Into the Infested Side

by Shane Hegarty

  Finn narrowed his eyes to see. “But that’s the wrong way,” he said.

  “No, it’s the right way.”

  “It’s not,” Finn insisted, pointing instead at the sliver of alleyway directly ahead of them. “I’m sure that’s what the map tells us.”

  An old man cycled towards them, whistling a tune that he left hanging in the air as he saw them, crouched, in armour, and wielding their fat silver Desiccators. He stopped, turned his bike clumsily in the narrow alley, climbed back on to the saddle and cycled away in the direction he’d come from, mumbling curses as he went.

  They watched him go, then resumed their planning. “It’s the correct way, Finn. It’s the only possibility.”

  “I know these streets. My dad made me memorise them.”

  “Look, Finn, I am in charge here. Those are the orders, so that’s just the way it is, whether we like it or not.”

  Steve didn’t just like it, he loved it. That was obvious. Since the Council of Twelve had ordered him to stay on in Darkmouth and act as temporary Legend Hunter, he’d been practically giddy with authority, and even more disappointed than Finn that a gateway hadn’t opened since.

  “Finn does know them, Dad,” said Emmie, pushing open her visor to reveal her face. “Trust me.”

  “Do you want to go back to the car?” Steve asked her.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Then let me deal with this. We almost got killed in this town because of invading Legends. This is serious stuff.”

  “But you said I could do a bit more, Dad.”

  “Yes, you can observe more.”

  “Come on, Dad. I just want to help.”

  Steve rooted through a pocket of his fighting suit, pulled out a set of car keys and held them out to her.

  Emmie let out a deep sigh.

  Content he’d made his point, Steve pushed the keys back into his pocket and again turned his attention to Finn, who had already stood up to cross the road in the direction he knew they needed to go. Steve pulled him back down by the shoulder and eyeballed him. A shudder went through Finn’s fighting suit. It was tough to exude ferocity when sounding like a wind chime.

  “This is the right alley,” insisted Steve, rising to move forward. “So, follow me and let’s see what’s down here.”

  It was the wrong alley.

  A dead end.

  “They must have put this in after making the map,” said Steve, coughing to hide his embarrassment. Finn and Emmie’s silent response said it all. Steve eventually cracked.

  “OK, let’s go the way Finn thinks we should,” said Emmie’s dad and the three of them moved back towards the other laneway. “And let’s hope he’s not wrong.”

  Finn felt his frustration rise sharply, but kept it to himself.

  They moved through the jagged shadows of the laneway’s cobbled defences, past houses of chipped paint and gouged windowsills. They ducked past old, dirtied walls dotted with fresh brick, like fillings in a tooth.

  It eventually led them to a wooden door, the entrance to a backyard. As was standard in Darkmouth, its wall was ringed by broken glass, nails, tacks, sharp stones, anything that might keep a Legend out. Softened by decades of rain, though, the splintered door pushed open easily, revealing a yard half filled with blue plastic barrels and large bins.

  Finn felt a jolt of uncertainty: this wasn’t right at all.

  Before he could speak, Steve held up his hand and began counting down with his fingers. Finn drew his Desiccator to his shoulder and followed him. Emmie stood behind them and tried to look as tough as she could before remembering to snap shut her helmet’s visor.

  They edged forward, between bins and barrels and the occasional waft of something rotting, until they reached the back door.

  Steve placed his hand on the handle.

  “This is ridiculous,” Finn’s mother, Clara, said from the yard behind them, causing each of them to almost jump clean out of their fighting suits. They spun round. “What do you think you’re going to find here?” she asked.

  “We were just about to discover that before you interrupted,” answered Steve, deeply frustrated by this disturbance.

  “Give me the map,” demanded Clara, hand out.

  “Keep your voice down,” Steve hissed.

  Finn snatched the map from where it was tucked into the utility belt on Steve’s fighting suit and, despite the man’s protests, handed it quickly to his mother.

  Clara held it up. “Do you really think it would be on a beer mat? You don’t think that just maybe Hugo would have told Finn to ‘look for the map on the beer mat’ if he wanted you to find it on an actual beer mat?”

