The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  “Why?”

  “You say you think about religion, but all you think about is fucking.”

  They both laughed, for the first time ever simultaneously. Maisa had already brought her coffee cup to her lips, and now managed to sputter it onto her nose and chin. They laughed some more.

  “I need to know, though,” she said, serious this time, “how my thunder got its name.”

  Pasi laughed once more, then calmed down. “I understand. Sort of.”

  “It would be amazing if you could help me. And without any tricks or bargaining, just this once.”

  He twiddled his thumbs above his belly.

  “I already did,” he said. “I don’t have any informants at the secret police.”

  Maisa had never believed that part, anyway.

  “This ancient professor in Helsinki told me about it. He’s originally from around here and tried digging around for more information, but he never found enough evidence of illegal military equipment. He drew his own conclusions and moved on to research something more sensible.”

  “Thanks. What’s his name?”

  Pasi stopped moving his thumbs. He frowned theatrically.

  “What I’m going to do now is pay for our drinks, then I’ll go up to my ten-square-meter suite and drink some more.” He clumsily shoved the table as he got up. “And I’ll have you know, miss, that the number of Mr. Jack’s wonderful room is 405.”

  Maisa sighed. “It was nice to see you,” she said, staring at her coffee.

  “Likewise.”

  Pasi walked to the bar, whistling. Maisa heard a quiet conversation. The waitress laughed and then wished him a good night.

  Maisa remained seated, pondering her self-worth and the overall insanity of her actions. Even the animal on the wall appeared to shake its head at her.

  She finished her coffee and got up. She didn’t even look at the front desk as she rang the elevator up to the fourth floor. The small lobby behind her was completely quiet. Perhaps all of the staff was asleep, except for the waitress.

  The elevator was claustrophobic and dimly lit. The car jerked with a screech as it began its ascent.

  Maisa was overcome with panic before she realized what was happening. Her thoughts were still with Pasi and the thunder and the hotel lobby. Her body, however, was in full fight-or-flight mode.

  The dim light flickered.

  If you’re not a good girl . . .

  The car shook. Maisa held on to the walls.

  Your heart will be dug out . . .

  The invisible pulleys in the machinery groaned softly just at the edge of her hearing. It reminded her of other sounds, of darkness emitting a strange rumbling.

  Maisa pressed her palms against the walls. She was prepared for the floor to cave in at any moment. When she got to the fourth floor, she lunged at the door. It didn’t open. The car had stopped, but the door remained shut. Some metallic latch was keeping it shut. Maisa pushed against the door again, sweat beading on her forehead. When it finally swung open she fell out and landed on her elbows on the hallway carpet.

  She struggled to get up. The panic attack subsided enough for her to think, I hope Pasi didn’t see that, please, anything else, but don’t let Pasi see that.

  The hallway was empty. Completely silent. Rows of doors lined up neatly behind her and in front of her. None of them opened.

  She looked for the stairs and walked down them carefully. A person in distress could easily fall over. Just take it easy, one step at a time.

  As soon as she was outside, Maisa focused all her thoughts on the calming waves of fresh air in and out of her lungs. There were things too immense to remember. Or to forget.

  Maisa looked at the rain and the dark clouds. She thought about the roiling storm front inside her and shivered.

  Maisa called Pasi as soon as she was back at her apartment.

  “Just listen to me and don’t say a word, all right?” she said when Pasi answered the phone. “I’m going to tell you something.”

  “All right,” he said after a long silence.

  “When I was fifteen, I went to a place where we weren’t supposed to go. I had a crush on a boy, who . . . Well, it doesn’t matter now. It was teenager stuff.”

  Maisa closed her eyes, but the darkness felt debilitating. She opened her eyes, staring at the teacup in front of her and the steam rising from it.

  “It was a large, old villa. It was on an island, but the ground was high enough for us kids to hop across the water on rocks. I went there with my dog, Nippu. I got to the villa and threw a stick for her, and I wondered why on earth we’d always been told not to go there and why the villa was supposedly so scary. It was in the middle of the day. The sun was shining. I made a huge ruckus on purpose, called out for Nippu, and whistled. I was not afraid at all.”

  The hand holding her cell phone had begun to tremble. Her cuticles hurt as if they were on fire.

  “Then someone was suddenly behind me. I didn’t hear or see anything, except the figure’s shadow in front of me. Whoever it was pulled a burlap sack over my head and led me into a cellar. They locked me there. It all happened so quickly, I didn’t even have time to be scared.”

  She could hear only the white noise of a phone line.

  “OK,” Pasi said, then, seriously, “That’s . . . terrible.”

  Maisa nodded, although nobody saw it. “I was in that cellar for almost two days. I screamed. I beat at the door. You can just imagine.”

  “Were you forced to do anything? Like . . . was that person some sort of a . . . you know.”

  “No. They just kept me there.”

  “All right, good,” Pasi said, sounding almost inappropriately relieved—as if Maisa had avoided the worst possible outcome by having remained physically intact.

  Silence.

