Darkmouth

by Shane Hegarty

  Finn’s father paused at the door, crouching down to pick through a box. “I love this shop,” he said as he stood up with what looked like a dusty old computer game in his hands. “You don’t get their sort anymore.”

  “I wonder why,” said Finn with as much sarcasm as possible in case it wasn’t obvious enough.

  “You’ll be surprised what you can find if you know where to look,” his dad replied, a touch of glee in his voice. He tossed the game at Finn. “Come on. It’s about time you were properly introduced to my old friend.”

  Finn felt a flash of excitement as he followed his dad. He had never before crossed the threshold—instead, his memories were all of sitting on the sidewalk outside, or playing along the lane, barely seen silhouettes shuffling around inside. His father greeting another man, a mumbled discussion, the occasional glance toward Finn before they disappeared.

  Now, finally inside, his excitement turned to disappointment. He could see the place was as messy as the exterior had promised it would be. Wire hoops hung from the walls, disembodied screens dangled from the ceiling, and towers of dusty DVD players teetered on the floor.

  “What do you want for one of those old Space Invaders games?” Finn’s dad called out.

  “Some bread would be nice,” came the reply. A man appeared behind a counter. Finn hadn’t noticed him amid the clutter. He hadn’t even noticed the counter.

  “Business that bad, old man?” continued Finn’s father.

  The shopkeeper grunted. He looked as worn out as the electronics scattered around the place. His dark, unkempt hair hung like black spaghetti past his ears, his suit was frayed at the edges, and his fingers were the yellow of old newspapers.

  “Well, I might have something interesting for you, Glad,” said Finn’s dad, gently placing the diamond on the countertop.

  Mr. Glad didn’t acknowledge it, but instead fixed his glare on Finn.

  “Your boy has grown, Hugo. I haven’t seen him since he was small, waiting on that step outside. Well, since he was smaller, that is. Let me have a look at him.”

  Stretching out both hands, he grabbed Finn by the back of the skull. Startled, Finn wasn’t sure if he was under threat, but he wasn’t in a position to wriggle free anyway. Mr. Glad turned Finn’s head one way, then the other, examining him like a vet might search a dog for fleas.

  “Will he be Complete?” he asked as if Finn didn’t have a voice of his own.

  Finn’s father pushed up his lower lip in an attempt to exude confidence.

  “Three successful hunts done yet?”

  Finn’s dad waggled a hand in a not-quite-there gesture.

  Mr. Glad kept hold of Finn for a few more seconds. Under his grip, Finn thought his head might crack open like an egg, letting his brain ooze out. It would be a welcome release.

  “He’ll have to do, I suppose.” Mr. Glad snorted in a way that didn’t convey much satisfaction, then released Finn, who rubbed the back of his skull, where a bruise was already blooming.

  “Now what’s this you have for me?” asked Mr. Glad, picking up the object and examining it.

  “I’m not sure,” said Finn’s dad. “But it looks like a diamond. A Hogboon came through a gate a short while ago and left it behind.”

  “Where’s this Hogboon now?”

  “In the car, doing a good impression of a stone.”

  “And did he say anything?”

  “He didn’t get the chance.”

  “He’s some man, your father,” said Mr. Glad, addressing Finn. “I’ve known him since we were boys. And your mother too. We all grew up in this godforsaken town. He went his way, I went mine.”

  Finn hid his surprise that his parents and Mr. Glad were the same age. Time had treated them quite differently.

  “Your father did some extraordinary things, even when we were young,” said Mr. Glad. “Has he told you about the day he fought—?”

  “Yes,” said Finn wearily, because he had heard the same stories over and over.

  “And the time he invented—?”

  “That too.”

  “Well then, we’re in agreement.” Mr. Glad turned and passed through a curtain of beads behind him.

  Before following, Finn’s father stopped and bent down to Finn. “You want to know what those ‘specialties’ are? You’re about to find out.”

