Chaos Descends

He reached the hallway, where a narrow door brought him into the stark contrast of a house as ordinary as any other in Darkmouth. Apart from one thing: all the people at the windows. Outside were the Half-Hunters who hadn’t won tickets to see him train. The flash of cameras. The dark flicker of silhouettes crossing the garden.

“It’ll all be over soon,” said Finn’s mother, Clara, as she arrived from the living room on her way to the stairs. “But not soon enough. Hold on, you’re wearing shorts.” She looked through the door to the Long Hall, where Half-Hunters were gathering their things to leave. “Your father’s fault, right? Did training not go well?”

Finn bit his lip.

“Just remind yourself it won’t be like this for ever,” Clara said, putting an arm round his shoulder. “I’ve done that pretty much every day since I married into this family.”

Outside, Finn heard the murmur of those loitering Half-Hunters, watched the shapes cross the door, saw one grow larger and darker until it poked a nose through the letterbox.

“Hello. Let me in,” said a voice desperately. A man’s voice. “Please, there is about to be a terrible disaster.”

He sounded French. Or Swedish. Or maybe Korean. Finn wasn’t great with accents.

“Please,” said the Half-Hunter. “I need help.”

Finn sighed, closed his eyes in a long blink to compose himself, while Clara carefully opened the door. A Half-Hunter was dancing about on the doorstep, wearing some kind of black, naval-type uniform, complete with coloured strips on his left breast and chunky red and black cufflinks.

“Thank you,” he said as he burst in. “Where’s the toilet?”

Clara nodded towards a door under the stairs, and the Half-Hunter dashed straight for it.

There was another knock on the door. “Toilet’s already full,” said Finn.

“Do you need me to unblock it?” asked Emmie, pushing her head round the door.

“That’s not what I …” said Finn, flustered. “Hi, Emmie. You’re here.”

“I wouldn’t have missed your big ceremony for anything,” she beamed. “You know you’ve a split in those shorts?”

Finn felt himself blush. “Good. Not my shorts. I mean, it’s good you’re back.”

“Just for the ceremony,” she said. “Unless something goes terribly wrong again in Darkmouth. I’ve my fingers crossed for that.”

“I’ll do my best,” he smiled, while hoping nothing whatsoever would go terribly wrong.

“Hey, Finn, Clara,” said Emmie’s father, Steve, walking in after her. “You know there are a lot of people out there taking pictures of your garden wall.”

“I signed an autograph,” said Emmie, excited.

“No one wanted mine,” said Steve, failing to pretend that this hadn’t bothered him a bit. “I guess no one cares about the guy who rescues you every time you need it.”

Hugo arrived from the Long Hall. “We’re all about to need rescuing from the tourists following me up from the training room.”

“I’m always available to bail you out,” said Steve. “Unless it’s an issue with the toilet.”

Hugo looked puzzled. They heard the toilet flush. The door opened. The now much calmer intruder emerged, drying his hands on his trousers before giving an exaggerated swipe of relief across his forehead. Realising he’d hit the Legend Hunter jackpot, he thrust out a hand to shake Finn’s, who took it reluctantly and squirmed at how damp it still was.

“Oh boy,” said the excited Half-Hunter. “I am Nils, from the Norwegian Blighted Village of Splattafest, and you are all here. In Darkmouth. Together. Are those flowers poisonous?” He inspected a bunch on a small table.

“No,” said Clara.

“But those coat hooks shoot deadly darts, yes?”

“I’ll just get that door for you,” said Hugo. “It’s been lovely to meet you, but …”

“We are all looking forward to the great Completion,” said Nils. “Especially what they plan to do with the dozen golden monkeys. Something to do with the six hundred scorpions, I think.”

“OK, it’s about to get crowded in here,” said Hugo, looking back at the group of raffle winners coming up the Long Hall.

“I made special souvenir cufflinks—” Nils said, but he was cut off as Clara politely ushered him out. As she did, the front door gently swung open to reveal a queue of maybe half a dozen Half-Hunters.

“I need the toilet as well,” said the one at the front, dancing on the spot for added effect.

“Oh yeah, me too,” said the next.

“I’m bursting,” said the third.

