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It’s five in the morning when Will Graham wakes up for the third time that night, nightmare images flashing before his eyes, drenched in sweat and tangled in his blankets. He runs a hand through his hair and tries to keep his composure, although there isn’t really any reason, seeing as he’s alone but for his dogs. The dogs in question aren’t even in the room.
Obviously, sleep is out of the question, so Will gets to his feet and groans, stretching until the joints in his back make satisfying popping sounds. He stumbles out of his room and into the living room, where all of his dogs are curled up in various places. He flops down onto the couch, sighing heavily, content to just stop moving for a while. Maybe his brain will settle down for a few minutes. Maybe he’ll even get his heartbeat to go back down to a normal human pace. It seems like his pulse is always racing these days.
One of the dogs jumps onto the couch and settles down on top of Will’s feet, and he almost smiles. It’s too dark to tell which dog it is, but it’s warm and soft. Another dog jumps up next to it, and Will actually grins for the first time in a long time. And then it seems like the rest of the dogs get the same idea, and it doesn’t take long before every single dog Will owns is on the couch with him, furry bodies covering every inch of him. Will isn’t sure how to feel, but he doesn’t think he’s going to be moving any time soon.
Of course, Jack Crawford has other ideas. Will’s phone rings, the sound shrill in the quiet of the empty house, and Will is torn between cursing and sobbing. He fumbles for the phone on the coffee table, trying to stretch far enough so that he can answer it without getting up. Without too much difficulty, he manages to get the receiver to his ear.
“Hello?” Will asks, trying to sound like he was just sleeping so that maybe he’ll be allowed to go back to bed. But the universe hates him.
“We need you,” Jack announces, and Will settles back down onto the couch, hoping to get the last bit of warmth before he gets up. “Can you come?”
“Where?” Will asks, though he knows he’ll come no matter where.
“About a mile south of your house, actually,” Jack says darkly, although Jack doesn’t really have any other way of speaking. Sometimes he manages to sound gloomy or angry or almost desperate, but that’s the range of his emotion. Will would hate to have to get in Jack’s head. “We think it’s the Ripper.”
Will coughs, gives the affirmative, and hangs up. Sighing heavily, he maneuvers his way off the couch, making an attempt to not disturb the dogs. He shuffles his way into some pants and a jacket, managing to get his shoes on the correct feet the third time around, and locks the door behind him. The snow crunches under his feet as he walks out to the car, and he deliberates the consequences of walking. Will sways on his feet, eyes fluttering closed, and hurriedly gets in the car. He’d rather not have to get a ride home with an officer if he can’t stay awake long enough to walk home.
It takes him about a minute to get to the crime scene, guided by the wailing sirens and flashing lights that he can see from a half mile away. It’s on a dirt road set back in the woods, one Will used to walk on with his dogs sometimes before he started staying indoors more often.
His breath creates mist in the air when he gets out of the car, swirling up into the black night sky. Will glances around the crime scene, hands shoved into his pockets. Officers mill around like ants, shouting at one another or just standing there being useless. Jack Crawford parts them like the Red Sea as he makes his way to Will, clapping a hand onto Will’s shoulder.
Will tries for a smile, and Jack nods at him. “What’s happened?”
Jack sighs heavily, leading Will through the ocean of officers. Will allows himself to be led, trailing after Jack like a lost child. “Got a call about half an hour ago. A hiker, terrified out of his mind, came across the body. No prints, no evidence, just a body in the woods. We identified the body as Tomas Richards, a tailor from upstate. He was immobilized with a sharpened blade, and then the body was punctured with sticks and branches until he died.”
“And how do you know it’s the Ripper?” Will asks, eyes downcast. He doesn’t want to see anything before he absolutely has to.
“It’s the same thing as the last ones. Abdominal mutilations, organ removal, clean crime scene. We set up a tent to keep it contained,” Jack explains, and Will looks up. There’s a large white wall of canvas rising in front of him, with Jack pulling back a flap to allow him entry. Will takes a deep breath and steels his nerves, trying to mentally prepare himself. In vain, of course, as always. But it doesn’t hurt to try.
