Worlds Explode

As he turned and stumbled back into the building, Clara crouched down and picked up one of the raw chips. “It didn’t occur to you that maybe Hugo had just doodled a map to the nearest takeaway on a beer mat?”

“But our files say Hugo doesn’t drink alcohol,” said Steve.

“No, but he eats food,” she said sternly. “Especially fish and chips. He loves fish and chips.”

Steve and Finn both slumped, almost simultaneously. Steve rubbed his eyes with his gloved hand. Finn hung his head and sagged against the wall. Emmie hovered, toeing the ground. Clara stood between them all, arms folded, head tilted back towards the orange sky.

“I’m sorry, Mam,” said Finn.

“It’s not you who should be sorry,” she said. “Steve’s supposed to be the grown-up here. Honestly. We need to find whatever Hugo wanted us to, but this carry-on has to stop.”

“You don’t think I’d rather be anywhere else but in this place, sorting out your mess?” said Steve.

“No, I don’t. A Blighted Village of your own? It’s clearly your dream come true.”

“I’m getting out of here at the first opportunity,” insisted Steve. “It’s pretty much all I talk about at this stage. Even Finn will confirm that.”

“I …” hesitated Finn.

“You don’t need to say anything, Finn,” said Clara.

“Tell her, Finn.”

“Ignore him, Finn.”

“I …” stuttered Finn.

“Ahem,” said a strange voice.

A young man stood at the entrance to the laneway. So tall and lanky that he seemed almost to stoop in case his head bumped the sky, he was dressed in a shiny grey business suit, a crisp pink shirt and a lime-green tie that knotted tightly at his neck. A briefcase sat on the ground beside him.

Everyone looked at him and, after a few seconds, the man seemed to finally remember why he was there. “Ah yes, hello there. My name is Estravon Oakbound, Assessor to the Subcommittee on Lost Hunters, as appointed by the Council of Twelve. And, under section 41, clause 9 of the 1265 Act of Disappearance, I am here to assess and ultimately assist in the case of the missing Legend Hunter of Darkmouth, Hugo the Great.”

He held out a greasy, fat, brown paper bag. “Excuse my manners. Would anyone like a chip?”

Back across town, at the end of a nameless street lined with buildings whose doors had been unopened in decades, windows boarded up or black with grime, was Finn’s ordinary-looking house. An unassuming brick building, it was tucked in behind a low stone wall, a patch of grass and a flower bed into which daffodil stalks were slowly turning into mulch, a couple of weeks after being crushed under the foot of a very angry Minotaur.

On a sofa in the living room, the visitor loomed over Finn and the others even though he was sitting down, his suit jacket flapping loose from his bony frame, his knees rising higher than his waist.

Finn and Clara sat opposite him, separated by a low table on which her tea stood untouched and cold. Finn could see his mother’s mouth was pinched, as if she was trying to prevent rash words from escaping.

Behind them, Steve paced slowly and a little nervously. He hadn’t been given any tea and had arrived late, having been delayed persuading a stubborn Emmie that she couldn’t be part of this and would have to return to her house.

“Darkmouth’s a hard place to find,” said Estravon Oakbound, dipping a biscuit in his tea and failing to catch it as the damp half broke away and splashed into the cup. He fished it out with his fingers, gobbled it. “But I am so glad I made it here. This place is famous.”

He checked his wristwatch, licked his fingers clean of tea and crumbs, then reached into the briefcase by his feet and pulled out a clipboard and a pen. “It may be just case number 4526-dash-U, as far as the filing clerks back at Liechtenstein HQ are concerned, but to me it’s a privilege.”

Estravon looked up to see that his enthusiasm was not appreciated, so switched to a more sombre tone as he ran the tip of his pen down the page on his clipboard. “Let’s see. Let’s see. Ah yes, here we are. The map.”

He waited. Eventually, Clara responded.

“The map?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Estravon. “I believe you’ve been looking for it. As an Assessor, I work directly with the Council of Twelve to examine and, well, assess cases relating to Legend Hunters or their villages. That’s why I’m here.” He looked at his watch again. Finn noticed its hands were curved rather beautifully, like daggers. “For a precious few hours anyway.”

