Nick Cutter - The Deep

These creatures were carved out of time itself—the hands on the clock couldn’t touch them anymore, though they had certainly left their mark.

Pitiless. This was Luke’s second and overriding sense. Beholding them, Luke realized for the first time in his life that there are things on earth, or beyond it, who are careless in the most quotidian terms: they lack the inclination or desire to care for anything. They are pitiless in the most simplified fashion, as they simply lack the ability to feel it.

“What are you?” Luke asked.

“ Call us the Fig Men ,” the creatures said in unison.

Luke shook his head. “The Fig Men don’t exist. The Fig Men are figments .”

“ We go by many names ,” the tall Fig Man said. “ It is of no matter. ”

“ We exist in many guises ,” said the squat one.

“Is all this…” Luke shivered involuntarily. “Did you…?”

The creatures inclined their heads at one another, teeth chattering in their seemingly lipless mouths. Was it laughter?

“Why?” was all Luke could ask.

“ Fun ,” the tall Fig Man said in a honeyed voice.

“ Fun ,” the squat one echoed.

“Games.”

“ Games ,” came the echo.

Torturously, the gears in Luke’s head began to mesh. He was beset by the same sense that he imagined a field mouse might hold the moment before the falcon swooped down: the sense of having been singled out, tracked at great distance, studied for a purpose that he could not possibly understand—and then, when the time was ripe, he was plucked squealing from the long grass. Meat for the feast.

“Why me?” was his next, utterly selfish question.

“ You ?” the squat one scoffed.

“ You were not the key ,” said the tall one.

“Then who…”

The Fig Men’s faces split in lewd rictuses.

“ Oh, child ,” they said in unison.

Luke knew. Of course he knew.

“ We observed you ,” the tall one said. “ For as long as you can remember, we have been watching you both .”

“ Tedious ,” the squat one said.

“ Our reach is not insignificant .” The tall one angled its head like a dog intuiting a high-pitched whistle. “ We have connections to your world. You have seen them, child. ”

It arrived with a thunderclap of understanding. The thing in the drainage pipe. The thing in the Tickle Trunk. Maybe even the thing in Westlake’s basement in Belmont, Connecticut…

…the thing lurking in the park not far from Luke’s house in Iowa City?

All the same thing, or parts of it. The Fig Men were their proud parents. And their children were malevolent, but not as old or repellent as these things.

The tall one said, “ We have observed many of your species, over centuries .”

“ Eons ,” said the squat one.

“ Your brother intrigued us .”

“ As much as any of your kind do. ”

“ The special qualities of his mind. ”

“ Mulish, but intriguing .”

“ We chart these qualities. There is so little else to occupy us down here. There have been other minds to capture our interest. ”

“ Better ones ,” said the squat one.

“ The short-eyed Florentine ,” the tall one said.

“ Da Vinci .”

“ And the other one. The insomniac pigeon-keeper .”

“ Tesla .”

“ Fine minds. ”

“ Superior to your brother ,” the squat one said.

“ Perhaps so ,” the tall one agreed. “ And of a quality suited to our purposes… and yet .”

“ And yet .”

“ You were not ready. As a species. You lacked the knowledge to find us. But now you have that knowledge ,” the tall one said mock-brightly.

“ And here you are ,” said the squat one.

Tricksters —the word raced through Luke’s mind. Merciless game players. Everything that had occurred had been the work of these… things .

“Why not just leave this place if you hate it so much?”

The tall one shook its head. “ We cannot, child .”

“ We have been shackled ,” the squat one said petulantly.

The Fig Men’s eyes swiveled skyward. Heavenward. Luke could only wonder at their origins. Perhaps they were the last surviving members of an ancient tribe who’d been cast out, cast down. Shunned. They had lain down here, licking their wounds. Next, they set about baiting their trap—and when that moment arrived, their knives were sharp for the opportunity.

“Why?” Luke asked.

“ We like to toy ,” they said in perfect unity.

Toy . Never in Luke’s life had the word sounded so monolithically sinister.

“ We fiddle ,” the squat one said.

“ We test ,” said the tall one.

“We discover how things work.”

“How they fail.”

“Their pressure points.”

“Their tolerances.”

“We are curious.”

“Eternally curious.”

Luke envisioned these ageless tinkerers examining bodies and minds for the sheer sport of it. Flaying brains open and plucking each synapse like the strings of a lute, teasing out every private fear and horror. Caring nothing for those they entrapped and tortured, committed solely to their games. They had done it to everyone down here. They had turned the Trieste into their laboratory. Their killing jar.

“I remember everything down here,” Luke said. “My mother. My family. My old life. But it’s too clear. The clarity is… hellish .”

The Fig Men grinned like children.

“Oh, yes?” said the tall one.

“This pleases us,” said the squat one.

Luke’s brain pounded within its bowl of bone; it seemed to expand, the grey matter expanding with the mad hum of his tormented thoughts, pressing against his nasal shelf until he was ill with it. Memory as a sickness.

“Your species is so busy forgetting,” the squat one said.

“But not you, child,” said the tall one.

“It is our special offering.” The squat one stared at Luke placidly. “Does it not please you?”

Were they even evil? Luke considered the fact that these things may well exist above the terms that humankind ascribes to certain actions or behaviors. The Fig Men were elementally themselves, as surely they had always been.

But their natures must have gotten them in trouble with the higher ups. And so they had been put in a place where they could do the least harm.

“The ambrosia,” he said. “Yours?”

“ Your kind requires a small enticement. You need… ”

The tall one looked to the squat one in search of the word.

“ Bait ,” the squat one said.

“ Yes, bait. The hounds must chase the hare down the hole .”

“And the ’Gets?”

“ A happy convergence, ” said the squat one. “ Our powers do not extend to such a degree. ”

“ You would have come for less ,” said the tall one.

“ You are a vain species, ” the squat one sneered.

Luke knew this was true. Ambrosia appeared to cure the ’Gets, and so that was how the narrative played out—the hunt to find a solution for the incurable disease. But Clayton and others of his ilk would have pursued the lure of the ambrosia regardless of circumstance, whether it promised relief from cancer, AIDS, or old age. The unknown was a profoundly powerful intoxicant.