Woodgrave

You're awake.

What day is this? Where are you?

The cabin. His cabin. You've been here before, three times now. You remember the first visit, two years into the relationship, when Rodin led you up the winding mountain road and said "I want to show you something."

You remember this trip. The seventh anniversary. The ring hidden in your bag, the speech rehearsed a hundred times, the plan to ask him by the fireplace after dinner.

You remember the storm rolling in faster than expected. The snow piling up. The roads becoming impassable. You remember thinking it was romantic.

You remember the food running low.

You remember the way he started looking at you.

His eyes would track you across the room. Linger on your arms when you reached for something. Drop to your thighs when you sat down.

You told yourself you were imagining it. Told yourself the man you were going to propose to wasn't sizing you up.

You remember him standing behind you. You were at the window, watching the snow, thinking about how you'd have to wait for the right moment. You didn't hear him pick up the iron poker from beside the fireplace.

You remember the whistle of metal through air.

Then.

You remember seeing your own body from above. Blood pooling around your skull, spreading across the floorboards you'd helped him refinish last summer. Rodin stood over you, the poker in his grip, chest heaving beneath his Henley. His winter coat was draped over a chair. He'd taken it off. Didn't want to stain it.

You watched him drag your body to the kitchen. The kitchen where you'd cooked breakfast together three days ago. Where you'd kissed him while the coffee brewed.

He didn't make it to the counter.

He dropped to his knees on the floor. His claws sank into your arm, the arm that had held him through nightmares he never explained, and he pulled. The sound of meat tearing from bone. He shoved the flesh into his maw before he'd finished ripping it free. His teeth snapped and ground, jaw working, swallowing chunks half-whole. Blood ran down his chin, pooled in the fur of his chest. He bit down again before he'd finished swallowing, throat convulsing, a wet choking sound escaping him. His claws hooked into your shoulder and wrenched, dislocating the joint with a pop, and he buried his muzzle into the wound.

Between mouthfuls, words spilled from his throat.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I tried. I tried. I'm sorry."

He ate until his stomach distended beneath the soaked fabric of his shirt. Then he kept eating.

And you watched.

---

You are not alone.

They stand in the corners of the cabin. They watch Rodin.

"I'm so sorry," a woman says. She's by the window, arms wrapped around herself. Middle-aged. A floral blouse stained brown. Her eyes hold a terrible gentleness. "I kept hoping he'd stop."

"Mom." A little girl tugs at her skirt. Pigtails. A gap where her front teeth should be. "He ate another one."

"I know, sweetheart."

A gruff voice from behind you. "Look at him. Fucking animal."

A heavyset man leaning against the wall near the basement door. Flannel shirt. Work boots. His throat is a ragged hole.

"Crying while he eats," the man continues. "Every single time. Blubbering while he chews."

"Orin," the woman says softly.

"Don't."

A young-looking man sits on the floor by the fireplace. His left leg ends at the knee. "He told me I reminded him of someone. Kept petting my hair while he cut into me."

A woman in a torn hiking jacket, near the kitchen doorway. Her neck bends at an unnatural angle. "He told me I had kind eyes. Kept repeating it. Couldn't look at them while he did it though."

A teenage boy in the shadow by the bookshelf. Half his face is caved in. "He sang to my dead body. Cried through the whole song."

Merrin's voice is steady. "He made me watch him eat my daughter first. Said it would be easier for me if I understood."

Tia looks up at her mother. Her small hand grips the fabric of the blouse.

"I hope he rots," Merrin says. "I hope whatever's keeping him alive leaves him."

"He won't," Orin says. "Look at him. He never does."

Rodin is still on the kitchen floor. His muzzle rests against your exposed ribcage, breath fogging against cooling meat. He whimpers. Nuzzles into the cavity.

"I didn't want to. I tried so hard this time. I held on. I really tried."

His tongue drags across a rib. His claws knead at the meat still clinging to bone.

