Chaos Descends

by Shane Hegarty

  Broonie moved around to hide behind the far side of the bin, while cramming a banana skin into his mouth.

  He heard the woman scream and presumed it was because she had seen him. Peeking over the bin, he realised her scream was instead aimed at something around the corner from them, out of view. It was accompanied by the sound of a vehicle screeching, then crunching. This was followed by a rumble through the ground, the shock wave from whatever was happening.

  The three humans were rooted to the spot, watching. Broonie moved around for a better look, and saw it.

  A figure seemed to have formed from black smoke, like a corpse leaked into the world. Around him was carnage. Humans. Monkeys. Scorpions. Mangled vehicles. A van lying on its side.

  “Now this is cool,” said the teenage boy.

  And among the wreckage was the boy Finn, bent double, hand out, reaching to help someone, but unable to do it. For the phantom had his hand on – no, in – Steve.

  Broonie watched as a gateway was sliced open right at Steve’s centre. It sent a shudder through the Hogboon, reminding him of the fate that awaited him in this world. Of Desiccation and becoming frozen in time, waiting to be brought back to life in a manner that felt like being pulled nose first through a keyhole.

  Then he saw what no one else seemed to notice. A second tiny gateway was hovering in the air. Right where a car had been unceremoniously propelled into Hugo’s vehicle. A tear in the world opened by Mr Glad, it was small but was probably just about the right size for, say, a limber Hogboon to fit through.

  Broonie’s mouth dropped wide enough for the old butter wrapper he was chewing on to drop from it. This was a way home.

  He weighed up the options.

  What did he have to look forward to here? In this world of humans, he was faced with Desiccation, interrogation, the torture of Hugo’s terrible music, the total lack of anything really putrid to eat.

  But, if he went back home, what awaited him there? So many punishments, of such a great variety. He remembered the story of a Hogboon who had tried to escape Gantrua’s mines: they said he was made to balance a spear on the tip of his tongue, pointed end down, while he simultaneously juggled three knives. All while standing in a trough of biteroaches. And he did that for forty-three days straight. After which, he was sent to the mines again.

  Broonie stood, ran a hand across his mouth as he considered.

  The boy-man from the little family he’d been following screamed at the sight of him.

  “Look, a goblin! This is brilliant!” said the teenager.

  Broonie knew he had no choice. It was bad here. It was bad there. But at least he had his own hovel over on the other side and he might get one more night in it before whatever new and novel torture life had cooked up for him came along.

  Broonie ran for the open gateway and jumped through it an instant before it slammed shut.

  A moment later, his mind feeling like it had been whisked, scrambled, poached and fried, he lay on the Infested Side. He gulped in the delightful stench of home, let its stink flood his grateful lungs.

  He was on a hillside. High up, with a wide view of the world in front of him. There was no human here. No ghost. No one but himself, for now at least. He needed to think quickly, to find shelter, to get out of here and hide for as long as possible. No more humans. No more resistance. No more anything. Just a quiet life from now on for Broonie.

  As he stood and dusted himself off, something caught his eye. There, fixed on this side of the world was a scar, vivid and large. The flip side of what had been drawn in the air on the other side of the invisible fabric between worlds.

  It burned in the sky of the Infested Side, a freshly carved beacon.

  “Look who it is,” a terribly familiar Fomorian voice said.

  Broonie turned, and very much wished he hadn’t.

  “Would you like to hit him, Cryf?” asked Trom.

  “After you,” said Cryf.

  Not surprisingly, this was the last thing Broonie heard before being knocked unconscious.

  In the basement of the Council of Twelve HQ was a dark, windowless cavern known as the Department of Destructive Studies. It had been put down here because its previous room fifteen storeys above had been blown up when, predictably, one study proved just too destructive.

  Now two people in white lab coats were moving between beakers of different-coloured powders and flasks of varying liquids. They were taking one or other and adding them carefully to the contents of a silver bucket. From within was a dull, reddish sparkle, its hue changing depending on what was mixed with it.