Will steps through the tent flap and has to take a small step back. There’s the body, like usual, splayed out on the dirt of the forest floor. It’s impaled with what must be hundreds of small sticks, piercing the translucent flesh and dripping with blood. Floodlights are set up, illuminating the inside of the tent with a surgical intensity. Three or four people are clustered around the body, kneeling and looking dumbstruck and horrified.
“Everybody out,” Jack booms, and the people go scurrying off like rodents, hurrying away from the body with a haste that tells of their desire to be away from such horror. Jack clears his throat and glances meaningfully from Will to the body and back. “You have ten minutes. Yell if you need me.”
And then Will is alone with a dead man, in this tent in the dark at five in the morning. He’s cold and exhausted and shaking, but he takes a step forward anyway, kneeling next to the body. He takes a deep breath, eyelids fluttering closed.
Everything slows down, time crawling by at an almost imperceptible rate, the very fabric of the universe seeming to stop in its tracks to watch Will work. He rubs his hands together, slowly emptying his lungs, eyes still gently shut. All of a sudden, he isn’t Will Graham, FBI special agent, teacher, crazy fisherman with a million dogs. He’s a killer, a careful killer, one that knows exactly how to work the system, with an intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of planned murder.
The Chesapeake Ripper’s eyes snap open, but he doesn’t see the body. He stands slowly, knees crackling, and rubs his palms together. All around, the trees whisper, no thin layer of fabric separating them from what’s about to happen. Before him stands a confused young man, rubbing his chin and slowly walking in circles, believing himself to be lost in the woods with a friend. The Ripper wants to laugh at how wrong this poor man is.
“I have convinced him that I’m his friend,” the Ripper mumbles to himself, narrating the crime. “He’s so stupid. He doesn’t see it coming when I pull a knife out of my pocket.”
The Ripper reaches into the pocket of his coat, pulling out an elegant knife with a serrated edge, five inches long and wickedly sharp. He’d sharpened it exactly for this purpose. “I wait until he’s turned around, angrily ranting at me, accusing me of getting us lost. He’s so rude, like an animal. He doesn’t deserve to watch me kill him.”
The young man doesn’t see it coming with the Chesapeake Ripper lunges for him, driving the knife into his back with a practiced precision, in a place that will sever the spinal cord, rendering his prey immobile. The man gurgles, but the Ripper was careful with his strike, and with a bit of effort he drags the knife upward, cutting just enough of the vocal cords that this man, this animal, will never make another sound. “I don’t want to kill him here, but it’s too late. Though I’d rather take him somewhere that I can mop up the blood, it was too good an opportunity. I’ve been waiting for him to be alone for a week.”
Then he gathers branches, sticks, tearing some off trees and taking others off the ground, piling them up in front of the terrified eyes of his prone victim. He snickers when he sees the terror in those eyes, fevered with pain and fear, just like the lower life form he truly is. “I’m going to have to kill him. He doesn’t deserve to have life. He doesn’t deserve the very organs that keep his body functioning. It doesn’t matter that he’ll bleed out here, the forest will soak it up.
“I need the right size stick to make the first jab with, before I can begin taking the meat. There’s the right one over there. I begin to walk toward it, but something happens first.” And then he trips, falling flat on the ground, knocking his head against some stones. The Ripper stands and curses softly, rubbing the sore spot, and goes back to work. After all, dinner won’t prepare itself. He selects a stick from the pile and grins down at the man, and then he drives it down with all the force he can muster, and—
Will Graham blinks and gasps, coming back to himself with a shock. He’s in the tent in the cold, under the harsh floodlights, standing before a body that’s slowly going purple around the fingers and toes. He shudders, trying to calm his breathing, and wipes tears away from his eyes, shaking his head violently to try and clear the thoughts out. All thoughts. He needs to be alone.
