The Deep (14 page)

Luke sat beside Abby, who was wrapped in a blanket and sitting on an ambulance bumper. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him. She resisted, her eyes bruised and reproachful.

“Did he run away?” Her voice had this terrible faraway quality. “No. Why would he run away? What did we do, that he would do that? Oh my God.”

There was something else in her eyes, too. Fuming in the green of her irises. Fury. She was so, so angry at Luke. Over time, that fury might’ve even shaded into hatred.

There were moments over the coming years when Luke wished that Zachary was dead. The fervency of his wish was sickening. But yes, dead. Of cancer or brain parasites or even drowning in the creek. If he’d died of cancer, Luke and Abby could have been at his bedside, making his final days as comfortable as possible. It would have broken them in some ineffable way, yes, but it would have allowed them to love their son through his final days on earth.

Even if he’d drowned in the creek . . . it was awful to envision, but at least it would be done. They would have a body to dress. Rituals to observe. A coffin, a funeral. There would be a sense of knowing where their boy was—even if that meant under six feet of dirt at the Muscatine Avenue cemetery.

But Zachary wasn’t dead. His case was classed as missing/unsolved. There was no closure. It was the equivalent of a movie missing its final reel.

Death was final. It meant Zach had passed beyond pain or fear. Missing was so much worse. Missing was a cavalcade of possibilities, none of them good.

NEITHER ZACHARY
nor his abductors were ever found. His disappearance made the rounds in the press, locally and eventually nationally, but the
media’s ardor cooled. There were other missing kids and a million other tragedies besides.

Luke drove.

For a solid year after Zachary vanished, he spent every night on the road. Driving around the city and farther afield, down the streetlit corridors of night searching for his lost boy.

He found him, too. Found him everywhere. It was a phenomenon other parents talked about; Luke and Abby had attended a support group at the urging of their grief counselor. A dozen empty-eyed parents (ex-parents?) sitting in a circle in a chilly community center. They kept seeing their missing children, too. Seeing them in busy malls or whenever they drove past a schoolyard. They saw them in crowds: an arm, a foot, or maybe something in a child’s posture that mimicked that of their own lost son or daughter. They had all rushed heedlessly into a throng, scooped up a child whose back was turned—so sure; so
goddamn
sure—only to see the frightened face of a stranger staring up at them.

Luke could understand. He’d see the crook of Zachary’s leg folding into a strange car and would follow that car until it stopped and a boy who wasn’t Zach got out. He’d seen his son’s tousled hair bobbing amid the crowd at the Iowa State Fair. In his more desperate moods he’d considered snatching someone else’s boy while his parents’ backs were turned—
serves you right! You’ve got to pay attention every . . . single . . . second!

He’d drive all night, come home at dawn, and fall into an exhausted sleep. His dreams were horrific. Dreams where Zach called to him from the bottom of a deep well. Or where Zach screamed that he’d run away and never wanted to see Luke again. But the most insidious night terrors were the ones where Zach lay beside him in bed, his breath feathering Luke’s neck . . . and when Luke awoke, his son just wasn’t there.

One evening, he woke up and Abby wasn’t there, either. She’d packed and left while he was sleeping. This came as only a small surprise
to Luke. They hadn’t spoken,
really
spoken, in months. They were two shells emptied out by grief.

The Human Shield. His old childhood persona, the one he’d cooked up to insulate himself from the predations of his mother. He’d always seen himself as that to Abby and Zach. A shield against the awfulness of the world—an awfulness his son would have to grapple with, yes, but hopefully not for many years. As a boy, he could simply stand behind his father and let Luke absorb the cruelest blows. Except somehow Luke’s defenses had been penetrated. The forces of evil had found a blind spot, their tentacles creeping behind his back to snatch Zach away.

Twenty seconds. Lives can collapse in that time span. Abby accepted the fact that it wasn’t all Luke’s fault—it could have happened to anyone, sure—and yet she came to hate him regardless. She walked out because she wanted to stop hating the man she’d once loved . . . and because she must have realized that her hatred, though powerful, was a pale reflection of the loathing Luke felt for himself.