  She turned it over in her fingers. On one side was an image of a full and frothy glass (Widow Maker – as refreshing as a kick from an eight-hooved Sleipnir). On the other, the print had been picked clean off and on the soft white cardboard a pen had been used to scribble what seemed to be a criss-cross of laneways, with an X at one corner.

  “It’s the best map we’ve come up with,” said Steve, his Desiccator wilting somewhat.

  “Better than when you thought you’d found the right one, but ended up bursting into Mrs Kelly’s crèche at nap time?”

  “The mark on that map seemed legitimate,” said Steve, flipping open his visor.

  “It was a coffee stain. And you set a dozen toddlers’ toilet training back a month.”

  “We’re trying our best, Mam,” said Finn.

  “I know you are, Finn. This isn’t your fault. I just don’t like to see you being led around blindly while carrying a dangerous weapon.”

  “Oh, that thing’s not even loaded,” said Steve, motioning at Finn’s Desiccator. Registering the shock crossing Finn’s face, he added, “Come on now, if you had to use it, you’d probably do more damage to yourself than anything else. But it kept you quiet to think it was working.”

  The door behind them swung open with a clang.

  Finn and Steve spun round, their raised Desiccators almost scratching the nose of the man who stood in the doorway, wearing a white apron and holding an open-topped blue barrel. He thrust his hands in the air, dropping the barrel so that everyone had to leap out of the way while water and slices of potato washed across the concrete.

  As he turned and stumbled back into the building, Clara crouched down and picked up one of the raw chips. “It didn’t occur to you that maybe Hugo had just doodled a map to the nearest takeaway on a beer mat?”

  “But our files say Hugo doesn’t drink alcohol,” said Steve.

  “No, but he eats food,” she said sternly. “Especially fish and chips. He loves fish and chips.”

  Steve and Finn both slumped, almost simultaneously. Steve rubbed his eyes with his gloved hand. Finn hung his head and sagged against the wall. Emmie hovered, toeing the ground. Clara stood between them all, arms folded, head tilted back towards the orange sky.

  “I’m sorry, Mam,” said Finn.

  “It’s not you who should be sorry,” she said. “Steve’s supposed to be the grown-up here. Honestly. We need to find whatever Hugo wanted us to, but this carry-on has to stop.”

  “You don’t think I’d rather be anywhere else but in this place, sorting out your mess?” said Steve.

  “No, I don’t. A Blighted Village of your own? It’s clearly your dream come true.”

  “I’m getting out of here at the first opportunity,” insisted Steve. “It’s pretty much all I talk about at this stage. Even Finn will confirm that.”

  “I…” hesitated Finn.

  “You don’t need to say anything, Finn,” said Clara.

  “Tell her, Finn.”

  “Ignore him, Finn.”

  “I…” stuttered Finn.

  “Ahem,” said a strange voice.

  A young man stood at the entrance to the laneway. So tall and lanky that he seemed almost to stoop in case his head bumped the sky, he was dressed in a shiny grey business suit, a crisp pink shirt and a lime-green tie that knotted tightly
at his neck. A briefcase sat on the ground beside him.

  Everyone looked at him and, after a few seconds, the man seemed to finally remember why he was there. “Ah yes, hello there. My name is Estravon Oakbound, Assessor to the Subcommittee on Lost Hunters, as appointed by the Council of Twelve. And, under section 41, clause 9 of the 1265 Act of Disappearance, I am here to assess and ultimately assist in the case of the missing Legend Hunter of Darkmouth, Hugo the Great.”

  He held out a greasy, fat, brown paper bag. “Excuse my manners. Would anyone like a chip?”

  Back across town, at the end of a nameless street lined with buildings whose doors had been unopened in decades, windows boarded up or black with grime, was Finn’s ordinary-looking house. An unassuming brick building, it was tucked in behind a low stone wall, a patch of grass and a flower bed into which daffodil stalks were slowly turning into mulch, a couple of weeks after being crushed under the foot of a very angry Minotaur.

  On a sofa in the living room, the visitor loomed over Finn and the others even though he was sitting down, his suit jacket flapping loose from his bony frame, his knees rising higher than his waist.

