The Deep

by Nick Cutter

  The Mushka-thing jerked. LB was wrenched backward again, yanked out of Luke’s grip. He slid forward and reseated his grip. He wasn’t desperate anymore. His fingers caressed those soft spots behind the jaw that all dogs loved to have rubbed. He rested his forehead against hers. He felt the thud of blood pounding in her skull.

  The Mushka-thing reached back with one clownish rear leg. It snagged on the poster and tore it down.

  The whispers assaulted Luke immediately. A yammering, mindless—

  No, not mindless there is a mind behind all this

  —riot. Those fishhooks sunk into his head again, skewering his brain.

  The hole was the width of a manhole cover, but wider on one side; it resembled a mouth twisted into a murderous sneer.

  He began to cry then, clutching LB. The tears came easily. He had not cried tears of such distilled regret since his son had gone missing. LB was going limp, either spent, tired of fighting, or resigned to her fate. Luke hugged her so, so tight. He wanted LB to remember his touch. The warmth and love that radiated from his whole body, coupled with the sadness that she was being ripped away from him. He wanted her to take that one physical memory with her wherever she was going. The imprint of his hands on her. He wished it to be a reminder that she was a good creature, and loved, and that there were places on the continuum where love and kindness still existed, even if she did not share that world presently. She did not deserve this. But things happened. They happened.

  LB’s body came alive in his grip, bucking in what Luke hoped was a final death-spasm. Her paws beat a frantic tattoo between his legs. White foam like beaten eggs emitted from the sides of her mouth.

  “Oh no,” Luke said. It was all he could say, in the end. It seemed to say everything. “Oh no oh no oh no.”

  The Mushka-thing was being sucked into the hole. Once its body made it halfway through, the pressure intensified exponentially; LB was jerked forward, at the mercy of whatever monstrous force existed on the other side. Luke kept pace with her. He stroked her head as gently as he could, but his hands were shaking badly.

  Please remember this, he thought. Please remember that you are part of the goodness of it all and that, and that, oh God oh please girl oh no oh no oh—

  LB’s body was steadily sucked into the hole; she could have been on a conveyor belt, such was her unstoppable ingestion. She had calmed by then, her struggles over. She peered at him with sorrowful, weeping eyes and bit down gently on his hand, as if that might anchor her to Luke. Her grip loosened by degrees, freeing Luke’s hand again. She gave him a hopeful look, as if this might all be a terrible dream they would both wake from shortly. Luke held on to her forelegs, her paws, the tips of her nails. She pulled away from him reluctantly, a kindergartner leaving the arms of her father on the first day of class. Fearful, yet perhaps understanding that this was the way of the world. Separations were unavoidable. These things happened every day.

  She was snatched from Luke’s numb grip, the upper half of her body dragging bonelessly up the wall. She gave a puppyish, exhausted bark. Her head went through last, and it went soundlessly, leaving only the faintest ripple on the hole’s surface.

  16.

  LUKE GRABBED THE FLASHLIGHT and stumbled from Clayton’s lab, away from the horrible whispers coming from the hole.

  His breath escaped in sharp whinnies. Oh, Jesus. Jesus. LB was gone. Worse—eaten. No. Eaten would be preferable. Chewed up and digested and gone, her suffering over. But she’d just been . . . taken. And whatever lay on the other side of that hole was worse than a million cramped dog crates or vicious dogcatchers or rolled-up newspaper whacks, worse than anything any dog on Earth had ever suffered.

  And Luke was terrified that LB would suffer for a long, long time.

  The main lab was quiet. Disembodied voices fluttered against his eardrums, the wing beat of moths. He shut his eyes and swayed unsteadily. He could feel it now. Madness hungering at the edges of his mind. Maybe it was for the best. He could just go gibberingly, shit-smearingly insane. Then he could wrap his arms around his chest and huddle in a corner, shivering and drooling, until whatever was going to happen, happened.

  Luke swung the hatch to Clayton’s lab shut. The voices dimmed. He turned and immediately sensed something moving just below the flashlight’s beam. A shape bristled up the wall, seeking the light.

  Mr. Hand. His old friend.

  It didn’t look like anything that could once have been part of his brother. Pallid and gelatinous, sharp bones running under a horrible stretching of skin. It had sprouted additional fingers, too: it had eight now, giving it an arachnid appearance.

  It walked up the wall and paused. It . . . stretched. A showy display, each finger lifting gracefully before settling back in place.

  It looks like Thing, Luke thought with giddy, unhinged hilarity. From The Addams Family, that old TV show.

  “What do you want?” he croaked at it.

  Mr. Hand twitched—had it heard him? One of those long crablike fingers tapped the wall as if in deep thought.

  What do I want, Luke? What do I want, indeed!

  Mr. Hand hopped on the wall, playful little bobs. Each time it landed, there came this squitch from its fingertips.

  One finger pointed straight up: Aha!

  Mr. Hand leapt off the wall and advanced on Luke. He reached into his pocket and held up the scalpel in one trembling fist. Mr. Hand shivered—Oooh, so scaaary!—then flopped over like a dog playing dead.

