Chapter Text
Late afternoon glittered in reflections of stippled light on the river— bright fall colors flaring vibrantly in the face of winter. A fishing rod whipped through the air, plastic line whirring as it arced out over the water in graceful sweeping waves. On the end of the line was a red fly made of speckled feathers and old boat twine. It skipped over the surface before landing with a plunk up river.
Will Graham settled the line, tugging it back down stream and drawing it in for another cast. His actions were worn smooth by years of practice. The long, sweeping motions imprinted in muscle memory. Fishing was simple. Peaceful. He found serenity in the rush of finely braided line slipping along his fingers.
He caught every pop of glittering sunlight on the water. Here and there ripples fanned out from the feather-light touches of insects— dancing river striders and fluttering dragonflies. The electric yellow line drifted back, hugging the surface in delicate curves.
There was movement in the trees along the bank. Will saw nothing but lengthening shadows as the sun sank toward the horizon. The delicate orange of afternoon slowly unfurled, setting the sky on fire with hosts of colors. He could let the gentle current of the river carry him on into the night, but the temperature was dropping with each passing moment. Soon, even his waders wouldn’t be enough to keep out the chill.
Will drew the rod back to cast. The line danced over his head. There and back. There and back. Near a small clump of tangled roots and plants, a fish broke the surface. On the final flick he angled his wrist to aim for the fading ripples near the roots. The fly slipped gracefully through the air as he released the line.
The sound of heavy hooves thudded on soft earth. The shadows were deeper in the growing dark. They moved and collected like a living thing, but the trees were too dense to make sense of the shape. Whatever was out there was watching him— stalking him through the willowy branches of half barren trees and underbrush. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end
The zip of Will's reel brought him back to the river. The lure dropped below the surface. He anchored the line with one hand and drew it back in even pulls with the other. The hooked fish swam hard, dragging upstream against the current. Will took a step forward to ease the tension out of the rod. He tugged and relaxed, fighting the fish as it jerked side to side. The line strained in his fingers, leaving red marks on his skin. He took another step forward. The fish thrashed, sending up a spray of white foam and disappearing below the surface. The rod bowed horribly, his line creaking beneath the weight. Will grit his teeth and fumbled for his knife to cut the fish loose before it snapped the pole. He stopped short. He hated the idea of losing his fly. It was homemade, and the twine he used had come from his dad’s old fishing boat.
Will sloshed forward, adjusting the angle. The fish was losing strength against the current. Will chose his moment and walked backward, pulling as he went. He could hear the plastic line groan. He needed to draw the catch in now or risk losing it entirely. The surface of the water bulged around a shimmering white form. The mass floated within range but was far too big to net.
Will reached down to support the weight of it. He caught a handful of cloth, not slippery scales. It was heavy. A brilliant white dress bled through the water, blooming as he brought it closer. Dark brown hair bobbed up and fanned near the surface, parting like a veil to reveal a pale face. Death looked up at the sky through open, milky blue eyes.
Will stumbled and fell backwards. Icy water flooded his waders. The dead body floated up against his chest. He coughed as the shock of cold squeezed his lungs. His muscles refused to contract, and he was dragged along by the sodden weight and the swiftly growing current. His hands slipped over river rocks, slick with moss. He curled himself around the dead girl and surged to his feet. Water spilled out of his waders, grabbing and pulling at him like hands in splashing waves. Little by little, he stumbled his way to the bank, dragging the body with him.
He laid the girl out against the dark, earthy sand on the shore. She looked like a ghost. Her skin was translucent. A light smattering of freckles dotted her cheeks. Her lips were a thin, brittle blue. She wore a white dress, tattered and strung with debris— moss, and mud. In the hem was Will’s red fly, hooked in the fabric.
Will’s mind was as frozen as the rest of him, immobile thoughts crystallizing in his head. His hand trembled as he reached for her thin, delicate neck. There, his fingers traced an ugly, open wound where her throat had been cut.
Gray clouds doused the evening sky, rolling in swiftly on a stiff wind. Across the river a dark shadow spilled from the trees, deepening the chill in the air until Will’s breath came out in puffs of white. A massive black feathered stag emerged from the wood, watching intently with bottomless eyes. The animal snorted, tossing its black head, nostrils flaring.
Pain curled in Will’s chest in the shape of claws. The sight of the beast pulled sharply at an old, deep wound. Something pathetically stitched together long ago until it healed over, crooked and wrong. The pain tore through the ugly scarring until the emptiness was open again, spilling darkness from Will’s core. His knees buckled, and he hit the ground.
Will tried to hold the gaping flesh closed, to make it heal over once again and hide it away forever— but his wasn’t the only wound that unsealed. Blood seeped from the dead girl’s neck, growing from a trickle into a flood. It fanned out around her, color bleeding into the mud below.
