About the book


The Creeper is a masterful tale of horror and suspense by one of Ireland's most talented emerging authors.


Superstitions only survive if people believe in them...


Renowned academic Dr Sparling seeks help with his project on a remote Irish village. Historical researchers Ben and Chloe are thrilled to be chosen – until they arrive...


The village is isolated and forgotten. There is no record of its history, its stories. There is no friendliness from the locals, only wary looks and whispers. The villagers lock down their homes at sundown. A nameless fear stalks the streets...


Nobody will talk – nobody except one little girl. Her story strikes dread into the hearts of the newcomers. Three times you see him. Each night he comes closer...


That night, Ben and Chloe see a sinister figure watching them. He is the Creeper. He is the nameless fear in the night. Stories keep him alive. And nothing will keep him away...

Which was the first horror story you read that made you want to write in the same vein? (Was it another type of story that first made you want to write?)


It all began with a picture book for 3-5 year olds called FUNNY BONES by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. It follows a skeleton family with a skeleton dog, and though not officially a horror per se, it’s full of fleshless, reanimated corpses, all smiling as if they’re happier in death than they ever were in life.


After that, I was a teenager, and the book was Lovecraft’s third omnibus – THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK. My older brother borrowed it off a friend of his, and then fate found its way into my hands. Stories like THE OUTSIDER and THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP opened my eyes to a style of writing that I would read obsessively for over a decade.


Had that book not crept into my house, I wonder how different my life would be now.


How has the landscape of Ireland inspired your work? Have you visited anywhere that particularly inspired THE CREEPER?


The landscape here is a character in its own right.


Aside from those few days of sunshine in the summer, the west of Ireland is a beautifully bleak place. It’s a horror writer’s dream, if said horror writer likes their settings dark, damp, and dismally cold.


Nothing stirs the literary mind quite like a good blast of horizontal rain.


I walked many a wet woodland when I was writing THE WATCHERS. And the village in THE CREEPER is actually based on the village I grew up in as a child. It’s a maze of narrow country lanes, with flooded fields, and ruined cottages.


It certainly helps to capture the landscape on paper when you’ve stood there in person.


You have mentioned the influence of Poe and the Gothic horror tradition on your work. Has modern horror had any impact on your writing and if so, which authors/books?


The quality of writing and the originality of ideas are a constant source of inspiration and envy.


They’re the reason the genre is so fresh and exciting in 2022. There’s such variety to the themes and characters that now, more than ever, readers who may have avoided horror for whatever reasons are being lured in.


And it’s a trap, of course. Once we have them in that cage, they’re never getting out.




To name but a few:


Simone St. James blends horror and mystery together beautifully in the likes of THE BROKEN GIRLS and THE SUN DOWN MOTEL. Michelle Paver’s DARK MATTER is a masterclass in isolation and possibly the coldest book I’ve ever read. Jonathan Aycliffe (one of my personal favourites) is a pro at the slow build, making sure that shiver hits the right spot on the spine; NAOMI’S ROOM and THE LOST, to name but two. I also adore writers who pay homage to any Gothic influences such as Nicole Willson’s TIDEPOOL, which was one of my favourite books of last year.


The list is endless.


How do you like to write? Do your plots come to you fully formed or do you start with a character or scenario and work from there?


A generous tumbler of absinthe during a full moon usually does the job.


I think it’s crucial to understand what your ‘horror’ is, and then build the story around that. But coming up with something original is easier said than done. That involves a lot of staring into space.


I’ll play around with characters, fears, scenarios and locations, and try to approach it from as many angles as possible. Often, the final plot is woven from many threads that could have been individual short stories in their own right.


THE WATCHERS was a rare exception in that I wrote Mina before the plot. I knew that I was sending her to the coop, but that’s all. Only when she was safely locked inside did I plan out the rest.


With THE CREEPER, I had the plot and then designed the character of Ben to best complement the horror of the story.


How has Irish culture and tradition impacted your writing?


I’ve embraced my country’s culture in the same way I did with my baldness.
Impacted? Yes.
Any choice in the matter? Maybe some subtle cries.


I owe so much to Ireland for providing me with the parts I need to assemble something fresh for the horror genre.


Even our better-known folk tales are open for interpretation. Reworking and updating old horrors is a great way to keep them interesting, otherwise there’d be no surprises.


