Nick Cutter - The Deep

… whush, whush, whush…

The sound floated out of the darkness, dancing delicately up his calves, slipping around his skull and into his ears.

… whush, whush…

That insistent, unpleasantly familiar sound.

NonononononoNO —

He was nearly around the bend in the chute; he’d been progressing in centimeters, in millimeters, in

— millipedes —

the smallest increments, but he was making headway. His hips were clear; in a minute or so he’d be able to work around the bend and really boogie.

But something was inside the chute with him now.

Whush-tikatikatikatikatikatika-whush, whush …

He could picture it behind him… twenty feet long, thick and sinuous, its feelers dancing lightly along the mouth of the tube. Its exoskeleton throbbing with moody colors; under that armor its guts were as soft and featureless as mashed bananas. Its compound eyes pulsing with alien hunger.

The millipede was inside the chute with him, its million-skillion legs tapping as it advanced gradually but with complete ease—tubes were its natural habitat, weren’t they?

Luke tensed, every muscle quivering. His heart hammered at his rib cage. The fear paralyzed him—his body, his mind. Finally he began to move. Hips bucking, feet shoving. But his body just uselessly accordioned. He felt like a worm stuck in the barrel of a clear, cheap ballpoint pen. Panic chewed his brain into pulp, rendering him stupid with fear.

Bug! yelped a giddy voice from his lizard brain, obliterating every last vestige of calm. Bug! Bug! Bug! BUG! BUUUG!

Whusha-whusha-tikatikatikatika…

He felt it now. At his feet. Its antennae—long and thick as extension cords—picked along the exposed skin of his ankles. Its mandibles gnashed like scissors. Its proboscis (they had those, didn’t they?) was a thick needle dripping venom.

Would it punch through the soles of his shoes, injecting poison into the pads of his feet while he thrashed helplessly? Would that poison kill him, or only paralyze him—would he feel it chewing through his boots, snipping off his toes like Jujubes and funneling them into the clotted hole of its mouth?

The sound switched direction—it was coming from ahead of him now.

Whush-whush-WHUSH …

Oh Jesus. Oh God no.

His feet would be bad enough, but for it to devour his head—its legs twitching through his hair as it scuttled over his forehead, his face, carrying the insectile stink of a roach nest, noxious nectars drooling out of its mouth as its mandibles fastened around the fragile nut of his skull, its proboscis injected through one twitching eyeball—

Bug! Bug! BugbugbugbugBUG!

Luke shook all over, screeching now, gripped by out-of-body terror. A vein of white-hot fire ripped up his spine as his overtaxed synapses detonated in his brainpan—

Fingers. Feelers .

Something was gripping his shoulders and was hauling him into—

“IT’S OKAY, DOC! DOC!You’re out! You’re out.”

Luke lay on the floor of what must be the purification room. Grainy light trickled down the walls, illuminating the canisters screwed into them.

He tried to sit up. His body wouldn’t comply, his muscles limp as wrung dishrags. A tidal wave of embarrassment crashed over him. Mindless terror had cracked him right open inside the chute. And over what? There wasn’t a goddamn thing inside it except for the cloying stench of his fear.

“I’m sorry, Al. I… I lost my head for a second there.”

Al touched Luke’s shoulder. “I was jumpy by the time I made it out, too. Enclosed spaces, right?” She displayed her broken hand; the fingernail of her index finger was peeled back, hanging on a tenacious strip of skin. “I wrecked my hand some more, too. Thank God for adrenaline, huh?”

Luke swallowed the burnt-chalk taste in his mouth. “That stuff’s a godsend.”

Al walked to a control panel on the near wall and flipped it open with her good hand. “Sonofabitch… goddamnit, the relay chip’s missing.”

“What does that do?”

“Regulates the warning system, for one.”

Luke stood. “Did somebody take it?”

“I don’t see it laying around here anywhere, and I can’t see how it’d just pop out. I was thinking Dr. Toy might’ve taken it. Some nutty sabotage attempt. But would that bastard, no matter how rat-shit crazy he’s gone, go through what we just did to cut off his own air supply?”

“So… maybe we’re not losing air then?”

“Impossible to tell without that chip. Thankfully…”

Al forded deeper into the room. Luke trailed her. It was perhaps fifty steps long—the longest room Luke had been inside down here. Thousands of canisters were screwed into the walls. They glowed faintly, like enormous eggs.

At the very back of the room lay a lone crate. The size of an old army footlocker, fashioned from molded black plastic. Its latch shone silver in the dim.

Seeing it, Luke’s feet churned to a dead stop.

“Something the matter, Doc?”

“No,” Luke said. Jesus. Jesus Christ. “Nothing.”

He felt it then—his mind opening up, an inky blackness flowing into it. The room spun and swum as he slipped suddenly into a memory hole, his psyche funneling deep down a dream pool.

“You okay, Doc?”

Al’s voice was far off, swimmy. It’s fine , Luke tried to tell her. It’s nothing at all. It’s just… it’s just…

… just my old Tickle Trunk .

HIS MOTHER HAD FOUND ITat Treasure Village, a flea market on the outskirts of Lake Okoboji.

It called out to me , she’d told Luke with a self-satisfied smile. It said: Pick me, Ms. Ronnicks. Pick me for Lucas. His very own Tickle Trunk. He’ll just adooore me.

Tickle Trunk. His friends had the same type of thing—except theirs were called toy boxes. But his mother insisted on the name, as she insisted on a great many things. A Tickle Trunk for my special boy , she’d said. A special place for all his ticklish things. She’d seen it at the flea market amid the ninja stars and chipped knickknacks—seen it and known . It must’ve shone like a beacon to her.

Oh , she would have thought, Luke will just die when he sees this.

The trunk was a nasty trick. Luke knew that right away. Exactly the sort of trick his mother liked to play from time to time to show who was boss. But of course she presented it as a gift, a token of love and affection.

Tickle Trunk. That name . Luke pictured a trunk lined with disembodied fingers—hundreds of them, callused and bony with nicotine-stained fingernails—and if he wasn’t careful those fingers would snatch him, drag him inside, and tickle and pinch him until he screamed…

The trunk appeared joyful. It was big enough that Luke’s seven-year-old body could fit inside, and was decorated with smiling clown faces. His mother urged him to name them, the same way Clayton would name his poor mice.

Look, there’s Chuckles , she’d say, pointing them out. And this one can be Koko. And there’s Mr. Tatters and Floppsy and Punkin Pie.

The trunk’s lid was rounded like that of a treasure chest. The clowns’ faces stretched over its top, as warped as reflections in a funhouse mirror. If you looked closer, you’d notice most of the clowns weren’t smiling so much as leering . Their lips were swollen and too red, as if they’d been painted with blood. And if you looked very closely, the lips of a few of those clowns—the ones his mother had named Bingo and Pit-Pat, specifically—were parted just slightly to disclose what looked like a row of discolored, daggery teeth.