He sat forward, looking towards the window as if expecting someone to be eavesdropping, then spoke almost conspiratorially. “We could probably have done a lot of this over the phone, but it wouldn’t be the same at all. Now what did it smell like?”

Finn was baffled and silent until he realised the Assessor was talking to him. “Excuse me?” he said.

“The Minotaur that crossed over into Darkmouth. What did it smell like? Rotten, I’d imagine. I believe the local sergeant was lucky to survive the old …” He raised a finger in a stabbing motion while making a squelching noise. “Horrible big thing. The Minotaur, obviously, not the sergeant. And real. So very, very real …” The Assessor seemed briefly lost in a daydream. Finn, meanwhile, still felt suffocated by how Sergeant Doyle had been so badly injured two weeks ago because he’d come to help himself and Emmie.

“We need a rescue party,” interjected Steve.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Estravon.

“You’re the rescue party?” asked Clara.

“No.” He blurted a laugh, then became more serious. “But I’ll have a great say in what happens. And I think we can put a good case forward for some very positive action here.” He paused. “Do you know about the six hundred scorpions?” he added, turning to Finn.

“Scorpions?” said Finn.

“At your Completion Ceremony. Sorry, I shouldn’t be giving away any surprises. Let’s just hope it goes ahead now. The chance to become the first brand-new, true, active Legend Hunter in many years. Not a mere Half-Hunter like the rest of us. And then this happens. Shame. I’d already chosen my suit.”

The Assessor fingered his jacket, clearly hoping for a compliment. He seemed a little deflated when he didn’t get one.

“You were going to say something about the map,” prompted Clara.

“Ah yes.” He ran his pen down his list again. “The Infested Side. That’s one thing that wasn’t clear in the report.”

“I wrote everything down,” said Steve.

“And very detailed it was too, thanks, Steve. So, you were all there on the Infested Side …” He went into his daydream again. “I can’t even believe I’ve had a chance to say those words. So few have visited, never mind returned alive. I can think of only a couple, and Conrad Single-Limb’s name says everything about the condition he came back in. Of course, according to the prophecy, you will be going back there some time, Finn. But let’s not dwell on that.”

Queasiness hit Finn and he didn’t know if it was in his body or his mind. “You know about that?”

“Of course I know about that. Everyone knows about that. Any of us around the Twelve anyway. Didn’t you grow up hearing about it?”

Estravon noted the embarrassment creeping across Finn’s face and the displeasure on his mother’s. He guessed what they meant. “You really didn’t know?” he said.

“Not till recently,” said Finn.

“The Legends are rising, the boy shall fall,” recited Estravon. “Out of the dark mouth shall come the last child of the last Legend Hunter.”

“There’s no need to—” said Clara.

“He shall open end the war and open up the Promised Land. His death on the Infested Side will be greater than any other.”

“—hear it again,” she finished, irritation flushing through her cheeks.

“It’s nonsense anyway,” said Estravon, busying himself with his clipboard again. “Rubbish. Could mean anything. I wouldn’t worry about it. We don’t. Not at all.”

“You don’t?” said Finn in surprise.

“Well, more or less. Not too much. Only sometimes.” Estravon tailed off and, in the few heavy seconds of silence, Finn thought he could hear the dust falling through the air.

Finally, Estravon announced, “Anyway, to the matter at hand. How did your father get trapped on the Infested Side? It says in the report that you were the last to see him, Finn, that you were with him, and Steve and your mother came through the gateway ahead of you. Yet only your father was trapped. How?”

“He pushed me through.”

“He pushed you through?” Estravon made a note.

“And the gateway closed. Suddenly. Behind me.”

“Closed. Suddenly. Behind you.” Estravon was focused on the clipboard, writing every word down. “But he told you about the map?”

“Yes,” answered Finn as calmly as he could through a head swimming with guilt. “He shouted it at me.”

“We’ve been through all this,” said Clara. “Can we just get the help now?”