Either side of Finn, there were Half-Hunters crowding into the house. He looked at Emmie. “I need rescuing.”

“Rescuing you is my speciality,” she smiled. “Let’s get out of here. Although you should probably put on some trousers first.”

“Do you still get the stink?” Emmie asked Finn, and offered him a sweet from a brown paper bag.

They were sitting on a low step at Darkmouth’s largest monument, a grey, grimy obelisk with a white plaque whose words were so worn no one knew any more why it had been put there. There was warmth in the day, and blue sky mixed with bubbling cloud. Finn had his hoodie pulled tight over his head as a disguise against the Half-Hunters swarming the town.

“Do you mean the smell of the Infested Side?” Finn replied. “Like rotting vegetables that were already stuffed with old cheese?” He dug in the brown paper bag.

“I’d say it smells more like a fish wearing yesterday’s socks,” said Emmie, chewing on something that was gradually turning her tongue blue.

Finn crunched down on a red sweet, letting the sugar fizz through his mouth. “It’s been worse for my dad,” he said. “Because the serpents hid him among Legends so smelly that no one else would go near them, that stench lasted ages afterwards. He had to burn his clothes. And then he had to burn the bonfire he’d burned those clothes on.”

“At least there’s been no Legends since,” said Emmie.

“Yeah,” said Finn.

“Just normal stuff, like school and whatever.”

“Yeah. Just normal stuff.”

They each rummaged in the paper bag open between them, popped a sweet in their mouth and sat quiet for a little while longer.

“It’s boring, isn’t it?” Emmie exclaimed eventually.

“So boring,” said Finn with a burst of relief at being able to share. “I never thought I’d say it. Never. But it’s just that after everything we went through …”

“Legends. Crystals. Serpents,” said Emmie.

“Gateways. Shapeshifters,” said Finn.

“And everything we saw there.”

“Stuff no one has seen,” said Finn. “At the time, I thought I never wanted to see a gateway again, didn’t want to meet another Legend. I just wanted to go on as normal. But—”

“Normal is boring, right?”

Finn gave her a guilty look. “Kind of. I mean, me and Dad still train a lot, but now I’ve nothing to use the moves on.”

“Welcome to my life,” said Emmie.

“He doesn’t like to show it, but I think Dad’s bored too,” said Finn. “He spent weeks on the Infested Side and, even though all that time he just sat there, waiting to escape, it was still like nothing anybody had done before. Well, nobody except Niall Blacktongue, but no one likes to talk about that.”

“At least people know he went to the Infested Side,” said Emmie. “I’m back at school in the city and no one there has a clue what I did. They just think I was away for a while with my dad’s work, but they have no idea what he really does.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That he’s a travelling DJ.”

“What?” laughed Finn.

“I didn’t know what else to say,” she said. “And it sounded kind of cool.”

“DJ Steve.”

“Hmm. Maybe not so cool.”

Finn threw a green sweet into his mouth.

“Anyway,” Emmie said, “you must be all set for the Completion Ceremony, right? It’ll be a big deal. The whole Legend Hunter world is going to be watching.”

Discomfort immediately contorted Finn’s face.

“Sorry,” Emmie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No,” he grimaced. “Be careful of those green stripy sweets. They’re really sour.”

She laughed at that. He swallowed the offending sweet with an anguished wince.

“Oh, I wish they’d go away,” said Finn, nodding towards a couple of Half-Hunters across the street, irritating locals by taking pictures of every hole in a wall.

“Maybe we can sign another autograph.”

Finn grimaced at the thought. “Or maybe we can get out of here before they spot us,” he said, pushing himself up and heading away from the obelisk.

They darted round a corner, across a couple of narrow alleys with walls that rose high over them and were topped with whatever sharp objects might keep a Legend out. But here and there were gaps, where nails or broken glass had fallen free and not yet been replaced by whoever lived behind the walls. There had been no Legends in a while. The people of Darkmouth were growing a little too used to that.

