Shane Hegarty - Worlds Explode

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.”

Finn tried to peer through the net curtains behind Mrs Bright’s barred front window. “She’s not home,” he said, but knocked one last time anyway.

“And he talks in his sleep. I could hear him through the bedroom door. ‘Snuggles,’ he said. ‘Come here, Snuggles.’”

“Snuggles?” wondered Finn.

“Snuggles,” Emmie confirmed. “I’d say it’s his cuddly toy.”

From the house neighbouring Mrs Bright’s, there came the sound of locks and chains being undone. Clank. Rattle. Clunk. The door opened and a man popped his head out to greet Finn with a lukewarm, “Oh, it’s you.”

“Have you seen Mrs Bright?” Finn asked.

“No. Saw her yesterday with that dog of hers. Not since then. She’s probably walking. She likes walking. Well, she does a lot of it anyway. It’s hard to tell if she actually likes it. Hard to tell if she likes anything at all really.”