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What a thing it would be if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free. It would be...heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unencumbered, into the morning. ~Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
The car purrs into the evening and Abigail Hobbs leans her head against the window to count the stars. The farther they get from the city, the more she can count as the light pollution fades.
She thinks about family camping trips, nights when the skies were so cold and clear that the stars were infinite. She'd tried to count them then, when she was little, when the camping and hunting was just camping and hunting and not any of the things it became later on. Sitting up on her father's or mother's shoulders to get that much closer to the sky, as if she could touch and hold. No one had told her yet about the time it takes for light to reach the earth, that some of the stars she reached for were already gone.
She wonders giddily if maybe some of the stars aren't really dead. Maybe they changed their names and moved to a different galaxy. Maybe they have their own Hannibals to whisk them away.
Her Hannibal has been mostly quiet on the drive, leaving her to her own devices, but he glances over now at the sound she makes, half-laugh and half-sigh. "Are you feeling all right, Abigail?"
She takes a moment to consider the question and then nods. "I think I'm having some of that lightheadedness you were talking about. From the blood." She presses a hand over the bandaged spot where he'd drawn her blood to stage her death. It's sore. It's good to feel sore; if she can hurt, then she's alive. "I was thinking about camping when I was a kid. We'd go so far out in the woods it felt like we were the only ones in the world. I feel a little like that now. I feel untethered."
Hannibal's eyes are back on the road as he nods. "It's a common enough thing to enjoy. To have your loved ones near you and be far from anyone else, and from the complications that come with other people in your life. Life can be very simple, once you walk away from the world and its expectations."
Abigail slips off her shoes and pulls her knees up tight onto the car seat, making herself compact, making herself safe, and thinks about a life without the world's expectations. "It's been a while since anything seemed simple."
"Things can be simple now, if you'll let them."
"I'm dead. My family is dead. All those girls are dead. You're taking me away to be someone new. That doesn't sound simple."
"You won't be alone, Abigail. I'll help you. It can be easier than you think. We're still an hour or so away, why don't you try to get some rest? You're going to need your strength."
"For your pound of flesh." She shudders, only once, but hard.
"Never that much, Abigail. Nothing you'll miss too badly. But it will be easier if you've had some rest, after the day you've had."
She’s too tired to argue and doesn’t really want to, anyway. She closes her eyes and thinks about what her father taught her, about the importance of using and honoring every part of what you kill. Together, they killed Abigail Hobbs tonight. She doesn’t know what to do with that yet, how to transform her own sacrifice into something new and valuable.
She thinks again about the time elapsed between a star’s death and its light reaching the earth, about the space between an action and its consequences. About what they did tonight, and what its consequences will be, and how free she is now to walk away from all of them. No one will ever look at her again and see the Minnesota Shrike’s little girl, killer girl, broken girl, evil girl.
She shivers, and Hannibal wordlessly turns up the car’s heat, and the car slides through the night like a knife seamlessly parting her old life from her new one. Abigail drifts in the quiet space between the two.
She wakes when the car stops, blinks and stretches and tastes the air as Hannibal opens his door. It’s heavy with salt - she’s never lived near the sea but this can’t possibly be anything else. Hannibal’s getting out of the car so she follows suit, craning her neck to look at the expanse of water, the trees, the house with its wide glass panels.
She walks to the edge of the cliff and peers over the dizzying height before stepping back quickly. She’s still feeling like she might float away at any moment, and it looks like a long way down if she faints at the wrong moment. She follows Hannibal to the front door and into the house.
She expected something abandoned and musty but it’s nice inside, clean and comfortable looking. Abigail frowns and runs her fingers over a surface that turns up no dust. “Does someone live here? Is this your weekend house or something?”
Hannibal hangs his coat and holds out a hand for hers and shakes his head. “I have a guest here sometimes. A young woman named Miriam. You’ll meet her, eventually. She’s not entirely lucid and not the best conversationalist, but she’ll be company for you when I can’t be, for now. And perhaps if you’re willing you can help me care for her.”
She’d like to ask more questions about that but Hannibal’s already briskly moving ahead, giving her a quick tour of the house, and she’s distracted by a large shape in the living area. “You really meant it about the harpsichord, didn’t you?”
He looks pleased to be asked. “Only that I would teach you to play if you wish it. If not, then there’s no need. One of the pleasures of starting a new life, Abigail, is deciding who you wish to be this time around.”
He talks like he’s started new lives before, and probably he has. She’ll ask about that, eventually. Right now she cocks her head for a moment and then says only, “I’ll think about it. It sounds like there’ll be a lot of things to decide. Can we.. can we go ahead and do this? The thing with my ear? I can’t concentrate on anything else right now. I want to get it over with.”
Hannibal has some preparations to make - apparently even he just doesn’t go around with the equipment for ear removal in his jacket pocket. He gives her some water to drink and directs her to the sofa to wait. He asks her if it matters which ear and she manages to keep her startled laugh from escalating into hysteria while she responds that no, it does not matter which ear.
He’s very, very gentle. Abigail remembers that he never did tell her how many people he’s killed.
He spreads some items out across the large dining table, something shiny, and she swallows hard and looks away. What he brings over toward her looks less scary; she recognizes a syringe and a little bottle of liquid, alcohol swabs, and there are a few other items she’s not sure about. Something that looks like a metronome, something that looks like a small light.
“Have you considered your new name?” he asks, sitting down near her, rolling shirt sleeves up, and she’s shivering again and she’s not sure when she started but she tries to focus. She tries not to sound scared. She thinks one of the things she would like to be, in her next life, is brave.
“Hadn’t gotten that far. I’ll think it over.”
“Good. Once you know, I’ll arrange some papers for you and we can discuss your next steps. Now, you’ll be more comfortable asleep for this. I’m going to put you out, and when you wake up it will be over. I’m going to have to go take care of a few things tonight, so I may not be here when you do wake up. I’ll leave you pills to take to help your healing, and there will be food in the kitchen, and you’ll be fine for a day or two until I can come back to check on you. Okay, Abigail?”
There’s no real choice in it, she knows. No other way forward for her. But she appreciates the kindness of the fiction. She nods and holds out her arm for the needle.
He must have been a good doctor once. She doesn’t even feel the sting, only a heaviness pervading her limbs and eyelids. She settles back and smiles dreamily, thinking again about her parents. “You’re going to use it for something, right? You have to…” Abigail startles and realizes she’s almost nodded off mid-sentence. “You have to honor every part.”
Hannibal pats her hand, and maybe it’s also gentle or maybe her hand’s just numb now. His smile has so many teeth, and his eyes are a night sky with no stars in them at all. He promises her, “We'll honor Abigail together, once she's gone." She blinks and he’s got antlers, blinks again and they’re gone, and if she thought was untethered before, boy is she untethered now.
“‘m I s’posed to count now?” She had her wisdom teeth taken out and they had her count, then, backwards from 100.
He seems entertained and says only, “If you wish.”
So she closes her eyes and she sees the stars over her childhood home that she will never return to after tonight, and she counts them out loud. “One… two…. three…. Hannibal, they’re falling. How do I count while they’re falling?”
The stars drop from the sky one by one and she tries to count them and the world becomes dark and Abigail Hobbs is gone.