Chapter Text
"Wealthy Sadist Kidnaps Fifty People to Hunt for Sport in Oregon Woods"
"Humans Hunted in Oregon- One Survivor"
"The REAL LIFE Most Dangerous Game"
"Man Survives Brutal Mass Murder"
It’s a good story- it’s truth stranger than fiction, a tale of horror beyond imagination playing in the metaphorical backyard of the people. It’s also, for many, something of a projected comfort. “I would have been the one to survive, if I’d been there,” is a common thought when people read about what happened, “I would have been strong enough to survive through the night. Like Will Graham did.”
For Will, the headlines blur together into an offensive amalgamation of guilt and irritation and despair- his concerns with them being both that they say too much, and they don't say enough.
What is said, constantly, over and over, by everyone: that Will is a survivor. That Hannibal Lecter, the mastermind behind the tragedy, is the devil in human form. That the people Hannibal invited to watch and join in on the hunt- all similarly wealthy and notable personalities he met in the circles he ran in- are a testament to what is wrong with society. That the people Hannibal kidnapped to be the aim of the hunt- all lonesome and unaccomplished- are victims to the utmost degree. Lives cut short. But not Will. Will is a survivor.
What doesn’t make the headlines is how Will falls asleep every night feeling the phantom sensation of warm hands on his face and a voice in his ear saying, “Cunning boy, you are something unexpected.”
***
When Will is fifteen, he makes a small series of mistakes. It’s truly one big mistake, but a preventable one, a mistake made menacing by threads of circumstance and leniency, a one-two punch of naïveté. The first part of the mistake is that he tells David to meet him in the woods. The second part is that he says it loudly enough to be overheard, though he doesn’t realize that at the time.
They’re outside the high school cafeteria, a wood frame building a couple dozen meters from the school proper. They’re as far away from the door as possible, practically standing in some bushes as David smokes and Will half-watches him. Will doesn’t smoke, but only because he knows he won’t be able to afford the habit if he starts.
“Can’t we just go to your place? I thought your dad was gone.” David has a good half-foot on Will, but he’s similar in demeanor- bookish, unintimidating. The main difference between me and David, Will has thought before, is that people seem to really like David.
“Uh,” Will says, fingers running the length of his backpack strap, He’s right, of course- there is no reason for them not to go to the trailer, besides the lingering, irrational trepidation in Will’s gut that tells him that his father would know what was happening even from hundreds of miles away- the way he always knew if Will stole some of his beer, or skipped school. A father’s omniscience over his dominion. “I think we should go to the woods.”
“Whatever,” David says, not harshly. David is nice- which Will finds absurd sometimes. The idea that Will has someone in his life that not only can stand him, but also has the same predilections seems like a miracle. The fact that he’s nice too- that seems impossible . “We’re gonna freeze.”
“It doesn’t even get dark until late anymore,” Will says, though it probably will be chilly. “We could always go to your house.” David has four sisters- Will knows they can not go to David’s house.
David huffs out a laugh, takes a step forward. One arm swings forward so that their fingers touch, for no more than three seconds. It’s still bolder than anything they have done at school, in public at all. “We can’t go to my house,” he says, voice low. Will’s breath is caught in his throat- he already isn’t making eye contact, but looks down even more as he nods, gaze all the way to his shoes. He only looks up when David is walking away, and Will’s so distracted by the way he walks, he doesn’t pay any mind to the murmur of footfall behind him, headed the other way.
***
Alana Bloom is not Will’s psychologist, because Will is refusing to see a psychologist. What Alana is, however, is stubborn. She seems dead set on being Will’s friend, if he refuses to let her be his therapist. Will assumed at the beginning that she was interested in the fame factor of it- of him- but the truth ends up being a lot harder for Will to accept: Alana seems to genuinely care what happens to him. Seems to be genuinely devoted to his ‘recovery’ from what happened in Oregon. It’s been five months- it’s a whole new year now, final February snow of the year still falling.