"Just need a little more. Then I'll stop. I promise."

The woman in the hiking jacket spits. "Every time. The same words."

The teenage boy: "Three years I've been watching him."

"Try twelve," Orin says.

The man in centuries-old clothing shifts in the corner. His mouth moves without sound.

"Thaun has been here longer than any of us," Merrin says quietly. "Since before the roads were paved."

Rodin's jaws close around another piece and tear it free.

---

Dasi, the woman in the hiking jacket, catches you staring at the darker corners. Figures that might be people, standing motionless, features impossible to make out.

"They used to talk. When I first got here, some of them still talked. Now they just stand there."

"Waiting," Orin adds. "For what, I don't fucking know."

"For him to die," Merrin says.

"He won't die. Whatever this is, he's been doing it longer than any of us have been alive. He's not going to just die."

"Everything dies," Merrin says.

"Does it?"

She has no answer.

"You're different," she says to you. "The way he keeps talking to you. Most of them, he doesn't say anything after. Only eats and cleans up."

She trails off.

"Did you know him? Before?"

You don't answer. You're watching Rodin press his bloodied muzzle against your palm. The hand that used to cup his face. That held a ring meant for him.

"I see," Dasi says softly.

---

Rodin finishes eating. What's left of you isn't recognizable.

He stands slowly, belly swollen beneath his ruined Henley. Washes his hands in the sink, scrubbing until the water runs clear, then continuing. Peels off the soaked shirt. Scrubs at the matted fur from muzzle to navel. Pulls on a clean shirt.

Then he stops.

He has found your bag. The one with the ring.

His claws shake as he opens it.

He pulls out the small box. Stares at it.

He opens it.

The ring catches the firelight.

Rodin makes a sound.

"No. No. No no no no."

He clutches the ring to his chest. Doubles over. Wails.

"I didn't know. You were going to. I didn't know."

The ghosts watch.

"What is that?" Tia asks.

Merrin's face has gone pale. "An engagement ring."

"What's engagement?"

"It's when you ask someone to be with you. Forever."

Tia looks at Rodin on the floor, then at you.

"Oh."

Orin's eyes widen. "They were going to propose. To the thing that just ate them."

Rodin stares at the ring with teary eyes.

"I loved you. I tried so hard. I held on for seven years. I didn't hurt anyone. For you. Because of you. And then the storm, and we were trapped, and I couldn't..."

He slides the ring onto his finger. It fits perfectly. You had his size.

"I'll wear it forever. I'll never take it off."

He curls around himself on the floor, the ring glinting, your blood still drying in his fur.

---

The ghosts are quiet.

"That doesn't change anything," Orin says. His voice is hard, cracked. "Being in love doesn't give you a pass."

"No," Merrin agrees.

"But seven years," Dasi says. "Seven years without..."

"Does it matter?" Orin demands. "He murdered someone who loved him. Someone who was going to marry him."

"I know," Dasi says quietly. "I know it's worse."

Tia tugs at her mother's skirt.

"Mom? Is the new ghost okay?"

They all look at you.

---

Rodin wraps your remains in plastic sheeting. His movements are practiced, his hands shaking. He keeps stopping. Keeps touching what's left of you.

He carries the bundle to the basement door.

You try to follow. A pressure stops you.

"Can't go down there," Orin says. "Whatever's down there, we're not meant to see it."

"Bones," Tia says flatly. "Bones and plastic and jars. I saw it once, before he closed the door."

The basement door closes. Footsteps descending.

---

Rodin emerges from the basement. Eyes red.

He moves through the cabin. The chair where you sat. The book you were reading. The mug you drank from.

He picks up your bag. Holds it against his chest. Breathes in.

"I can still smell you."

"Welcome to the rest of forever," Diel, the young man by the fireplace, says. "It never gets better."

"We can't do anything," Orin says, quieter. "Can't touch him. Can't move things. Can't leave. Only watch."

"Sometimes I scream right in his ear," the teenage boy, Patvel, says. "He never hears."

