Nick Cutter - The Deep

CLAYTON’S FINGERTIPS BENT BACKfrom his palms, each digit trailing a runner of ooze.

He’s folded them down , Luke realized in horror. They grew longer and longer and he got scared so he folded them over themselves and taped them down. It was the only way to convince himself it wasn’t happening.

He pictured his brother doing it. Teeth gritted, gagging back his horror, gripping each terrible finger and bending it into his palm, then taping the doubled-over digit tight.

His fingers unkinked one by one; they looked like pocketknives unfolding. Fully outstretched, each finger was monstrously long: the pinkie at least six inches, the others longer than that. They were skinny and cruel, spread on the bench like the tines of a garden rake.

The tips were wide and spoon shaped, with large nail beds. The perfect mulch in which to cultivate dark, sharp nails.

It was a hand Luke had seen before. A hand that, as an adult, he’d convinced himself couldn’t possibly exist.

But here it was. Grafted onto—growing out of —his brother’s own flesh.

He would cut the fucking thing off. Not just the hand, the whole goddamn arm. It revolted him at a subcellular level. He thought that—and his thoughts were unfocused on this item, perhaps even a wee bit delusional—well, that if he took the infected arm off, maybe he could save Clayton. Excise the cancer, save the rest. Even though his brother was a miserable shit, Luke had to salvage what he could. The dog, Alice, even his brother. Everything else he would abandon to shriek and gibber down here at the bottom of the world, alone in its misery.

As he stood debating this, still grappling with the sight of his brother’s horrible appendage, Clayton’s hand clenched again. A sudden spastic movement as if it had been hit with high voltage. Luke backed out of its range, watching pop-eyed. The wrist swiveled, those snakish fingers hooking the edge of the bench. With a convulsive flex, they tightened. The flesh of Clayton’s wrist stretched like carnival taffy. The ulna and carpal bones pulled apart with a meaty thok . The fingers crawled forward, reseated their grip, and contracted again. The realization dawned on Luke.

It’s tearing itself off.

The skin of Clayton’s wrist stretched and thinned, then began to rip apart. It did so noiselessly, like fork-tender beef. There was no blood at all; in that way it was as clean as unscrewing a hand from a mannequin. Luke knew this sight should bother him much more than it did—but now, right this minute, it didn’t seem nearly as strange as it ought to. That his brother’s hand was pulling itself off, amputating itself from the limb it had been attached to since birth, didn’t seem that unnatural at all. It wasn’t really part of Clayton, was it? It was infected. So in a way, Luke was happy to see it go—sort of like watching a tumor excise itself before a surgeon was forced to do it.

Clayton’s body juddered as his mutinous hand jerked and clenched, the last few tenacious rags of skin shearing through as it snapped forward, free now, the wrist trailing off blue ropes of nerve and veins filled with blackened blood. The hand went limp as soon as it had detached, the fingers relaxing. Gravity carried it off the edge of the bench; it hit the grate with a smack. Disgusted, Luke kicked it under the bench.

A sense of numb duty drove him to bandage up Clayton’s wrist stump—there was no blood at all. Events were happening too swiftly; his mind was struggling to process them. His one simpleminded ambition was to drag Clayton’s body to the Challenger , but the immensity of that task filled him with a bone-deep exhaustion. And even if he dragged him there, what then?

…skritch, skritch, skritch…

THE NOISE HOOKED ITSELFto motes of dust, which drifted lazily through the air to Luke’s ears.

… skritch…

A playful scrape at his thighs. It was just LB, of course it was. The dog was trying to get his attention. But no—he could see LB in the corner, watching him with obvious concern.

… skriiiitch…

His overalls tightened a few inches below his groin. A thrilling tension. It reminded him of his first sexual experience in eleventh grade with Becky Sue Morgentaler. Becky was a good Baptist girl—she refused to take Luke’s pants off or to actually touch him down there. But she’d permit his hands to roam freely under her sweater while she grabbed his jeans midway down his thighs and pulled with aching pressure, drawing the denim tight over his throbbing erection.

Pulling isn’t touching , she’d murmur. Pulling isn’t touching, or sucking, or anything much at all.

… skritch …

Clayton’s amputated hand. It was on the floor at his feet. Its pointer finger curled in a come-hither gesture. Every time it curled, it brushed Luke’s overalls.

It’s just the nerves , Luke thought. Nothing but nerve endings firing one last futile salvo. I saw a decapitated corn snake bite its own tail; I watched venom spurt from its neck stump as it bit and chewed…

But this was slow and deliberate. Worst of all, there was something sexual to the gesture, that finger flirting lovingly along his ankle.

Hey big boy… pulling isn’t touching, right?

Luke lunged away. His arm swung, sending bandages and vials across the floor.

The hand flapped once more—a fey, mocking wave—and went limp.

Luke bit back his disgust and reached down for Mr. Hand—that’s how he suddenly thought of it; not Clayton’s torn-off hand, but Mr. Hand —although it really resembled a huge and horrible spider.

Go ahead, Luke , Mr. Hand seemed to say. Touch me. Grab me.

Jaw clenched, nerves jangling, Luke vised his fingers around Mr. Hand, gripping it by the mangled remains of its wrist. He held it at the end of his arm as though it was a poisonous snake. He realized that those long, crablike fingers could easily wrap around his own wrist—hell, they could reach halfway up his forearm.

“Go ahead,” he seethed. “Go ahead and try. See where it gets you.”

The hand remained limp. Luke threw open the cooler lid. A sad puff of mist billowed out—with the power cut, it wasn’t that cool anymore.

The small guinea pig rested in a thawing mantle of frost. The thing beneath it, the one wrapped in trash bags and duct tape, remained motionless.

Luke heaved Mr. Hand inside. It bounced off the cooler lid. Mr. Hand skidded down the side—then came alive, spidering about with nimble movements.

It finger-walked over to the frozen guinea pig and tightened into a fist.

The guinea pig… compacted . Its half-thawed flesh squished between Mr. Hand’s fingers. Rags of flesh splattered the cooler’s insides.

Mr. Hand unclenched again. Lay there covered in gore.

One finger twitched. Coyly beckoning.

No hard feelings, right, Luke? We can be friends. Heck, let’s shake on it.

Luke slammed the cooler shut, gagging on his fear. He set a heavy box of lab equipment on the lid.

Clayton was still passed out. Luke wanted to check on Al—it was critical to keep an eye on everything , but he couldn’t possibly be two places at once.

Luke pushed up Clayton’s eyelid. His pupil was a piss hole in the snow. He’d be out awhile—and when he awoke, he’d be groggy and safely trussed up on the lab bench. Luke could risk leaving him for a few minutes, couldn’t he?

“Come on, LB. Let’s go see Al.”

LUKE SENSED ITright away. An emptiness in the storage tunnel.