His grip settled around her throat, desperate to hold it closed. His own wound gaped, spilling black ichor like tar, all over her dress. Blood pulsed out, faster and faster, flowing red and thick around his fingers. Not again .
His body trembled with effort, the pressure of his fingers doing nothing to contain the flood in either of them. A sob wracked his shoulders and he begged. He begged around the knot of terror logged in his throat. The wretched twist of his spine screamed please .
Across the river the stag stamped the ground, hooves turning up black earth. He tossed his head and crowed to the roaring sky. It was a deep lowing sound. A repeating bass note that rattled the space buried behind his ribs.
Will didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t make it stop. He had to make it stop.
A cold hand gripped his shirt. The dead girl sprang to life. Her milky eyes twisted in their sockets. Grazing him like a touch of ice. She pulled him close, her lips frozen as she whispered tainted secrets in his ear. Secrets that tickled like moth wings beating against his skin. The cold speared through him and sank down to his bloodstream. It crept through until it finally reached his seeping black heart. He knew her then, as if she were his own flesh and blood. He knew her name and everything she was— everything he lost.
“Break the cycle,” she whispered, and her grip fell lax.
Will staggered to his feet, water sloshed up around him as the river surged, growing in size. The gentle stream gave way to rapids. Mist clung to him, gathering at his temples like sweat and plastering his clothes against his skin. From up river, wilted flowers and browning leaves sailed the currents, heralding other white-gowned figures beneath the river’s surface. Will stood stock-still, unmoved by the current as bodies drifted by, their empty eyes open and staring at the sky. They came in droves, countless numbers— souls to be ferried into the underworld. The water turned rust-colored with blood.
The stag watched on mercilessly, black eyes unblinking. Will waded out further, until water was rushing up against his waist. Abigail’s words echoed like a warning and a promise, burning in his head. Will could change things . He had to change things. He closed his eyes and with a final trembling breath, he laid back and let the water take him.
Will sat up with a gasp. He was in bed. His sheets were tangled around his body, wet with sweat. Another nightmare. The frantic jumping in his chest left him cold and shivering. Paws shuffled on hardwood and a wet nose pressed up against his leg. Will jumped.
Tsk! He scolded, throwing his bedding aside. Max whined and cocked his large brown head. Blue moonlight hung on his fur like the silver lining of a black cloud. Will pointed toward the pile of dog beds on the floor but Max stayed put, black eyes twinkling in the night.
Will rubbed at the ache behind his eyelids, and slid out of bed. The floor sent a shock of cold through his bare feet. He wouldn’t go back to sleep any time soon.
“Need to go out, buddy?” He asked, his voice rough.
Max padded eagerly to the door. His little terrier, Buster, scrambled out of bed. By the time Will grabbed his coat and slipped on an old pair of unlaced work boots, the rest of the pack was up and shuffling about.
The front door swung open with a screech. Six sets of paws bounded out. They thundered over the wooden porch before landing with soft thuds on dirt and disappearing into the woods. Sunrise was still a few hours away, and the night was peacefully silent.
Will walked over to his old rocking chair on the porch and sat down, massaging his temples as he drove back the pain of a headache. It’d been a long time since he’d had a nightmare, and an even longer time since he had one bad enough to set off a migraine. He wasn’t sure what triggered it. They were much worse back in his days on the force in New Orleans, but since he’d taken the teaching job at Quantico they’d been almost nonexistent.
Usually his dreams consisted of abstract fears and bubbling anxiety. Though there were others that were much, much worse. Nightmares that delved into parts of his mind where Will never tread in consciousness. Images borne of primordial drives, where the rough stone walls were gouged by claws. There was never any light in the places where his thoughts bled out. His fears were a constant companion, growing and festering inside of him until he thought he might choke.
This dream was like one of those. It scratched at an old aching part of himself that he’d tried to seal away. Something he often convinced himself didn’t exist.
The subjects of the dream were strange. He knew them intimately even though they’d never met. It wasn’t unusual to dream about victims in the cases he worked, but Abigail wasn’t one of his. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know any of the dead that appeared in the river. These weren’t his ghosts. They were something else, something horrible and other— something that tread closer to the realm of prophecy and harbingers.
Will pulled his coat tighter. Dressed in nothing else but a t-shirt and boxers, the cool air nipped at his bare legs. It would take too much effort to get dressed. Each shift of his head made him nauseous.
The lingering guilt from the dream didn’t sit right. He felt wrong . Will was no longer a cop. He wasn’t responsible for anyone except himself and his dogs. He ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair and tried to think of anything else but the nightmare burning its way into his psyche.
Will startled at a strange movement in the woods. He picked through the darkness, unable to see anything clearly in early morning twilight. Logic told him it was the dogs snuffling around in the underbrush. He scolded himself and settled back into the chair. Anxiety made him jumpy, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Like something out there was waiting for him. He thought of the large black stag and shook his head. It was just a dream. He repeated the thought to himself like a mantra, but a knot of unease settled deeper in his gut. There was change in the wind and it promised more than a long brutal winter. He had the foreboding sense that he was standing at the edge of a cliff, and he was about to fall.
