The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  “Your voice changes.”

  What a strange thought. Samuel had never considered that.

  “Maybe I will write one,” he said.

  This was followed by a silence that nearly convinced him to start writing straight away. If he’d only brought a pen and paper, his words would’ve flowed. The words felt like breathing; they organized effortlessly into beautiful lines in his mind. He didn’t quite understand them, but they made him feel good the same way music did.

  I know how to do this, Samuel thought. What an astonishing thought. Maybe he could be like Eeva-Liisa Manner or Arto Melleri. Maybe he, too, could piece words together to reveal completely new sceneries, the kind that were descriptions of a simultaneously unknown yet familiar world.

  “What’s over there, on Bondorff Island?”

  The question barely penetrated his internal wordplay.

  “You hear me?”

  “Yeah, I did,” Samuel said. “That’s where Granny Hatchet lives.”

  “Granny?”

  “Yeah.”

  Julia laughed. “Why does she have a hatchet?”

  “Because she kills children,” he said. “It’s just this story we tell each other.”

  “She’s a bogeyman?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Like a . . . troll.”

  “Sort of, yeah.”

  He wished he had a pen and paper.

  “Why does she kill children?”

  “I don’t know,” Samuel said. “Nobody asks that kind of stuff. She just does.”

  How wrong was it for no one to ever have thought about it? Words in his head began to flow around the singular puzzle of Granny Hatchet.

  “How is it even physically possible for some old lady to catch kids?” Julia asked.

  “She smells them,” Samuel said. “Like that half-blind witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ You know that story?”

  “Of course.”

  “She can smell children from miles away. She sniffs the air like a fox that’s been sniffing gas out of Jape’s moped tank.”

  Julia laughed so hard that tears began to run down her cheeks.

  “She runs like a mink at terrifying speeds, and when her hatchet swipes at rocks you can see sparks fly.”

  Julia turned on her side. It sounded like she was choking.

  “Don’t laugh,” Samuel said, trying to keep a straight face. “You’re allowed to laugh if you catch Helge sniffing his own fingers, but you better not laugh about Granny Hatchet.”

  “Stop!”

  “Otherwise she’ll appear one day when you’re least expecting her,” he continued. “And she’ll wait for you to turn your back on her. Then she’ll whack you with her hatchet between your shoulder blades so hard that the air is knocked out of your lungs and your legs go numb. And she’ll roll you over. She’ll stick her black tongue out at you . . .”

  Julia suddenly wasn’t laughing anymore.

  “That’s gross,” she said, wiping her tears. “I’m getting scared. Tell me something else.”

  She sat up and looked around in the summer dusk.

  “I’m sorry,” Samuel said immediately. “What kind of a story would you like to hear?”

  “You can tell me about that island, but please—not one more word about any grannies.”

  He looked up at the sky and pondered. Then he said, “That island is a piece that was broken off the moon.”

  “What?”

  “The moon forgot to take it along when it separated from Earth.”

  Julia’s clothes rustled as she turned to face Samuel.

  “Ooh. Tell me more.”

  “Our geography textbook has a picture showing the moon breaking off from Earth about a hundred thousand million trillion years ago.”

  “So?”

  “The moon’s left eye was created when Bondorff Island refused to follow it, instead staying here.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Julia chuckled. “Did you just make that up?”

  “I didn’t make it up—Harri did. He remembered that picture in the book and one day just started telling this as a fact. Sure, we’d had some moonshine that day, but only now I understand what a great story it was.”

  Words finding their places, wrong words replaced by the right ones, causing chain reactions that were beautiful even at their ugliest.

  “And when the moon’s eye was left behind, so was Granny Hatchet. And some creature that ought to belong on the moon.”

  Samuel could feel his words coming now, bubbling up inside of him . . . How does it feel to dive into the green waters of early summer through algae that wraps around the ankles like a forgotten—

  “Moonshine? Does it mean home-made alcohol here, too?” Julia asked.

  “Yeah. Made of yeast and sugar. Makes you really drunk.”

  The mud on the bottom of the sea is soft and light brown, the damp ashes of the ancient separation—

  “All right. Where did the moon’s right eye come from?”

  “It’s another island,” Samuel muttered. “Near Iceland. It’s inhabited by people made out of rocks who can hold burning lava in their hands, and when they do, their faces glow in its light, making them look like . . .”

  Words became muddled as soon as they were spoken. They became mechanical toys that lost their magic. He should’ve been writing them down instead.

  “What about its mouth?”

  “That’s America,” Samuel said without hesitation.

  “California?”

  “Maybe. Yeah. California is big enough.”

  Julia was getting excited.

  “That’s the reason why California could fall into the ocean if there’s an earthquake,” she said. “The moon tried to pull it along for the ride, but some of it fell back to Earth. That’s why the moon’s smile looks so moronic.”