  “What about the dog?” he then asked. “Didn’t your dog defend you . . . or bark, or—”

  “Nippu didn’t bark. She didn’t make a sound. I don’t know what happened to her. I never saw her again.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Surely the police—”

  “No police. No adults. Nobody ever found out. I lied to my parents about needing to pee really badly and how I went into the cellar of an abandoned house and the door got stuck. There were a lot of abandoned buildings in Suvikylä then, so it wasn’t implausible. I lied about Nippu, too, and told my parents she had run off while I was in the cellar. Mom and Dad were in shock. Dad wrote a letter to the local newspaper’s editor, demanding that the abandoned buildings be torn down.”

  “That’s a hell of a story. Must’ve been traumatic.”

  “Yes, it was,” Maisa said. “It is.”

  “But luckily nothing happened to you.”

  Maisa gritted her teeth, barely containing herself. She heard shuffling on the other end of the line. Pasi was most likely balancing the phone between his shoulder and his cheek to pour another drink. Or maybe he was settling into a more comfortable position before he asked something he thought would make Maisa uncomfortable. She was already regretting her decision to have told him anything. It seemed that he was treating this story like a slightly more inconvenient occurrence than locking yourself out on the balcony in the winter or getting lost while picking berries.

  “So . . . why are you telling me this?” Pasi asked. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be a shoulder to lean on.”

  Bullshit.

  “But your calling me at this hour, although we just—”

  “There was someone there.”

  Her hand began to tremble again. She tried to focus on the teacup and the wisp of steam.

  “Where?”

  “In that cellar.”

  “What do you mean?
”

  “I mean exactly what I’m saying.”

  The nauseating stench flooded back. The splashing from deep in the cavern, as if something had climbed out of the water and was pulling itself along the rocks. But that wasn’t the worst part.

  “Someone spoke to me.”

  The voice came back to her immediately. Maisa had been blocking it from her memory through sheer willpower. But her confession broke down all the barriers and dams inside her mind. Her hands now shook so violently that she had to put the phone down on the table and turn on speakerphone. Pasi’s breathing sounded like he was in a small matchbox.

  “What did the thing say?”

  Maisa moved the tips of her fingers like the restless legs of a spider. She leaned over the phone.

  “It told me that I had to be a good girl. That I could never tell anyone. And if I’m not a good girl, my heart will be dug out of my chest with a hatchet—”

  “And buried in the potato patch,” Pasi said on cue, as though he didn’t realize he was speaking out loud.

  Maisa nodded again to her invisible audience. “And that my heart would remain there until it was thoroughly black. And the rest of the story you know.”

  A gust of wind made the window rattle. Maisa jumped and turned to look. She stared at the dark window and finally allowed herself to recognize the truth.

  Of course she knew where Sagal was.

  The storm left a calm world in its wake. The wind had died out, and the rows of reeds stood still in the water. Dry leaves crunched loudly underfoot in the absence of crashing waves.

  “I can’t see anything,” Julia said.

  She stood on the first rock leading up to the Bondorff villa, the video camera on her shoulder. The rocks ran across the bay, like a path that had been tiled for that purpose. Julia took the first step. Her sneaker couldn’t get traction, and for a moment it looked like she would fall into the sea, camera and all. Samuel managed to grab her.

  “Give me that camera,” he said. “I’ll go first.”

  Julia gave it up reluctantly. As always. Samuel had occasionally been allowed to film, but it was clear who had the privilege of watching the world through the lens. Julia would be fine in front of the camera for a moment, but would soon demand to be behind it again.

  The jump from the first rock to the next was the worst. The island looked just as abandoned as Julia had said. The rocks were already dry after the storm. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. As Samuel reached the last rock, his fears were completely pushed aside. He hopped onto the Bondorff lawn like a brave moonwalker and looked around. Julia was right behind him.

  Samuel didn’t offer to give the camera back, nor did he ask if he was allowed to film. He simply lifted the camera over his eye and pressed the “Record” button. He wanted to see the world the same way Julia did, through a lens. It was important that they saw the world the same way. Julia didn’t protest.

  The villa first appeared on film as a hazy blob, then it came into sharper focus. The trees around it were nearly as still as the house itself. Samuel followed Julia, who marched toward it. Grass had grown on the lawn up to their knees. He thought about adders hiding in the grass and how they should’ve worn rubber boots. A blade of grass tickled him between the straps of his sandal, which felt like a warning. He was happy that Julia had worn sneakers. He could die happy knowing that she’d been saved. What a strange thought. Samuel was so mesmerized by it that at first he didn’t register the nausea that had made him slow down.

  Then Julia stopped and turned to the camera.

  “Ew, what stinks?”

  She looked pale. For the first time Samuel realized Julia could be scared. He continued filming in silence. The smell was earthy and nauseating, overwhelming. His dad had once asked him to find out what reeked in the kitchen, and Samuel had discovered a herring that had fallen between the stove and the cupboard. This stench was a hundred times worse, and more insidious, too. He first felt it in his thoughts, and only then in the pit of his stomach.

