Styx (9 page)

At the police academy they'd made the recruits check their pulses every day—after every twelve-minute Cooper test, after each scuba lesson, during the damn first-aid lectures—but he never did get the hang of it.

“Come
on
, dammit!”

He let go of his wrist and pressed his fingertips to the side of his neck, feeling for the external carotid artery.

Nothing.

There had to be
something
, dammit. Otherwise, he wouldn't be standing here. Where the fuck was his pulse?

He still had a heart, didn't he? After all, he'd taken a bullet to it!

And then he realized what that meant, what it implied, and his wristwatch slipped from his fingers and fell into the sink.

His legs gave out from under him and, for the second time that night, he lost consciousness.

But this time he knew as he dropped that he would wake up again. Not as the old Raphael Styx, an Ostend policeman with a beautiful wife and son, but as a new man, a new
kind
of man.

There was a word for what he had become, but he cracked his head on the washroom floor and his blackened lips fell still and silent.

When Styx awoke, he found himself on the floor of the train station men's room. It wasn't a cabana on the beach, but it wasn't much of an improvement. Shrouded in darkness, his superstition and fear gave way to certainty.

Raphael Styx is dead
, he thought.
But he lives again, a revenant.

A zombie.

He clawed his way to his feet but didn't dare return to the mirror. Nothing had changed, and he didn't need a mirror to be sure.

He shuffled out of the public toilets and heard the first train of the new day rumble into the station. He felt for his father-in-law's pocket watch and looked around for a trash barrel, convinced it had brought him only bad luck. But then he noticed something strange.

The watch was a half-hunter, with a small crystal circle set into its
hinged lid to allow its hands to be seen even when the lid was shut. Through the crystal he saw that the second hand was moving.

He stared at the watch, clicked it open for a better view of the hands. And, yes, the second hand was slowly circling the dial.

“How—?”

The entry hall was still deserted. Even the bums had moved on from their benches. Styx stood in the shadow of an alcove, bewildered by this bizarre new turn his life had taken, when the voices of the day's first travelers echoed through the enormous hall. Footsteps sounded on the marble flooring. And then he saw them.

“This way, Your Majesty,
s'il vous plaît.
Our program for today begins with a visit to the first asphalt roadway connecting Ostend with Wenduine. After we enjoy a buffet luncheon at the Nouveau Theatre Royal, we shall proceed to the new port of Ostend, and then to the casino.”

Styx stared at the small procession of partygoers, open-mouthed. There were men in three-piece suits, wearing top hats and carrying canes. The women wore hoop skirts, narrow boots, and wide hats, and carried fans. They all spoke French. In the middle of the cortege was a tall man with an immense squared-off white beard and a sharp nose.

What was
this
? A theater troupe, just arrived from France, here for a performance at the Theater Aan Zee? Styx watched the parade draw nearer, the women giggling, the men talking rapidly and gesticulating broadly. The man with the beard only nodded, and occasionally pointed out a feature of the station hall's construction with the tip of his parasol.

“And if we have time, perhaps we can take in the Promenade and the Parc Léopold . . .”

The atmosphere was genial, the conversations of the men rebounded through the hall and fell on the ear like song. Styx stood in his corner, watching all the girls go by. He was so riveted by the
spectacle that, for a moment, he forgot who he was. Or
what
he was, what he had become.

It was odd: the mood, the people, their clothing, the ambiance; it all reminded him of another Ostend, an Ostend that was as dead as he was. The Ostend of La Belle Époque, when Leopold II ruled the land from his Royal Palace. The train station was the same as always, but it was bathed in the glow of an earlier time.

I'm going nuts
, Styx thought.
I haven't just gone beyond the pale—I've gone around the bend. This has to be some kind of nightmare.

He was so preoccupied with his own situation that he barely looked up when the procession moved past him. The men gave him polite nods, but two of the women in the company edged away from him.

“Here, you poor man,” another woman said, holding out a coin. She didn't dare risk brushing his hand, though, and dropped her offering at his feet. It tinkled to the ground, and the sound reverberated through the hall like wind chimes in a summer breeze.

“Ostende doit devenir la capitale de la côte Belgique et la plus belle ville,”
the king said.

“Mais bien sûr, Monsieur Le Roi,”
a member of the entourage replied.
“Ça c'est certain.”

They remained gathered around him, and Styx couldn't understand their nonchalance. Weren't they horrified by his appearance? Or were they so caught up in their roles that they saw him as just an ordinary beggar instead of the decrepit syphilitic horror he had become?

“Mais maintenant on va quand même fêter?”
said the king, a little louder now.
“C'est pour ca que je ne vais jamais au Congo. Pourquoi visiter le Congo si il y a des pauvres imbeciles à Ostende?”

They moved on, and their laughter disappeared around a corner. Styx bent down and picked up the coin. It was heavier than a euro and seemed made of gold. A profile of Leopold II's head and neck faced to the right. When this group played a part, they played to
win
.

He dropped the coin in his pocket and left his niche. Just before stepping out of the station into the bright sunshine, he turned back to the arrivals and departures board. The letters and numbers weren't clacking electronically, as they always did. Instead, the destinations and times were painted onto wooden slats and hung from pins attached to the board, just like in the olden days.

Styx did some math in his head.

More than two hours from Ostend to Brussels?

That trip wouldn't take two hours unless you traveled by steam engine.