Down a cobbled lane, Finn and Emmie encountered a couple of Half-Hunters in fur coats rushing excitedly to the spot where Mr Glad’s shop used to be. It had been gutted by fire on the night Mr Glad had turned on Hugo, nearly destroying the town as a result. That was almost a year ago now, but to Finn it was beginning to feel like a lifetime away. It was certainly long enough that the shop had since been rebuilt as a hairdresser’s. Those Half-Hunters in furs would leave not with pictures of the lair of an infamous traitor, but of Snippy Snips.

“Down here,” Finn suggested, and the two of them slunk along an adjoining laneway, in and out of the town’s maze of streets, until they squeezed through a gap and on to the strand close to the slumped remnants of the cliffs. Surrounded by busy Half-Hunters in boiler suits, a scaffold was rising from the ground. It was a stage, still just a half-formed skeleton of steel rods, with huge rectangular pieces of floor leaning against them ready to be put in place.

“Is that it?” Emmie asked.

Finn nodded. This was the place where, the following night, he would become Complete. No matter how incomplete he felt.

“Is that a cannon up there?” said Emmie, looking closer.

“Apparently so,” confirmed Finn.

“And over there, in those tubes?”

“Fireworks,” said Finn, not even looking at them.

“That’ll be enough of a racket to, like, wake the dead,” said Emmie.

“I wouldn’t mind a bit of Legend Hunting,” said Finn. “It’s just becoming a Legend Hunter in front of everyone that I’m not so keen on.”

That triggered something in Finn, and he reached in under his hoodie to withdraw a silver chain. On the end was a cylindrical locket, an ornate swirling pattern on its case surrounding a small window that revealed sparkling scarlet dust within. “Do you still have yours?” he asked.

Emmie pulled out an identical locket from beneath her jacket. Inside was dust and sand, the last pulverised remains of the crystals they’d found in the cave before it was destroyed. Finn’s dad had presented one to each of them, as a reminder of what they’d been through together. “It was nice of your dad to give us these,” she said.

“I know,” said Finn. “For my last birthday he got me a box of spanners. But I think his time on the Infested Side has mellowed him a bit. He’s softer on me too. Some of the time.”

“Even my dad wears his locket,” said Emmie. “Although he says it itches a bit.”

“It does itch,” admitted Finn, rubbing at the front of his neck.

“It’s better to be itchy than dead,” Emmie smiled. “Or worse.”

“Yeah. Suppose.” Finn pushed the locket inside his clothes, tilted his head back to shake out the last sticky shards of sweets from the paper bag. A couple of them fell into his nostrils, irritating his nose. He sneezed.

Down the road, away from the strand, they heard the screech of a car, the growl of an engine.

“Since the Infested Side, my sneezes can, you know, set things off. My parents look at me funny if I get annoyed about anything, like I might blow up the kitchen,” Finn said. The car engine grew louder. “But this is a new one.”

The growling grew nearer, and a moment later a large black block of a car hurriedly took the corner.

“It’s Dad,” said Finn.

The car pulled up in front of them. The tinted window on the passenger side whirred down and Hugo leaned towards them.

“Get in,” he said urgently. “Something’s happened at the hotel.”

Finn, Emmie and Hugo stood at the entrance to the hotel room. Dust still swam in the air from where the door had been roughly pushed open.

But the dust was not what they were looking at.

“I should never have reopened this place,” the hotel owner said, pushing in between them. Mrs Cross held a fluffy yellow towel, or at least half of one, torn raggedly. “But I was begged to. Pushed into it. Convinced it’d only be a few days and they’d be no bother. But it’s been only bother from the start. All I’ve had is complaints since your lot started arriving here. The beds are too soft. The pillows too feathery. The shampoo smells too fruity. And now this.”

From downstairs came the ting of the reception bell. She ignored it. Instead, she pointed at something very strange in the air.

Finn’s father stepped forward to examine it. On the far side of the room, just to the side of a narrow window, about two metres off the ground but fixed and unmoving, was a scar in the air. Three gouges, as if great cracked nails had clawed at empty space.

Ting, ting went the reception bell downstairs.

Hugo walked round the phenomenon, his face registering a measure of surprise. He motioned Finn over to him.

As Finn approached, he examined the marks without touching them, saw how they were almost puckered, with edges raised and uneven like roughly stitched skin. As he passed, the angle narrowed until the marks disappeared entirely. When standing behind them, they were completely invisible. There was nothing at all to see except for Mrs Cross’s deeply annoyed face staring back. Her displeasure was almost strong enough to burn its own hole in the air.

