Nick Cutter - The Deep

LB chuffed, seemingly in agreement. She was a wonderful companion—Luke wondered if, without her, he might’ve already slipped around the bend. He was getting the dog off the damn station. Lord knows she’d been through enough.

“Would you like that, girl? Early retirement?”

LB blinked and licked his cheek.

Okay , Luke thought, what’s the list?

1. Get the hell off this station. Mission be damned.

2. Take Clayton. Drug him if necessary.

3. Get back home. Bring LB.

Three objectives. It calmed Luke to break the situation down into small goals leading to one ultimate goal: sunlight, fresh air, home.

Granted, there were obstacles. Eight miles of water and pressure. His brother’s legendary stubborn streak. A sub without power…

And the thing or things inside the station with them. Inside, or partially inside, or struggling to gain entrance.

The thing his brother had willingly invited in. The ambrosia.

The thing whose lips Westlake could hear whispering on the other side of his beloved hole. That thing ( things? ) had wrecked Westlake. Oh, maybe it hadn’t touched him directly, but it had ruined him regardless.

It must’ve done the same to Hugo. Even Clayton? His brother’s mind was stony, but even stone eroded under constant assault. Luke’s own resolve was definitely weakening; a phantom hammer tapped along the block of his brain, searching for the seam that, when struck, would crack it in half.

“Come on, LB. Let’s find Al.”

LUKE HAD TAKEN A FEWsteps down the tunnel when it struck him that he hadn’t heard any noise for quite some time.

When last he’d consciously checked, he’d heard Al hammering away. It had possessed that steady, confident rhythm: the sound of a carpenter pounding a nail.

Now the silence was eerie. Luke wondered if Al was working on the generator’s finer mechanisms. That could be quiet work. Maybe she’d even drifted off to sleep. A little power nap.

A nap. That sounded nice. Luke’s eyes stung with exhaustion—except hadn’t they promised each other not to fall asleep?

The storage room was shadowy. The generator sat in a fall of light slanting through the open hatch. A huge cylinder made up of several disklike batteries wired end-to-end. Which made sense: you couldn’t use a gasoline genny in a closed space; everyone would die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Al?”

The room was dead empty. Where the hell could she have gone? Why hadn’t she come back for Luke? A bolt of panic jackhammered up his spine. What if Al had slipped into one of the same dream-pools that he had fallen prey to already?

He stepped out of the room. LB’s snout was aimed farther down the tunnel, where Al must have gone. Her tail pointed straight up, quivering.

“What is it, girl?”

LB’s haunches tensed. She growled, then took off.

“No!”

Luke couldn’t imagine losing the dog. If she disappeared in the warren of tunnels, he’d come apart.

He tore after her. Her tail vanished around a bend. Luke pursued heedlessly, not knowing what was around that corner—and in that moment not caring. He flashed around the bend, encountering nothing but stale air, then ran through an open hatchway (had Al left it open?) and hurtled headlong after the dog.

The tunnel described a wide ambit that descended so gradually that Luke wasn’t sure it was happening at all, then tightened into a choking spiral; Luke was hit by a wave of nausea brought on by the disorientation—until the tunnel abruptly ended in a crawl-through chute. LB’s rump was wriggling through the far end; she tumbled out, her nails skittering, and raced on.

Luke dove into the crawl-through. It was laughably wide in comparison to the access chute he’d been forced to navigate. He shifted onto his back, gripped the rungs, and swiftly hauled himself through.

Dropping out of the chute and rounding the near corner, he came to another dead stop. LB was hunched before a hatch. The hackles stood up on her shoulders.

“Easy, girl.” Luke ran his hand down her back, feeling the muscles jump. “It’s okay. It’s nothing.”

Where was Al? This was the only way she could’ve come. Luke inspected the hatch. It was locked from the other side. Al couldn’t open it. So where—?

A face rose up in the porthole. Malevolent and familiar.

DR. HUGO TOYwas pallid and shrewlike, his features pinched together on the pasty canvas of his face.

But he doesn’t look crazy , Luke thought. Last time yes; this time… no.

Dr. Toy looked like a man living under an incredible pressure that had warped his bones. Luke now understood how that pressure could make a man look crazy.

He held up his hands, a peaceful gesture. Dr. Toy calculatingly eyed him.

A scrap of paper slapped against the glass.

WHO ARE YOU?

The paper withdrew.

“Luke Nelson. Clayton’s brother.”

Dr. Toy nodded. Scribbled quickly.

DO YOU FEEL IT?

Luke nodded. “Yes. Everywhere.”

Dr. Toy shivered—excitement? Anticipation?

CUT YOURSELF, he wrote.

Luke’s brows knit together. “What?”

Dr. Toy slapped the paper against the glass. CUT YOURSELF CUT YOURSELF CUT YOURSELF

Luke said: “Why?”

I WANT TO SEE YOU BLEED SHOW ME YOUR BLOOD

Luke figured he might as well comply—what were a few drops of blood? He crouched over the grate. Its lattices were serrated. He raked the tip of his index finger over one. His skin opened on the third stroke, blood welling down the cut.

He showed it to Dr. Toy.

WIPE YOUR FINGER ON THE WINDOW

Luke did so. Dr. Toy leaned in, nose flattening against the glass. The blood appeared to mollify him. He wrote:

I’LL LET YOU IN BUT I’M TYING YOUR WRISTS

“I have one of the dogs,” Luke said.

SHE CAN STAY OUTSIDE

Luke shook his head. “No way.”

Dr. Toy bared his teeth.

OK, he wrote in thick angry letters. BUT I TIE HER UP, TOO

Dr. Toy set his shoulder to the wheel; the hatch opened inward, less than a foot. “Turn around,” he said. “P-puh-put your wrists through the door.”

“Listen, I’m not—”

“Shut up. Do it.”

Luke turned and thrust his wrists through the gap. Dr. Toy used duct tape—it made that telltale whoooonk noise as he stripped it off the roll. “Tight?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He dragged Luke inside and shut the hatch.

“The dog—”

“Scruh-scruh-screw the dog.”

“You said—”

“I say a lot of stuff I don’t mean.”

Dr. Toy led Luke to a folding chair and shoved him down. Luke could see LB’s snout bobbing frantically at the bottom of the porthole.

“You lying bastard.”

Dr. Toy smiled, unruffled. Glimpsed in full, he was a reedy man whose long articulate limbs seemed to be constructed from knotted wires. He was slightly walleyed, his left eyeball drifting lazily toward his nose.

The room was about twelve feet square, with a low ceiling. Symbols covered the walls—Toy had fashioned them out of duct tape. They didn’t look scientific… more pagan. The rest of the room was scattered with papers, most of them balled up in evident frustration.

The smell was atrocious. Luke spied a heap of soiled overalls in one corner. On the surface, that heap would’ve attracted flies. Down here it just reeked.

“No access to the f-f-fuh-facilities, I’m afraid,” Toy said, displaying a slight congenital stutter. “Does the smell bother you?”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Toy shrugged. “I was r-ruh-raised by a nurse. She spent her days emptying bedpans and changing adult diapers. She didn’t want to encounter bodily fl-fluh-fluids at home. She posted a slogan above our toilet: If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, wipe the suh-seatie. But if she ever did encounter tinkle, even a drop… She once thruh-thhh-threatened to make me clean it up with my toothbrush. And I’d have to use that same toothbrush until the bristles dulled and it was time to buy a nnn-nuh-new one.”