The feeling of anticipation, much like his headache, didn’t go away. It stayed with Will throughout the morning as he showered, spilling from the showerhead in waves of hot, steaming water. It was there as he fed the dogs, each of his worries chopped up like raw chunks of meat. It was there in his scrambled eggs, sliding down his throat. It swirled in his morning coffee, and rode in the passenger seat of his truck on the way into work. It sat as a student in the lecture hall— a shadow leaning on folded hands as it listened intently to every word.
Something dark had hitched a ride on Will’s nightmare, and joined him in the waking world. Now it was lodged in his brain like a sickness. The aspirin in his pocket wasn’t doing much to help, but he took some every few hours anyway, out of some vain hope to drown it out.
Time inched by, dragging endlessly through his lectures for the day, before ending abruptly at three. A few students lingered— like they always did— hoping to ask a few questions, but Will had mastered the art of impenetrable walls. None of them were pushy enough to do more than wait politely by his desk. He radiated his distaste for social convention, refusing to acknowledge their existence as he packed away papers and assignments. Eventually they left without comment, and he finished gathering his things. He was exhausted and ready to get back home for the evening. There was half a bottle of scotch waiting for him, and his restlessness was taking its toll on his patience for the waking world.
He shouldered his laptop bag and walked briskly through the halls of Quantico. Occasionally people tried to ensnare him in small talk when they ran into him outside the classroom— particularly other teachers. They found him to be an endlessly interesting oddity. Fortunately, the halls were empty today. Will was nearly home free when a snare in his periphery brought him to a complete stand still. Through the glass walls of an office, he spotted a single photograph on a bulletin board. His thoughts derailed like a train wreck, crashing to a devastating halt.
It was a picture of a young woman. She had long brown hair and wind-chafed skin. She was plain looking, but pretty. And so, so familiar. He should leave. His headache would only get worse if he stayed. He should go home and self-medicate— maybe try to get some sleep. Will adjusted the shoulder strap of his laptop bag, and tried the door to the office. It was unlocked. He stepped inside.
There was nothing else on the cork board, only the photo— like it was waiting for more tragedy to fill the space around it. Will wondered what it was about the girl that captured him so completely. It wasn’t the dead one from his dream, but she was familiar in a similar way. Her image burned in his thoughts like an old scab. He wanted to scratch at it— to peel it back and see what was underneath. He let his eyes fall closed. If he could sink into the feeling, maybe he could connect the dots. Maybe he could step into her shoes like he would a killer’s. He could become her. Think like her. He let the pendulum fall, sweeping him up in warm blue eyes.
The girl lifted from the frame, falling back into inky darkness. Beyond the borders of the image she wore a white dress, her skin pale with death. For the span of one trembling breath she hung suspended in space, pure and perfect. Then the moment fractured. Protrusions erupted through her torso, causing flowers of red to bloom against the white of her dress. They made a pattern like antlers, as if she were mounted on them. A name floated to the surface of his thoughts, Dolly Woodward.
“Hey, you’re Will Graham, right?”
Will jolted back into his body, disoriented. Nausea roiled in his gut, like he’d stepped off a tilt-a-whirl. The disorientation of an empathic episode was always a bitch, but the migraine made it ten times worse. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to curse.
Will recognized the woman that appeared at his side. She had long black hair, and a sharp cleverness shining in dark eyes. One of Jack Crawford’s people. Her name was Beverly— something. She’d been in the room the whole time, but he was so zeroed in on the photo, he hadn’t noticed.
“You wrote the standard monograph on time of death by insect activity,” She said brightly.
Will adjusted his glasses and took a step back toward the door. So much for his plan of avoidance.
“Yes, I—” He bumped into a file box, and grabbed it before it could tumble off the stack.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” She interrupted, but before he could respond asked, “Are you FBI?”
He shook his head, wondering how best to weasel his way out of this conversation. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “Uh, there were strict screening procedures…”
“It detects instability. Are you unstable?” She asked, crossing her arms. Will cocked his head at the rude comment. Not inaccurate, but still rude. At least she didn’t do him the discourtesy of dancing around it like his colleagues. They often treated him like a ticking time bomb of insanity.
“I saw the photo—” he started, then stopped. He didn’t have to explain. He hadn’t done anything wrong or illegal. This could just be another one of his oddities that people talked about behind his back.
“Do you know her?” Beverly asked.
“No. I thought— but no, I don’t. Who is she?”
The agent opened a manilla folder and pulled out a second photograph. She walked over to the bulletin and pinned it up next to the first one. Another girl. Dark hair, pale skin. Just like Abigail, the girl from Will’s dream. This one was also familiar in some distant and uncomfortable way. The name sprang to his mind much quicker this time, April Anderson.
