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Hannibal has just settled in Baltimore when he calls the god to the Chesapeake Bay region. There are preparations, and he makes them without delay. He purchases woods, deep and dark, for his god’s use. He builds the temple with his bare hands, by a stream of fresh water, so that his god will never go thirsty. He leaves the woods wild and full of prey, so that his god will never go hungry.
The woods, when he finishes, are quiet with solitude.
His god demands sacrifice.
(In Louisiana, Will Graham is shot. When he’s released from the police force, he’s pulled north—to Quantico, to Virginia, to Wolf Trap.)
For years, he does nothing. He finishes his medical degree. He begins work as a surgeon. He goes to the woods, driving the distance without concern.
He is a priest, an acolyte, a worshipper at the altar of the god he has summoned to the Chesapeake Bay. He leaves his sacrifices in the temple he built, the smoke sweet, the flesh splayed out in art. The artists of old painted portraits and carved marble in worship, and he is no different.
His canvas stretched over a frame of bone, his art painted red with blood—
His god is not satisfied.
Hannibal displays the body on the streets.
And go into the world, he says, to the flesh before his feet, and preach the gospel to every creature.
They call the Chesapeake Ripper a serial killer. They call him sordid. They say that he’s lost morality, that he’s beyond sin. They call him many things, all of them wrong.
Hannibal knows what’s right. He knows who he is. He knows who his god is.
But knowing who his god is does not equate worship.
Hannibal stands in the operating room. There is the steady rustling of the theatre, of bodies at work. They do not understand. A body lies, splayed, on the operating table. The rites were not observed. This was not meant to be a sacrifice. This was a mistake.
Hannibal was not able to save it.
He goes to the woods, blood on his hands. He offers what he can, this mistake, paltry offerings to his god. It is not good enough. It will never be good enough.
Hannibal is only one man. He rises, standing still and quiet in the darkness.
Gods demand worshippers.
Baltimore, serial killer hub of America. The deaths grow more and more sordid. The Chesapeake Ripper continues to take victims. Other serial killers come and go, drawn to death and decay, justice one step behind.
Hannibal sits in his office. He consoles those who come to him, prescribes advice and instruction both. His flock leave their tithes to him, and he bestows it to his god.
They are acolytes, paltry worshippers.
And when they die, they leave their estate to him. He takes their money, their property, their offerings—but not for himself. He is, after all, merely a priest.
For the glory of god.
And it appears that this is enough for a time.
Something is calling Will, something in the north. Restless, he moves, one city after another, making his way unerring towards the Chesapeake Bay. There is something about the surrounding woods that settles him, that leaves him uncannily focused on only himself.
He purchases a house in Wolf Trap, Virginia. It’s close enough to Quantico, far enough from people. It’s surprisingly affordable, given land and housing prices in the surrounding area. He doesn’t question his good luck.
It comes furnished, and he finds the house settles around him like an old glove. Always the new boy, drifting from one town to the other, all of them alike in their own way, and here, in the woods of Wolf Trap, he finally settles, sinking into the loam, roots making their way deep into the soil.
He finds the first dog a week later.
Something restless stirs in Hannibal. It’s a familiar feeling, one that he’s nursed since childhood. He cradles it, feeds it, keeps it from burning out. He holds it close as if a candle in the wind, guttering with each breath.
When he walks on the street, he can hear it, like a whisper, an echo of the wind as it slips between buildings. He trusts in it, this guidance, and he follows paths made straight and true. It leads him to a rolodex of recipes, of business cards organized neatly. It leads him into dark abandoned streets and a basement bright with fluorescent lights. It leads him to oil sizzling in a pan, fresh herbs growing on a wall adjacent.
It leads Hannibal to the pigs to slaughter.
Will has always understood killers. There has always been a piece of him, many pieces of him, fragments, that caught and reflected the darkest parts of humanity. Like the broken shards of a mirror, he could cut himself if he wasn’t careful.
Handle with care.
He knew what drove a killer when he was a child. It was as if he had been born with an understanding driven by cold winters and hunger. Growing up from boatyard to boatyard, he had never experience cold winters like he knew, but he did know hunger—a gnawing want, a desperation that lingered even when there was nothing else.