  He pushed aside the beads, beckoning Finn through. In the back room, much to Finn’s surprise, there was . . . order.

  It was not necessarily neat, nor was it any brighter or more cheerful than the shop, yet as Finn looked closer he began to see a strong semblance of organization. The floor could be seen and actually walked on without fear of tripping over a fossilized tape recorder. There was even a bed, roughly made, in the corner.

  But it was the equipment that most caught Finn’s attention.

  One wall was lined with shields of various sizes, some with spikes arranged round the rim or protruding from the middle. On another hung parts of armor—a breastplate, a pair of iron trousers, and a steel cup that Finn knew was particularly important for protecting the vital bits of male Legend Hunters. On the shelves were a variety of objects, including triggers, handles, tubes, small boxes with fat wires, and fat boxes with small wires.

  Specialties, thought Finn.

  His attention was caught by what looked like a long fork, with two prongs and a smaller blade jutting between them. Mr. Glad seemed to notice his interest and handed it to him for a closer look.

  “It’s a Tooth Extractor,” he said. “If you get bitten by a Legend, you don’t want to leave any stray teeth in there. Poison, you see. It’ll gradually worm its way into your skin and seep deep into the tissue. Then it’ll turn rotten and eat away at your flesh so that you’re left in terrible agony for hours, or days, unless . . .” Mr. Glad leaned in to Finn. “Schlupp! You pop it out with one of these. It’s a proper relief when you do. Trust me.”

  He tucked his hair behind his right ear. Finn could just make out the edges of a scar on his temple. It was deep and circular, with two small punctures on either side. He looked at the prongs of the Tooth Extractor, then back at the scar.

  Mr. Glad let his hair fall back over his ear and moved away.

  Finn glanced at his father and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

  “Mr. Glad is what is known as a Fixer,” said his dad.

  “What do you fix?” Finn asked.

  “Whatever it is you need,” answered Mr. Glad conspiratorially.

  “Mr. Glad has been a Fixer for a long time, Finn,” said his father. “He’s one of the best.”

  “And one of the last,” interjected Mr. Glad, sitting down on a rusted seat at a large desk by the wall. “Civilians can’t become Legend Hunters, but some of us have found other ways to become useful. Traveling to the Blighted Villages, making weapons, fixing equipment, sourcing materials. It’s not what you’d call an official role. The Twelve like to keep us hidden, as you can see.” He gestured at his surroundings.

  Finn stared at Mr. Glad, trying to figure out how to react. He felt his dad watching him, waiting for his reaction, willing it to be positive. “Interesting,” said Finn because he reckoned he should say something.

  Mr. Glad opened a wooden drawer and lifted out a brass microscope. He placed it on his desk and opened a cap on its lens before giving it a once-over. “I used to move around a bit. It was the best of times, it was the bloodiest of times, and all that,” he said. “Soon neither of us might be needed by anyone. Unless you plan to keep us in business.”

  He paused for a moment, before slapping his knees in an unexpectedly cheery gesture. “But such is the small price of a great victory! Now let’s take a look at this diamond, or whatever it might be, before we get chewed up by nostalgia.”

  Mr. Glad placed an edge of the crystal just below the lens. The only sound was the rattle of his breath as he examined it.

  “Well, it’s not a diamond, I can tell you that right away,” he announced, sitting back an
d inviting Finn’s father to have a look. “I don’t believe that diamonds dance like that, do you?”

  17

  Finn’s father squinted into the lens and then beckoned Finn over so that he too could peer in. Deep within the crystal, Finn could see strands of a pure white light dashing gracefully across the lens. It was quite beautiful.

  “I don’t know for sure what it is, but it’s new to Darkmouth,” said Mr. Glad.

  “New?” said Hugo as if the word tasted bad. “When it comes to Legends, new is never good.”

  “Never. Most of the time,” said Mr. Glad.