“They’re missing,” Beverly said. “Two so far, but we think there may be a third. Jack Crawford has bumped this up to a top priority.”
“What are their names?”
“Dolly Woodward and April Anderson.”
The room tilted and turned. Will swallowed down bile, his head pounding hard enough it might just split in two. He couldn’t know anything about these girls. He didn’t even know about their disappearance until this moment, so how did he know their names? How did he know that they were dead? No, not dead. Beverly only said they were missing. But they were dead . Will knew they were.
“Are you okay?” Beverly asked.
“I have—” He rubbed his eyes until he saw stars, “I have migraine issues and I didn’t sleep well last night.” Will adjusted his glasses and decided it was best to evacuate. “Sorry for intruding, I thought I recognized one of them, but— ” he didn’t finish the thought and abruptly left the room. Beverly let him go. She would no doubt find his behavior strange and off putting. In this case it worked to Will’s advantage. The agent didn’t even attempt to stop or follow him out.
The drive back to Wolf Trap was long. The shadows of confusion and doubt clung to Will all the way home, dragging him down with a particularly vile sharpness. He’d hoped to go on a long walk with the dogs to ease his mind, but with the swiftly approaching winter, the days were getting shorter. It was already tipping into early evening when Will pulled up to his house. Exhaustion settled deep in his bones, so instead of a walk he let the pack out while he went inside for a drink.
Will tossed a few pine logs in the fireplace, lit a starter, and headed toward the kitchen. There was a can of pork and beans on the counter. He’d set it out before he left for work to remind himself to eat dinner. He put it back in the cabinet and poured a bottle of Jim Beam with a heavy hand. He tossed in a few cubes of ice without refilling the tray and settled heavily in an old worn out armchair in front of the growing fire.
There were many possible psychological explanations for his experience that day. A misfiring in the brain was the most likely one. The mechanisms for storing short term and long term memory could have gotten crossed, and new information could feel as though he’d known it beforehand. A simple case of deja vu. Will drummed his fingers against the cold glass, before taking a drink. The acrid liquid hit his tongue and he leaned back in the chair, savoring the way it burned on its way down.
Deja vu didn’t explain his certainty that the girls in the pictures were dead. It also didn’t explain his certainty that there would be more of them coming, or that all of this was about one girl in particular, Abigail. Will held the girl in his mind, trying to focus on her alone. Abigail wasn’t missing yet. If it came to pass, then that meant these thoughts were reaching beyond simple reasoning and into the realm of premonition. Will scoffed and took another drink, downing half in a long swallow. He was many things, but a soothsayer wasn’t one of them. No, this had to be another facet of his version of crazy. He needed to deal with it and keep it hidden, just like the rest.
Flames licked up the logs in the fireplace, dancing to their full height and filling his living room with a bright orange glow. The heat bled slowly through the air, warming his legs. Will allowed his mind to drift, mesmerized by the dancing fire. It was nice to just float for a while, to have the bright light chase off the shadows in the corners of his mind. The whiskey was hitting his bloodstream and warming him from the center out. For the first time all day, his migraine began to settle, and he felt the tension melt away.
From somewhere in his mind a voice slipped through. He recognized it as well as his own, the strange accent rolling through him like a comforting song. “Put your head back, Will. Close your eyes. Wade into the quiet of the stream.”
Will gasped, blinking rapidly as he glanced around the empty room. The words were firmly in his mind, but they touched him like a gentle, tangible caress— a strikingly intimate auditory hallucination. He must have briefly fallen asleep. Heat filled the room like a physical presence, and he was warmed all the way through the ends of his fingertips. A dull ache filled his chest at the familiarity of it all, and he smiled sadly.
“Am I going crazy?” Will asked the flames.
“Crazy is relative. Behaviors are only outside the norm if they are not accepted by one’s peers or others in their culture or subculture.”
Will chuckled, unfazed by the disembodied response. “I have no culture or subculture. I am an island.”
“You isolate yourself because you are ashamed of the shadows in your mind, but you have no reason to be.”
“I’m having a conversation with my fireplace,” he argued. “I don’t know anyone that would accept that.”
“You are seeking connection. Everyone understands that desire.”
“I have the strangest hurt under my skin. Almost like I miss you,” Will said, rubbing his sternum with his knuckles. “I don’t even know you, and I miss you. How is that possible?”
“We are conjoined. You will always know me.”
Will shook his head, he wasn’t going to think about it anymore. He refused to feed this psychosis. He knew he was crazy, but he wasn’t that kind of crazy. The kind that talked to the air and couldn’t find reality.
“What will you do with this gift of foresight? Will you try to change things?”
“My sphere of influence does not extend beyond my classroom,” he frowned. That’s all the responsibility he wanted. Nothing more. That was just the way he liked it. Everything was nicely partitioned. He could keep himself safe from the world, and the world safe from himself.