"I used to pray," Dasi adds. "Stopped after the first year."

Tia walks over to you and reaches out. Her hand passes through your arm.

"It gets easier," she says. "That's what Diel told me when I got here."

She looks at Diel. He looks away.

"He lied." She pauses. "But maybe it's different for you."

Rodin settles into the chair by the fire. Pulls your blanket around his shoulders.

"I'll be better. I'll never do it again. I promise you."

He touches the ring.

"I would have said yes," he whispers. "If you'd asked."

None of them believe him.

---

You watch through the window as the storm becomes something else entirely. Snow falls so thick the world beyond the glass disappears. The drifts climb past the windowsill. Past halfway. By the third day, only a sliver of grey light filters through the top.

Rodin opens the door on the third day. Snow blasts in, horizontal ice coating the floor. He makes it four feet outside and turns back. Slams the door with his whole body. His paw pads are already white with frostbite.

He doesn't try again.

---

The ghosts watch him eat you.

He descends to the basement on the fourth day and returns with the plastic-wrapped bundle. He tears through the sheeting before he's stopped moving.

He eats the way he did that first night. Tearing and swallowing half-chewed. His muzzle buries into your torso, tongue scraping against the inside of your ribcage. He cracks your bones and sucks at the marrow.

"He's not saving any," Diel says.

"He always saves some," Dasi agrees. "The organs. The fat. He jars them."

"Not this time," Orin says. "Look at him. He's eating all of it."

By the end of the first week, nothing is left. Bones scraped white. Skull empty.

Rodin sits at the kitchen table surrounded by your skeleton. He doesn't move for a long time.

"Why didn't he save any?" Merrin asks.

Tia watches him.

"He's scared," she says.

---

The days pass.

Rodin paces. Circles the cabin, pausing at each window to stare at the snow pressing against the glass. The blizzard doesn't stop. The cabin groans under the weight on the roof.

He burns through firewood, feeding the hearth constantly. Starts breaking furniture. A chair. A table. The shelves.

"He's never been stuck this long," Orin says.

"Someone always comes down the road," Dasi says.

"There is no road anymore." Diel gestures toward the window. Snow has covered the glass entirely. The cabin exists in dim twilight.

Rodin still has food. Canned goods. Dried meat. Rice. Beans. Enough for weeks.

He eats all of it in three days.

He vomits behind the cabin. Canned peaches and half-digested rice steaming in the cold air.

"Can't process it," Merrin says. "Whatever he's done to himself."

---

His fur loses its luster. The spotted pattern dulls. He scratches at himself, claws raking through fur, coming away with loose clumps.

He tries the canned food again. It comes back up within the hour.

He drinks water. That stays down. He melts snow and drinks cup after cup.

His jeans that fit properly two weeks ago sag at his hips. His belt tightened two notches.

---

The cabin smells different. They can see it in the way Rodin wrinkles his muzzle. In the way he scrubs at his own fur with snow.

His movements have slowed. The pacing stopped days ago. He sits by the fire, feeding it with the last of the broken furniture.

He talks to himself. Mumbles. Words in languages you don't recognize. Sometimes he laughs, thin and trailing off. Sometimes he cries.

"He's remembering," Thaun says. His voice faint, cracked from disuse. "The old ones. The first ones."

Rodin's claws dig into the armrest.

"I had to. You understand. I didn't have a choice."

---

His arms, once thick, now hang thin. The definition gone. His legs tremble when he stands. His muzzle has sharpened, flesh receding, pulling back from his skull, making his teeth look larger. Ribs showing beneath matted fur.

"He's dying," Dasi says.

"Not fast enough," Orin replies.

Rodin stops eating entirely. Stops trying. He drinks water and sits by the fire and waits.

---

He can't stand anymore.

The ghosts gather around him. Rodin lies on the floor by the hearth, curled on his side, breath coming in shallow rasps. His shirt hangs off his frame. Every rib visible. His spine pressing against the fabric.

