by Nick Cutter
“Get out of here.”
She pulled an iPhone from her pocket and thumb-shuffled until she found what she was looking for. “This came through fifty hours ago. You received a call in Iowa City shortly thereafter. Sound file, no video. It stands as our last contact with your brother. We were debating whether to act on it, but the Westlake situation forced our hand.”
She pressed play. Clayton’s voice floated out of the speaker.
“Come home, Lucas. Come down, Lucas. We need you, Lucas. Come home.”
Clayton’s flat, monotone cadence was rendered tinny by the recording. Clayton sounded as if he was asleep; his voice was syrupy and water-warped, like a 45 rpm record playing at a relaxed 33 rpm. That could be a problem with the transmission itself, which had to carry through eight miles of water. Clayton repeated himself again before the message cut out abruptly.
“We need you, Lucas. Come ho—”
“It took a while to figure out who Lucas was,” said Al. “Your brother doesn’t speak about his family. We figured it could’ve been a research associate, a friend, a lover even. Our intel people dug around a bit and figured he must’ve been talking about you.”
“But Clayton doesn’t need me. He doesn’t need anyone. He never has.”
Except for those nights when the sleep terrors descended on him, he thought. The nights when you’d climb into bed with him until he settled down. But that was years ago, when they were only boys.
Yet Clayton had been saying We need you. We. WE. We who?
“Think of him as our pampered rock star whose rider calls for a big bowl of M&M’s, only the red ones,” said Al. “In this case, he’s asking for his brother. We give him what he wants—making every effort to preserve your safety, of course.”
“Why would he want me down there?”
Al cocked her head. “You put people’s minds and bodies under that kind of pressure . . . Things snap, right? We want to do everything possible to avoid that snap.”
“So that’s what I am, then? A bandage?”
“Think of yourself more as a key.”
Luke couldn’t imagine his brother needing a bandage, anyway. He was armor plated, titanium coated. But that voice . . . it hadn’t sounded entirely like Clayton. Granted, it had been years since they’d last spoken, but still, something was off about it. The difference wasn’t in the words themselves or the pitch of his voice—it lurked somewhere behind the obvious, sly and scuttling like rats in the walls.
Come home, Lucas. Come home come home come home . . .
“That’s not my home down there,” he said.
Al said: “It’s nobody’s home. Trust me.”
Two rights, a left, and they came to another dry dock. Three subs were cradled in hammocks. The numbers 2, 3, and 1 lay on their flanks. A workman was filling a seam in one of them with foam that pumped from a sophisticated caulking gun.
“That’s the secret ingredient,” Al told Luke. “Some kind of superfoam that expands or compresses depending on pressure. It can withstand fifty tons per square inch. The Trieste is held together with the stuff. Cost a billion-plus to develop, but it’s worth every dime.”
Luke followed Al across the tarmac. It was like being on the deck of an aircraft carrier—the sky was wide and trackless, the sun beating down from a cloudless sky. It was so hot that the patching tar had softened; it clung to the treads of their boots like Black Jack chewing gum.
Another sub was partially obscured by a pile of pallets; all Luke saw was its back end canted over the water. It sat in moody isolation, its stocky shape banded by yellow tape—the kind that ringed a crime scene.
“The MPs are still investigating,” Al said. “It seems worthless.” She laughed without mirth. “Like investigating a haunting or something.”
The Challenger 4 rounded into view. Luke’s lips curled in an instinctive expression of distaste.
It looked no different than the sub he’d seen earlier, and yet it repelled his gaze. There was something profoundly awful about it. He sensed that Al felt the same way about it—and he imagined it unnerved her just as it did him, because rational minds objected to unreasoned fear.
Perhaps it was because it had traveled so far below the sun’s reach. The pressure had warped it, giving its shape a madman’s hint of those depths. Or perhaps it was what happened within it—in Luke’s head, the sight of it melded with that of Westlake’s tortured corpse. The vessel was hateful in some way he could not accurately distill.
Al approached it, and Luke reluctantly followed. An awful coldness wept off the sub’s metal. Had it carried up that icy chill from the Challenger Deep itself?
