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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
- 5
- 6
- 7
Lumen passes through Nashville in the middle of the night. Velvet dark blows in through the open windows. Pierced by neon jewels, it weaves the thick scent of mimosa into her clothes.
She pulls into the parking lot of a Motel 6 on the outskirts of town. It’s a low white building, a ghost abandoned in the woods. A big magnolia shades one corner of the lot; the thick green leaves are dark, waxy in the dim light of the streetlamps. The white blossoms float on the boughs; big, round, they are like moons reflected in still water. Their whiteness seems to glow, the thick petals folded back. Faint lemon animal scent sifts down onto the hood of her car.
Lumen opens the door, swings her legs out. She stretches. When she stands, exhaustion whirls around her and throbs at her temples. She yawns.
A blizzard of moths swirls, draws a widening cone beneath the bright yellow floodlight.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome, honey.”
Lumen smells trees, rain, motor oil. She heaves a sigh. Her eyes are disjointed, grainy, her cheekbones full of lead. The humidity sprawls over her skin. The small hours of the morning murmur around her in a voice of leaves, exhale the low distant whoosh of interstate traffic. Crickets shriek.
She unlocks the door. Pushes it open. She glances around.
Lumen steps in. Flips on the light. The room is cold, full of white noise. Her heartbeat sounds in her ears, muffled, as she turns to close the door. She shuts the heavy drapes. Her skin feels hot. She touches the back of her hand to her forehead, feels the simmering summer sun still trapped inside.
Two beds fill the tiny room. She tosses her purse onto the closest one. She sits down, folds her legs. She sighs and rubs her face.
“Fuck,” she mutters.
She picks up the remote and turns on the television. The screen lights up in the image of a blow-dried blonde in a pink suit. Her voice fills the room, Southern-strained like honey through the speakers.
Lumen lies down. Her world twitches out of focus.
She rolls over, unzips her purse. Pulls out her phone. She deletes three texts from Owen, erases four of his voicemails. There is a message from her mother but she saves it, sets it aside until morning. She glances at the battery level and turns the phone face-down on her chest. When she closes her eyes, she imagines getting up. She longs for a shower.
Her whole body jerks and when she opens her eyes the blonde is no longer on the television. A choir of voices takes her place, flinging their words toward Baptist heaven. Her breathing settles. The hymn comes apart in her mind, falls back down. It hits her like a steady rain of big floppy flower petals.
“I don’t want this,” she murmurs, turning to her other side.
She sees the preacher man, his white teeth dazzling, his arms open wide. The eyes sparkle like those of a predatory beast. In a sing-song, a chant, he lauds the concept of the sovereign while the positioning of his body declaims himself his prince. He carries the trappings, that smooth wave of hair, suit like a pelt, red lifeless mouth animated by some other force. He sacrifices truth and lets the blood run. Waves of adoration push gently against the stage. They crawl up, kiss his toes.
Lumen gropes for the remote.
What you are doing now, your erratic flight south: it is what Will Graham would expect of you.
Her mind does not use her own voice. Smoky and deep, its breath is soft as moss on her cheek. The words tumble over themselves, ragged and cold, in a Scandinavian cadence.
Has he flushed you out of your frosty Minnesota wood like a quail?
Her eyes open. She pushes a red button on the remote, cuts the sound off.
“No,” she murmurs. “He doesn’t want me. It was a coincidence. I believe that.”
Are you sure?
Lumen sees Hannibal in her mind’s eye, he is standing on the deck of his hotel room and dressed in a soft suit the color of thunderclouds. The air around him is dark but for the tie; it is a dark red, cherry, like firelight flickering through a glass of pinot noir.
“No.”
What will you do?
Hot tears ooze out of her eyes. She digs the pillow out from beneath the bedspread, buries her face in it.
*             *             *
Will glances from shadow to shadow. “X-ray them first.”
Conversation drops off, words and half-syllables crashing into each other. Clothes rustle.
“Just…just do it.” He rubs his forehead. Faces turn. He shrugs. “There might be something to see. You never know.” The frigidity of the morgue brings a flush to everyone’s skin and the light, harsh and bleak, hollows out their eyes, lays bare the mottled map of blood beneath. He gestures to the bodies, turns away. “You have to admit that this kind of presentation is…unusual.”
“True that,” says Beverly. “You guys heard him. Come on. Let’s get this done.”