He does appreciate Alana, especially for her help in the practical aspects of his life he has no idea how to handle- the aforementioned fame, the access to sleeping pills, the lawsuits, what he’s actually required to do by law and what it’s just sternly suggested he do. And, to her chagrin, convincing the FBI to take ‘no’ for an answer when Will insists he won’t be testifying at Lecter’s trial.
“They have a confession from Lecter himself, don’t they?” They’re at a diner, eating matching burgers. Will’s appetite comes and goes, but it helps when there’s another person there. “I don’t want to see him.” Will never saw Lecter, not really. He was blindfolded for most of it, in the dark for the rest. He’s seen enough. An outline of a man, backlit like some facsimile of an angel. He knows what Lecter’s hands on his own feels like, knows the warmth of his breath, knows the weight of his body. He doesn’t need to see him.
“There are court advocates- ways to get around that. You won’t even have to be in the same room as him.”
Will flicks a french fry across his plate. Tries to come up with a good, normal excuse, and can’t. “I can’t do it. I don’t want to.”
“I won’t be so condescending as to explain to you what survivor’s guilt is,” Alana says, reaches to pat one of Will’s hands- Will only barely resists pulling away. “But you know you shouldn’t feel guilty about anything.”
Will measures the idea of that in his head, his soul against a feather. Does he feel guilty? Which part of it does he feel guilty for? Surviving? What he did to survive? That he liked it? The only thing a testimony would do is bring more attention to him. Will has the lingering feeling that if he gets up on that stand, puts his hand on a Bible- well, he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be allowed to go home afterward.
***
It has to be a dream- not because it feels like one, at all, because it doesn’t, it hurts far too much to be a dream- but because it’s a scene a step away from reality. Will wakes to find himself blind and constrained, sweaty and shaking. He’s outside, in an open space, the smells and sounds of dirt and decay near overwhelming when in combination with the absence of sight. His own breathing in his ears is perilously loud. The last thing he recalls- dinner, alone, stew after a long, cold day at work- seems simultaneously as if it should still be happening and as if it is years away.
He does see, but it’s all black- a blindfold then, and as soon as Will realizes he can feel it, a band tight around his skull. He can move both legs- both arms as far as his back but no farther than that. Scratchy rope around his wrists.
I’ve been kidnapped, Will thinks. Who the hell would want to kidnap me?
Will forces himself to his knees, and then upright. He begins to walk, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
The sound of breathing doubles, but it still takes Will a moment to register that means there’s another person near. “Hello?” He calls out, voice rough, not stopping to think about why that might not be a good idea.
“Are you like me?” It’s a woman’s voice- harrowed but eager. “Are you…”
“I’m blindfolded,” Will says, “and my arms are tied. If that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah,” the woman says. “That’s what I mean. Did you just wake?”
Suddenly there’s a crack of footfall, not ten feet away. The woman gasps, hard enough she lets out a high noise.
“What-” Will starts, breath coming fast again, “What’s going on?”
When the woman speaks it’s a loud whisper, the horror in her voice something desperate. “They’re hunting us.”
Then, the flit of an arrow flying through the air, and a strangled scream from right in front of him.
Will drops to the ground on instinct, has the breath knocked out of him as he tumbles down an incline he didn’t realize he was on. After long seconds of falling, he lands against a tree, and forces himself to sit up against it. He keeps his breath as quiet as he can for as long as he can, but no one seems to be coming after him- at least not yet.
Hunted. Will certainly feels hunted. Nausea almost overtakes him as he stands, leaning heavily against the tree. He curses as he almost knocks his head on a low hanging branch. It takes several minutes that feel much longer, and rubbing his wrists near raw, to get his hands free from the rope. He immediately shoves off the blindfold after, rope still hanging around his arms.