  “It needs more mush,” said one of the scientists, his moustache long enough to reach his earlobes.

  Watching from the very edge of the room, Lucien sipped on his coffee. In his hands was a top-secret document titled THE TRUE FINDINGS AT DARKMOUTH. It was so secret, in fact, that it was supposed to self-destruct two seconds after it had been read from start to finish. But Lucien had fooled the document by beginning at the last page and working backwards from there.

  The other scientist in the room, a tall woman with hair that shot like electricity bolts in all directions, withdrew a palmful of sparkling clay and carefully attempted to rub it against thin air, like a particularly bad mime artist.

  Nothing was happening.

  “We need to add more mush,” said the moustached scientist again.

  Lucien returned his attention to the top-secret report, specifically a page listing all the things found in the mess after the battle at Darkmouth. These were:

  5,387 tonnes of rubble, stones and bricks

  211 desiccated Legends

  1 twisted lifebuoy

  1 leg from a pair of trousers

  3 bits of old fishing nets that may in fact have been one old fishing net torn in three

  1 old fishing net that may in fact have been 3 old fishing nets tied together

  Dust

  Lots and lots of dust

  But it was what they had found inside the dust that mattered. More dust. Scarlet. Fine. Mysterious. It was the dust of the crystals found in the Cave at the End of the World, and which Finn had used to open a gateway to the Infested Side. Under a microscope, it appeared almost alive, wriggling and dancing with light. It was this dust that they were now testing, seeing if it could be used to make more gateways into the Infested Side.

  But still nothing was happening.

  “I’ll add even more mush,” said the tall scientist.

  Lucien watched. Every failure of theirs was another moment in which he and everyone around him was condemned to stare at pages, not portals.

  He pushed at his glasses. They slid back down the bridge of his nose.

  A colleague entered the room beside him, eating a small bun. Axel, a fellow Half-Hunter who worked in the Office of Snacks. “Have they opened a gateway yet?” Axel asked.

  “No,” confirmed Lucien.

  “I hope they make a breakthrough soon,” said Axel. “We need it. I was not born into a long line of Legend Hunters purely for the purpose of ordering three hundred mini-muffins and a box of cheese crackers each Wednesday. Speaking of which, your mini-muffins have arrived. Raspberry icing, just as you like them.”

  Lucien remained silent, thoughtful, his growing frustration at missing out on the Darkmouth excitement pushing dark thoughts into his mind.

  “Maybe that stuff only works in Darkmouth,” said Axel, wiping crumbs from his mouth.

  “Which would mean only Hugo the Great and his son, Finn, get to try it out there,” said Lucien.

  In front of them, another attempt to open a gateway failed.

  “Too much mush,” the scientists agreed.

  “Well, that family does seem to enjoy trips to the Infested Side,” said Axel as he took the top-secret document and, before Lucien could warn him, flicked quickly through the self-destructing document from first page to last.

  “No—” Lucien cried.

  Three seconds later, and accompanied by a good
deal of yelping, they both learned just how horrible burnt fingernails smell.

  Across Darkmouth, shops flipped their ‘Closed’ signs early. Locked their doors. Pulled their shutters. The townspeople retreated indoors, once again in the shadow of disaster. But the Half-Hunters filled the streets in anticipation of a great and glorious showdown to come.

  Amid the excitement, Finn had been examined by his mother, who grabbed him by the face, by the shoulders, by the head, checking him over. And over. And hugging him. And only stopping once he told her that, while he seemed to have broken no bones, every hug hurt him in molecules he didn’t know he had.

  She tried to soothe Emmie too, who was sitting on the kerb. Numb. Disbelieving. Quiet. That disturbed Finn most. Emmie was never quiet.

  When Clara went to Hugo, a medical assistant had come over to Finn. She had arrived with the Council in the aftermath of the incident. All ten present members, in full regalia, a shock of colour and pageantry in a scene of devastation. They conversed with their various assistants, while Estravon made notes on his clipboard.

