Into the Infested Side

by Shane Hegarty

  Emmie ran on ahead and Finn followed, rubbing his arm and wondering how much more it would have stung if it had been an unfriendly punch. When they reached the corner where their streets met, Finn saw that Estravon the Assessor was parked up at the front of his house, talking to his mother.

  “Maybe it’s good news,” said Emmie.

  “It’s not,” said Finn as they approached slowly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he hasn’t even got out of the car,” said Finn, “and he’s kept his engine running. I think he’s ready to leave here quickly.”

  They arrived to hear the Assessor methodically reading the words on a piece of paper stretched across his lap. Even with his face down, his head was crammed up against the roof of the car.

  “The Council of Twelve has read the Assessor’s report and met again on this matter,” Finn heard him say as he and Emmie arrived.

  “If this was something positive, you’d be inside tucking into the biscuits,” said Clara. “So, just get on with telling us whatever bad news is on that page.”

  Estravon cleared his throat and continued, clearly hoping that he’d be allowed to do so without interruption so he could just make his escape. “Before this tragic occurrence in Darkmouth, Hugo the Great was due to become a member of the Twelve, a true reward for a real hero. This is our loss as much as yours.”

  “You really think so?” Clara asked.

  “The Council of Twelve has accepted that Hugo acted out of the highest bravery, which will be duly noted in a later, official capacity, according to section 19, clause…” The Assessor looked at them out of the corner of his eye, noted the impatience on the faces of his audience and skipped on a little.

  “Nevertheless, it is with the deepest regret that we must conclude that Hugo is most likely...” Estravon cleared his throat, “…dead.”

  Finn’s mouth flopped open.

  Emmie’s head dropped.

  Estravon paused, as if expecting a reaction or a follow-up question. All that came was a calm, stern instruction from Finn’s mam.

  “Just keep reading,” she said.

  “Under rule 123a, paragraph 14, it is required that an appropriate time must pass before a lost Legend Hunter is officially declared dead and a full-time replacement Legend Hunter brought in.”

  “And the appropriate time is?” asked Clara.

  “Forty-eight hours.”

  Finn’s mouth flopped open a little more, so that his jaw felt like it might fall from its hinge.

  “Two days?” exclaimed Emmie, but Clara simply put a hand up to quieten her, as if she was keeping her fury snarling behind a locked door for when she really needed it.

  “A little less than two days, to be accurate,” said Estravon. “You know, with the gap between the news being passed to me and then me delivering it onwards to yourselves.”

  “And what happens to us?” asked Clara.

  “Reassignment,” said Estravon.

  “Reassignment?” said Finn. “To another town?”

  “No, no. Another house in Darkmouth. Where Steve and Emmie are at the moment.”

  Steve appeared round the corner, a bounce in his step that suggested he had absolutely no idea what had just happened. “You all sunbathing?” he asked.

  Clara’s glare hit him like a blastwave.

  “What?” Steve asked.

  “You wanted a Blighted Village to call your own and you finally got it,” Clara said to him, still remarkably calm on the surface even though her anger was so very clear.

  “Actually,” said Estravon the Assessor, bumping his head on the car ceiling, “that’s not quite how it works.”

  “Someone is going to have to rewind this conversation and start from the beginning,” said Steve, “because I have no idea what you’re going on about.”

  “All those years of living with their rules, of living with their demands and restrictions,” added Clara, “and this is how we’re repaid. Eviction.”

  “Reassignment,” clarified Estravon.

  Clara ignored him. “So, congratulations, Steve; unless Hugo comes back within forty-eight hours, we’re swapping houses. I hope you like vacuuming corridors because you’re going to be doing a lot of it.”

  Calculating that this was his moment to escape, Estravon took his chance and put his foot down so the car lurched on to the quiet road, paused at the corner and, with a belch from the exhaust, disappeared from view. They could hear the engine fading away into the town, the fumes of its exhaust still acrid in the air.

