The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  Sagal dropped her hands to her sides and turned toward the figure in the yard. She thought about the mask and the heap in the corner. She was sure now that this was a setup to shame her in front of everyone. They had found out what a disgusting girl she was. It was all out in the open now.

  Just take it easy.

  Everybody thinks that everyone else is keeping an eye on them, Mira once said. Even just thinking about Mira made Sagal feel immensely better. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, checked who was calling, and answered.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Where are you? Do you know what time—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m inside the building already.”

  “Good. Dad’s worried about you.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Sagal hung up and began to breathe more evenly. Her mom’s voice and the thought of Mira had taken all her fears away. She stood still for a moment and stared at the figure out in the yard. What right did he have to scare kids? She walked to the door and opened it.

  The wind cooled her face and blew the smell of rubber away.

  “What did I ever do to you?” Sagal yelled at the figure.

  It didn’t respond.

  “I’m not scared of you guys,” she said. “Even Mira laughs at you and your stupid stories.”

  The figure didn’t move, but Sagal wasn’t taking any chances. She started walking faster, her mom’s voice still ringing in her ears.

  “I’ll do whatever I want.”

  She heard the door open to the building next door. Sagal felt empowered: she was surrounded by others—dog walkers, night shifters, drunks. These buildings were full of ordinary people who didn’t let silly boys scare young girls. She was with moms, dads, little sisters, and brothers who brought Sagal’s family small presents during Christmastime, even when they knew her family didn’t celebrate Christmas.

  She heard the door behind her open, too. Sagal turned to look. The stairwell was dark, but the lights from the parking lot flashed in the glass. Someone was approaching her fast from the building. Maybe that person had also seen a strange anorak-clad masked figure in the yard.

  “He’s trying to scare me,” Sagal shouted at the approaching figure.

  No reply. The figure picked up its pace.

  Sagal looked to her right: another figure was approaching from the neighboring building. It was running.

  She held her breath and faced the yard.

  The raincoat hem flapped in the wind. The mask was askew, about to fall off—too big for whoever it was hiding. Or maybe whatever it was hiding. Sagal thought about the tree, the burl, the scarecrow. She looked for the figure’s legs, but all she saw was a black mess. Maybe the jacket and the mask had just been hung onto a rake that leaned on a rock. Maybe it was a trap.

  Sagal stopped and turned around.

  She was between two apartment buildings, with a third one in front of her. Three boxes battered by the fall winds. Each had its windows lit, TVs flashing, and shadows moving here and there. They had to be normal people who didn’t see what was going on or do anything because they were busy with their evening chores, watching news, gossiping on the phone. Her dad had always warned Sagal: never expect people to take notice or take action. When evil rears its head, people turn blind and become paralyzed.

  The mute figures were approaching, only twenty yards away now. They raced to get to Sagal, their faces gleaming in the dark, too big for their bodies.

  Sagal’s hands were shaking as she took her phone out. Its bright screen turned on. She stared at it and tried not to pay attention to the movement in the corner of her eyes.

  Who should she call?

  Why should she call?

  If you have nightmares.

  Surrounded by windows, the rumbling of the last bus of the night leaving its stop.

  Call me and I’ll be there.

  The dog walker from the building behind her would stop and light a cigarette and cough at any moment now. But the figures kept on moving toward her, determined and faceless as if otherworldly—as if they didn’t exist here, with these buildings. The damp gravel made strange sounds under their feet—there was no predetermined rhythm; instead it roared like a wave, like bloodhounds.

  Sagal dialed Mira, her other hand over her mouth, and closed her eyes. She could hear the steps, too close to her.

  She waited for the phone to ring, thinking about the morning bus and the other students who always looked past her, their reflections indifferent ghosts in the windows.

  She didn’t open her eyes until a hand touched her shoulder and squeezed. A whisper in her ear. Sagal didn’t understand the words; her head spun. Her neck muscles were wound tight, ready to accept the whack of a blade in her back; the blade that had been plowing hair, fingers, eyes.

