by Nick Cutter
“How fast are we falling?”
“About thirteen hundred meters per hour. I’ll increase that as the currents subside. Once we enter the Mariana Trench, three miles down, there’s no current at all. Then we’ll go faster—the proverbial hot knife through butter.”
Some part of the vessel whined. Al made a minute adjustment, and the unpleasant noise stopped. Air bubbles scrolled around the window, delicate as those in a glass of champagne. The darkness was as absolute as the bottom of a mine shaft.
Luke said, “Christ, that’s desolate.”
“That’s the sea at night,” Al said, laughing a little uneasily. “Don’t you worry, it’ll get even darker. You’ve never seen the kind of dark we’re gonna encounter.”
They were already beyond the point of the deepest free-dive; Luke figured it wouldn’t be long before they passed the point of the deepest scuba dive. After that they’d reach the depth where oxygen toxicity set in: the nitrogen levels change and the air in a scuba diver’s tank turns poisonous. Finally, they’d enter the lung-splintering depths where humans simply didn’t belong.
A fizzy pop shot through Luke’s veins. He felt a subtle expansion between his joints. It wasn’t painful—more like being tickled inside his bones.
Al modified their trajectory. The submarine stabilized.
“Nitrogen buildup. You feel it? We’ll hang out here a minute,” she said. “We’re in the ‘Midnight Zone,’ by the way. Complete darkness. We’ll stop again at twenty-five hundred meters—the ‘Abyssal Zone.’ ”
The tickle subsided. The sea was a solid wall of black through the porthole. There was nothing out there. The bleakness crawled inside Luke’s skull.
“Check it out,” Al said. “Light show coming off your starboard side in five, four, three, two—”
It started as tiny, vibrantly glowing specks. They accumulated slowly, drifting on the current. A hundred became a thousand became a numberless quantity. A swarm of neon creatures a hundred feet wide, giving a sense of depth to the ocean in the same way the sweep of a flashlight will reveal a huge cave.
Some were small as grains of sand; others were the size of no-see-ums; a precious few were the size of summer fireflies. They glowed warmest amber. Their bodies brightened and dimmed like embers in a fire.
“Phytoplankton,” Al said. “They’re bioluminescent. You’ll see more of this kind of thing the deeper we go. Until we get too deep . . . then you won’t see a damn thing.”
The plankton flurried like flakes of snow. Just like the night Luke met Abby.
In that moment, Luke was back in Iowa City with his ex-wife—except she wasn’t even his wife then. She was twenty-two-year-old Abigail Jeffries of Chicago, Illinois. He met her at an intra-faculty mixer for seniors at the U of I. It happened that very night. Luke fell madly in love with Abby Jeffries. All parts of her, even the parts that remained unknown to him then.
In time he’d come to love her chipped canine tooth, her snaggletooth as she called it, which she never bothered to get capped under the belief that a face without flaws was a face lacking character. He loved her habit of squeaking after she sneezed. He loved the way her skin sparkled after sex. He loved everything about her, indiscriminately.
That first night they left the mixer and hit a bar. When everyone got kicked out at last call, they’d staggered happily down East Jefferson hand in hand. Snow had been falling, big fat flakes swarming out of the sky like the plankton was doing right now . . .
The glowing flakes scattered as a monolithic shape passed by the Challenger. Luke glimpsed a pitted wall of blue-gray flesh. For a heart-stopping instant, he saw an eye the size of a dinner plate, a ring of shocking white banding a black pupil.
The Challenger rocked; the displacement of water felt roughly akin to a tractor-trailer flying past his car on the highway.
“Sperm whale,” Al said. “It’s the only creature that big that could exist down here. I’ve never spotted one this low.”
Al cut the motors. The descent continued.
Luke’s back was beginning to ache.
“Can I stand up?”
“Go right ahead.”
Luke managed to stretch a bit, taking the pressure off his hips.
He watched Al work. She piloted the Challenger with easy authority—it reminded Luke of observing an experienced veterinarian perform routine surgery. There was an air of practiced boredom to the way Al’s hands moved over the controls.
