall of the freshly dug grave. Styx tightened his grip on its copper head. The
mud had shifted beneath his weight and there was a chance he might be able to work himself loose.

He wriggled his foot, felt the mud fight back but grudgingly release its hold. He took a painful half step forward.

And Dr. S. Vrancken, orthopedic surgeon, pulled the trigger.

The blast took Styx in the face, punched a dozen tiny holes in his throat, and ripped away half his jaw. Rotting flesh and bone fragments flew in all directions. But Raphael Styx stayed on his feet.

His left foot came free of the sucking mud, and he took another step. Vrancken's head snapped up in shock. He took fresh aim and unloosed the other barrel. This time the buckshot hit Styx full in the chest. He jerked back, then shook off the impact and staggered onward. There was no blood—all his blood had dried up long before.

Supported by Marc Gerard's cane Styx walked toward the doctor.

Vrancken fumbled in his pocket for fresh shells but dropped them. He fell to his hands and knees and scrabbled for them in the mud.

Lightning flashed again, and Vrancken looked up to see the monster he'd created towering above him. He turned frantically from side to side, searching for an escape route, but it was too late.

“No!” he screamed. “For God's sake, no!”

And with every remnant of his remaining strength, Styx swung the copper fish at the side of the Stuffer's head.

There was no need for a second blow.

The serial killer lay motionless at his feet. He was breathing, Styx saw, but it would be a good long while before he would return to consciousness.

Styx tipped his head back and let the rain wash his devastated face. A roll of thunder growled in the distance.

No, he realized, this time it wasn't thunder.

This time it was his stomach.

The animal hunger had returned.

He should get away now, before he could no longer resist the urge to feed. If he gave in, he knew his shattered jaw and the fresh wounds in his chest would quickly begin to heal.

But he also knew the old legends, knew that a zombie's bite would zombify the bitten one.

He had no idea if those stories were true, but could he take the chance of granting the Stuffer eternal life after death? Did the doctor deserve the same second chance Styx had received?

No, no, no.

Something deep inside him, deeper even than the ravening hunger, warned him not to open that door.

Half an hour later Styx
plodded laboriously back across the churchyard's marshy terrain. He crossed the deserted Dorpstraat and let himself into S. Vrancken's office with the keys he'd taken from the unconscious doctor's pocket. He was drenched and sodden and steaming, but he didn't waste time trying to dry himself. He flung open every door he could find, till he came to the very last of them, at the far end of the hall. Painted on it in delicate script was the word
Lavatory
.

He stood there, still dripping, and stared at that final door. No sound came from behind it, but he knew she was in there. He could feel her presence. Vrancken had boasted that he would never find her, but that had been nothing but a bluff.

There was an old-fashioned keyhole set below the knob. All he had to do was turn the right key, and he could set her free.

Or would showing her what he had become only sentence her to a more permanent prison?

“Hello?”

The voice was so faint he thought at first he'd imagined it.

“Is somebody there?”

It was her voice.

She was alive.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Let me out.”

Styx swallowed painfully. The compulsion to throw open the door and gather her into his arms was almost overwhelming, stronger even than the hunger he'd felt in the graveyard.

But he fought against it just as hard.

He stood there, separated from her by an inch of wood and paint, and listened to her piteous crying.

He touched the golden key with a rotting finger.

How many times had he stood like this in their home, him on the outside of the bathroom door and her on the inside, weeping, avoiding him, protecting herself from him because he'd stumbled home drunk or high or both and she couldn't handle the sight of his pathetic, idiotic face?

“Can you hear me?” the voice behind the door pleaded. “Please help me. Let me out!”

How many times had he locked
himself
in their bathroom, with Isabelle on the outside pounding her fists against the door in frustrated fury, afraid to let her see what some gangster had done to him when he couldn't pay his gambling debts, his face streaked with tears and the residue of coke?

“I won't tell,” Isabelle promised, more loudly now. “I swear it. I won't make any trouble for you.”

Nor I for you
, Styx decided.

He laid what was left of his head gently against the door. Eyes closed, he stood there and listened for one last moment to the sweet sound of her voice. He pressed his blackened lips to the door in a final kiss, and then he turned and went up the hall and through the waiting room and out of the building.

He took his cell phone from his pocket and pressed the speed-dial button he'd programmed.

“Who the fuck is
this
?” the person at the other end of the line shrieked, his voice clotted with a mélange of terror and fury.

“Who the fuck do you
think
it is?” said Styx calmly, despite the agony of having had half his jaw blown away.

“Styx? Is that you? You have to get me out of here!”

“Why?”

“It's—it's inhuman!”

“That sounds about right.”

“You've got to get me out of here, Styx, before it's too late.”

“It's already too late.”

“Then why did you leave me my phone?”

“Call a friend,” Styx suggested. “Call the cops.”

“You know I can't do that. If they find me—”

“If they find you, they'll put you away for the rest of your life. It's too damn bad we don't have the death penalty, or they'd hang your sorry ass.”

The silence between them stretched out for a very long time.