Darkmouth

by Shane Hegarty

  “What do you want?” he asked, realizing he didn’t know the new girl’s name.

  “You’re Finn, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” said Finn crossly. “And you are . . . ?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why are you following me?” said Finn. “I mean, have you seen my street? We don’t exactly get many visitors.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Then you should know that you’re better off staying away.” He took a deep breath so he could stand a bit taller. “I deal with a lot of things far worse than you every day of the week, and it usually doesn’t work out well for them.”

  “That’s not what I heard either.”

  Finn immediately deflated. “You seem to have heard everything then,” he said, betrayed by a squeak of hurt in his voice. “Now leave me alone.”

  He turned and started marching away.

  “Emmie!” she shouted after him. “My name’s Emmie. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. First-day nerves, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Finn paused, but he still didn’t know what to say.

  “I mean, my dad moved here because of his job and I never thought I’d end up in a small town because, you know, I grew up in the city and I’ve never had to be the new girl, not that I had that many friends back home anyway, but I had a few and now they’re there and I’m here and this town is kind of weird because, you know, I wasn’t even allowed to bring Silver with us because he’d get hurt just climbing the walls because—oh, Silver’s my cat, by the way—because of all the glass on them. I mean, what is the story with this place and its high walls and all the glass and these narrow mazy alleys? Do people actually like living like this? Because it seems like, I don’t know, kind of depressing. I mean, another few weeks and I’ll probably just go completely . . .”

  Emmie stopped, suddenly aware of how much she had blurted at him.

  Having been blurted at, Finn was a little stunned.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “It’s to stop those, erm, things, isn’t it? I heard all about it. In school.”

  She stepped forward, her hair parting a little to reveal green eyes that were wide with enthusiasm. “Tell me, do you see many of them? Did you see one this morning? Are they dangerous? What are they like? Have you ever killed one?”

  Self-awareness reasserted itself and she stepped back, tucking her head down so that her face again retreated behind her hair. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be so nosy,” she said. “It’s just, well, it’s kind of cool.”

  A flush burst across Finn’s cheeks. Emmie looked around, seeming a little uncomfortable. “I’ve blabbered on too much. I’d better go.”

  “Oh,” said Finn, still a bit dazed by all of this.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said brightly.

  “Whatever. At school, I suppose.”

  “I’ll see you before that, on the way there.”

  Emmie opened the door of the house they were standing in front of and disappeared inside.

  Finn remained where he was, somewhat bemused by the encounter. He looked at the house for a few seconds. It was a standard town house, nothing special. His was similar, of course—from the outside at least—so he knew how deceptive looks could be, but Emmie’s was on an ordinary street, lined with busy houses and cars and a sense of life. It wasn’t the ruin that his street appeared to be. He envied that.

  Finn turned to make his way home. As he did, he noticed the twitch of a curtain in the downstairs window, but whoever was there was gone just as quick.

  9

  Finn sat at the desk in his bedroom, below a windowsill cluttered with coins, batteries, broken pieces of an old phone, and a frayed stuffed animal with eight arms and soft fangs that he’d never been able to bring himself to throw out. His goldfish, Bubbles, picked around the stones in his tank, occasionally darting in fright at his own reflection.

  In front of him was a large hardcover book: The Most Great Lives of the Legend Hunters, From Ancient Times to the Modern Day, volume 18, From Rupert the Unwise to Sven Iron-Tooth. Finn was supposed to be studying it, but his eyes were not on the book. Instead, they were on the now dark, quiet street outside, which still glistened with the wet of the day’s rain.

  His mind was somewhere else entirely.

  It was replaying the sight of the car that morning, crumpling like a tin can. The disappointment on his father’s face. The moment when the Minotaur had cornered him. The smell of its breath still clung to Finn’s nostrils, forcing him to run the scene over and over in his head, and he felt his shame grow with every replay until it formed a large knot in his chest.

  From deep within the house, he could hear dull thuds and whirrs. His father had been making something for weeks now, sometimes long into the night. Since returning home, Finn had seen him only briefly—when he walked into the kitchen while Finn was doing his homework, telling him what section of The Most Great Lives he had to read that night, while prizing a blade from the blender, before leaving again without explanation.

  There was a thump so loud it sent a shiver through the house and shook Finn out of his self-pity. Then silence.

  Finn tried to clear his mind. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the curved, diamond-like object that had been in the Minotaur’s nose and held it up to let the streetlight catch its edges. Before he could study it further, his door opened. Finn quickly threw the crystal into an open drawer.

  “Mam! You’re supposed to knock before coming in.”

  “Sorry, Finn,” his mother said, entering the room. “I was just worried about you. I heard you had a tough day.”

  They sat on the edge of his bed together. “How was work?” he asked her. His mother was a dentist and, as she did most days, she had brought home a faint odor of chemicals and ground teeth. This was more comforting to Finn than he had ever stopped to consider.

  “Not as exciting as your day, thankfully. Although everyone was talking about the Legend that came through this morning. Luckily, all I had to do was wave the drill at them and they shut up pretty quickly.” She put her arm around Finn and went to give him a kiss on the top of his head.