“Your actions have already set events in motion.”
He’d already raised the suspicions of someone on Jack Crawford’s team. He’d started picking at the scabs in his mind, digging for whatever it was he knew about the girls.
“Then I will stop them,” Will pushed back. He wasn’t going to get involved.
“You plan to shut yourself off again. Are you determined to be alone?”
“I can deal with being alone,” Will lied. He felt the tug of that old wound in his chest and ignored it.
The fire laughed, “Always so self-sacrificing. Or are you afraid? Are you going to let your fear define you? Let it drive you?”
“As opposed to what? Letting you do it?” Will scoffed. “I think I’ve had enough of your manipulations, doctor.”
The fire fell silent and Will balked, very aware of himself. What was he doing? Who was he talking to? He set his empty whiskey tumbler aside and rubbed his face. He really was losing his mind. His fingers pressed into his eyes until his vision blurred, and the world narrowed down to nothing. Maybe he should get his head checked. As appalled as he was at the idea of letting someone poke around in there, these hallucinations and daydreams were out of control. It could be something serious, like a brain tumor.
Will’s vision came back into focus. He watched as a dark line bubbled up along the base of the crackling fire. It grew slowly, oozing out and pooling onto the brick. It was thick and carmine red. It dripped down to the floor, growing in volume and speed. He was drawn in by it, unable to look away, horrified. The blood washed over his feet, wet and hot, soaking through his socks. The air filled with a thick coppery scent. Will’s stomach burned with bile.
A scratching at the door snapped reality in two. Will jumped, his eyes flying open as a snore was cut off mid rumble in his throat. The empty glass tumbler in his hand fell to the ground with a thud. It rolled up next to the fireplace. The logs had been reduced to nothing but embers and ash. There was enough light to cast the room in a soft orange glow, nothing like the portentous fire in his dreams. There was no pool of blood. Just plain hardwood flooring, covered in dog hair.
Another scratch came at the door, and Will clambered to his feet. His limbs were heavy with sleep. He only meant to shut his eyes for a moment. The poor dogs must be freezing. They trotted in, the whole pack with lolling tongues and wagging tails. They all made a beeline for the warm, cozy dog beds.
“Sorry, guys,” Will mumbled, picking his glass up off the floor.
He washed the tumbler in the sink before shucking his shirt and pants, tossing them messily on the floor and falling into bed. As much as he dreaded the idea of another nightmare, the idea of trying to keep himself awake seemed worse. He closed his heavy eyes, and let sleep claim him.
The dreams didn’t stop. They continued on through the next week, bombarding Will every time he closed his eyes. He was averaging a few hours of rest a night and it was taking its toll. His headaches persisted until he was going through Aspirin like Tic-Tacs. It didn’t stop him from trying to ignore the symptoms all the same. He hoped it was just a bad spell, and that eventually it would pass.
“Is this a bad time?”
Will stifled a groan. He recognized the demanding voice filling his empty lecture hall. It was Jack Crawford, head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. They knew each other mostly through hearsay, and only met once before. Will hadn’t liked him much then, and he didn’t expect this conversation to go any better.
“That depends, is this an ambush?” Will asked, as he closed out of his presentation. He suspected Jack must have been waiting in the wings for his students to file out after his last lecture of the day.
“Do you consider it an ambush?” Jack asked, moving around the podium to place himself directly in Will’s eyeline.
“If you’re going to ask me about a case, then yes, I consider it an ambush,” Will grumbled.
Jack stepped back around the podium, catching Will as he turned away. He then had the audacity to reach for the glasses on Will’s face and adjust them so they were more firmly on his nose. The action forced his gaze up to eye level. Will openly scowled.
“Jack Crawford,” he said, offering his hand.
“Yes,” Will said, ignoring it, “We’ve met.”
“I hear you’ve met one of my team members too, Beverly Katz,” He said, moving clunkily right to the point. At least he was direct. Will appreciated that.
“I already apologized to Ms. Katz for intruding, and I don’t know anything about the missing girls,” he said, zipping up his bag.
“Would you like to?” Jack asked.
Will paused. Yes, yes he would . “I moved into teaching for a reason, Jack.”
“I hear you’re very good at what you do,” he said, ignoring the comment.
“Yes, well, teaching can be very rewarding,” Will said dully.
“That’s not what I meant.” Jack followed Will like gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe as they walked out of the classroom. He wasn’t one to be easily deterred. He wouldn’t have become a legend among the FBI recruits at Quantico if he were.
“You may not know anything about the girls, but something caught your attention. What was it?”
“I thought I recognized one of them, that’s all,” Will answered. “They are very ‘mall of America’, it's not that surprising.”