“Let me get this straight, Finn,” said Estravon, placing the pen across the clipboard and concentrating on Finn. “The gateway was closing as a swarm of Legends descended so your father pushed you through, shouting to you as you fell. And then the gateway closed. He therefore simply became stuck, Finn. Trapped there. For no other reason than bad timing?” Finn felt sweat moisten his brow. “Yes,” he said, his tongue like sandpaper. “Bad timing, I suppose.”

The Assessor stared intently at him, his face expressionless for what seemed to Finn like an age, but can only have been a few moments. Then he suddenly snapped into a grin. “Well, that’s all good then.”

He clicked the pen, pushed his clipboard back into his briefcase. Relief surged through Finn. A moment ago he’d wanted to jump out of a window and escape. Now he had to fight the urge to punch the air in delight. He wanted to ask if that was it, if they actually believed all of that, but managed to wrestle that idea away from his mouth before he said it.

Estravon checked his watch again. “I can’t believe I’ll have to go so soon after getting here. But I wouldn’t want to impose on you here in this house.” He looked at Steve. “So, I’ll stay the night in your house instead.”

Steve gawped a little.

“But what about the map?” asked Finn.

“Oh yes, the map,” said Estravon.

“Can you help us find it?”

“Well, that’s the thing, I’m afraid,” said the Assessor. “There is no map.”

“No map? Of course there’s a map,” insisted Clara. “Hugo said so.”

“I’m afraid he was mistaken, Clara. May I call you Clara?” He didn’t wait for a response. “The existence of any map, Clara, was thoroughly investigated after the death of Niall Blacktongue although no one really likes to talk about all of that. Nevertheless, what I can say, quite sincerely, is that there is no map. There never was. It was searched for. It was not found.”

That information settled in the hush of the room.

“So that’s it?” said Steve.

“Not at all,” the Assessor said as he stood up suddenly, triggering Finn and Clara into doing the same. “I will report back to the Twelve, to make a recommendation. I feel confident there’ll be some progress as a result of this.”

He glanced once more at his watch as if in a hurry and, seeing Finn look at it again, unclasped it from his wrist and dangled it at him. “Please. Take it.”

“I can’t do that,” Finn said politely.

The Assessor insisted. “It would be an absolute privilege for me to know that it was being worn here, in Darkmouth.”

Finn looked at his mother, who nodded in encouragement while looking as if she wanted this man out of her house as soon as possible. So, Finn took the watch and strapped it on his wrist. “Thanks,” he said.

Estravon leaned into Finn and whispered, “They’re standard issue anyway. I have a drawer full of them at home.”

“I worry we’ve very little time,” said Clara pointedly.

“I do understand.” The Assessor picked up a biscuit. “But there is time at least for one more of these before I have to leave.”

Fully aware of the intense irritation now radiating from his mother, Finn distracted himself by looking at his new watch, admiring how the delicate curves of its steel hands caught the light of the fat moon flooding through the window.

Outside, the sky was clear and still. Another night falling on a world without his father.

The next morning, sun crept into Darkmouth and an early summer breeze travelled across the sea, tickling the low waves that ran up to the raggedy shoreline and warming the fat rocks that littered the small crescent of beach at the town’s southern edge. Reaching the wide mangled cliffs that separated Darkmouth from the rest of the world, the breeze rose up until it ruffled the grass lining the top.

A basset hound scampered across the stony beach, stopping briefly to sniff a pebble, pee on it, then move on again.

“Yappy!”

The animal’s owner, Mrs Bright, scrambled after it, struggling to keep her footing on the shifting layer of stones.

“Yappy! Come back, Yappy, you stupid animal.”

She stopped for a moment and looked back along the beach. It curved away into the early morning haze, its stones kissed by the sun-sparkled sea that lapped at the long sweep of the bay. Inland, the houses of Darkmouth huddled together, as if cowering from some unseen danger, but, in this clear morning light, it looked like a normal town. You couldn’t see the shimmer of broken glass on walls, the dull glint of bars on windows, the tight squeeze of the town’s mazy alleyways. You could only see the painted house fronts, the wooden shop signs, the little playground of swings and slides. It was almost, in fact, a thing of beauty.