  One finger curled. That beckoning gesture again.

  Follow me, follow me, said the spider to the fly . . .

  Mr. Hand righted itself and skittered across the lab. Luke tracked it with the flashlight. The hand danced impishly along the floor, spinning balletically. Mr. Hand feinted left, back right, then flipped onto the wall. Where the hell was it going . . . ?

  The keypad to Westlake’s lab. A glowing square, each numeral outlined in a faint red square. Mr. Hand sprung up and landed on the keypad.

  You always were the curious cat, weren’t you?

  His mother’s voice in his head now, bitter as aspic.

  Always sticking your nose in. Same as when you were a boy, wanting to get into your brother’s lab even though he told you no, no, no. You couldn’t take no for an answer, could you? You wanted to drink your greedy eyes full.

  Mr. Hand punched a number. Punched another.

  Curious, curious boy. You want to see what’s behind door number three, my son? Do you want to play the bonus round, where the scores can really change?

  “No, Mom,” Luke croaked. “I don’t want to see. Don’t show me.”

  Mr. Hand tapped another number, and another . . .

  There are some secrets, Lucas dear, that really ought to stay secrets.

  “I don’t want to see,” Luke said hoarsely. “Please. Don’t show me.”

  Take your medicine, son. Bitter, yes, but it’s oooh-so-good for you.

  Mr. Hand pushed the red button. The keypad went dark.

  A hiss as the pressure valve on Westlake’s hatch let go. A sweet, corrupted smell hit Luke’s nostrils . . . the scent of rotting honeycomb, just maybe.

  The hatch opened. Only a crack. The metallic squeal peeled back the nerve endings over every inch of Luke’s skin.

  And after the squeal came the buzz.

  17.

  COME-COME-COME-COME-COME-SEE-COME-SEE-COME-SEE

  The whispers were louder now. Almost as loud as the maddening drone that curled through the hatch. The whispers vacillated, the singsong call of a bird.

  Come-SEE! Come-SEE! Come-SEE!

  The buzz fell and rose like crazed laughter at some insectoid dinner party.

  Come-SEE! Come-SEE!

  Luke’s feet obeyed this command. He begged them to stop but they just went stupidly on. His brain was a horrified inmate inside his body—Rapunzel trapped in a garret.

  The flashlight illuminated the edge of the hatch, coated in foul syrup. The whispers mingled with the bu
zz, unifying in a single voice.

  A bee—one of Westlake’s bees, Luke realized with druggy horror—struggled through the syrup, its wings beating weakly. It toppled from the hatch and fell to the floor, its crooked legs waving uselessly in the air.

  Luke’s foot came down on the bee. It crunched agreeably under his boot. He felt the mad buzz of its wings through the sole. He laid one hand on the hatch. His fingers sunk into the desiccated syrup, crusty as old shaving foam.

  Westlake’s lab was muggy, the air perfumed with that sweet reek. The only light came from a serrated ring set an indeterminate distance away: that light was coming from the hole, it could only be.

  By the hole’s light Luke saw the bees—thousands; tens of thousands—surging around him on unseen currents, as if riding zephyrs that gusted through the lab.

  He could sense rather than see a structure to his left. Monolithic in scope, far larger than this room should possibly contain. The hum found its center here: sonorous, rhythmic. It wasn’t a bad sound, far from it: it was natural and clean, hitting notes that softened pleasantly into his bones.

  You wanted to see, said his mother. So see, Lucas. See it all.

  His hand rose, and with it the beam of his flashlight.

  “My Lord . . .”

  The hive was enormous. A carbuncled mass of wax and honeycomb that rose beyond the light. The ceiling had risen against the tremendous weight of water, becoming a great domed cathedral that could scarcely contain the colony.

  It was horrible and beautiful. It was not unlike a city: parts of it were rotting and sloughing off in decayed rags, while industrious drones built new spires and whorls elsewhere. Its surface was crawling with industry. The bees were huge, some the size of sewer rats. They moved with a sluggish, almost stupid lethargy.

  Uncomprehendingly, Luke traversed this staggering kingdom with the flashlight. He couldn’t get a true measure of its size. The ceiling was out of sight and the walls had been blown back and out. Everyday notions of scale dissolved.

  His eyes caught something. A ribbed tube, off-white, projecting through the honeycomb. It hung like an executioner’s noose. Heavy-bodied bees trundled over that tube, pasting it to the hive with the ichor that spurted from puckered orifices on their abdomens.

  Luke could see stuff moving through the tube. Slowly, like sludge through a partially blocked pipe . . .

  Get out of here, Luke. Before you see something that ruins you.

  He almost laughed. Too late for that. Too late by far.

  The beam swept the hive. Lab equipment was studded through it. He saw half of a beaker. A glass pipette . . .

  . . . a trio of blunt twigs projected from the comb. They looked like hardy buds sprouting from a pot of dirt. The bees busied themselves about them, tending to each bud in the manner of patient gardeners.

  The sticks twitched.

  The bees took flight with an aggrieved buzzing of wings before settling again.

