Into the Infested Side

by Shane Hegarty

  No, thought Finn. I just want to go home now.

  “It’s OK,” said Niall. “I can help you. Help drain the power out of you and into the gateway. The rock won’t kill you. I know a way.”

  Finn felt his heart beating very fast. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You can’t,” said Niall. “But what choice do you have?”

  Finn knew he was right. He was going to explode, one way or another. He couldn’t hold it much longer.

  “Go, Mam,” he said. “Go, Dad.”

  They didn’t leave the cave.

  Finn wanted to shout at them to run, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t hold the power back any more. The energy rushed through him, desperate to escape. The clock ticked down. The urge to explode was overwhelming.

  Only he had the power to close off the hole between worlds. To stop all this.

  “Are you scared?” his grandfather said softly.

  “Yes,” he said. Because Finn was very scared indeed.

  “You are far braver than you know,” said Niall, comforting, sympathetic. “Now let’s end this. Together.”

  Niall pressed the sword to Finn’s chest. The tiniest of pressures. Enough to just prick the skin.

  A thin trickle of blood ran across the edge of the blade.

  “Go, Mam!” he bellowed. “Get out, Dad. I can’t—”

  Inside Finn, a bomb went off.

  It began again.

  The atoms in Finn’s body becoming sticks of dynamite. His veins a fizzing fuse along which fires ran until...

  But this time there was no explosion. Instead, there was Niall Blacktongue’s hand on his shoulder, his other palm on his elbow. Finn felt the energy boil to the top, overflow just as it had before.

  Only the power was not being released but diverted. Finn’s vision flared; a great noise filled his mind and, amid the agony of its grip, it took a second for him to understand that the power was draining from him and flowing instead into his grandfather.

  Niall’s whole body was arched, fighting to keep hold as energy jumped and flickered, trying to escape and explode. He spoke a mantra that gradually morphed into a shout of pain which rose until it filled the chamber.

  The energy left Finn entirely and Niall collapsed to his knees at the entrance to the Infested Side, while Finn slumped against the cave wall, not caring about the scraping rock, but only that he was free again, the burden lifted. Empty.

  The last echo of Niall Blacktongue’s anguish faded in the cave.

  Finn felt his mother lifting his face, checking him over, holding him by the shoulders, pushing up his chin so she could see into his eyes, asking him over and over, “Are you OK? Do you feel OK?” Until, eventually, Finn mustered the energy simply to nod in agreement and Clara let out a stuttered breath of relief.

  Hugo towered over Niall Blacktongue, Desiccator pointed at him, tension so thick the cave didn’t seem big enough to contain it.

  Slowly, hands raised, Niall lifted himself from the floor, sand clinging to his cloak, threads of electricity running along his skin, sparking, crackling, as he pressed a hand against the cave wall.

  Still Finn’s father did not shoot, as if fighting with his own instincts.

  Finn stood unsteadily, grabbing at the rock for support. His mother was trying to help him move from the cave.

  Niall raised a hand to him, fingertips crackling with electricity. “When I left Darkmouth,” he said, agonised, “it was to make a new path to the future. I hope I’ve done that, Finn. It’s up to you to take it.”

  Niall sparked, a match striking, ready to burst into flame.

  “I will use this power. Destroy this gateway. Destroy this cave. End this path to the Infested Side.”

  Hugo’s Desiccator was still raised, but his finger was no longer on the trigger.

  Niall dropped to his knees. Finn saw that his eyes were whirlpools of energy. Every vein glowing. Every neuron firing. He was looking at his son and grandson, Clara between them, each standing in the cold, grim light of the Infested Side. Finn saw him murmur a mantra before speaking through teeth clenched in pain.

  “I am sorry.”

  Finn’s father watched Niall for what felt like the longest time, but may only have been a second. He lowered his weapon. Finally, Hugo nodded, and Finn immediately recognised that this unspoken acceptance flooded Niall with contentment. A visible calmness even as he struggled with the energy rippling through him.

  “There is so much to tell you,” said Niall, tensing. “But no time. Leave. Now. My future ends here.”