  “This is . . .” Julia began, but her sentence was interrupted by mute gagging. She pressed her arm against her nose and mouth.

  Samuel tried to focus the camera on her, but he couldn’t because now he had to gag, too. He tried to focus on the buzzing insects all around. On the little dots flitting across the screen.

  “This is so gross,” Julia said.

  He paused the film. “Wait,” he said and ran back to the shore. His vomit splashed onto the rocks in three waves.

  “Sorry,” he said between retching.

  Julia laughed, but not for long. Samuel wiped his mouth and thought about competitive sports and throwing darts and anything at all where he had to concentrate really hard although everyone was gawking and yelling at him. He raised the camera over his eye.

  “All right,” he said and started to record.

  Julia looked sick on film. She still held her arm over her face.

  “What’s that sound?” she asked.

  They heard a shriek among the rustling of the trees and the buzzing insects. Like someone screaming inside a bottle.

  “It’s coming from over there,” Julia said, pointing at the building. Samuel turned to look. “Come on.”

  She walked up the stairs to the porch. She let her hand fall onto the door handle, pressing down with her palm and letting go as soon as the door opened. She walked in. Samuel followed her.

  The voice was now louder.

  “It’s coming from the cellar,” Julia said and pointed at the stairs leading down. “Come on.”

  Samuel was right behind her. The sound became clearer. It was a human screaming.

  They stopped at the cellar door. Julia turned to look at him, as if he had any answers to any of this. The door had been barred shut, but either one of them could lift the latch. Samuel’s hands were full with the camera.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The voice came from behind them. From the yard. A woman’s voice.

  The stench became unbearable, as if the woman’s breath reeked all the way into the cellar. Julia’s face told Samuel that she was thinking the exact same thing. His hand began to shake, and the camera shook with it.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Julia said.

  They ran up the stairs and out the front door. He stopped shooting, sure that someone would grab his shirt before he’d make it outside. The smell alone was so revoltingly thick, it could turn at any moment into a sticky membrane that would trap them and pull them back into the villa.

  Samuel bumped into Julia on the porch.

  She lost her footing for a moment, but didn’t move.

  There was a human figure standing in the yard. It took a moment for Samuel to recognize it was a woman.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Inside the house the question had sounded threatening, shrill. Now the voice was playful. It could’ve even been happily surprised, but the words came out muffled. Samuel’s first thought was that the woman was drunk, or mentally disabled.

  “We just . . . heard some voices.”

  The woman was a curious sight. Her skin was white as a sheet, and the skin around her eyes had collapsed into craters. Yet she didn’t appear old. She was maybe the same age as Samuel’s mom, if she’d still been alive. She wore a dark dress. The lace around the collar and the sleeves reminded him of photos in his history textbooks. Her unkempt hair was unnaturally red.

  “Do you live here?” Julia asked, jumping down one step casually, as if nothing weird was going on.

  Samuel followed slightly more cautiously.

  The woman grinned. “I do believe so.”

  Her lips were dark. She was missing at least two teeth.

  “Aren’t you sure?” Julia laughed.

  Another light-hearted jump and she was safely on the grass.


  The woman’s smile waned. She turned her head to one side, as if to contemplate this question, as if it had never occurred to her before.

  “Of course I’m sure,” she then said.

  They heard screaming from the cellar again. It was drowned out by chirping birds. The sun was blazing hot and so suffocating that Samuel was tempted to ignore the screams. The bay remained calm. He stole glances at his surroundings. It wasn’t too late to run away.

  “Surely you know where you live,” Julia said, “or are you kept here as a prisoner?”

  The woman grinned again.

  Such a grotesque sight. Samuel wanted to film her, but he didn’t dare. He hid the camera behind his back.

  “What’s it like nowadays?” the woman stammered.

  “What’s what like?”

  “The mainland.”

  Julia didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know,” she started. “There’s . . . all sorts of things.”

  The woman glanced over her shoulder and took a few quick steps toward them.

  Samuel stepped back. Julia remained standing, but she squeezed her hands slowly into fists.

  “I tried to go there,” the woman whispered.

  She really reeked. Her eyes were askew and hollow.

  “This was the only thing I had time to take with me,” she said.

  She shoved her hand within the layers of her dress. She then held out a small white rock in her palm.

  “All right,” Julia said. “That’s . . . nice.”

  Samuel saw what was wrong with the woman’s eyes. One of the pupils was enlarged like on a frightened cat. The other was a minuscule dot.

  “You could come with us,” he suggested. He was surprised at how serious he sounded. Apparently Julia was surprised, too, because she jerked her head toward him. “There’s someone in the cellar. Let’s take whoever’s down there with us, too.”

  The woman’s stare made Samuel’s skin crawl.

  “Ha!” the woman shrieked. Then she began to laugh hysterically.

  Her tongue was dark. She seemed to have something in her mouth that shouldn’t be there. Samuel caught a glint of metal before her lips closed shut.