  The medical assistant gave Finn the once-over.

  “Where were you hurt?” she asked, and Finn could only look back dumbly, because there was no answer to that. He hadn’t been hurt exactly; he’d almost been imprisoned between two worlds. He turned the locket in his hands, tried to recall the details. It was already a fading memory, like a dream he was trying to remember. But he knew it had been real. He’d heard voices. Had a vision of …

  He couldn’t hold on to it. It was frustrating him. He felt his anger rise. It had been him, until Mr Glad was distracted. It should have been him. Not Steve.

  Behind him, a house alarm went off. Was his stress triggering that? The problem was he couldn’t be sure. Finn forced himself to calm down, to count his breaths. The last thing anyone needed was for him to explode.

  The medical assistant continued to examine him, declaring that she could find nothing wrong with him and went to check on Hugo and Clara.

  Finn waited where he was, watched. He’d never seen his father as he was now: his face ashen and drawn. They’d been in trouble before, they’d been challenged before, but this looked like something Finn had not truly seen. This looked like defeat.

  To his other side, the Twelve were still in consultation with their assistants. Finn could see that their focus was on one in particular: the bald assistant with the battered red briefcase still handcuffed to his arm.

  “Something’s happening,” Finn said to Emmie.

  She didn’t seem to even hear him.

  “I think it’s a weapon,” he added as he edged a little closer to the huddle, trying to make out what they were saying. But they stopped talking and, instead, started to move away, two by two, from the scene.

  “What’s a weapon?” said Emmie flatly.

  “That briefcase,” said Finn.

  Emmie stared at him, blank-faced.

  As the Twelve filtered away, Finn looked to where his parents sat. He didn’t want to cause trouble where there was none, especially not after everything that had happened. But something was going on, and he needed to know what it was.

  “I know you don’t want to move right now, Emmie,” he said. “But we really have to. Please. Look, I don’t know where your dad is, but I don’t think he’s gone altogether. I think he’s out there somewhere, in some way I can’t explain, but what happened to him nearly happened to me, so you have to believe me when I say I just know it. So, we need to know what the Twelve are planning. It could help find your father.” Finn didn’t know if this was true. But he felt it was. That would have to do.

  Still half stunned, Emmie nodded, slowly got up from the kerb and together they followed the Twelve and their assistants. Finn led the way, crouching low while having to practically drag Emmie through the streets after the elders, pushing her into corners when he thought they might be spotted, pulling her along when it was time to move again. Her body was there, but her mind was stuck somewhere else entirely.

  They trailed the group through the streets until they reached their destination, the hotel.

  They waited until they had all gone inside, then followed, seeing the last of the lurid robes disappearing into the hotel’s function room. They crept to the door, which was open just enough for them to slide in through. On hands and knees, they hid behind a row of stacked chairs, rusty from years without use.

  They peeked through gaps in the chairs, seeing the Twelve settle around the dark wooden dance floor, their assistants helping them, pulling up seats. All the while, Estravon waited, with clipboard in one hand and a thin screen in the other.

  Aurora the Third was the first to speak. “Things are happening here in Darkmouth.”

  Estravon held up the screen. Finn could see some kind of bright graphics on it, and a string of numbers.

  “Almost as soon as we arrived,” he said, “I began tracking background energy levels to try and see what is really going on here. Three years’ studying Crystal Dynamics, you see. I know a lot about it, as it happens. Though, to be honest, I don’t know what’s happening here exactly. But what I have found is that every time there is an attack, these energy readings spike. Coronium readings crucially. The very substance that opens gateways from the Infested Side into here. The same substance that I myself discovered growing in the cave in Darkmouth.”

  A murmur broke out between all the Twelve, and Estravon waited patiently for them to quieten again. Finn had to restrain himself from protesting Estravon’s claim. Finn and Emmie had found that cave and the crystals all those months ago. In fact, Estravon had tried to stop them.

