The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  “But we were tipped off about this place,” the male officer said.

  “A taxi driver confirmed that he dropped the man off here,” the woman continued. “The driver had given him rubber boots.”

  Here we go. The hand holding on to the rubber boot shot up.

  “Did he take off for the ferry without his left boot?”

  A good question. This is probably how they managed to solve crossword puzzles, too.

  “He must’ve taken off in a hurry with one wet sock,” the Inspector said. “Hope he doesn’t catch a cold. Anyway, the sighting was confirmed on Swedish waters, so we can wrap it up here.”

  Immediate resistance in their glaring faces. This used to be so easy. Everyone just fell onto their knees like in some Shakespearean play. There were no women back then, either. Just men in berets and pink shirts too tight around their bellies. They were often hungover with blood pressure through the roof, but at least they wore ties. This new breed in their coveralls was unfamiliar.

  “Apparently other people have recently gone missing around here,” the woman said. “Last week they were looking for a teenage girl. And before that . . .”

  My, she had memorized a list.

  “Is that so?” the Inspector said when the woman was done. “We have a goddamned Bermuda Triangle here. But didn’t that girl turn up? And this man has now been seen elsewhere. He’s singing ABBA in a northern Swedish bar while we are here, racking our brains over a single rubber boot.”

  The officers weren’t budging. The setup was straight out of an old Western. Everyone waited to see who’d draw first. The Inspector turned to look at the villa.

  He saw a woman standing in the upstairs window.

  “What was your name again?” the male officer asked him.

  The Inspector laughed and quickly looked away from the villa.

  “Feel free to call your superiors if you don’t believe me,” he said.

  “Who are you?” the female officer repeated.

  “Just make that goddamned call so we can get this pissing contest over with.”

  Actually, they sometimes organized such contests in the days of berets and ties.

  The Inspector relied on his stern gaze, trained to communicate years of experience. The situation was getting on his nerves, and the feeling was apparently mutual. He didn’t dare to check whether the woman was gone from the window. After a long, silent debate, the female police officer dug a cell phone from one of her pockets and made the call. The Inspector took his wading boots off while he listened. Only the soles had gotten wet.

  “What did they tell you?” he asked when she hung up.

  No reply. Well, that was a reply, too.

  “So it’s all sorted, then,” the Inspector said. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  Yet they still stood there glaring at each other, thinking about the rubber boots and other issues in their tiny worlds.

  “Why are you here if he was seen in Sweden?” the woman asked.

  “I’m only a messenger. I came to make sure your valuable time isn’t wasted here.”

  The male officer’s phone rang. Great timing. The Inspector snuffed the cigarette butt on the lawn with his heel. The caller’s message appeared to be unambiguous, because the officer’s only words were “Understood, understood.”

  After the phone call the female officer raised the rubber boot.

  “What are we supposed to do with this?” she asked.

  “Gosh, I don’t know,” the Inspector said. “Try hollering inside it. Who knows who’ll holler back at you.”

  The male officer cursed, shoved the phone back into his pocket, and yanked the boot out of the woman’s hand. It flew in a beautiful arc across the yard and landed crashing in the reeds.

  The female officer was quiet, but her opinion on the matter was obvious on her face. They parted. Surely this incident would come up with their colleagues over a glass of beer or with their spouses. Let them have the pleasure. People would talk, but in the end they trusted that the officials always knew what they were doing. And they were correct. They knew what they were doing with the Bondorff family.

  When the baggy pants had leapt their way across the bay toward new adventures, the Inspector turned back to the villa window. The woman was gone. He dialed a number. The phone was picked up immediately.

  “There’s someone else here,” the Inspector said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I saw a woman in the window.”

  Silence.

  “Maybe it was that—”

  “No,” the Inspector interrupted. “They don’t screw around during the daytime, especially if there are people around. You know that.”

  A longer silence.

  “Go see what she’s about,” the other end of the line said. “I’ll send the boys to the shore. They’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  The Inspector hung up and watched the empty window on the second floor. He lit another cigarette.

  They weren’t even sure of all the things that lay under the island, but they were sure whatever it was had to stay there. Special instructions for dealing with Bondorff Island were passed on from one retiring Inspector to the next. The envelope had appeared on his desk twenty-three years ago. It was an easy area to patrol with good pay. Before this he hadn’t been on an assignment where he had to obey so many prohibitions instead of taking action. Don’t meddle. Be careful. We are not officially a part of this. So on and so forth.

  The Inspector put out the cigarette, walked to the villa’s door, and opened it. He listened for a second before stepping in. He saw only one way out from upstairs, so he decided to take his time downstairs first. He walked into the large living room, where he saw a movie projector and a box of film reels. Some were on the floor, but otherwise everything appeared normal. He checked the other rooms. Photo albums and diaries were lined up neatly on the shelves, exactly where they were supposed to be. The Inspector had sometimes browsed through the unsettling stories they contained. Whoever wrote them was insane, he thought, but you’d better not tell a black widow how to spin a web, his predecessor had told him.

