Darkmouth

by Shane Hegarty

  Before Finn could get to it, she had already grabbed it.

  “So You Want to Be a Veterinarian,” she read. “You want to be a vet?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, killing creatures rather than wrapping them in bandages?” She handed the book back to him. “Like, I didn’t see too many stethoscopes in those portraits downstairs,” she said, now nosily scanning the things on his windowsill.

  “Maybe I won’t be like all the others on that wall,” said Finn.

  “Really? Thought you had no choice. You know, only son of the only Legend Hunter and all that.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it’s because—” Finn was struggling to find the words to explain himself. He hadn’t talked about it before.

  “What?” Emmie prompted him.

  “Sometimes it feels like maybe I could be a different sort of Legend Hunter. Like, I’m learning all about these incredible creatures, but the only thing I’m supposed to do is fight one when I see it. There could be another way to deal with them that doesn’t mean hurting them. Like my mam does for people. She helps them with their teeth, I mean. Same sort of thing really, just different animals.”

  “A Legend Hunter and a vet,” said Emmie. “What does your dad think about that? From what you’ve told me about him, I can’t imagine he’s too happy.”

  Finn’s silence gave her the answer.

  “Sorry,” she said, then changed the subject by grabbing the eight-limbed stuffed animal off his windowsill. “That looks pretty dangerous. He’s got cute little fangs and all.”

  Finn needed to rescue his pride, so he blurted out, “I have something better than that.” He slid open the drawer, shielding his underpants as best he could, unwrapped the crystal, and held it out to her. Low morning sun reflected off it in a dozen directions. Emmie’s eyes widened.

  “Let me hold it.”

  He passed it to her and she turned it in her hands, running her finger across its edges and feeling its surprising lightness.

  “It came from a Legend,” said Finn. “You’re holding a part of another world.” She gasped just a little at that, and the approval gave Finn a shot of confidence.

  “How did it get here?” she asked.

  “It was in a Minotaur’s nose.”

  “Gross!” she exclaimed, dropping it on his bed.

  From somewhere in the house, Finn heard heavy steps. He grabbed the crystal back and threw it into the drawer.

  “Nice underpants,” exclaimed Emmie.

  And, just like that, Finn’s moment of triumph was lost once more.

  “Come on,” he said, ushering her out again. “I’d better eat. I only just got up.”

  As they came downstairs, the panels on the narrow door to the Long Hall flashed simultaneously and, with a clunk, it opened. Finn’s father emerged, carrying what appeared to be half a vacuum cleaner in his arms, exposed wires trailing past his waist.

  “Hello,” he said, stopping in the doorway, clearly surprised to see a stranger there.

  “Dad, this is Emmie, a new girl . . . a new, er, friend, from school.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “No,” Finn shot back. “A friend.”

  “Don’t mind him,” said Finn’s dad. “He’s very grouchy in the mornings. Nice to meet you, Emmie.”

  “Hello, Mr. . . .” She seemed to be struggling to think how to address him, as if “Mr. The Great” didn’t sound quite right. Finally, she settled on: “Hello, Finn’s dad.”

  “Hugo will be cool.”

  Cool? thought Finn.

  “So, what are you kids up to then?” his dad asked.

  Kids? Finn would have been happy if the whole world left him alone this morning, but his dad’s disappearance would be a fine start.

  “Come on, Emmie, let’s go,” Finn said, starting for the kitchen in the futile hope that he could cut short this conversation.

  “What brought your family to Darkmouth, Emmie?” Finn’s dad asked, readjusting his hold on the machine part so that he cradled it like a baby.

  “Work. My dad’s work. It’s just me and him.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a consultant. Techy things,” she said, pulling her bangs forward with one hand. “I don’t really understand it.”

  “Techy things? Like computers?”

  “Phone lines, I think.”

  Finn’s dad nodded. “Sounds fascinating. Did Finn tell you what we do?”