Finn and Hugo moved back round to the front of the room until they could again examine the strange markings from the front.

“Now what am I going to do?” the hotel owner asked them. “I can’t exactly rent out this room, can I? I’ve been in this trade for sixty years and I can tell you this: no one wants a room with ghostly scratch marks imprinted in the ether.”

Ting. Ting. Ting.

“Oh, give it a rest,” she shouted out of the door.

“You must tell no one,” Hugo said to her.

Mrs Cross gasped. “And what do you suggest I do? Just leave it here for guests to hang their hat on?”

“You could tell the Half-Hunters,” said Hugo, “but only if you want to turn this room into the greatest tourist attraction in Darkmouth. You think they’re bothering you now? Wait until you show them this.”

Ting. Ting. Ting. Tingtingting.

“Pack it in!” she yelled from the doorway. “Right, Hugo. I’ll be quiet for now. But if that thing doesn’t fade you will get the bill for a single room, with breakfast, occupied from today until the end of eternity.” She left the room to clomp down the short corridor towards the stairs and the tinging bell in reception. “What do you lot want now?”

“What’s that on the carpet?” asked Emmie.

Bootprints were burned into the floor and surrounded by a sulphuric shadow. It seemed apparent that whoever had been standing in them had been in this spot whenever whatever happened took place.

Hugo crouched to examine the print. “They’re Hunter boots all right. Standard issue. Except they’re made in Scotland.” He caught Finn and Emmie’s reaction to his detective skills. “OK, so I already knew it was a Scotsman who took this room. These were the boots of a Half-Hunter called Douglas. And I have a very nasty feeling that he was standing in them when these marks were made.”

Knives, a toothbrush and a comb were laid out neatly on the bed. Hugo stood again, and the three of them faced the marks branded in the air, glancing at what may or may not have been the remains of Douglas of the Isle of Teeth.

Hugo blew hard through his cheeks. “We can tell no one either,” he said.

“OK,” said Finn.

“Yep,” agreed Emmie.

Hugo fixed his attention on Emmie. “Understand?”

She looked offended. “Just because I spied on Finn once doesn’t mean I’m always spying. It was ages ago and I didn’t even want to anyway. I’m not going to tell anyone about this.”

“Would the Half-Hunters not be able to help, though?” Finn asked.

Hugo moved slowly towards the grimy window, looked out on to the street. Finn and Emmie joined him. Together they watched a Half-Hunter strut down the street, wearing a long chain-mail skirt and samurai sword. He was being followed by a group of small, excitable children and occasionally he would delight them by turning and growling in pantomime fashion.

“Gis a go of your sword, mister,” they heard a kid say to him.

“I would like to,” replied the Half-Hunter, “but the last child I gave it to is still being glued back together.”

The children squealed with delight at that, and kept tailing him as he moved on.

Hugo nodded towards the man down on the street. “That is a fellow called Kenzo. He’s come all the way from Japan just for the ceremony. His Legend Hunter family goes back 1,500 years, and he’s the second generation that’s had nothing to do but use their swords to cut sandwiches. And it’s only a wooden sword anyway.”

Kenzo was holding a scrap of paper, seemingly checking house numbers against it.

“You know what Kenzo does now? He’s a children’s entertainer,” Hugo continued. “Birthday parties. That sort of thing. That fighting suit looks impressive, but it’s had more chocolate biscuit cake on it than blood.”

“You don’t think they’d be up to it?” asked Finn.

“Not only would they not be up to it, this isn’t their Blighted Village,” said Hugo. “It’s ours. Which means this is our problem. That’s the tradition. That’s the Legend Hunter law. That’s the way it’s going to be. So, we tell no one. Not even Steve, Emmie. And for now, Finn, we won’t mention this to your mam either. She’s unhappy enough with all this fuss as it is.”

With queasy horror, Finn realised that a greasy blur on the window was a palm print, large and firm. Was this Douglas’s last desperate act as he tried to escape? Finn stood back, turned away from it as he had an idea. “You don’t think this has anything to do with … Well, you know who?”