“You don’t seem too concerned about all this,” Luke said.
“If you’re talking about the dive, I’m okay,” she said. “I brought your brother and the others down. Supplies and food and scientific doodads after that, before the drones were operational. Hell, on my last descent I brought a poster of Albert Einstein. I’m a glorified delivery girl.
“The thing is—and I’m sorry if this doesn’t make you feel any better—at a certain depth, it doesn’t matter. Where we’re going, the pressure per square foot is the equivalent of twenty-seven jumbo jets. If we spring a pinhole leak, the water will come through with enough force to cut through three feet of solid steel. It’d slice us apart like flying Ginsu knives. This sub will crumple. It’ll happen in a fraction of a heartbeat. Imagine being crushed between panes of extrathick glass traveling toward impact at the speed of sound.” She thwapped her hands. “We’re talking flesh pâté. Say good night, Gracie.”
“Comforting image, that.”
Al exhaled, jiggling a joystick using a few deft strokes.
“Listen, Luke—dying that way, crushed in the blink of an eye . . . there are worse ways to go down here. We’ve only lost two men so far. But we’ve lost a bunch of drones and . . .” She bit down, her teeth making an audible click. “You ever hear the term short, Doc?”
“You mean of stature?”
“No, there’s another meaning. It’s a military term: short-timer. It’s when you’re at the end of a long hitch, just before you hit furlough. In a combat zone, that’s the most superstitious time. When the fates are gonna take a swipe at you. People get hinky. I’m so short I could parachute off a dime, man. That’s kinda how I feel. The more dives I make, the more I test this big black motherfucker, the Mariana, the more I’m sure it’s going to . . . Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m rambling. We’re fine and we’re going to be fine.”
“I trust you,” Luke said simply.
A stiff bark of laughter from Al. “Try to catch a nap if you can. Sleep might be tough to come by the deeper we go; the pressure can mess with your REM patterns.”
The sea swept against the Challenger’s hull with a lush suctioning. Luke felt as though he was in an elevator plummeting to the bottom of the world—closing his eyes, he envisioned red numerals flashing past:
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, G, P1, P2, P3, B, SB, SSB . . .
Sub-subbasement—did floors go any lower?
“The Ag Mey.”
“Hmm?” said Al.
“The Ag Mey Are Here. The words written inside the Challenger. They have any meaning to you?”
Al sounded curious. “Is that how you read it?”
“What, you saw it differently?”
“Yeah. Man,” she said. “The Something-Man.”
“The Ag Man are here?”
Al shrugged. “Nonsense words, Doc. The grammar doesn’t even jibe. I don’t presume they’d have meant much to Dr. Westlake by the time he wrote them.”
4.
LUKE SHUT HIS EYES. He was hungry but he didn’t feel like eating; the sea seemed to reach through the submarine’s walls, pressing uncomfortably on his stomach. His thoughts circled back to his mother. He was anxious, and during such times his mind would stalk the walled-off corners of his memory relentlessly, chasing a handful of dire recollections like a terrier down a rat-hole.
After she was put on disability from the Second Chance Ranch, Luke’s mother began to eat. It became an obsession. Though she’d always been sturdy, she’d never been much of an eater—only enough to sustain
her frame. She took no apparent joy in eating, and that never changed—only the quantity changed.
Porridge. She’d cook it in a huge steel pot—three, four pounds of edible sludge—and gorge herself in front of the television, eating it with the same sterling silver baby spoon she’d used to feed pabulum to her infant boys.
After a while the smell of cooking porridge was enough to make Luke feel ill. He’d come home and find his mother in the dark, eating congealed porridge with a wet-mouthed vacancy, her lips moving like a horse eating sugar cubes.
