Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 30: Crushed and Broken and Crossed

 Will had the sense he was looking in a mirror. But there were no mirrors in Castle Lecter.

He raised his hand to his hair and touched it, feeling the trembling curls, then passed his fingertips over his cheek. Will dropped his hand to his side, and his reflection did as well. But only after a long second where their movements were not in sync.

This man was him, was Will, and wasn't. He was dressed in a blue doublet, something from the Henry VIII era perhaps, stitched with gold, paired with dark breeches and high boots. There was a ring on his finger. His smile was somehow different, though Will couldn't explain it.

"You and I," he said, offering Will this beatific smile, "have begun to blur."

Will opened his eyes, then immediately closed them. The light pierced his lids, filling his vision with blood red.

Peter sat at the table near the window. Will could hear a few tentative mews; he had a basket in his lap and was feeding the kittens. Through the open window, which unfortunately admitted the sun but also the warm fragrance of mountain summer, Will could hear unfamiliar sounds of work and a multitude of voices.

He lay for a moment, looking at the ceiling, cudgeling his brains, trying to put memories and visions and thoughts and dreams in order. It hurt. Thinking hurt, and he abandoned it quickly. He was sick again, that much was evident, weak and trembling and feverish.

"Will," Peter said, noticing that he was stirring.

"Finish feeding them," Will said, his voice hoarse like he'd been screaming. "I can wait."

Peter settled back in, dipping his dropper in a cup of milk.

"What's going on...? Out in the courtyard?" Will asked, pulling himself up higher on the pillows. It felt like a Herculean effort.

"S-some of the villagers are-are here," Peter told him, eyes on his work. "Working on the chapel."

"The chapel? Why?"

Peter shrugged. "It upsets the animals," he said. Of course, that would be the extent of his knowledge, and Will didn't hold it against him.

The chapel, as far as Will knew, was abandoned. The stained glass windows were mostly broken, boarded up, some partially intact but not long for the world. The heavy doors looked old and rusted shut. There might be another door, but Will had never been on the other side of the building that faced away from the courtyard. The bell tower was a rotting skeleton, the bell long gone. He couldn't see any holes in the roof but the whole building looked forgotten, disused.

What was in the chapel, and why were villagers working in it now? Repairing it? That made no sense. Unless Hannibal planned to take the bones of his ancestors to London, which also seemed implausible.

I go to the chapel.

Hannibal's voice in his head. Of course, Will couldn't be sure if those words had ever fallen from those aristocratic lips. Reality was a sliding scale.

He wasn't permitted to be buried on consecrated ground.

Of course not. Will's own thoughts intruded. I threw myself in the river, despair overwhelming the threat of Hell.

I threw...

HE threw himself.

The correction didn't feel right.

When Avigeya relieved Peter, she brought Will some thin corn mush, tea, and broth, hoping, he figured, to get some of it into his stomach. He forced himself to the table to eat, wrapped in the dressing gown and a quilt, so that he could see what was going on in the courtyard.