Crystals of ice gathered up Luke’s spine. The words were grotesque in the same way Westlake’s body had been: the letters were swollen and lewd, the blood dried thickly on their outer curves like paint slopped heavily on a fence slat. More unsettlingly, those words recalled Clayton’s voice, calling out to Luke from the icy depths of the sea.
We need you, Lucas. Come home.
PART 2
DESCENT
1.
THE EVENING DARK hung against a paling sky. Alice had left Luke to his own devices while she made the final preparations for their descent.
It seemed absurd: less than an hour from now, Luke would be inside a cramped sub, free-falling eight miles down through the Pacific. But then, was it absurd? The circumstances of his life made him the perfect candidate, if you looked closely.
Luke was a divorced veterinarian. He spayed calicos and repaired budgies’ split beaks. He still lived in the modest home he and his wife once shared with their son, not far from the university campus. On quiet Saturdays in September he could hear the roar from Kinnick Stadium.
His son, Zachary Henry Nelson, had vanished seven years ago. He had never been found. His bedroom was unchanged: the baseball motif wallpaper, dusty toys shoved underneath the bed. All waiting for him when he got back.
Luke’s life had stopped, fundamentally stopped, on a cool autumn evening seven years ago. As pitiful as it may be, he had no reason not to be here, accepting the task set before him. It gave his life a small but vital sense of purpose.
He sat on the edge of the Hesperus, his feet dipped in the sea. The water held cascading shades: a pure aquamarine deepening to more enveloping blues. A school of orange-and-pearl fish made lively darts at an algae-slick chain. The fish had curved, sickle-shaped jaws. They looked predatory, like midget piranhas.
Those fish would’ve scared Zach. There was a time in the boy’s life when he’d been scared of everything. Luke recalled how, at five, Zach (like many five-year-olds) had become convinced that a monster lurked in his closet. Luke reacted by flinging Zach’s closet door open and rattling the coat hangers.
“See, Zachy? No monster. You’re perfectly safe, I promise. Monsters aren’t real. They’re just figments of your imagination.”
Zach looked even more petrified. “Fig Men?”
Luke nearly burst out laughing. He pictured these bloated, misshapen, fruitlike creatures, the Fig Men, massing in his son’s closet.
“Not Fig Men, Zach, figments. Figments aren’t real. Your mind is making them up, that’s all. No Fig Men. No monsters.”
But that night, Zach crept into their room and curled up on the floor.
“What are you doing here, buddy?”
“The Fig Men are in my closet,” Zach whispered.
Luke got up and marched his son back to his bedroom.
“There is no monster, Zach. No Fig Men. Didn’t I show you that?”
“That was in the daytime,” Zach said with bone-deep worry. “Monsters hide from grown-ups in the day. It’s night now.”
But Luke was adamant. “I’ll leave the hall light burning, buddy. That’s the best I can do. You’ve got to sleep in your own bed, okay?”
Zach pulled the covers up to his throat and nodded wretchedly.
Back in bed, Abby said: “You’re not being fair, Luke. Zach’s allowed to be scared. He’s a kid. There shouldn’t be a penalty in this house for being scared.”
Luke knew she was right. Your child doesn’t owe you loyalty or obedience. You owe your child love and understanding, owe it unconditionally, and if you love them strongly enough, eventually that love may be returned. Luke’s own mother had never seen it that way. She thought Luke and Clay owed her love regardless of how she treated them.
Luke got out of bed and grabbed his toolbox. He returned to Zach’s room and pointed at the closet.
“So this is where the Fig Men are lurking?”
Zach nodded forlornly. Luke cracked the toolbox and pulled out a stud finder. He ran it over the closet walls and made a few exploratory taps with his knuckles.
“There are traces of ectoplasm,” he said in the tone of a veteran contractor. “That’s monster slime, in layman’s terms. What do these suckers look like?”
Zach said: “Old, all wrinkly, like they’ve lived a million years.”
The short hairs stood up on the back of Luke’s neck. Something about the way his son said that one word, old, was chilling. Luke didn’t feel like laughing this time. The Fig Men—these twisted, ancient, calculating little devils hunched in the dark closet, peering at his son through the slats with cruel avidity—had taken on a sinister shape in his mind.
Luke gripped his chin, putting on a good show. “The Fig Men. I’ve never heard of them specifically, but harmless monsters do infest closets and crawl spaces. They usually like sweet stuff—you haven’t been keeping anything tasty in your closet, have you?”
“That’s where I put my Halloween candy.”
“Well, that’ll give you a Fig Man problem. Now, I’m sure they’re not dangerous—just gross. But if you let a few hang around they’ll call their buddies and before long you’ve got an infestation on your hands.”
“I don’t want that, Daddy.”
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Luke. “What do you want first?”
Zach said: “Good.”
“Good news is I can get rid of the Fig Men.”
Luke rooted through his toolbox for a pouch of fine red powder.
“This is cardamom; it’s made from the crushed shells of stag beetles. It’s used in monster containment spells.”
Luke laid down a line of powder in the shape of a keyhole.
“Now this,” he said, “is the trap. The Fig Men will wander up this path, which gets narrower and narrower until—bang-o!—they get stuck. The circle closes and the Fig Men will starve overnight. They’ll turn black and hard as a rock. Now the bad news, Zach. You have to pull one hair out of your head, and that’ll hurt a bit.”
“Why?”
“Fig Man bait.”
Zach plucked a strand of hair. Luke laid it in the middle of the trap.
“You know what’d help? Something sweet. Why don’t you and Mom go downstairs and grab a few chocolate chips.”
While they were downstairs, Luke hustled into his bedroom and grabbed two small chunks of obsidian he’d picked up during a trip to Hawaii years ago. He set them in the middle of the ring and shut the closet.
When Zach returned, Luke strung the chocolate chips along the edge of the closet door.
“The sweetness will draw those Fig Men out of hiding. Now Zach, the trap is set. But if you open the closet the spell will be broken. So you must not open it until tomorrow morning. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Stick a needle in my eye,” Zach said solemnly.
“Do you want to sleep in our bed tonight?”
Zach shook his head. “I’m okay now.”
Back in the bedroom, Abby kissed him with uncommon ardor. Luke enjoyed a deep dreamless sleep, feeling very much like a minor superhero. The next morning, Zach flung the closet open.
“The trap worked!” he cried.
He raced into their bedroom clutching the blackened, calcified Fig Men.