  Finn looked down at his feet, thinking about the first crystal he had found, the one that was currently tucked away in his underpants drawer.

  “Is this the only one that’s come through, Hugo?” Mr. Glad asked as Finn’s father took another look.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?” Mr. Glad was looking at Finn, who felt a flush of guilt. Mr. Glad’s eyes were like a microscope on his conscience.

  “Yes,” Finn answered, trying not to let his voice squeak in betrayal.

  “Well then,” Mr. Glad said, slowly breaking eye contact with Finn, “I’ll hold on to it, if that’s okay with you, Hugo, and run a few tests.”

  “Fine with me,” Finn’s dad answered, his fist pressed into his chin as he thought through this unwelcome twist in what should have been a standard hunt. “There was something else too. Another gateway.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mr. Glad.

  “A second gateway while we were dealing with the Hogboon. It was just a small one, judging by the scanner, and wasn’t open for more than a few seconds. No Legend could have come through.”

  Mr. Glad rubbed the wisp of his beard with the back of his hand. “They might have been trying to get in another way, but something went wrong. We haven’t seen too much of that recently, but it isn’t unheard of for more than one gateway to open at the same time. Remember that plague year we had?”

  “Of course. I’m still getting the stains out of my fighting suit,” said Hugo. “But it’s been years since that kind of thing happened in Darkmouth.”

  A hush fell over the room, broken only by the clang of swaying implements hanging in the shop out front.

  “Oh, one other thing, Glad,” said Finn’s father, seeming to suddenly remember something of importance. “There are a few bits and pieces I need to get from you for a project I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. Finn, you have a look around. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Finn wandered the room while his father and Mr. Glad got on with their business. He pretended not to be interested in what they were talking about, but kept an ear on the conversation. Unfortunately, he could only hear snatches.

  “. . . progress . . . ,” he heard his father say.

  “. . . energy source . . . ,” he heard Mr. Glad say.

  “. . . close it permanently . . .”

  “. . . highly dangerous . . .”

  “. . . donkey cabbages . . .”

  Finn wondered if he might have misheard that last one.

  He continued to explore the room. In the corner were a couple of long spears that he recognized from the more faded paintings in the Long Hall at home. At the foot of the wall, peeking out from behind the spears, Finn noticed a framed wooden certificate on which he could only make out the words “of the Hidden Realm.”

  Finn ran his hands over a long countertop that was busy with objects he didn’t recognize. He picked up a green metallic one shaped like an egg and gave it a bit of a shake.

  “Look but don’t touch,” cautioned Mr. Glad, suddenly appearing beside him and grabbing the object from Finn’s hand. “You don’t want to leave here with fewer fingers than you arrived with, and I don’t want to have to clean up the mess after you. This is called a Fingerless Grenade.”

  He gave it a squeeze and rows of small, jagged blades popped out of either end, one of them pushing a pin out of the top. “It’s called that because you’re the one who ends up fingerless if you hold it wrong. Give that about ten seconds and it will explode too.” He pushed the pin back in before it did. “Maybe your parents will get you one for Christmas. How is your mother anyway?”

  “Clara’s fine, thanks for asking,” interrupted Finn’s dad.

  “We go way back too, young man,” Mr. Glad told Finn, then winked. “Further back than your father.”

  Finn wanted to go home now.

  They left, with Finn’s father holding a couple of machine parts. He threw them in the back of the car alongside the desiccated Legend.

  “Shouldn’t we just ask the Hogboon what the diamond is for?” asked Finn.

  “It’s not a diamond and he’s not to be trusted.”

  Finn felt jittery. The Hogboon’s apparent recognition of him still nagged, but he also felt a growing sense of obligation to tell his father that there was another crystal—presumably with the same curious properties as the Hogboon’s—currently sitting in his bedroom.

  “What do you think of Mr. Glad?” his father asked him as they drove home.

  Finn grimaced. “I think I’ll be feeling his thick fingers on the back of my head for another week.”