  Hugo, Finn and Clara took one last lingering look at him. Then Hugo seized Finn by the shoulder, and took Clara’s hand, and together they ran.

  Finn, Hugo and Clara came out from the cave on to the beach, yelling at the crowd of Half-Hunters to get out of the way, to get into the water, off the cliff.

  “Fire in the hole?” Steve asked as the trio ran past him.

  “Just run,” ordered Hugo.

  “Fire in the hole!” shouted Steve and ran.

  Nothing happened for a few seconds other than a beach and cliff full of bemused Half-Hunters hurriedly seeking protection. Eventually, from behind the rock at the headland, Estravon popped his head up from underneath his hands, carefully looked back at the cave and said, “Is something supposed to happen?”

  There was a rumble. The entire cliff heaved a little, soil spilling from its edges as it settled again. The Half-Hunters still loitering on it took that as their cue to scarper in whatever direction seemed good.

  Silence.

  Nothing moved.

  For a moment, it seemed that no explosion was—

  And then light burst from the cave entrance, a crimson that briefly filled the beach, throwing everyone on it to the ground, hands over heads. The cliff lifted again, then slumped in the middle. Two wide cracks chased away in either direction from the epicentre until the grass collapsed, imploding suddenly, catastrophically, disappearing in a great cloud of dirt and rubble, a rumbling noise like the world falling in.

  When it finally settled, the dust drifting up and out across the water, a cliff that had cast a shadow every day for many millennia was no more than a great pile of soil and stone.

  Finn watched from where they had dived behind a rock on the beach, tried to process the scene. The destruction. The chaos. The fact that he was still alive. It was utterly, completely, bafflingly surreal. And yet the strangest thing of all was how normal that was beginning to feel.

  Emmie emerged from where she had been hiding alongside him. “Whoa,” she said. “Whoa.”

  That was pretty much the most articulate response possible.

  Broonie popped up from behind her. “Now I know there’s no limit to how bad my days can get.”

  “Is it safe?” Steve asked Hugo, but Finn’s father didn’t answer. Instead, he flicked open the clasps at the neck of his fighting suit to get some air, rubbed his face with the back of his hand and walked towards the rubble.

  He turned, scanned the entire beach, every Half-Hunter who had come to claim his town, to take his home, to take his legacy, and waited for Clara to stop hugging Finn.

  “I’m sorry about my clothes, Mam,” Finn was saying to his mother. “And I left my bag behind with all the books in it and—”

  “Oh, shhh,” she said and gripped him tightly while he tried to breathe and to not look too embarrassed in front of Emmie.

  When she finally let him go and went to embrace Finn’s father, he wiped his forehead clean of her kisses and said to Emmie, “I wasn’t even gone that long.”

  Emmie laughed at him. “This has been amazing. What a day! What a week! And we did it, Finn. We survived. We went into the Infested Side and we came back. And this is going to change everything. I mean, for you. And for me. And for everybody. And...” She stopped, looked at him. “And did I already mention that’s a nice kitty T-shirt you’re wearing?”

  Finn wanted to die all over again.

  Wh
ere the mighty mound of rubble met the beach, Hugo stopped, bent down and picked up a grass-fringed clump of soil, a worm wondering why it was suddenly dangling free. He threw it away and picked another to move aside.

  Finn slowly jogged after him, bent down and did the same, flinging a clump of soil out of the way. “Dad,” he said, because now was the time to say it. Now was the time to tell him that he wanted to be free of a future as a Legend Hunter. Free of prophecies and the end of the world. Free of any more of this. That he had got his dad back. That he had earned his freedom. That he just wanted to go off and be normal, go to school, grow up to be a vet in a town where the animals weren’t murderous. “Dad, I...”

  “I never doubted you, Finn. Not once,” his father said, sifting through rubble. He stopped for a moment, looked at him. “OK, maybe once or twice when things were really bad.” He smiled, just a small tired one, tinged with sadness, but still warm with pride. Then he resumed digging through the rocks. “We’ll take a few days off, hey? Get back at it after that. I’ve learned so many new moves over there...”

