The Deep

by Nick Cutter

  And then? Well damn, he’d just have to turn around and do it all over again.

  Don’t think about that. Just take it inch by inch.

  His shoulders jammed.

  Pushing with his heels did nothing—he was stuck, his body pinned. He couldn’t budge; his heels drummed a helpless tat-a-tat. His lungs constricted as darkness poured into them.

  Was the chute shrinking? It pressed on the back of his skull with an insistent, menacing weight—it would keep pressing, slowly and remorselessly, until the bones of his face collapsed.

  It’s a bend, Luke. Just a little bend in the tube, for God’s sake.

  Suddenly he felt it: the chute was pressing into his right-hand side, but there was a little space on the left. Luke torqued his elbows and bucked his hips, squirming onto his side. His spine followed the bend of the tube now. He could breathe shallowly again.

  He pushed against the chute with his feet, which slipped on its greasy coating. Incrementally, fighting for inches, he propelled his torso around the bend.

  The air before his eyes burst with puffs of cottony light. Those puffs were a manifestation of exertion, panic, and a lack of breathable air—he was gasping now, the onset of a claustrophobic attack.

  He’d never been prone to that. Crowded elevators and windowless rooms had never bothered him. But now he was eight miles underwater—Eight miles! Eight miles! his mind parroted idiotically—in a chute that felt like it was being compressed in a vise. The sea was held back by nothing more than a fragile shell. He heard, or believed he could hear, the subtlest creaks as the water exerted its bone-smashing force . . . except it wouldn’t smash his bones, would it? No, it would do something else entirely. He’d be crushed into a cube, like a car at a wrecking yard. It was highly unlikely that his body would be compressed into anything so neatly geometric, but that was the image his mind settled around.

  Dap-dap-dap-dap-dap—those nightmare children dashing overhead, the bloated pads of their feet only an inch from his face now.

  He wriggled his shoulders, clenched his fists, and inched onward. He was bathed in sick sweat; his thighs chafed. He couldn’t hinge his knees more than a few inches. His lungs burned, packed with hot rivets.

  Why had he done this? How could he have been such a fool?

  It was torturous to breathe—were his sinuses constricting? What if the chute narrowed until he couldn’t move another millimeter—what if he caught up to Al, who’d gotten stuck herself, his head butting her heels? What if she told him the exit was grated? Could they get out? Luke didn’t think so. Moving forward was hard enough; moving backward would be impossible. They would die in the chute like rats trapped in a heating duct.

  . . . whush, whush, whush . . .

  The sound floated out of the darkness, dancing delicately up his calves, slipping around his skull and into his ears.

  . . . whush, whush . . .

  That insistent, unpleasantly familiar sound.

  NonononononoNO—

  He was nearly around the bend in the chute; he’d been progressing in centimeters, in millimeters, in

  —millipedes—

  the smallest increments, but he was making headway. His hips were clear; in a minute or so he’d be able to work around the bend and really boogie.

  But something was inside the chute with him now.

  Whush-tikatikatikatikatikatika-whush, whush . . .

  He could picture it behind him . . . twenty feet long, thick and sinuous, its feelers dancing lightly along the mouth of the tube. Its exoskeleton throbbing with moody colors; under that armor its guts were as soft and featureless as mashed bananas. Its compound eyes pulsing with alien hunger.

  The millipede was inside the chute with him, its million-skillion legs tapping as it advanced gradually but with complete ease—tubes were its natural habitat, weren’t they?

  Luke tensed, every muscle quivering. His heart hammered at his rib cage. The fear paralyzed him—his body, his mind. Finally he began to move. Hips bucking, feet shoving. But his body just uselessly accordioned. He felt like a worm stuck in the barrel of a clear, cheap ballpoint pen. Panic chewed his brain into pulp, rendering him stupid with fear.

  Bug! yelped a giddy voice from his lizard brain, obliterating every last vestige of calm. Bug! Bug! Bug! BUG! BUUUG!

  Whusha-whusha-tikatikatikatika . . .

  He felt it now. At his feet. Its antennae—long and thick as extension cords—picked along the exposed skin of his ankles. Its mandibles gnashed like scissors. Its proboscis (they had those, didn’t they?) was a thick needle dripping venom.