The blindfold being gone doesn’t help Will’s vision much- it’s very late, the moon a slight sliver in the sky, and the trees are so tall and plentiful there doesn’t seem to be a world beyond them- but it does help calm him down. Whatever, whoever, is hunting him expects him to be blind and bound. Will doesn’t have much time to think beyond that- a cacophony of gears and metal and footsteps making him lean back further against the tree, like he can hide inside. There’s suddenly a car, or a truck, near, bright headlights blinding him as much as the blindfold had. Will turns and all he can see are outlines of a figure- two figures, he realizes after a second. A man, and the monster he’s holding back on a leash.
Will can see the outlines of the master and monster like paper dolls- the man standing tall and half-hidden by shadows and trees, the monster clear in its outrage if not its actual composition. Will is just working with vague shapes, but it seems impossible that the monster is any earthly creature he’s seen before- its head and giant face is bear-like, but the rest of it… its body is much too thin. Maybe it is a bear, Will thinks. Maybe it's an emaciated bear, starved to a point beyond recognition. Will rolls his shoulders, and the loosened rope falls from his wrists.
The chain rings and then grinds as the monster pulls forward, giant maw crashing open.
***
The cop is a large man, with giant hands and a horrific, greasy mustache. Looking back at this moment as an adult, Will has to wonder if the man was only so large because Will himself was so small. It’s 1995 and Will is fifteen years old and just over 100 pounds, buried in flannels handed down four times over.
“Now, William James,” the cop says, “Mrs. Waters said she saw you lurking around the woods on Brookside about four hours ago. What were you doing in these woods here?”
Will’s given name isn’t actually William- he thinks it’s kind of stupid the cop knows his middle name but doesn’t know that. He starts to correct him, but a phantom heavy hand on the back of his neck, his father telling him to hold his tongue from states away, makes him stop. He’s anxious but also grateful- Mrs. Waters saw him, not him and David.
“I was going for a walk. I have trouble sleeping,” Will says, and then flounders for a moment- he’ll need a better excuse than that. “My dad’s outta town. I have trouble sleeping when my dad’s outta town.”
“Where’s your old man?”
“Work. Downstate.” He’s actually three states north, in Indiana, but Will knows better than admitting that. Everyone’s dad goes out of town for a short work trip. No one else’s dad goes to a different state for over a month.
The cop nods. “Well, we’ll probably have a talk with him too, when he gets back into town. But I think we can figure this out ourselves today, don’t you Will?”
It’s with a sudden sense of relief that Will realizes he’s not actually on the defensive- he’s being interviewed, maybe, but not interrogated. The cop doesn’t actually think Will did what happened in the woods. Will can still fuck this up, of course, but he has a chance. “Yessir,” he says.
“So you didn’t see anyone else in the woods?”
“No, sir.”
“No one? Did you hear anything? Yelling? Music? Footsteps?”
“No, sir.” Will pauses, remembers how he felt the crunch of a tree branch like the crack of a bone. A scrap of fabric, green torn from a tee shirt, burns in his pocket. “Birdsong, maybe some opossum running by.”
“What did you do when you were done with your walk?”
“I’m bad with directions. Got lost. I walked around til the sun came up, and found my way back to the trailer then. You came by about an hour after.” This is the important part- his story matching up with what he actually did, where people would have actually seen him. It does seem like the most bold lie he’s told so far, the most ridiculous claim to try to get away with. ‘Walking around lost’ is not a real alibi, but Will knows adults- especially adults like cops and teachers- usually think Will is kinda dim, so it’s at least believable. The cop seems to be considering, as he watches Will closely.
“Do you believe in God, Will?”
Will thinks about his father’s hand on the back of his neck. He thinks about David’s hands on his arms, on his thighs. He thinks about the first time he was aware of the concept of omniscience, when he was six and realized he would surely be going to Hell, if God really knew all. He thinks about falling. He thinks about the news- all the talk about Satanists and sacrifice. He thinks about the looks he gets from the women in the PTA. He thinks about counting the churches on his route to school, eight in five blocks.
“Yes,” Will says. His fingernails bite marks into his palms. “I’m going to see my mother again in Heaven one day.”