  Finn had already gone into his house and was heading straight for the library. He had less than two days to find the map. To find his father.

  It was the next morning, but Finn had no idea what time it was exactly. Neither did he notice Emmie’s arrival. He was at the door between the main house and the Long Hall. It was propped open with books, and the whole corridor to the library was strewn with pages, piles of paper arranged in haphazard order.

  As Emmie approached, Finn disappeared into a side room before emerging with another armful of candidates to work through. Not able to see where he was going, he tripped over a mound of atlases, sending himself one way and paper the other.

  “Have you been awake all night, Finn?”

  Finn picked himself up, shaking off her helping hand, swatting a small hardback off his shoulder until he stood staring at the mess he’d created.

  “No, of course not,” he said, sifting through the pages of tattered, yellowing books that had disintegrated as they hit the floor.

  “Did you sleep here, though?”

  “No! Well, a bit,” he admitted. “My mam forced me to bed eventually. I got up early. We’ve only three days to find something.” He stopped himself, looked at the watch given to him by the Assessor, the tiny daggers slowly working their way round an ivory face. “Actually, not much more than a full day now.”

  “But you’ve been in the library pretty much since the Assessor said your dad was, you know, erm...”

  “You can say it,” Finn said tersely. “You can say ‘dead’, Emmie. Go on. Because it doesn’t matter. It’s not true.”

  Emmie didn’t say the word. “You must be exhausted.”

  “I can’t stop,” he said, biting his lip. “Dad told me I wouldn’t. I can’t.”

  Above them, a strip light flickered and died. Finn tutted and immediately headed to the narrowest door in the corridor which had S4 hand-painted on it. Emmie followed, hovering outside the door while Finn rooted around fretfully in search of a new bulb.

  “We’re out. Do you have any bulbs at your house?” he asked.

  “Come on, we’ll get breakfast before school,” said Emmie.

  “We need to keep the place lit up, so we don’t miss anything,” he replied.

  “Finn—”

  “Can you get me a bulb from your house or can’t you?”

  Emmie looked up at the Long Hall’s ceiling. “Doubt it. These are strip lights, like you’d have in an office or something. I live in a normal house. Not a crazy house like this.”

  Silence.

  They both paused for a moment to appreciate the inadvertent clumsiness of what she had said and the words that were left hanging there: she didn’t live in a crazy house like this for now.

  Emmie coughed.

  Finn felt his hopes sink even more.

  Emmie looked at the lettering on the door and pushed her head in to find a room crammed with boxes, tools, dusty and rusting equipment. “So, what does S4 stand for anyway?”

  “It’s a storage room,” explained Finn.

  “Just junk and stuff?”

  Finn stood with hands on hips, looking around, admitting defeat in the search for a new bulb. “Yeah, and stuff. Do you think I should just give up searching?”

  “No, there must be one here somewhere,” said Emmie, squeezing past him and rooting through the overcrowded shelves. She pushed aside some boxes to see what lay behind before she belatedly realised what Finn had
actually meant. “No, Finn, I don’t think you should stop searching for the map.”

  “What if the Assessor’s right, though? What if there is no map?”

  “They didn’t find one,” said Emmie. “There’s a big difference.” She kept rummaging through the clutter, as much to move on the conversation as in the hope of finding any light bulbs. She pawed at a couple of things as she went. A ship’s wheel with rusted wrenches taped to each handle. What might have been a satellite dish made out of a roasting dish, tinfoil and a spoon.

  She knocked against something propped on a shelf and just about caught it before it hit the floor. A tin box attached to a circuit board, it had a couple of old brass light switches fixed on to it and what looked like an egg whisk protruding from one end.

  “What’s this, Finn?”

  “An egg whisk, I think.”

  “No,” said Emmie, “what is this whole thing? What does it do?”

