# Cleave On one October night when fog rolled thick from the harbor, Thomas Blackwood walked towards the pine-studded hills above Kingsport, seeking perhaps the courage to cast himself upon the rocks below. Thomas had grown old before his fortieth year. The consumption gnawed his lungs, each rasp a struggle against the inevitable. Each morning he woke to the taste of copper and rot, spitting black into the washbasin. The shipping concern that had been his grandfather's pride now lay in creditors' hands. Three generations of Blackwood prosperity, dissolved by his own poor judgment and the machinations of cleverer men. Even his modest cottage would soon be forfeit. His beloved Constance now regarded him with the weary contempt reserved for broken things that linger past their usefulness. Their final quarrel still echoed—her voice sharp with accusations, his hoarse with denials, until she fled to her sister's house, taking their young daughter. From the cliffs, the lighthouse beam swept its accusatory finger across the sky. He saw the village slumbering beneath its vaporous shroud, mercifully concealing from his sight the harbor where his grandfather's proud vessels had once rode at anchor. From the ledge, he could not discern the jagged rocks below that awaited him with their promise of obliteration, yet the weak and listless tide whispered to him through the darkness. Then he heard the sound of autumn leaves rustling, though no wind stirred. From the weathered granite outcroppings, shapes emerged that challenged the eye's comprehension. Neither wholly spider nor wholly grasshopper, the worst of both: jointed legs that moved with predatory grace, multifaceted eyes that reflected starlight, and bodies that seemed to shift between chitinous black and earthen brown. Some, the size of a house cat. Stone-Leapers. The children's stories were real. They came to take souls that had already begun to rot, crawling from the mountainside like locusts towards a feast they'd already decided. To Thomas, they seemed not to move yet expanded in a swarm—shooting quickly from rock to rock in sudden bursts, then freezing motionless. They flowed laterally, surrounding him, dozens of them now. In their approach lay something almost conversational. They regarded him with curious tilts of their heads, awaiting recognition from one who had already begun to devour himself. One positioned itself upon a boulder mere feet from where Thomas stood. Its compound eyes held depths that somehow reflected his own emptiness back at him. He saw himself as they saw him: a hollow thing that tasted of endings, of battles lost and dreams grown septic. *"Come then,"* he whispered. *"Finish what I have already begun."* They swarmed upon him—not with violence, but with thoroughness. He felt their grasp on his legs, then his shoulders, then his flank. Their mandibles start cutting. The pain was exquisite and strange, as if they were mining putrefied ore from veins he had not known existed. When unconsciousness claimed him, his last sensation was of being hollowed out, scraped clean. --- Dawn. I breathed in, waiting for the familiar panic to flood my chest at the sound of my own wheeze. It didn't come. I rose stiffly. The creatures had vanished. I touched the scratches they had left in the granite. Not claw marks. More precise, like razor cuts. Below, the harbor held three fishing boats and a single merchant vessel I recognised. It had once carried my Blackwood cargo to Boston and beyond. I watched it rock peacefully. The harbor mist cleansed the village. The lighthouse beam scanned faithfully. Smoke rose from chimneys. My own chimney too. Constance had come home. At the cottage, she waited with red-rimmed eyes and our daughter sleeping in her arms. When she looked at me, I saw exhaustion. Her own deep fear of losing what remained of our life together. *"Thomas?"* she said, her voice uncertain. *"I'm here,"* I replied, and meant it in ways I had not for months. She studied my face. The shipping business remained lost. The debts unchanged. The consumption still gnawing at my chest with each labored breath. My daughter stirred in Constance's arms, reached for me. I took her carefully, expecting her to pull back from the familiar smell of sickness. But she didn't flinch. Didn't turn away. We held each other. *'The monsters didn't eat you, Papa,'* she whispered against my chest. *'No,'* I said, the words coming slowly as I understood them myself. *'They only eat the spoiled bits. Like... like when mama cuts the bad parts off an apple.'* I heard the gulls calling. I breathed in - still that familiar rasp - and felt my daughter adjust her breath to match mine. Her small hand found the spot on my collar where she used to trace patterns when she was smaller, when she would still touch her nose to mine. Constance watched us, and something in her face softened. As if she could see past the hollow-chested stranger I'd become to the man who used to make her laugh at breakfast. I set our daughter down gently, my hands still shaking slightly. *"Do you want help with the porridge?"* I asked Constance. *"We need wood for the stove."* I took her hand. She squeezed back, then nodded toward the kitchen.