The Mind of the Deep

I live in an undisclosed small town in the northern part of Connecticut. It’s your typical sleepy town, populated mostly by older folks and newer families. It’s the idealistic town that an author might go to begin working on their next book. It’s the town where you grow up making good memories of fall harvest festivals, church services, and days spent outside playing with your friends in the summer. It’s the type of town that you want to spend the rest of your life in.
But what if that town has a darker side? A side that nobody speaks of, but everyone is at least in some way aware of it?
Let me take you back to 1983. I was in my freshman year of high school. I was your typical 14 year old. I hung out with my friends, tried to stay up to date on what was cool and what wasn’t, and stayed out of the way of the upperclassmen. This one guy, his name was Robert, he did everything he could to torment me. Robert wasn’t your typical bully either. Robert was smart. Presumably one of the smartest kids at our small school. Straight A’s, probably going to Harvard or MIT, that sort of guy.
Anyway, Robert loved to mess with me in small ways. Moving things, tripping me in the halls, knocking my food off the table then acting like it was an accident at lunch, that sort of thing. And he always managed to escape the blame. He always was able to pin it on somebody else, or make it seem like an accident. Looking back now, Robert would have made a perfect criminal.
This “incident” if you can call it that, took place about three quarters of my way through my freshman year. The kids had this place we called “The Deep”, and it was this little hole in a concrete wall that was sitting beside these old railroad tracks in the more industrial area of our town. It wasn’t very popular because of how damp it was, and also people claimed there was something living in “the deep” that was pure, unadulterated evil. I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, look at this guy, he’s read Steven King and decided he was gonna try to scare us on the internet!” Well no. While it does sound like the plot of a Steven King horror novel, I assure you. The deep is real. It is a real place. And there is something in there.
I realized that something weird was going on when Robert, heaven help him, decided to challenge me to “step into the deep”, as he said. I was deathly scared of the deep. I had heard the stories growing up about strange creatures scuttling out of the flashlight beams of explorers who went in there. Stories of children returning from the deep scarred in their minds, and on their bodies. I never met one of these kids, but you know how it is to be a child and hear a story like that. Whether it’s true or not, it’s going to stick.
Somehow, Robert found out about my fear. Now, nobody else knew about my fear. As children, everyone was scared of the deep, but everyone outgrew it, or, like me, pretended they did. And here came Robert, telling me that if I wanted my secret to be a secret, I’d better prove I wasn't scared. He did this because of a little “accident” I had with Robert involving a science lab, some elephant toothpaste, and a cup of bleach. Needless to say, he hunted for some way to get back at me sufficiently.
I was trapped. Robert knew my secret, and would tell if I didn’t go. But I also had no guarantee that he wouldn’t tell everyone even if I went. I, for once, had to trust Robert. And that was something I wasn’t really wanting to do. He gave me a time, 8:00pm, and a list of two things to bring. Flashlight and camera. It seems it was going to happen.
I began to get ready at 7:00. Found everything I needed. Hopped on my bike and began to pedal down to the deep. It was a horrible experience. I was trying to keep it together, because as I said, the deep was my worst fear. I considered just turning around and going home. Pretending I had forgotten. Maybe even had to refute his claims that I was scared of the deep. But if I didn’t do it now, I probably would never conquer my fear. So to the deep I went. Looking back, I wonder if it would have been better if I had just turned around and gone home. It’s not like anyone would have found out about my little secret anyway.
I got to the area of the deep at around 7:45 to 7:50. The first thing I noticed was this sulfurous smell. Typical rotten egg smell. It did the job though, and scared me out of my wits. But I had to go. I had to prove I wasn’t scared. I found out when I stepped down to the area around the grate that the smell was coming from a little homemade pouch, courtesy of Robert. A dastardly plan indeed. Well, if he thought a little pouch would dissuade me, he was sadly mistaken. I turned to the grate, and in my excitement, failed to notice the flash of something backpedalling rapidly into the dark, just out of the range of the dying light. I only realized it a couple years later, when I was mulling over the memories of that day. I wish I had been more watchful. Maybe I would have realized what was to come.
I pulled the flashlight and the camera out of the backpack I had brought with me, slinging it back over my shoulder and then began the process of delving into this hellhole. I had to crawl in there, as it was a tight fit. My flashlight beam was bouncing all over the place. Strangely enough, there weren’t any spiders in there. A very small, easy to forget detail, but I thought it weird at the time that there were no spiders to be found in that small space. I kept crawling for what felt like miles. Eventually I began to have a hard time breathing, mainly out of fear. I wasn't a fan of this, and I had no way to turn around. That’s how tight it was. I began to feel like I was being hunted. Like I was a rat stuck in a trap. But I kept going. Forwards. On and on and on.