Luke couldn’t blame her. He was even mildly relieved to discover she’d gone. When the divorce papers arrived a few weeks later, he’d signed them without rancor.

In time, he returned to his veterinary practice. Tending to animals gave his life a glimmer of value. And if he occasionally broke down in tears, or screamed or shook, well, animals were eminently forgiving of such behavior.

So Luke did his job, and at night, to avoid sleeping, he’d drive. Consciousness couldn’t stave off the memories, though. In time, his memories became waking dreams. It got so that he could actually dream with his eyes wide open.

Luke remembered feeding Zach this one time when he had a fever. Zach, then just a toddler, hadn’t wanted to eat. But if he didn’t, he’d get sicker. This worried Luke tremendously. He’d wished Abby was there—he needed her calm composure—but she had been working late. In frustration, Luke shoved a spoonful of applesauce into his son’s mouth. “Just
eat it
, please!”

Zach went silent, the dismay and bewilderment building as his face
turned pink. Then he’d begun to bawl, the applesauce still pooled in his mouth.

Sick with guilt, Luke carried him upstairs to the bath. Zach sat in the tub, withdrawn and motionless. When Luke dried him, Zach started shivering. He wouldn’t make eye contact with Luke. This scared Luke so badly. Had he wrecked that beautiful bond of trust between them? Some things you can never get back. Even if Zachary couldn’t remember it consciously, the act—his dad shoving a spoon into his mouth and shouting at him to eat—would stick in his developing mind like a barb.

That’s why I ran away, Daddy. I ran because you were mean to me.

Luke had been afraid that Zach wouldn’t trust him anymore, because he had let him down.

And years later, Luke would let his son down again at the worst possible moment.

As a father, Luke couldn’t cope with that.

He still breathed, still functioned, but he was ruined inside. Guilt and despair crushed him into something unrecognizable.

So he drove and grieved, and in time the ’Gets took its hold on the world.

He dearly wished he would catch it. Forgetting was the best remedy, wasn’t it? Forget Abby. Forget Zach. Forget the wonderful life they’d had together.

Just let me forget. Please, for the love of God.

But the world was resistant to bargains of that nature, too.

9.

“YOU OKAY, DOC?”

Alice’s voice snapped Luke out of these unhealthy ruminations. First his mother, now his son—the sharp blades of a tiller churned through his gray matter, dredging up blackened pulp and old bits of bone. Luke felt them there in the
Trieste
, both Bethany and Zachary. Not in any material way, but their shapes and voices clung tightly to him now—it had started the moment that the
Challenger
slipped under the sea. He was trapped with them now, under the hammering intensity of a trillion tons of water.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just . . . having some trouble concentrating.”

Luke was flanking Al. The dog, LB, padded behind them. They’d already stopped to collect their bags at the
Challenger
hatch. Then they’d rounded the gooseneck on the other side of the tunnel, heading toward the remaining hatch.

“Your brother will let us in,” Al said. To Luke’s ears, her voice held the mad certainty specific to leaders of doomed polar expeditions.

“Oh, yeah, most certainly.”

Luke glanced at the portholes along the ceiling. He caught movement across one of them. A pale shred drifting languorously along. “Al—?”

“That’s it—the ambrosia,” she said, her eyes following his pointing finger. “That’s why the portholes were built: to see where it’s concentrated.”

The ambrosia wafted to the porthole’s rim and hung there a moment before vanishing. Luke continued to stare at the ring of blackness where the foot-thick glass and polymer held back the crushing sea—he half expected something to flare across it. A disembodied face, perhaps; a suety pockmarked face glowing a sick maggot-white except for the
eyelids, which were red as flayed beef. The pressure had vacuumed the eyes into their sockets—they stared from deep within those cold pits . . .

. . . but of course nothing appeared. Just the bleak emptiness of the deep. Luke wondered if this was how an astronaut felt staring through the porthole of his lunar module to catch a glimpse of space where not a single star shone: an infinite blackness, bleak and dehumanizing.

The tunnel was less cluttered on the other end. Light burned behind the hatch’s porthole. Al knocked on it. It sounded as if she was rapping her knuckles on a cast-iron cannon at a Civil War memorial. Nobody answered.