The cop nods. Will unclenches his hands. Every social interaction he’s ever had- every interrogation by an adult, every conversation with a classmate, even with David, is a test he does or doesn’t pass. This seems like the most important one yet.
“Alright, son,” the cop says, “You get yourself home.”
***
Will has no interest in the trial. The fact that there even is a trial, given the amount of evidence even pardoning Will’s testimony, is a sign of Lecter’s insanity. Not a jury in the world would let him go. Unfortunately, it also means there’s an inordinate and unavoidable amount of press.
Will is in a convenience store, getting aspirin and a sandwich, when he hears it. He’s buzzed his hair and shaved his face, in an attempt to not be noticed. It works more than he thought it would, and less than he’d like it to.
He doesn’t hear the sentence being asked- the audio from the television behind the counter is muffled slightly, and Will is actively trying not to listen. He hears “Oregon” and “murder” and “hunt” and “Hannibal Lecter” and he blanks his mind and focuses on the step-pause-step of waiting in line.
He’s checked out, and has turned to leave when a single sentence registers in his mind.
“I purchased the property in Oregon in 2002.” An accented voice- light, reedy, unfamiliar.
Will hesitates, unwillingly recalling another voice, a different voice. The voice of the man who bandaged his hands, in a quiet room in a mansion hidden away in the Oregon woods.
It’s not the same voice.
“Hey, bud. You okay?” The convenience store worker asks, reaching over a wave a hand in front of Will’s face.
Will jerks, stepping back and into another customer. “Shit- yeah, uh, sorry.” He hurries out of the store and very near into the street, having to pick up his speed to a jog to avoid being taken out by a cab. He makes it back to his condo with little awareness of how he’s done so, and leaves his grocery bag on the floor next to the front door.
He goes to where his laptop rests on the couch, opens it, and types into the search bar “Hannibal Lecter trial testimony”. After an ad for a brand of toothbrush, a video starts playing, this one supposedly of Lecter confessing to how he found his victims.
“I looked for people with no close family or friends. For obvious reasons.” Grating, sarcastic, cruel.
Not the voice Will heard in his mind every night.
Not Hannibal Lecter.
A confession, leading surely to a conviction.
Will spends the rest of the night, aspirin and sandwich forgotten, watching the videos of the trial, of the man that was not Lecter.
He has dark hair, just graying at the temples. He’s about Will’s height, a bit shorter. Lecter was taller, Will thinks. I should’ve looked at the pictures, I should’ve watched the trial.
I shouldn’t have trusted the authorities to find him, Will thinks, shock turning to anger, because they fucked up, and now I have to do it myself.
***
“Cunning boy,” the man says, shocking fondness in his voice. “You are something unexpected.”
Will murmurs nonsense, reaching up to push the blindfold away- he’s stopped, the man pulling his back hands down, brushing fingers over Will’s knuckles- an action that makes Will realize his hands are not just bloody but still actively bleeding. He’s inside now- the air cool and sterile. He’s seated and the man talking to him clearly is too, two chairs facing each other close enough Will can feel the heat of his body.
“Can’t have that,” the man tuts, as he holds Will’s hands to his own knees. “Now tell me, which one are you?”
“Will,” Will says- there’s no point in not- this is obviously the man that kidnapped them, or at least one of them. “Which one are you?”
“My name is Hannibal,” he says, and then, as if he knew what Will was thinking. “I am the one who brought you here.”
“How many are left?”
“Curious question,” Hannibal says. He’s still holding down Will’s hands. “Will you let me clean your hands?”
“Yes,” Will says. “You’ve done this before. Hunted.”
Hannibal gently brings up one of Will’s hands and submerges it into what is apparently a shallow dish of water. It stings, and brings Will back to himself a little. The oddness of the situation fully registers, and Will shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. “Yes, many times. And to answer your previous question, around fifteen quarries remain. There were fifty to start, including you.”