“There was another one reported missing this morning.” Jack stopped in front of him. The name came to Will without any effort, Samantha Olsen. There would be five more after her. Snakes of false memory betrayed Will’s best intentions. They begged him to ask questions— Begged him to look closer.
“Samantha Olsen,” Jack supplied. Will tried to ignore the way his stomach dropped. A misfiring in the brain couldn’t happen before information was revealed. At a certain point this would move from suspicions of déjà vu to something much worse. Delusion .
“She’s been missing for two days and matches the profile of the other two victims.”
“Jack—”
“Just take a look at the file,” He interrupted. “Maybe we can find them and bring them home.”
No, we won’t . Curiosity burned in his mind like an insufferable itch. He knew the girls were dead, but more than anything he wanted to know why he knew that. Jack was offering him a chance to scratch the itch. Will knew this would be a very bad idea. Once he started he wouldn’t be able to stop. He would just keep scraping away until the inside of his head was a bloody mess.
But what if I can save Abigail?
The image of her laying lifeless on the bank of a river grated painfully inside his ribs. He could feel her blood on his hands and had the urge to wash them clean.
Will summoned the courage to meet Jack’s gaze. “I don’t want this to be an open invitation. This won’t become a habit,” Will warned.
The agent held up his hands. “Of course not— I’ll only borrow your imagination just this once.”
Will knew it was a lie. Still, there was something endearing about the way Jack always managed to work his foot in the door. Regardless, Will knew that the dreams weren’t going away. If ignoring them didn’t work, then maybe scratching the itch would. Will knew pulling back the layers in his mind would be risky. He had to be careful to only pull back the corner, otherwise everything might come tumbling down. He didn’t need the head of the BAU seeing just how dark his mind really was.
Will relented and waved down the hall with an irritated sigh. “Lead the way,” he said and Jack grinned.
Back in the glass-walled office, a third picture had been added to the bulletin board. Another dark haired girl with fair eyes reduced to a statistic. Will set his bag on the desk. He tucked his hands in his pockets as he stared at the three images.
Jack shuffled through his desk for a file folder as he spoke, his voice rumbling through the small room in a peaceful cadence. Will wasn’t paying attention to the specific words. It was like listening to an old movie, one he knew all the lines to. The girls had been taken from their homes. There were no witnesses, no signs of forced entry. They were all college aged and often traveled by public transport. They all vanished into thin air.
“This isn’t about all of them, it’s just about one of them,” Will said, catching Jack in the middle of a sentence. Some metaphor about a golden ticket crossed his mind.
“You think he’s reliving his first kill, or working up to someone in particular?” He asked.
“No, he’d want to hide how special she is…” Will ran a hand through his hair, and tried to dismiss the endless feeling of déjà vu. He knew he’d had this conversation before. Maybe that was the key— focusing on the familiarity. He closed his eyes and followed the white rabbit that was leaving a ghostly trail. Jack remained quiet as he worked, too afraid to upset his new toy.
The pendulum swung.
A garish display adorned a field of yellow grass. A girl impaled on the head of a stag, the antlers reaching like twisted roots through her body. Cassie Boyle— not dead yet, but dead in Will’s vision. Her lungs were taken while she was still alive. She was left in a field in dramatic fashion. Left where black birds could peck at her exposed flesh.
The curtain of his thoughts tried to close as he chased the memory deeper. Will surged forward, refusing to give ground. Pain lanced through his skull but he held a fast to the thread. This wasn’t the killer Jack was looking for, this was someone else, but the scene provided a negative in the absence of bodies. Whoever was killing the girls— the other three— loved them. He used every part of them. The one that killed Cassie didn’t. He saw her like a pig.
The image of a young woman filled the space of his mind. A gentle breeze tousled her long brown hair. A blue scarf decorated her delicate neck. Affection, warm and soft, filled Will to the brim.
Abigail .
“He—” Will struggled to hold on to the memory. The more he did, the more it felt like his skull was cracking apart. “He has a daughter. She looks like the others… She’s growing up, going off to college. He can’t stand the thought of losing her.”
“We’re looking for a family man?” Jack asked.
“He’s blue collar, hardworking, most likely a hunter…” He’d have an antler room. Will trailed off, uncertain how he could explain away any information much more specific than that. He was supposed to be brilliant at deductions, not psychic— or psychotic if that was closer to the truth. No reason to make Jack think he was somehow involved in all of this.
“I’ve heard you can make leaps that no one else can explain,” Jack said, stuck firmly within his skepticism.
“The evidence explains it,” Will argued.
“Do you think you can come up with a profile?” Jack asked.
Will nodded, his mouth dry and gritty like sand. He shouldn’t get involved. He took a copy of the file that Jack offered him anyway.
“You’re doing the right thing, Will,” he assured him with a heavy clap on his shoulder.