  Finn’s brain was screaming at him to stop talking right now, this very instant.

  “I’m in what you might call pest control.”

  Enough, Dad!

  “Yeah,” said Emmie, energized again. “I know all about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah, from books and stuff.”

  “Books?” asked Finn’s father, curious.

  “Well, Finn’s book. Upstairs. And from Finn too. He’s told me so much.”

  Finn wondered if he looked as embarrassed as he felt.

  “Anyway, welcome to Darkmouth, Emmie,” said Finn’s father. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  Bedbugs, oh God.

  “Finn, I’ve got to go out and get something looked at. You okay on your own?”

  To show just how excruciating this was for all of them, Finn rolled his eyes so far he could almost see the inside of his skull.

  His dad finally headed outside, and Finn gave an overblown sigh of relief. But, just when he thought it was safe, his dad popped his head back in the house. “Finn, give your fighting suit a wipe, will you? It’s beginning to smell like a family of cats lives in it.”

  Emmie laughed.

  Finn’s mouth opened in silent frustration. He needed to find something to rescue this situation, and quickly.

  Suddenly, he knew what it was.

  “Do you want to see something?” he asked. “Something really good.” Emmie didn’t have time to answer before he pressed the panels on the door to the Long Hall. She followed as he quickly dashed down the corridor, ignoring the long line of portraits and heading straight for the door at the very end, only hesitating when he reached his destination.

  “I’m not really supposed to go in here,” he said, pointing to the door marked “Library.”

  “Oh, all right then,” she said, then screwed her foot into the floor a bit. “I mean, if you’re scared of your dad, I understand. . . .”

  That was all it took to persuade Finn. He opened the door.

  Beyond it was a space unlike any library anyone could have imagined. The round room was massive, stretching high into the pitch of the roof, crowded shelves covering almost every bit of the walls.

  At points along the edges of the floor, full suits of armor stood at attention, complete with spears and swords and shields.

  At the center were a couple of large, cluttered desks and near these were two domed cages, one about Emmie’s height and another big enough to fit several adults inside, including some on each other’s shoulders. Looming over both was a wide object covered with sheets.

  Finn stood back, letting her take it all in. She moved toward the desks, one of which had a computer on it with a screensaver scrolling through a selection of images.

  A horned skull.

  An illustration of an old woman with leather wings.

  A photo of Finn as a toddler, grinning and holding an oversize sword while his father, laughing, waved some fierce little creature in his direction.

  She moved to the covered object. It was about the height of a grown man and as wide as two. Scattered on the floor around it were various tools, batteries, an electrical fan, the drum of a washing machine, a kettle, what looked like the blade from a blender, and other bits and pieces. As they got closer to it, Finn could feel a low electric hum radiating through the floor and tingling his toes.

  “What’s this?” Emmie asked.

  This, presumably, was the thing Finn’s dad had been working on all hours of the ni
ght. Finn had no idea what it was, but didn’t want to admit that. So he rummaged through his mind for something that would make it sound like he knew what he was talking about. It just came out as a bit of a gurgle.

  Finn wasn’t sure if Emmie was just being polite, but she ignored his meek response and instead began to lift the sheet for a look. Before she got too far, though, her attention was caught by something else on the shelves: a collection of glass jars of various sizes and shapes.

  She reached out and lifted one with a hard ball rattling around inside. She read the handwritten label aloud:

  “‘Gargoyle. Adult. Approx. 5ft. Darkmouth. 13.02. 1963.’”

  She picked up another. It too contained a hard ball, and its label read Griffin. Height 4ft, span 6ft. Darkmouth. 01.05.1946.

  She checked another. A Grendel. Then another. A Gogmagog. She looked up and around. Shelves were lined with jar after jar, of various sizes and shapes, stretching high to the ceiling and halfway around the room. Each contained a hard ball, sometimes leathery, sometimes furry or feathered or hairy, but almost always perfectly spherical.