But all of his understanding is nothing when it comes to the expectations of the people around him. The FBI rejects him, but ask him to teach. He settles into teaching, like an ill-fitting suit. He talks, he lectures, he fills the air with the sound of his voice. He’s glad to stay here, in the dark woods that seem to know him better than himself.
In the Virginia woods, his thoughts seem to sharpen, to hone themselves until there is nothing but killers, and how they think. The trees loom above him like the pillars of a cathedral, and though he is small, he seems to settle into the woods, fill the spaces between the trees until there is just him and the woods, him and his dogs, Will Graham and the woods he has made his home as if he had always belonged.
He teaches about murderers wandering the world—
In Minnesota, a man murders a girl: dark hair, blue eyes, chafed skin—Mall of America looks.
Will stands before the sacrifice, all pale limbs still with rigor mortis.
Will looks, and he sees.
He prepares a meal for Will Graham. Sausage made fresh, bright bell peppers, eggs whipped light and airy. He holds it in offering, waiting to be allowed entrance.
Give, and it will be given to you.
Will Graham steps aside.
He offers and waits, watching avariciously. Will takes his offering, consumes it. The fruits of his labor, a tithe to his god. He eats and drinks his fill. But it is not enough.
In an empty office, a priest issues a call.
When Will enters, the front porch is anointed with blood. His shoes leave footprints as he steps through, gun up and forward. Hannibal follows.
What follows is blood and death. Will’s eyes are steady, and his hands do not shake. He shoots Will takes the offering with blood and death. His eyes are steady, and his hands do not shake.
But Hannibal is not the only one to make an offering. There is a child lying on the floor, blood pouring from the cut on her throat. Will Graham kneels before the child, and his hands are soaked with blood when he presses against the wound—not to take, but to heal.
Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.
Hannibal kneels. He slides fingers through skin slick with blood and pinches the artery closed.
She will live.
He raises his gaze to Will Graham when the paramedics arrive. He doesn’t look back, turned away. His hands are splattered with blood. Speckles dash across the lens of his glasses. Hannibal turns back to his task. He focuses on keeping the child alive.
Will shakes as he leaves, trembling like a leaf on the wind.
Once, Hannibal had been a child.
He had been a happy child. His parents had loved him, his younger sister had adored him. They had been happy, in the simple way that loss glossed over the mars and imperfections of life. He had been happy.
As a child, he had no need for a god. His needs were provided by his parents. His fears were soothed by his parents. His worries were eased by his parents. He had no need to call upon a god, and so he did not.
And then he had stopped being a child.
In his uncle’s house, he learned about God. God, who made the world. God, who ordered Abraham to kill his son Isaac. God, who tested Job without compunction. God, who demanded loyalty without question, and would reward beyond measure.
A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.
But before his uncle’s house, in the cold of a Lithuanian winter, all he had known in a single shattering moment was that he was powerless.
He had been a child. He held Mischa’s bones in his hands, Mischa’s flesh in his belly. He knelt in the cold and dark, and he prayed.
Will Graham paces around the mezzanine of Hannibal’s office. Stalks. Hannibal remains on the ground floor. He gazes up, their eyes never meeting.
When the office was constructed, Hannibal hadn’t thought the mezzanine could be used like this. His eyes raise to follow Will’s movements, his head tilts up as if basking in sunlight. When the two of them are on the same ground, they could almost be equals. Will, pacing above him, is not his equal.
He has a piece of paper in his hand, assuring that Will Graham is stable of mind, able to work. He can turn that mind to any murders that pass his way. He can look at the work of acolytes and see their gifts. He can hear the prayers of the depraved in every slit of a knife, in every shot of a gun.
There is work to be done.
Will Graham looks down at him. There is murder clinging to his hands. There are multitudes lingering behind his eyes.
He stands like a—
—totally functional, and more or less sane—
—statue of god.
Where Will Graham walks, justice follows. He is all-seeing, breaking apart secrets. He stands before a crime scene and sees. In the blood splatter, he sees a map leading to the heart of the issue. He follows the footsteps of the killer and sees their origins.
Hannibal hunts.
Will goes to crime after crime. He looks at them, and sees the deed as it is done. He looks at them, and he hears the cries of the victims. He finds the perpetrator. He gives their victims justice.
