Chapter Text
The storm had arrived so fast. The sky had been shaded with dark violet for the whole afternoon, but with the sun peeking through the clouds and the air still warm and calm the tempest had seemed to pass by; peacefully watching the scenery of this Sunday in late October.
Now the storm was raging; tossing leaves and branches and playing with them like it could defy gravity altogether. The electricity in the air made the hair on Will’s neck rise as he got out of the car which he’d been forced to pull up by the side of the road to investigate the smouldering bonnet. Even before opening it he could tell there was nothing left to save: The car’s time was up. Angrily he kicked against the driver’s door and looked around to try and ascertain his location. The breakdown had left him stranded on a small country road with acres of forest and fields stretching out in every direction. He’d been driving for over an hour without passing a single township, so he knew he was at least 40 km away from the nearest offshoots of civilization; and according to his navigation system the place where he’d booked a room for the night was another 25 km away. His phone didn’t have a signal either, of course. Shit! Scanning up and down the road, and gloomily reflecting on the fact that he hadn’t passed more than a handful of cars during the course of the past hour, it began to dawn on him that – like it or not – he’d have to spend the night in the car.
The backseat was stacked up to the roof with files and cardboard boxes containing various preparations of preserved organs, anatomical models, bones and other paraphernalia that he needed for his lecture at the Academy. Will silently cursed that he’d agreed to come all this way to Lithuania just to talk to a bunch of disillusioned forensic students about the gruesome details of his work as a crime scene investigator. After years of travelling and lecturing at international congresses he knew the motivation of his audience. Most of them were just there to gloat over the pictures of mutilated bodies he showed them; their glistening eyes only seeing the excitement, not the nightmares those same pictures induced if one were to visit the scenes for real every day. It made Will’s stomach turn when he saw those twenty-something brats whisper to each other in excitement when seeing a shot-through skull and giggle over the picture of a naked female corpse. It was disgusting. In reality they wouldn’t last for longer than three days in a job like his.
However, the lecture was the day after tomorrow and he was still standing next to his broken down car amidst the Lithuanian woods without a place to stay. A low rumbling sound weltered from the north and the wind tugged at his thin jacket. This promised to be an uncomfortable night.
An hour later the rain started; gentle and thin at first and then suddenly it was as if the dams of the Styx had broken and hell’s river was flooding the world with its angry waters. Will had wrapped himself in his blue sweater, but it provided only scarce protection from the cold and without the motor running there was no way to heat up the car. The thermometer told him it was 8°C outside and the temperature would surely sink even lower during the night. With hands white from the cold he rubbed his arms and legs in an attempt to get some warmth into them when he suddenly heard a small humming sound coming from behind above the noise of the storm. Another car.
Within seconds he was out in the rain, waving his arms wildly to urge the driver to stop; and to his relief the other car pulled over, coming to a halt next to him. Behind the steering wheel sat a man of Will’s age with long blond hair and a dirty baseball cap on his head. He wound down the window on the passenger’s side and called out to him in Lithuanian. Will, of course, didn’t understand a word and gestured at his car instead: “Motor – broken. I need help.” Hopefully the man understood at least a bit of English.
After a brief frown the man’s face lightened up.
“Ah, accident. Where from?” His accent was heavy but at least he seemed to have understood that Will was a foreigner.
“Umm, the States. I need a lift to Vilnius. Can you help me?”
The rain soaked Will’s jacket and his hair was stuck to his head. There was no way he could get back into his own car again in this state: his soaking clothes would drench the seat and then the night in the car would be unbearably cold.
It seemed the man needed a moment to process what Will had been trying to tell him, then he slowly shook his head.
“Vilnius wrong direction,” he shouted through the rumbling of the thunder, “but I know where stay, come in, come in!”
Will knew, of course, that it wasn’t safe to get into the cars of strangers. Over the years he’d seen enough examples of what could happen; most of the time the victims were women, but who knew? Will himself wasn’t exactly a person of strong physical stature and the guy looked honed and athletic. Yet a single look at the state of his own car and a bright flash instantly followed by a roll of thunder made the decision for him. He gave the man a signal to wait and hastened through the rain to the trunk of his car to collect a few personal belongings and some dry clothes; hastily wrapping them in a tattered plastic bag. Then he return to the other car and hopped onto the passenger’s seat, closing the door behind him while the man already started the engine.
