As seen by the casual observer, it may appear as though every day the strange man in the lonely cabin drags a nattily dressed scarecrow into a clearing in the front of his house. He hangs the figure from a pole, dusts off his hands, and goes inside. Not long afterward, a large dog bursts out of the house and savages the scarecrow within an inch of its rag-stuffed life.
Dorothy Gale would have an aneurysm.
This is how it might have appeared should someone have been watching Will Graham's house for a few weeks. But Frederick Chilton knew there was no one watching. Even Will had ceased to play lookout after a while. By night, he and Frederick would stuff the increasingly tattered three-piece suit with rags, preparing for another day of "training." In the morning, before Will went to work, he would spritz the dummy with the egregiously expensive aftershave that had been a gift from Hannibal (Will still insisted upon using obscene amounts of the "ship-on-the-bottle" kind). The good doctor's effigy would then be hung in the yard—wrapped in the cloud of its exquisite scent like a pall—waiting for Frederick to wake up.
Frederick had taken to sleeping in these days, a luxury he had never in his recent memory afforded himself. And he could not recall having slept better in his life. It was enough to know that "Hannibal" was out there.
In this new routine, Frederick would rise, cook up a couple of pounds of sausage and devour the lot of it, taking care not to look out the front window. Not just yet. Then, he would walk back to the living room and fold the sheets and blankets neatly on top of the couch. After this, he calmly took off the clothes he had slept in and leave them folded atop the sheets. Again, carefully avoiding looking out the window, as if savoring a fine wine before drinking. At this point, Buster (now adorned with a vivid pink scar) would be leaping around his heels.
He might reach down to give the dog a pat on the head. Then, and only then, would he glance through the pane. On those cloudy winter days, the Hannibal dummy cast no shadow, much like the man himself. And Frederick saw the dummy as he saw the man: a clever constituency of parts. He could tear the body, certainly, but he would also need to dissect the life in order to clear his own name. That would take much more than a few minutes of context-divorced savagery. It was not enough to lure Hannibal Lecter to a moonless and remote hillside; it was doubtful he'd take the bait in any case. Will had been right all along in continuing his therapy. Taking the Ripper down would necessitate getting inside Hannibal's mind much in the way he winnowed into those of his own patients.
Not just getting into his head, but into his life. Into his home. These were the considerations that preoccupied Frederick Chilton as he stood, stark naked, on the liminal zone of Will Graham's porch. The frigid air would clutch and drag at his bare skin, and he could totter on both literal and figurative thresholds alike before he tumbled forward, letting the change happen. Hands would be paws before they hit the snow.
However, as much as he wanted to indulge the cliché of allowing instinct full rein, Frederick felt more and more that he did not transform every day on that porch so much as he split. By all practical estimations, the wolf surged off the porch and set to rending the doctor's likeness to increasingly pathetic shreds. Hence what any observer might have seen. But the man sometimes seemed to hang back. It was as if Frederick watched himself, gaining patience just as he lost it utterly. At times, he thought, as he clutched and tore at a flailing stuffed "limb," he might be content to live this way forever: brutalizing an idea for the sake of a few more wrested bits of self-knowledge.
Those bits, so long ignored, were precious to him. But at the same time, simply put, he wanted his life back. No, not necessarily his life, but a life. Frederick was not dim-witted enough to think that the status quo would ever be as it had been.
Nor, now, was he thick enough to fear the change. Not only the physical one that came upon him every day now at his behest, but the shift in his mindset. Turning into an animal had turned him into a man.
So now the man watched and was carried along for the ride as the animal dug its hind claws into the splintery boards of the porch and leapt into the snow. In a bare few bounds he was at the Hannibal-scarecrow's throat. Last time he had swallowed a button. This time the shirt collar hung open and stained with saliva. His clever teeth snatched the redolent, oil-soaked rag at the dummy's neck. Gravity brought him to the ground again, and with him came the rag, tearing through the buttons of the waistcoat until it hung at the beltline like entrails.