  Finally, the phone started ringing. Sagal held it tight. Mira would pick up at any moment. She’d run from the peninsula over mossy rocks and fallen trees, almost flying, her breath steaming. Then this nonsense would be over. She’d stomp on the masks and her yell would make everyone on Patteriniemi Road turn the volume on their TVs down and cock their heads like animals, sensing that a large beast was mighty pissed off somewhere.

  Then Sagal realized what was out of place. Just plain wrong. She heard two ringing tones. One came from the phone pressed against her numb ear. The other rang behind her. They sang to each other like birds. First Sagal’s phone, then a response behind her—one dampened by clothes. By a jacket. Sagal hung up.

  Her world went black. A thick, coarse fabric had been thrown over her head. It stuck to her skin, forcing her to drop the phone. The fabric pricked her face. It smelled like a cellar and her own bad breath as she screamed into its fibers.

  “Why did you have to talk?” a voice asked right next to her ear.

  That was no granny.

  It was an angry girl.

  “Nobody talks. Ever.”

  The girl was furious. She wasn’t pretending to be furious, like that time when she’d claimed she was innocent to a teacher who’d accused her of smoking cigarettes at school. This time her fury was real.

  Sagal stopped screaming.

  You could argue with many. Just not with Mira.

  When Sagal was dragged away, she heard her phone ringing on the ground behind her. It was her dad’s ringtone.

  She wanted to take the call. Not because she wanted to ask anyone to interrupt their important business to come rescue her. She only wanted to tell her dad he’d been right all along.

  HIS FATHER’S HAND

  Samuel Autio was driving toward his childhood home when a stiff human figure suddenly appeared in his headlights.

  No way to brake in time. And it was completely dark. Rain was pouring down. His thoughts were a mist. A thump. Something rolling under the tires.

  Samuel stopped the car, although he knew it was too late. He felt a strange pressure on his chest, as if an invisible hand tried to prevent him from flying through the windshield. This feeling knocked loose a memory in his mind, and had he not been so exhausted, it would have come to him clearly. Instead, the car engine hummed and rain drummed on the roof and hood in an even rumble. The windshield fogged up immediately. Droplets appeared out of nowhere, as if the window were sweating. Right before the wipers performed their arc, the water had been dirty, darker, like blood. The image lasted for less than a second and was wiped away by the mechanical movement of the rubber wiper blade before Samuel could confirm what he saw.

  He looked in the rearview mirror. A wavering line of streetlights and their reflection on the dark asphalt. Nothing else. He turned the engine off and got out of the car. The rain was freezing cold. There was nothing on the road. Nothing under the car.

  Samuel stood in the rain and thought long and hard. He remembered a dark figure had rolled over the hood. There was the softest of squeaks when the str
anger’s palm had slid against the windshield. It had happened in less than a second, but Samuel remembered it vividly. Pale, squished skin in a blink of an eye. He walked to the side of the road and peered into the ditch.

  Nothing.

  The road was between the woods and a parking lot, and behind the parking lot, Samuel saw rows of three- and four-story prefabs built in the seventies. Somewhere among them was Patteriniemi Road and his dad’s home. He’d learned how to read—from a milk-carton label—in an apartment on the second story of that building. He had done it just like that, on his own.

  Samuel circled the car and felt the wet hood with his fingers. No dents. He leaned over and looked for signs of blood but found none. The rain was deafening.

  When he straightened up he saw lights approaching. He waited a moment, weighing his options. He walked back to the driver’s seat and started the engine. The windshield wipers squeaked. The approaching car’s headlights appeared in the rearview mirror.

  Where did that thing go?

  Samuel squeezed the steering wheel. He thought about calling the police. It had all happened so fast. There had been fog and traffic on the road all the way from Helsinki. He thought about the phone call six hours earlier, the visit to Central Hospital in Vaasa, seeing his dad sleeping, and the nurse who spoke with a Swedish accent telling him his dad was dead.

