Free Styx by Bavo Dhooge Page A

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 itshinged 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.
    â€œHow—?”
    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.
    â€œThis 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.
    â€œAnd 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 thespectacle 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.
    â€œHere, 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.