Bloodletting
Chapter One
Will's gaze is beyond the field of flowers, laid out all before them. His eyes see farther than any pair that watches him. The victim is young. Not yet twenty. Female. Black hair. Pale eyes. Paler now that rigor mortis had settled in her bones. She is impaled on a set of wide antlers, harshly pressing through her flesh. Puncturing lungs, her kidney, her intestines all mottled and ripped from the sharp prongs rising from her soft, cold belly and chest.
She is literally presented to them all on a golden plate with this grandiose display. It is horrifically similar to the Chesapeake Ripper's handiwork...yet... something is amiss.
Will circles the body, his eyes calculating and alight with a foreign light. There is something off about this macabre picture. The wounds don't fit the crime.
A glint of haziness before Will separates himself from Jack and the crew, closing his eyes and taking two deep breaths. He sees the pendulum swing across his vision. One. Two.
Three.
Will opens his eyes and sees the girl, writhing in obvious discomfort and sobbing uncontrollably. She is bound by the ankles, wrists tied behind her back, and her mouth emits muffled cries around the gag she is forced to suffer through. To Will's immediate right lay the antlers, already standing and fixed to the ground; a pedestal ready for the trophy.
"I take the bound girl and stab her twice in the chest."Will's body moves as purposefully and with as much dark intention as the murderer. He grabs the girl by the scalp and pulls her hair tightly, forcing her body to straighten out in attempts to alleviate the pressure. At this moment, Will raises his balled hand, the hunting knife tight in his grip and maliciously stabs her twice in the chest, strings of blood following the blade as it pulls out and reenters her flesh in quick succession. Her body buckles, a strangled choke rising from her throat as blood fills her lungs. It begins to spill out her mouth, her eyes wide and latched onto Will's face as she dies.
"I carry her dead body to the antlers..." Will lifts the girl over his shoulder, warm blood seeping through his shirt. He pauses in front of the open antlers, welcoming the sacrifice with an open mouth, malevolent fangs grinning back. "And I impale her." Will hurls her off his shoulders, using every muscle in his arms and back to slam her back into the set of antlers awaiting her arrival. A sickening crunch and crack indicate the body is anchored securely. The tips of the antlers break through her skin and reappear in the open air, red with her blood. They jut out her flesh, her eyes open and her chin tipped back to gaze, petrified, at the sky.
But Will knows it's not over. This killer was doing this for a very specific reason. This is a letter. A letter of adoration and admiration.
Will steps forward again, his hands fumbling in his pocket to take out a small scroll of paper, carefully wrapped.
"I carefully place the letter where I know the Ripper will find it. It's meant for him, after all." Will looks over the body. The mouth...the belly...the chest...theā¦
stab wounds.
Will forces his hand through the wound, ripping the skin further apart, his fingers sloshing around in the mess of punctured organs inside. Finally, the heart becomes tangible and Will pushes his fingers into the first chamber he can feel. He splits it open, depositing the letter safely there, nestled in with the black blood and sinews.
"I conceal the wound," Will harshly pushes the girl, tugging her in one direction and hearing her skin and flesh rip as the antlers drag and mask the wounds. "I want this letter to be found, but not by just anyone."
Will steps back, feels the stickiness of his hands and arms. The way his shirt clings to him and a clammy sheet of sweat and blood coats him. He feels how wrong but powerful this is. He closes his eyes again, and opens to them to the crime scene. His eyes rest over the wounds on her chest where he knows the letter will be found.
"This is my design."
Will's eyes flicker momentarily, a sudden wariness returning to him in rolling waves. He blinks, a shuddering breath releasing the tension from his body; the empathy. Then Jack's bulky form is beside him, and the waves crash against the rocky bluff.
"What did you see?" Jack's grim frown is taught and pulled thin across his face. The wrinkles formed in his face seem to reflect the depth of displeasure the man has for the bloody sight before them.
Will does not need to confirm the look on Agent Crawford's face. The severe tone he uses is evidence enough. Will knows what he has to say won't make anything better, but the letter must be recovered. "A poem."
"How poetic," the thick accented voice is easy to distinguish. Will's head turns a slight fraction to watch as Doctor Lecter approaches the body, hands clasped over his ever dapper jacket. Lecter stops alongside Will's other unoccupied shoulder with a charismatic smile, Jack and Hannibal forming almost a wall behind the Profiler. Only, walls didn't make Will feel any safer.
"Yeah, well this poem is a little hard to grasp," Will walks over to Price, the man confused by his sudden involvement.
Hannibal and Jack watch their colleague with interest, the former with an added dose of amusement.
"How do you mean?" Jack asks.
Will gloves his hands with a surgical pair he obtains from Price after rolling up his sleeves. "He put it inside her body."
"Where did he put it?" Hannibal steps forward, the concept obviously fascinating to the doctor and psychiatrist as he finds a better position to witness the reveal.
"Close to the heart," replies Will, carefully inserting his fingers into the deepest wounds in the chest. The stab wounds. They were cleverly disguised by the repositioned placing of the body. The killer could nearly have gotten away. The message might have been delivered.
After a few seconds of plunging his fingers with as much care as he could into the chest cavity, Will is able to feel the smooth corner of the paper and pluck it from her heart strings. He slips the small scroll out from the chest wound, his hand returning black with congealed and deoxygenated blood.
"It's been treated. And wrapped," Hannibal examines the letter in Graham's hand. It was treated. And it is indeed wrapped.
The paper is shiny, indicating either lamination or chemical treatment to keep the blood from ruining the words cautiously scrawled on the inside. What's more interesting is what holds the scroll together. A small flower. Presumably white before it was stained with the victim's blood, the small petals circled the yellow center.