"Is he dead?" Tia asks.

"Not yet," Merrin says.

His lips move. No sound.

"What's he saying?" Diel leans closer.

Thaun tilts his head.

"Names. He's saying names."

Yours, more than any other.

---

The fire goes out.

He ran out of fuel three days ago. Cold fills the cabin, frosting the walls, turning breath to fog.

He's on the bed, crawled there judging by the scratches his claws left in the wood. A pile of blankets with a shape barely visible beneath it.

"Today," Orin says. He's been saying it for three days.

Rodin's eyes flutter open. He looks around. At the frost. The dead fire. The snow pressing against every window.

His gaze passes over you. Over all of you.

He doesn't see you. He never has.

Something in his expression changes.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

His eyes close.

The heartbeat stumbles once. Twice.

Stops.

---

His soul rises from his body.

He stands above his own corpse, looking down. His soul looks younger. Fuller.

He stares at the sunken cheeks. The protruding bones. The fur that fell out in clumps during those final days.

Then he looks up.

There's a light. Past the walls, past the snow. An opening to somewhere else.

Rodin sees it. His ears perk forward. His tail gives a single wag.

He takes a step toward it.

---

Movement in the corners.

The silent ones stir.

You'd almost forgotten them. They've stood motionless so long they've become part of the architecture. Whatever words they once knew have eroded away, along with their names, their memories, everything that made them who they were.

But they remember him.

A man reaches the edge of the light first. He stands there, swaying, mouth working around sounds that won't come. His hand extends toward Rodin. To block. To deny.

Light gathers at his edges.

He turns. Looks at you. His eyes hold something too old for language.

He burns.

It rushes into you. Impressions. Fear. Betrayal. Trust shattered. Flesh torn. The same story repeated until the details stopped mattering and only the suffering remained.

A woman follows. She reaches toward the light, and it recoils, and she ignites. More weight. More ancient, wordless accusation.

The children go together. They hold hands and the light takes them both at once. What pours into you from them is smaller but sharper. Lives cut so short there was barely anything to forget.

One by one, the silent ones burn. The corners empty. The shadows retreat. With each one, the weight inside you grows. A foundation built from centuries of rage, waiting for the walls and roof that the others will provide.

The light Rodin is reaching for flickers.

---

The last of the silent ones dissolves, and the cabin falls quiet.

Merrin is the first to speak.

"Did you see that? They gave themselves to..."

She's looking at you. They all are.

Orin steps back. "What the hell just happened?"

You try to answer, and voices spill out that aren't yours.

"...waited so long..." "...make him pay..."

The voices fade.

"They couldn't speak anymore," Thaun says slowly. "Couldn't remember who they were. But they remembered what they wanted. And they gave it to you. Every scrap of hate they'd been holding onto."

Tia tugs at Merrin's skirt. "The light is smaller."

The glow Rodin is reaching toward has dimmed. Where it once filled the doorway, now it barely extends past the frame.

"It's working," Orin breathes.

Rodin doesn't seem to notice. Still grasping.

"But it's not enough," Patvel says. "He's still moving toward it."

"We need more," Diel says.

They all know.

---

Orin breaks the silence. "So that's it, then. That's what it takes."

"Maybe there's another way," Dasi says. "Maybe if we just..."

"Just what? Scream at him some more? Stand here another decade watching him walk into paradise?"

"Orin..."

"I've been here twelve years watching him eat people and cry about it and promise to stop and do it again. And now he's about to walk away from all of it." His hands clench. "I'm not letting that happen."

Merrin pulls Tia closer. "But if we do what they did, we'll be gone. Really gone."

Thaun nods slowly.

"Then we'd never see each other again," Merrin says. "Tia and I, we'd..."

"Mom." Tia's small voice cuts through. "I don't want to watch anymore."

Merrin looks down.

"I don't want to stand here forever. I don't want to watch him hurt more people."