This was the case with THE WATCHERS, which was a reimagining of a very particular character in Irish folklore. And THE CREEPER toys with Ireland’s love affair with old superstitions and how they survive to this day.


The horror at their core of both novels is quintessentially Irish.
So, I count myself lucky to have been born on this little island and to be surrounded by so much spooky shit all the time.


Do you ever model your characters on yourself?


There are definitely a few personal traits and foibles that I’ve put into Mina (THE WATCHERS) and Ben (THE CREEPER). But I’ll never tell you which ones. I’m like a parasite inside my characters that no one can see.


I think every author puts bits of themselves into their work. But I’d also be guilty of “borrowing” personalities from people I know, mixing up whatever cocktail I need for the narrative.


Which other genres do you particularly like to read? Do they have an influence on your work?


I rarely stray too far from the horror genre. It’s become an addiction that I’m happy to live with.


But science fiction and horror are so closely linked that often they’re one and the same. I still enjoy books grounded in reality but what I really look for are elements outside the ordinary – a concept or idea that ‘ve never encountered before.


I really enjoyed Blake Crouch’s Pines trilogy. The twists, horror and pacing were sublime.


Stuart Turton’s SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE was also wonderful. Applying a concept like body-swapping to a murder mystery was genius, and I’m in awe of how he managed to map it out.


And the occasional thriller is always welcome, especially if they’re twisty. The last one I loved was THE SILENT PATIENT by Alex Michaelides.


If you weren’t writing horror what other literary projects would you like to pursue?


There’s only horror.


Even if I tried my pen at sci-fi, it would always read like a horror.
It’s both a blessing and a curse.


Which two of the following characters would you rather have dinner with: Carmilla, C. Auguste Dupin, Frankenstein’s monster, Count Dracula, Cthulhu, Roderick Usher?


Frankenstein’s monster – eloquent and an absolute gent. But would I enjoy my dinner sitting across from a mismatch of stitched together body parts? Probably not.


Cthulhu – he’s a fair size, so I’ll put his invite aside until I’m having a summer barbeque.


Dupin would probably talk too much, and poor old Roderick too little.


So, I guess it’s got to be the Count and Carmilla. Vampires – good conversationalists, snappy dressers. With some bottles of wine and a few carafes of blood, we could quite happily natter by the fire until the dawn.

​"An extraordinary psychological horror book. Excellently written, with a twisted, spiraling, unexpected end that will leave you speechless." ~ TBM Horror Experts


Detective. Angel. Victim. Devil.


A haunting tale of suspense, loss, isolation, contempt, and fear.


On November 1, 1951, war hero John Ashton was promoted to detective. His first assignment: find the district attorney's missing daughter. But his only lead is Alena Francon, a high society sculptor and socialite committed to Bellevue's psychiatric facility. 


Alena has a story for the new detective. A story so outlandish John Ashton refuses to heed the warning. Alena admits to incarnating Golem, a demonic force, into her statue. A devil so profound he's infiltrated every part of New York's infrastructure. Even worse, he uses children to serve as bodily hosts for his demonic army, unleashing a horde of devils into our world. 


When Alena's confidant, Annette Flemming, confirms the existence of Golem, John is sent on a collision course where fate and destiny spiral into peril, and the future of the human race hangs in the balance. 


The Devil Is In The Details!


Fans of The Silence of the Lambs, Clive Barker, John Connolly, old Stephen King, and Anne Rice will be fascinated by this edge of your seat psychological horror thriller with a story that rips out the heart of humanity and throws it on a slab to be feasted on. 

I believe at some point in our lives we all reach rock bottom, or so we believe when life doesn’t go the way we wish for. Some of us experience rock bottom many times, and later in life we realize that the bottom can still be deeper than we can imagine. You might once have thought you hit rock bottom when your mom told you “NO” to buying that one expensive toy that you saw in the commercials, and start crying and thinking that life can never get worse than this. And some of you might be the moms and dads, who are hardly making do with the little you’ve got to survive, and now you have to deal with your young kid’s attempt to have his, or her way with you. 


This is a story of how I reached, let’s say, a rock bottom, where I thought I was digging myself out, only to realize that I almost buried myself in.