Al wrenched the hatch wheel. The muscles trembled up her arms, as if a subconscious part of her rebelled at the act.
The hatch was circular, slightly smaller than a manhole cover, a solid foot of steel. Al let it clunk against the hull.
A smell wafted out. Luke had never inhaled its equal. Raw, adrenal, and profoundly human.
The stink of insanity, Edie, sharp as malt vinegar, as his mother once said.
Luke bent to peer inside. Several deflated bladders dangled down inside the cabin; he could only suppose that they were the equivalent of nautical air bags.
What he didn’t see yet was blood, which was incredible considering what had occurred inside. Maybe the MPs had swabbed it out already?
“You’re gonna need to crane your neck,” he heard Al say. “Look higher.”
He crouched, neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle. Something was written on the far wall. Rust-colored scratches. Messy, frantic.
He dipped lower, aware of the blood-beat in his ears. The scratches resolved themselves into . . . letters?
And that rusty discoloration.
Blood. There it was. Dried blood.
Letters, but he could make out only their undersides. The bulbous lower swoop of a C; the jagged horizontal slash of an E.
Luke knelt until his knees hit the deck. It was the only way to contort his head enough to see what had been written inside.
Five words. All written in a crazed, spiky scrawl—written in the blood that had momentarily gushed from Westlake’s innumerable wounds. Five words in one string, seven in the other.
THE AG MEY ARE HERE COME HOME WE NEED YOU COME HOME
Crystals of ice gathered up Luke’s spine. The words were grotesque in the same way Westlake’s body had been: the letters were swollen and lewd, the blood dried thickly on their outer curves like paint slopped heavily on a fence slat. More unsettlingly, those words recalled Clayton’s voice, calling out to Luke from the icy depths of the sea.
We need you, Lucas. Come home.
1.
THE EVENING DARK hung against a paling sky. Alice had left Luke to his own devices while she made the final preparations for their descent.
It seemed absurd: less than an hour from now, Luke would be inside a cramped sub, free-falling eight miles down through the Pacific. But then, was it absurd? The circumstances of his life made him the perfect candidate, if you looked closely.
Luke was a divorced veterinarian. He spayed calicos and repaired budgies’ split beaks. He still lived in the modest home he and his wife once shared with their son, not far from the university campus. On quiet Saturdays in September he could hear the roar from Kinnick Stadium.
His son, Zachary Henry Nelson, had vanished seven years ago. He had never been found. His bedroom was unchanged: the baseball motif wallpaper, dusty toys shoved underneath the bed. All waiting for him when he got back.
Luke’s life had stopped, fundamentally stopped, on a cool autumn evening seven years ago. As pitiful as it may be, he had no reason not to be here, accepting the task set before him. It gave his life a small but vital sense of purpose.
He sat on the edge of the Hesperus, his feet dipped in the sea. The water held cascading shades: a pure aquamarine deepening to more enveloping blues. A school of orange-and-pearl fish made lively darts at an algae-slick chain. The fish had curved,
sickle-shaped jaws. They looked predatory, like midget piranhas.
Those fish would’ve scared Zach. There was a time in the boy’s life when he’d been scared of everything. Luke recalled how, at five, Zach (like many five-year-olds) had become convinced that a monster lurked in his closet. Luke reacted by flinging Zach’s closet door open and rattling the coat hangers.
“See, Zachy? No monster. You’re perfectly safe, I promise. Monsters aren’t real. They’re just figments of your imagination.”
Zach looked even more petrified. “Fig Men?”
Luke nearly burst out laughing. He pictured these bloated, misshapen, fruitlike creatures, the Fig Men, massing in his son’s closet.
“Not Fig Men, Zach, figments. Figments aren’t real. Your mind is making them up, that’s all. No Fig Men. No monsters.”
But that night, Zach crept into their room and curled up on the floor.
“What are you doing here, buddy?”
“The Fig Men are in my closet,” Zach whispered.
Luke got up and marched his son back to his bedroom.
