Chapter Text
The iron-barred door slid open with a clang. The panel watched, stone-faced, as the inmate stepped into the room, his hands clasped comfortably at his midriff as if he chose for them to be there, as if they were not forced to be held so by the especially tight handcuffs he was wearing. He stopped beside the hard chair in the middle of the room, and waited.
“Sit.”
The inmate sat. His posture was impeccable. He met their steely gazes evenly and folded one leg over the other.
A silence fell. Half the panel glanced down at their notes to avoid the inmate’s intense, intelligent eyes. Finally, after a sip from his water glass, one man spoke.
“Hannibal Lecter.”
“Dr. Hannibal Lecter, if you don’t mind.”
The man who had spoken glared at the inmate over his file. Such insubordination was rarely heard in that room, as every inmate who sat in that chair knew they had to be on their very best behavior if they wanted even a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting out. But Lecter was not like every other inmate. Even in the upper echelons of the administration, it had to be said, there were few within those walls who were even remotely as well educated as he was. And no other inmate had graduated medical school.
But that was beside the point. Lecter could afford to be insubordinate because he did not believe he would ever get out. Not via the parole board, at least.
“Dr. Hannibal Lecter,” the young man holding Lecter’s chance at parole in his hands said with a slight sneer. “We see by your file that you’ve served twelve years of your life sentences.”
“That is correct.”
“Do you feel you’ve been rehabilitated?”
Dr. Lecter raised an eyebrow a fraction, the faintest flicker of an amused smile playing over his lips. “Of course. I have learned my lesson. I am no longer a danger to society, I assure you.”
The panel watched him for a moment, then dismissed him. He was still within earshot when one muttered that the creepy fuck should never get out. He heard them stamp the rejection on his parole form and allowed himself the indulgence of rolling his eyes.
They unfastened his handcuffs and let him loose into the exercise yard. He emerged into fading daylight, folding his hands behind his back and glancing up at the sky as he strolled. Light winked off the coils of razor wire that topped the high stone walls beneath the looming guard towers.
The yard was bustling with activity, cons milling around, playing catch or cards, passing the time. Lecter passed through them like a blade through butter, many darting out of his path. He was respected. He was also feared.
On the outside, he’d been a surgeon (good work for a man as young as he was) and a well-respected socialite, a man with a passion for the opera, for fine wine, and for the culinary arts. Oh, Lecter loved to cook. As it turned out, he’d been serving human meat to guests at his many renowned dinner parties for years before he was caught. They could never prove that, but everybody knew.
He was serving three consecutive life sentences after being caught red-handed — almost quite literally — with a dead local councilman in the trunk of his Bentley. It was sheer dumb luck that they caught him at all. He had a busted taillight; the officer conducting the routine traffic stop opened his trunk on a whim, at which point Lecter — who moved as silently as a cat — stuck a linoleum knife under the man’s ribs and damn near disemboweled him. Would have finished the job, too, if a second unseen officer waiting in the patrol car hadn’t put two bullets in him first. The body in the trunk had had all its major organs removed with surgical skill; they were tucked neatly into a cooler on the backseat. When detectives tore apart Lecter's home, they found organs from the victims of two other open cases marinating in his fridge. Lecter had been planning a dinner party for the board of directors of the symphonic orchestra later that week.
They never could prove exactly what he was, or what he’d done. Lecter never said a word during the lengthy interrogations he was subjected to, even when they tried sweating him with sodium amytal. They had enough to convict him for the three deaths they could prove, plus the attempted murder of the cop, though they suspected he’d been behind a good deal more than that. The judge threw the book at him hard enough to fix up any chance of parole he might have for a long, long time. He was twenty-nine years old when he went to trial. After twelve long years in stir, he was in his early forties and being turned down regular as clockwork at every parole hearing he had. Getting a pass out of Shawshank when you had murder stamped on your admittance slip was slow work.
Lecter had connections on the outside, and it hadn’t taken long for him to establish connections on the inside as well. He was a man of impeccable taste, and tasteful things are few and far between in stir. Lecter had no intention of relinquishing his old habits completely. He’d enjoyed considerable wealth once and had bank accounts the FBI had never found. A few letters to the right people, a few phone calls, a couple of bills slipped to the right guard who’d turn a blind eye when the packages came in through the usual channels (the trucks that supplied the kitchens, usually), and more often than not, Lecter got what he wanted. And, knowing he had a long stint ahead of him, and desiring to build a suitable reputation for himself to make his time go a little smoother, compounded with the fact that he was already bored and needed something to occupy himself with, he soon began extending his services to others.
In every state and federal prison in America, there are cons who can get it for you. Cigarettes, a bag of grass if you’re partial to it, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your kid’s graduation. Damn near anything, within reason.