“Doubt it,” said Hugo. “Wouldn’t make sense.”

“You know who who?” asked Emmie, baffled.

“Finn, have you told Emmie about him yet?” asked Hugo.

“No,” said Finn.

“Told me what?” asked Emmie.

“If we tell you, you’re not to speak to anyone about it,” Hugo insisted.

“I keep saying I won’t,” she answered, irritated. “And I don’t even know what it is I’m not supposed to tell anyone about anyway.”

“Do you know where to find him?” Hugo asked Finn.

“Same place he always is, I’d say,” answered Finn.

“Same place who is?” asked Emmie.

“I didn’t really say much earlier, because I wasn’t sure I was allowed,” said Finn bashfully. “But there is at least one Legend loose in Darkmouth. Want to see him?”

They found Broonie the Hogboon right where Finn expected to. In a small patch of soil and plants, divided into squares hardly bigger than a double bed, hemmed in by high walls on three sides, and a tall wire fence on the fourth. This was the local allotment, where people came to grow vegetables and fruit – and where the only living Hogboon in Darkmouth came to feast.

“Why has he got his head stuck in that beehive thing?” whispered Emmie as they lurked behind the fence.

“It’s a wormery,” explained Finn.

“A whatery?”

“A wormery. The gardeners use them to make compost. Although, to be honest, I overheard someone saying that the compost hasn’t been great of late. And smells a bit funny. Plus the wormery doesn’t have many worms in it. I didn’t want to tell them I could guess why.”

Broonie’s slurping was quite pronounced, his green legs dangling where he had pulled his skinny frame up to stick his head in.

“He eats the worms?” said Emmie.

“Lots of them,” said Finn. “Even though he complains about the taste.”

Broonie didn’t seem to notice them, just twitched a floppy ear as he continued to eat.

“I thought the Council of Twelve ordered you to desiccate him until they could decide what to do with him,” said Emmie.

“That was the order,” said Finn. “But it wasn’t his fault he ended up here. He just got shoved in through the gateway really. He didn’t want anything to do with any war.”

“You let him out!” she exclaimed.

“Shush,” said Finn. “We don’t allow him out all the time. Just once a week. For twenty-four hours only. The rest of the time he spends in the house. Complaining about everything.”

Broonie paused in his banquet. Belched loudly. Resumed eating.

“The Council of Twelve gave Broonie back to us, but only once he’d been desiccated,” said Finn. “They didn’t want him running loose, causing trouble. He’s still just a Legend as far as they’re concerned, not to be trusted. The Desiccation was horrible. There were shouts and screams and, well, a lot of cursing. Hogboons know a lot of curses. And, when it was all over, they gave him to us in a jar.”

“But you brought him back,” said Emmie.

“Reanimating him was even more horrible. And there was even more cursing. But Dad felt we owed Broonie something given he sided with the resistance over on the Infested Side. Or, at least, got kind of stuck with the resistance. And then got stuck with us.”

Broonie stood upright. A long slurp suggested he was sucking in a worm.

His right ear revolved towards them.

“You know I can hear the two of you,” he said, without turning. “As if I couldn’t smell you before you even arrived.”

Finn gently pushed through the gap in the wire from behind which they had been watching Broonie, holding it open for Emmie to follow. He crept up to the Hogboon.

“Hey, Broonie!” Emmie shouted as she skipped ahead.

“Quiet,” begged Finn. “We don’t want the Half-Hunters knowing he’s here.”

“Look who it is,” Broonie said to Emmie as if she was another trial sent to test him. “Come to see the poor creature in his prison, have you?”

“My dad said I should check on you,” Finn said to the sullen Hogboon. “You know, to make sure you’re OK.”

“To see if I’d escaped again,” sneered Broonie.

“You’ve escaped before?” asked Emmie, examining the Legend’s green skin, droopy ears and droopier nostrils.

“I tried to,” said Broonie. “I got something worse than Desiccation for my troubles. I got a strict talking-to from that grunting Legend Hunter Hugo, and a promise that if I ever tried it again I’d be thrown into a jar and put at the very back of the highest shelf so that no one would ever find me again.”