Styx wasn't sure what to
do next. He ought to go straight to the police station. Even before heading home, he ought to fill Crevits in on the events of the previous evening. He could report his face-to-face encounter with the Stuffer. He could report that he'd taken three bullets. He could report—

Report what? That he no longer had a pulse? That his flesh was beginning to rot away, that he was starting to stink like the walking dead? What good would that do? And besides, he was no longer sure Crevits could be trusted.

Styx thought back to his previous life, the life he'd already begun to ruin when he still had one to live. John Crevits had twice betrayed him. The first time, Crevits was forced to call in Internal Affairs after a complaint that Styx had used excessive force on a suspect. The second betrayal had been more personal, when Crevits—whether on purpose or accidentally—had let Isabelle know about his affair with Amanda. He'd tried to make it seem like he'd done it for Styx's own good and the good of his family. Crevits, the guardian angel, that was the idea—but Styx knew better. From that day forward, things between the chief inspector and the commissioner had never been the same.

No, maybe he'd better not bring Crevits up to speed. What if, the minute his boss saw the new Styx, he notified his superiors of the situation? Crevits was a company man, always had been, and he'd relish the fame this incredible revelation would bring him.

No, he finally decided, John Crevits—like everything else—belonged to the life he'd left behind.

Styx clapped Grandpa Marc's watch
shut and shuffled out into the streets of Ostend. It was a smallish city, which would make it harder for him to hide. From time to time, he saw people looking at him. Two kids on the way to school with their mother stood stock-still in the middle of a crosswalk and pointed at the funny man limping along the pavement.

It didn't take him long to come to a decision. The sun was up, and in his condition, he couldn't go on wandering around in the open. That would attract more attention than he felt he could handle.

But where could he hide?

With the remnants of mental clarity he still had, he considered the current state of affairs:

The Stuffer had shot him.

The Stuffer thought he was dead.

Therefore, although he wasn't sure exactly how it might work, he had an advantage, a trump card he might find a way to play.

But what about Isabelle? And Victor? They need to know I'm not dead.

“You
are
dead,” the voice in his head reminded him. “That's the problem.”

But I can't hide from the world forever.

“For now, though, it makes sense to keep a low profile.”

Why? Because of the fucking Stuffer?

“Exactly. The bastard killed me.”

And your point is?

“He must know by now I'm missing, and that's got to piss him off. Serial killers hate being a step behind the learning curve. They want to
be
a mystery, not solve one.”

Where are your brains, you moron?
Look
at yourself! You need help.

“No one can help me. It's too late for that.”

You stink, man! And so does your plan to go into hiding.

“What else can I do? It's the only way I can think of for us to trick the Stuffer out of his nest.”

Us? Who else is there? You're on your own, Styx, there's no “us.” If you're really dead, then there's nobody left on your side, not even that nitwit Delacroix.

Styx listened to the voice of his other self. The human Styx, the rational Styx, the old Styx who shunned his fellow man, who had been nothing more than a doom-and-gloom hypochondriacal misogynist.

Well, this wasn't a rational situation. It was a situation, but there was no rational way to deal with it.

So what's your plan, if you don't mind my asking? Prowl around Ostend like a werewolf until you find him?

“I'm not the Stuffer,” he told himself, “and I can't beat him at his own game. No, I'll have to wait him out, wait till he shows himself.”

Without further thought, Styx turned into the Adolf Buylstraat, a pedestrian shopping zone lined with expensive, exclusive stores. In Leopold II's time, he would have been surrounded by wealthy ladies in long dresses. Today, though, it was early enough that the shops were only just opening and the street was still relatively empty.

He slipped into Kruidvat, one of the chain drugstores that carried a little bit of everything and was big enough for him to lose himself in its maze of displays. Better that than the ICI Paris XL, a compact boutique where his face would have given the coquettish salesclerks a heart attack. He hurried up and down the aisles as quickly as his
condition allowed, grabbing a few cans of deodorant—Garnier Men's, “don't sweat the small stuff!”—a bottle of aftershave, and the largest jar of foundation he could find in the makeup department.

He held his bank card at the ready to speed up his passage through the checkout line. The cashier barely looked at him as she scanned his items. He swiped his card, tapped in his PIN—and felt the nail at the end of his index finger break halfway free.

Back on the street, he was proud of himself for getting in and out without attracting unwanted attention. If the airhead at the register had been awake, she probably would have called the cops on him.

But then he asked himself: Why? He hadn't done anything wrong. Maybe he looked like a disaster, but he was just doing a little innocent shopping. There was nothing the police could do to him. He hadn't even disturbed the peace.

A few doors down, he slunk into an H&M. He realized by now that he could probably get away with his appearance for another day or two. Sure, his clothes were in tatters and his face was a minefield of dried blood and hollow eyes, plastered with drool, but he hadn't gone into all-out zombie mode, not yet.

Not too long ago he'd come in late one night to find Victor in the living room, watching some silly horror movie when he was supposed to be in bed. Lumbering zombies, missing arms and legs. Writhing, spastic, vomiting blood. But that wasn't him.

Not yet.

In a dressing room at the back of the H&M he saw that, except for the three gunshot wounds, there were no other indications of violence on his body. And he hadn't really begun to decay. No, examining himself now in the mirror, he saw a man in a nice linen suit (tan jacket and matching trousers that he'd grabbed from a nearby rack) and an immaculate white dress shirt. He looked like a guy who'd had a rough night—but a
guy
, not a character in a splatter film.