  None of that had made any waves: the hospital, his dad’s body, anything. On the contrary, it had felt safe and comforting. He dealt with bodies at Meilahti Hospital all the time. He’d held an old woman’s hand at the precise moment when she turned into a corpse. His voice hadn’t wavered once when he’d talked about the details with the nurse. Samuel couldn’t have forced it to if he’d tried.

  But he had to admit that the first call had made his stomach churn, although nothing had really changed: the office calendar was on the wall like always, with the holiday party marked down although it was three months away; someone requested he call an elevator to the ward; the computer hummed softly. He was still in dire need of a bathroom break and was slightly worried that the ache in his left eye was a symptom of early onset Horton’s syndrome. And he imagined fucking Annika from the neighboring ward in the parking garage, forgetting about Krista and the kids completely, he’d just do it and then scream at the sea that he would do as he pleased.

  Although nothing had really changed, the news of his dad’s death had overwhelmed him, forcing itself into his veins and seeping through his skin.

  Samuel began to drive. The car behind him came closer, then turned into the parking lot. The light in his rearview mirror blinded him for a moment, then disappeared. The car hadn’t stopped or even slowed when it came to where he thought he’d hit someone. Pushing the incident away for a moment, Samuel turned onto Patteriniemi Road. It was the last street before the woods, the small cluster of islands, and, eventually, the sea. He turned the engine off and looked at the apartment buildings’ neat rows of balconies.

  The same structures, the same shapes. Their resiliency calmed Samuel down. They spoke of his decades between the legal drinking age and the present moment he found himself in. Sitting in the quiet of his car, he realized that those decades honestly meant nothing to him anymore. All the things that had transpired—his first full-time job, getting married, kids, arguments, affairs, movies—were all just a fog that was wiped away every morning. But these buildings remained, like the pyramids in Egypt and the statues on Easter Island.

  Signs of modernity did pop up every now and then in the form of satellite dishes and immigrants. If an African man had strolled onto Patteriniemi Road in the 1980s in Samuel’s childhood, the local labor union would’ve composed songs and performed skits about this bizarre creature at their Christmas party. The Hagert gypsies hadn’t been considered representatives of foreign culture, although the neighbors gawked at their garden parties from their windows like anthropologists observing tribal dancing. The neighbors peered in, making bets about who’d get knocked out or stabbed first. People these days talked about immigrants constantly, but the new Somali neighbors must be easier folks to live with than the Hagerts.

  Once upon a time a man everyone dubbed “The Prof” lived in one of the Patteriniemi Road apartments. He would play opera all day long at full volume and take long strolls, mumbling to himself. No one ever knew what he was talking about. He never answered when kids prodded him with inappropriate questions, and his peculiar concentration could not be broken, not even when boys sped by him on their mopeds, yelling sarcastic remarks. Samuel’s dad always said there was nothing inside The Prof’s brain except an opera without an audience.

  One time, The Prof was returning from his stroll and happened to find himself in the middle of the Hagert family’s garden party in the yard. He’d stopped to listen to one of the early evening solo numbers, when talented young singers performed for the approval and admiration of the entire family. Pertti Ahlanen had been leaning out of his window, smoking, and saw how it all went down. The Prof had been clapping along with everyone else. “Marvelous singing,” he said, “but the vibrato was a tad forced.” The remark escalated into an attempted murder, a police report, and a new, permanent expression in the Patteriniemi Road vernacular among the adults. “Vibrato was a tad forced again last night,” they’d say on Sunday mornings when the yard was littered with empty beer bottles, sausage wrappings, and bloodied shreds of gauze—the aftermath of a Hagert party.

  These were all echoes from a world that no longer existed, although its sounds and people had felt immortal at the time.