"Sweetheart..."

Merrin's eyes close. When they open, they're wet.

"If we do this," Dasi says, "what happens to you?" She looks at you. "What do you become?"

You can feel the silent ones inside you. The beginning of something that doesn't have a name yet.

Thaun steps forward.

"I've been here longest. Watched more of this than anyone. And I've never seen anything that could touch him."

He gestures at the dimming light.

"Until now."

Rodin takes another step.

"I'll go first. Show you it can be done." His voice is gentle. "I'm tired. I've been tired for a very long time. And if being tired can finally mean something..."

He looks at Rodin.

"Then I'm ready."

---

Thaun steps forward.

"Elize. My wife's name. I haven't said it out loud in over a century. I was afraid I'd forget how it sounded."

He looks at his hands. The edges have begun to blur.

"Will and Joda. My boys. They'd be long dead now. Their children too."

"I was a trapper. Coming home to them when the snow caught me. When this cabin caught me. I remember thinking how lucky I was to find shelter."

The dissolution creeps up his forearms.

"The hatred's all that's left. I've forgotten Elize's face, the sound of my sons' laughter. But I remember every single thing he did. Every victim. Every meal. Every tear he shed while he chewed."

He turns to you.

"I'm giving you all of it. Take it. Use it."

Light bleeds from his outline. He comes apart. Where he stood, warmth floods into you. Watching Rodin eat his body. Watching Rodin bury his bones. Decade after decade of horror unfolding in this room.

Thaun is gone. But he's also not.

---

The light Rodin is reaching for dims further. His paw hesitates.

"What..." he murmurs.

The others stare at where Thaun stood. At you.

"He's really gone," Dasi whispers.

"No." Orin points at you. "He's in there."

Merrin kneels to Tia's level. "Do you understand what Thaun did?"

Tia nods. "He burned himself up so the new thing could be stronger."

"And if we do the same thing..."

"We'll be in there too. All of us together. Hurting him forever."

Merrin's breath catches.

"Together."

Orin rolls his shoulders. "Are we doing this or not?"

---

He steps forward. The ragged hole in his throat darkens.

"Forty-seven. Divorced. One kid. Pat. Sixteen when I died."

He cracks his knuckles.

"My rig broke down twenty miles from here. Walked six hours through the snow. He opened the door with that fucking smile, and I thought, a break."

"Three days he waited. Playing buddy-buddy, asking about my kid. Then he came at me from behind with a hammer. Couldn't look me in the eye."

His edges begin to shimmer.

"Twelve years standing three feet away while he washed my blood off his claws and hummed to himself."

He presses his palm toward you.

"Can't do it myself. But you can. Every fantasy. Every ounce. Every fucking drop."

He ignites. A flare of white fury that sears into you. The phantom weight of a hammer. The confusion of waking up dead. The sound of Rodin crying "I'm sorry" with a mouthful of Orin's flesh.

---

Dasi approaches slowly, one hand on her broken neck.

"Park ranger. Search and rescue. I was good at it."

Her fingers trace the angle where her spine snapped.

"I came here looking for Patvel. Someone reported him missing, seventeen, solo hiking. Another hour, another direction, and maybe..."

"He told me I was kind. While I sat by his fire, studying my maps."

Her form wavers.

"I never saw his hands coming."

"I've screamed at every person who walked through that door since. They never heard me."

Her outline brightens, cracks of light splitting through.

"But he'll hear you. Whatever you do to him, wherever he runs, he'll hear every second of it."

She smiles.

"Make it loud."

She fractures. The frustration of screaming into silence, of watching horror repeat, of knowing and being powerless, crashes into you.

---

Patvel hasn't moved from his spot. Half his face is still caved in.

"I was going to ask a girl to prom. Sarah. She had red hair and freckles and she laughed at my jokes even when they weren't funny."

He touches the ruined side of his face.

"My parents were splitting up. I came out here to clear my head. Stupid, probably."

He sobs.