“Including me. Do you include me? With the rest of them? I can’t imagine you doing this for all of them.” ‘This’ being the way Hannibal is pressing a cloth into the cuts on his knuckles on each hand, actions steady but light.
“No,” Hannibal says. “You do not seem to be like the rest. You killed my beast,” Hannibal’s tone is mostly curious. Will intuits the ‘my’ in that statement denotes ownership instead of affection.
“It was a man,” Will says, having come to the discovery as he pinned the beast to the ground and snapped its neck. “A man in an animal costume.”
“He considered himself an animal in a man costume,” Hannibal says, now drying Will’s hands with a plush towel. “My hunt was a convenient way for him to carry out his natural impulses. That is what the hunt is for all who are invited.”
“You don’t seem to care that I killed him. Your beast.”
“I care very much that you killed him. I do not, however, care that he is dead,” Hannibal places Will’s hands, now dry but left unbandaged, back in Will’s lap.
Will brings his right hand up and hits Hannibal in the face hard, open-palmed, forcing his nails into cheek and jaw, and then lunges his body forward, topples them both out of their chairs and onto the floor. Hannibal’s soft noise at the impact is more out of shock than pain, even as Will scratches down his face hard, comes away with skin and blood.
Will feels unconstrained, wild and thrashing- like the beast in the woods had been, always is. But he’s tired, and starved of vision, and Hannibal ends up being larger and stronger than him. Will bloodies his hands again but ultimately finds himself facedown on the floor, Hannibal pinning him down with his own body. He does feel proud that Hannibal is panting in his ear, proud of the sign of exertion.
“If you want to fight me, you must first kill the other quarries I’ve brought here. I won’t abide by loose threads,” Hannibal says. It is not what Will was expecting, but something in him that he’ll later ascribe to some survival instinct twinges with excitement at the words.
“If I kill the others,” Will says, “You’ll let me take off the blindfold. You’ll fight me after I have a hot meal and some sleep. It’ll be equal.”
“Do you think you’re my equal?”
“I think you think I am. I think I’m the closest thing you’ve found so far.”
A long pause. Hannibal bears Will harder into the floor- marble, Will thinks, or granite. “You will have to deal with the other hunters as well, either through killing them or avoiding them. It would be terribly rude of me to deny them what I had already promised.”
“What did you promise them?” Will asks. Hannibal is moving away now, Will pushes himself up to his elbows but stays on the floor until- to his surprise- Hannibal helps him stand.
“The same thing I’m promising you,” Hannibal says, a hand heavy on Will’s shoulder. Will wishes he could see him. “An opportunity.”
***
His name is Jason Key. He goes to school with them- Will has never spoken to him before.
Well, Will thinks, I still haven’t ever spoken to him.
Jason is leaned up against a tree, posture casual and face beaten in. He is unrecognizable now- his face is still puffy with swelling, there’s a visible dent in his head, teeth litter the dirt at his feet. His torso has been carved up, shallow but numerous cuts making the scent of blood overwhelming.
Will mourns the fact that he’s going to have to get rid of his pocket knife.
“Will?” David’s voice is higher than usual, almost lost in the noise of the woods.
“David,” Will says, and then fully realizes what’s happening, snaps out of his haze, “David, shit.” Will hurriedly goes to David where he’s leaned against a tree trunk about eight feet away, takes his face in his hands. He realizes it’s the first time he’s ever touched his face. David can’t see what Will’s done- there’s a scrap of fabric from Jason’s torn shirt nearby and Will quickly wraps it around David’s eyes, a makeshift blindfold. “David, we have to go.”
“Will,” he says again, sounding faraway. Will is grateful he’s so out of it- Jason had hit him hard, once, knocking him out- so it’s not difficult to pull David to his feet and gently but quickly lead him away from the body.
Will blindly leads David, whimpering and shaking, to his home. Sits him down on the curb outside the apartment complex, and only barely remembers to take off the blindfold- evidence- and shove it into his own pocket.
“What happened? Jason-” David starts, but Will cuts him off.
