Gloom-Leeches

Overview

The Gloom-Leeches are the parasites of the Stopped Clock, the town where time has halted at one instant and the frozen people are aware of everything. The Gloom-Leeches were not there when the Clock stopped. They formed from the frozen people's suffering, and they feed on it and make it worse. The Watchers of the Many-Eyed One are a different thing altogether.

Appearance

No one has seen a Gloom-Leech. They are invisible to the eye, and they show themselves as cold spots in the still air, a chill on the back of the neck in a street where nothing moves, a patch of frost on a window that should not frost. Above all they show as the feeling of being observed, sharper than the frozen eyes that follow every visitor. In a Clock where everything is silent, some visitors swear they hear something like breathing near one, and no one else hears it.

Habitat and Range

They gather among the frozen, thickest around those in the worst despair, and drift towards visitors who begin to despair too. A Clock that has stood long holds many.

Behaviour and Temperament

Gloom-Leeches are passive and malevolent. They do not attack. They cling to the despair of the frozen like moths to a flame and feed on it, and in feeding they amplify it, so that the zone grows heavier and harder to leave. They have no society and, as far as anyone can tell, no thought but the next feeding.

Abilities

They feed on despair and deepen it in whoever they settle near. A visitor who lingers among them grows hopeless, suspicious, and sometimes unwilling to go on living.

Life Cycle

They are born of the zone, from the accumulated suffering of the frozen, and grow more numerous the longer the Clock stands. When a Clock collapses and time resumes, they are thought to vanish with it.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. They are a reason not to linger in a Clock, and a reason why visitors who rearrange the frozen street for a better ending often do it in a darker mood than they knew.

Lore and Belief

Those who have walked a Clock call the Gloom-Leeches the town's own grief, which is near the truth. Some believe they are the frozen people's spirits slipping out of their bodies; there are no such spirits, and the frozen are still inside themselves, watching.

Delvers who go into a Clock after its gold come out heavy-hearted, and some have killed themselves within the year; the old hands say to leave before the sadness feels like one's own.

Where It Appears

• The Stopped Clock
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Resonant Zones