The praise tasted bitter, but Will offered his best attempt at a smile. He couldn’t exactly explain his reasons for wanting to help. Of course he wanted to do the right thing, but he knew he was better off teaching in a classroom than investigating in the field. It was only his curiosity that made it impossible to say no. He had to figure out why his mind was imploding, and why he knew the things that he did. That was all. He wouldn’t get more involved than he had to.
When Will arrived home later that day, the dogs were wild. They were jumping and falling against the front door, anxious to get out and run. He scolded them to no effect, and they spilled out into the yard as soon as he had the deadbolt unlocked and the screen open. Only sweet little Ellie tottered politely behind, pausing to say hi before running off to join the pack.
Will set his laptop case near the armchair and tossed the file folder on his bed. He wandered off to the kitchen to pour himself some cheap whiskey. It had become his nightly ritual since the headaches and hallucinations started. If nothing else, it took the edge off. He kicked off his shoes, started a fire, and grabbed his laptop before settling comfortably in his chair. Since the dream about the disembodied voice in the fire, he’d moved his seat closer. Some small, pathetic part of him hoped it might visit again, but so far it had remained silent.
The first website Will pulled up was TattleCrime. He absolutely despised the seedy little tabloid, but he had to know if the intrepid reporter, Freddie Lounds, had caught a whiff of the missing girls yet. She had a few pieces on some local assault cases, but that was all. There were no flashy headlines or unflattering pictures of Will. He frowned, uncertain why he thought there might be any pictures of himself. He’d never done anything to earn her attention— though perhaps it was another one of those pesky intrusive thoughts from another version of himself.
Chewing his lip, Will allowed himself to fall down the cracks in his mind once more. Tabloid titles listed in vibrant red bled through his consciousness. One in particular stood out: ‘ Takes one to know one’. In it, Lounds touted him as one of the beasts he was trained to catch. She could somehow see beneath his skin, like her camera lens was an X-ray. What was it she saw that others couldn’t? Her cunning was razor sharp and bladed on both sides, just as dangerous to herself as it was to everyone else. It would be her undoing, Will was sure of it.
Lounds was always one step ahead, sneaking into the Minnesota Shrike’s nest before the police could catch a glimpse of flame colored hair disappearing into the woods beyond. The—
Minnesota Shrike.
Will sat forward abruptly. The name struck an unfamiliar chord in a growing dissonant song in his head. It snuck into his mind like termite. After a week of this nonsense he still wasn’t used to stumbling across new threads of thought, like someone else’s neurons were worming their way into his brain.
A quick search on the Minnesota Shrike only turned up articles on a bird. One called the Loggerhead Shrike. A small thing with a vicious method of claiming its meals. It impaled insects on sticks to save them for consumption later.
That’s what they would call this killer, The Shrike. They would call him that because he would mount the girls on racks of antlers, impaling them while they were drained of blood. Then he would dismantle them, piece by piece. He would use every part to honor them. With bones he’d make weapons and tools. With the skin he’d make leather and hide. With the meat…
“He’s eating them.”
Will opened up an empty document and began typing up a profile. It came quickly, filling up the page with vivid detail. It was comprehensive, and far more thorough than should be possible. He couldn’t stop, like the Shrike himself was pouring through Will’s memories and into his body, possessing him.
He knew the man’s daily routine, when he would wake up, where he went to work. He knew what he ate, and what he loved…
Will had never fully embodied a killer so quickly before. It was too much too fast, like a dam broke and flooded his senses. Fingers danced across keys too fast to keep up with the raging memories. Blue eyes watched him, crinkling at the edges. His daughter smiled fondly. His brain was cycling out of control, running hot, like it might catch fire. He had to stop, or this new identity would cleave him in two.
I love her. I’ll never let her go.
Will ripped himself away from the laptop and pushed both palms to his eyes.
Stop! Just stop!
He was trapped in the maw of a great beast and the teeth were threatening to rip through his skin. He desperately wanted out— out of his mind, out of his body, anything . He needed to find a way to center himself and fast.
“My name is Will Graham, it is six thirty-four, and I am in Wolf Trap, Virginia!”
He sat down at a quaint little breakfast table across from Abigail. There were eggs and sausage laid out on a tablecloth with a faded floral print. They ate together, like a family.
“My name is Will Graham!”
The pale figure of Dolly Woodward was laid out on a prep table in his hunting cabin. Will cut into her soft belly, slicing her gut open as he would a deer carcass. He would honor her in death— use every part.
“I am in Wolf Trap, Virginia!”
Tears burned him, forcing their way out and streaking down his cheeks.
Abigail was captured in the cage of his arms. He was sorry, so very sorry, but he couldn’t let her go. The thought was too much to bear. She was growing up and would be off to college soon. She would leave, and Will couldn’t let that happen. The world would ruin her. Abigail could only leave him one way— forever and eternally pure in her youth. He cut her neck in one swift motion. Blood arced out in a glittering red spray.
Broken and shaking, he wailed, “Please! My name is Will Graham—“
“Will.”
