Darkmouth

by Shane Hegarty

  “Hugo, you need to listen to him,” said Finn’s mother. “And it’s time you told him a few truths too.”

  “Right, Finn,” his dad continued. “Here’s a truth. Just before I become the first member of this family to join the Twelve, you want me to go to the Council and tell them that my Fixer—a man they gave their highest honor to—is conspiring with the Infested Side.”

  “I’m only telling you what I saw, Dad.”

  “Maybe I’ll make some jokes about their personal hygiene while I’m at it.”

  “It was Mr. Glad who attacked me,” said Finn. “I know it.”

  “When you know something, it’s because I tell you. And here’s today’s lesson: the Infested Side will freeze over before I accept that my oldest friend is a traitor.”

  Finn’s father was breathing angrily through his nostrils, his chest rising and falling. His phone buzzed, sliding a few inches across the table, and he picked it up and read a message. As he did, his left eye twitched.

  He looked at Clara.

  “What does it say?” she asked.

  He handed her the phone, got up, and left the room.

  Finn stood up to lean over his mother’s shoulder and read the short message.

  PRIORITY EXECUTE ORDER 23b PARAGRAPH 5. SUBJECT: GLAD.

  “What does that mean, Mam?”

  “I’m not positive,” she said slowly, “but I have a feeling it means your dad needs to start listening to someone other than himself.”

  41

  Finn’s father poked his head around the kitchen door again, a stony expression on his face. “Follow me.”

  Finn dragged himself away from the table and trailed his father through the Long Hall, figuring they were heading to the library. But his dad stopped short in front of the portrait of Gerald the Disappointed.

  “That wasn’t his original Hunter name,” said his father. “Do you know what it was?”

  Finn shook his head.

  “Gerald the Fierce. And do you know why they changed it?”

  “No.”

  “Because of me. When he sat for this portrait, he was supposed to be finished as a Legend Hunter. He was supposed to be tending to those bonsai trees, whittling axes, and generally enjoying his hobbies. He was supposed to be free from the day-after-day, hour-after-hour, minute-by-minute responsibility of keeping Darkmouth safe.”

  His father angrily opened the door to a narrow room opposite and from within it grabbed a fighting suit. Sliding into it, he snapped shut clasps around his legs and shoulders. “Instead, while that portrait was being painted, he had a child running around his office. Me. And he wasn’t free because of the man next to him. His son. My father. Niall Blacktongue.”

  Finn peered at Niall Blacktongue’s portrait. The Legend Hunter looked nervous, as if he was afraid to meet the eye of the viewer. He seemed more interested in the bits and pieces scattered around him.

  “If you want to do things differently, Finn, then go ahead,” snapped his father. “Try it. But you’ll end up like my father, abandoning everything you’re supposed to protect. And I’ll end up like Gerald, picking up the pieces.”

  Finn examined his grandfather’s face. He thought he saw something new in those eyes. A clarity of purpose suggesting itself through the meekness Finn had always seen.

  “If you don’t tell me what he did, how can I avoid whatever mistakes he made?”

  His father sighed deeply before lifting his helmet, pushing through the door into the library, and grabbing a Desiccator. Then he made straight for the hidden way through the shelves. Finn followed him, emerging onto the street to find Steve, in a fighting suit, leaning casually against his van.

  “You got the order from the Twelve then?” asked Emmie’s father.

  “I guessed that was your doing,” said Hugo.

  “I saw what happened at the harbor. I tracked that gateway and watched from the van. I had to report it to the Twelve.”

  “The fog there was thicker than your skull. You can’t have seen much.”

  “Mr. Glad was first on the scene, but I didn’t see him approach, only leave. He must have gotten there before any of us. When you said there had been a human at the gateway, I didn’t add it up at first. But then I figured it out: it had to be him. And we have to arrest him.”

  Finn finally realized what was going on, understood that he was right in his suspicions.

  “Maybe. But did you tell the Twelve that we saw you leave that scene too?” asked his father.

