Nick Cutter - The Deep

Knock.

“Can you help us?”

A gulf of silence.

“Do you know what that is—the substance we’re here to study?”

Again, silence. The feathery sound of water swirling around the microphone.

When next he spoke, Westlake’s voice was tight.

“Do you wish us no harm?”

Sounds from the liquid. Rustling and shucking.

Knock… knock .

What the hell does that mean? Luke asked himself. No, we wish you no harm? Or no, we do wish you harm?

“ I’ll ask again,” came Westlake’s voice, “ can you help us? We are… we may be dying. Our species. Do you understand? Can you —”

A gnashing grind. The squeal of feedback.

“Jesus Chr—!”

Click .

Fear crawled over the dome of Luke’s skull. He was filled with a sense that he was hovering on the cusp of something as terrible as he’d ever known—new knowledge, facts he could live a thousand lifetimes without knowing. He could feel it pulsing against his skull, tapping at the plates of bone with an icy fingertip. He ached with the desire to hurl the laptop at the wall and smash it to pieces. But there was no way he could allow himself to do that.

Heart thudding, he opened the third and final file.

“Test number… immaterial. The day is… immaterial. Time, also immaterial.”

The buzz was incredibly loud now. Westlake’s voice drifted hazily, sounding somehow untethered from his body.

“The phenomenon ate the microphone. Ate ? Is there a better word than that? Something certainly yanked it through the hole. So yes, ate . It happened so fast. I was lucky to salvage the laptop .”

A sucking sound, very close. A rapid suck-uck-uck . A wet pop .

Was Westlake… was he sucking his thumb? Like an infant?

“There has been no further contact. Not in the prior-established manner, I should say. But the hole has grown. A great deal, I must say. The bees are now constantly agitated.

“ And I… I hear things. Sometimes it’s things being ripped. Other times they’re noises like nothing I’ve ever heard. The buzzing of flies—this sounds quite different from the drone of the bees, somehow lower, and not only in register: it is the hum of a baser order of life. Of stupid, witless, shit-colonizing flies. Occasionally, there is also the hammer and clash of machinery. How the hell is that possible? And … and laughter? Yes, I do believe I heard that, too. A child’s laughter. If it were not absurd to say so, I’d tell you it was that of my own daughter, Hannah .”

Westlake loosed a tortured laugh of his own.

“This is madness, of course. It’s difficult to hear anything above the drone of the bees. I haven’t stepped outside the lab in some time. Nelson and Toy would only interfere. They wouldn’t understand. Their minds are too dense, too literal. ”

Westlake’s voice turned brittle. Luke could imagine him hunched in his lab, his body grown gnomish, his posture covetous as he hoarded his dark secret.

“ And I… I don’t want them to have it. This is all mine.”

More sucking. Luke pictured Westlake’s thumb, pink from the suction.

“I have to say this. Not long ago, when I was staring at the hole—it commands my attention, I’ll tell you that—it changed. Went opaque , is perhaps the word. Like watery milk. Behind it, or through it, I saw shapes. Indistinct but wonderful. Like dark wings fluttering. An enormous space filled with this antic fluttering.”

The tone of Westlake’s voice was off-putting—there was an uncomfortable echo of Alice’s voice in it, the way she’d sounded after she’d been caught staring at Westlake’s hatch.

“Whatever this is that I’ve discovered… it, they, can be communicated with, I am sure of it. Reasoned with. They are here to help. I sense no hatred. Only curiosity .”

Curiosity . The word stuck in Luke’s brain like a quill. Somehow it seemed even more frightening than pure hatred.

“This is my final recording. I will continue to chart my progress in my journals. I am confident that what lies on the other side is beneficial. Are they the bringers of the ambrosia? If so, perhaps they will tell us how to harness its awesome power. I believe in this possibility, and I will endeavor to make it so.”

Click .

LUKE’S ARMS WERE TENSEDhard as marble; a concerted effort was needed to force his muscles to relax.

He had to consider the possibility that none of this had happened. That Westlake had caught a malignant case of the sea-sillies—that, or a particularly baffling indicator of the ’Gets. These files were no more than a manifestation of his creeping insanity—he’d imagined the whole goddamn thing. He’d isolated himself in his lab the same way a dying bear will crawl into the shadows of its cave; in his own sickness and delusion, Westlake had played make-believe, slave to the apparitions in his head.

What had Luke heard, really? The buzz of bees. Some scraping and scratching. A few knocks—knocks Westlake could have made himself, playing a game of call-and-answer with himself. What about the watery echo? Luke figured immersing the microphone in a glass of water would have the same effect.

Disconcerted, Luke lay down. He was so damn tired. His body was physically shutting down, a power grid starved of electricity. He’d rest briefly, and upon waking, he’d take Westlake’s laptop to Al and Clayton. They could listen to the files and decide what to make of them.

He shut his eyes and tried to conjure Abby’s face. Instead, a different scene: Abby and Luke in the bedroom of their shoebox apartment, back when they were graduate students. The heat lay thick inside the walls; that late-summer warmth did something to Abby. Set her afire. She’d sat on the bed with that beguiling smile. She pulled his sweats down, then his Fruit of the Looms with one finger, leaving them strung clumsily around his knees.

Get closer, silly , she’d whispered. This isn’t going to work unless we’re pretty much touching, is it?

Luke remembered being overtaken by the friendliness of it. Just a chummy blow job, followed by some aw-shucks sex. Y’know, the kind of thing pals do. Friendly, and practiced—Luke felt the tiniest ripple of concern about that: just how had she gotten so damn practiced? But Luke had felt so overjoyed at the fact that your ideal lover could be your best friend, too…

Then Abby’s face changed. Her features went viscid, reshaping themselves into something dark and fearsome.

Luke’s eyes snapped open. He swore he could see a face at the porthole now, peering in at him.

Clay…

No, Al…

…then Westlake’s tortured face from the vault…

All three faces blurred together and became something else.

They became Zachary’s face. Luke’s son as a tot.

His boy was laughing.

Was there anything more wonderful than a baby’s laughter?

Not now, though. This was menacing—too adult, full of cruel mocking.

Luke couldn’t look away as Zachary laughed with unhinged gasps, his face shading redder and redder… the same color it’d been as he’d screamed with the millipede inside his sleeper.

Laughing at his father. Laughing fit to bust a gut.

Ha-ha! They won’t let you go, Daddy! They won’t never ever let you go!