  Would it punch through the soles of his shoes, injecting poison into the pads of his feet while he thrashed helplessly? Would that poison kill him, or only paralyze him—would he feel it chewing through his boots, snipping off his toes like Jujubes and funneling them into the clotted hole of its mouth?

  The sound switched direction—it was coming from ahead of him now.

  Whush-whush-WHUSH . . .

  Oh Jesus. Oh God no.

  His feet would be bad enough, but for it to devour his head—its legs twitching through his hair as it scuttled over his forehead, his face, carrying the insectile stink of a roach nest, noxious nectars drooling out of its mouth as its mandibles fastened around the fragile nut of his skull, its proboscis injected through one twitching eyeball—

  Bug! Bug! BugbugbugbugBUG!

  Luke shook all over, screeching now, gripped by out-of-body terror. A vein of white-hot fire ripped up his spine as his overtaxed synapses detonated in his brainpan—

  Fingers. Feelers.

  Something was gripping his shoulders and was hauling him into—

  12.

  “IT’S OKAY, DOC! DOC! You’re out! You’re out.”

  Luke lay on the floor of what must be the purification room. Grainy light trickled down the walls, illuminating the canisters screwed into them.

  He tried to sit up. His body wouldn’t comply, his muscles limp as wrung dishrags. A tidal wave of embarrassment crashed over him. Mindless terror had cracked him right open inside the chute. And over what? There wasn’t a goddamn thing inside it except for the cloying stench of his fear.

  “I’m sorry, Al. I . . . I lost my head for a second there.”

  Al touched Luke’s shoulder. “I was jumpy by the time I made it out, too. Enclosed spaces, right?” She displayed her broken hand; the fingernail of her index finger was peeled back, hanging on a tenacious strip of skin. “I wrecked my hand some more, too. Thank God for adrenaline, huh?”

  Luke swallowed the burnt-chalk taste in his mouth. “That stuff’s a godsend.”

  Al walked to a control panel on the near wall and flipped it open with her good hand. “Sonofabitch . . . goddamnit, the relay chip’s missing.”

  “What does that do?”

  “Regulates the warning system, for one.”

  Luke stood. “Did somebody take it?”

  “I don’t see it laying around here anywhere, and I can’t see how it’d just pop out. I was thinking Dr. Toy might’ve taken it. Some nutty sabotage attempt. But would that bastard, no matter how rat-shit crazy he’s gone, go through what we just did to cut off his own air supply?”

  “So . . . maybe we’re not losing air then?”

  “Impossible to tell without that chip. Thankfully . . .”

  Al forded deeper into the room. Luke trailed her. It was perhaps fifty steps long—the longest room Luke had been inside down here. Thousands of canisters were screwed into the walls. They glowed faintly, like enormous eggs.

  At the very back of the room lay a lone crate. The size of an old army footlocker, fashioned from molded black plastic. Its latch shone silver in the dim.

  Seeing it, Luke’s feet churned to a dead stop.

  “Something the matter, Doc?”

  “No,” Luke said. Jesus. Jesus Christ. “Nothing.”

  He felt it then—his mind opening up, an inky blackness flowing into it. The room spun and swum as he slipped suddenl
y into a memory hole, his psyche funneling deep down a dream pool.

  “You okay, Doc?”

  Al’s voice was far off, swimmy. It’s fine, Luke tried to tell her. It’s nothing at all. It’s just . . . it’s just . . .

  . . . just my old Tickle Trunk.

  13.

  HIS MOTHER HAD FOUND IT at Treasure Village, a flea market on the outskirts of Lake Okoboji.

  It called out to me, she’d told Luke with a self-satisfied smile. It said: Pick me, Ms. Ronnicks. Pick me for Lucas. His very own Tickle Trunk. He’ll just adooore me.

  Tickle Trunk. His friends had the same type of thing—except theirs were called toy boxes. But his mother insisted on the name, as she insisted on a great many things. A Tickle Trunk for my special boy, she’d said. A special place for all his ticklish things. She’d seen it at the flea market amid the ninja stars and chipped knickknacks—seen it and known. It must’ve shone like a beacon to her.