I just turned thirty years old in 2015. My birthday gift from the family was a new smart phone, and an envelope with some cash from my parents and my siblings. Happy day, right? Not how I felt about it. Now you might think that me reaching my third decade in life might be the reason why I wasn’t happy, but that’s not the case, I actually like growing up. I always joked about how I can’t wait to have some grey hairs sprinkled around my head. “That will attract the ladies” I always joked. I’m thirty-six now, and still not a single grey hair on my body, and I am happily married, so I kissed the ladies’ magnet fantasy goodbye and moved on.

The reason why I was depressed was because I have been jobless for a year. I was living with my parents, and for some unknown reason, I was coughing blood months before my birthday. Now the first two problems can happen to many - unfortunate how it may be - but the last one was not only a terrible thing to have, but also a mystery to everyone. You see, no one knew why I was coughing blood. They did all the blood works, all the chest X-Rays, and CT scans. All they could tell is that there are some radiolucencies in all the images they took of my lungs, but they couldn’t seem to find the cause. TB was ruled out, which one might think it’s a good thing. But my brain just announced that I reached rock bottom, thinking that not knowing the reason was much worse.

Insomnia was just the cherry I needed on top of the pile of messy cake life have handed to me. And just like those fellas in The Sleep Experiment, I turned feral on my family and friends, and slowly became excluded. I became lonely, and that’s when thoughts of – you know what- creeped in my head. And for a writer like me, who writes fiction most of the time, I could get really creative with how I would do it to myself. 

One day, I lay down on my bed, not alone, my pal insomnia is with me, making sure I stay awake. I started to imagine…  it. I was day dreaming about it for weeks, but that was the first time I am thinking of ending it all while I’m on my bed, and then it became all I can think of. I told myself: “It’s okay, I’ll never really do it… no harm in imagining it… it’s just imagination… thoughts can’t hurt.”. Now I know you, who are reading this, might be shaking your head, and thinking, this won’t end well… you don’t know the half of it.

I was tired, but I still couldn’t sleep. This can affect what you imagine at a moment like that, so I couldn’t imagine myself running in a highway trying to avoid the incoming cars until I check out like a deer, or I couldn’t imagine casually climbing an alligator’s cage and throw myself in; doing a double front flip before I go down under and never resurface. I was tired, and I wanted to sleep.

Sleeping pills. The words flashed in my head.

I remember moving my hands to my mouth, and pretending to swallow a handful of sleeping pills. I’m not sure if a handful is enough, I’m not an expert, and I don’t ever wish to be so, but it was enough for my brain to imagine myself slowly losing all myself to the void.

The next day I woke up, not realizing when did I fell asleep. It was the first time in a while where I felt I had a good night sleep. I found a way to sleep. I finally found a way to sleep. I remember thinking how much I looked forward to the next night to come so I can do it again. I felt like I have solved one of my problems, and that made me believe that… maybe… everything will be alright. 

I did it again the second night, and this time, I went into a deeper state of sleep. I only woke up in the afternoon when my mom came to me to see if I was alright. I slept for sixteen hours that day. I thought that this was a blessing, albite I felt a little lethargy from the extended sleep, but I thought I earned that because I haven’t slept right for months. Tonight, I thought, I will have the best sleep ever.

Seven hours later, I went back to my bed. I lie down on my side, pillow between my thighs. I chug two handfuls of imaginary sleeping pills, and then, slowly, my body started to sleep… my body started to sleep… not my brain… my body. Everything was shut down except for my consciousness. I was able to feel the passage of time, and for a moment, I thought that this trick I convinced myself works, wasn’t going to do it anymore. More time passes, and I thought this might be insomnia again, telling me: “Hey! Ahmed! Guess who’s back from vacation?”. 

As time continued to pass, I started to wonder if my eyes were closed, or if it’s the room that was too dark. Of course, I could easily test that by opening and closing my eyelids, which for some reason, I didn’t feel was happening. I tried to rub my eyes, and when I say tried, I mean I summoned every ounce of my muscles and tendons to reach out to my eyelids, but I couldn’t feel my fingers touching anything, I couldn’t even feel my hands. A memory flashed before me, where I once slept on my arm until it went numb and I couldn’t move it the next day when I woke up for about fifteen seconds, which later followed by pins and needles that I can only describe as extremely loud TV static noise inside your muscles. I decided to get up and switch sides, but I couldn’t move, I couldn’t feel anything. I tried to move my fingers, my toes, my tongue, even tried wriggling like a freshly caught fish, but there’s nothing. I tried to speak, but there was no mouth, no lips, no tongue. I then tried to take a deep breath… nothing… I couldn’t breathe. 