At first she simply got thick . . . a solidity over her arms and legs and bosom that gave her a matronly look. But she kept shoveling in that gray gruel and soon thickness gave way to bloated girth. Her arms projected from the sleeves of her shapeless shifts like the booms on a sailboat, larded with folds of quaking flesh that resembled hunks of wet wool. Her thighs widened to the point that when sitting, her legs appeared to be welded together: a vast blanket of quivering skin. When she limped from her spot on the chair, her thighs rubbed together with a raw whispery note. Her features receded into the shapeless bloat of her face. Her eyes stared out of that netted flesh like two raisins thumbed into proofing dough.
“We are all but flesh,” she would say to Luke’s father when he dared mention that she might think about cutting a few carbs, “and we will all go the way of all flesh.”
As her size increased, so did her cruelty. Especially to her husband. It was a sport to her. She’d belittle the man in front of his boys and torture him far worse in private moments.
One night, unable to sleep, Luke had crept downstairs for a glass of milk. On the way back to his room, he passed his parents’ open door. He caught the rustling of sheets, the movements of bodies.
Next: a breathless exhale. It sounded like the moan of a man who’d been stabbed and wanted to deal with the injury as quietly as possible.
“You dirty boy.”
His mother’s voice.
You dirty boy.
It wasn’t an endearment or a sly encouragement. No, this was more as if Luke’s father really was a boy, a depraved and softheaded one, who’d been found under the porch steps smeared with his own excrement. Yet his father moaned in that soft, gut-stabbed way and whispered: “Yes, yes, so fucking bad.”
She ruined Luke’s father, decimated him until he sickened her. Her bulk would have cooled the ardor of some other men, but it only intensified his father’s servility. Like a whipped dog, he mooned around her petticoats, begging for scraps of affection, which only deepened his mother’s loathing.
All day she had nothing to do but sit in the dark, dreaming up ways to dominate the household. She’d squashed her husband already. Clayton was either down in his lab or, in later years, pursuing his projects at sponsoring labs. Beth’s immediate project was Luke, who by then had discovered the vast well of malice that lurked inside his mother.
Luke had once returned from his fifth-grade classes to find her in the tub. She was in the bathroom Luke and Clay used, even though she had her own. She didn’t sound a warning as Luke climbed the staircase and stared at him silently when he opened the door. Her body was ghostly and pale. Bubbles clung to the edges of the tub, gray and scummy, darkened from the dirt off her body. Her belly was ribbed with fat, her breasts huge and sallow.
Luke’s eyes dipped. She’d said nothing, willing them to rise again. He slammed the door.
“Don’t you ever knock?” her voice boomed from behind it.
Despite this, Luke continued to bring her a glass of Ovaltine after school, sitting at her feet like a lapdog. She’d slurp it and gawp at the TV—it played soaps or infomercials, although Luke figured she’d be just as happy with a test pattern. Sometimes she would say the nicest things. Lucas, you’re my angel. How would I live without you? But she could turn sadistic without warning. One time she’d stared at him dolorously and spoke in a dry monotone. I had such high hopes for you. Such high, high hopes.
In time, Luke believed his mother only said the nice things so that the barbs would sting even more.
Not long after the bathtub incident, he’d come home to find his comic book collection on the front lawn with a sign reading: FREE.
“You’re too old for comics,” she’d told him, sunk down in her easy chair with a dollop of porridge on her chin. “We must all let go of childish things.”
“But—”
Her head swiveled, eyes peering out from pits of buttery flesh.
“But nothing. Let some younger boys in the neighborhood have your funny books. You’ve read the damn things how many times already.”
Funny books. These weren’t Archies or Casper the Friendly Ghosts. These were Daredevils and Wolverines. They weren’t funny.
“But . . . they’re mine. I’m collecting them.”
“All they’re collecting is dust. They’re gone, Lucas. The matter is settled.”
