Nick Cutter - The Deep

Warmth . The second, glorious sensation.

For a second, Luke imagined he was on a beach. Warm sand, sun blazing overhead. Gulls screeching as they wheeled in the postcard-pretty sky. Abby and Zach would be somewhere close by. Romping in the surf, snorkeling for starfish. He would find them and sweep them into his arms and never let them—

“How you doing, Doc? Ready to blow this Popsicle stand?”

The Challenger came into focus incrementally. Luke’s jacket was still slung over the web chair; he’d slid it off when it’d gotten too hot during the descent and had forgotten to take it with him. An energy bar wrapper was folded and threaded through an eyelet on his chair…

Luke’s gaze traveled upward, a rising note of confusion hammering his chest—

“Doc? Hey! Jesus, what happened?”

He ignored that impossible, treacherous voice. His eyes traversed the instrument panels, the shiny metal switches hooded with red switch guards. The buttons and gauges were all labeled— somebody must’ve used one of those old DYMO label makers , Luke had thought during the descent. The ones that punch each letter onto a sticky black strip …

“Doc?”

Alice Sykes stared down from the Challenger ’s cockpit, looking a bit worried.

Whole. Intact . Smiling cautiously. Alive. Alice… Sykes .

Luke reached a trembling hand toward her—then stopped, partially due to the puzzled look on her face but mostly out of the fear that…

Toy’s voice: You are not who you say you are …

“What’s up, Doc? Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The gears inside his head spun wildly, burning out in gouts of smoke. Her hand fell on his shoulder. Luke flinched from her touch.

“Doc? For the love of… What the hell happened to you?”

Luke said, “Are you… you ?”

Alice recoiled at the rasp of his voice—or was it the capering lunacy in his eyes?

“Who else would I be?”

Was it her? Or was he dreaming? Had he dreamed that terrible hive in Westlake’s lab with Alice’s body strung all through it? Had she been here all along, waiting for the Challenger to charge up?

“You can’t go inside the station,” he said, his breath knocking hollowly in his lungs. “It’s… it’s death in there.”

She nodded—a bit oddly, he noted, her chin dipping to touch her chest like a marionette in the hands of a clumsy puppeteer.

“You bet, Doc. We’re getting out of here. Clear seas above. We’re gonna bob right up like a cork. We’ll be eating broiled snapper al fresco in a few hours. You just sit tight, okay?”

Luke nodded, puppyish in his desire to please her. He’d sit tight as a drum, he’d be quiet as a church mouse oh yes indeedy, everything would be just right as rain, neato torpedo as Zach used to say, wowee zowee and neato torpedo ; Luke would do any goddamn fucking thing Alice wanted as long as she—

“Huh,” she said in obvious puzzlement.

“What is it?”

She flicked a switch. A relay kicked over, shuddering the hull. The lights dimmed, then brightened again.

Alice glanced down at him. She looked different.

Her dark hair was thinner, with kinked gray threads shot through it. She smiled. Luke recoiled. Her teeth looked all wrong in her mouth, yellowed and rotten like shoepeg corn.

“Everything’s fine,” she said in a queer singsong. “Fine as cherry wine.”

She started whistling a familiar tune. Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

There was an unbuckling sensation inside Luke’s head, the feel of a hasp popping under extreme duress. With it came relief of a sort. His brain smoothed out, achieving a state of total unconcern. It felt good. Very good indeed.

“You’re dead, Alice,” he said, his voice itself dead as a dial tone.

The whistling stopped. In its place came a sucking, whispering exhale.

“You’re dead, Al, and I’m very sorry. I wish… I wish you were here. I wish that so, so much. But you’re not. This is just another game.”

“A game, a game, a game…”

Alice’s voice had changed, too. Higher, reedier. A child’s voice.

“…all the world’s a game…”

Something slammed into the Challenger , rocking Luke in his seat. An alarm pealed; the emergency lights kicked on, bathing him in their blood-red glow.

“Oh my child,” that voice said, “the game is only just beginning.”

He looked up, unable to help himself. Alice’s eyes were melting.

They puddled in her sockets as she stared down at him, smiling through her rotted mouth. The corneas liquefied to a jet-black fluid that flowed upward against gravity, over her forehead and hair, fanning out, crawling over the insides of the Challenger .

“It’s fun, Daddy,” she said in perfect mimicry of Zachary’s voice. “The Fig Men have the very best games. Oh, it’s just the most fun you can possibly imagine.”

The blackness unraveled from her eyes, black scarves fluttering over the submarine’s interior, coating the consoles and blotting out the lights. The Challenger rocked again, the metal squealing— please , Luke thought , please rupture —as something hammered at the hatchway, hard staccato beats like an enormous fist rapping on a door. Alice was laughing now, howling while the black fluid poured from her eye sockets and crept down the walls toward him.

The power cut out. The Challenger plunged into total darkness.

A voice spoke right next to Luke’s ear.

“I’m so happy, Daddy. You’ve come home.”

LIGHT. HIGH ABOVE HIM.

Beautiful golden light.

Luke stretched toward it. He was underwater. The light came from the sun. It shone upon the surface of the water, a plate of mellow gold.

He kicked, surging toward it. His legs were strong, his strokes confident. A dark square rested atop the water. It was a floating dock. A rope trailed down from it. Thick nautical gauge, clung with algae. It hung down through the water and disappeared into the darkness below.

His eyes hugged that darkness for a moment. Things thrashed and tilted down there, a few inches past the point where the light went bad.

He looked away. Looked up.

Two shapes jutted from that dark square. Shoulders, heads. Instinctively, he knew it was Abby and Zachary. The smaller shape dipped his hand into the water. The tips of his fingers sent out delicate ripples.

Luke thought: Don’t touch the water, Zach. Don’t give yourself over to it, ever .

His body speared toward them. His lungs burned. It felt good, necessary. You had to suffer to reach those you loved. To suffer was to care.

An emotion bigger than joy, bigger than relief, bigger than hope ripped through his chest: bigger because it was all these emotions, concentrated and magnified.

He arrowed upward. He was moments—a mere heartbeat—from breaking the surface.

Their faces. He could remember their faces again. Soon he’d touch them, hug them both, never leave their sides, not for a moment. Not for anything or anyone.

His hand stretched upward, fingers straining toward the surface—

—LUKE SNAPPED AWAKEin the dark. Inside the Challenger .

Calling his son’s name.

How much time had gone by? He didn’t care. Something had broken inside his head. He lacked the ability to properly acknowledge this fact. His mind could no longer process the scale of its own ruin.