Eventually I got tired. I didn’t know how much time had passed. I just kept crawling. My knees were bruised and bleeding by this point, and I was completely over this little adventure. Finally, the passage began to widen by a bit. My heart sped up, and I could smell something that wasn’t stale air. I hurried up, crawling faster and faster, skinning my knees and mixing my blood with god knows what else.
The passage widened, and suddenly stopped. Not as in hit a wall, but stopped as in quit being a passage, and began being a large room. I pulled myself out, and tried to get an idea of where I was. From what I saw when I was beaming my flashlight around, it seemed like an old factory complex, although how I got into it I had no idea. Another small thing I saw was that the darkness seemed to swim when I wasn’t pointing my light into it. I ignored it, and the whispers that were emanating from it. Or more likely, my mind did. I pushed onwards, going forward, looking for the other side of this thing. More than once I saw small things dart out of the light just as my beam hit them. I assumed them to be rats.
More walking, and hearing things scuttle beside me and out of my flashlight beam. I wasn’t surprised at this point. I fully expected the rats to be more bold around a thing they hadn’t seen before. The swimming of the dark became more rapid the more I walked, and the whispers became louder. I began to hear them tell me things I shouldn’t have heard. Didn’t need to hear. Things I can’t and won’t write down. Secrets I refuse to betray. Further on I went. I had to find a way to prove I had been into the deep.
Onwards I went. The things the dark told me. Many secrets. I found out that my mom had been having an affair for the last three months. I found out one of my neighbors was a serial killer. I was told what it feels like to have your hands awash in the blood of others. And still I kept walking. For I was on a mission, and I wasn’t going to be stopped by some whispers in the dark.
I came to the brink of the floor. Into a pit it went. A deep pit. I didn’t know where it went, but I looked down in it, and smelled sweet air coming up from it. The whispers, by this point full fledged voices, tickling my ears and burying their seeds in my mind, kept saying “Jump. Open yourself to the deep. Let it bury into you. Let it turn you into its proxy.” I came so close to fully opening myself up to the deep, had I not seen something that changed my mind. As I looked in the hole, and began to tilt over the edge, I saw Robert. But it wasn’t Robert. Not fully. Robert had become what I was to become. A proxy for the mind that was the Deep. He had been incorporated. He was no longer human. Merely a deformed husk. He looked like an anorexia victim found long after their death. He had been mutilated, and had this strange obsidian-like substance on him, and growing into him. He saw me, I swear he did, and he looked at me with those onyx marble eyes, and I understood. He wanted me to go. To escape. The boy that had made my high school year hell was going to be the one to save me.
I turned, and I ran. I ran like hell. I ignored the whispers telling me to turn back. Eventually they knew. They knew what I had seen. And they knew I wouldn’t join them. So they began to bash my sanity. The things that I had assumed were rats began to crawl into the flashlight beam, and let me catch a glimpse of them. They were masses of flesh. Black onyx and obsidian mixed with flesh. They stayed there long enough for me to see them, then began scuttling with me as I ran. The whispers told me horrible things. I reached my breaking point. I felt something snap in my mind. I finally slept.
When I awoke, I was in my bed at home. I bolted up and tore out of my room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. There was my mother, in all her glory. I practically catapulted myself into her, hugging her and crying. She never understood what had happened, and neither did I. It was only years later I realized what had happened. Robert had disappeared. I believe he had become part of the Deep. He was gone. Nobody knew what happened to him. His parents became shut-ins. They never got the closure they needed. And I realized that I had never physically gone into the Deep. It had entered me. The whole escapade was in my mind. This scared me out of my wits. It had control of my mind, and it played me like a violin. It used me like a toy.
I know now what the Deep is. It is a mind. A malevolent entity that abuses humans not for food, not for survival, but for enjoyment. It pulls people as needed to be its proxies, and then breaks the minds of others. It is truly evil, and I have decided that when I finish this writing, I shall pack my bags and leave this place. I will escape the Deep. I will not have it carried around in my mind while I reside here. I will escape.
Thank you for reading my tale. And know that, no matter how much you attempt to run from the Deep, once it enters your mind, you are part of it. You are submitted to its will. You are one with the Deep. And it is one with you.
Goodbye.
Category:Beings
Category:Mental Illness
Category:Places