If wolves could smile, Frederick might have.
As much as they had sharpened his man's wits, the practice sessions on the Hannibal dummy had sharpened his animal's urges, as well. One day, a couple weeks into his and Will's routine, he woke up in wolf form with the very unaccustomed desire to kill something. Something real—warm and quivering and terrified and alive...though not for long. As if anticipating this mood, Buster waited by the door, prodding the jamb with his wet nose and whining.
Wolf-Frederick opened his mouth to say, "Okay," but it came out as a yip. Buster took this as encouragement and began leaping up and down. Still uncertain he would be able to turn back right away, or that a change to human form would deprive him of this delicious yearning, the wolf squirmed its way out of Frederick's t-shirt and went to the door.
Which was firmly closed.
"Whuff." Damn.
It took only a couple of futile tries at grasping the knob between his jaws—an idiotic and slobbery endeavor—before he realized it just wasn't going to work. Feeling more trapped than he had in a couple of months, Frederick snuffled, trotting from window to window and testing the latches, nearly rubbing his nose raw in the process. In the bathroom, he felt a slice of cool wind from the small window to the left of the sink. Will must have cracked it to cut the steam. Frederick was able to stand with his paws on the window ledge, wedge his snout into the frigid rectangle of space between sill and glass, and push upward. By the end of it he was jumping and knocking his nose painfully against the window frame to get it to rise just a few more inches.
Dropping back to the tile, a little dazed, he was struck by an urge to give up, to go back and burrow into the blankets on the couch. As a man, Frederick had never been good at follow-through. Executing a threat on a patient, keeping his New Year's resolution to get in shape, calling women back after tentatively non-disastrous first dates. He decided he would be damned if he wasn't going to follow his wolf-brain's primal lead and get out there into the snow to destroy something a little higher-stakes than a rag-stuffed dummy.
Still, the window was a bit higher than those in the living room and kitchen, and it had a screen. Deciding against risking his tender snout again, Frederick crouched and sprang up, much as he had when going for Randall Tier's throat, but this time thrusting his paws forward, looking as if he were about to dance a waltz. The mesh bowed dangerously as his heavy paws punched it, but then the plastic frame of the screen snapped free and whorls of snow skittered across the white porcelain of the sink as they swirled in from outside.
Frederick placed his forepaws on the sill and readied himself to jump when he heard a whine from somewhere near his hind paws. He'd forgotten about Buster.
You can't possibly want to come. Then, How am I going to get you through that window?
Buster whined again, shuffling with a clacking sound on the tile.
Wolf-Frederick heaved a canine groan, causing his furry chops to flutter, and hesitated only a moment before finding as delicate a grip as he could on the scruff of Buster's neck. If he missed, the impact could knock the little dog unconscious or split his head open. Then Frederick would have to spend the hours until Will came home licking blood from a friend instead of from a kill.
A friend?
The obtrusive thought nearly caused him to set Buster back down, but he could tell the dog was trying not to squirm with excitement. Frederick blinked once, twice, then crouched again and leapt. The impact of the sill on his ribcage made him spit Buster out the window onto the snow below. Casting a satisfied thought to the fate of the hideous, outdated wallpaper, Frederick scrabbled with his hind claws against the bathroom wall. He could feel the sharp pressure of the window frame on his back, and for a brief moment he was sure he'd end up stuck, Winnie-the-Pooh-style, half in and half out of the window of Will Graham's bathroom. But then he placed his forepaws on the clapboards and hauled, and suddenly his hindquarters were through to the other side. His tumble into the snow was indelicate, but he soon righted himself, shaking snow from his thick coat.
Buster was dancing on the frozen ground.
"Whuff." Okay. Let's go.
By contrast to Frederick's slow, considered slinking, Buster proved to be an aggressive and frankly frightening hunter. He joyously dug up a nest of hibernating field mice and wagged his stump of a tail while he snapped at least two furry little necks with a sharp shake of his head. Once upon a time, man-Frederick might have fainted. Now he only watched, impassive, waiting for larger game.