Lecter was a somewhat different breed. He’d get you cigarettes, or a bottle, or any number of little trinkets and indulgences, but he refused to deal in heavy drugs or weapons, or anything he considered particularly vulgar. A few cons made the mistake of asking him for such items, and all earned themselves a trip to the infirmary for their trouble. The same was true of those who attempted to engage his services in a manner that he deemed impolite or disrespectful. Regardless of what you could pay, if you talked to Lecter the wrong way, he’d never do business with you again. His regulars respected his rules as much as they respected and feared the man himself. He could be difficult, outright terrifying when he wanted to be, and he had competitors who’d get you what you wanted without the hassle — but Lecter was, undoubtedly, the best.
So when Will Graham came to him and asked if he could smuggle a dog into the prison for him, Lecter told him — no problem.
*
A word about Will Graham.
Will Graham came to Shawshank Prison when he was thirty years old. He was a short, wiry little man with a tangle of dark curls on his head and perpetual week-old stubble on his face. He wore spectacles most of the time, though his friends soon grew to suspect that he didn’t need them; they were always perched low on his nose so he could stare at the frames to avoid making eye contact. That was the thing his friends would remember most about him, afterward. There was a lot more to the man, of course, but that seemed to sum him up for them. Will did not like eye contact.
On the outside, he had been a teacher. People could figure that out long before he told them; he had a way of speaking that conveyed both fierce intelligence and a general weariness with the lack of it in others. The truth was, he’d taught forensics at Quantico, though it was some time before he confided that to anyone. Before mostly retiring to teach, he’d been a homicide detective, and toward the end of his time as a free man, he’d worked as a special investigator and criminal profiler for the FBI. Will kept most of this to himself the majority of the time, and that’s probably the reason why he lasted as long as he did. Former lawmen don’t tend to do so well in stir, where most folks have an axe to grind against the cop who put them away, and any cop will serve as a stand-in. Luckily for Will, he didn’t look or act like any cop any of them had ever known.
‘Course, most cops didn’t murder teenage girls neither.
Will Graham was convicted in the winter of his thirtieth year for killing three young women and cannibalizing one of the bodies. He had for many months been investigating a killer dubbed the Minnesota Shrike, a man called Garrett Jacob Hobbs who’d abducted and killed eight women from eight different campuses around the state. They called Will in after the fifth disappearance. No bodies had been found, the FBI had almost nothing to go on, and Will had a particular way of thinking about these things that tended to get results. It transpired later that there was a reason they’d found no bodies: Hobbs had eaten the organs and flesh — served them to his wife and daughter as well — and then stripped the bodies down and used every part of them for something, bones and hair and everything in between, just as he did with the deer he hunted. It was a horrible thing, but Will confided in his friend later that it had made a crazy kind of sense to him when he got into the killer’s mindset. "He loved those girls," he murmured, many years later in the prison yard, the blood of three dead girls still drying on his own hands. "Not in any sexual sense… He wouldn’t disrespect them that way. But he loved them. And when they were dead, he wanted to honor every part of them."
Will caught the Shrike mostly by accident. He'd only come to ask Hobbs a few questions, following a hunch more than anything substantial — but as Will climbed the front steps of the man’s house with a uniformed officer, Hobbs had seen them coming and shoved his wife out the door to greet them. She’d been stabbed multiple times, too far gone to be helped, even as the officer called in SWAT and an ambulance. Mrs. Hobbs had lain there bleeding out and clutching at Will as he forced his way into the house, hearing screaming from inside, cracking his shoulder before the door gave in — that shoulder would trouble him for as long as he lived, aching every time a cold spell hit — and inside he’d found Hobbs in the kitchen cutting his daughter’s throat, still cutting even as Will’s .38 knocked chunks out of him, and when he eventually went down he sat there crying and the girl lay rasping and bleeding, her windpipe cut, Will holding her down as she looked up at him with wide, glazed eyes, all while her father sat on the floor whispering "See? See?" until he fell over dead.
That was when Will lost his mind.
Temporarily. He was already sick, had been for some time, though he was so eccentric that no one had noticed at first. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, he said. He’d been having hallucinations, losing time. His mind was on fire, and what happened with Hobbs pushed him over the edge.
Will had a knack for the monsters. That’s why the FBI wanted him — that’s why they kept pushing and pushing him to find the Shrike even as he lost his grip on reality. He had pure empathy, and he hated it, but he could get into the mind of anyone. With Hobbs, he got in so deep that he couldn’t find his way back out. Over a two-month period, he killed two college girls — the sort Hobbs would have loved — before finishing the man’s work and killing his daughter. The morning after, with no recollection of most of the previous weeks, he threw up the girl’s ear in his kitchen sink and, terrified, called his handlers at the FBI. When they arrived at his small house, they found Will unconscious on the porch. He woke in the hospital chained to the bed and was informed that he’d been indicted for murder. After being discharged from the hospital, he spent a few months in and out of straight jackets in a criminal psychiatric facility having his mental state assessed, and eventually found himself in front of a jury.