“There is no monster, Zach. No Fig Men. Didn’t I show you that?”
“That was in the daytime,” Zach said with bone-deep worry. “Monsters hide from grown-ups in the day. It’s night now.”
But Luke was adamant. “I’ll leave the hall light burning, buddy. That’s the best I can do. You’ve got to sleep in your own bed, okay?”
Zach pulled the covers up to his throat and nodded wretchedly.
Back in bed, Abby said: “You’re not being fair, Luke. Zach’s allowed to be scared. He’s a kid. There shouldn’t be a penalty in this house for being scared.”
Luke knew she was right. Your child doesn’t owe you loyalty or obedience. You owe your child love and understanding, owe it unconditionally, and if you love them strongly enough, eventually that love may be returned. Luke’s own mother had never seen it that way. She thought Luke and Clay owed her love regardless of how she treated them.
Luke got out of bed and grabbed his toolbox. He returned to Zach’s room and pointed at the closet.
“So this is where the Fig Men are lurking?”
Zach nodded forlornly. Luke cracked the toolbox and pulled out a stud finder. He ran it over the closet walls and made a few exploratory taps with his knuckles.
“There are traces of ectoplasm,” he said in the tone of a veteran contractor. “That’s monster slime, in layman’s terms. What do these suckers look like?”
Zach said: “Old, all wrinkly, like they’ve lived a million years.”
The short hairs stood up on the back of Luke’s neck. Something about the way his son said that one word, old, was chilling. Luke didn’t feel like laughing this time. The Fig Men—these twisted, ancient, calculating little devils hunched in the dark closet, peering at his son through the slats with cruel avidity—had taken on a sinister shape in his mind.
Luke gripped his chin, putting on a good show. “The Fig Men. I’ve never heard of them specifically, but harmless monsters do infest closets and crawl spaces. They usually like sweet stuff—you haven’t been keeping anything tasty in your closet, have you?”
“That’s where I put my Halloween candy.”
“Well, that’ll give you a Fig Man problem. Now, I’m sure they’re not dangerous—just gross. But if you let a few hang around they’ll call their buddies and before long you’ve got an infestation on your hands.”
“I don’t want that, Daddy.”
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Luke. “What do you want first?”
Zach said: “Good.”
“Good news is I can get rid of the Fig Men.”
Luke rooted through his toolbox for a pouch of fine red powder.
“This is cardamom; it’s made from the crushed shells of stag beetles. It’s used in monster containment spells.”
Luke laid down a line of powder in the shape of a keyhole.
“Now this,” he said, “is the trap. The Fig Men will wander up this path, which gets narrower and narrower until—bang-o!—they get stuck. The circle closes and the Fig Men will starve overnight. They’ll turn black and hard as a rock. Now the bad news, Zach. You have to pull one hair out of your head, and that’ll hurt a bit.”
“Why?”
“Fig Man bait.”
Zach plucked a strand of hair. Luke laid it in the middle of the trap.
“You know what’d help? Something sweet. Why don’t you and Mom go downstairs and grab a few chocolate chips.”
While they were downstairs, Luke hustled into his bedroom and grabbed two small chunks of obsidian he’d picked up during a trip to Hawaii years ago. He set them in the middle of the ring and shut the closet.
When Zach returned, Luke strung the chocolate chips along the edge of the closet door.
“The sweetness will draw those Fig Men out of hiding. Now Zach, the trap is set. But if you open the closet the spell will be broken. So you must not open it until tomorrow morning. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Stick a needle in my eye,” Zach said solemnly.
“Do you want to sleep in our bed tonight?”
Zach shook his head. “I’m okay now.”
Back in the bedroom, Abby kissed him with uncommon ardor. Luke enjoyed a deep dreamless sleep, feeling very much like a minor superhero. The next morning, Zach flung the closet open.
“The trap worked!” he cried.
He raced into their bedroom clutching the blackened, calcified Fig Men.
“It’s a cocoon,” Luke said. “Except these ones are hard—a prison. The Fig Men will never be able to escape. Put them on display as a warning to any other monster that might wander along. It’s not every day that you can hold a monster in your palm.”