But he can’t be, because there’s a small cluster of rocks about a foot away from the body, with a scuffed place in the dirt about six feet away. And there’s blood on the rocks. Will chokes on his own breath and buries his face in his hands, pressing lightly on his eyelids until he sees stars. Then he takes his hands down and blinks until the swirling blackness fades into vision, gaze going immediately back to the rocks. The blood is still there. It wasn’t a hallucination.
“Jack!” Will shouts, and Jack pokes his head into the tent. It’s clear that he never really left. Will points at the blood on the rocks. “The killer killed him in the woods because the forest floor would soak the blood. Well, he didn’t really want to kill him out here, but it was too late. He tripped and hit his head.”
Jack gets a slightly manic look in his eye, and shouts for his team. Will is ushered away from the body, and goes gladly, content to sit in his car and wait for Jack to need him again. He crawls into the passenger seat, aided by a nice young woman who chatters on about getting him home safely. Will waves her away and she goes without argument, leaving him alone to lay down. His eyes flutter shut and he loses consciousness.
XXXXX
Will wakes with a start when Jack pounds on the window. He sits up immediately, banging his head on the steering wheel. Rubbing the tender place on his temple—and trying not to think about the parallels—he rolls down the window, blinking in the predawn light.
“We’re going to take the rocks back to the lab and see if we can get any DNA off the blood. You can go home,” Jack says. Will nods and scoots over into the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition. He glances around the crime scene to see that the tent has been taken down and the body cleared away, leaving only a cluster of police cars and several yards of yellow tape.
Will gets home in about a minute, heading straight for the front door. His hand shakes when he tries to unlock it, but he manages to get it open, holding it so that the dogs can go outside. He stands on the porch and watches them with a keen gaze, making sure they don’t wander too far or get themselves hurt.
After five minutes, the dogs are all back in the house, and Will follows them happily. He nearly collapses onto the couch, legs giving out and body giving up. He needs to sleep. He hasn’t slept for more than three hours at a time in days, possibly a week. It’s only a matter of time before the headaches and sleepwalking and sleep deprivation drive him over the edge of the cliff he’s been clinging to for years.
He’s barely shut his eyes when the phone rings again. Will nearly sobs when he picks it up and hears Jack’s voice. But what Jack tells him is the exact opposite of what he expected.
“We’re sending a car to your house to bring you down to the precinct. You need to be under protection.”
“Why?” Will asks immediately, turning to lift the curtain and peer outside. He can’t see any flashing red and blue lights yet, but now that he knows they’re coming, he can hear sirens. He mentally curses Jack for inadvertently bringing about this new auditory hallucination, left eye twitching.
“Because you found the Chesapeake Ripper,” Jack says, sounding satisfied. “And he knows who you are.”
Will can almost feel his heart stop. He lets go of the curtain and gets to his feet, ignoring the sirens and slowly walking back ward through the house, trusting his feet to not step on anything important like a box or furniture or a dog. He fumbles behind his back for the doorknob to his room, eyes glued on the front door, breathing slow and shallow. “Who is it?”
“We’ll tell you when we get you down here,” Jack evades, and now there’s a note of desperation, possibly worry, in his voice. “For now, don’t open the door for anyone. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t come out until you hear sirens.”
Will almost laughs, but there’s someone banging at the front door, and he isn’t armed yet. “Okay,” he says, and hangs up on Jack’s protests.
The gun is cool and heavy in his hand, painfully familiar and laden with traumatic memories. Outside, the sirens wail, and the knocking on the front door gets louder. Will bites his bottom lip, shaking hands struggling to load the gun. He usually keeps it loaded; he’s not entirely sure why it isn’t.
“Will?” It’s Hannibal’s voice, shouting through the door, and Will shakes his head violently. He can still hear the sirens, but a glance out the window betrays no hint of flashing lights. “Will, can I come in?”
The banging on the door stops, and one of the dogs starts barking. It doesn’t take more than ten seconds before the rest of them take up the call. The house is a cacophony of howling, drowning out the sirens and giving Will a moment of blissful clarity.
