Nick Cutter - The Deep

Zach looked even more petrified. “Fig Men?”

Luke nearly burst out laughing. He pictured these bloated, misshapen, fruitlike creatures, the Fig Men, massing in his son’s closet.

“Not Fig Men, Zach, fig ments . Figments aren’t real. Your mind is making them up, that’s all. No Fig Men. No monsters.”

But that night, Zach crept into their room and curled up on the floor.

“What are you doing here, buddy?”

“The Fig Men are in my closet,” Zach whispered.

Luke got up and marched his son back to his bedroom.

“There is no monster, Zach. No Fig Men. Didn’t I show you that?”

“That was in the daytime,” Zach said with bone-deep worry. “Monsters hide from grown-ups in the day. It’s night now.”

But Luke was adamant. “I’ll leave the hall light burning, buddy. That’s the best I can do. You’ve got to sleep in your own bed, okay?”

Zach pulled the covers up to his throat and nodded wretchedly.

Back in bed, Abby said: “You’re not being fair, Luke. Zach’s allowed to be scared. He’s a kid. There shouldn’t be a penalty in this house for being scared.”

Luke knew she was right. Your child doesn’t owe you loyalty or obedience. You owe your child love and understanding, owe it unconditionally, and if you love them strongly enough, eventually that love may be returned. Luke’s own mother had never seen it that way. She thought Luke and Clay owed her love regardless of how she treated them.

Luke got out of bed and grabbed his toolbox. He returned to Zach’s room and pointed at the closet.

“So this is where the Fig Men are lurking?”

Zach nodded forlornly. Luke cracked the toolbox and pulled out a stud finder. He ran it over the closet walls and made a few exploratory taps with his knuckles.

“There are traces of ectoplasm,” he said in the tone of a veteran contractor. “That’s monster slime, in layman’s terms. What do these suckers look like?”

Zach said: “ Old , all wrinkly, like they’ve lived a million years.”

The short hairs stood up on the back of Luke’s neck. Something about the way his son said that one word, old , was chilling. Luke didn’t feel like laughing this time. The Fig Men—these twisted, ancient, calculating little devils hunched in the dark closet, peering at his son through the slats with cruel avidity—had taken on a sinister shape in his mind.

Luke gripped his chin, putting on a good show. “The Fig Men. I’ve never heard of them specifically, but harmless monsters do infest closets and crawl spaces. They usually like sweet stuff—you haven’t been keeping anything tasty in your closet, have you?”

“That’s where I put my Halloween candy.”

“Well, that’ll give you a Fig Man problem. Now, I’m sure they’re not dangerous—just gross. But if you let a few hang around they’ll call their buddies and before long you’ve got an infestation on your hands.”

“I don’t want that, Daddy.”

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Luke. “What do you want first?”

Zach said: “Good.”

“Good news is I can get rid of the Fig Men.”

Luke rooted through his toolbox for a pouch of fine red powder.

“This is cardamom; it’s made from the crushed shells of stag beetles. It’s used in monster containment spells.”

Luke laid down a line of powder in the shape of a keyhole.

“Now this,” he said, “is the trap. The Fig Men will wander up this path, which gets narrower and narrower until— bang-o! —they get stuck. The circle closes and the Fig Men will starve overnight. They’ll turn black and hard as a rock. Now the bad news, Zach. You have to pull one hair out of your head, and that’ll hurt a bit.”

“Why?”

“Fig Man bait.”

Zach plucked a strand of hair. Luke laid it in the middle of the trap.

“You know what’d help? Something sweet. Why don’t you and Mom go downstairs and grab a few chocolate chips.”

While they were downstairs, Luke hustled into his bedroom and grabbed two small chunks of obsidian he’d picked up during a trip to Hawaii years ago. He set them in the middle of the ring and shut the closet.

When Zach returned, Luke strung the chocolate chips along the edge of the closet door.

“The sweetness will draw those Fig Men out of hiding. Now Zach, the trap is set. But if you open the closet the spell will be broken. So you must not open it until tomorrow morning. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Stick a needle in my eye,” Zach said solemnly.

“Do you want to sleep in our bed tonight?”

Zach shook his head. “I’m okay now.”

Back in the bedroom, Abby kissed him with uncommon ardor. Luke enjoyed a deep dreamless sleep, feeling very much like a minor superhero. The next morning, Zach flung the closet open.

“The trap worked!” he cried.

He raced into their bedroom clutching the blackened, calcified Fig Men.

“It’s a cocoon,” Luke said. “Except these ones are hard—a prison. The Fig Men will never be able to escape. Put them on display as a warning to any other monster that might wander along. It’s not every day that you can hold a monster in your palm.”

Zach set them on his nightstand. They were still there, in the room Luke had left untouched since the day his son had gone missing—

A shadow fell over Luke’s shoulder, snapping him back to reality. The minipiranhas scattered, zipping under the Hesperus in a silvery flashing of scales.

“You about ready?” Al asked.

Spider legs scuttled up the lining of Luke’s stomach.

CHALLENGER 5 WAS SUSPENDEDfrom a miniature sky crane. Its hatch hung open like a hungry mouth.

Luke carried only a duffel bag with a change of clothes and a cable knit sweater. Plus a toiletry kit with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a stick of deodorant.

Where will I spit my toothpaste? he wondered. There couldn’t be a drainage system. No conventional toilets, either—one flush and the pressure would probably cave in the Trieste .

I’ll swallow my toothpaste , he thought. And pee in a bottle .

“I’ll get in first and take the cockpit. You’ll sit a little lower.” Al smiled. “It’s a good news, bad news scenario. Good news is, you get the better view. Bad news is, your head’s going to be parallel with my behind.”

Luke grinned despite the quivers that kept rippling through his belly. Al ducked through the hatch. Luke realized for the first time that the vessel was designed to dive vertically: they’d be arrowing straight down into the black.

Luke ducked and stuck his head inside the sub. The sight reminded him of the cockpit of a commercial jetliner, only much more cramped.

“Hop in,” Al said from inside, already flicking switches. “You’ll have to tuck your knees, and be careful not to touch anything unless I ask you to.”

The webbing of Luke’s seat sagged like a hammock; Luke sank into it so deeply that his chin nearly touched his knees. Instrumentation panels sat a few inches off each shoulder, their uncomfortable electrical warmth bathing his face. His body tightened instinctually, his muscles and posture contracting; it felt a little like being trapped at the bottom of a village well, except there wasn’t even a view of the sky. Al sat a few feet above with her back to Luke. She craned her head down.

“Comfy, uh? Wish I could let you pop an Ambien and sleep through the descent, but that shit does a number on your blood—added pressure, yeah?”

Luke had never considered how it might feel to be buried alive in a buzzing, blinking, high-tech coffin, but he had a good sense of it now.