  “The problem here, Hugo, is that you can only see what you want to,” responded Steve.

  “I already told you, this is my town.”

  “And this is your mess.”

  “The Twelve gave me this order—I don’t need an apprentice getting in my way,” said Hugo.

  “But you do need that place on the Twelve. You can leave me behind, but I don’t think you’ll abandon that chance.”

  “Wait here, Finn,” said his father. Then he jumped in his car and pulled out quickly. When Steve ran to his van and tore away in pursuit, Finn saw Emmie standing on the sidewalk in the twilight.

  “Oh great,” groaned Finn.

  “My dad told me to stay here while he gets Mr. Glad,” she said contritely. “He even brought a Desiccator this time, so it must be serious.”

  This surprised Finn. His dad had left with a Desiccator too, but he hadn’t expected it to be used on a human. Emmie and Finn listened to the distant grunt of the vehicles on their way to Mr. Glad’s. A question burned in Finn’s mind.

  “Emmie, why do you think the Council wanted you to watch me?”

  “I told you,” said Emmie. “I don’t know. They’re concerned about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Finn rubbed his face, tried to wipe the frustration away. “You said there was a prophecy.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “You won’t tell me, you mean,” said Finn.

  “No, honestly, I don’t know,” insisted Emmie. “I was just asked to hang out with you, to get inside your house, to tell Dad what was going on with you.”

  “You’re just another person who won’t tell me what I have a right to know. Even the Legends seem to know something about me that no one else will talk about.”

  “Then why don’t you ask one of them?” said Emmie.

  “One of who?”

  “The Legends.”

  “Yeah, sure, just wait for a portal to open and—”

  “You don’t need to wait for that,” said Emmie.

  It took him a few seconds to catch on to what she was getting at.

  “Er, the library?” she said slowly, as if he was an idiot.

  Which, he realized, he was.

  42

  Finn stood in the center of the library knowing two things: he shouldn’t be doing this; and Emmie certainly shouldn’t be anywhere near him while he was doing it.

  It was a simple matter really. The Reanimator was still propped up against the library wall. The Hogboon was in his jar, at the front of a low shelf.

  “I wanted to tell you we were here to spy on you,” Emmie was saying now. “I just couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed. I would have gotten into awful trouble.”

  Finn grabbed what he needed while she blabbered.

  “But I really enjoyed hanging out with you,” she continued. “Really. I hated lying to you. Although I didn’t lie, I just never told you the truth.”

  “I’m fine on my own,” said Finn.

  “I thought you might want my help here, with the Rean—”

  “I don’t just mean right now.”

  “Oh.”

  Even as he fought to keep his distance from Emmie, he felt an infectious creep of bravado. What he was doing went against everything his father would want him to do, but it felt like the only thing he could do.

  “I think I can remember enough about how my dad reanimated the Legend,” he said, still refusing to make eye
contact with Emmie. “You grab that Desiccator and shoot if there are any problems.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .”

  “Just do whatever you’ve done in training.” He started to move about, grabbing what he needed.

  “I . . . ,” said Emmie hesitantly. “I haven’t trained that way.”

  “Really?”

  “My dad’s quite protective. I mean, I train, but he won’t let me use a Desiccator yet. He did let me hold one once, but that was it. He said it might take my eye out.”

  Finn allowed a sense of superiority to warm his mood. This night was getting a little better already.

  A weak light came from Mr. Glad’s shop, leaking in through a darkening alley, throwing Hugo and Steve’s shadows against the wall they crouched by.

  “We’ll go around the back,” whispered Steve, visor raised, Desiccator propped on his shoulder.

  “We’ll go in the front,” said Hugo, standing up and moving on ahead.

  They stood on either side of the doorway. Baskets of electrical bric-a-brac were piled at the shop front, ready for another day of waiting for customers who would never come.

  “You still don’t believe he would betray us, do you, Hugo?”