Hannibal offers.
Will stands in the classroom and teaches. He guides the next generation. He is a teacher, lecturing from the pulpit. He shows murders, and teaches how to extract justice for the victims.
Hannibal murders.
Justice cannot exist unless there is a need for it.
Once, Hannibal did not believe in god.
He knelt in the cold of winter, hands folded over too small bones, and when he prayed, there was no answer except the restless stirring of helpless rage. Each prayer ended unanswered, and the men who killed and ate Mischa lived on.
In the cold of an orphanage, in the empty halls of his uncle’s house, he folded his hands together and gnashed his teeth. He prayed for justice. He prayed for vengeance.
Ask, and it shall be given to you.
When he was no longer a child, Hannibal found one of the men who had killed his sister, and he killed him in return.
He stood, with blood on his hands, and when he touched his hand to his lips, he could taste the iron of the blood. He stripped the flesh from bones and it tasted like soup cooked in a copper bathtub on a winter day.
He stood before the remains, the soup simmering in its copper pot, the blood still on his hands, and, slowly, he knelt and clasped his hands together.
And gave thanks.
Will Graham was born in Louisiana, a prayer in his ears.
Louisiana was warm and humid, sticky with moisture. He was born to the soft pleas of “please, God, oh please,” the murmur of his father as he clutched at his mother’s lax hand, the echo of a prayer lingering in his ears.
Since he was a child, he understood. He could see into the hearts of his neighbors, understand their motivations better than they could. When he came across the splayed corpse on the banks of the river, he saw the fight on the boat that left the victim stabbed and sinking in the water. When he saw the perpetrator in the store the other day, he knew that he did it.
No matter where he went, he could hear a quiet voice whispering to him. It told him the secrets of the people walking on the street, their crimes. It told him that they were asking for justice. They asked for vengeance, and the voice told him.
He joined the police force, because where else would he give victims justice? He left the police force with a wound on his shoulder and a whisper in his ear.
hallowed be thy name—
And moved north.
Once, Hannibal prayed.
He had been a child, that first time he prayed, and Will Graham had yet to be born. He knelt in the cold snow, a child, and prayed for justice. He prayed for vengeance. He did not yet know that they were the same thing, to his god.
Once, Hannibal prayed.
He had stopped being a child, and he stood before the corpse of the man who had killed his sister. It was no lamb, pure and innocent, but a pig, dirty and unclean. He stood before it and stared at what he had done.
Once, Hannibal prayed.
His hands were covered with blood when he knelt. He had been a child before he took the knife and slit the man’s throat, but he was no longer a child. Baptized in blood, made anew in his god’s image. He prayed, and he felt his god’s grace, guiding him to drain the blood, to take the flesh and burn it.
Once, Hannibal prayed.
And Will Graham answered.
Hannibal sits across from Will Graham. The room is silent, like the hushed halls of a cathedral. Each breath seems to echo between them. They had been discussing the Chesapeake Ripper.
Will sits, silent, envisioning.
Hannibal exhales, says, “What do you see?”
Will’s eyes look over him, not at him. They gaze into him, through him, beyond him to the crime scene he laid out hours ago, in the woods of Wolf Trap.
He did not offer a lamb, innocent and pure. Instead, he found the worst of the pigs, and stripped the skin from flesh. He took the skin and burnt the pig whole, leaving it in the woods to be found.
He milled bones with fine flour to offer bread, seasoned only with salt, fragrant with the incense of the woods where he had made the temple. He offered it to the trees, and the birds pecked them until sated.
He found a pig, and offered its blood and fat ground together with the kidneys into long strings of sausages. He took the shoulder for himself, braising it slow until the tough muscles broke down. He cooked the sausages into a scramble that he left on Will’s doorstep, ate the shoulder himself that same day.
He drained the blood from a bull and watched the body burn, until the smoke rose thick and fragrant, like incense.
He spread the blood in the woods, letting it soak into the darkness. And, when all of it was done, he knelt in the cold winter of Wolf Trap, and he prayed.
(And he remembered being a child, praying for justice that would never come, praying for vengeance that guided his hand unerringly to its target.)
In the hallowed halls of Hannibal’s home, Will looks at him, and his voice is a benediction.
“An offering.”