I really hate Darkmouth, thought Mrs Bright.

Mrs Bright wasn’t supposed to be living here at all. She had made the mistake of marrying a man from Darkmouth who had come not only with a dog she couldn’t stand, but a promise that they would live in the town for exactly one year, and no more, before moving on to any place of her choosing.

He died suddenly eleven months later.

She was left with a house she couldn’t sell and a dog she didn’t want.

“Yappy!” she shouted. “Where did you go, you useless mutt?”

She scanned the beach for the dog again. No sign. She moved towards the corner of the cliff, where rock jutted towards the water and the shore narrowed. Squeezing herself carefully round the base of the looming cliff to the beach on the other side, she could still see nothing of her tiresome pet.

“Yappy! I’ll leave you here, don’t think I won’t.”

From somewhere she heard a muffled yap.

She stopped. Listened. Heard it again.

Squinting at the black stone of the cliff, its layers of rock turned in on itself as if it might collapse at any moment, Mrs Bright realised there was an opening. It was small, a fissure not much taller than herself, and bent over as if buckling under the weight of the land above it.

She had walked this part of the beach many times and never noticed a cave before. Loose soil and stones were scattered at the entrance, apparently freshly fallen. There must, she thought, have been a rock fall, maybe caused by the heavy rains that accompanied the recent invasion of those things. Another reason why she wanted out of Darkmouth at the earliest opportunity.

There was another bark from inside the cliff.

Mrs Bright sighed, stepped carefully over the rubble at the opening, manoeuvred round a large rock and carefully made her way inside.

It was a cave, its walls narrowing as she moved deeper into it, the roof sloping down so that she needed to stoop as she called again for the dog.

“Yappy!”

Her shout echoed back at her just as she squeezed through a gap and into a chamber that stretched high into the blackness above her. The cave was so dark that Mrs Bright could hardly see the ground at her feet.

She gave one final call for the dog and heard nothing but her own breathing and the sound of trickling water.

As Mrs Bright turned to leave, she realised she could see now. A flickering crimson light crept across the hollowed-out rock. Then something else occurred to her: the light was coming from inside the cave.

From somewhere in the direction of that light, Yappy yapped.

Mrs Bright peered towards it. She made out a smudge of deep red, the soft edge of a light obscured by a fold in the cave wall. Cautiously, she edged towards it.

“Is that you, Yappy?”

It most definitely was not.

Mrs Bright’s strangled scream echoed through the high cavern.

Many dogs are intelligent, perceptive beasts with an almost supernatural sense of danger.

Yappy was not one of those dogs.

A couple of minutes later, he emerged from the cave, stopped at a large stone at its entrance, sniffed it, peed on it, sniffed again. He dropped something from his mouth, a curved pink and white object, sniffed around a bit, licked between his legs, sniffed around some more, picked up the object again and scuttled away down the beach. The sun climbed above the horizon into a sky of near unbroken blue. But, if anyone had been looking up at that moment, they would have seen the merest hint of a cloud cross the sun, dimming it almost imperceptibly before burning away again.

And they would have presumed it was just a trick of the light that the cloud briefly appeared to change, solidify and form the shape of a howling face.

Finn waited at the front door of his house, his father’s hulking car parked outside. Black with a few old scrapes scoring the paint, its familiar sleekness had been dulled by the dust slowly settling on it as the days and weeks went by. It was becoming a spectre and a reminder of Finn’s failure to find his father.

In those last violent moments before the gateway closed and he turned to face the approaching army of Legends, Hugo had told Finn he believed in him, that he knew he’d find a way into the Infested Side. Finn the Defiant he had called him, and Finn had carried that faith with him through the first few days following his father’s disappearance. Yet each speck of dust on that car was a reminder of every day, every hour, every second of failure since. His father believed in him. But Finn was struggling to. All he knew for sure was that he’d been unable to stop Mr Glad pushing his mam through a gateway and his father had been lost while rescuing her. He felt that guilt as heavily as if a Hydra was squatting on his chest.