Every man in prison is innocent. Most of them would swear it on a stack of bibles. To hear them tell it, they’re the victims of judges with hearts of stone, incompetent lawyers, police frame-ups, bad luck, or all of the above. Blame had a hard time sticking in Shawshank, where damn near every cell seemed to be occupied by an innocent man.
Will Graham was not one of them. His defense had not been that he didn’t kill those girls, because it was undeniable that he had. His defense was that he had not known what he was doing when he killed them. The best he could hope for was to be found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, and that was an uphill climb with the blood of three bright, beautiful young women on his hands. The prosecutor hammered home that point by inundating the jury with pictures of the girls living, then shocking them with pictures of the girls dead. The FBI, not wanting to admit any culpability in driving a profiler insane, disowned Will. His lawyer fought the good fight, but he might as well have been muttering to himself in the corner for all the good it did. By the time Will took the stand in his own defense, nine days into the grueling ordeal, it was already long since over for him.
Will did himself no favors on the witness stand. He was a reserved and unforthcoming individual at the best of times, and the jury read this as coldness. After weeks spent in an oppressive psychiatric hospital, barely eating, sleeping, or speaking, he was withdrawn and immensely weary, and had no tears left to shed. Perhaps they would have saved him. Perhaps not. As it was, he told his story (what he remembered of it) like a recording machine. The DA pummelled him for two days, repeatedly asking him to describe what happened on the nights the girls died. Will told him over and over, calmly, coldly, that he could not remember.
“You don’t remember killing them,” the DA said at one point, with theatrical skepticism.
“I do not,” Will said. “I feel I have been very clear on this point.”
The DA shook his head, incredulous.
“Humor me for a moment, then, because I’m struggling to believe what I’m hearing. You’re saying that you remember no part of killing Cassie Boyle or Marissa Schurr and displaying their bodies inside the very cabin where Garrett Jacob Hobbs took his victims? You impaled them on a rack of antlers, Mr. Graham; antlers which you knew were there because you’d investigated the cabin — that says premeditation to me. And, of course, you don’t remember cutting Abigail Hobbs’ throat with one of her father’s knives before slicing off her ear while she was still breathing and swallowing it in front of her. Doing these things would be abhorrent, wouldn’t it, Mr. Graham? But you don’t remember. That’s rather convenient, isn’t it?”
It was at that point, according to the papers, that Will displayed one of the few slight emotional reactions he allowed himself during the fourteen-day trial. A slight, bitter smile crossed his face.
“Since unconsciousness is the cornerstone of my defense, and since claiming that I have no memory of committing these crimes only serves to make me look guiltier in the eyes of everyone in this courtroom, then it seems to me decidedly inconvenient.”
The case went to the jury at 1:00 pm on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. The twelve members of the jury filed back into the courtroom at 3:30. The bailiff later confided in the DA that they would have been back within the hour, but held off to enjoy a final lunch at the state’s expense. They found Will guilty and sentenced him to serve three consecutive life sentences, one for each of his victims — the same punishment that had been delivered upon Hannibal Lecter, a man he would soon encounter, in the very same courtroom twelve years prior. It was as good as a death sentence, which the DA had been pushing for and most folks had expected he would get. Perhaps there was a flicker of doubt in the minds of some of the jurors; or, more likely, the FBI quietly pulled some strings to save themselves the embarrassment of a very public execution of one of their own. Either way, Will avoided the electric chair by the skin of his teeth and found himself making a one-way trip to Shawshank.
That was how he met Hannibal Lecter.
*
On the evening that Will Graham arrived at Shawshank, Hannibal Lecter, fresh from the parole hearing that marked his twelfth year of incarceration, crossed the exercise yard with his hands folded behind his back, humming Rossini, to join his acquaintances where they slouched against the bleachers. He would not have gone so far as to call them friends — Lecter only ever had one friend on the inside, and at that moment this friend was sitting in the back of the gray prison bus drawing up to the gates — but surrounding himself with a few acquaintances who provided at least a small amount of mental stimulation was preferable to being entirely alone. That, and it was expected that a man of his stature would have a crew, as it were. Tedious though most prison customs were to Lecter, it was necessary for many to be observed.
Among those he trusted enough to call acquaintances were Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller, cellmates for the best part of a decade by that point and as close to being a married couple as it was possible to be without a certificate to prove it. Price was a little younger than Lecter, an accountant who got caught diddling the books and accidentally killed his secretary trying to cover it up. At least, it was an accident the way he told it. The woman had been almost three months pregnant at the time, something Price had not been aware of, and he’d made things ten times worse for himself by trying to cover up her death. He wasn’t a violent man — half the men inside those walls only had one terrible crime in them, and once it was done and couldn’t be undone they regretted it forever — but he had a quick mouth that often got him in trouble, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to appear in the yard with a split lip or black eye. Nor was it uncommon for him or his cellmate to show up covered in hickeys.