  “He has nothing to gain.”

  “Looking at the state of this place, it looks to me like he has nothing much to lose,” said Steve.

  Hugo raised his Desiccator to his shoulder. “There will be no need to shoot, so don’t do anything stupid. Now let’s get this over with.”

  From his belt, Hugo fished out a small cigar-shaped object, jammed it into the keyhole, and pressed the top. There was the muffled crack of a splintering lock. The door eased open.

  “Drag that cage over here,” Finn told Emmie.

  She had finally stopped talking and, as Finn placed the sphere of desiccated Hogboon on the floor of the cage, he caught her watching him, knowing she wasn’t just curious but impressed by his apparent expertise. He put on his most convincing look of confidence, all the while willing himself not to screw it up.

  Finn took hold of the Reanimator and repeated the moves he had seen his father make, pushing up the switch with his thumb and waiting as its high whine gave way to a tick of readiness. Then he placed its tip on the shriveled Hogboon. “You might want to stand back,” he told Emmie.

  The desiccated ball glowed, then cooled, hopped, and twitched, until the return of the Legend was announced with a scream that might have been heard in every Blighted Village on the continent.

  The low, soft light in the shop threw shadows against the wall, the silhouettes of old brass kettles and bunches of plastic pipes hanging from the ceiling that clanged a little as the two men crept by. Hugo stopped to find a switch on his helmet that turned on the built-in night vision, sending his world flaring into shades of granulated green. Steve walked into the back of him.

  “Why don’t you just ring the doorbell?” hissed Hugo.

  “And why don’t you give him a call if you believe he has no reason to hide?” was Steve’s whispered reply.

  They moved on through the shop, stepping over boxes and barrels, picking their way through the gap in the countertop and toward the rear room, hidden behind the gentle sway of hanging beads. They waited on either side of the door. Squinting through the quarter-light, Steve thought he could see a figure on a chair by the far wall. Through his night vision, Hugo could see the definite silhouette of a person, unmoving, slumped forward a little under a wide-brimmed hat.

  Steve placed a hand in the beads to move inside. Hugo gripped his wrist, holding him back, then slid ahead through the curtain. He crept toward the figure in the chair silently. Reaching it, he slowly bent down and peered into its face for a second until he was sure of what he was seeing.

  He turned off his night vision and lifted his visor. “It’s just a mannequin,” he said.

  “A decoy?”

  Hugo listened, but heard nothing in the building save for the thoughts whirring through his head and the crumbling of his certainty. He walked to the bed and prodded it, knowing that Mr. Glad wasn’t there. He turned on a lamp, bringing soft light to the room.

  “Not exactly penthouse luxury, although he’s got some nice gear here,” said Steve. “Does he have any other hideouts?”

  Hugo shook his head, thinking it through, staring at one of Mr. Glad’s Fingerless Grenades that was sitting on the floor.

  “I’ll have to grab a few things from here,” Steve said, moving slowly across the room toward the mannequin. “Once we’ve found him and desiccated him, of course. Maybe our plastic friend here will tell us something.”

  Hugo saw the line of wire running from one grenade that was nestled close to another, and onto another, until the wire ended, tied to the mannequin’s big toe.

  “Don’t move that!”

  But Steve had already spun the mannequin round, yanking on the wire. Blades sprang from the closest grenade, pushing out a pin and triggering the blades on the next grenade, and the next, in a cascade running halfway around the room.

  Tick, went the grenades. Tick.

  43

  “Stop doing that!” screamed Broonie, before collapsing to the floor.

  Fifty-three seemingly endless seconds later, Broonie’s intolerable tsunami of pain had receded into an almost bearable buzz of pins and needles through his small gnarled body. Some energy had seeped back into him, from the knotted knuckles of his toes to the drooping ends of his ears, and he had returned to a healthier, greener pallor.

