by Nick Cutter
Behind those hands lay a shape or shapes that Luke could not fathom. It spanned out and up, sheer as a cliff face, rising beyond the reach of his sight and his mind. The cliff shone in places—the dazzling but condensed light of a camera flash reflected in tinted glass. It was dark in other spots, a shade more profound than any Luke had known.
Zachary ran into those hands the way a child might chase a bouncing ball onto a busy street. Luke opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The hands enfolded his son. Zachary turned and stared at Luke through a gap in those massive fingers. His eyes emptied out, his face melting as his skin ran like candlewax.
The hands opened. They were empty.
Next the hands decayed and collapsed, flesh dripping off in gobbets until only the bones remained. Those were then absorbed into that nest of livid industry . . .
. . . but they left something behind. An ovoid ball that pulsated gently.
Next, his mother and father stepped from the trembling darkness.
4.
A CHILL SWEPT OVER HIM. His mother, corpulent and fearsome—and a few steps behind her came his father, stooped and hangdog.
“You have come, child. After all this time.”
No, it wasn’t his parents. That wasn’t his mother’s voice. Whatever these creatures were, they were merely draped in the flesh and figure of his parents. The imitation was good, cunning, but imperfect in some way—perhaps purposefully so.
The two figures who stood before him seemed to have been birthed from the cliff of flesh that backgrounded them. Their fleshy coverings withered and peeled. His mother and father’s faces rotted away in pestilent rags. The creatures underneath were humanlike in their rudiments, but not so in their particulars.
One was tall and shockingly thin; the other was squat and pear-shaped. Their flesh had a boiled, piglet-pink sheen; raw sinews cabled the visible portions of their anatomies.
Their legs were squat and elephantine, their groins sexless. Their arms were so long and thick—engorged fire hoses—that they trailed to the ground and curled back, networking into the roiling cliff.
Luke found his voice. “Dear God . . .”
“God is not here,” the tall one said.
“Perhaps he should apologize for his absence,” said the squat one.
Ancient. These things were older than anything any human being had ever laid eyes on. Their flesh was flayed open, the raw tendons scored with tiny cracks. Yet their skin was nearly translucent, too, as if their bones had been smeared with a thick coating of Vaseline—it was as though the years in their endless accumulation had sucked the pigment from it. Their skulls showed through in places, the bone as brittle as the parchment in a dusty book.
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 priva
te 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.
“Why me?” he asked again. “You had my brother already. So why?”
“Because,” the tall one said, “we had nothing to offer him in return for bearing our gift.”
“There was nothing tying your brother to the surface.” A look of true confusion graced the squat one’s face. “He prefers to be with . . . us.”
“There is no accounting,” the tall one said.
“But you.” The squat one flicked a serrate black tongue over its teeth. “Ohhh, now you . . .”
“You have loved, my child.”
“You have supped that weak nectar.”
“You have ties to the sunlit world. And you see, we too wish to see the sun again.”
“After all, we were there for its birth,” said the squat one. “Your brother was the key. He was a satisfactory tool. But his use has been served.”
“Your use has yet begun,” the tall one told Luke.
“I just want to go home,” Luke said. It was the simplest request he’d ever made, and he asked as a child would.
“And you may,” the tall one said laughingly. “Of course, of course. We insist upon it. But with our gift. You will bear it.”
Gift?
The cliff behind the Fig Men flexed and cramped. A shrill, prolonged moan filtered out of the dark. Chillingly, it sounded like a dog’s moan.
“Our gift,” the tall one repeated.
“You must take it,” the squat one echoed. “We have arranged it. You must accept our terms.”
“What terms?”
The tall one grinned. “Oh, come now.”
“It took all of our powers to accomplish it,” the squat one said. “It was . . . draining, would be your understanding of it. We had to slumber afterward.”
“Such sweet slumber.”
“Sweet, yes. And when we awoke we had company.”
“Such merry company.”
The long con.
It was a term Abby had described to Luke years ago, after they had watched a movie about a pair of bunko artists plying their trade across the Midwest.
There are two types of cons, she’d told him. Short and long. The short con is a confidence trick that can be pulled in minutes. Three-card monte’s your classic short con. The other one, the long con, unfolds over days or weeks, even years. It involves preparation, props, costumes, scripted lines. The long con takes time. The con men have to gain the full trust of their rubes; it’s got to be seamless, you know? A perfect facsimile of life.
How the hell do you know all this? Luke had asked her. Should I be watching my wallet around you?
Your wallet? Abby sniffed. That’s pure short con. You should watch your bank account.
These creatures had known. Luke saw that now. All along they had known.