“Will?” Hannibal calls again, and Will squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t know if Hannibal is actually there. What if it’s all in his head? What if none on this happened? After all, catching the Ripper is almost too good to be true. And the spot of blood was a big break. Maybe he’s still asleep, drenched in a cold sweat and tossing violently against the sheets tangled around his legs. He’s just sleepwalking, huddled in his room clutching a loaded gun in a silent house while he dreams of sirens and barking and shouting and killers.
Will sits down on his bed, staring out the window and waiting for the flashing lights that have to be on their way. With the lack of banging on the door, the dogs quiet down, and Will can’t hear sirens anymore. Meaning that either he’s slowly coming out of his psychotic break, or they’ve left him to the mercy of the killer that is without a doubt headed right for Will.
“Will?” Hannibal calls again, softer and less urgent this time. “Jack called me and asked that I come over to make sure that you’re alright. Can you let me in?”
Will shakes his head to clear his thoughts. What is he doing? He’s hiding in his bedroom instead of going out there to actively engage, that’s what. He’s being cowardly and completely out of character. Deciding to add “paranoia” to his mental list of problems, he grabs his gun and creeps toward the door.
A look through the peephole tells him that Hannibal Lecter is actually outside, or at least a hallucination looking like him is. Will eases the door open a crack, making eye contact. Hannibal smiles softly at him, and Will nods to himself. He lets Hannibal in.
And is immediately stabbed.
XXXXX
There’s a bright light, and every inch of his body aches, so Will keeps his eyes closed. Instead of using his eyes to survey his surroundings, he uses every other sense. He can’t hear anything, but he can smell disinfectant, indicating a hospital or a ward of some sort. He’s in a bed with thin, scratchy cotton sheets, furthering his hospital assumption. It makes him wonder if he’s finally snapped.
There’s a knock at the door, and will wrenches one eye open. He stares up at the tiled ceiling, opening the other eye slowly. The fluorescent lights sting his retinas.
“Mr. Graham?” It’s a woman’s voice, tentative. Will tries to prop himself up on his elbows, but a burning pain ripples through his chest, and he’s forced to abandon the effort. He drops back down onto the bed like a stone, out of breath already.
There’s the sound of heels clicking across the rile floor, and then there’s a blonde woman peering down at him from behind thick glasses. She frowns worriedly, and he can see a spark of sympathy in her clear blue eyes as she bites her bottom lip.
“I would give you more medication, but I’m not allowed. You’re on the maximum dosage that we can give without putting you in danger,” she explains, and Will nods blearily. He wasn’t asking to be medicated. He can deal with this himself.
“You were stabbed, do you remember?” she asks, and he shakes his head. Of course he remembers. But he certainly doesn’t want to.
“Where am I?” he rasps.
The nurse’s hands flutter around the machines like butterflies, alighting on buttons and dials before taking off again to go to the next, taking inventory of Will’s vital signs. Will watches them with an idle fascination. They’re so pale and thin; he can see veins. Light blue lines trace across the backs and wrists, leading off into her fingertips, carrying vital blood to the extremities.
“In the hospital, silly!” she gushes, drawing Will’s attention from her hands. “One of the officers brought you in. You were stabbed twice, in the ribs, before someone came to save you. You’re very lucky to be alive!”
She flashes him a disturbingly bright grin, which Will can’t bring himself to return. Everything feels distant and fuzzy, as if he’s been heavily drugged. Which he has been, so nothing’s amiss there. “Can I make a phone call?”
“Sure!” the nurse says happily, reminding Will of his dogs right before he feeds them. She scurries out, leaving him alone in the white, white room with the painfully bright lights and no company but for the gentle whirring of the machines. He settles back onto the raspy pillows, head pounding.
He falls asleep for a second or two, and the nurse wakes him when she comes bustling back in carrying a heavy landline. Will sits up, sighing heavily and rubbing his temples. He nods gratefully at the nurse and stares pointedly until she gets the hint, leaving him alone once more, but not closing the door.