  “Yeah,” Samuel said and put this enormous catastrophe of an earthquake into words in his head, although he wouldn’t have been able to find California on a map. It just seemed to fit the story. Some things were true, even if they really weren’t. But somewhere deep within their cells and between cells, they were true. This thought caused another chain reaction of words. Tens of new words. Hundreds. The algae braided itself into tentacles, the soft mud on the bottom of the sea puffed up like a mushroom cloud, piercing the surface like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, rising high into the sky where the moon shook and buzzed as ants gnawed on its insides. The hum of the sea became louder, devastating his eardrums. The words took Samuel away and his sense of where he was, what day it was, where he lived.

  Julia saved him by taking his hand.

  The mud settled.

  The algae unraveled.

  The gnawed moon steadied.

  The waves found a rhythm.

  There was only Julia. In the pale full moon.

  And the realization that words could whisk you away from this world.

  Neither of them wore a watch so they had no idea what time it was when they finally headed back home along the path in the woods. Their exhaustion manifested only in increasingly ridiculous stories.

  “My dad will have a fit,” Julia said. “He thinks I should always be home on time.”

  Samuel thought this was strange. Usually when he got home, he had to shake his dad awake, who’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. Nobody ever asked him what time it was.

  The path was narrow, so Julia went ahead. She skipped over rocks and roots sticking out of the ground, exaggerating the obstacles, as if she were a ballet dancer. It was a completely still night. They heard only the seagulls screeching out on the sea. It was so quiet Samuel thought that the world had turned itself off, and they could do whatever they wanted.

  “What if we don’t go home?” he su
ggested.

  He liked the world when it stood still like this. He could’ve spent the rest of his life this way.

  He didn’t hear an answer, and was about to repeat his question when he bumped into Julia.

  “Shh.”

  “What?” Samuel said.

  Julia was looking off the path to the right, into the woods.

  “That wasn’t there last time,” she whispered.

  Samuel tried to pinpoint where she was looking and saw nothing special. All he saw was a bunch of tree trunks and piles of rocks in the darkening summer night. Far behind them the sea glittered. Julia came closer to him and pointed. Now he followed her arm all the way to her fingertip. Her hair tickled his cheek.

  “There, on the tree trunk.”

  “Yeah?” Samuel said, although he wasn’t sure he was even looking at the right tree.

  “That weird . . . lump.”

  “That burl?”

  “Whatever. It wasn’t there last we walked by.”

  Samuel focused his eyes. “Are you pulling my leg?” he asked.

  “Come on. No.”

  “How can you even remember what all these trees look like?”

  “I was filming here earlier, remember? I was shooting right between these two birches out to the sea.”

  Samuel noticed the back of his neck had gone cold ever since Julia had stopped in her tracks, and the cold was spreading down to his back, arms, and belly.

  “There’s someone there.”

  “No, there isn’t,” he said. “You remembered wrong.”

  Julia shook her head slowly, still looking ahead.

  “Someone’s standing behind that tree.” She was dead serious.

  Samuel tried to make out any details in the figure, just to prove to Julia that she was wrong, but the more he squinted, the more the burl seemed to transform. It kind of did look like a human shoulder poking out behind a tree. Or, maybe, a face peering from behind the tree. Dusk had blurred the details. Julia lifted her video camera toward the tree trunk.

  “Shoot,” she said. “Out of battery.”

  Samuel was about to ask the immobile group of trees if anyone was out there. That’s one way to find out, he thought, and he’d show Julia that he wasn’t scared.

  The burl moved.

  Julia screamed. Her scream startled Samuel and he yelped. They took off running as if it were a part of an agreement they’d signed. Julia sprinted so fast that Samuel had a hard time keeping up. His back was tingling, as if preparing to be touched, waiting for a cold blade to sink in all the way to the spine. The screams of the seagulls in his ears began to change, and all he heard was the attack call of a hunter running like a mink.

  They didn’t turn to look back until they felt asphalt under their feet. They leaned against the garage wall, panting, ready to run again at the first sight of movement in the corner of their eyes.

  Suddenly the idea of the world having stopped turning and leaving them alone didn’t sound that great. Samuel would’ve loved to hear just one car coming around the corner.

  “What the fuck was that?” Julia asked, like he was supposed to know. This was where he grew up, after all.

  The memory of the figure in the woods began to instantly fade. The screams from the sea were nothing but seagulls again.

  “Maybe it was nothing,” Samuel said. “Maybe we’re just tired and we’re imagining stuff.”

  Julia panted and breathed out a muttered protest.

  “I heard its steps,” she said. “It was running right behind us.”

  He didn’t have another rebuttal. Maybe she had heard his steps. How could you be sure of anything when you ran for your life and your heart beat in your ears like a drum?

  Talking about it began to change the way Samuel remembered what had happened. Maybe there had been a third, faster pace mixed in with the rhythm of their feet. It had sounded softer and lighter, like someone running barefoot.

  Samuel noticed again how his back felt clammy and cold, as if a corpse were breathing on his sweaty skin right behind him.

  After that eventful night, the days grew longer again, just like in Samuel’s childhood. The fear they now shared had brought Samuel and Julia even closer together. It was their unspoken secret that made the daylight seem so much brighter.