It was a luxuriant exercise. Every movement in the bare scrub, every sliver of shadow in the copse of trees, could have been something, but he found he didn't have to dash after it each and every time. He could investigate or let it slide at whim, a capricious hanging judge. Until one particularly clumsy pattern of snaps and creaks drew his attention. Peering around the slow-waving trunk of a birch was a tapered head—wet, black nose and a blaze of white fur leading up a dished muzzle to wet, black eyes. Prey eyes, set wide on the sides of the head. Frederick slammed himself down into the deep snow. When he raised his head again, Buster had done the same. The little dog was vibrating, but this time it was from fear.
The doe, though she was ragged and starved-looking, was still much bigger than Buster. Frederick looked over, trying to keep one eye on his terrified friend and one on the terrified deer. Buster caught his gaze and calmed a little. Steam coiled up from wolf-Frederick's nostrils like plumes of smoke from a dragon's snout.
Here, the man returned. Not physically but mentally. Vacillating where he had not before in bringing about the messy end of Randall Tier. A creaking bough far away in the stand of trees caused the deer to tense its hindquarters, tufted white tail poised in the air for imminent flight. Silent as the snow under his paws, Frederick was in motion before the deer's flight could begin.
Not as perfectly positioned at the beast's neck this time, he clutched and scrabbled with his paws, much as he had on the windowsill, along the prominent knobs of the deer's spine. But when his teeth caught meat on the shoulder, he bit down, feeling the stretch and snap of skin. The deer grunted. It could only wander a few panicked steps with Frederick on its back like a toothed knapsack, then it twisted in a helpless, graceful spiral and fell, snow pillowing its fall.
Frederick pried the tips of his fangs from the doe's shoulder blade and leapt over its shivering carcass to clamp down on its neck. Only then did the deer scream, when it seemed least possible that it could have. It was cut short with a gurgle as Frederick gave it a violent, spine-rattling shake. Gouts of red spilled onto white—steaming, melting.
Buster gave a yip.
Frederick looked up over the deer's death throes to see the dog bounding toward him. Buster ducked under one still-kicking leg and carefully studied Frederick's blood-covered snout. Frederick licked his lips. Once. Twice.
Buster whined and nudged at the slight bulge of the doe's belly. When Frederick closed his eyes, he could smell the still-warm viscera beneath the cooling flesh. His lips curled upward as he prepared to bite.
He was fully expecting to take a shower, even after having carefully cleaned his muzzle in the damp, new snow on the far side of the destroyed deer. That had been fun. A real bonding experience. Buster's gaze seemed twice as adoring now that they had partaken of mutual murder.
Thoughts of returning to his man-shape flew from his head, though, when he saw Will's car parked outside the house. Next to it was Margot's little roadster.
He was about to attempt a bark when Buster beat him to the punch, running like a yapping patch of mottled snow up onto the porch. The screen door opened; it was clear that either Will or Margot had only just arrived.
Frederick knew that she knew about him. He didn't know if Will knew that she knew. He wanted to find out, but not by way of suddenly appearing as a naked man in the snow. No, that sight was saved for Margot alone. This he remembered with a frisson of pleasure.
"Buster," Will said. "What are you doing out there?"
Frederick ambled up, trying to hide what were probably still apparent rust-colored stains on his snout.
"Flapjack!" Will said.
Frederick expected Margot to burst out laughing at the ridiculous name, but she remained somber as he climbed the porch steps and was ushered into the house. The reek of blood was still strong in his nostrils, but he caught a whiff of Margot's perfume. And...something else.
Distress.
He hadn't noticed it before, but she had a handkerchief out in her still-gloved hand and was dabbing at the corners of her eyes, trying to retain composure. Frederick, the man, was suddenly so affected that the wolf lost the strength in his hindquarters and fell with a flat thump to the mat. Something was wrong; something was very wrong.