  “Actually, my dad loves this,” said Finn, taking it from her and examining it. “It’s a Legend Spotter. It was used years ago, before they invented scanners to track Legends down. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He headed quickly to the library, pushing the door through a carpet of papers and books, and carefully picked his way to the centre of the room. Emmie followed.

  “Wait there, by the wall,” Finn told her while he found a switch on the Spotter’s underside and thumbed it for a moment. “Now turn off the lights. All of them.”

  Emmie flicked off each of the dozen or so switches, section by section, until the library was in total darkness. She promptly fell over a pile of maps as she tried to return to Finn.

  “You OK?” asked Finn.

  “This had better be good, Finn. I think I’ve broken a tooth.”

  “It is. I promise.” He pressed the button and the device’s whisk glowed a weak orange, hardly enough to illuminate his chest.

  “Wow, great trick,” said Emmie, her sarcasm carrying across the darkness. “Halloween must be a blast in this house.”

  “Just wait.”

  Then it began. It was hard to perceive at first, but across the span of the room, on its shelves, in spots along the floor, they began to make out dull smudges of orange light. Quickly, each flicker grew in intensity until the room was lit solely by the glowing balls of Legends caught over the decades and now scattered across the shelves and floor of the library. The unbroken jars, which each housed a desiccated ball of a creature caught invading Darkmouth, were like glow-worms in a cave, the still lights fostering an eerie calm. “That is pretty cool actually,” Emmie said.

  “If something’s been on the Infested Side or in a gateway, this will identify it,” Finn explained. “We use scanners now, so this hasn’t been used to track down a Legend in years, but Mam and Dad sometimes have their dinner here on Valentine’s Day. My dad calls it ‘the Planetarium’. Apparently, this is how he asked Mam to marry him. He spelled it out on the floor in glowing desiccated Legends.”

  In the galaxy of orange lights, Emmie picked her way across the floor to where Finn stood and they enjoyed the silence and surprising beauty to be found in the glowing husks of savage creatures from a parallel world.

  “I can see why they found it romantic,” said Emmie.

  Finn moved away a step, a flush of heat running through his face. “I’ll turn the lights back on.”

  He started back towards the wall and its light switches, while he looked again for the on/off button of the Spotter.

  “Wait,” said Emmie, looking at him. “The orange.”

  Finn looked down at himself and for the first time realised he was lit up; a radioactive glow was spreading across his skin, emanating from his chest, but pushing out of his sleeves, the neck of his sweater, the gap between his trousers and socks.

  “That’s weird,” he said, holding his hands out to examine them. “But I was there, on the Infested Side, so I suppose that’s why I—”

  “No,” said Emmie, “not you. What’s that beside you?”

  Finn looked around, unsure for a moment what she was referring to. Then he saw his schoolbag propped up on a chair beside him, where he had left it the day before. From inside leaked a bright orange glow.

  He put the Legend Spotter down, reached carefully into his bag and pulled out Mrs Bright’s false teeth. Directly under the device, their orange was deeper, more vivid than any other in the room. The colour had the newness of fresh paint.

  “I don’t get it,” said Emmie. “What’s that mean? That Mrs Bright was a Legend?”

  Finn thought of the grains of sand that had clung to Yappy’s paws and the damp fringes of its coat. He tried to make connections where none seemed obvious. All the while, the tiny echo of a message began to intrude on his thoughts.

  Light up the house.

  “Is it possible that Mrs Bright…?” he muttered. “Were her teeth...?”

  Light up the house.

  “Is that what the message really means?” he continued, only half audible to Emmie. The connections were forming in his mind, solidifying out of mist.

  “OK, Finn, you’re going to have to make a bit more sense because I don’t—” Emmie stopped, eyes growing wide as she worked it out too. “Oh,” she said.

  Finn began to wander the room, waving the Legend Spotter up, down, left, right, diagonally, sweeping across the floor.

