The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  “Yeah, what a story,” Sagal said and turned to look behind her. “I was worried that someone was going to touch me in the dark. I would have screamed if they did. I would’ve screamed so loud.”

  She saw the lights go off in the stairwell behind them.

  “Really?” Mira asked. “I meant what a fucked-up situation. I almost started laughing.”

  She’d stopped trying to light her cigarette to check whether Sagal had been serious. Mira’s laugh came out almost aggressive when she found out she was serious. That’s the way Mira laughed when Sagal was about to embarrass herself in front of everyone with some stupid Muslim opinions. Muslim opinions were anything that Mira—along with everyone else—disagreed with. But now there weren’t any other people around.

  “Seriously, how could that story have scared you?” Mira said. “It’s baby stuff. Ooh, her pussy was a mouth and some shit. Sick. Stupid, sick shit.”

  Sagal shrugged and crossed her arms. She stared at the door to the building. She could see sparks on her right from the lighter as Mira began to light her cigarette again.

  Sagal had squeezed Mira’s hand in the bomb shelter. Mira had squeezed back. Sagal had closed her eyes, although it had been so dark it made no difference.

  “And that goddamned mask,” Mira mumbled with her lips wrapped around the cigarette. “So lame. All that hype and then some . . . some story about a mink? What the fuck is a mink, anyway? Or a burl?”

  A mink is a terrifying, small predator of wild animals such as birds, and a burl is a disfiguration on a wounded tree, Sagal said, but only to herself.

  She could smell the cigarette before a veil of smoke spread over her eyes. The wind blew it away. She didn’t want her scarf smelling of tobacco, so she took a step away from Mira. Her mom would smell it on her immediately.

  “Besides, I recognized who that High Priest was,” Mira said, now slightly calmer.

  Sagal turned to her. “No way.”

  “I did!” Mira laughed. “It was Tuure. The Condom Washer.”

  “What?”

  “The Condom Washer. Tuure Aulanko from the building next door. One time, he stole his dad’s used condom from the trash because he was too embarrassed to buy one. Then he washed it and hung it out to dry in his bathroom. Jonna had gone over to fuck him when his parents were at a bar. When she went to pee she saw the condom hanging on the clothesline. She asked Tuure about it and he told her the whole story. She had a real hard time keeping a straight face! She called me as soon as she got to the stairwell.”

  “Oh.”

  Mira was quiet. Then she faced Sagal.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” Sagal said and looked past Mira. Lately she’d had a hard time looking Mira in the eye.

  Mira followed her gaze and turned around. “What are you staring at?”

  Sagal sighed. “Why won’t he come out?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The High Priest. That Tuure guy.”

  Mira shrugged and took a final drag from her cigarette. “Maybe he got locked in,” she said. “Serves him right. Let him rot there under his rubber mask, blowing on his dad’s condoms. I still can’t believe how shitty that story was. Ansku warned me that the Sermon is so unbelievably terrifying that she was getting goose bumps just thinking about it. What a fucking loser. She’s in ninth grade and supposedly still scared a year after hearing the story.”

  “He’s alone in there—in the dark,” Sagal said.

  It took a few seconds before Mira figured out that she meant the High Priest.

  “I guess so,” she said, then looked lost in thought. “Or he lives in the same building and just walked up a few flights of stairs to get home.”

  “He doesn’t. You told me he lives in that other building.”

  Mira snorted. “Well, it sounded like Tuure, but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t see his face.”

  Sagal looked through the door at the stairwell for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yeah, he must live in that building,” she said and tried blowing cigarette ashes off her scarf. “I have to go now.”

  “You’re not coming to the party?”

  Of course she wanted to.

  “No,” Sagal said. “I have to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She was about to take off when Mira grabbed her shoulder.

  “You weren’t seriously scared, were you?” she asked.

  Light drizzle fell like glitter on Mira’s dyed black hair. A gust of wind brought the smell of the sea from the shore. Sagal thought that the raindrops and the sea smell were one and the same. She shook her head.

  “I wasn’t scared.”

  “I’m sorry I laughed,” Mira said. Sagal saw her eyes behind the glowing butt of the cigarette, and she looked genuinely worried. Sagal couldn’t hide her smile.

  “Just don’t have any nightmares. That story is not worth it. That’s just the kind of stuff that goes on around here. Scaring kids, things like that, but it’s all done with good intentions. It’s about us all belonging to the same community. You remember what I told you about Iida?”

  Sagal nodded.

  “When we scared her at the shore?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We waited for her for what must’ve been three hours, but it was so worth it.”

  Sagal didn’t say a word.

  “So, that’s the kind of stuff we do around here,” Mira said. “Pranks. And if someone pulls a prank on you, it just means that you’re one of us. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “See, you just witnessed a prank in the Fairy-Tale Cellar. Don’t be scared. Besides, I’m here to take care of you.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” Sagal said.

  “For real?”

  “For real,” she said. “But thanks anyway, Mira. Have fun at the party.”

  “I’ll try, but remember—if you’re having nightmares just call me, and I’ll be there to ring your doorbell in the middle of the night.”

