Shane Hegarty - Worlds Explode

“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.