  “Light up the house,” he said as he passed Emmie, holding it above his head. “That’s what the note from my dad said. But maybe we’ve been lighting it up in the wrong way. Maybe it’s been about this all along.” He held the Legend Spotter upright.

  Still, Finn couldn’t quite figure it out. “It just seems to be the usual desiccated Legends here. Mrs Bright’s teeth must have been on the Infested Side somehow or touched it in some way. Maybe she got caught up in the Manticore attack. Half the town would probably light up if we waved this at them.”

  “Or she could have got caught up in a gateway,” suggested Emmie. “Except there’s been no gateway in weeks.”

  Finn ran the Spotter across the curving length of a shelf, where the petrified Legends glowed a little brighter as he passed, dimmed slightly as he left them behind. “I just don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said.

  “But this is only one room, Finn,” said Emmie. “The note in the box said to light up the house.”

  “You’re right!” Finn strode past her towards the door to the Long Hall and began sweeping along the walls, the ceiling, the doors, and waving the Spotter into each room they passed.

  Still, they nearly missed it. It was weak, almost imperceptible, a tiny smudge in the dark registering in the corner of their vision. But Finn noticed it first and his heart rapped on his ribs when he did. He nudged Emmie to follow him to the wall.

  The closer they got, the brighter it glowed.

  Squinting, unable to quite make out any detail, Finn reached out a finger and placed it on the spot. He felt the slight bend of canvas, the roughness of paint.

  “Turn on the lights, Emmie.”

  She palmed her way across the wall until she found the switch. The bulbs flared in a race along the corridor, Finn’s and Emmie’s eyes briefly recoiling at the sudden intrusion of bright light. As they refocused, Finn kept his finger on the painting for a moment more.

  Niall Blacktongue gazed directly at Finn’s fingertip.

  Finn pulled his finger away to reveal a painted table on which were scattered a few objects, including books, a magnifying glass, a compass, a small mirror.

  In the mirror was the reflection of a map.

  On the map was an X.

  Finn looked at it, then back to his grandfather’s face. Where there had only ever seemed to be meekness, a sagging under the weight of responsibility, now he looked relieved, unburdened, free finally of a great secret kept for so many years.

  Finn forgot to breathe for a moment and, when he finally remembered, it came with a quiet utterance of relief.

  “Found it,” he said.
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  ‘The Arrival of the Human’

  From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse,

  as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side

  THIRTY YEARS AGO

  Humans smell.

  It is a bad smell. It is not like the intoxicating sweetness of a Pantera, whose scent lures victims to its lair, the horror its victims feel as they are eaten alive offset only by their fervent hope that it bites off their nose last of all because its fragrance really is that delightful.

  To be fair to humans, they don’t smell as putrid as the vile Nuppeppõ, those blob-like creatures whose odour was in ancient times compared to rotting flesh until it was realised that covering yourself in rotting flesh was far preferable to getting close to a Nuppeppõ, not that anyone has been close to a Nuppeppõ in a millennium. They are forced to live high in the mountains, far from the rest of us, under strict orders to stay downwind at all times.

  No, humans smell of damp skin; of the cheese on their feet and the dandruff on their shoulders; of the oils in their hair and food in their teeth. They smell of fear, panic, inevitable death. And sausages.

  They all smell of sausages.

  Stooping to enter the cell of the human, Niall Blacktongue, the great and ghastly Gantrua inhaled. He drew the air molecules past the metal grille across his face, and deep into his cavernous lungs, because he wanted to taste the very Promised World he would one day take as his own. Only then did he speak. And only two words.

  “Shut. Up.”

  But the human did not shut up. Instead, he kept babbling, words tumbling from his mouth in a torrent, just as he had done for the two years since he arrived there.

  “Ljensboytareskypartljensboytareskypartljensboy tareskypartljensboytareskypartljensboytareskypart...”

  “He is still like this?” Gantrua asked of the Hogboon guard half squashed against the wall by Gantrua’s bulk.

  “Yes, master,” replied the guard.