Jack turns his back and takes out his phone, speaks in stage-whispers. The morgue attendants circle around the bodies, take hold of the gurneys. The wheels hiss over the rubber-brick floors. Metal frames squeak, wheels spinning in their casters before aligning themselves with the push. Heavy plastic bags wrap around the torsos and rattle over every seam in the floor. Shark tails, covered with white sheets, jut out over the ends.
Beverly herds Jimmy and Brian out into the hallway. “Lunch?”
“Ooh, yes please. Seafood?”
“You’re gross.”
“Am not. Grouper is delicious. I saw a little place by the hotel.”
“Well, I’m having a sandwich. With ham, or something. You guys can have whatever you want. Will?”
The overhead lights bleach out his train of thought. “Huh?” He looks over his shoulder. “What?”
Beverly peers around the doorframe. “Food time?”
“Uh, yeah.” He wipes his palms on his pants. “Sure. Okay.”
She smiles. “We’ll have the time while they go upstairs and do your x-rays. Jack’s going to babysit the bodies.”
Jack pockets his phone. “Yeah.” He waves a hand. “Go ahead.”
Beverly lifts her eyebrows. She smiles. “I’m so hungry it’s ridiculous.”
Will nods. “Okay. I’m coming.”
“You want me to wait?”
His eyes snap back into focus. He turns away from the autopsy table. Beverly’s still holding the door open. She’s watching him, a faint smirk on her face.
“If you want,” he says. “I’m coming. I’m walking. Now.”
The hallway, painted a bright soothing blue, burns with overbearing Florida sunshine. Will feels it on his skin as they pass tall chrome-treated windows, a heavy weight, its heat displacing the flow of his blood. He takes a breath.
Beverly looks at him, squints in the sun. “How are you doing?”
He filters the exhale through his teeth. “I’m all right. You?”
She shrugs. “Okay, I guess. It’s a weird case.”
“Yeah. That’s a word for it.”
“I keep thinking about mermaid lore.” Thin, lattice shadows from the potted palms fall across her face. “There are hundreds of variations on the legends. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“There’s a place to begin, but it’s in this guy’s head.” Will puts his hands in his pockets. He studies the texture of the carpet, the way the crisp shadows interact with it. “He’s taken pieces of the legends and cobbled together his own meanings.”
“What do you think?”
Will looks up, pushes open a heavy blondewood door. They step into a windowless hallway. Dim and fitful, the change in light plants dull seeds of pain behind his eyes. He squeezes his temples. Refrigerated air blasts him in the face.
“He’s got a boat big enough to do his work.” The cold settles around his neck. “This guy’s an expert fisherman. He’s got…dedication to it, it’s a lifestyle, an artform, practically a religion—it takes him days to find the right fish, long days, sunup to sundown.” He shivers. “He takes the women first. I’m not sure how important they are to the tableau, beyond the fact that they look a certain way: blonde, like these women were, or long-haired. Not too big or too small.” He glances at her. “Have the women been identified yet?”
“Yeah.” Beverly takes a notepad out of her lab coat pocket. “I think so.” She flips through the handwritten pages. “Yeah. Let’s see. Jessica Flynn, age 23, she’s a student from Ft. Lauderdale; the other woman is Carolyn Fletcher, age 24. She worked at Disney World in Orlando. She was down here visiting a friend.”
“Are they locals?” Will turns his head, eyeing a watercolor painting of pelicans. “Natives?”
“I think Jessica was. I’m not sure about Carolyn.”
“He goes out, finds his woman—or in this case women—and he keeps them somewhere. He has to. He feeds them, keeps them…healthy? He doesn’t torture them, though, at least not above the waist.” Will snorts, grimaces as he emphasizes each word. “After all, he doesn’t want to ruin the canvas.”
Beverly shakes her head. She folds her arms. “Gross.”
“Then, he goes out onto the water. Matching woman to fish is a precise art. This guy, he has a lifelong relationship with the sea. He’s one of these guys who can smell a storm when it’s still two hundred miles out and can tell by the color of the water which fish will be running and which ones won’t. He’s probably a native Floridian, or he comes from some other region of the Gulf coast.”
“Why the boat? Couldn’t he do the assembly in his basement, or whatever?”