They had seen the shape of the world to come and had bent it to their own devices. They had divined it all a lifetime ago, back when Clayton and Luke were only babes. They had watched the two of them their entire lives, doting over them like careful babysitters . . . no, more like pig farmers waiting with idle interest while the spring hogs were fattened for slaughter. These things had toyed with the fates of both Clayton and himself, engineering their lives to the finest calibration . . .
. . . and then, one autumn evening at a park not far from Luke’s home, they’d played their finest trick of all.
“You stole my son.”
The squat one tittered. “Foolish child, you must always mind your belongings. Never let them out of sight.”
In a conversational tone, Luke said: “Fuck you.”
The squat one’s face peeled back from its skull, its teeth elongating into curved rat’s teeth. Its arms undulated silkily.
“Have you any idea what I could—”
The tall one hissed warningly. The squat one cringed.
“Such a harsh word, stole,” the tall one said. “We have held him. Kept him safe. And we did so knowing you would pay what you owe to reclaim that which was once yours.”
Luke closed his eyes. Ole Zach Attack. They had taken him. Ruined his family. Ripped Luke’s life apart—they knew he would have to be utterly hopeless before he agreed to come to this watery hell in pursuit of his insufferable brother. Luke must have nothing left to live for. Well, they had seen to that. Zach had spent the last seven years with these things. Seven human years, the passage of which seemed immaterial in a place like this. More years than he had spent with his own parents. What would that do to his son—to anyone?
Luke opened his eyes. “What do you want?”
“To be free,” they said simply.
“You don’t deserve it,” Luke croaked, a ghastly smile spreading across his face. “You deserve to be down here. Alone.”
The Fig Men smiled back. Luke’s soul shuddered. The cliff was swelling behind them—it seemed to be curling over in its upper recesses, beyond Luke’s sight, a horrific wave preparing to break.
The Fig Men smiled bashfully, coquettishly. It’s just little ol’ us, child. What harm can we cause?
“Our gift . . .”
“I won’t accept it.”
The tall one said, “Why ever not?”
Luke set his feet. “I’ll die here.”
They chuckled mordantly.
“Oh my child,” the squat one said, “will you remain a stranger to yourself to the very end?”
“You love too much,” the tall one said. An expression flitted across its face that could have charitably passed for sorrow. “Your kind does so—loves heedlessly, without restraint or governance. It can lead you to grand places, surely. Places we have never seen or ever will.”
“But love has other uses, too,” said the squat one.
The ovoid ball those monstrous hands had left behind began to thro
b, its exterior issuing crackling birch-bark sounds. It bulged and heaved as whatever lay within struggled to set itself free . . .
A cocoon. Of course it was. Just like the one he’d once pointed out to Zach in the backyard, the one with a lunar moth crawling out of it. This cocoon was tar-black, just like the ones that had encased the Fig Men in his son’s closet . . .
The cocoon expanded, pulsing like a diseased heart. Its exterior shed in crackling layers as it stretched with an awful elasticity.
Something split through. Dark and bladelike. A broth of pulpy sludge issued forth. One appendage was joined by another. Two arms, two huge and spidery hands. Tearing and sawing the cocoon apart.
A bulbous head appeared. It was all black. It opened its mouth—out came the shocked cry of an infant.
Its eyes opened next. They pinned Luke in a gaze that was equal parts malevolent and loving.
“Daddy,” it said.
It slipped from its sheath. Its shape was incomprehensible. Its lunatic anatomy humped toward Luke, those two gnarled but powerful arms dragging the ruin of a body still slick with amniotic fluid.
Zachary. After all this time, Luke’s son had returned to him.
He fell to his knees. The Fig Men watched impassively.
“Our gift,” they said. “Will you accept it?”
His son drew nearer. His skull was swollen and hairless; veins bulged over his scalp, pulsating weakly. Luke saw elements of others he’d known in the awful contours of that face—his brother’s pursed lips, his mother’s delicate ears. His son’s mouth split into a smile. His teeth were tiny, his old milk teeth, each one trimmed to a sharp point.
Luke held his arms out. He wanted to touch his son again. To be Zachary’s protector, his Human Shield—he’d failed his son once at that, failed Zach and Abby both, but never again. Not in a million years. He’d die first.
My son, my son. Come back to me. Let me hold you again. I’ll protect you this time, I promise. I will never let you go. I WILL NEVER EVER EVER LET YOU GO—
Tendrils spooled out of Zachary’s mouth, each no thicker than baby’s hair. They danced toward Luke’s face, licking and sampling. They needled painlessly into his flesh, twining with the twitching tendons under his skin, hooking around his skull and tightening with the fierceness of a devoted lover.
Yes, Luke thought dimly. Together again. Together forever.