The night flew by outside the window, the landscape hiding in utter darkness that was only momentarily chased away by flashes of lightning. Will had his fingers clenched on the seat cushion and only when he let go of it did he realize that his hands were trembling. It wasn’t the cold; the car interior was cosily warm. He couldn’t name it, but there was a tension that had gripped him almost since the first moment he’d arrived in Lithuania. It was like an anticipation of something bad that was about to happen; like a sixth sense. He’d experienced these kinds of things before. Sometimes he had the feeling, that his extraordinary ability to empathise transcended the threshold between reality and supernatural. It was ridiculous, of course: Will had never been one to believe in anything irrational, neither God nor ghosts or demons. For him those things were all just fantasies in people’s minds; and this in itself was scary enough. He wouldn’t want to believe the pictures in his own mind to be real. He knew the monsters of the world; had seen their work - and they had all been human.
The driver chuckled when he noticed Will’s nervousness. “Cigarette?” he offered.
Will considered it for a moment. He’d successfully rid himself of his bad smoking habit several years ago and didn’t want to start again this evening; but he had to admit that he craved the momentary relief some deep draws of burned tobacco might provide. Nevertheless he refused and tried to calm his mind by letting his gaze rest in the distance. Apart from the sound of the motor and the occasional thunder growls there was complete silence; the driver hadn’t even turned on the radio. It unsettled Will. During the whole ride in his own car he had flicked through the stations, searching for a channel with a clear signal; but all he got was white noise with occasional scraps of conversation or music, so he’d turned it off again and hummed to himself. Not really melodies, but just sound; something to fill the yawning darkness around him with life.
“Where are we going?” he asked after some minutes, growing slightly uncomfortable with not knowing their destination, even though up to now they’d only followed the road straight.
“Place where you can stay for night,” the other man answered without looking at him.
“A hotel?”
“No, not hotel. Not far, a house where you can stay.”
Will was bewildered. “But someone is living there, right?”
The man smiled, but it wasn’t a warm smile. His eyes were glistening with excitement. It could be madness in the worst case, or simply eccentricity. Will suddenly became aware of the fact that he was trapped in a stranger’s car without any chance to call for help in case things got out of hand. Where the hell was this guy taking him?
“A man is living there. He is a doctor. He will take care of you.” The smile on the man’s face faded while he spoke and that unsettled Will even more.
“I’m not injured,” he stated in confusion.
The man smiled again. “No, he isn’t working no more. You can stay there.”
Will didn’t know what to make of this rambling explanation, so he looked out of the window again. Behind the trees on the right side of the road a wrought-iron fence had appeared, that seemed to surround a private property. The fence was black and at least two meters high; its intertwined posts made it look like it belonged to a prison courtyard. When the row of high trees suddenly ended Will caught sight of the huge mansion (or was it even a castle?) that sat enthroned in the centre of the now openly visible estate.
With an abrupt swerve the driver pulled over and stopped the car right in front of the huge wrought-iron gate, in the middle of which was a sign proclaiming the owner of the estate: Lecter Dvaras - The Lecter Castle.
Will darted a questioning glance at the other man. “Is that where I’m supposed to stay?”
“That’s the house,” the stranger confirmed. “You go in and ask for Dr. Lecter. He is a fine man. He will take care of you.”
Will nodded, being seriously relieved to get out of the car and away from this strange guy who spoke in such riddles. He opened the door and was about to step out when suddenly the man grabbed him firmly by the shoulder and leaned over, the grin still on his face.
“But careful, young man. There are ghosts there.”
Will frowned. “Do you mean it’s haunted?”
“Yes, yes, haunted,” the man nodded in excitement. “There are ghosts. Careful, careful you be!”
Then he gave a guttural laugh and Will was determined to get away from him as fast as possible.
“Yes, I’ll be careful, thank you for the ride,” he replied hastily, then grabbed the bag with his belongings and slammed the car door behind him. He didn’t turn round when the car was swallowed by darkness again. Instead he hurried towards the gate, trying to ignore the last thing the stranger had told him. Haunted. Such nonsense.
♠♣♥♦
Will expected the gate to creak when pushing it open, but the hinges appeared to be well oiled. The lawn was neatly mowed, with every flowerbed symmetrical and the cobblestones on the small path to the entrance door refusing to let even a single tuft of grass peak through. It was obvious that the property was inhabited.