  Oh, she would have thought, Luke will just die when he sees this.

  The trunk was a nasty trick. Luke knew that right away. Exactly the sort of trick his mother liked to play from time to time to show who was boss. But of course she presented it as a gift, a token of love and affection.

  Tickle Trunk. That name. Luke pictured a trunk lined with disembodied fingers—hundreds of them, callused and bony with nicotine-stained fingernails—and if he wasn’t careful those fingers would snatch him, drag him inside, and tickle and pinch him until he screamed . . .

  The trunk appeared joyful. It was big enough that Luke’s seven-year-old body could fit inside, and was decorated with smiling clown faces. His mother urged him to name them, the same way Clayton would name his poor mice.

  Look, there’s Chuckles, she’d say, pointing them out. And this one can be Koko. And there’s Mr. Tatters and Floppsy and Punkin Pie.

  The trunk’s lid was rounded like that of a treasure chest. The clowns’ faces stretched over its top, as warped as reflections in a funhouse mirror. If you looked closer, you’d notice most of the clowns weren’t smiling so much as leering. Their lips were swollen and too red, as if they’d been painted with blood. And if you looked very closely, the lips of a few of those clowns—the ones his mother had named Bingo and Pit-Pat, specifically—were parted just slightly to disclose what looked like a row of discolored, daggery teeth.

  The trunk had a huge silver latch. If you got trapped inside the trunk—if that were to happen somehow, accidentally or not—that latch would keep you locked in. Its interior smelled like the white balls Luke’s neighbor Mr. Rosewell scattered under his crabapple tree to keep mice away . . . that, plus another smell, impossible to name. The trunk was lined with cracked brown skin; Luke imagined it’d been stripped off an alligator, or a Komodo dragon. The skin was tacked inside the box with dull brass rivets.

  Luke didn’t like the box. No, his feelings were stronger than that—he hated it on sight. He wondered if whoever had sold it to his mother had given her a steep discount just to get it off his hands.

  Luke hadn’t wanted it in his room, which was of course where it ended up. His mother insisted.

  Now you’ve got a spot for all your stuff, she said mock-brightly. A place for everything, and everything in its place.

  He grudgingly threw his toys into it—all but his most precious ones, which he couldn’t imagine leaving inside. His foolish prepubescent self had been scared that when he closed the lid, the trunk would release an acid that would melt them into runny goo like beaten eggs; its lid would open and close, a pair of greedy lips, gummy strings of what had been his Matchbox cars and army men stretched between them.

  Feed us, Lucas, he’d imagine it whispering in a guttural voice after all the houselights had been switched off. We’re so hungry. So hungry. Feed us any old thing; we don’t mind. It’s all meat. Come closer, why don’t you, so we can tell you what we really want . . .

  He hated sleeping with it in his room. Clayton had been spending most nights down in his lab by then, so it was just Luke and the trunk and the shadows cast by the backyard maple bending over the walls.

  Sometimes he’d awaken with a shudder and swear he’d heard the trunk moving on its casters: the sound of marbles rolling across a pane of glass.

  He decided one night to mark the trunk’s edge with a piece of sidewalk chalk; the next morning, Luke discovered with fright that it had moved an inch over the line. Slowly but surely it was advancing toward his bed.

  When he told Clayton, his brother smirked.

  The floor is warped. The trunk is on wheels. Of course it rolls a little, dummy.

  The next day, he dragged the Tickle Trunk down to the basement. His parents were both out. Clayton was supposed to watch Luke, but he’d left the house on a specimen hunt. It was Luke’s best chance to rid himself of it once and for all.

  He hated touching the wormy grain of its wood, festooned with those capering clowns. As he’d backed down the staircase with it, the trunk sat heavily against his chest; its weight was dreadful, a slab of pulsating stone.

  He dragged it across the kitchen linoleum and bumped it down the basement stairs. He dropped it, breathing heavily, and opened the crawl space door. A three-foot-tall storage room sprawled over half the basement. Inside were old boxes cowled in spider’s webs, full of stuff Luke’s parents had no use for but were loath to throw away.