  “He’s a good man, something of a legend in his own right. Did you see that plaque in his room? That’s the Honorary Sub-Knight of the Hidden Realm, the highest honor a civilian can be given by the Council of Twelve. He didn’t get that for a lifelong dedication to fixing Legend Hunters’ toasters. He earned it, just like he earned that scar.”

  They pulled onto their street as his father continued.

  “When you need something, he always has it or knows how to get it. And you’ll always need something, Finn.”

  The car approached their house and, as they got closer, they both saw the writing at the same time. There had been visitors while they were out. And they’d delivered a message.

  Finn’s dad slowed the car and slid down its window so they could examine it.

  On the wall directly across the road from their front door, under the orange illumination of the streetlight, was a line of six-foot-high graffiti. It was fresh enough that its letters still dripped slowly down the concrete. It read:

  They got out of the car and stood in front of the house, hands on hips. Finn saw that his father’s gaze wasn’t on the graffiti, but somewhere above the wall and beyond.

  “Finn, do you ever get the feeling . . . ?”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he took the Desiccator canister and his newly acquired spare parts into the house, then returned with a can of white paint and two brushes. He handed one to Finn, and they got to work covering over the graffiti.

  From A Concise Guide to the

  Legend Hunter World, vol. 3:

  Blighted Villages, Known and

  Unknown, 16th Edition

  There are many theories as to why the gateways between the Infested Side and this world have become so rare.

  Some believe that the Legends grew weary of failed attempts at invasion and withdrew into their own world to contemplate the error of their ways and acknowledge the clear superiority of humans such as the Legend Hunter clan of Cemitério, Brazil. This theory is somewhat undermined by being solely the work of the Legend Hunter clan of Cemitério, Brazil.

  Another idea is that the atmosphere between worlds has thickened to such an extent that it can no longer be penetrated. Suggested reasons for this include industrial pollution, global warming, the proliferation of mobile-phone radiation, volcanic eruptions in Iceland, and methane released by the, as it were, “emissions” of cows.

  Evidence gleaned through interrogation of the decreasing number of invaders informs us that the Legends’ ability to break through the wall between our worlds has diminished in recent years for reasons even they do not fully understand. It should be noted, however, that there is some doubt about the veracity of such revelations, as transcripts show these to be punctuated by such sentiments as “Please, not the stabbing device again!”<
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  18

  Finn woke, blinking against the sunlight that pierced a gap in his bedroom curtains and fell directly on his eyes. From way down in the house, he could hear drilling again. Skreeeump. A pulse. Then another. Then quiet.

  Sticking his feet into a pair of oversize slippers shaped like grizzly bears, he shuffled downstairs, meeting his mother on her way out to her Saturday-morning dental clinic.

  “Good morning, Mam,” he said, stifling a yawn.

  “I wish it was, Finn,” she said. “I’m tired, and that racket your dad’s making woke me early. Thankfully, a busy morning of staring into people’s rotting dental cavities will be just the thing to perk me up.”

  She grabbed her keys and left. A moment later, the doorbell rang. “What did you forget, Mam?” Finn asked as he opened the door.

  “Nice slippers,” said Emmie. “Did you kill those in a hunt?”

  Finn half hid behind the door, while Emmie waited outside, jumping around to keep warm in the crisp morning. Eventually, she gave him a look that said, “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  He let her in. Then he darted upstairs to get some proper clothes on. He reopened his bedroom door to find her standing right outside it.

  “What’s your bedroom like, Finn?” she asked, walking straight past him to have a look for herself. “Whoa, I thought my bedroom was messy.”

  She spotted the goldfish and gave its glass a tap. “What’s his name?”

  “Bubbles,” Finn answered. “I was younger when I got him,” he added in response to Emmie’s giggle.

  “What are you reading? Is this The Most Great Lives?” Needing two hands, she picked up the large book, only for the other, smaller book hidden inside to fall from between its pages.