  They could hear the waves. The wood grain in the utility poles told them that the poles hadn’t always been there—someone had made them. Jape’s mean laugh and threats were meaningless as they walked across the yard. They knew that Jape was a deeply sad human being and lived in a pathetic alternate reality, and they almost pitied him.

  They didn’t pity the girl living in the townhomes, Maisa, nearly as much. She’d had a crush on Samuel since January. Earlier her flirting had just been awkward: she’d push her way through the crowd on the bus to sit next to Samuel. She even called him on the phone. His dad had once picked up the phone and told Samuel right away that he’d better not start planning to marry any of “them townhome brats.” For once they agreed on something.

  Jape had noticed how badly Maisa was crushing on Samuel, and that had made it even worse. The bastard wrote a little ditty about it.

  “Maisa, Maisa, will you let Samuel fuck ya . . .”

  He composed a whole song. When Samuel couldn’t fall asleep he entertained horrifying thoughts of Jape becoming the singer of a popular rock band and recording and releasing that song. All sorts of nonsense had become hit songs for yokels like Jape to sing along to when they were drunk. Samuel’s shame would never end, and he’d have to move abroad or drown himself in the sea. That would crown Jape the ultimate winner.

  When these thoughts pummeled him, Samuel tossed and turned until three in the morning and did his best to convince himself that it wasn’t that easy to become a rock star. But someone always became a star, and Jape had already been a singer in one band until playing drums was banned in the garages. On other occasions Samuel thought about the ways he could silence Jape. He could wait near the path in the woods until Jape was drunk and wobbling his way back home alone. He’d hit him with a rock from behind. He’d beat him until he was unmistakably dead. He’d walk to the shore and throw the rock as far into the sea as he could. Teachers would give kids an opportunity to share their thoughts about Jape in school, and cops would launch an investigation, but nobody would suspect Samuel if his plan were flawless. He’d wear plastic bags over his feet and agree on an alibi with Harri: he had been at Harri’s place listening to records all night. Eventually, it would all turn into a story. Jape’s disappearance would be another Granny Hatchet job. The sea monster ate him. There would never be a rock star called Jape, and there would never be any mean songs about Samuel.

  When Julia arrived, these horrifying thoughts disappeared. Jape became delightfully meaningless.

  But now there was Maisa. Even just seeing her made Samuel despise and loathe her so much it scared him. He used to pity her, but now he could’ve spat on Maisa’s face to get the message across.

  Maisa once appeared out of nowhere at the shore with her golden retriever when Samuel and Julia were there. That was the worst.

  “Who are you?” she asked Julia. Maisa’s voice betrayed how close she was to a breakdown, but only Samuel recognized the signs.

  Julia introduced herself and chatted politely, yet she was reserved. Any mention of the United States made Maisa yell at her dog, who was tugging on the leash, trying to get back to the path. Her admiring voice at Julia’s stories was sickeningly fake.

  “How nice. How exciting.”

  When they ran out of things to talk about, Samuel started to worry that Maisa might cause a scene. He made sure to keep his back turned to her and not look at her.

  “What are you filming?” Maisa asked.

  “The Bondorff villa,” Julia said. “Apparently you’re not supposed to go there.”
>
  Maisa yanked the dog back to her.

  “Why not?” she asked defiantly.

  Julia shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Samuel.”

  He felt Maisa’s eyes on the back of his neck.

  “Come on, tell her,” Julia said.

  “Maisa already knows,” Samuel said. “She’s just bullshitting to say something.”

  Julia looked puzzled. She laughed a little at Maisa and escaped the situation by hiding behind the camera. The uncomfortable silence continued for an eternity. Even the swooshing of the waves seemed to demand someone to speak up.

  “Do you know how it feels,” Maisa said, holding back tears, barely audible, “when your heart is ripped out of your chest?”

  So embarrassing. Samuel was so ashamed for her that it hurt. Her voice was so helpless and humiliated that he couldn’t bear to listen to it.

  Go away, he kept thinking to himself. Die, or whatever, but just disappear.

  It took awhile, but Maisa eventually left. Samuel could hear her shoes crushing the tree branches and her sobbing disappearing into the woods. He didn’t see where she went, but he noticed Julia had turned her camera around.

  It followed Maisa. A thin, cruel smile slowly spread across her face.

  That’s when Samuel felt sick, but only for a moment. He decided to drop by at Maisa’s on his way home and apologize to her. Nobody should tolerate cruelty like this.

  But when Julia suddenly kissed him, he forgot about apologies, along with everything else.

  “Did you bring a condom?” she whispered, lips touching his ears.

  Of course he did, but Samuel had been hiding the condom for so long he almost lied about it. He’d found it in the bottom of one of his dad’s drawers. The “Use By” date had passed almost a year before.

  He worried about a lot of things. Would he be as good as the men in pornos? Would someone see him? What if the condom broke? He’d get AIDS or worse, a child.

  Then he forgot everything again.

  When Samuel walked back home later, Maisa no longer existed to him.

  When Samuel called Julia on Sunday, he was greeted by an angry man’s voice on the other end.