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Lumen Obscura	By : PinkSiamese Category: -Misc TV Shows > Crossovers Views: 1077 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Hannibal or Dexter in any of their incarnations (TV shows, movies, books). I am making no money off this story.

Chapter List
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Lumen sits in the parking lot of a McDonald’s, greasy paper crinkling in her fingers. She takes a huge bite. Her windows are open, letting in the damp air. The sun burns through a layer of hazy white clouds, eye-wateringly bright.
She wipes the grease off one hand and picks up her phone. There’s another text from her mother, looking to confirm a lunch date.
She looks out the windshield. The grass, a vigorous green, glitters with rain. Leaves sway over her car, releasing fat drops of water. The irregular sound taps through her trance.
She finishes her food and crumples up the wrapper, tossing it back into the bag. She takes a long drink of iced coffee, feels the caffeine hit her bloodstream. She swipes the receipt off the dashboard. The folds it up, moves to tuck it into her wallet when she notices the edge of a creamy vellum card peeking out from behind her Visa. She shoves the receipt in with the cash.
With her fingertips, she eases the card out. She tilts it, bright sunlight falling across the front. The design is elegant, sparse, silver and black engraved into a smooth ivory background:
Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Doctor of Psychiatric Medicine
Psy. D., M.D.
Below that, a Baltimore address, a fax number, an office number.
Lumen turns it over. Written on the back in an antiquated hand, in the unmistakable strokes of a fountain pen, is a short note.
I have greatly enjoyed our time together. Should you ever find yourself in Baltimore, do not hesitate to get in touch. I would love to see you again.
Lumen’s face gets hot. Below that, close to the bottom edge, a handwritten mobile phone number. She puts the card on her lap. She picks up her phone, taps out a reply to her mother’s text. She sucks in a breath, lets it out in a long hard sigh. She looks up for a moment, thinks. She opens up a new text window and double-checks every digit before typing it in.
I’m sorry I ran out on you after telling you that I would stay. Something came up. Forgive me?
She hits send, stuffs the phone back into her purse and turns the ignition key. She looks in the mirror, wipes the grease off her face. Steps on the brake. Shifts the car out of park.
The phone buzzes. She freezes, both hands on the wheel, and looks down at her purse. Her heart swells against her ribs, kicks into a swift rhythm. She slaps the car back into park and yanks her phone out. She looks at it, smiles a little, sighs and rolls her eyes. Breathlessly, she starts to laugh.
“Mom, I really don’t care where we go,” she says, putting the car in reverse. She turns her head, looks over her shoulder. “No, really, wherever you want to go is fine.” The car inches backward. “Lumen, you’re being dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.” She laughs, shaking her head. She puts the car in drive.
As she rolls up to the road, the phone buzzes a second time.
“Goddammit, really?” She looks in her rearview, stomps the brake, and wrestles the phone out.
Your apology is accepted. Thank you, Lumen. It is my fondest hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.
The morning air feels cool on her flushed cheeks. A slow grin crosses her face. She lets the phone slide back into her purse and does a little low-down fist pump. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
A horn honks long and loud. She jumps, looks in the rearview and flinches. The man in back of her glares and lays all of his weight on the horn.
“All right, all right, you got me,” she yells, scanning the road. She leans over, peers past some low-lying
shrubbery, and turns into traffic.
The man speeds past her. He taps the horn and gives her the finger. She shakes her head at him, hair blowing. She sticks her arm out the window and gives it right back.
Once on the highway, she rolls up the windows and turns on the air conditioning. She puts the radio on, restlessly surfs the channels.
“C’mon, give me something that won’t put me to sleep,” she murmurs. “That is all I ask. I don’t think it’s too much.”
After awhile, she gives up. The road winds deeper into the trees, all of them so green; the clouds break apart into a clear blue like the still depths of a warm ocean. She drives, the wheel humming in her hands. Her thoughts wander along the backs of the white lines, serpentine. They slither deep into her memories.
I did not actually spend much time down there on the water under the sun. In my memories, the bay of Biscayne is always black.
She feels a sharp urge to go back, to take a boat and ride out until the land is a thin sparkling line and look down into the depths of that pale blue water, milky in places, almost green, a color unlike anything else in her world.
It’s not the first time. I don’t think it will be the last time, either.
The feeling settles into her stomach, weighs it down. She rolls the window down to let the heat of the day fill the car but it’s dry; the evaporating remnants of the night’s thunderstorms are not enough to replicate the weight of Florida air, its tactile quality, its smothering sweetness.
Lumen pulls over onto the shoulder. Traffic rushes by, rocking her car on its wheels. She takes out her phone and calls Owen. She knows he’s asleep, his phone on vibrate. It’s early enough, yet late enough, so that he should be in deep sleep.