“You fell. You hit your head, got roughed up in the brush,” Will says, eyes focused on David’s hands, and then on the ground. “That’s it.”
“What did you do?” David says, so quiet. It’s the first time in his life that Will truly feels like someone is afraid of him. He hates how much he likes it. He hates that it's David that's the one who is afraid. Jason hadn't been afraid. He'd died too quickly.
“Nothing, David,” Will says, and finally meets his gaze. “You fell.”
***
“I believe it would be a professional oversight for me not to insist you receive psychological help,” Alana is sitting on Will’s shitty couch, out of place in her nice clothes and general sense of order. Any attention Will’s been giving to keeping up the appearance of someone even mildly well-adjusted has gone out the window since finding out about Lecter. Though he has been careful to keep his realization to himself- Will doesn’t need to try it to know no one is going to believe him if he claims the man arrested for Lecter’s crimes isn’t actually Lecter now, after Will’s already removed himself from the trial.
“You’re going to have me committed?”
“I don’t want to. And I don’t have to. You could see a therapist willingly, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” Will says, not meaning it at all.
“People are clambering to help you, Will. And yeah, a lot of them want something else out of it. But isn’t that just being human?” Alana leans forward, hair falling over her shoulders.
Will can concede to that. There are a lot of people interested in meeting with him- psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists. He gets emails and snail mail and dropped-off business cards near daily.
“This one,” Alana says, picking up one of the letters she's been shifting through. “A man from Italy. He flew over just to meet with you, Will.”
“Sounds a little desperate,” Will says, giving Alana a grim smile, which is cautiously returned.
“Well, his name is Dr. Otto Gordon, and his business card is right here, on top of the fifty other business cards of people who just want to help you.”
Alana drops it after that, and they spend the rest of the dancing around the prevalent issues of Will’s mental health and trauma by focusing primarily on Alana. Will is fine with that- she lives a pretty interesting life, between her practice and her family and her apparent stable full of horses. They talk, and order in dinner, and finally, once the pre-evening blue sky turns dark, Alana says goodnight.
“I don’t want to find you dead here one day, Will.” Alana says, with no preamble, once Will has walked her to the front door.
Will is shocked by her frankness, and frowns. “You won’t. I’m a survivor, right?”
Alana looks at him, expression sad enough it makes Will regret his glibness.
“You won’t,” Will says, again, more seriously. “I’ll call one of them. One of the therapists.”
Alana doesn’t seem convinced.
“The one who came from Italy,” Will says, insistent, because it’s the only one he remember, "Dr. Gordon."
Alana leaves, and Will waits until he hears her car reach the end of the street before pulling out his laptop and searching for any small sign of where Hannibal Lecter could be.
Otto Gordon, when Will calls him just after lunch the next day, sets him on edge immediately. Despite the fact that he purportedly flew over just for a chance to talk to Will, he seems very nonchalant about the whole thing, and honestly sounds like an asshole.
“I see this as an opportunity, Mr. Graham,” the doctor finally says, after a lot of buzzwords about healing and trauma, and then something clicks. Before he even registers what his mind has realized, Will’s stomach drops, and his heart races, and his breath comes quickly. He remembers the cold granite floor, and the sting of water on his hands.
While Lecter in Will’s mind has a vague, unrecognizable accent, the man on the phone’s accent is clearly Italian. They share a similar enough cadence, but Will has also only talked to Gordon for maybe two minutes. Will thinks he might be pitching his voice down somewhat as well, but it doesn’t really matter. None of it matters. Despite the differences, despite the impossibility of it, Will knows. Will knows.
Will feels his hands begin to shake, but it takes him a moment to realize it’s not fear, but the most intense, undiluted anger he’s ever felt in his life. He mutes the phone in time to take three deep breaths, and then three more, and then three more. Then, hands still, he unmutes his phone.
“I’m in the market for a therapist, Dr. Gordon,” Will says, voice steady. “What do you say we have a talk over dinner?”