  Finn smiled, but squirmed away. “I’m not a baby, Mam.”

  “You’re still my baby,” she replied quietly.

  He groaned in protest. He didn’t want to admit that it warmed him when she said that.

  There was a phwump from deep in the house, followed by the long squeeee of a drill. “I wish he’d hurry up and finish whatever it is he’s building down there,” said Finn’s mam. There was another thud. “Have you talked to him? About . . . this morning?”

  “Not much. It’s fine, really. Stop worrying.”

  Finn’s mam looked at him. “I knew what I was getting into when I met your father. You never had that choice.”

  “Sometimes, I wish you were a Hunter too,” said Finn. “You’d be a really good one.”

  Finn’s mam grinned. “I don’t think my parents would have let me marry your dad if I’d been expected to do that. I don’t think I would have married him. Anyway, you know the rules. Civilians can’t become Legend Hunters, Finn. You’ve got to be born into it.”

  Finn and his mother were quiet for a few moments, the only sound the goldfish pecking at pebbles.

  “I mean it, though, Mam. You’d be a great Hunter.”

  “I could give them a good flossing until they succumbed. Or threaten them with a root canal.”

  Finn smiled weakly, sending another trickle of warmth through his chest, loosening the knot a little.

  “I’ll talk to your dad,” his mother said, standing up. “Get him to go a bit easier on you.”

  “No!” snapped Finn, before quickly calming down. “Please don’t. I’m trying really hard, it’s just . . .”

  “I understand.” His mam gave him another kiss on the head before she left. This time he didn’t squirm so much.

  Finn got up and locked the door after her, then went back to his desk and took the
diamond from its hiding place. He heard the front door of the house open and looked out of the window to see light spilling onto the sidewalk.

  His father’s long shadow knifed across the street. Finn could see that his attention was focused on the far end of the road, where a parked van started up its engine and, without even turning on its lights, slowly pulled away.

  His father turned back to the house and there was the heavy sound of the front door being bolted.

  Finn wrapped the diamond in an old pair of pants and placed it at the back of his underwear drawer where it would be safe. He didn’t know what he was doing with it, only that it felt too late to admit to having picked it up in the first place. It was his souvenir. No one would need to know.

  He sat back down at his desk and flipped through The Most Great Lives, only half registering the text, until, from beneath it, he pulled out a smaller, thinner book. On its cover was a man in blue medical scrubs holding a dog by the jaw. It might not have been too clear whether he was about to help the dog or punch it except for the title, half-obscured by a school library stamp: So You Want to Be a Veterinarian.

  Finn read a few pages, poring over the images of dogs, cats, birds, and lizards, with instruments pointed at their ears, and confident-looking people in scrubs holding down their tongues, combing through their fur, feathers, or skin. He imagined himself in those scrubs rather than a fighting suit. He closed his eyes and saw himself tending to an animal rather than blasting one, healing creatures rather than shrinking them into little balls.

  His daydream was interrupted by the sounds again, deep in the house. Finn placed his head on the desk, the page of the book cool on his cheek, and listened to the noises, feeling the vibration tickle his face. Khrump, khrump, khrump. Silence. Squeeee.

  They didn’t stop him from quickly falling into a deep sleep.

  From A Concise Guide to the

  Legend Hunter World, vol. 2,

  chapter 65: “The Infested Side: A

  Guide to What We Know and What

  We Don’t” (published by Plurimus,

  Magesterius, Fortimus & Murphy)

  Over the years, there have been instances of Legend Hunters traveling to the Infested Side, either to wage an attack or because they were abducted by Legends. There was even one infamous attempt to make peace with the Legends. And, in at least three recorded cases, people simply tripped and fell into a gateway.

  The experiences of those who have returned from the Infested Side are largely unverified. However, there are consistencies in their accounts: They each arrive home with vivid descriptions of a scorched world, poisoned and poisonous, where death clings to every bare tree and every shard of burned scrub. They also arrive home with a really, really bad smell.

  So, over hundreds of years of such visits, added to the words and screams of thousands of interrogated Legends, we have learned many things about the Infested Side.

  Some of them may even be true.

  10

  Broonie did not know where he was being dragged to, but the simple facts that he had a bag over his head and his arms were tied gave him reason to suspect that it was not anywhere pleasant.

  At first, he had thought it was a practical joke played on him by the Hogboons who lived three mounds over and with whom Broonie had been engaged in a battle of pranks for a few months now. The most recent gag played on Broonie had involved a small rodent being released into his home, which in itself wouldn’t have been so remarkable if the small rodent hadn’t been on fire at the time.

  It was, Broonie reckoned, a fair response to his own clever and complex practical joke involving ivy, sharpened sticks, a large hole, and a bag full of beetles.

  So, when he was woken rudely from his standard all-day nap by a bag being placed over his head, he was certain it was just another revenge prank. “Oh right, lads, very funny,” he’d said as his arms were being tied. “But wasn’t it my turn to play the joke?”

  That was when he got punched in the head for the first time.