Don’t answer the phone. Please. Just…don’t.
Voicemail picks up. She sighs and closes her eyes, rubs her forehead. “Hey, it’s me. I couldn’t sleep last night so I drove into the city pretty early for breakfast at Hell’s Kitchen. I was gonna do some shopping too but I couldn’t find anything worth spending money on. I’ll be home soon.”
She hangs up and looks out the passenger side window. There’s a split-wood fence and beyond that, a broad and sweeping field dotted with sun-bleached boulders. Three horses graze at the far end, clustered beneath the rippling shade of a windbreak. The shadows of the leaves make dappled patterns on their dark hides. Hot wind gusts against the back of her head, smelling like hay and asphalt.
Will I be home soon?
She puts her hand on the keys. She glances in the rearview in time to see a dark blue sedan pulling onto the shoulder behind her. Lumen’s mouth quirks as she sits back, brushing flyaway chunks of hair away from her face. She pulls the elastic out of her hair. A man leans his head out the driver’s side window, squinting behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.
In the side mirror, she watches the driver’s side door open. “Great. A good Samaritan.” She talks around the elastic in her teeth, manhandles her hair into a ponytail. “Just what I need right now. The goodness of his heart is probably directly proportionate to the blondeness in my hair. Does he stop for fat old ladies, I wonder?”
The man closes the door, approaches her window. There is a hesitation in his steps. He’s got his phone in his hand. Lumen turns around, shading her eyes with the flat of her hand. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeved button-up shirt. He looks at her, holds the phone out like he’s surrendering a weapon. The sun makes amber glints in his hair.
“Hi,” he said. “Are you all right? Are you having trouble?”
“No.” Lumen shakes her head. “I’m fine. No car trouble or anything like that. I just pulled over to make a phone call.” She pulls her phone out of her purse, holds it out the window. “See?”
“Okay, good.” He smiles, doesn’t make eye contact. “I saw you sitting here when I passed you by and just…I don’t know, thought it would be a good idea to turn around and double check.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
He nods. “No problem.”
Lumen looks in his eyes. There’s something raw about them; their color is like water, shifting from slate to sea, sky to thunder. “This is gonna sound hokey, I know.” She tilts her head, glances at his crooked mouth. “But are you from around here?”
“What, me? No. No, not at all.” He shades his forehead with the flat of his hand. He smiles a little. “I’m here on business. I live in Virginia.”
“Okay.” She shakes her head a little. “I was gonna say that you look familiar. I don’t know. Maybe you’ve just got one of those faces.” She holds up a hand. “I swear, I’m not hitting on you.”
He blushes, chuckles and glances down. “Well,” he says, looking up with a one-sided grin, “now that we’ve got that all sorted out.”
“I know, right?” Lumen starts the car back up. “Thank you, though. Seriously. It was nice of you.”
He steps back and nods. “Drive safe.”
“You too. Have a safe trip.” She pauses. “Back home, I mean.”
“Thank you. I’ll try.”
She watches him return to his car. He climbs in, shuts the door. He looks at her through the windshield before starting the engine.
* * *
That evening, Lumen sits by the window with her laptop while the sky silvers into twilight. She listens to Owen upstairs as she scrolls through Facebook, the sound of water in the pipes. He hums beneath the hiss of the shower. Behind her, a pile of dirty dishes.
She closes Facebook and opens Google, types in Sif and the trickster god.
“Loki,” she murmurs, eyes moving in lines back and forth. “Supremely clever and possessed of a silver tongue, he used it to ensnare everyone in complicated designs to which he then provided the key.”
She pauses, takes a slow sip of chai.
“The gods eventually punished him for his misdeeds by taking the entrails of his son and binding him fast to three rocks—one beneath his head, one beneath his knees, and one beneath his loins—and over him bade dwell a deadly snake whose fangs continuously drip venom into his face. It is the burden of his faithful wife Sigyn to hold a bowl above him, to catch the venom. When the bowl brims over, she carries it away from him to dump out its deadly contents. As the venom strikes his face, the god Loki writhes in his suffering and brings earthquakes to Midgard.”
She scrolls down, clicks on a couple of links.
“Sif and Loki.”
Owen walks into the kitchen, hair still damp. He leans against the doorway.