  Samuel watched the buildings and for the first time he wasn’t sure what to do. He could follow in Aki’s footsteps: he’d told Samuel on the phone that he couldn’t simply take off from Shanghai on such short notice, even though his dad had just died. This from Aki, who had excelled at guilt-tripping Samuel for keeping their old man at arm’s length, even accusing him of hating his dad because of an old grudge. Yet it had been none other than Samuel who’d had to walk into his dad’s apartment when things had gotten real. Not Aki, who had called their dad once a week from across the world, now that his successful career guaranteed he was far enough away from his former time zone. The one who hadn’t succeeded had the privilege of seeing his dead father. The one who just held old ladies by the hand when they turned into corpses.

  Samuel had a set of keys in his palm. He’d found them among his dad’s belongings at the hospital. Three keys. One new grooved key, one old Abloy key, and one unknown key—perhaps to his dad’s basement storage. Samuel looked at the set and slowly realized how abandoned the keys looked now that his dad was gone. It was as if the little heat with which the metal pieces warmed his palm had come from his dad’s touch.

  He closed his fingers around the keys and began to walk. Muscle memory in his legs took him to the correct apartment building, to the correct entrance. He suddenly wanted to bound up the stairwell like he had when he was a little kid, counting how far he could make it up the stairs before the door slammed shut behind him. You always had to reach at least the second floor, or else something terrible would happen. Like your dad would die.

  Samuel climbed the stairs to his dad’s door, opening it with the grooved key. He paused at the threshold, greeted by the scents of his childhood home. There was a subtle chemical smell he hadn’t noticed before, possibly left over from a renovation some twenty years earlier. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, then let out all his breath in a deep sigh and turned on the lights. He looked at the shoes and clothes on the coat rack. There were a pair of sneakers, a pair of brown leather shoes—fake leather, rather—one cream-colored coat, and a long black wool-blend coat, an expensive purchase for his dad’s meager earnings.

  Samuel took his shoes off and shoved them next to his dad’s, then walked around the apartment, turning lights on in each room. His and Aki’s room had become makeshift storage, filled with folders and cardboard boxes brimming with to
ols, old magazines, and greasy engine parts. Miraculously, an Iron Maiden poster was still hanging on the wall, crucified with thumbtacks. A futuristic Eddie from the Somewhere in Time era peered into the room with his peculiar camera eye, and Bruce Dickinson stood in a wide stance wearing a ridiculous ruffled shirt. Samuel was briefly amused by the image of his dad rummaging in the tool boxes under the poster’s watchful eye.

  The window in the room was a black rectangle, its surface beading with drops of water. Samuel thought he saw a faint flash in it, like a pale hand moving across it.

  He turned the lights off. That was better. The window became transparent again, revealing a leafless tree branch, the silhouette of the apartment building across the yard, and the dark-gray storm clouds overhead.

  Samuel walked through the rooms again, turning the lights off.

  He went into the kitchen.

  There wasn’t much in the fridge: a pack of margarine, an opened milk carton, and a piece of pork tenderloin wrapped in plastic. Samuel pulled out a partially filled garbage bag and began to dump the food in it. The package of tenderloin had a screaming-orange tag that read “50% Off, See Best Before Date.” That would have been the only reason his dad would buy tenderloin. He’d never understood vegetarianism, but he also never bought expensive meat.

  Samuel dangled the cold meat over the garbage bag, looking at the price tag and the colorful prints on the label. Some poor outsourced graphic designer had finally gotten his tenth iteration past the meat bosses, whose aims were to please average customers of average purchasing power and force them to make quick purchase decisions. And his dad had made that decision, but not until the design had been ruined by an orange tag advertising a steep discount.

  The milk carton was red. No low-fat products for his dad. Samuel took turns looking at the pack of meat and the milk. He couldn’t take them home, but his dad wouldn’t have approved of throwing them in the trash.

  “Stingy bastard,” Samuel whispered.