  The Inspector climbed the stairs to the second floor. He saw an open door and walked up to it.

  “Hello,” the Inspector said and knocked on the door frame.

  A woman stood in the corner. She looked pretty nasty, and judging by the stains she’d been in the cellar. Not good.

  “What are you doing here?” the Inspector asked and lowered his briefcase onto the floor.

  The woman stared at him. Her hands appeared to be cramping. She squeezed her fingers one at a time.

  “This is private property,” he said.

  The woman responded, but he couldn’t tell what she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They didn’t want me,” she said.

  The Inspector tried to come up with an appropriate answer.

  “I see,” he said.

  “I knew them,” the woman continued. “And they knew me. But they didn’t even remember me.”

  What a loon. He walked closer.

  “Anyway, you need to go now. Does anyone know you’re here?”

  The woman shook her head, staring into the distance.

  “Have you called anyone?”

  She didn’t react, so the Inspector pulled on his rubber gloves and walked one step closer. The woman didn’t resist when he felt through her coat pockets. She barely even noticed when the Inspector took her cell phone.

  “All right,” he said, bagged the phone, and placed it in his pocket. “We should be going now.”

  He led the woman by her arm down the stairs. That was the easy part. She didn’t fight until they reached the front door. She kicked and struggled in his arms and tried to steal glances toward the cellar. The reception committee was already waiti
ng at the shore when they walked out. Two men dressed for the outdoors, looking like friends or a gay couple on their morning run. One of them held a canvas bag. The Inspector greeted them and was glad to hand the woman off.

  “I’m going back to make sure the place is clear,” he said. “I should find one stiff, unless they took care of it themselves.”

  “All right,” said the man crouching over the canvas bag. He tore open a packet that contained a syringe. The other man was talking to the woman in a calm voice while he felt around in her mouth with his rubber-gloved hands, and asked her to stick her tongue out.

  The Inspector saw a third man beyond the reeds on the other shore. He loitered, nonchalantly observing his surroundings. But he touched his earbud constantly—the Inspector had to remember to talk to him about that.

  “Everything is all right,” the man inspecting the woman’s mouth said and pulled the gloves off.

  “She said they didn’t want her,” the Inspector said.

  “Lucky girl.”

  When the woman had received her shot, the same man took his time splashing them both with a disinfectant.

  “All clear,” he then said.

  The Inspector turned around and walked back into the house. He fetched his briefcase from upstairs and on his way out stopped at the stairs that led down to the cellar. He sighed. He looked over his shoulder toward the shore. Everyone else was already gone. That was quick, just like it was supposed to be.

  He really did not want to take a single step toward the cellar, but this was an exceptional situation. He had to inspect what was down below. He announced his presence three times, then opened his briefcase and took out a gas mask, which he pulled over his head. He checked the fit and walked down the stairs. He opened the door and stopped before stepping through the doorway.

  “Is everything all right down here?” he asked the darkness.

  No answer. That was no surprise. The purpose of the question was to alert anyone hiding in the cellar to his arrival.

  The Inspector waited for a moment before repeating the question.

  He heard clothes rustle against the rocks.

  “Good,” he said then. “So everything is all right. It looks like the new Fisherman has settled in, and so on.”

  Shuffling in the darkness. Whispering. Then a man’s voice.

  “My name is Samuel.”

  “No names, please,” the Inspector said. “We don’t use names here.”

  Special instructions, section four.

  The gas-mask lenses had begun to fog up at the bottom. An old piece of crap the Inspector had been carrying in his briefcase without bothering to check its condition.

  “Feel free to carry on—you won’t be bothered anymore. Any questions?”

  The darkness remained mute.

  “Good. I’ll be going then—”

  “Have you seen it?”

  The Inspector turned back toward the darkness.

  “The Ever-Devourer.”

  Special instructions, section four: only ask what you need to know. Don’t answer any questions.

  “Just carry on as you have,” the Inspector said. “Until next time.”

  Which hopefully would never come. He’d retire in five years. He’d throw a party where his guests would praise President Kekkonen’s era and the golden days of the Soviet embassy on Tehdas Street and how things were so much better then.

  “It’s like a soul. It changes color when it’s startled.”

  The Inspector didn’t respond. He turned away from the voice and began to climb the stairs.

  “Or when it gets mad.”

  That was a woman’s voice. And it didn’t come from behind him. It came from above. The Inspector looked up.

  The light from outside had been blocked by a wavering shadow. His fogged lenses revealed a dark figure ahead. Matted hair, like a crow’s nest. The strap of her dress had slipped off her right shoulder. He saw light through the holes in her hem. A tool hung from her hand. The Inspector had heard about it.

  Special instructions, section two: always keep a distance of at least three meters, especially from the woman.