  Even through a minor concussion, he could tell that there were two assailants and they were big. They clearly weren’t Hogboons like him, because Hogboons were a short, spindle-limbed race, though what they lacked in physical stature they made up for in length of ears, crookedness of teeth, greenness of skin, and general mischief.

  “Stay still, you ugly little thug, or I’ll snap your arms off and use them to break your legs,” one of the assailants roared as Broonie found some energy to struggle.

  “You’re calling me ugly?” exclaimed Broonie. “I can see your feet through the bottom of this bag. Do you mind me asking, are all of those warts yours or did you borrow some for this special occasion?”

  That was when he got punch number two. It knocked him out.

  When Broonie came to, he was being dragged up a slope of some sort. It was steep and brutal underfoot. Actually, brutal underfoot would have been a luxury to Broonie right then. As he was dragged along, it was brutal under his toes, brutal under his shins, and particularly brutal under his knees.

  Worse than that was the stench in the air. It seeped through the canvas of the bag until he could feel it burning his throat. He had heard about this intense smell from other travelers, or at least from those who claimed to have survived it.

  “If you were to leave a bag of fish to rot inside a corpse stuffed with already rotten fish, that would be sweet perfume compared to the stench of this place,” one traveler had insisted.

  “I burned every item of clothing I owned to get rid of its foulness. Even then it wasn’t enough,” whispered another. “In the end, I had to shave every last fiber of fur from my body, pluck every hair from my nostrils, and pull every lash from my eyes to free myself of it. Yet, even now, if the wind blows in a particular direction . . .”

  The air seemed to grow more putrid with every step Broonie’s captors took, with every bump and scrape his body absorbed. He understood now where he was being taken. It was to a place of death. Most probably his.

  Eventually, the climb evened out, the ground becoming flat, hard stone. It was warmer and the echoes of his captors’ footsteps told Broonie he was indoors.

  A door groaned open and heat smacked Broonie hard. They stopped. Broonie was flung to the floor. As he pushed himself up, one of his kidnappers yanked the bag from his head. The Hogboon was briefly blinded by numerous fires, burning tall in huge cauldrons that lined the large stone room. In front of him, the largest of them popped and crackled and leaped high toward the ceiling.

  His captors shuffled their hulking bodies away. Broonie realized now that they were Fomorians, brutal, merciless giants who were all either very intelligent or spectacularly dumb, with nothing in between. He wasn’t entirely sure which type was better to encounter.

  His eyes adjusted quickly and he saw that steps rose from the far side of the fire, leading to a plinth on which stood a figure Broonie had dearly hoped he would never have to lay eyes on.

  Gantrua’s massive bulk was turned away from Broonie and, when he spoke, he shifted his head only slightly toward him, just enough to reveal the curved edge of great fierce horns that sprouted from his forehead.

  The light of the flames danced off armor that ran from his waist up to a jagged grille across his mouth. Even in the uncertain light, Broonie could see that it was made up of many individual teeth fixed onto a metal rim.

  “Do you know who I am, Hogboon?” Gantrua’s voice was so deep Broonie felt it quiver through the stone at his knees.

  “Yes, Your Greatness. The whole land trembles at your very name.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Broonie did not. So he took a guess. “Is it the beetles? It was only a bag of them, Your Lordship, and no one was eating them at the time. If they were yours, I am truly sorry. I had intended to sweep them all up and return them, but, you know how it is, Your Powerfulness, there were other things to do, and—”

  “Quiet,” commanded Gantrua with an authority that ter
rified Broonie so effectively he briefly lost his balance. “I don’t care about your pathetic thieving. If you had decided to steal from me, you would have been struck down before the thought had even entered your head.”

  Broonie’s head drooped from exhaustion and humiliation. His body ached from the violent journey. His brain hurt from trying to figure out why he was here in the first place.

  He glanced up again to see that Gantrua was ignoring him now, engaged instead in a conversation with a smaller hooded figure in the shadows. Gantrua signaled to this other creature to wait, then turned fully and loomed over Broonie.

  In the flickering light, Broonie could make out the scars that marked Gantrua’s skin, valleys sliced across his arms, rivers of wounds crossing at his shoulders.

  “You are trained?” asked Gantrua.

  Broonie had not expected that question. “We all were, Your Greatness. A long time ago now. Before the sky closed.”

  “You had better search your memory for those lessons. The sky has not closed entirely.”

  So the rumors are true, thought Broonie. There are still gateways to the Promised World. There had been talk among the armies of this, but he had never heard it confirmed. It had been a long, long time since he had heard of anyone going through and coming back.

  “We are on the verge of a great invasion of the humans’ world,” continued Gantrua. “It must succeed or the way through could be locked for eternity and we will be trapped. Forever. In this place.”

  He spat into the flames, shocking them into chaos. He composed himself again as the fire settled into its normal dance. “You, Hogboon, shall go to the Promised World.”

  “I’m flattered, Your Worship. Really. I am greatly honored. But, Your Masterfulness, I have not trained for many years. I fear I’ll get captured as soon as I step through the gateway.”