You might have been in an extreme state of fear at some point in your life. Fear can be described as some kind of pressure that can be released through our human reactions; like a shout, or a gasp, or you might turn the other way and run for your life. Me, however, in that state of tormented, agonizing fear, could not scream, run, or even faint. I couldn’t react to what is happening, and that made my fear build-up as I became convinced that I was dead. Somehow, I am dead… and conscious. I turned religious, remembering the times I heard that after we die, we will be buried until judgement day, which could be countless eons from now.

Am I going to stay like this, just a conscious in the dark for hundreds, thousands, millions of years from now? Isn’t judgement day in the heavens? Is judgment day going to be in our galaxy? The closest galaxy is two million light years away from us. AM I GOING TO STAY LIKE THAT FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS?

“Don’t pull” I suddenly heard in the darkness. I wanted to ask “who is it?”. I tried to shout or wave. But I was a paralyzed, bodiless victim in the pitch blackness of my doom.
“Don’t pull”
Pull what? What are you talking about? Who are you? What is happening? I replied in my mind. It was the only way I could answer. 

Then, out of the darkness, a hideous creature, something I could not comprehend, manifested in front of me. It had a face similar to a lion, but it was covered in scales you’d see on oceanic creatures, That’s the best way I can describe its continence. Its body, even though it had hands and legs, diverted from anything close to being human, or anything earthly. I felt everything shaking around me as it got closer to me, it’s eyes bright, but not glowing, as if there was an invisible light reflecting on them. And all around it, there was some kind of smoggy vapor, and I knew, without being able to smell, that this almost smoky halo evaporating from it, was the stench of death.

“Don’t…

I took a swing at it out of fear. It looked shocked at me. Then, slowly, the face of this cosmic humanoid, oceanic lion started to morph into a familiar face; my brother’s, who came to wake me up, and is now in shock after I punched him on the face. I looked at him for a while, and then I started crying. He took me out for lunch that day and I talked to him about what happened. We snuck out, so no one would see me in that state. He never mentioned what happened to me to anyone. This is the first time I’ve ever revealed that dreaded night, and I hope I will never live through it again. 
​
The power of imagination is stronger than we think, so if you ever reach rock bottom, just remember, it can always get worse, and most certainly, do not imagine taking the easy way out, for imagination has a way of manifesting itself if we let it. You might be at rock bottom now, but you will eventually be on top of the world another day.


Bonus information:
When I met my wife, I learned that during the time I was mysteriously coughing blood, that she was diagnosed with TB, and when she was cured, I stopped coughing blood. That was three years before we met…. Weird.

Ahmed Alameen is an Iraqi writer and filmmaker who was born in Kuwait. He moved around to Emirates, Egypt, South Korea, and finally to China where he met his wife.

He had first came across with his talent when he had met a group of students in Emirates who were discussing the making of a movie. After seeing how his ideas had impressed them, he started to take a little interest in story telling.
​
He started finally after he came up with the idea of a new fiction thriller book, Psychs, which was his first published book, and in 2020 he became the first Iraqi creator to get fully funded on Indiegogo for his comic book, The Epics of Enkidu.
At the moment, Ahmed and his wife, Rita, are settled in Kuwait where he works on developing new stories that are inspired by his Iraqi culture.

The Survivor, by James Herbert, is the author’s third novel and was published in 1976. I was at secondary school at the time and was already aware of his previous novels The Rats and The Fog as copies of them had circulated throughout the school, battered paperbacks with dog ears marking all of the gruesome/mucky bits. I bought my own copy of The Survivor though, not just because I’d enjoyed the other books but because the image on the cover was such a striking one, the original design of the aeroplane flying through the eye socket of a skull.

And so I began reading, and was drawn in immediately by the hugely atmospheric prologue describing the crash of a passenger jet in the fields near Eton with bodies falling from the ruptured fuselage and its descriptions of the aftermath of the crash with wreckage, mechanical and human, spread across the ground.

What followed was – and probably still is – the most terrifying reading experience I’ve ever gone through. There were times when I was reading The Survivor that I frequently had to put the book down as I was so scared. This was a different kind of horror to that of The Rats and The Fog; those books had relied mainly on gross-out scenes for their effect, generating disgust rather than real unease but this was something else entirely – supernatural horror that wormed its way deep into my fear centres, evoking real sensations of dread and terror.