“Handling a fish of that size takes equipment. Cleaning up after the all the butchery would be far easier on a boat. It’s probably commercial fishing size, with all the cranes, pulleys, deck space he could ever need.”
Beverly shudders. “Any thought I might have had about going out on the water is presto-magic gone.”
Will halts, pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Jack wants to know if we’ll pick him up a Cubano.”
“Only if we are grabbing one for ourselves, yum. That sounds great!”
He shrugs, puts his phone away. “Whatever you want is fine.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Now we just have to find a local sandwich shop.”
“I am sure there’s an app for that.”
“Fuck that! I’ll just ask someone who works here.”
They walk into the glass lobby and Beverly strides up to the front desk, where old-lady volunteers in turquoise vests stand and smile. Will takes refuge beneath the wide waxy leaves of a potted peace lily. He studies the walls; they’re white stucco, set with shells and bits of broken tile. The shards pick up the relentless sunlight, flash back macaw colors. Overhead, someone pages someone else, a deep male voice echoing through the vaulted ceiling. Will touches the shell shapes, murmurs their names in his mind: cantharus, cockle, conch, coquina. Kitten’s paw. Olive, murex. Angel wings. Whelk. His lips move. He traces the outline of each one.
“Got a lead on the sandwiches,” says Beverly, walking over to him, holding up her notepad. “What are you doing?”
“All the shells used in the wall are native.” He shrugs. “I just…I thought it was a nice touch.”
Beverly looks around. “I guess.”
“It’s the kind of thing our guy would notice.” Will puts his hands in his pockets, studies the wall. “He would know all their names. He would…approve.”
“Creepy.”
“Sorry.”
“Come on. Let’s go.”
*             *             *
The next morning, her hair wet, Lumen walks out into the parking lot of the Motel 6. She steps beneath the magnolia, pushes herself up on her toes. She cuts a blossom off the tree with a tiny folding knife.
She goes back into the room one last time and rinses out an empty plastic McDonald’s cup. She fills it to the brim with water. Gently, she floats the big white flower on top.
In the car, she snugs the cup down into the central holder.
She takes out her phone. Bites her lip.
If your life ever takes you to Miami, look me up. I know the perfect place for breakfast.
*             *             *
“Would you go out on the water with me?”
Beverly looks up, startled. The wind pushes her hair into her face and she hooks it behind her ears. “What?”
They sit together in the shade of a deep pink umbrella, around a small white glass-topped table. A vinyl tablecloth flutters, held down by condiments and a napkin dispenser. The sky hangs overhead, deep and blue, puffed with bits of bright cloud. The constant traffic noise bends and dips in the breeze. The air smells of tidal sand, hot pavement, frangipani, vinegar, and roasting pork.
“Out on the salt. Fishing.” Will studies his half-eaten sandwich. “Would you go out in a boat with me?”
“Yeah, sure! I mean…probably, yeah. Of course I would trust you.” She grins, picks up her sandwich. “I don’t know.” She shakes her head. She lifts the sandwich to her mouth. “I’ve never been out on the ocean before.”
“I grew up in Louisiana.” Will hunches his shoulders. “Then later we moved to Biloxi. Stayed there awhile.” He concentrates, teasing a thin slice of pickle out of his sandwich. Grains of mustard cling to his fingertips. “I used to fish with my dad, sea fishing, as a kid. We’d head out before dawn and…” He pauses, eyes tracking the soaring flight of a bird. “And by the time the sky was silver we’d be out of sight of land.” He glances at her as he pops the pickle in his mouth. “Every time, until I was like, twelve or so,” he says, chewing, “he’d point at that silvering in the sky, and then he would explain to me all the differences in twilight.”
Beverly’s eyebrows twitch. “Differences?”
He pushes his chair back, holds up his hand. “Yeah. You see, there’s civil twilight.” He tilts his fingertips toward the tabletop. “That’s when the geometric center of the sun is six degrees below the horizon—from that time, until proper sunrise. Or sunset. It’s when there’s still enough light in the sky to easily see distinguishing features of the land, individual things like houses and trees and cars and…and dogs,” he says, flashing a brief grin. “Then you have nautical twilight, which happens when the sun is twelve degrees below the horizon. We’d call it first light, or false dawn, or nightfall. It lasts until you can’t navigate by sight on the water.” He picks up his sandwich. “Then there’s astronomical twilight, which has to do with whether or not sixth-degree stars are visible to the naked eye.” He props his elbows on the table, takes a bite. “But to most people, those with untrained eyes, it just looks pretty much like full dark.”