"Can I get you a drink?" Will asked.
Margot sniffled, reining in hard on the emotion that sizzled just below the surface of her habitual coolness. "I don't know why I came here."
"I know why you didn't go to Hannibal."
"Everything I have. He has to take it away." Margot also seemed to go limp, pouring into one of the living room chairs with the fluidity of a fainting silent-film heroine.
Hannibal had taken something from her?
"There are other psychiatrists," Will said, obviously out of his element. "I'll help you find one."
"No," she said. A tear slipped down her cheek.
It took every ounce of of willpower Frederick could draw upon not to go up to her, to lick that tear away with his blood-tainted tongue.
"No?" Will asked.
"He wants my mind, too. Hannibal will give it to him," Margot said.
"Hannibal is not a scrupulous man, but I know that he won't betray your confidence to Mason," Will told her.
"I told F— I told someone once that the only thing Mason doesn't control is my body. And now not even that is true."
It tore Frederick's heart to see her so undone, on the edge of collapse. He knew she wouldn't give in, and that was why he mustn't, either. She would retain her facade, and he his, both helpless again in the wide wake of their respective tormentors.
"I don't understand," Will said. It was a simple, honest statement.
Margot put her face gently into her hands for just a moment, letting the kid leather cool her flushed cheeks. "I was pregnant."
"What?"
"He took it. Mason."
"What? When?"
"He found out and he took it, and he made sure it would never happen again." At that, Margot looked directly at Frederick, though she could not know to whom she spoke.
Will moved closer to her, put a hand on her shoulder.
That hand should have been Frederick's, and he ached with the knowledge of it.
"Your brother forced you to have an abortion?" Will asked.
A nod.
"When was this?"
Margot paused, then spoke in a voice just above a whisper. "Two days ago."
"What?"
Frederick leapt to his paws, every muscle strung like a bowline.
"He brought a doctor," Margot said. "I don't know what he did. I only know that...it hurt. It still hurts."
"We should get you to a hospital," said Will.
"It won't make any difference," she said, putting her head in her hands again. A bead of sweat trickled from her hairline down the finger of her glove.
"You're not well," Will said. "We have to get you to a hospital. Now."
Shaking her head, Margot tried to stand, but she fell back against the chair, its cushions puffing dust into the warm glow of the lamp beside her.
Frederick cried out, then.
"Flapjack, stop!" Will shouted.
It must have come out as a bark. Of course...of course Will wouldn't know.
Margot was trying again to rise, but she collapsed this time into Will's arms. He bore her up and carried her toward the door. "Stay," he told Frederick.
The command went unheeded. Frederick bounded out onto the snow at Will's heels. Will shot him a look. It was agony, but it was true. He couldn't come. He couldn't risk slowing them down, having Margot fail to receive the care she needed because the ersatz "Chesapeake Ripper" had come out of hiding to hold her hand.
He stopped, planted his hindquarters, and howled into the coming sunset.
"I know," Will said, trying to bundle Margot into his car. "I know." But it seemed to be directed toward the wolf rather than the woman.
Frederick watched the headlights recede over the hill. Then he bore down on the half-savaged "Hannibal" dummy in the yard and tore at it until the scraps were unrecognizable as fabric, much less clothing.
Just as he did most mornings, the man watched while the wolf did its work. And more horribly, just as he was in the mornings, the man was trapped in his patient, ticking thoughts.
Two days ago. Two days.
The baby. It wasn't likely, but it had been a couple of weeks. Margot's baby. It might have been his.
Having tortured its body to the point of exhaustion—first with the deer, then with the dummy—the wolf part of Frederick dragged itself up to the porch to meet its whirling man-mind. He fell to the boards, panting gobbets of steam into the the frigid air. At some point, he must have turned back again, because Frederick felt tears on very human cheeks.
And he knew even through those tears, with the wolf's lethal certainty, that Hannibal Lecter would not be the only man who needed to pay for his crimes before Frederick Chilton was avenged.