  “Where is the Coronium coming from?” asked Aurora.

  “That I don’t know yet. But it seems that Mr Glad, if it is him, almost swims through this energy, that he requires the right conditions to be able to appear here and strike.”

  The hum of talk broke out again.

  Finn kept his head down, pressed his eye to the gap in the chairs. Emmie couldn’t help but listen too.

  “There is one other thing,” said Estravon, raising his voice to cut through the chatter. “The Coronium energy readings have dropped after each attack, but not as low as they had been before.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Cedric.

  “That next time he will come back sooner. Much sooner.” Estravon held up the screen, with a graph rising, falling, a little like a heart rate. But it was moving steadily upwards towards a red line. Beside it was an electronic timer, counting down. “Eight hours twenty-seven minutes,” he said. The minute ticked down. “Eight hours twenty-six minutes actually.”

  Again, the room broke into discussion.

  “And, after that, I calculate he’ll be able to come back again after only six hours,” said Estravon. “Around about midnight tonight. He said ‘tick, tock’ to Finn. The clock is indeed ticking.”

  Cedric stood and calmed them with a coughing fit, while he held a hand aloft. He sat again as he asked the important question.

  “Until what?”

  Aurora turned to him. “We have had a III, a II and now a I. At least one countdown is over. I think we can safely assume that whatever happens next will be bad.”

  “A bigger attack?” wondered Cedric. “To disrupt the ceremony perhaps? The man has a grudge against Hugo and his family. He must especially want to kill young Finn.”

  More murmuring.

  Finn swallowed.

  But he thought back to when Mr Glad had tried to trap him between worlds, tried to hold on to the dream that was slipping from him with every moment.

  It hadn’t felt like death. It had felt like something bigger. Like Mr Glad was gathering his victims. Preparing. Finn didn’t know what for, but it had left him sure that when Mr Glad returned he would not be alone.

  “I recommend we all set our alarms for eight hours and … twenty-five minutes,” said Estravon. “That is when he’ll be back.”

  Many of the people in the room fiddled with their watches an
d phones, setting timers. Finn set the alarm on his own digital watch too.

  “This is getting out of control,” one of the Twelve said, twitching in his leopard-skin robe.

  “We cannot wait any longer,” said another, draped in bottle green with leather cuffs.

  Lazlo the Second stood, one long finger poking through his droopy black sleeve. “There is a saying in my Blighted Village. If the sun does not rise tomorrow, you should not wait for the mushrooms to grow legs.”

  That silenced everyone for a few seconds.

  “You do have to wonder,” said Aurora, scratching the scar that ran across her face. “If it’s not rogue gateways, then it’s crystals in caves. And if it’s not that it’s traitors and Minotaurs. Darkmouth is supposed to be under Hugo’s control, but I don’t see it under any kind of control.”

  Finn and Emmie silently shared a worried glance.

  “Weapon,” snorted Stumm the Eleventh without opening his eyes.

  Aurora turned to him. “Is it too soon, though? We don’t know what we’re facing, let alone how to face it.”

  Finn realised for the first time that he couldn’t see the assistant who carried the battered red briefcase everywhere.

  “We cannot,” said Cedric, coughing while looking for a hanky.

  “It would be unprecedented,” admitted Aurora.

  “It would result in certain death,” said Cedric, taking a handkerchief proffered by an assistant and spluttering into it.

  At the word ‘death’, Finn and Emmie looked at each other again, still as puzzled but far more concerned now.

  “When we open that briefcase, it must be in the most desperate of circumstances possible,” continued Aurora. “This is the weapon of absolute last resort.”

  She let those words settle. Through the chairs, Finn watched, wondering what would happen next. Curious to know what this weapon was. Worried he might find out.

  Aurora looked around. “But these are desperate circumstances.”

  The eleven members of the Twelve looked at each other solemnly. Behind them, assistants whispered to each other, exchanged glances. Watching from the other side of the chairs, Finn could see the worry in those looks.