Zeller was younger than Price by some years. As a dumb punk of nineteen, he’d held up a convenience store and shot the clerk when he got jumpy. Shot the clerk five times, in fact. The man ended up in a coma and never woke up, and Zeller got thirty years. Nine had passed by then, and that dumb punk had long since vanished, replaced with a scruffy and sarcastic but ultimately goodhearted man.
He’d had it rough his first year in the slam. By sheer bad luck, he’d wound up in a cell with a notoriously vicious predator, and for a while, he’d come close to ending it all. Price, whose cell had been almost directly opposite Zeller’s, eventually witnessed the kid getting hurt one too many times and broke one of prison’s cardinal rules: he interfered. He didn’t go to the guards, however — he’d have wound up with his throat slashed before evening count if word got out he was a rat. He went to Lecter. Two days later, Zeller’s cellmate was found dead in one of the dark, tunnel-like spaces behind the industrial washers in the laundry, minus his tongue. They never found the tongue. It was long gone by then anyway. Zeller moved into Price’s cell after a few bills changed hands with a guard and, after a brief period of nervousness and distrust, the pair had become close friends. A couple of years into their cohabitation, Zeller had realized quite suddenly and with great surprise that he was in love with the older man. It had taken a few years more for them to become open about it, and plenty of beatings had followed, but eventually, the prison population had shrugged and let them get on with it. They were acquaintances of Lecter, after all, and he was not a man who ought to be antagonized.
The final member of Lecter’s gang at that time was Randall Tier. He was a tall, baby-faced man who looked like he wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but had in actuality murdered a young couple at their campsite five years prior. Tore them to pieces. It was a bloodbath.
Tier fascinated Lecter, who had been giving very serious thought to moving into psychiatry before his incarceration moved his career in an altogether different direction. Tier believed he was an animal trapped in a human body, a dysphoria that many expensive therapists had tried to dissuade him of for decades before he finally snapped. He was much more comfortable with himself these days, ever since he’d met Lecter and had, for the first time, felt as though someone believed him. He’d acquired a magnificent collection of jailhouse tattoos in the years that followed — the impression of clawed talons inked against his own human fingers; long fangs etched into the stretch of skin beneath his lips. The warden had pitched a fit when he saw them, and Tier had spent a week in solitary. He’d born the punishment as a sculptor bears dust from the beaten stone. In prison, in a manner he’d never managed on the outside, he was learning to feel whole.
Tier spotted Lecter first and raised a hand to him as the man approached.
“How did it go?”
Lecter settled on the bleacher beside him and straightened the cuffs of his faded prison blues. “As well as can be expected.”
“I know how you feel,” Zeller said, eyebrows knitted in a frown. “I’m up for rejection next week.”
“I got rejected last week,” Price added.
“As I said. As well as can be expected.”
A siren blast issued from the main guard tower and the outer gates to the loading dock swung open. The bus outside lurched forward and rumbled through the gates. Inmates dropped what they were doing and approached the fences surrounding the loading dock to get a look at the new arrivals. In a place as devoid of entertainment as prison typically is, this event was always quite the crowd-pleaser.
From their position on the bleachers, Lecter's crew watched dispassionately as the door jerked open and the first of the men began to shuffle from the bus, their hands cuffed and their ankles in hobbles, chained together single file.
“There they are, the human charm bracelet,” Zeller said.
“Am I getting older, or are cons getting younger?” Price mused, closing the book he’d been reading and throwing an arm around Zeller’s shoulder. “The failure of the American educational system — that’s the real criminal.”
“We taking bets today, HC?” Tier asked.
Lecter removed a small notebook and pencil from the breast pocket of his shirt. “Smokes or coins? Bettor’s choice.”
“Smokes. Put me down for two.”
“Who’s your horse?”
“The tubby guy with the beard. Fourth in line. He’ll be first.”
“Bullshit,” Zeller scoffed. “I’ll take that action.”
“Me too,” Price said. “You’re out some smokes, bear-man.”
Lecter jotted down their bets in his small, neat hand, letting their good-humored bickering wash over him. Prison was noise, constant noise, and he’d grown very good at tuning out what he didn’t care to hear. His eyes flicked up from the pad to watch the men exiting the bus, shoved along by the unfeeling baton of the captain of the guard, Jack Crawford. The inmates surrounding the fences were jeering and screeching at them, trying to make the men (many of them boys, really) shit their pants. They might succeed. Most of the new arrivals looked terrified. One in particular, though he was working very hard to hide it.
“What do you say, HC?” Tier said.
Lecter wet his lips. “The skinny drink of water at the end. Glasses. Looks like a stiff breeze might blow him over.”
Price squinted down the line. “Pretty boy? Never happen.”
“Ten cigarettes,” Lecter said, calmly.
“That’s a rich bet.”