And it did that via some hugely effective prose. The descriptions in this book are some of the best I’ve read for evoking that sense of dread. The imagery created is outstanding and has stayed with me even after all these years, scenes imprinted on my memory never to be forgotten: the early morning fisherman attacked by corpses fallen from the plane into the river, the melted doll discovered at the crash site, the demon bursting into flames in the school chapel…

Despite being utterly terrified, I lapped the whole thing up, approaching each night’s reading with a combination of fear and anticipation. The book followed a structure which Herbert used a lot in his writing, chapters alternating between plot progression and set-pieces. It’s probably where my own love of a good set-piece comes from, just one of many influences this book in particular has had on my own writing style. A set-piece is associated with films too of course and, in keeping with his other novels, The Survivor is a very cinematic book, the imagery so well created that it’s like watching the film play in your head as you read. That’s something I strive for in my own writing and might explain why I try to choose interesting locations to set my stories in.

The plot which threads its way between these set-pieces is a gripping one, a mystery that has to be solved and which culminates in a twist ending that blew me away when I first read it. (And is one which has been used to very good effect in many novels and films since).

Looking back at The Survivor now, it’s influences on my own writing are impossible to ignore. My love of the supernatural as the driving force behind the horror was born here and it’s something I always try to use in my own work. I love a good monster – and the one in The Survivor is utterly terrifying – the real horror of a supernatural foe arises from the fact that it’s an unknown quantity, lying outside the realm of the known. As I mentioned earlier, the images it created are burned into my subconscious (I can even remember individual lines – “and then his heart did burst”) and so it’s no real surprise that my first novel, Witnesses, opens with the crash of a passenger jet. I didn’t write it as a homage at the time but in retrospect it’s clear the connection was there.
​
I think any writer absorbs experiences and exposure to other writers which shape their work and style and there have many more of those personally since I read The Survivor. But it was the first and is undoubtedly the biggest influence on the writer I’ve become. I may have been completely terrified by it when I first read it – but I’m so glad I did.

Anthony Watson has placed short stories, novellas and novels with a number of small presses. He was co-founder of Dark Minds Press and worked as editor there for ten years before leaving to concentrate on writing. He writes supernatural horror with most of his stories set in historical timeframes.

Following the publication of Witnesses in 2017, his second novel The Fallen was published in October 2020 by Demain Publishing. His most recent novel, The Damocles Files Volume Two: Seeds of Destruction, co-authored with Benedict J Jones, was released in February 2022.

As well as writing, he posts occasional book reviews at his Dark Musings blog which can be found at https://anthony-watson.blogspot.com/
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and his Amazon author page is at: Amazon.co.uk: Anthony Watson: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle

CHILDHOOD FEARS


My childhood memories are like a selection of old photographs, filled with sunshine and ice-cream or party hats perched above elastic smiles. But if I were to carefully sift through my brain-album, there would also be memories stained by darkness lurking in the corner, seeping and light-absorbing.


When I was a kid, there were three main things I was scared of – life-like dolls, clowns and imaginary shapes shifting in the darkness. These fears were mainly rooted in two movies I watched: Poltergeist (1982) and Child’s Play (1988). The clown toy scene in Poltergeist had embedded itself so deeply in my subconscious that even as an adult, I’m reluctant to look under my bed at night. In Child’s Play, when I saw Chucky’s head rotate without batteries and say, “Hi, I’m Chucky. Wanna play?”, my phobia of moving dolls was cemented forever.


There was also that 1980s photobook of hauntings which my sisters gleefully brought back home one day. Try as I might, I can’t remember the title, nor can I find any details of this mysterious book online. I like to think it appeared just to haunt me. What I do remember however, is the mirror-like sheen of its front cover, its inky black smell and its dead weight on my little hands. Inside, people could be seen with stuff oozing out of their mouths (which I later found out to be a substance called ectoplasm), girls were flung across their rooms by some hostile unseen force, apparitions hovered above staircases and ghostly passengers sat in the back of cars. Strong emotions would arise from the pit of my stomach when I gorged on the book, like an addict knowingly lacing themselves with poison yet helpless to do anything about it.


