Nick Cutter - The Deep

Looking back, Luke was sure this was why his mother had chosen the comic books. It could have been his action figures or his bike, but he could’ve parted with those easily. The comics opened up a new world to him, a place where he was safe. And his mother wanted to rip that haven away from him.

Luke hadn’t dared retrieve the comics from the lawn. By that evening, the grass was picked clean. From that time forward, Luke made a point out of secrecy: if his mother was unaware of the things that gave him joy, she couldn’t take them away. But she had other ways to maintain her dominance.

One night she’d climbed the staircase, each step whining under her bulk, and opened his bedroom door. Luke had been sleeping alone; Clayton was in the basement most nights. She crossed the room with thudding footfalls, threw back the covers, and slid into his bed. The springs squealed and the mattress took a sickening downward lurch. Luke felt as if he were being sucked down into greedy quicksand.

She nestled her body up with his, spooning him. There was nothing motherly in the embrace. He caught the acrid whiff of her armpits and the dense, peaty scent wafting from her mouth.

She curled an arm around him; his pajama top had rucked up, and she spread her hand across his bare belly. Her flesh was sickeningly warm, a hot water bottle packed with boiled lard.

Her index finger tapped his stomach in time with the beat of his heart. As its rate accelerated, so did her tapping. Her mouth was close to his neck, her breath moistening the downy hairs. He was certain she’d sink her teeth into him, holding tight as she ate him the way she ate her porridge: in tiny, tiny bites.

Part of Luke realized she was trying to break him, as she’d already done to his father. Fear equaled control in the mind of Bethany Ronnicks. It was an effective tool. But only if you stood for it.

She wasn’t really clever. Luke had been coming to that realization for a while by then. Not smart, just cunning. Animals were cunning. Animals also ate their own shit and chewed live electrical wires.

The only way to deal with monsters—real or imagined—was to show no fear. You had to become the Human Shield.

Luke opened his eyes and gripped her wrist. Her muscles tensed under their encasement of flab. Shifting his weight, he slung himself out from under her and landed on the floor with a graceless thump. He stood and retreated to the door.

“Where are you going?” A mocking coo.

“This isn’t your bedroom, Mom. You don’t sleep here.”

“This is my house.” All mockery gone. “I sleep where I goddamn like.”

“Then I’ll sleep somewhere else.”

“Get. Back. Here. ”

Luke hesitated… then left. He got halfway down the hallway and collapsed. What had he done? He was only thirteen. He couldn’t leave the house. He was trapped. What would his mother do to him now? What would she—

Luke awoke with a start. The dim ticking of instruments, the rush of water against the hull. He was in the Challenger . The heat of the instruments pulled sweat out of his pores. Alice stared down at him with concern.

“You’re okay, Doc. You were dreaming.”

Luke wiped at the drool on his chin, mortified. “How long was I out?”

“Couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. You were grinding your teeth; sounded like rocks in a blender. Mumbling, too.”

Alice was leaning over, her hand on his shoulder. He felt the warmth of her flesh and caught the scent of her body—the softest note of vanilla. It wasn’t perfume; Al didn’t seem the sort to wear it. Probably just a dab of hand cream—it was dry as a desert inside the sub, which was weird seeing as they were surrounded by water. She’d unzipped her overalls a little—the heat was intense—and Luke couldn’t help his eyes from orienting on that slice of bare flesh trailing down to the dampened hem of her tank top…

He wrenched his eyes up to her face. She was watching him impassively, her head slightly cocked.

Enjoying the view? her expression seemed to say. There was no recrimination in it, just a vague sense of mirth.

“What did I say?” Luke asked. “When I was sleeping, I mean.”

“ Get behind me .” She smiled as if to say it wasn’t anything he ought to be embarrassed about. “ Get behind me where it’s safe or something like that.”

THE CHALLENGER LEVELED OFF.They were presently over twenty thousand feet undersea. Luke heard sly pops and crackles, the sound of Rice Krispies doused in milk.

“Relax, that’s just the foam,” Al said. “It’s compressing to bear the strain.”

The view was disorienting. Profound, terrible darkness. What could possibly live down here? Luke pictured the water rolling away for miles in every direction, empty and pitiless. This stratum was cleansed of nearly all the fundamental assets that foster life—sunlight, warmth, air, food—so the only creatures that lived in it should be, by definition, less than whole. Their skin would be jellylike; Luke imagined bodies draped in a thin stretching of greased latex, like condom skin. He almost laughed at the idea of schools of condom fish flitting through the deeps—

Tink!

Something struck the porthole’s glass, then pelted away.

Tink! Tink!

“Do you hear that?” he whispered.

Al’s voice was tight. “Viperfish, I’m thinking.”

The water exploded with frenzied movement.

Tink! Tink! Ti-tin-ti-ti-tink! Tink! TINK!

Luke recoiled as quicksilver flashes smashed into the glass.

Ti-tin-t-t-t-ti-TI-ti-TIN-TINK!

It sounded as if they were being shelled with machine-gun fire.

“Al, hey, is this normal?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty unnerving,” she said. “We’ll be okay. Viperfish are the undersea version of wolverines. They’ll attack anything, even if it’s a hundred times their size.”

Just then, a viperfish got snagged before the glass. Its jaws—huge, sickle shaped, fearsomely toothy—were enmeshed in the foam. The creature was long and eelish, with fluted gills and oily black eyes socked in a polished-steel face. It was the most predatory thing Luke had ever seen.

“They’re mean as catshit,” Al said. “And I’d say we’ve hit a swarm of them.”

TINK! Ti-ti-ti-TINK!

“I’ve never seen so many of them. They’re fixing to tear that foam to shreds. We gotta boogie, Luke. Hold on.”

The Challenger plummeted. Luke caught a flash of the massing school of viperfish: a glowing sheet of bodies staggered into the water, tens of thousands of whiplike fish darting furiously about.

The sounds ceased as Al stabilized the vessel.

Tink!

“Fucking things,” said Al. “We must be in a cone of them—there’s no way they could drop that fast.”

Again, the Challenger plunged. The pressure built in Luke’s ears. That tickle returned to his bones, becoming quite painful now.

“Hold on,” Al said. “I’m feeling it, too.”

Luke’s gums tightened around his teeth until he was sure they’d shatter. The plates of his skull ground together.

Al stabilized the sub again. She shot a look down at Luke. A rill of blood, as thin as a pencil line, was trickling out of her nose.

“You’re bleeding,” Luke said.

She wiped it away. “Yeah, you, too.”

Luke wiped his nose. His fingers came away clean.

“Higher,” said Al.

Luke felt wetness leaking from his eye. He wiped away a single, bloody tear. “Am I bleeding from my eye ?”

Al nodded. “You’ll be fine. Happens a lot down here. The blood comes out of you in funny, nontraditional places.”