“Are you going to prove me wrong? Price? Zeller? You too, Tier?” Lecter smiled his small, reticent smile, making a note in his book. “Brave souls.”
The P.A. system crackled to life, informing the inmates it was time to return to their cellblocks for evening count. Price tucked his book inside his shirt and extended a hand to Zeller, which the man took without hesitation. Tier rose to his considerable height, stretching languorously. Lecter’s notepad disappeared back into his pocket.
The four of them joined the straggle of cons filing back into Cellblock Five, with Lecter bringing up the rear. He glanced over his shoulder a final time before being herded inside, just in time to watch the new arrivals disappearing into the admittance building on the far side of the yard. The handsome young man he’d staked half a pack of cigarettes on stumbled and almost fell, earning himself a swift blow to the small of the back from Crawford’s nightstick.
Lecter smiled thinly, though there was no joy in it. Betting was something to do to ease the monotony, and guessing which of the new fish would break down and cry first was as good a thing as any to bet on, he supposed. Though he didn’t care a great deal whether he won or lost, he felt confident in his bet. He didn’t think much of the man he would soon learn was called Will Graham.
That was his first impression of the man.
*
Will Graham tried to keep his eyes straight ahead and ignore it all, but this was easier said than done. He could still hear them.
Their voices washed over him like freezing water. Taunts and catcalls. Promises to show him a good time, to make him wish he’d never been born — which, he supposed, amounted to about the same experience for him.
He was relieved when the P.A. system barked at the men to return to their cells, but only marginally. He’d be among them again soon enough. And there wouldn’t be a fence between them then.
The high, austere walls seemed to swallow him whole as he crossed the threshold of the admitting area. Will closed his eyes for a moment, nausea washing over him. A regret so great that he could not grasp it filled his heart.
The heavy doors closed behind the cons with a resounding boom that echoed through the dim, quiet space. Will felt as though the sound belonged to the guillotine blade that had lopped off his life at the neck. Everything below fell away and was left outside those doors to rot. They had left his mind intact to stagnate and think about what he’d lost. Whole life gone, blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.
Crawford paced the line with a scowl as the inmates were shuffled into place. Dust swirled in the shafts of dusk’s last light that fell from the high, barred windows above.
A door across the room opened and a man strode inside, the heels of his polished wingtips tapping rhythm with his cane on the concrete floor.
“Eyes front,” Crawford snapped.
The smaller man strolled toward them, taking his time, making sure they got a good look at him. He was every inch a bureaucrat, from the Brylcreemed hair to the gold tiepin gleaming against Windsor-knotted striped silk. He looked like he could piss ice water. Will got the immediate impression that prison administration had not been the man’s first choice of occupation, and as such he worked overly hard to make himself seem far superior to all those in his care — though the very fact that he could leave at the end of the day was all it would take.
He stopped, close enough that Will could smell his cologne. It was mid-range, dry, and he wore too much of it.
“This is Mr. Crawford, captain of the guard,” the man said, gesturing at the scowling Crawford. “I am Mr. Chilton, the warden. You are convicted felons. That’s why they’ve sent you to me.”
He gave a smug smile, as if he’d said something very funny. When none of the inmates returned it, he continued, his eyes flinty and unyielding.
“Rule number one. Respect. I will not hear a bad word spoken against myself or any of the other men who preside over this prison. You will address me as sir or Warden Chilton, and nothing else. You may refer to the correctional officers as boss, and nothing else. We’ll treat you with as much respect as you treat us. The other rules you’ll figure out as you go along. Any questions?”
“When do we eat?” one con muttered.
Chilton glanced at Crawford, who stepped forward, nightstick raised.
“You eat when we say you eat!” he roared in the con’s face. “You shit when we say your shit, you piss when we say you piss! You got that?”
For emphasis, he rammed the tip of his nightstick into the con’s belly. The man fell to his knees with a rattle of chains, gasping. Crawford surveyed his work, then stepped back to Chilton’s side.
“Any more questions?” Chilton asked.
Silence. At a look from Crawford, the man on the floor struggled back to his feet, clutching his stomach. Will felt an urge to ask how often Crawford liked to dole out respect with his nightstick, but knew when to keep his mouth shut.
“I believe in two things,” Chilton continued, his eyes moving down the line and finally settling on Will. “Discipline, and more discipline. Here, you’ll receive both. Welcome to Shawshank.”
With a final glance at Will, he turned on his heel and strode from the room. Crawford unsheathed his nightstick again and gestured with it to a different door.
“Move, ladies, and don’t take all day about it.”
The inmates began to move. Will was jerked and shuffled along with the rest, his heart thumping in his chest the deeper he got into the bowels of the prison. The line wound down a dark corridor and into a dank little room that smelled of damp and rot. A steel cage stood in one corner.
“Unhook ‘em,” Crawford snapped, and several guards moved forward to remove the shackles. Will rubbed his wrists reflexively. “Now strip.”