  “They’re Legends,” said Finn. At last, this was something he knew all about. “Decades’, maybe centuries’ worth of Legends. They’re trapped, collected, and stored here.” Emmie picked up one jar from a small table beside the shelves, not yet filed away. Finn could see one word on it: Hogboon.

  “Are they alive?”

  “Yes. Well, sort of. Dormant really.”

  “There must be hundreds here,” said Emmie.

  “Three thousand and twenty-nine to be accurate,” said Finn’s father from right behind her. “And we wouldn’t want you to be number three thousand and thirty, would we?”

  19

  Emmie was so startled by the sudden arrival of Finn’s dad that she dropped the jar she was holding. It rolled unbroken to his feet. He picked it up. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Finn, breathless and a little panicked, blurted, “Emmie, the bathroom isn’t down here.”

  Hugo and Emmie both shot Finn a look that wilted him.

  Finn hadn’t seen his father so annoyed in quite some time. At least not so annoyed with anyone other than Finn. “There are things in this room that could kill you,” he said, seething. “There are things here that could kill everybody. This is not a playground.”

  “Dad—” started Finn.

  “It’s time your friend went home, Finn.”

  Finn sighed, but signaled to Emmie to follow him. They were making their way toward the exit when Emmie stopped and faced Finn’s dad. “They’re desiccated, aren’t they?”

  “What?” asked Finn’s dad.

  “The Desiccators. I heard about them.”

  “Heard about them?”

  “Yeah, Finn told me.”

  “Did he now?” said his father.

  Did I? thought Finn.

  “He said the Desiccator net became the weapon of choice for most Legend Hunters centuries ago,” continued Emmie, undeterred, “because it trapped Legends but didn’t kill them. Is it true?”

  “Yes,” said Finn’s dad, a little calmer now, examining her. “We’ve used a Desiccator on them.”

  “All of them?” asked Emmie, gaining a little courage to take a step back into the library.

  “Remind me, what did you say your father does?”

  “He’s a technology consultant,” she answered, sounding a little shy again.

  “Technology consultant.” Finn’s father’s anger seemed to have ebbed as he became more inquisitive. “And how long are you here for?”

  “A short while. Dad’s doing stuff with the phone lines. Or something. I didn’t pay attention.”

  “No. Why should you? And you heard all about the Legend Hunters from Finn?”

  “Oh yes. I’m fascinated by them now. The life. The battles. What it must be like to come face-to-face with a Legend. I would love to be one. A Legend Hunter.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But you can’t, can you?” said Finn’s dad.

  “Can’t I?” asked Emmie.

  “Didn’t Finn make that clear? No civilians.”

  “Oh yeah, of course. But I think about it sometimes all the same.”

  Finn’s father narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. He was holding the jar containing the Hogboon, rolling it deliberately between his palms. “Go on now,” he said and shooed them away, shutting the door behind them.

  Finn and Emmie walked up the long corridor without a word, entering the house and going straight to the front door. Finn opened it and waited for Emmie to leave.

  “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said. “I hope I haven’t gotten you into trouble.”

  Finn felt something unsettling, but he couldn’t quite identify the sensation. “Did you mean that? About wanting to be a Legend Hunter?”

  “Definitely,” Emmie replied, her tone a little regretful. “What you do is amazing. All that excitement, and the Desiccators and other worlds and that huge room at the end of that huge hall. I mean, seriously, who wouldn’t want this?”

  Finn’s face betrayed his deepest feelings about that. Finally, he spoke. “Did I really talk to you about the Desiccator? I don’t remember that.”

  “Oh yeah, you must have. Loads of times, I’m sure. Anyway, I’d better go.”

  Emmie pulled her hair forward and turned for home. Finn closed the door, not noticing that the bright day had swiftly given way to damp gray, and that Emmie had already disappeared into a veil of gathering mist.

  20

  “There’s one blip.” Finn’s dad pointed at the computer screen.