  Sagal smiled. “I’ll remember that.”

  “And you’ll call me, all right?”

  “I will.”

  “I’m serious—I’ll run over and I’ll be at your door. Then your dad will say again, ‘What you want, you a crazy girl?’”

  Sagal laughed.

  Mira hugged her. Sagal forgot about all the scary things in this world. Her dad hated Mira: she always had money on her. New clothes, new phones, new hair dye. He saw it as a red flag, knowing that Mira’s single mother was unemployed. Where was all that money coming from, he undoubtedly wondered. Rent was constantly climbing, so where did it come from?

  Sagal could have fallen asleep wrapped in Mira’s damp hair. It smelled of unfamiliar chemicals and cigarette smoke and everything Sagal didn’t know enough about. Mira kissed her on the cheek and walked away.

  Sagal turned to walk home until Mira was out of sight. Then she pulled a digital recorder out of her breast pocket, releasing a waft of tobacco smoke from the folds of her coat. The device was smaller than a matchbox and connected to a cord that led to a set of buttons. Sagal pulled the cord out of her sleeve. She’d been afraid that Mira or someone else would notice it in the basement, although it had been pitch black.

  She glanced at her window. There was still a light on in the kitchen, but her mom and dad were probably in the living room and her little brother was in bed. Her older brother would be back when he’d be back. Boys could come and go as they pleased. Soon her dad would realize how late it was and would ask her mom to call her cell.

  Sagal wrapped the cord around the device and shoved it in her pocket. The stairwell in the building with the bomb shelter was still dark. The wind rustled leaves in front of the door. Sagal took a step back but wasn’t sure whether she was heading to the parking lot or back to the bomb shelter. Th
e latter thought sent sharp ripples from her lower back through her shoulder blades into her arms. She was both excited and terrified, like how she felt when she slowly waded into cold water. She took a few steps and there she was, at the door to the bomb-shelter building, looking at her own reflection in the glass door. She saw the bare tree branches swaying in the wind behind her, trying to steal her scarf with their crooked fingers. Sagal leaned into the glass and stopped before her nose touched it.

  The stairwell led down into darkness. Sagal could see only a white rectangle where the basement door was. She suddenly squeezed her device and thought about dropping it in the storm drain. It would fit through the grid, and the next storm would take the player away. Rats would wonder if it was edible, trying to bite it. Water would seep into it and destroy every single sound it had recorded until only silence and things never done remained.

  Sagal jumped when a light flashed in her reflection. She held her breath and turned around, dead sure that a flashlight was aimed at her.

  There was no one in the yard. Only a car had pulled into the parking lot, and Sagal saw afterglow from its headlights for another split second before the lights dimmed. Her heart was pounding in her eardrums. She squeezed the thin, plastic music player in her pocket once more. The headlights didn’t flicker a second time.

  Sagal looked around, then over her shoulder. An empty yard, lined with buildings and lit windows, surrounded her. Behind her was the dark stairwell. She began to walk toward the parking lot. The gravel crunching under her shoes seemed to echo from the square building walls louder than usual. That was odd. Odd feet, odd hands against warm, smooth plastic. An odd girl.

  The driver reached inside the car to open the passenger door for Sagal. A faint light turned on. Sagal didn’t dare look around—she yanked the door open and sat down quickly.

  “What took you so long?” The woman was nervous. “Were you thinking of going back in there?”

  Sagal, an odd girl, was now shrouded in the odd new-car smell.

  “Take it easy,” the woman said and touched Sagal’s shoulder. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Suddenly the woman was holding the digital recorder. Sagal saw her unravel the wrapped cord hastily.

  “You’re no cop,” Sagal said.

  The woman calmed down when she connected earbuds to the device.

  “Yeah, I am,” she said, barely paying attention to Sagal, listening to the audio.

  “No, you’re not. Cops wouldn’t ask me to do this.”

  “Mm-hm.” The woman’s eyes glazed over—she wasn’t listening to a word Sagal said, mesmerized by the sounds stolen from the bomb shelter.

  “I’ll report you to the police,” Sagal said.

  The woman pulled her earbuds off. “What did you say?”

  “I told my older brother. I asked if he’s still selling.”

  The woman was quiet. She may have held her breath.

  “He hasn’t done anything since the last time,” Sagal continued. “Cops aren’t after him.”

  The woman took a quick breath, but then forgot to breathe out.

  “You’re just screwing me over and I’ll get into trouble.”

  “You won’t get into any sort of trouble,” the woman said. “You could have, if you’d gone back to the bomb shelter. I was so worried when I saw you walking back.”

  Sagal frowned. “You’re no cop. And you weren’t the least bit worried, liar.”

  The woman went silent. She was thinking. Why had Sagal returned if it was so clear that she wasn’t a cop?

  “Listen now, Sagal.”

  “What?”

  “What you did was really brave.”

  “Are you some sort of gossip writer or . . .”

  “I’m conducting research,” the woman said. “And you have nothing to worry about. I’d like to thank you, and . . .”

  She pulled money out of her wallet and handed it to Sagal. “This is for you.”