  Finn let him talk. The time wasn’t right to start telling him about how he wanted to be a vet. The time might never be right.

  He had lost his father and found him again, and he couldn’t yet believe it. He had found his grandfather and lost him again, and that was even more unbelievable. The thought almost overwhelmed him, but how must it have been for his own father? “Dad,” he said. “Granddad…”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” his father replied. “Not now anyway. Later. For sure. But it’s complicated. Very complicated.”

  He pulled an orange life jacket from the rubble, put it aside and just kept digging.

  Clara arrived, sleeves rolled up, to help out. “I could’ve married an accountant,” she complained. “Or a dentist. Oh, I could have married any number of dentists. But no, I had to go and marry the last Legend Hunter on the planet. I should have listened to my mother.”

  Beneath Hugo’s overgrown beard, there was a hint of a smile.

  Emmie joined them, picking up a desiccated Legend with its hardened scales dusted in earth. After a dramatic sigh of frustration, Steve threw down his helmet and started digging too.

  Half-Hunters began to move in, helping to clear the rubble and desiccated Legends, to push their way into whatever might remain of the cave, until people in various shades of armour and helmets, tattooed or clean, spiked or smooth, snaked in a line across the beach, passing debris along from one to the other.

  One eager Half-Hunter, with a red Mohican welded on the top of his helmet, blue swirls adorning his fighting suit, muscled in between Hugo and Finn, the joints of his fighting suit grinding with rust, his eyes wider than a child on Christmas morning.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m such a big fan.”

  Both Finn and his father kept pulling at the rubble.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I have to ask,” the Half-Hunter said to Hugo. “What exactly are we digging for?”

  Hugo didn’t pause, didn’t even look at him, just kept pulling at rocks and clumps of soil as he said, “When you find him, you’ll know.”

  “Thanks,” Finn said to the Half-Hunter. “For coming to rescue us.”

  “Well, you know, that’s not exactly what happened. To be honest, we all came here to claim Darkmouth as our own. That’s the tradition once the last remaining Legend Hunter, you know...”

  Hugo gave the Half-Hunter a laser-beam glare even while he continued to sift through soil and desiccated Legends.

  “...dies,” the Half-Hunter concluded. “But anyway you’re alive. And Darkmouth is all yours again.”

  Finn’s father pushed aside dirt-caked, earthy stones with his hands, threw a desiccated Fomorian over his shoulder, then stopped digging for a moment to look at Finn. “Not for much longer,” he said. “Next time you want to take Darkmouth, you might have to take it from someone tougher than me.”

  Finn remained still for a moment until he realised his dad was talking about him. So many things had changed. Him being slow on the uptake was apparently not one of them.

  “Ah yes, we’re looking forward to the ceremony,” the Half-Hunter was saying as the digging went on. “It’ll be a big day. All the excitement, the music, the dozen golden monkeys.”

  Finn’s mind had wandered. Tiredness was closing in on him. The enormity of what he had just been through beginning to squeeze his mind. He stood, wiped his brow with a filthy hand, looked at the industry on the beach and carnage surrounding it.

  He had been into the Infested Side. And back. Again.

  He had been blasted by crystals. Twice. He had ignited once. Almost done it a second time.

  He had travelled through time. Fallen from a tower. Flown with Legends. Escaped from death.

  He had been told he would end the world. End two worlds.

  A breeze pushed at Finn’s fringe as the sun disappeared behind an approaching cloud. He looked towards the newly revealed stretch of beach beyond the flattened cave. A new path lay ahead. Uneven, strewn with rocks, dangerous.

  One thought hit him above all others.

  “What do you mean, a dozen golden monkeys?”

  On the beach, Estravon was sitting on the cool pebbles, taking in the scene. The damp sky, the foaming surf, the Half-Hunters crawling across the ruins of the cliff.

  An alarm sounded. An electronic bleep-bleep on his wrist. He checked his watch, pressed the button to silence it. “That’s the two days up,” he muttered to himself, and picked at the ruins of his suit while shaking his head. “Lucky Legend Hunter, Hugo. Very lucky.”

  Estravon noticed someone standing beside him, a pair of legs stalled at the corner of his eye. He nodded towards the collapsed cliff.