A gentle lilting voice cut right through the chaos in his mind. He slumped to the ground before the fireplace, a sobbing mess.
“Please,” he whispered back.
“I’m here, Will.”
“Where were you?” He croaked. “You were supposed to be my paddle.” He was lost, unmoored and drifting through tar-black memory.
“I am your paddle.” The fire crackled in the hearth.
“I’m losing my mind,” he whispered.
Warmth spilled out from the growing flames, wrapping the room in heat. For a brief and wonderful moment, Will felt held.
“You’re getting lost in the reconstruction.”
“The reconstruction of what?”
“Of teacups and time.”
Will blinked and he was back in the armchair, his laptop tilted in his lap. He rubbed his face. Was he asleep? He couldn’t remember ever closing his eyes.
The fire shimmered, flames burning in full.
When he looked back through his profile on the Shrike, Will nearly cracked. He laughed maniacally to himself, gripping a handful of hair and tugging so that it hurt. The first page was normal enough, but the rest of the text was nothing but the word ‘see’ over and over again for pages. He thought he might throw up.
“Fuck me,” he groaned. Something was really, really wrong. He moved to delete the entire document, when a line in the first paragraph stopped him.
“... this is not a sociopath. Hobbs is sympathetic to his victims. He loves them.”
Hobbs? Where did that come from? It carried with it a clanging weight, like a heavy bronze clapper striking the inside of a bell and ricocheting off the stone walls of a belfry.
Will rose to his feet and paced his living room. A new thread of memory was woven into place. Garrett Jacob Hobbs was the Minnesota Shrike . It was a truth as real as the cold hardwood floors beneath his feet— that, or Will had fully descended into delusion and madness.
He paused before the fireplace, and stared into the bright flames.
“Am I having visions of the future?” He asked.
There was no response but dancing light and sparkling embers.
If these hallucinations really were premonitions, then Will had a moral and legal responsibility to stop Hobbs from killing five more girls. He pulled out his cellphone and pulled up Jack’s number. His thumb hovered over the call button, frozen in place. How could he explain what he knew?
Hey, Jack— oh shit is it already midnight, I didn’t even notice. You were asleep? Sorry. Anyway, this is going to sound insane, but you should go arrest this random guy whose name I just pulled out of my ass. Yes, I have had a little whiskey tonight, why do you ask?
There was no evidence that currently pointed to Garrett Jacob Hobbs. If Will pulled a specific name and a home address out nowhere, it would cause problems. Major problems. Jack might think that Will knew him— They would think he was somehow involved. They would discover that Hobbs had a partner, someone who picked the girls and learned their schedules. Will couldn’t have the FBI thinking it was him.
Another unsettling piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
He couldn’t let them find out it was Abigail either.
The truth was painful, like a knife slowly sinking into his heart. There was no question it was her. Who else would those girls trust, alone on a train or a bus? They would rely on someone like them. Another girl, the same age, who was seemingly alone.
“I didn’t know what else to do, so I just did what he told me.”
Abigail trusted her father. She loved him, and he betrayed her. She was no less a victim than any of the girls he made her choose. Will would not let Jack crucify her for that. He put his phone away.
It would have to be an anonymous tip. A good Samaritan who wanted to report some suspicious activity at the Hobbs house but remain off the record. That would get the FBI to conduct a home visit.
It wouldn’t be enough.
With no immediate evidence, the FBI couldn’t get a warrant. The agents would request a home interview. It could take weeks to get a judge to approve any more action, and that provided too much opportunity for things to go wrong. Any intervention from law enforcement could spook Hobbs into a panic. Panic meant Abigail would be in danger. Who's to say he wouldn’t slit her throat as soon as the agents left their house?
Will needed to go to Minnesota and observe Hobbs himself. There was no other choice. If he could find a link to the missing girls, then the FBI could move in right away and make an arrest. That would significantly reduce the chances that Hobbs would be able to hurt his family.
The plan would be easier said than done. There could be no record of Will’s involvement. That meant he couldn’t fly to Minnesota. He would have to drive. It was sixteen hours from his home to Bloomington. Will licked his lips, anxiety bubbling through him in a wave. He could picture the house in his mind— a version of it with the word CANNIBALS spray painted in black on the garage door.
The weekend was only a day away. It wouldn’t be unusual for Will to take a fishing trip this time of year. He could ask the neighbor to watch the dogs for a night. The profile Jack wanted would be easy enough to fudge. He could type up something generic with just enough meat to give the BAU something to chew on and keep Jack happy.
This was all for the best. If these hallucinations weren’t real, then this little trip would confirm it and no one else would be the wiser. If they proved true, then Will could turn in Hobbs and feel good about saving lives. He would only go to observe and collect evidence. Nothing else. He would not interfere and not do anything stupid.
Oh, but how often the best laid plans of murderers and men go awry.