The Deep (2015)
Author: Nick Cutter (pseudonym of Craig Davidson)
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Page Count: 394
Official Summary: A strange plague called the 'Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget -- small things at first, like where they left their keys, then the not-so-small things, like how to drive or the letters of the alphabet. Their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure. But far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a universal healer hailed as "ambrosia" has been discovered. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab has been built eight miles under the sea's surface. When the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths... and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anyone could possibly imagine.
***
It's rare that horror novels genuinely scare me. I read a lot of them and generally enjoy them, but I'm almost never actually scared -- the only exception before now has been
House of Leaves (one of my overall favorite works of fiction), which is so out-there and disturbing that it barely counts as a conventional horror novel like, say, the works of Stephen King. I bought this book out of curiosity because Davidson's previous novel under the "Nick Cutter" name,
The Troop, impressed me so much despite its modest appearance. That novel advertised itself like a
Cabin Fever ripoff and turned out to be one of the most disgusting and compelling body horror works I've ever read, so I guess I shouldn't have been shocked when this one seemed like a predictable mashup of
The Abyss and
Event Horizon, but turned out to be a disquieting masterpiece I could barely stand to put down even though it freaked me the fuck out more than anything in years.
From the very first chapters, one thing is established about
The Deep: it's remarkably, remorselessly bleak. Even by the standards of
The Troop, which saw multiple helpless Boy Scouts getting eaten alive from the inside,
The Deep is utterly unforgiving in setting the stakes. The 'Gets is a potentially comical concept even for someone who's deathly afraid of Alzheimer's (me, for reference), but "Cutter" wrings all potential dark humor out of the idea and leaves us with the horrifying, seemingly unstoppable reality of a world where memories are vanishing and society is slowly abandoning itself. Opening with protagonist Luke Nelson -- brother of Clayton Nelson, the lead scientist aboard the
Trieste -- encountering a man in the late stages of the disease and continuing on to illustrate more people who are condemned to lose their minds, Cutter immediately and expertly establishes a world that needs any shred of hope it can cling to, even if that hope arrives in the form of incredibly sketchy regenerative goo from the Mariana Trench.
It's in these early goings, when Luke imagines what a young girl with early signs of the 'Gets is about to go through, where the awful magic of
The Deep first sank into me. Without ever crossing into needless floweriness, Cutter has a knack for latching onto one horrifying passage or another and pumping it full of so much detail and atmosphere that it seems impossible that whatever's next could be worse. It is always worse. Whether Luke is flashing back to a traumatic memory or confronting some horrifying new sight that could be real or imagined, the terror just keeps escalating, and my eyes were always glued to the page. Abuse and loss are just as frequently visited for gut-wrenching chills as insanity and large insects are; as shit hits the fan, they even start to overlap.
And it's where all of this horror is concentrated that makes it so effective. The majority of the book takes place aboard the
Trieste, the experimental lab comprised mainly of tubes spidering all over the Challenger Deep. Things are already bleak and horrific before Luke and his sole companion dock in the station, but this incredible setting is key to keeping the tension amping up without a moment's relief. The
Trieste is constructed and lain out in such a way that no area feels comfortable or safe, all function with no concern for form. The tight tunnels and occasional forced crawlspaces would be bad enough without the added pressure, darkness, isolation, and threat of either hallucinations or reality-defying abominations. Cutter balances his writing in such a way that you stay as wary of the location itself as the mysteries and possible threats inhabiting it, and from the midpoint on, I felt the suffocating pressure in every stressful moment.
To maintain the sense of isolation, the cast is extremely limited. Luke's POV is the only one we stay focused on, his only ally entering the station is plucky submarine pilot Alice "Al" Sykes, and they meet Clayton relatively soon after docking. There are a few other individuals who pop up in both the present and the past, but that's mainly it. So on the frequent occasion when one or both characters mysteriously vanish, what little comfort they provided instantly gives way to the same dread Luke feels. I can't say too much about how well-developed the characters are, mind you, because everyone turns out to have buried traumas and fears that get dug up at just the right times to be exploited by whatever force is slowly caving in their minds. Suffice to say that they are all great, and I particularly liked Al.
But what force
is picking away at their sanity, if any? Where does the ambrosia come from, how does it manage to do the seemingly impossible things it does, and is it a threat to humanity in itself? Why did the station go silent if the head researcher is fine? These questions and more form the backbone of
The Deep's present-day narrative, and answers are slowly implied and trickled in without sacrificing the vital murkiness and ambiguity that keeps the
Trieste feeling like a hellish pocket detached from reality. These bizarre mysteries combine to present a world where every shadow has something watching you from within it, where every childhood fear is realized and things that are laughably impossible become fact, where you can plummet into a nightmare at any moment without even realizing you fell asleep, and where the monsters in the closet could be real and following you through your whole life to strike when you're vulnerable. No matter what, it feels like the characters are being toyed with by something unfathomable (part of why I filed this as "Cosmic Horror" -- Lovecraft would be proud). And of course, all of this deliciously chest-tightening suspense is accompanied by a deal of body horror that winds up surpassing
The Troop for sheer unfathomable brutality, though the actual gore is paced deliberately enough that it's still shocking every time it pops up.
And in the end, the scant concrete answers that come do nothing to derail the dread and intrigue set up prior, as endings (particularly in the horror genre) so often do. I'm almost not sure what to say about the finale, because without exaggerating, reading it actually made me feel disoriented and slightly sick. Not everything Luke encounters in this final stretch is untrodden territory for horror fans like myself, and some of it should be rightfully silly, but that wonderfully detailed prose and how effectively every concept has been built up turns everything into a whirlwind of painful incomprehensibility, stark realizations, and deeply disquieting imagery. By the end, I knew what caused the situation and had an idea of the surface world's fate after all of that trouble, but there's so much left to fester in your imagination that the shadows still feel unsafe. My only complaint about it would be the lack of definite resolution to some character arcs, but it's a minor problem drowned out by all that surrounds it.
In short,
The Deep is fucking scary and I will continue to buy every book "Nick Cutter" puts out. It's tough to communicate why it's so frightening without spoiling it, and even tougher to understand the slowly burning terror that prompted me to devote all of these words to it without buying and reading it yourself. If you have a good tolerance for horror (I wouldn't want to give anyone actual panic attacks or something) and what you've read here sounds like a good time, I absolutely recommend picking it up and reading it for a few hours at a time whenever you can. Just be sure there's no one in your house who isn't supposed to be there when you do. And maybe keep an eye on your closets.
Rating: Everything's Better Down Where It's Wetter