  Sagal didn’t move. The rustle of the bills reminded her of Mira, who always had money on her. She kept her arms stiff at her sides. She had a clear line of sight to the building’s stairwell door through the windshield. Wind pressed the tree branches down, making them wave right in front of the door.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” the woman said, but Sagal wasn’t listening.

  It was strange to think that she’d been standing in front of the door to the building just a few moments before. The woman dropped the money onto her lap, where Sagal stared at it. She opened the car door and instinctively grabbed at the bills when a gust of wind was about to blow them away. As soon as she shut the door, the woman started the engine.

  “Thanks so fucking much,” Sagal said as the engine revved. She shoved the bills into her pocket and wiped her palms on the hem of her coat.

  She was left alone in the wind that mercilessly tossed around everything not rooted in the ground. Sagal knew she wouldn’t report the woman to the police—she never reported anything. This wasn’t some immigrant thing; it was a Patteriniemi Road thing. If someone’s car got torched next to the city-housing apartments, there was no use reporting it. If you walked a hundred yards to the garages of the nicer town homes and broke a windshield over there, the cops might show up. But if you walked another fifty yards and threw a rock through a rich person’s single-family home, at least two cop cars would be on the scene, the cops ready to shake you down. Her dad always said that Patteriniemi Road was like his neighborhood in Somalia before the war—except Patteriniemi Road had the strange distinction of being both kinder and colder at the same time.

  Sagal returned to the yard and made fists inside her pockets, reminding herself that she no longer had the device. This piece of incriminating evidence was gone, and there could be any number of reasons why she had money on her. Her head was clear until the wind blew something whirly and sticky in her face. It felt like a bug, and Sagal yelped and shook the damp maple leaf off her, wiping her face and spitting bits of leaf out of her mouth. Gross.

  When she looked up someone was staring at her from a second-story window in the bomb-shelter building. Staring right at her.

  Sagal’s body tingled again, lower this time.

  They’re not looking at me, she told herself. They didn’t see a thing. Sagal tried to distract herself by thinking about how boring it would be at school the next day, waiting for the school bus, and all the bad breath in the classroom when someone yawned next to her. She always held her hand in front of her mouth when she yawned. Nobody needed to see her tongue or teeth or smell her breath.

  She took determined steps toward the stairwell in her own building. When she grabbed the door’s cold handle, she turned once more to look back at the building with the bomb shelter. Now there was a light on in the stairwell. Sagal was relieved. It had to be the High Priest walking up the stairs to his place. He was just a regular guy, this Condom Washer, although he carried a hatchet and a rubber mask in a plastic bag. She might spot Tuure on the bus in the morning if his moped or bike was broken. Sagal opened the door and sneaked in quickly.

  She hummed a tune and walked toward the light switch.

  Her foot touched something.

  Sagal shivered and looked down. Something was stuck to the sole of her left shoe. It made a rubbery flapping sound when she shook her foot. She got the thing off and backed away, holding her breath and walking around until she was sure that it remained still.

  In the darkness all she could see was a formless, light-colored lump in the middle of the floor. It was right between her and the light switch. Sagal stared at it as if it were an animal playing dead, and she was suddenly aware of the smell of rubber that had attacked her nostrils as soon as she had stepped into the stairwell.

  The Condom Washer, Sagal thought, then berated herself for thinking that the shapeless little pile was a condom. Stupid. It had gaping holes
and torn edges, and—

  She peered into the corner to the right of the light switch. A green shape slumped there like a human without a head or legs. The coat had slid down the wall, leaving behind streaks of dark, dripping stains.

  Sagal couldn’t help looking back outside. That’s when the light in the bomb-shelter building’s stairwell turned off. It didn’t seem like a coincidence—it was more like a warning, a planned, secret code. She was a bad, bad girl. No one had committed worse deeds than she had: she had betrayed Mira and all the others.

  That same Mira who made her think impure thoughts—whose hair she loved to smell. Bad, bad.

  Movement in the corner of her eye made Sagal turn toward the yard. She looked between the picnic shelter and a massive rock. These rocks in the yard and in the Suvikylä woods had always made her feel unfathomably alone, as if these buildings that seemed to have been around forever were just a backdrop on some distant planet where she couldn’t expect anyone to understand her. She’d seen a picture of the surface of Mars in a textbook, and that’s how she felt sometimes. Deeply alone. She should’ve framed that picture.

  Someone stood in the yard.

  Sagal realized she’d been staring at the shape for a while without recognizing it as human. It was wearing a green coat and had a funny face.

  A burl in a tree.

  Let’s pull a prank on you.

  Sagal turned to look at the heap on the floor, then the other heap in the corner. How could the mask and that coat be here if they were being worn—

  She yelped when her cell phone went off. A silly shriek. She threw both her hands over her mouth and looked around. How embarrassing, causing a scene like this over nothing. It made her forget about everything else except the horror of the masked shape outside hearing her scream through the glass.

  Her phone rang, echoing in the stairwell. It was loud, but nothing moved. She didn’t know why she had expected anyone to hear her, there in the dark.