On approaching the house it looked more and more to Will like an actual castle: annexes and little towers appeared from behind the huge conifers, shaping the image of something recycled from a child’s fairytale. It looked enchanted, but not in a romantic way. Maybe it was just the weather and the darkness, but he expected the whole building to shape shift at any moment and turn into the kind of houses that haunted his nightmares. Those in which one finds dead bodies. Haunted. There was the word again, and Will could fully understand why it must look that way to a stranger. His natural instincts alone told him not to set foot into that castle and those were the natural instincts of a disbeliever. They would not make him turn around and leave again, but potent as they were, they would certainly be capable of driving away a mind receptive to the supernatural.
As scrupulously well-kept as the whole building was, here and there small branches of ivy still crawled their way out of crevices in the wall in places that were unreachable from both the inside and out. It was a nice piece of wildness in a surrounding so utterly controlled. In fact Will found it rather charming.
The dark wooden door was adorned with a heavy silver knocker, but there was also a modern bell push on the wall next to the door. Will couldn’t decide which one to use, so he used both at the same time.
He didn’t know what he had expected to see when the door opened. A servant perhaps (this place certainly looked like it was run by at least a dozen of them); or a creepy old lady with a candle in her hand and a black cat nuzzling around her feet; or maybe nobody at all and the door opening by itself with a creaking sound. In that moment his brain would have been able to cope with any of these scenarios. What he certainly didn’t expect was a tall, middle aged man, wearing an apron and holding a spatula in his hand, while the smell of roasting meat surged through the open door. Will was utterly perplexed.
The man looked at him questioningly, although he didn’t seem to be taken aback by Will’s unheralded appearance.
“Taip?” he asked.
It took Will a moment to find his words. “I’m sorry. I am...Do you speak English? My car is broken down and I got here so...” At the last moment he stopped himself from saying “so you could take care of me” That would have capped all his embarrassment off.
The other man observed his face for a moment and Will had the uncomfortable, but very familiar feeling, of being judged. The shimmer in those eyes was so intense that Will had an urge to turn his face away.
“Do you... Can I spend the night here somewhere? I can pay for it, of course.” Will couldn’t even be sure the other man understood him, but his growing awkwardness with the whole situation made him ramble on. “It’s just that there’s no other place round here for miles and the weather makes a night in the car very uncomfortable.”
He waited for a reaction, and was almost at the point where he wished to fade away like a ghost himself, when suddenly a smile appeared on the man’s face.
“Be my guest,” he said, the English consonants slightly contoured by his accent. He then turned round and held the door open, signalling Will to follow him inside before he asked: “And what is your name?”
Awkwardly, Will realised that he’d failed to introduce himself. “My name is Will Graham, I’m from the States and I'm here in Lithuania for - professional reasons,” he answered. What profession it was he rather kept secret for now. He didn't like it if people he barely knew asked him about his job; it was quite difficult to explain and most of the time it only led to overly curious questions.
“Welcome, Mr. Graham,” his host replied. “My name is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I own this estate.”
“What kind of doctor are you?” Will asked and then realised how stupid that sounded.
The other gave an amused smile. “I’m a psychiatrist, but I stopped practising years ago.”
Will just nodded; he was aware that he hadn’t made the best first impression and apparently talking made it worse.
The corridor Dr. Lecter was leading him through was dimly lit. The walls were covered in mahogany wood-panelling and the floor was tiled in a pattern of continuously alternating black and white. It gave Will the feeling of walking over a gigantic chessboard. He remembered a game he played with his classmates when he was a kid. They would play tag in the school hall, which was also tiled in black and white, during their lunch break. They would form two teams, team white and team black, and then elect catchers for each team to catch the members of the opposing one, but during the game everybody was only allowed to step on the tiles of his group’s colour. Those who took a misstep were out. The team whose catcher first caught all the members of the other team won. The tiles had often been slippery when the janitor had cleaned the hall and one time Will slipped, fell and almost broke his nose. The other kids had laughed.
This corridor however didn’t look as if any children had used it for their silly games. Will’s steps echoed from the wall; Dr. Lecter’s on the other hand, had the silent tread of a stalking panther.
Will followed him up the stairs on the right and down another, less chessboard-patterned, corridor. They didn’t exchange a word, nor did Dr. Lecter turn around to look at him and Will almost suspected the other man had forgotten about him when they abruptly came to a halt. Hannibal opened a door to his right, flicked on the light switch, and beckoned Will to enter the room.
“You can spend the night here; it is one of the various guestrooms, of which this house has no lack of,” he said with a small smile.