"It is a Chrysanthemum," Hannibal declares, approaching Will with Jack following closely behind.
"Chrysanthemum? This guy is leaving notes with flowers for the Ripper?" Jack's incredulous look betrays the disgust in his mind.
"Not just any flower. The Chrysanthemum is known to symbolize rebirth and longevity," Will inspects the flower closely. There appears to be no other clue inside the flower. It is slightly disfigured from its decided flowerpot.
"Will is correct. In most Asian countries the Chrysanthemum symbolizes life and rebirth, but this flower is white. It is a symbol of love and devotion. Loyalty and truth," Hannibal's smooth and rounded voice denotes his intrigue in the small scroll with the way he offers more possibilities to the meaning of this present.
Jack raises an eyebrow at the mentioned words of affection. "Why would the killer copy the Ripper and send him a flower that is supposed to represent honesty and faithfulness?"
"Perhaps the letter will enlighten us?" Doctor Lecter looks to Will expectantly, the Profiler awaiting Jack's approval before he reads the blood-stained words. It comes.
Reaching into his front pocket and placing his glasses on his face, Will unravels the scroll and begins to read the words out loud.
"Murders are red,
Corpses are blue,
Now she is dead,
Does she die, too? "
Will finishes the short lyrical script with a contemplative frown, his cloudy eyes swiveling from left to right as he reread the small inscription once again. And again. And again.
"He's threatening to kill again," Jack at last says.
"It would seem that way, yes. However, the killer provides no indication of how to stop that from happening," Lecter switches his attention to the corpse, lifting the wrist with his gloved hand and checking the body for any suspicious marks or abrasions. "She's been dead for twelve hours."
The letter is short. Concise. Precise. There is a message there waiting to be understood. There is something in that letter the Chesapeake Ripper could decipher. What would a killer like the Ripper see in those words? What did Will have to do in order to see it, too?
"Whomever it is referring to, the Ripper knows her somehow. Her death must affect him in some way," Will voices his thoughts out loud, more to be said in his throat but he just chokes on the words. He refrains from saying anything more until he knows it's concrete. He meets Hannibal's gaze for a furtive moment. He sees the man already watching him under those dark pupils that seem to mask emotions too well.
Will closes his lips.
"We'll move the body to the lab. Run some more extensive tests. See what we find," Price chimes in with his usual peppiness despite the somber circumstances. "Maybe she's got more secrets in that heart of hers."
The playful quip was meant to be just that, but it doesn't amuse another soul that hears it. Jack's stern gaze hardens and, quietly, Price lowers his eyes, makes a quick note on his clipboard, and wanders off.
"Anything else you can tell us?" Jack looks hopefully over at Will, but the man makes no other move other than to shake his head assuredly. Crawford's broad shoulders stiffen visibly at the negative response. He lingers a moment, his feet firmly planted in the ground for a few silent seconds until he makes his way off the crime scene. "We'll regroup at Quantico. I want a report on that body on my desk by tomorrow morning!"
Soon after Jack's exit, Price and the other analysts follow. Then there is just Will and Hannibal who remain.
Will focuses on the letter in hand, still interpreting the words to make sense of it all. He couldn't accept a version of events in which they were left completely to the mercy of the killer. That they must wait for another murder. And another. And another.
"Perhaps there is an anagram. A secret message in those words," Hannibal speaks after a period of silence. He removes the latex gloves and pockets his hands in his expertly pleated pants.
"No," Will furls his brows, a thick mist hovering over the answer to this puzzle. He had only to remove the fog. He just couldn't figure out how. "This was meant for the Ripper. This is an ode to him. A sign of admiration. Anagrams and word play don't apply to the Ripper's style. The Ripper only understands how to take a life and surgically remove organs. There is no poetry to how he kills."
Perhaps if Will wasn't so engrossed in the message in his hands, he'd have seen the message in Lecter's grin. Aesthetic and soft to untrained eyes, it hides a sort of sadistic glee buried beneath.
How close Will is to solving this game of life, death, and blood. He is standing on the brink of destruction. Just one little nudge is all he needed. Such a thing is too tempting.
After all, Hannibal is curious to see what would happen.
"Whatever the message is of that letter, I think it best we prepare for the reply."
Will froze, his eyes clearing as he slowly raised his gaze towards the psychiatrist, catching a glimpse of those obsidian pools before the well dressed man turned on his heel and walked past the yellow tape.
Will is alone. Alone with his thoughts and the cadaver. He likes it best this way. It leaves room to focus. Yet, he is anything but focused. His concentration jumps from theory to theory. From word to word.
Maybe this letter wasn't a riddle. Maybe it wasn't even a threat. All Will knew is that it ended with a question mark. A question. Does she die, too?
Does she?
Will sighs audibly. The smell of the corpse permeates the air and soon Will cannot detect anything but death. The signs. The undeniable signs.
He rolls the letter back into its original scrolled form, letting the Chrysanthemum dangle idly in the wind, its stalk tied into a ring to fasten the letter closed. Its dried considerably, and the faintest breeze loosens a paper thin crimson petal. A few more minutes and Will is certain it will disintegrate entirely. He cups his hands, keeping the small Chrysanthemum and the scroll intact as he returns to the group outside the yellow tape.
He passes the evidence onto another analyst who promptly places the objects in a sanitized plastic bag. Will begins to remove the gloves, watching as a stretcher is prepared. Someone accompanies them with a body bag.
AN: Obviously, I do not own Hannibal nor any of the characters. We can all thank Thomas Harris and NBC for these wonderful creations. This is my first Hannibal fanfiction, so I'd appreciate any feedback or comments! I love this series dearly. You can expect lots of darkness to come 3
Thank you ! Eat well my friends. ;) Don't be rude~
-CJ&J