  Fingers. Those are fingers they’re fingers they’re—

  Luke’s hand operated of its own accord now. He saw things. Dreadful things.

  A dusky loaf suspended from the hive on a strip of organ-meat . . .

  A glint of bone that shone a delirious sapphire-blue . . .

  A pinkly grooved ball that twitched when the light touched it . . .

  Other things. Some worse, none better.

  You wanted to see, my son. Do you like it? Does it please you?

  Finally, horribly, the light fell upon a ball crawling with bees.

  It projected from the hive a few feet above Luke’s head. At first Luke had no idea what he was seeing—it could have been the bottom of a wide-bellied beaker. The bees fretted lovingly over its surface. Perhaps an exhaled breath sent them off; whatever the cause, they lifted away to attend to other labors.

  I’ll kiss it better.

  That was the stupid thought that zipped through Luke’s mind while his eyes drank in this most sublime horror. Abby used to say it to Zach whenever he scraped his knee or stubbed a toe. As if something so simple as a kiss could salve all hurts.

  Don’t worry, Alice, I’ll kiss it better. Just a kiss and it will all be okay . . .

  Her neck bulged from the hive, webbed with syrup. Her face had been sliced open vertically and horizontally, the cuts intersecting at her nose; the flesh was skinned back from the center of her face in four triangular flaps, stretched out and stitched to the comb. Her scalp was split down the center, the skin peeled back in thick folds; each fold had been anchored to the hive on thin metal armatures that must have once been part of Westlake’s lab equipment. Her naked skull bone was dull as chalk.

  Alice’s body had been teased apart and strung all through the hive. Luke understood that without actually seeing all the evidence. Every limb and vein and nerve stem woven throughout the comb, tended to by diligent drone bees. Luke could only hope that she’d been dead before any of this began. He could only—

  Al’s eyelids snapped open. Her eyes were so very white in the flayed redness of her face. They rolled down languidly to meet Luke’s horrified gaze. She smiled, her teeth ripped out. The grin of a newborn.

  Luke felt no fear at the sight. That emotion had burned out quite suddenly, like an overloaded electrical switch. He felt nothing but an ineffable hopelessness—which in its way was so much worse than fear.

  The buzz grew louder—hungrier. The whispers drummed into Luke’s skull. Bees jigged nimbly around his head, alighting on his ears and hair. They returned to Alice, too, landing daintily on her skull, their antennae dancing lightly on the raw bone. Alice threw her head back, her mouth open as if in laughter; the flaps of her scalp strained threateningly against the metal armatures.

  The scalpel was back in Luke’s hand. He took a step toward Alice. Sensing his intent, the bees darted at his face, their wings paper-cutting his flesh. He slapped at them and caught one solidly; it fell to the floor with a squeal and Luke stepped on it, enjoying the sound of it pulping under his boot. The hive came alive. Drones emptied out of it, their fat bodies squeezing from the comb.

  Luke would kill Alice. Slash her throat open—one swift sideways swipe to let the blood out. If these putrid things killed him for that, so be it. But he’d kill her before they finished him.

  Alice’s eyes filled with red as they hemorrhaged blood. They became the same color as the bees’ eyes. Her lips formed a single word.

  “No.”

  Luke’s hand stilled. Bees alit on his arms, friendly now, nuzzling his flesh with their furry abdomens.

  Alice smiled—it was the same one he’d seen on Abby’s face at the hospital after Zachary was born.

  The smile of a new mother.

  The bees lifted off his arms, whirring into the dark. Luke followed them with the flashlight—

  He saw it then. The final horror.

  A huge translucent sac hung pendulant from the underside of the hive. It was the size of a trash bag—this was Luke’s first, incredibly domestic thought. The big orange ones he’d stuff with autumn leaves after Zachary had finished jumping in the piles Luke had so diligently raked.

  Instead of orange, this sac was milky, strung with blooms of red and blue veins. The bees zipped around it in protective patterns, a thousand insect nursemaids. A few large bees tiptoed over its surface, which was convulsing with unnatural birth.

  The sac hung in close proximity to the hole—which was far bigger than even the one in Clayton’s lab. Light poured around its edges.

  By that light Luke could see something moving inside the sac. Limbs strained against its membrane the way stray elbows and knees will push against the canvas of a tent. Luke could barely glimpse the fearsome outline of whatever lay inside.

  The sac ruptured. Thick, veiny broth gushed out. Luke shone the flashlight up to Alice. Her face was dented, her nose and cheeks forming a horrifying concavity—the pressure of this unnatural birth was caving her skull in.

  But she was laughing. High, breathless scream
s of laughter.

  Luke backed toward the hatch. There was no saving her. No saving LB. No saving no saving no saving—

  The bees formed a corona around his head, their bodies beating at his back. Something breached the sac. Luke didn’t get a good look at it, which was a mercy. Only a sense of some gaunt and nightmarish limb slitting its own womb apart with mechanical ruthlessness, making a sound like a thousand knuckles cracking as it tore and gouged.

  Luke’s heels hit the lip of the hatch, spilling him into the main lab.

  The hatch swung shut on Alice’s deformed, gibbering laughter.