  He slowly reached into his pocket for his stun gun. The woman was now descending the stairs. He held out the gun, but before he could react it was knocked out of his hands. Judging by the pain, his knuckles had been shattered with the blow. The Inspector grunted, more in disappointment than in pain. Another blow hit his shoulder. Now the Inspector howled in agony. His legs gave in. He fell backward and slid down the stairs. He tried to grab ahold of the door frame, but his fingers couldn’t find the cellar door. He rolled through the doorway down into the darkness.

  His consciousness became hazy.

  Special instructions, section one: under no circumstances should you go into the cellar.

  The Inspector tried to hold on to his gas mask as someone tried to yank it off his face. He didn’t succeed. He swiped at the darkness, trying to find anything to hold on to, but his fingers didn’t obey. He was dragged over sharp rocks somewhere deeper.

  “You need to see it.”

  It was the man’s voice this time, but the woman was there, too. The hatchet blade clattered along the rocks.

  The Inspector could hear sloshing. The smell of the sea began to mix with something thick, something chemical.

  Under no circumstances—

  His palm touched a metal surface. Under any other circumstances the Inspector would not have touched the barrels, but now he felt for them with his fingers. But he couldn’t hold on. He heard a metallic boom drifting away from him as a barrel teetered but did not fall over. His head hit a rock. The Inspector passed out.

  “Look at it.”

  The woman’s voice was right next to his ear. The Inspector realized he was sitting. He was propped up, the woman and the man holding him by his arms. His eyes were open, but all he saw was black.

  Can they see in the dark? he wondered.

  Pure black. Sloshing water. Nauseating stench.

  Then he detected flickering colors. They were first barely visible, but they slowly formed a purple glow that began to form an unrecognizable shape as the color turned brighter.

  When the Inspector realized that something large was coming at him, his lungs let out a sound he didn’t recognize. The sight was incomparable to anything he’d ever seen before. He wasn’t sure whether he should forget about his retirement party. There’d been no special instructions for this.

  THE BLACK TONGUE

  Maisa opened her eyes gradually.

  A blue, cloudless sky. The scent from the sea. Not the muddy and stuffy smell of her childhood, but the scent of an open ocean. A genuine sea.

  Maisa stretched her limbs. A gentle wind caressed her bare arms. She playfully blocked the sun with her palms, but its light was irresistible, breaking through her fingers. She gave up, yawned, stretched some more, and sat up.

  The sea around her was pleasantly calm. She saw lazy, slow waves that only rarely turned foamy white. She leaned back past her towel, touching the hot fiberglass.

  She saw an island ahead. It was overwhelmingly verdant, and the green slowly transformed into a sandy beach at its shore. Maisa smiled.

  “Is that . . .” she started to say and looked over her shoulder.

  The man behind the wheel stood at the edge of her vision. A figure waving in the wind.

  “Bora-Bora,” the man replied.

  Maisa turned back toward the island and thought about the people hiding in its lush vegetation. She was privileged. There weren’t many who could experience this. To wake up in the morning to this sight, to smell a real ocean around you, to feel a warm wind on your bare skin, and to look at a mysterious lushness, thoughts brimming with excited anticipation. Everyone should be allowed to feel this way, Maisa decided. Instead of making wrong choices, bein
g born into the wrong family, into a stuffy apartment building where people spin evil stories in a bomb shelter like a spider’s web.

  Maisa kept her eyes on the mesmerizing shades of green, until they seemed to flow into her, an endless green light.

  A man stood on the shore. She shaded her eyes and tried to focus.

  He stood in the water and waved his arms in large arcs. He occasionally stopped waving and put his hands around his mouth. He appeared to shout into the wind.

  “Are you seeing this?” Maisa asked and pointed at the man.

  There was no reply. She turned around to ask again but didn’t see anyone there. The wheel turned from left to right on its own.

  How irresponsible. She should’ve shouted and told the man off, but it wasn’t easy when she didn’t know the captain’s name. Maisa hooked her bikini top, jumped up, and struggled to find her balance for a second on the waves. They had indeed grown stronger. Or maybe the boat had already reached shallow waters, which made the waves feel worse. She wobbled over to the wheel and past it, to the stairs leading down to the cabin.

  The stairs were hewn of stone. Why would a boat have stone stairs and a door made of rotten wood?

  Maisa called out to the nameless man and descended the stairs. Her feet, warm from the sun, soaked in the icy coldness of the stone.

  She opened the door.

  A stuffy cellar. A man lying down in a fetal position. An almost bloodless purple appendage stuck out of his mouth, but it appeared to be too long to be a tongue. It looked more like an organ that had been vomited out.

  Maisa shut the door and ran back onto the deck. She grabbed the wheel and tried to steer, but the waves kept on sending the boat toward the shore in an increasingly frantic motion.

  The man waving at her from the shore had given up. He just stood there, observing the approaching boat. The sandy beach was gone. The lush greenery was gone. Only a rocky island remained, and a ransacked villa stood on its tallest hill like a shipwreck that had drifted ashore.