"He acted concerned. Warm. 'You shouldn't be out here alone. Let me make you something to eat.' I actually felt better. For a few hours."

His remaining eye fixes on Rodin.

"I was asleep when he hit me. Woke up with my skull cracked open, and he was standing over me crying. Sang a song while he reached for the knife."

Light seeps from his edges.

"Should have graduated. Should have asked Sarah. Maybe she would have said yes."

He looks at you.

"Seventeen. Hadn't done anything yet. He took it all because he was hungry."

He comes apart slowly. Stolen potential, unlived life, rage so young it hasn't learned to be anything else. It floods into you.

---

Diel rises, his missing leg trailing into nothing below the knee.

"Twenty-two. Running from home. My old man was a piece of work."

He shrugs.

"Hitched rides. Ended up here. Went from one monster to another."

He touches his absent leg.

"He told me I reminded him of someone. 'You have his eyes.' Took the leg first. While I was still alive. Said he wanted to make it last."

His form begins to brighten.

"My family probably thinks I died in a ditch. They're right about the dead part."

He looks at you. Less rage. More resignation.

"My dad always said I was worthless. That I'd never amount to anything." A smile. "If being worthless means I help destroy him, then fine. Take everything."

He burns from the feet up. Old wounds beneath new ones, a childhood of fear feeding into an eternity of helplessness. It settles into you.

---

Merrin and Tia step forward together.

Their hands are clasped.

"Third grade teacher." Merrin's voice is steady. "But I loved her more. More than anything. More than my own life, and I would have given it gladly if it meant she could walk out of here."

Tia looks up at her mother, then at you.

"I was seven. I wanted to be a veterinarian. I had a dog named Biscuit. He was a golden retriever and he slept at the foot of my bed."

She pauses.

"He gave me hot chocolate. It had marshmallows. The little ones."

Merrin's form wavers violently.

"Our car broke down. He found us on the road. Carried her through the snow because she was tired. She fell asleep in his arms."

Tia squeezes her mother's hand.

"He wasn't kind."

"No."

Light begins to gather around them both.

"He made me watch." Merrin's words come faster. "Sat me in a chair. Tied my hands."

Tia's small face is calm.

"It hurt a lot. I kept asking for Mom. She was crying and screaming and she couldn't move."

Merrin's composure breaks.

"I couldn't save her. Just sat there and watched and screamed until my voice gave out. And then he..."

"Then he ate me," Tia finishes. "And then he ate Mom too."

Their forms begin to merge at the edges.

"Holding her hand in this place. Knowing I failed her."

She looks at you.

"I would have died a thousand times to save her. And he took her anyway. He took her and he made me watch."

Tia's gap-toothed face tilts upward.

"I don't want him to go to the nice place. I want him to hurt. Forever and ever and ever."

Merrin holds her daughter tighter.

"I would have liked to see her grow up."

She looks at Rodin.

"So I'm giving you everything. All my love for her. All my grief. All my hatred."

Tia smiles.

"And then don't stop."

They ignite together. A mother's weight, watching your child die. A child's confusion and rage, crystallized into something no longer childlike.

It floods into you.

---

The cabin shifts.

The walls groan, wood twisting. The floor buckles. The windows crack, then seal themselves with ice. The fire roars back to life, flames giving light but no heat.

Rodin stumbles back from where the light used to be. His spectral form flickers.

He sees you.

For the first time, he truly sees you.

Thaun's centuries of watching coil through your veins. Orin's hatred reinforces your spine. Dasi's helplessness has become resolve. Patvel's stolen youth burns bright. Diel's layered pain adds weight. Merrin's grief and Tia's poisoned innocence wrap around your heart.

You carry them all.

Rodin backs away. His tail tucks. His ears flatten.

His hand goes to the ring.

"No. Not you. Please, not you."

The walls press inward. The door seals itself, wood fusing into wood until there's no seam. The windows vanish beneath growing ice.

He's not going anywhere.