Losing You Terrifies Me

Chapter 41

The castle loomed overhead. It had sat there day in and day out. Never changing. It looked just as Hannibal had remembered it from his childhood, though a little more overgrown. The plant life had slowly taken back over the carefully manicured gardens.

Hannibal stood at the fence line, unable to so much as build up the courage to touch the rusted gate that had dead and new vines of ivy growing over it to the point where Hannibal knew if he wanted to get in he would have to climb the spires. The thought made him take a small step back and glance over the fence once more, wondering just how Will had done it. He had to have met Chiyoh somehow.

He was curious how far Will had wandered. Will had said that he hadn't stepped foot into the castle, he had stayed more on the grounds where Chiyoh had been staying. Will had mentioned the wine cellar that was off the side of the house and it would be a lie if Hannibal wasn't curious as to what had become of the man that Chiyoh had killed, left in that cellar to rot with the rest of his family's homemade vintages.

For the hundredth time Hannibal glanced over his shoulder, unable to rid himself of the feeling of being watched just like on that last day here in this place. A feeling that there were eyes on him even though he had no idea where they possibly came from.

Shadows among the tree line of his property. The same trees that seemed to have hands that snatched at him and his sister as they had run through the snow in an attempt to escape.

Hannibal glanced up at his home once more before turning away from the gate and trudging through the light wisps of snow and wet leaves that were remaining as spring finally started to claw its way to the surface.

The path was as clear and sharp in his mind as it had been nearly thirty years ago. A right at this tree, a left at that one. A nick across his cheek from a snatching branch of this tree. The tug of his hand against Mischa's as she shivered from the cold of the winter. Numb with wide eyes that Hannibal thought would never be bright again, a red ribbon still tied stubbornly in her hair.

Hannibal's sure footfalls halted when he fell upon the cabin that was dilapidated with the years of disuse and being forgotten, abandoned to the elements just as the rest of his property had been.

The longer Hannibal looked at it, the more it looked like a shed than an actual cabin. Its roof was caving in and the entirety of the building was leaning so far to one side that it was bound to collapse if not now then in the exceedingly near future. The chimney had already given way, the bricks scattered in a line across the ground.

Hannibal stepped up to the door and tugged at it. The wood splintered and cracked under the weight of the walls and roof it was helping hold up, but with enough force, Hannibal finally got the door to begrudgingly open. He had to throw his shoulder into the wood in an attempt to make enough room for him to finally step through.

He had to duck beneath the frame from the angle, but a flash of a man doing the same thing from when he was younger came to his mind. Someone who was just bones now, left somewhere to rot, not even his sister's name carved into his flesh any longer. A man who Hannibal would now be taller than. Had become stronger than. If only he had been stronger all those years ago.

A lump formed in Hannibal's throat as he glanced around the empty room that had snow blanketing the ground and sunlight streaming in from the cracks in the roof and the broken windows.

A single rocking chair was tipped over in the corner, but Hannibal could still hear the way that the wood creaked as it moved, the thud of a knife as it was embedded into the armrest and pulled free again and again and again.

The fireplace was alive with crackling flames and Hannibal's stomach turned at the scent of fresh food cooking. The first meal that wasn't some sad form of hard and stale biscuits in what felt like months, though it had probably only been days.