“Thick door,” she said as if this were a new fact.

“Not to sound desperate here, Al, but what are our options?”

Al stuck her tongue between her teeth, biting down. “Well, we can wait. Chances are your brother will pass down this way.”

“Tip-top plan. And how do we know Toy doesn’t have control of the whole station?” Luke said. “How can we be sure he hasn’t tied Clayton up, or worse?”

“The thought crossed my mind ever since we lost contact,” Al admitted. “Most of the areas can be self-sealed and contained—the lab, the purifiers—so my hope is that it’s Toy who’s been isolated, or he’s isolated himself. But you’re right. He may have the run of the entire joint. We have to get in there somehow.”

“You said something about triggering the lock remotely?”

“Yeah, that may be our best bet.” A shiver racked Al’s frame. “I’ll head back and see what I can do. You stay here. If I pop the lock, you hold the door.”

She squeezed past Luke—the tunnel was so cramped that Luke had to suck in his stomach to let her pass. Her footsteps receded down the tunnel, and with them went the reassuring glow of the flashlight.

Luke dropped his duffel bag and sat on the floor. The dog rested her head on his lap. He felt foolish. Ineffective. God in heaven, sitting beside a locked door in the hope it would open. A glorified bellhop.

“Goddamn it,” he said softly. “Christly Jesus goddamn hell.”

It felt good to blaspheme—goddamn fucking
good
. Could God even hear him down here?

You go ahead, son,
he figured God might say, good sport that He was.
Take my name in vain if it keeps your powder dry. People take it in vain when they stub their toe or get cut off on the freeway. I’m used to it.

“I’m closer to hell than heaven down here, anyway,” Luke said, and laughed. It freaked him out a little how hollow it sounded.

“Hello-oh-oh-oh,” he said. His words soaked into the darkness only to come back in a mocking lilt.

Oh
-
ho-ho-o-o-o . . .

He glanced down and spotted a spiral-bound notebook that had either fallen or been wedged under the grate. Curious, he lifted the grate a few inches and fished the notebook out—and nearly dropped it just as fast. The cover was slick with a dark sticky substance.

Psych Report,
the cover read.

He riffled the pages. The first few were filled with neat, clinical handwriting. The overhead lights dimmed, a fluttering brownout. He slid the notebook into an empty pocket in his bag, not wanting that black gunk to touch his clothes.

The lights went out.

All of them, this time, and all at once. The light beyond the porthole glass, the dim runway lights winking in the floor.

Darkness clogged in Luke’s sockets and invaded his throat. His brain fused shut in utter panic—he couldn’t think, could barely breathe. LB sat bolt upright, her breath feathering the nape of his neck. Her hackles rose against his arm, stiff as porcupine quills.

A new noise slipped out of the darkness. Back where Al had gone.

Not footsteps. No, this was a deliberate, smooth slithering.

LB whined next to Luke’s ear. Her breath held a shaved-iron tang. The scent of pure animal fear.

What could possibly make a noise like that? Had Clay brought a snake down for his tests? Oh God, what if he’d brought a python? Could it have gotten loose?

Whush-whush-whush
. Soft, silky, advancing steadily through the dark.

No
, Luke remembered.
Felz said there were dogs, lizards, guinea pigs, bees. No snakes
.

Those footsteps raced overhead again, but this time the darkness gave them a new, knowing cadence. Luke pictured a group of stunted youths in the water outside the station. Their bodies white as candle wax, sun-starved flesh flaking from their skeletons. Their heads, projecting from their collared shirts, were flat as flounders; their mouths were enormous and studded with the same needlelike teeth he’d glimpsed on the viperfish. They would be staring through the porthole with sightless silvery eyes, not really seeing but
sensing
him . . .

Now the
whush-whush
was joined by another sound: a dry chittering, almost mechanical. The sound of a million tiny limbs dancing lightly along the metal floor.

It’s the old man
, Luke thought wildly.
The old man with the mantises on his head.
Luke pictured him trudging down the tunnel, his radial-tire sandals
whushing
on the floor while mantises spilled off of his skull.

Then another image darkened his mind—an older memory this time, a recollection drawn down from the surface world.