  “They should really be wearing hard hats,” he said to his new companion.

  The person didn’t respond. Estravon turned and squinted up at the stranger, but the glare of the day was blinding to him after so long on the Infested Side, and he couldn’t see the face of the man he was talking to. All he could make out was a long coat over a suit and unkempt, greasy hair like long black strands of spaghetti.

  “Rough day?” asked Estravon.

  “I’ve had worse,” said the man, his voice deep and unnatural, as if echoing from the bowels of the earth.

  “Tell me about it,” said Estravon. He watched Finn pick through the rubble, stopping briefly to rub his forehead, then stare into the middle distance as if lost in thought. “That boy,” he tutted.

  “Yes, that boy,” said the man.

  “You know him? Of course you do. Everyone knows him. The things they say about him? I doubted it all, but here I am, just about living proof. But that’s the life we chose, huh?”

  But the man was gone. Estravon hadn’t seen or heard him go. He couldn’t see him anywhere on the beach. Yet it seemed for a moment as if his shadow remained, fleetingly after he’d left. Estravon shook his head again. “I spent too much time over on the Infested Side,” he said. “I need a good sleep.”

  Thin, barely there, a shadow drifted above the beach, above the crowd of Half-Hunters at the ruins of the cliff. It rematerialised at the crack of fresh soil where the cliff had been sliced clean from the land, leaving a view of the town of Darkmouth, its roofs and alleyways huddled together for protection.

  He formed slowly, surely, stretching his limbs in agony until solid again. Then he broke into a smile of such malevolence it killed a passing butterfly stone dead.

  Mr Glad had been trapped between worlds. Pulled apart every time a gateway opened in that cave. Yet, as each of those gateways closed, he had been brought closer and closer to the world again. Until he was no longer at their mercy. They were at his.

  He was back. Not from the dead. From somewhere far worse than that.

  Mr Glad examined the empty air, peered at it as if catching sight of a particularly interesting molecule, and reached out a crooked finger. He picked at the invisible fabric, as if finding a loose sti
tch, revealing a small spot of golden light that hung, unmoving, in the air. With his nail, he picked at it again, tearing a narrow scar in the sky, through which Mr Glad could see the dark of the Infested Side.

  He gazed into it for a while, then broke into a vengeful smile. Quickly, he ran a hand over the light, folding the edges back together so that they sealed again.

  A cloud of fine debris drifted high on the breeze, passing through Mr Glad. When it was gone, so was he.

  Across Darkmouth, it began to rain.

  THANK YOUS

  I am indebted to everyone at HarperCollins Children’s Books who has worked on this story and the Darkmouth series so far. Particular gratitude to my extraordinary editors, Nick Lake and Samantha Swinnerton in the UK, and Erica Sussman in the US.

  Thanks to copy editor, Jane Tait, and her invaluable eye for detail. Thank you to interiors designer, Elorine Grant, and cover designers, Kate Clarke and Matt Kelly. Also thank you to Geraldine Stroud, Mary Byrne and Nicola Carthy in publicity, Hannah Bourne in marketing, Amy Knight in production, and Brigid Nelson and JP Hunting in sales, and to Tony Purdue in HarperCollins Ireland.

  My particular thanks to Ann-Janine Murtagh, head of children’s books at HarperCollins, for her invaluable support.

  Thank you to my agent, Marianne Gunn O’Connor, for her continued belief, passion and relentless work.

  Thanks to James De La Rue for illustrations that have become so important to the world of Darkmouth.

  It takes a great many people to press a book in to the hands of readers, but it couldn’t be done without all the great booksellers out there, so I’m very grateful to them.

  Thank you to my family. Special love and thanks as always to Maeve, without whom this adventure would never have happened. And thank you to my wonderful children, Oisín, Caoimhe, Aisling and Laoise.

  And, finally, thanks to all you great readers for stepping into the world of Darkmouth.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SHANE HEGARTY was a journalist before becoming a full-time writer. He lives on the east coast of Ireland, in a village not unlike Darkmouth. Only with no monsters. That he knows about.