The row of cons began to pull off their clothes. Many were still dressed for court, Will among them — shabby suits, armpits drenched in nervous sweat. Will’s fingers fumbled as he unbuttoned his shirt and let it drop to the dirty floor. He was shaking. The men on either side of him were already naked — he was going too slow. Crawford had noticed.
“Did I stutter, inmate?”
Will shook his head, staring at the rims of his glasses. He could see flabby white guts and flaccid penises in his peripheral vision. He wrenched at his zipper — it was caught — and eventually got his pants down around his ankles.
Crawford glanced down at his boxers. “We going to have a problem? Are you shy, pretty boy?”
Will swallowed and slipped out of his underwear, bending quickly to remove his socks as well. An inmate whistled. A couple of guards smirked.
Crawford surveyed Will a moment longer, then jerked his nightstick at him. “You’re first. Into the cage.”
Will did as he was told, resisting the urge to cover himself up with his hands. If he showed weakness now, he’d be an easy target later. He could feel eyes crawling over his slim, naked frame. He wanted to be sick.
He had his back to them when they turned on the hose. The water hit him like a solid wall, slamming him into the back of the cage. Will lost his footing and almost fell, spluttering, his fingers hooked through the mesh and holding on for dear life. His glasses were knocked from his face and skittered into the shadows and out of sight.
“That’s enough.”
As abruptly as it had started, the shower stopped. Will's skin burned from the freezing assault. Shivering, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked for his glasses. They were nowhere to be seen.
“Turn around,” Crawford said. Then: “Delouse him.”
Will turned his face away as a huge scoop of white delousing powder was thrown all over him. Still, it got into his nose, into his mouth; he coughed and almost retched. Crawford watched dispassionately.
“Move out of the cage. Pick up your clothes.”
Will followed the orders, gasping and blinking, stumbling on quivering legs. He accepted the bundle of prison clothes that was thrust at him, clutching it over his genitals. The fabric was scratchy and worn, the colors faded. He wondered, distantly, how many cons before him had worn these prison blues. How much sweat and misery had they soaked up? For a moment, he was repulsed by the idea of letting them touch his skin. Then all other thoughts left his mind as he was shoved away from the cage and toward a guard with gloved hands and a torch held between his teeth, and Will realized what came next.
Someone grunted at him to bend over. Will closed his eyes as he felt his cheeks being spread and a cursory finger probing inside him. It was over quickly. He hoped it was the last time he’d have to think that. He knew it wouldn’t be.
Soon he was being marched down another corridor with the rest of them, toward the cellblock where he’d spend… Well, where he’d spend the rest of his life. The powder stung his eyes. His throat was tight with fear. The con in the line behind him grabbed his bare buttock when Crawford wasn’t looking, and it took all the willpower Will possessed not to show how much it bothered him. He didn’t think he’d survive the night. Surviving another thirty, forty, fifty years… That was inconceivable.
Cellblock Five was a squat, square building near the back of the prison complex. It was the oldest cellblock in Shawshank, and while that came with its fair share of disadvantages — old concrete walls that would sweat and sometimes even drip after a wet spell, to name but one complaint the inmates liked to voice — it also had its upsides. For one thing, it wasn’t nearly as overcrowded as some of the newer buildings in the East Wing, those built under a regime that seemed content to cram prisoners damn near standing room only into spaces no sane person would deem large enough for human habitation. In comparison, Cellblock Five seemed downright roomy. Though every cell contained bunks, at least a third were generally single-occupation at any given time.
It was full dark outside by the time Will and the other newcomers were marched, shivering, into the cellblock, naked as the day they were born. The sodium bulbs hanging far overhead cast long shadows. Hands and arms emerged through cell bars. The darkness bristled with amused, hostile eyes.
Will’s bare foot connected with something wet and he recoiled. A phlegmy glob of saliva smeared the concrete. Far from the worst thing he could have stepped in, he thought sickly, but it gave him no comfort.
Heart wedged firmly in his throat, his eyes traveled the length of the cells. Tiers of unforgiving concrete and steel rose on either side like mausoleums. And from the dark hollows within, the voices jeered:
“Fresh fish!”
“Reel ‘em in boys!”
“Here fishy, fishy!”
“I can smell that one’s pussy from here!”
Crawford ignored it all, directing the newcomers toward their new homes with curt commands and a rap from the nightstick if they didn’t move fast enough. When he assigned Will to the furthest cell of the top right-hand tier, Will got moving real quick to avoid another bruise. A guard escorted him up a flight of metal stairs and down the creaking gangway. Sallow faces watched him pass, some leering at his trim body, others bearing the despondent countenance of those who’ve lost all hope. Will kept his eyes fixed dead ahead and kept moving. Almost there. Almost there, then he could breathe.