“Sif, the wife of Thor,” continues Lumen, leaning forward, her chin in her hand, “had beautiful hair that fell past her feet; its color was that of wheat fields in the sun. One day, while she was sleeping, the trickster god Loki, god of thieves and adventurers, cut it off. He left stubble on her lovely head, akin like the stubble of flayed autumn fields. While she cried out in anger, Thor thundered through the halls of Asgard, threatening the worst punishments he could devise and aiming to bring them down on the head of the perpetrator. Loki, fearing the vengeance of Thor, traveled to Asgard and to Smifhelm, home of the dwarves, to ask for help. At Loki’s behest they got to work, spinning threads of hair longer than before, finer, and wrought out of the most precious gold. Loki came back to Sif the next day with the new hair and promised that it would take root on Sif’s head and grow there, that it would surpass the hair he had shaved off with his blade. Sif placed the hair on her head and to her delight and Loki’s relief it grew and grew long, until it passed her feet, and when she went to the window the sun gleamed upon it with all the vigor of summer. The gods' fury was appeased.”
“Hey,” says Owen. “What’s this? Story time?”
Lumen flinches and half-turns. “Jesus, you cared the shit out of me.” She pulls her feet up onto the chair and hugs her knees. She rubs her forehead and giggles. “Wear a bell, will you?”
“Sorry.” He walks into the kitchen. “What are you looking at?”
“I was just looking up some Viking myths.” She pushes the computer away and shrugs. “Something made me think of it. Is there anything you want me to do tonight?”
“Sleep,” he says. “Which, speaking of, if you’re having insomnia you probably shouldn’t be drinking tea this late at night. Try cutting it out and see if that helps.”
Lumen makes a face. “Ruin all my fun.”
He chuckles, walks over and kisses the top of her head. “I worry about you. Do you think it would be easier if I went to days? Is it the sleeping alone that bothers you?”
“No, no. It’s…I don’t know what my problem is.” She closes the laptop. “I’m probably just bored. There are only so many jobs I can apply for in a day and sooner or later all the chores get caught up.”
“What? You aren’t enjoying almost-daily lunches with your mother?”
“I am, I am.” Lumen rolls her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. Well…I enjoy the times she manages not to talk about Miami. Which is a thing that happens. Sometimes.”
“She just worries.”
“I know she does, but we’ve talked about that already and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It was a stupid thing to do. I can agree with that most of the time.” Lumen folds her arms. “That should be enough.”
“Why did you go?”
“I told you already.” She turns her head. “I wanted to go somewhere where it wasn’t seventy five below in the winters. A place with ocean. At the time, it seemed like a good place to be.”
“Miami’s really dangerous, though.”
“Everywhere’s dangerous. Some places hide it more than others.”
“But around here isn’t…”
“Hello, Minnesota Shrike?” Lumen stands. “That was thirty miles away from here.” She taps her finger on the table. “From this house. Has everyone forgotten that already? Or is just that overwhelming desire people have to pretend that their hometown is special in some way? It’s like people think that moral depravity is this trendy thing and has no interest in flyover country.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up.”
She sits back down. She picks up her tea. “I’m sorry you did too.”
He sighs. “I’ve got to go.”
“I know.”
Owen leans over, kisses her cheek. Lumen sits still.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he says.
“Okay.” Her smile is quick, freezes, seems to melt off her face. “I hope your day doesn’t suck.”
Owen pauses a moment, then turns and hauls his backpack up off the floor. His silences makes her think that he wants to say something, but instead he loops the backpack over his shoulder. He turns. Lumen sits with her back to the doorway, listening to his footfalls cross the living room.
Lumen Googles Minnesota Shrike. She passes a handful of local links, clicks on one that shows up purple in her search results:
IN THE MINNESOTA SHRIKE’S NEST: EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS
She glances at the site name. Tattlecrime.com. Of course.
Out of habit, she scrolls through the Miami tag first. She clicks back over and looks through the collection of photos.
She sees racks of antlers mounted on the walls and ceiling, the light of one window transforming a cabin attic into a ghoulish cave. Blackened wood on the floor in the shapes of bloodstains.
She clicks the Minnesota Shrike tag at the bottom of the post.
IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE
ANOTHER SHRIKE IN THE NEST?
Lumen pushes her chair away from the computer. The sudden intake of her breath cracks the stillness of the kitchen.
This is gonna sound hokey, I know. But are you from around here?
I was gonna say that you look familiar. I don’t know. Maybe you’ve just got one of those faces.
The picture isn’t that good, it’s too saturated, the winterlight does the lens no favors at all but it’s the curly disheveled hair that makes her draw a shaking line between the man in the photo and the man in the blue car.
That, and the delicate little bags under his eyes.
Lumen opens a new tab, bring ups Google. Her fingers fly. She runs an image search on Will Graham. She stares at the screen.
Same dark-rimmed glasses. Same long, flushed, lopsided mouth.
Her hand drifts to her face. Her fingers cover her mouth. “Oh, shit.”
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Lumen Obscura