Will dials quickly, hands shaking, struggling to focus long enough to hit the right buttons. He holds the receiver to his ear, leaning back on the pillows but being very careful to keep awake. The phone only rings three times before Alana picks up.
“Hello?” she asks, confused. Will realizes that she must have caller-ID. She might not have been notified of his current status as an injured man.
“Alana?” he rasps. “It’s Will.”
“Will! Why are you in the hospital?” she asks immediately, voice keeping level but somehow gaining intensity. There’s a sound of something clicking; she must have put down whatever she was holding.
“I was stabbed,” Will answers honestly.
“I’m coming right over.”
XXXXX
Will’s asleep again when Alana hurries into the room, but he wakes up as soon as she starts questioning the doctor. He forces his eyes open a crack to see Alana with arms crossed, glaring at a tall man in a white coat.
“Alana,” Will murmurs, and her face relaxes a bit. She turns to him and tries for a smile, but he knows it’s forced. So is the one he gives in return.
“Hey,” she says softly, then turns back to the doctor, voice hardening. “Now, he’s awake. Tell me what’s wrong with him.”
The doctor looks at Will with a small glint of fear in his eyes, probably because of the anger thinly veiled in Alana’s voice. Will shrugs to tell him that he’s on his own, and the doctor swallows hard. Will tries not to read the man’s current mentality.
“Um, I need to speak to the patient first,” the doctor says reluctantly, and Alana makes a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. Will coughs, hoping for some sympathy. The doctor, with a put-upon look, sighs heavily and reaches for Will’s chart.
“Thank you,” Alana says.
The doctor glances worriedly at Will, and Will begins to wonder if the whole hospital thinks he’s insane. The doctor clears his throat and introduces himself.
“I’m Doctor Simmons, and I’m the one in charge of you for the moment. You were brought in with multiple stab wounds to your ribcage area, but when we got you in for trauma surgery, we also ran a few tests that yielded some… worrying results.”
Will gestures for Dr. Simmons to go on.
“You have encephalitis. That’s swelling of the brain, which will cause headaches, fever, sleeplessness, seizures, and a laundry list of other symptoms. We have you on antibiotics for that and some medication to prevent seizures. We don’t know if you’ll have any lasting problems from the encephalitis, but we’re hoping for a full recovery. Questions?” Dr. Simmons looks like he hopes there aren’t any.
Will shakes his head, and the doctor flees, steps a bit too hurried to be casual. Alana rolls her eyes in his general direction and turns her attention to Will, hands shaking slightly when she feels his forehead for fever. She frowns and sits in the hard plastic chair at his bedside. “I cannot believe Jack didn’t call me.”
“Me neither,” Will says, though his words are slurred. He hadn’t realized just how exhausted he was until he was given medication to fix it. “I’m fine, though.”
“You were stabbed,” Alana points out. “Twice.”
“Okay,” Will agrees. “Maybe not fine.”
“Who did it?”
“Did what?”
“The stabbing.”
“The Chesapeake Ripper,” Will answers, making an effort to sound overly chipper. Alana seems torn between disbelieving laughter and horrified gasping. The sound she makes is somewhere between the two. Will goes on, tone of voice going back to his normal one, though a bit slower thanks to the drip attached to his elbow. “I helped Jack catch him. He came to kill me in return.”
“Who was it?” Alana asks, still horrified.
Will can’t say it. Instead he shakes his head and lets his eyelids flutter closed, shaking his head weakly. He really does need sleep.
Alana sighs. “We’ll talk again when you wake up. Rest.”
Will’s already asleep.
XXXXX
Will wakes up again not much later, head aching as if it’s been in a pressurized contained for the last week. He lets out a shuddering breath, refusing to open his eyes unless someone actually demands it of him. Everything is happening too much.
That last thought didn’t even make sense.
Maybe he really did snap.
Will isn’t sure anymore.