He almost made it to his cell without looking directly at any of them, but a face in his peripheral vision caught his eye, and Will glanced up, startled. In the cell that neighbored his own, leaning against one wall with a forearm draped over the crossbar and a cigarette dangling from his fingers, stood—
“Hannibal Lecter,” Will breathed, stopping dead in his tracks.
Dr. Lecter seemed momentarily surprised. A slight twitch of eyebrow and parting of lips was all that gave it away. He examined Will with cold, penetrating eyes and raised his cigarette to his lips.
“Do I know you?”
Will opened his mouth to reply, then swallowed the words back down. It would not be wise to admit that he recognized Hannibal Lecter from the case files he’d seen as a rookie cop, something they’d used to scare the new recruits fresh from the academy. Case files he’d later taught in his own classroom during lectures on serial murder. Oh, Will Graham was very well acquainted with the Lecter file.
But he said none of this.
It would not be wise to admit on his very first night that he had worked for many years in law enforcement. Not one bit.
Lecter was still staring at him and Will realized, too late, that he had been asked a question. A question that Dr. Lecter — he was a surgeon, he had medical knowledge, he carved their organs out while they were still breathing — now expected an answer to.
The bored guard escorting Will saved him from responding by giving him a rough shove. “This isn’t a wine reception at the country club, inmate — get a move on.”
Will stumbled away from Lecter’s cell and into his own, aware of Lecter’s eyes trailing him until he was out of sight. The heavy bars drew shut behind him with a clang.
His mind whirled a moment longer, grisly details from Lecter’s file rising from the depths of his memory — he took surgical trophies, he ate them, he ate them, he ate them — before Will processed that he was alone. That he was safe.
For now.
He realized he was holding his breath, and exhaled. The sound of the guard’s shoes retreating down the gangway brought a fresh lump to his throat.
He was alone. And he was here.
The cell was about six foot by eight. The only furnishings were a metal bunk with thin, gray sheets, a metal toilet with attached sink, and a narrow metal desk and stool, both bolted to the floor. There was a small window, barred, of course, and so high Will had to stand on the balls of his feet to glimpse the paltry view it yielded of the exterior walls and the bare, flat fields beyond.
The realization sunk in that this was his home now. It might as well be his coffin.
Will placed his bundle of clothes on the desk, then hunched over the sink and brushed the excess powder from his hair, ignoring his reflection in the polished metal mirror on the wall. He dressed slowly in a loose undershirt and boxer shorts, then lay down on his bunk.
After a moment, he heard a slight sound from the cell on the other side of the wall. A creak of bedsprings. Dr. Lecter had settled on his bunk as well.
In spite of the sick fear and horror that had consumed him since the sentence against him was read and he’d realized what he had left to look forward to in life, Will felt overwhelming relief that he had not been put in a cell with Hannibal Lecter. No matter how bad things got, he reflected grimly, they could always be worse.
An eerie silence descended over the cellblock after the last newcomer had been sent to his cell and the bars had all slammed home. Crawford paced on the lower level.
“Lights out!” he bellowed. One by one, the lights on the block went off with a clunk. Crawford’s footsteps echoed through the darkness, and then he was gone.
An itching silence returned, waiting.
Then:
“Fish…. Fish… I know you can hear me, little fishies. Come out and play…”
A ghostly titter drifted from below. The darkness creaked with life.
“You’re gon' like it here, new fishes. Gon' like it a whole lot...”
“I’ve got something you’ll like."
“Make you wish your daddy never diddled your momma.”
“Where’s that new fish with them pretty curls and the fine ass? I know you can hear me, boy. You shy? You can hide now, but you can’t hide forever. I’m coming for you, pretty boy.”
Will closed his eyes and tried to tune the voices out. He was exhausted, but the idea of sleeping was ludicrous. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to sleep again. Not in this awful place.
The last six months had been the worst of his life. His first inklings that he was getting sick, the nightmares, losing time, the FBI ignoring his pleas to go back to his classroom, forcing him to go on, driving him half-crazy with guilt for wanting to quit. Shooting Hobbs, seeing the man’s madness unspool right in front of his eyes and losing track of where Hobbs ended and he began. And finally the girls, the girls he hadn’t meant to kill, the girls he didn’t remember killing; waking one morning with almost no memory of the previous weeks and vomiting Abigail Hobbs’ ear into his sink, realizing what he’d done to her, to all of them…
And the trial. Trying to explain that he didn’t remember and knowing no one would ever believe him. Watching the FBI turn its back on him. Wholeheartedly believing he’d get the death penalty and being forced to come to terms with that. Finding no relief when he got life instead.
The worst six months of his life. And yet, Will realized now, those months would feel like paradise when compared with what was to come.
His eyes opened. He stared up at the empty bunk above, his arms stiff at his sides on the narrow mattress. Like a cadaver on the autopsy table, he thought.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice from the neighboring cell startled him. The sound was muffled somewhat, but Lecter’s words were clear. It sounded as though he was sitting with his back against the wall.