  Finn and Clara sat opposite him, separated by a low table on which her tea stood untouched and cold. Finn could see his mother’s mouth was pinched, as if she was trying to prevent rash words from escaping.

  Behind them, Steve paced slowly and a little nervously. He hadn’t been given any tea and had arrived late, having been delayed persuading a stubborn Emmie that she couldn’t be part of this and would have to return to her house.

  “Darkmouth’s a hard place to find,” said Estravon Oakbound, dipping a biscuit in his tea and failing to catch it as the damp half broke away and splashed into the cup. He fished it out with his fingers, gobbled it. “But I am so glad I made it here. This place is famous.”

  He checked his wristwatch, licked his fingers clean of tea and crumbs, then reached into the briefcase by his feet and pulled out a clipboard and a pen. “It may be just case number 4526-dash-U, as far as the filing clerks back at Liechtenstein HQ are concerned, but to me it’s a privilege.”

  Estravon looked up to see that his enthusiasm was not appreciated, so switched to a more sombre tone as he ran the tip of his pen down the page on his clipboard. “Let’s see. Let’s see. Ah yes, here we are. The map.”

  He waited. Eventually, Clara responded.

  “The map?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Estravon. “I believe you’ve been looking for it. As an Assessor, I work directly with the Council of Twelve to examine and, well, assess cases relating to Legend Hunters or their villages. That’s why I’m here.” He looked at his watch again. Finn noticed its hands were curved rather beautifully, like daggers. “For a precious few hours anyway.”

  He sat forward, looking towards the window as if expecting someone to be eavesdropping, then spoke almost conspiratorially. “We could probably have done a lot of this over the phone, but it wouldn’t be the same at all. Now what did it smell like?”

  Finn was baffled and silent until he realised the Assessor was talking to him. “Excuse me?” he said.

  “The Minotaur that crossed over into Darkmouth. What did it smell like? Rotten, I’d imagine. I believe the local sergeant was lucky to survive the old...” He raised a finger in a stabbing motion while making a squelching noise. “Horrible big thing. The Minotaur, obviously, not the sergeant. And real. So very, very real…” The Assessor seemed briefly lost in a daydream. Finn, meanwhile, still felt suffocated by how Sergeant Doyle had been so badly injured two weeks ago because he’d come to help himself and Emmie.

  “We need a rescue party,” interjected Steve.

  “That’s why I’m here,” said Estravon.

  “You’re the rescue party?” asked Clara.

  “No.” He blurted a laugh, then became more serious. “But I’ll have a great say in what happens. And I think we can put a good case forward for some very positive action here.” He paused. “Do you know about the six hundred scorpions?” he added, turning to Finn.

  “Scorpions?” said Finn.

  “At your Completion Ceremony. Sorry, I shouldn’t be giving away any surprises. Let’s just hope it goes ahead now. The chance to become the first brand-new, true, active Legend Hunter in many years. Not a mere Half-Hunter like the rest of us. And then this happens. Shame. I’d already chosen my suit.”

  The Assessor fingered his jacket, clearly hoping for a compliment. He seemed a little deflated when he didn’t get one.

  “You were going to say something about the map,” prompted Clara.

  “Ah yes.” He ran his pen down his list again. “The Infested Side. That’s one thing that wasn’t clear in the report.”

  “I wrote everything down,” said Steve.

  “And very detailed it was too, thanks, Steve. So, you were all there on the Infested Side…” He went into his daydream again. “I can’t even believe I’ve had a chance to say those words. So few have visited, never mind returned alive. I can think of only a couple, and Conrad Single-Limb’s name says everything about the condition he came back in. Of course, according to the prophecy, you will be going back there some time, Finn. But let’s not dwell on that.”

  Queasiness hit Finn and he didn’t know if it was in his body or his mind. “You know about that?”

  “Of course I know about that. Everyone knows about that. Any of us around the Twelve anyway. Didn’t you grow up hearing about it?”

  Estravon noted the embarrassment creeping across Finn’s face and the displeasure on his mother’s. He guessed what they meant. “You really didn’t know?” he said.