Zach set them on his nightstand. They were still there, in the room Luke had left untouched since the day his son had gone missing—
A shadow fell over Luke’s shoulder, snapping him back to reality. The minipiranhas scattered, zipping under the Hesperus in a silvery flashing of scales.
“You about ready?” Al asked.
Spider legs scuttled up the lining of Luke’s stomach.
2.
CHALLENGER 5 WAS SUSPENDED from a miniature sky crane. Its hatch hung open like a hungry mouth.
Luke carried only a duffel bag with a change of clothes and a cable knit sweater. Plus a toiletry kit with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a stick of deodorant.
Where will I spit my toothpaste? he wondered. There couldn’t be a drainage system. No conventional toilets, either—one flush and the pressure would probably cave in the Trieste.
I’ll swallow my toothpaste, he thought. And pee in a bottle.
“I’ll get in first and take the cockpit. You’ll sit a little lower.” Al smiled. “It’s a good news, bad news scenario. Good news is, you get the better view. Bad news is, your head’s going to be parallel with my behind.”
Luke grinned despite the quivers that kept rippling through his belly. Al ducked through the hatch. Luke realized for the first time that the vessel was designed to dive vertically: they’d be arrowing straight down into the black.
Luke ducked and stuck his head inside the sub. The sight reminded him of the cockpit of a commercial jetliner, only much more cramped.
“Hop in,” Al said from inside, already flicking switches. “You’ll have to tuck your knees, and be careful not to touch anything unless I ask you to.”
The webbing of Luke’s seat sagged like a hammock; Luke sank into it so deeply that his chin nearly touched his knees. Instrumentation panels sat a few inches off each shoulder, their uncomfortable electrical warmth bathing his face. His body tightened instinctually, his muscles and posture contracting; it felt a little like being trapped at the bottom of a village well, except there wasn’t even a view of the sky. Al sat a few feet above with her back to Luke. She craned her head down.
“Comfy, uh? Wish I could le
t you pop an Ambien and sleep through the descent, but that shit does a number on your blood—added pressure, yeah?”
Luke had never considered how it might feel to be buried alive in a buzzing, blinking, high-tech coffin, but he had a good sense of it now.
The hatch closed with a satisfying thunk—the sound of a luxury car door slamming shut. A gassy hiss was followed by a volley of pressurized tinks!
Al said: “It’s a high-pressure vacuum, drawing out every bit of excess air. Then the seal will engage.”
A workman appeared in the porthole window. Luke couldn’t hear anything outside now. The sub must be noise-proof. The man’s hands clutched one of those high-tech caulking guns; a puffy crust of foam began to encircle the window.
“They’re foaming the seals,” said Al. “The entire vessel will get a coating, except for the bank of high-intensity spotlights running down each side. You okay?”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Just . . . this is really happening.”
“Try to relax. I’m kicking on the air recycler.”
Cool air pumped around Luke’s feet from pinhole vents. It had the same chemical tang that puffed from the vault containing Westlake. Luke was worried that his lungs would lock up, refusing to inhale the foul stuff.
The crane lifted the sub and pinioned it over the water.
“Buckle up,” Al said. “The crane operator’s got a heavy hand.”
As soon as Luke’s belt clicked, they dropped. His stomach leapt as it would on a roller coaster. They hammered the sea’s surface. Water climbed the porthole. Luke’s breath came in shallow gulps.
Breathe, he chided himself. You’re safe, totally safe.
His final surface sight was of a new moon hovering in its eastern orbit: a waxen ball whose light plated the slack darkness of the sea.
Then they slipped under and were gone.
3.
AL FLICKED SWITCHES and twisted knobs. Her hand entered Luke’s peripheral vision, toggling a joystick near his ear.
“This tub’s got three motors, but they’re strictly for stabilization and maneuvering,” she said. “We’re carrying three thousand pounds of lead weights. We just drop. When we want to surface, we’ll start shedding those lead plates bit by bit.”