The chamber was generously appointed for a guest room; but in a house like this, what was one to expect? A king-size bed awaited Will on the opposite side of the room, with a counterpane of cornflower blue. On the wall above the bed hung a huge set of antlers which were very dark, almost black, with shiny white tips. Next to the bed a huge grandfather clock stood majestically in the corner; its heavy pendulum swinging at a steady, silent pace. There were many more pieces of antique furniture, like a dark wooden davenport and several book shelves. On the back wall was a door leading to another room; a bathroom, probably. Everything in the room was clean and arranged very neatly, as if a guest had been expected.
“Do you often have guests here?” Will asked, realising again that he might sound rude in being so straightforward.
“Occasionally yes, but at the moment I’m alone here,” Dr. Lecter answered, undisturbed by his guest’s somewhat awkward manners.
Will stepped closer to the bed and ran the tip of his index finger over the counterpane. It was made of silk and felt like he was stroking cool water. Will had to fight the sudden urge to lie down and bury his face in it; after days of travel and bad sleep this bed called to him like a silent siren.
“Is it to your liking?”
Will jumped slightly, having almost forgotten that the other man was still in the room.
“It’s perfect, thank you so much, Dr. Lecter!”
“Please, call me Hannibal.”
Hannibal. Wasn’t that the guy that had crossed the Alps with elephants? Will wondered if this was his real name or if he was just a history fanatic with a fascination for rebels who had decided to take on an alias.
“Alright – Hannibal,” Will replied, rolling the word on his tongue. It sounded strange, but still familiar. Something... its sound reminded him of something...something similar, something else. “So I guess you can call me Will.”
Hannibal nodded. “I will leave you to yourself now, Will, so you can freshen up. And I advise you to change your clothes. You will catch a cold in those; I can lend you some if you require it.”
“No, no, it’s quite alright,” Will replied hastily, not wanting to cause any further trouble. “I’ve got something to change into. You’ve already been so generous, I’ll be fine here.”
“Alright then; if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.” Hannibal smiled softly; and Will noticed that his eyes were of a rich mahogany brown, just like the walls in the entrance hall. “You are invited to join me for a glass of wine in the parlour later, if you like. It is downstairs: the first door on the left.”
With these words Hannibal turned around and left the room, gently closing the door behind him.
It took Will a few moments to mentally review what had happened during the past few hours; from the moment he noticed the smoke coming from the bonnet until Dr. Lecter (Hannibal) left him with the invitation for a glass of wine.
He put down his bag and took off his soaked jacket, realising the water had seeped through each layer of clothing to his skin, and possibly even through this. It felt like there was not a single part of him that wasn’t utterly drenched. He opened the door to the bathroom and his eyes brightened at the sight of a huge white bathtub with silvery metal feet and a fluffy white bathrobe hanging over the rim. This was far more luxurious than what would have awaited him at the hotel and suddenly Will felt very happy about the outcome of the evening – despite the broken car.
The water was fantastically hot and the bath essence smelled of lavender and heather; like an extract taken from the landscape around the estate; the fresh and pure wilderness of Aukštaitija. Will closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, enveloped up to his chin in the water. It was heaven. Then he was suddenly struck by an uncomfortable thought that Hannibal would probably expect him to pay for his accommodation; yet he didn’t have much money with him and it was the end of the month, so his bank account was naturally low. All of this seemed pretty expensive. What if he couldn’t afford it?
The thought made him nervous and so he got out of the bath sooner than intended. While he rubbed himself dry the silence of the room was suddenly interrupted by a sharp sound, like a scythe cutting through air. Will paused to listen. There – again! It came from his bedroom.
Will tied the towel round his waist and walked towards the door on tiptoes, his ears straining for the smallest sound. The noise came again and again, setting into a steady pace of sharp swinging sounds. Very careful not to make a sound he slowly turned the doorknob.
The moment he pushed open the door the sound stopped immediately; as if he’d caught the room red-handed. Everything looked exactly like the moment he had left it half an hour ago. The contents of his bag were spread over the bed, the window was ajar and the curtains billowed gently in the breeze; the moonlight bleaching all the colours pale.
Just there, in the corner, the old grandfather clock stood dark and bulky, its pendulum swinging from side to side; gently and quietly, without a sound, the edges of it sharp like a blade. It reminded Will of a verse from The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe; an author whose vivid imagination had been an inspiration for most of his nightmares when he was younger. ‘To the right -- to the left -- far and wide -- with the shriek of a damned spirit; to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger’
Will felt a cold shiver creeping up his spine. He suddenly craved company, of any kind. Hadn’t Hannibal invited him for a glass of wine in the parlour? Hectically and with his hands still slightly shaking he pulled on some dry clothes and hurried downstairs.