She sits back. “Wow. I guess it’s true.”
“What?” He chews, swallows. “What’s true?”
She leans forward to take a suck off her straw. “You learn something new every day.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No, no. I’m being serious.”
“So you’re seriously making fun of me.”
“No!” She picks up a potato chip. “Stop.” She points at him with it. “Stop it.”
“I’d like to go out while we’re here but I doubt there will be time for it. Out on the water, I mean.” Palms rattle in the ebb and flow of the wind; fronds cast sweeping shadows across the white concrete. He watches them. “I haven’t been in awhile. A couple years.”
“You’ve fished here before?”
“Out of the Keys, yeah.” He pops a chip into his mouth. “It’s some of the best sport fishing in the world.”
Beverly blots her forehead with a napkin. “Holy fuck it’s hot out here. Florida in the summer. Jesus. Whose great idea was that?”
Will takes a drink. He looks around. “It’s not too bad in the shade, with the wind.”
“Speak for yourself.” Beverly waves a hand in front of her face. “My coddled, air-conditioned blood has other ideas.”
“I loathe air-conditioning.” He wipes his mouth. “Because no matter how well you maintain it, or how often you’re able to turn it off, your house always ends up smelling like canned mold.”
“I think air conditioning is what makes life bearable in this part of the world.”
“Maybe.” He takes a bite. “It’s warm out here.”
Beverly wipes her hands and gets up, walks to the counter. She carries her drink with her. Fat drops of condensation slide off the waxed paper, darken the bricks. Will listens to her voice as he looks out across the street, through an esplanade planted with yellow hibiscus and royal Poinciana trees. The pavement beneath is scattered with patches of flame-colored petals, scarlet stains smeared by heavy rain into the white curbs. She chats with the guy at the counter about the weather, then orders a third sandwich wrapped to go.
A sudden fluttering and chattering snags his attention. Magpies land beside his feet. Their black-and-white feathers gleam, the white patches bright, long jaunty tails scintillating blue-black in the sunlight. He gins a little, watches them hop along the bricks. They snap up crumbs, spread their wings, tussle with each other. He chuckles.
Beverly turns, walks back toward the table. He squints up at her. “We have friends.”
“Nuisance birds.” She glances down, moves her hair back over her shoulders. “People probably feed them.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Don’t.” Beverly sits, crosses her legs. She jabs at the ice in her drink with her straw. “The owners will probably chase us away if you do.”
Will plucks a chip off his plate. He looks down, leans over. Three of them dart toward his lowered hand and tear it out of his fingers. He laughs.
“Don’t encourage them!” Beverly grins, nudges his foot with her own. She looks around. “We’ll get in trouble. Don’t you go and get me in trouble, Graham.”
“They’re really smart,” he says. “Magpies are some of the smartest birds in the world. It doesn’t matter whether I feed them or not.” He tosses down another chip. “They’re got the brains to figure out how to get what they want. I bet they steal right from the counter all the time.”
Beverly slides on a pair of sunglasses. “This is me, shielding my eyes from your bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit.” He looks back and forth at his face, reflected in her lenses. “They really are that smart.”
“Yeah.” She leans back, folds her arms. “I would go out on a boat with you.”
He smiles. “Good.”
Beverly’s phone goes off. She digs it out of her purse. “Jackpot.”
Will takes a drink. “What?”
“The x-rays show that he severed the victims’ feet at the ankles and stuffed them inside the sharks’ stomachs.”
Will sighs.
*             *             *
Lumen pulls over on a long straight highway flanked with spindly Georgia pines. The sun hangs low and florid in the layers of clouds, burns through them and kindles the light into a gilded shade of orange. It lies on her hands, burnishes her arms. It casts long spindly shadows across her face.
Cars flash by on gusts of speed. Her car shudders and rocks with the velocity as she leans over the passenger seat.
She fishes out her phone. She dials. With the phone pressed to her ear, she stares at a big blue sign.
“Lumen? Is everything okay?”
“Dex…I’m…” She swallows. She squints at the white lettering. “I-I’m at the Florida border.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then?”
She lets out a huge sigh and smiles a tremulous smile. “Yes…yes.”
- 5
- 6
- 7
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Lumen Obscura