  He snapped on the lightbulb, which swayed on a knotted cord, and pushed the trunk past the crawl space door. He got on his hands and knees and pushed it farther inside. Dust motes swam in the air. His heart thumped; his mouth could’ve been packed with sawdust. He wanted to abandon the trunk at the very back of the crawl space. It seemed to have gained fifty pounds since he’d lugged it out of his bedroom.

  Suddenly he pictured the crawl space lightbulb burning out, the door slamming shut, and the trunk lid popping open.

  Alone at last. That guttural whisper—but real this time, not just in Luke’s mind. Come here, Lucas, and let us whisper in your ear. No? Okay, we’ll come to you . . .

  Anxiety coated Luke’s brain in a suffocating glaze as he pushed it to the very back of the crawl space. It was early afternoon; sunlight streaked through a dirty casement window. If it weren’t for that fragile link to the outside world, Luke might not have gotten it that far.

  He let go of its handle—for an instant his hands wouldn’t come unglued—and started back toward the door. The trunk sat in the fall of weak sunlight, bloated and sullen.

  “There,” Luke said with a triumphant little smile. “You stay where you belong.”

  That night, his mother forced him to go fetch it again. In the dark.

  She’d immediately noticed it was missing. Luke was positive she had been waiting for Luke to try something sneaky. She crossed her enormous fat-girdled arms at the dinner table, eyeing him down.

  “The trunk, Lucas. You’ve moved it.”

  Luke didn’t look up from his plate. He pushed peas around with his fork. “I put it downstairs. It’s just, there’s not enough room. The trunk’s big and our bedroom, with me and Clay both in it, it’s really too—”

  “What do you suggest? Move into a mansion?” Harsh, barking laughter. “Do you think your father could afford that?”

  Luke swallowed, forced his head up.

  “I don’t like it, Mom. I’m sorry. Thank you for buying it, but . . .”

  Her mouth set in a hard line—it was the only part of her body that hadn’t gone permanently soft.

  “You’ve hardly given it a chance. You will go downstairs, Lucas Adelaide Nelson. You will bring it up.”

  The dread etched on his son’s face forced Luke’s father, Lonnie, to intervene.

  “Beth, honey, do we really have to—?”

  Lonnie’s objection died with a glance from his wife. He gathered his menthols and his cup of tea and slipped into the family room.

  “What are you waiting for?” His mother’s arms remained crossed. “An engraved invitation?”

  L
uke sat rooted to his chair. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to move—he physically couldn’t. His mother gripped his wrist fiercely and marched him to the basement door.

  “Go,” his mother said. “Now.”

  Luke didn’t argue. He had a vague but dire notion that given reason, his mother could conjure torments worse than whatever the trunk held in store.

  He trooped down the squeaky, swaybacked stairs. He waved his hand around until his fingers brushed the light cord. The bulb illuminated his father’s workbench, the water heater, and the door to Clayton’s unoccupied lab.

  His mother shut the door. Luke’s heart made a donkey kick in his chest.

  It’s just a stupid trunk, he told himself. It’s ugly and gross but it’s not alive, okay? It can’t hurt you.

  Then why did you try to get rid of it? asked a second, traitorous voice. And why did it inch across your bedroom floor?

  The crawl space’s cheap plywood door swung open to reveal a darkness that raised the downy hairs on his arms. The trunk lay inside, waiting.

  You’re back, Lucas! So soon, so soon. Lovely. Do come in.

  The crawl space’s light cord dangled to the left of the door, a flimsy string with a bell-shaped bob of plastic on the end. It took a few adrenaline-pinching seconds to find it—had it been moved? He overbalanced, nearly toppling face-first onto the floor.

  His fingers brushed the cord. He’d reached too far at first.

  The trunk sat where he’d left it, at the very back of the crawl space. Boxes were stacked on either side, forming a rough corridor. He hadn’t noticed the alignment that afternoon. Had someone—something—moved the boxes?

  He crawled toward it. Silky rustling noises emanated from behind the boxes. Mice? But they didn’t have a mouse problem. Clayton had trapped them all. Every last squeaker.

  Luke’s nose filled with the smells of wood rot and mildew. Our house is diseased, Luke thought weirdly. But only right here, in the crawl space. And Luke was in the heart of the disease now, crawling toward its decaying tumor.