Still, I grew up relatively normal – or so I thought. When I penned my debut Gothic poetry collection, Where Decay Sleeps (published by Haunt Publishing), I realised that not only were my demons not exorcised by the passage to adulthood, but had only laid dormant over the years, reincarnating themselves inside poems such as Porcelain, Shadow, Plain Paper, and other ghastly imaginings within the collection. In hindsight, the title Where Decay Sleeps couldn’t have been more apt; the hauntings had finally been reawakened through the pages of my book.

Red across black, the blood moon
smeared her lunar cycle across the night
shedding the sky from scarlet to rust.
His garden
awakened


Where Decay Sleeps lays 36 poems on the undertaker’s table, revealing to us the seven stages of decay: pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, livor mortis, putrefaction, decomposition and skeletonisation. Readers are summoned to walk the Gothic ruins of monsters, where death and decay lie sleeping.


Tread carefully through Satan’s garden. Feast your eyes on the Le Chateau Viande menu (before your eyes are feasted upon). Read the bios of monsters on Tinder. Discover the unpleasant side effects of a werewolf ’s medication.


Blending traditional Gothic imagery, modern technology and Chinese folklore, Where Decay Sleeps is the debut poetry collection from the haunted mind of Anna Cheung.
​

As discussed in previous articles, LGBTQ representation in horror is as significant as in any other genre or medium. Representation includes and acknowledges those who have traditionally been excluded, and opens up genre parameters to voices, concerns and subjects it might have otherwise been closed to. Both medium and audience thereby evolve through such interactions, shrugging off old assumptions and parameters, providing alternatives to traditional orthodoxy. This factor of representation is too often ignored in discussions and debates over the subject, which too often operate along proscribed lines and within established parameters. It is as healthy, productive and transcendental for the genres and mediums in question as it is for LGBTQ creators and audiences themselves for such voices to be heard, and to be provided platforms alongside those established as traditional luminaries and icons. 


That said, representation in itself is not enough: it should not be an end goal, rather a means of redressing historical imbalance and exclusions. Representation is a stepping stone to greater things; to elevations of the conversation. We've already discussed this factor with regards to Clive Barker and Billy Martin (writing as Poppy Z. Brite). Now, there are numerous popular films, video games and TV shows that echo those sentiments, and seek to drag LGBTQ representation out of the political quagmires in which certain quarters would see it founder forever more. 


Hannibal, Bryan Fuller's abstruse adaptation of Thomas Harris's iconic books, is perhaps one of the most powerful, prominent examples in recent history:
​

The choice to reimagine the dynamic that exists between Doctor Hannibal Lector and FBI profiler Will Graham (protagonist of the first book, Red Dragon), is a stroke of sincere genius: instead of being immediately antagonistic, with a freight of bleak history trailing behind them, the show portrays Will Graham as a man of peculiar capacity and psychology; a far cry from the more macho, composed and masculine archetype found in the books. The Will Graham we find in the show exhibits tendencies that are explicitly neuroatypical, though the writing takes especial care not to make him emblematic of any particular condition or state of mind. Rather, he is described as his own peculiar phenomena; a psychological rarity that has no parallel in existing understanding. Combined with this, he is almost asexual, barring one or two notable exceptions (both of which are framed in abstruse terms rather than inherently sexual; the romantic/sexual entanglements Will has with women are by-products of other agendas and situations and expressions of conditions other than what might be understood as classical attraction). 


Counterpointed to Will is the show's reimagining of Hannibal Lector; a more poised, saintly/infernal figure than any found in the books or film adaptations. Like Will, he is a rare flower; a species of one, so separate from the common herd of humanity as to be alien or extra-dimensional (a factor helped immensely by Mads Mikkelsen's avian performance). 


Like Will, Hannibal does not experience attraction in the classical sense; even when he engages in romantic and/or sexual relationships, they are means to an end; by-products of agendas so abstruse and bizarre as to be intentionally baffling. 


The only sincere relationship they enjoy in the show is with one another. To describe their mutual attraction as homosexual or homoromantic is technically incorrect; it is a mutual fascination and obsession that transcends sexual or aesthetic desire, or even the aching need of love: it is a strange, almost indefinable species of psychosexuality, the pair not only mutually fascinated and attracted by one another's states of mind but, owing to their peculiar manifestations of empathy, psychological understanding and -fittingly enough- cannibalistic tendency to incorporate others into their psyches, a merging that occurs in the abstract: They are lovers that substitute sex for abstract entanglement. They meet in the asylums of one another's minds and engage in couplings of violent intimacy, to the point whereby assumptions of who they are dissolve, leaving them mutually in flux by the show's end. 