  Nevertheless, he steeled himself for disaster at any moment. This trip to the Promised World had not exactly gone well so far. Any journey that begins with having your finger cut off is never bound to be much of a vacation. But the way these humans kept destroying and remaking his body over and over made even the Fomorians look softer than the mud that pooled outside his hovel back home.

  He really missed his hovel right now.

  When he looked up again, the boy was pointing a weapon at him nervously.

  “That was brilliant!” squealed the girl. “Let’s shrink him and do it again.”

  “No, please,” Broonie begged. “It feels like someone’s pulled my brain out through my backside and then stuffed it in again.”

  Then Broonie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Where are the others? The adults?”

  “Where does it hurt exactly?” asked the boy. “I’ve read a bit about animals, you know, medical stuff. I might be able to help.”

  “Animals!” Broonie said, horribly insulted. “I am not an animal. You’re the animals. If you think I look strange, you should know you don’t look too good yourselves, with your tiny ears, square teeth, strange-colored skin, and those pathetic little nostrils. You’d never find a mate with a nose that small.”

  “He’s so cute,” said the girl. “I wonder if he’s met any Gorgons.”

  “Excuse me?” said Broonie.

  “Or a Cyclops. Or any giants really. I’d love to meet one of those.”

  “I’m sure one could find space in its stomach if you really want to meet one that badly,” said Broonie.

  “Sorry about the whole shriveling-you-and-blowing-you-up-again thing,” said the boy, with a politeness that surprised Broonie. He’d been expecting to be hanging by his guts from a hook by now. That’s the kind of thing he’d been told humans did. Apologizing wasn’t supposed to be in their character.

  The boy continued talking. “My name is Finn. I live here. Her name is Emmie and you’re better off ignoring her. Do you have a name?”

  “Do I have a name? Honestly. What do you take me for?” The young humans kept staring at him until he gave in. “Brooniathon Elgin Astrophor Fleriphus.” He registered their blank faces. “Broonie.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Broonie,” said Finn. “I just need to know what you meant, when you spoke to me.”

  “What I . . . what I meant?”

  “You said something to me. The other day. Just before . . .”

  The other
day? How long had it been since they had last conducted their magic on him? Evidently even longer than it had felt. Still, Broonie had to think back to that moment, to recall just what it was he had uttered. Then it all came back to him.

  “I’m not sure,” he lied. “Maybe it was important. Maybe it wasn’t. I’m finding it hard to remember.”

  “Oh, he’s adorable,” squealed Emmie. “A real Legend! You should keep him as a pet, Finn.”

  Broonie’s eyes widened in disgust.

  “But you said something to me,” Finn pleaded. “I heard you.”

  “Did I? I don’t know. It’s hard to think clearly in this cage. So claustrophobic.” He crouched, hands over his head. “Maybe I could breathe a little better if you let me out of here.”

  “No,” said the boy.

  “Then send me back into that half death. If you cannot let me out, then I am of no use to you.”

  Finn hesitated, then moved forward, pulling a key from his pocket. “If you promise you won’t do anything dangerous, then I will let you out. But only if you tell me what I need to know.”

  Broonie peeked out from behind his remaining fingers. He pitied these ugly humans with their ridiculous hairless ears.

  “I promise,” he said.

  44

  Finn opened the cage. The Legend that called itself Broonie stepped out and stood to its full height, which was still well short of Finn’s.

  “So?” enquired Finn.

  “I’m thirsty,” said the Hogboon.

  There was a bottle of water on the desk and Finn motioned for Emmie to grab it. She handed it to Broonie.

  He guzzled so that it ran down his cheeks and chin. “Extraordinary. I’ve never tasted anything like it,” he gasped. “How did you get the taste of carcasses out of this water?”

  “So?” Finn repeated, ignoring Broonie’s question.

  “So?”

  “What did you mean earlier?”

  “Oh yes, I’m having difficulty recalling it,” said Broonie. “That shrinking device must have scrambled me a bit.”

  Emmie jerked forward. “You promised him! He let you out and you said you’d talk.”