  Blip.

  “And there’s the other.”

  Blip.

  Finn stood beside him, not entirely sure what they were both waiting for.

  The two spots kept blipping.

  Blip.

  Blip.

  On the screen was a map of the town. Every few seconds, a small green pulse appeared in two distinct spots.

  Blip. One at the harbor.

  Blip. The other a couple of miles from it, by the short tunnel at the entrance to Darkmouth.

  Finn understood what the scanner was telling them: two gateways had just opened. The alarm had sounded as Finn was making his way back down toward the library, but was silenced quickly. He had arrived in the room expecting his father to be rushing in the other direction. Instead, he was standing over the screen and had motioned for Finn to join him.

  “Dad, I didn’t know . . . ,” Finn started to say.

  “Later,” came the curt reply.

  Blip.

  Blip.

  “What do you see, Finn?” His dad didn’t wait for an answer. “These are two gateways, but they’re both small. Only one of them would let through a Legend of any size. Very odd. I’d like you to examine the smaller one while I check out the larger one. You can get changed in the car before I drop you off.”

  “Hold on, drop me off?” asked Finn, not liking what he was hearing.

  But his dad was already heading for some bookshelves at the back, where he lifted the stopper from a large, empty, triangular jar. To Finn’s surprise, a whole section of the wall swung open and Finn’s father ran through. Finn stared after him for a moment, irritated.

  “A hidden door? When were you going to tell me about that?”

  “I just have,” said his dad. He stuck his head back into the library. “I didn’t want you messing around with it. Now hurry up.”

  Sighing, Finn followed and found himself in a part of the building he hadn’t known existed—a dark, apparently unused remnant of whatever this part of the library used to be before the Legend Hunters moved in, long hidden behind the circular wall, its deep red bricks exposed under crumbled patches of rotting plaster, apparently unchanged since the rest of the street had been colonized by Finn’s ancestors.

  Ahead of him, his father pulled at a large door, which opened reluctantly until the dull morning light flooded the space and
released them onto the street.

  “Very odd,” his dad repeated as they drove. Finn was in the back, wrestling with his fighting suit, trying to avoid falling against a row of knives lining the interior of the vehicle. “We have two gateways appearing at the same time, but even the bigger one is so small it shouldn’t be of too much concern. That must be why this fog has come down instead of rain.”

  Finn realized he was pulling his suit on backward, the armor choking him at the chin. He tried again.

  His dad had half an eye on a scanner on the dashboard, which showed the same map and unevenly sized green dots flaring every couple of seconds.

  “Here’s the thing, Finn,” said his dad. “Remember when that second gateway popped up the other day and then disappeared right away? I looked back at the scanner’s records for the previous hunts and what do you think I found?”

  Finn really wanted to get this right. “Other gateways?” he guessed, losing his balance again.

  “Well done. This has happened four times now. Other tiny gateways opening in Darkmouth while we were off hunting a Legend. The others were so brief they hardly registered.” The scanner went blip. “So, this right now is curious. The smaller one might be a failed attempt by a Legend to open a bigger gateway. We need to make sure in any case.”

  “I really have to check it out on my own?” asked Finn.

  “You’ve got to do it sometime,” said his dad. “Better when there’s probably no great danger.”

  “Probably?”

  The car’s lights stabbed an arc in the fog as it turned sharply, causing Finn to flail across the back and crash into a net of canisters.

  “If the gateway is still there when we get to it, Finn, all you need to do is mind it until it disappears or I get back, whichever happens first. It’ll be too small for any Legends to get through, so there’s nothing to worry about. You can reach me on the radio if you need to.”

  Finn was still fighting with his fighting suit.

  “Come on, buster. Hurry up. Seriously.”

  They arrived near the pier, the car’s massive tires scrunching up along the curb as it pulled over. Its side doors slid open automatically and Finn half fell out, holding on to his helmet to keep it on his head.