The morning breeze picked up for a moment, spreading goosebumps across Finn’s arms. He grabbed his backpack, a dead weight that needed to be hoisted with a grunt on to his back. An arm of his fighting suit fell loose from its open zip.

He was in the habit of carrying the armour every day, just in case it was required, and would sit in class with an eye on the weather outside the window. The merest spit of rain – it always rained when portals opened from the Infested Side – was enough to give him the jitters.

Finn twisted in an awkward effort to shove the arm back into his bag. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. An animal was scampering up the street. It was a dog – a basset hound – stopping occasionally to sniff a paving stone or to pee on random parts of the street.

Even from a distance, Finn could see its coat was sodden and it appeared to be carrying something in its mouth. He only half watched the dog approach, his mind still largely occupied by the awful thought that he might never find a way to his father, and partly distracted by his continued inability to stuff the fighting suit arm into his bag.

The next thing he knew the hound was sniffing at his leg. Finn looked down, the dog looked up and Finn realised it was wearing false teeth. Not false teeth for dogs, if there even were such a thing, but human false teeth. Large pink and white gnashers, crammed into its mouth so that it sported the widest, most surreal grin he had ever seen.

The dog had a tag round its neck. My name is Yappy, it read. If you find me, you can keep me.

Yappy shook his wet coat, spraying salty water and tiny stones in every direction as Finn jumped out of the way.

He recognised the dog. He had met its owner about the town, spotted her coming in and out of her house over the years, had seen her walking through the town with a headscarf and a scowl as she barked at the dog.

He had a flashback to meeting her a few weeks ago, the day the Minotaur first came through. She was huddled in a doorway on Darkmouth’s main street, Broken Road, while the Legend rampaged through the town. She hadn’t been particularly confident in Finn’s chances of stopping the creature. She’d had a point.

The dog had been in the doorway too. It didn’t have those teeth then. Finn was pretty sure he’d have noticed a thing like that.

“Your owner’s name is Mrs Bright, isn’t it?” he said to the dog. Accepting a tickle under its sodden chin, Yappy looked up at Finn. The teeth glinted in the bright morning light.

It coughed out the dentures and, following another violent shake of its hair that left Finn’s knees flecked with tiny pebbles, it trotted away, stopping only to pee at the corner before disappearing.

Finn picked up the teeth.

“What’s that you’ve got?” asked Emmie, coming down the street, schoolbag slung over her back, woollen hat forced down over her hair.

“I’m not sure,” said Finn. “I mean, they’re false teeth, but I don’t know why a dog had them.”

“A dog had them?” she said as she reached him.

“Yeah, in its mouth.”

“And you’re holding them now?” said Emmie, disgusted. “Lovely.”

Finn felt the slippery teeth in his hand and shuddered. He found a wad of tissues he had stuffed in his jacket, wrapped the teeth up and put them in his pocket.

“That’s even lovelier,” observed Emmie.

“I know who owns them,” he said.

“How? Did they write their name on the gums? ‘If found, please return to the mouth of whoever.’”

“No. I recognised the dog that just dropped them here. It belongs to Mrs Bright. We’ll call in on the way and hand them back.”

“Make sure you tell her to put them through the dishwasher first. By the way, you should brush down your trousers. You’ve got half the beach on them for some reason.”

Finn gave them a quick scrub with his thumbs, then frowned. “Do you reckon my trousers smell sort of seaweedy?”

Emmie sniffed him. “Nah, you’re OK.”

“Sure?”

“Nah. I mean, yeah. There’s no smell.”

Finn suspected Emmie was lying just to make him feel better. Which she was.

Mrs Bright wasn’t home.

They knocked on her door, rang the doorbell, but she did not come out to reclaim her teeth.

“He likes Chocky-Flakes,” said Emmie, leaning against the wall of the house.

“Who likes Chocky-Flakes?” asked Finn.

“The Assessor. He loves that cereal. Ate about three bowls of it last night and another three this morning. He went for a walk and came back with an ice cream and a giant grin on his face. Then he just disappeared to his room where he said he had to file his report.”