“I know you’re awake. I can hear you breathing. And no man sleeps on his first night.” A pause. “It isn’t wise to ignore me."
Will swallowed. In all his nightmares of what prison would be like, he’d never imagined he might run into Hannibal Lecter in the flesh. Let alone have him as a neighbor.
A sigh from the other cell. “I acknowledge that manners decline within prison walls, but I’d expect more from a man on his very first night inside. I am merely attempting to make small talk — small talk that you initiated, I might add. How do you know my name?”
A long pause. The taunting continued across the tiers, low and cruel, just out of earshot of the guards. It wouldn’t be long before one of the newcomers broke down and started to scream. Dr. Lecter was quite certain it would be Graham and was delighted to find his horse within earshot. He’d never encountered a man within these walls he couldn’t get the better of, and Graham appeared fragile on arrival. Terrible shame if he was to break, but these things happened in stir.
“My first thought was that you’d done a stint here before, but I would have recognized you,” he said. “So perhaps you read about me in the papers. It’s been many years since they spoke of me, but I suppose you might have a remarkable aptitude for remembering faces.”
He paused again. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
“But more likely, I think you come from law enforcement. Our boys in blue remember me very well — I almost disemboweled one of them, you know. Is that it? Are you a cop? I could understand why you’d want to keep that quiet. You’re going to have a tough enough time as it is, with that handsome face… Though it might not be handsome for long. That may depend on how pliant you are when they come for you.”
Will stared into the darkness above. His hands had curled into tight fights.
“If you are a cop, perhaps you know Officer Stewart,” Lecter continued, his words quiet but penetrating. “I believe he left the force after he saw my basement. Unfortunate that his emotional problems got the better of him. I thought he was a very promising young officer. I heard he manages a motel now. Doesn’t answer my letters. Terrible shame.”
Will’s nails were digging hard into his palms now. If he hadn’t bitten them to the quick during his trial, he would have drawn blood.
“Do you ever have any problems?” Lecter asked. Then, very quietly: “You will…”
Perhaps, if he had continued that way throughout the night, he could have gotten Will to break. Perhaps. Looking back, years later, Dr. Lecter grew to believe otherwise. Lecter listened until morning, long after the bet was over and Will Graham had cost him half a pack of smokes. He never made a sound.
The man who did was in a ground-floor cell a stone's throw from Randall Tier's. The next day, Tier would swear he hadn’t goaded the man, but of course he had. They always did.
Not long before midnight, as the whispered taunting was reaching critical mass, a loud wail of despair cracked through the cellblock. “God!” a man screamed. “I don’t belong here! I want to go home!”
“We have a winner!” someone yelled, and the place erupted with whooping and laughter as the chant began: "FRESH FISH, FRESH FISH!"
“I want to go home!” the sobbing man repeated, his voice rising in his hysteria. “I want my mother!”
“I had your mother, she wasn’t that great!” one con yelled, and the laughter rose.
“I don’t belong here!” the man screamed again, and that was when Jack Crawford stormed back into the cellblock, his face like thunder, several other guards at his heels.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Let me out!” the man screamed, thrusting his arms through the bars. His face was puffy and streaked with tears. “Please! I’m not supposed to be here!”
Crawford examined him coldly, drawing his nightstick and gesturing with it menacingly. “I won’t count to three. Not even to one. You’re going to shut up now or I’ll sing you a lullaby.”
“Hey man, shut up,” Tier muttered from a few cells over. “We was just playing, shut up.”
“You don’t understand, I’m not supposed to be here!”
“Me neither!” one con yelled from the higher cells. “They run this place like a fuckin’ prison!”
“Please!” screamed the plump, bearded man, reaching through the bars close enough to snatch at Crawford’s shirt, and Crawford lost it.
“Open it.”
A guard unlocked the cell. Crawford grabbed the bearded man and dragged him out by the collar, then delivered a harsh blow with the nightstick to the man’s head. The man fell, crying out, and tried to crawl away. Crawford hit him again.
The cellblock had fallen deathly silent. The man on the floor seemed close to unconsciousness.
“Take him to solitary,” Crawford muttered, delivering a final smack with his baton for good measure. He glared around the cells as the inmate was dragged away. “If I hear so much as a cough in here the rest of the night, you’ll all visit the infirmary. Every last motherfucker in here.”
From the uppermost tier, Dr. Lecter looked down on the scene in contemplative silence, removing a cigarette from behind his ear and lighting it with steady fingers. In the neighboring cell, Will Graham was curled in a ball, his hands fisted in his hair, his eyes wide, but dry. He was too horrified to cry.
Crawford's eyes scanned the cells with contempt a final time, settling briefly on the silhouette of Lecter on the top tier and narrowing a fraction. He stooped and spat on the floor where the man he had beaten had lain. Then he turned on his heel and stormed out of the cellblock, dripping a thin trail of blood from his nightstick as he went.