He’d turned his back on her, tears scalding his cheeks. Those comics weren’t just ink on paper—they represented freedom from the increasing hostility of his home life. He could dive into those pages and spend time with characters who were larger than life, fearless, and did right by others. He’d even created a superhero alter ego, joining the cast of caped crusaders and crime fighters in his favorite comics. The Human Shield. As Luke envisioned it, his alter ego had touched a glowing asteroid that bestowed a singular trait upon him: his flesh was impenetrable. Nothing could hurt him: not bullets, not blades, not even a heat-seeking missile. The Human Shield’s role was to stand in front of children and single mothers while his superhero pals battled their archenemies; any stray laser beams or pumpkin bombs would strike his body, which safely absorbed the blast. He wasn’t one of the top-tier superheroes, but he was allowed to hang out at the Hall of Justice and X-Mansion, rubbing elbows with Aquaman and Marvel Girl. What Luke liked best about being the Human Shield was his ability to protect the innocent without fear—because his home life was by then characterized by a marrow-deep, ever-present dread.
Looking back, Luke was sure this was why his mother had chosen the comic books. It could have been his action figures or his bike, but he could’ve parted with those easily. The comics opened up a new world to him, a place where he was safe. And his mother wanted to rip that haven away from him.
Luke hadn’t dared retrieve the comics from the lawn. By that evening, the grass was picked clean. From that time forward, Luke made a point out of secrecy: if his mother was unaware of the things that gave him joy, she couldn’t take them away. But she had other ways to maintain her dominance.
One night she’d climbed the staircase, each step whining under her bulk, and opened his bedroom door. Luke had been sleeping alone; Clayton was in the basement most nights. She crossed the room with thudding footfalls, threw back the covers, and slid into his bed. The springs squealed and the mattress took a sickening downward lurch. Luke felt as if he were being sucked down into greedy quicksand.
She nestled her body up with his, spooning him. There was nothing motherly in the embrace. He caught the acrid whiff of her armpits and the dense, peaty scent wafting from her mouth.
She curled an arm around him; his pajama top had rucked up, and she spread her hand across his bare belly. Her flesh was sickeningly warm, a hot water bottle packed with boiled lard.
Her index finger tapped his stomach in time with the beat of his heart. As its rate accelerated, so did her tapping. Her mouth was close to his neck, her breath moistening the downy hairs. He was certain she’d sink her teeth into him, holding tight as she ate him the way she ate her porridge: in tiny, tiny bites.
Part of Luke realized she was trying to break him, as she’d already done to his father. Fear equaled control in the mind of Bethany Ronnicks. It was an effective tool. But only if you stood for it.
She wasn’t really clever. Luke had been coming to that realization for a while by then. Not smart, just cunning. Animals were cunning. Animals also ate their own shit and chewed live electrical wires.
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The only way to deal with monsters—real or imagined—was to show no fear. You had to become the Human Shield.
Luke opened his eyes and gripped her wrist. Her muscles tensed under their encasement of flab. Shifting his weight, he slung himself out from under her and landed on the floor with a graceless thump. He stood and retreated to the door.
“Where are you going?” A mocking coo.
“This isn’t your bedroom, Mom. You don’t sleep here.”
“This is my house.” All mockery gone. “I sleep where I goddamn like.”
“Then I’ll sleep somewhere else.”
“Get. Back. Here.”
Luke hesitated . . . then left. He got halfway down the hallway and collapsed. What had he done? He was only thirteen. He couldn’t leave the house. He was trapped. What would his mother do to him now? What would she—
Luke awoke with a start. The dim ticking of instruments, the rush of water against the hull. He was in the Challenger. The heat of the instruments pulled sweat out of his pores. Alice stared down at him with concern.
“You’re okay, Doc. You were dreaming.”
Luke wiped at the drool on his chin, mortified. “How long was I out?”
“Couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. You were grinding your teeth; sounded like rocks in a blender. Mumbling, too.”
Alice was leaning over, her hand on his shoulder. He felt the warmth of her flesh and caught the scent of her body—the softest note of vanilla. It wasn’t perfume; Al didn’t seem the sort to wear it. Probably just a dab of hand cream—it was dry as a desert inside the sub, which was weird seeing as they were surrounded by water. She’d unzipped her overalls a little—the heat was intense—and Luke couldn’t help his eyes from orienting on that slice of bare flesh trailing down to the dampened hem of her tank top . . .
He wrenched his eyes up to her face. She was watching him impassively, her head slightly cocked.