  “Not till recently,” said Finn.

  “The Legends are rising, the boy shall fall,” recited Estravon. “Out of the dark mouth shall come the last child of the last Legend Hunter.”

  “There’s no need to—” said Clara.

  “He shall open end the war and open up the Promised Land. His death on the Infested Side will be greater than any other.”

  “—hear it again,” she finished, irritation flushing through her cheeks.

  “It’s nonsense anyway,” said Estravon, busying himself with his clipboard again. “Rubbish. Could mean anything. I wouldn’t worry about it. We don’t. Not at all.”

  “You don’t?” said Finn in surprise.

  “Well, more or less. Not too much. Only sometimes.” Estravon tailed off and, in the few heavy seconds of silence, Finn thought he could hear the dust falling through the air.

  Finally, Estravon announced, “Anyway, to the matter at hand. How did your father get trapped on the Infested Side? It says in the report that you were the last to see him, Finn, that you were with him, and Steve and your mother came through the gateway ahead of you. Yet only your father was trapped. How?”

  “He pushed me through.”

  “He pushed you through?” Estravon made a note.

  “And the gateway closed. Suddenly. Behind me.”

  “Closed. Suddenly. Behind you.” Estravon was focused on the clipboard, writing every word down. “But he told you about the map?”

  “Yes,” answered Finn as calmly as he could through a head swimming with guilt. “He shouted it at me.”

  “We’ve been through all this,” said Clara. “Can we just get the help now?”

  “Let me get this straight, Finn,” said Estravon, placing the pen across the clipboard and concentrating on Finn. “The gateway was closing as a swarm of Legends descended so your father pushed you through, shouting to you as you fell. And then the gateway closed. He therefore simply became stuck, Finn. Trapped there. For no other reason than bad timing?” Finn felt sweat moisten his brow. “Yes,” he said, his tongue like sandpaper. “Bad timing, I suppose.”

  The Assessor stared intently at him, his face expressionless for what seemed to Finn like an age, but can only have been a few moments. Then he suddenly snapped into a grin. “Well, that’s all good then.”

  He clicked the pen, pushed his clip
board back into his briefcase. Relief surged through Finn. A moment ago he’d wanted to jump out of a window and escape. Now he had to fight the urge to punch the air in delight. He wanted to ask if that was it, if they actually believed all of that, but managed to wrestle that idea away from his mouth before he said it.

  Estravon checked his watch again. “I can’t believe I’ll have to go so soon after getting here. But I wouldn’t want to impose on you here in this house.” He looked at Steve. “So, I’ll stay the night in your house instead.”

  Steve gawped a little.

  “But what about the map?” asked Finn.

  “Oh yes, the map,” said Estravon.

  “Can you help us find it?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, I’m afraid,” said the Assessor. “There is no map.”

  “No map? Of course there’s a map,” insisted Clara. “Hugo said so.”

  “I’m afraid he was mistaken, Clara. May I call you Clara?” He didn’t wait for a response. “The existence of any map, Clara, was thoroughly investigated after the death of Niall Blacktongue although no one really likes to talk about all of that. Nevertheless, what I can say, quite sincerely, is that there is no map. There never was. It was searched for. It was not found.”

  That information settled in the hush of the room.

  “So that’s it?” said Steve.

  “Not at all,” the Assessor said as he stood up suddenly, triggering Finn and Clara into doing the same. “I will report back to the Twelve, to make a recommendation. I feel confident there’ll be some progress as a result of this.”

  He glanced once more at his watch as if in a hurry and, seeing Finn look at it again, unclasped it from his wrist and dangled it at him. “Please. Take it.”

  “I can’t do that,” Finn said politely.

  The Assessor insisted. “It would be an absolute privilege for me to know that it was being worn here, in Darkmouth.”

  Finn looked at his mother, who nodded in encouragement while looking as if she wanted this man out of her house as soon as possible. So, Finn took the watch and strapped it on his wrist. “Thanks,” he said.

  Estravon leaned into Finn and whispered, “They’re standard issue anyway. I have a drawer full of them at home.”