On the rare instances physical intimacy does occur, it expresses itself with brutal intensity; through stabs, gouges, bites and trauma; the only expressions fitting for emotions of such incredible complexity and strangeness, and a very dangerous concept for the show to approach. Will and Hannibal never sexually consummate what they know to be true by the show's conclusion, but it is consummated physically, via their mutual murder of the “Red Dragon,” Francis Dollarhyde, in a moment of operatic violence whose symbolism is fittingly mythological in nature. At the climax of that violence, they cling together, bloodied, panting, breathless, and declare a love that threads beyond what any proscribed relationship could ever encompass. There is nowhere else for them to go at that moment other than to Hell together, where they can be immortalised and infernal forever. 


That the show takes what begins as metaphor and implication and drags it into literal light - “Is Hannibal Lector in love with me?”- is a profound experiment, and one that could've easily failed, in lesser hands. As it stands, making the metaphor literal enhances the show tenfold, dissolving whatever fragile septum exists between metaphor and waking reality, the psychological realms of demons, angels and dragons that both characters inhabit and the ostensibly crude, artless waking world they have little time or pity for. 

By operating beyond spheres of what might be considered conventional romance or interaction, Hannibal Lector and Will Graham transcend whatever humanity they might resemble in a manner not unlike many of the serial killers that the show features: almost every one of them is seeking a form of apotheosis, in his or her own way; a transformation that both Hannibal and Will perceive and appreciate in a fashion those around them cannot. Despite Will's reluctance to engage in the full darkness of their romance -hampered, as he is, by lingering shreds of assumed selves-, he is as in love with the world of demons Hannibal opens up beneath him as the demon himself; he sees intimacy and beauty and art in the violent and sadistic expressions of these otherly-inspired individuals, and aches to emulate them in a manner that Hannibal understands and desires for him. Hannibal is aware in a way Will initially is not that the latter cannot function in the proscribed world of matter and rules and restrictions that other human beings do: they are angelic and demonic forces trapped within lamentably human skins, made to dance and flounder around reality like birds in a fish bowl. They are neither of them made for the circumstancs in which they find themselves; for Hannibal, those circumstances are too rude and imperfect -symbolised by the callous and frustrating incapacity/unwillingness of broken cups to gather themselves up and repair-, whereas for Will, it is too cruel, chaotic and contradictory; a place of broken promises rather than broken cups, where nothing can be beautiful and survive.


However, they find a strange beauty in one another; a poetry that is antagonistic, violent and intense, mercurial and subject to shifts in status and expression just as their states of mind -their whims- are. 


Hannibal is amongst the most perfect expressions of the gothic's influence upon the noir; whereas the setting, the narrative components, are all of the latter (crime drama, murder mysteries, police procedurals), the tone, language and aesthetics are all determinedly of the former. Despite the dirty, noirish realism of the show's settings, its characters exhibit notably gothic souls: they are almost universally eloquent, poised, insightful and elaborate in their interactions. They engage in subtext and metaphor that requires a level of interpretation and allegorical undertanding not typified by shows of its ilk. Here, we have allusions to Romanticism and renaissance, to religion, artistic and culinary tradition, to occultism and alchemy, to kabbalism and mythology. 


In the midst of this, Hannibal and Will's peculiar romance percolates and efflorescences, coming to realise itself via a series of traded traumas that, in any other story, would be romantic or sexual dalliances. 


Here, sex and romance are traded for a communion more akin to that found in religion or metaphysical practise: the tatters they shed are not clothing, but the raiments of former selves. The intimacies they share are psychological; meetings of mind that are as agonising to them both as they are transformative (such that part of the sincere tension between them lies in a desire to extricate or exorcise one another, manifested in Hannibal's eventual attempt to literally cut the meat of Will's mind from its housing). 


The climax of their courtship is the only place in whose aftermath they allow for any kind of physical intimacy beyond the violent; a bloody embrace that occurs at the apex of pain and exhaustion, when they are both on the edge of death, and a shared transcendence that they've ached for -and been predestined to fulfil- since their first cataclysmic meeting, where fires beyond the nuclear began to spark, and rewrite definitions of heaven and hell. ​