Stolen Tongues

by Felix Blackwell

  “What is it?” I whispered, patting Chewie’s head. She didn’t move a muscle. Her entire body was rigid, ready to attack. But neither dog made a sound. I waded through the dark of the hall to peek inside Colin’s room, but I was stopped by a powerful wave of nausea. The walls spun around me and my legs went rubbery. I caught myself on the handrail next to the stairs. As I regained my sense of balance, Carrot said from behind me, “Warmer…” and then shrieked, “UGLY! UGLY!” Her cage rattled again, and Faye screamed.

  I bolted back down the hall, nearly tripping over the dogs, who were now barking and snarling wildly. I flicked the light on in the guest room to see Faye sitting at the far end of the bed, knees pulled to her chest, terror in her expression. Carrot’s cage was on the floor again, and the bird was flapping around inside, still shrieking.

  “Someone was in here,” Faye choked out, trying to hold back tears. “It felt like someone was standing right there.” She pointed directly at me.

  At this point I’d seen enough. We got dressed, threw our luggage together, and ushered the dogs out the front door. We all piled into the car and sped down the mountain. A full moon lit our path. All the way home, Faye and I traded stories of all the creepy and unexplainable things that had happened to us in our lives. Most of mine involved the sounds I hear at night, and most of hers involved sleepwalking as a child. Carrot watched our conversation from her cage on Faye’s lap, but never uttered a word the entire drive.

  When Monday rolled around, Colin and Gabriella were

  surprised to hear that they had to come pick up their pets from my apartment. In the coming years, I learned from them that Carrot never spoke again.

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  I hadn’t seen snow in decades. Fresh powder dusted the road, and our rental car struggled to make it up the hill. It was hard to take in the beautiful view while trying not to plummet off the cliff, but I managed. To the right, an icy pine forest drifted past, and to the left, far below, lay an enormous valley. A big town rested inside it. All around us, dozens of other snow-capped mountains jagged the rim of the horizon.

  Faye was my copilot. She pushed a stream of fiery-gold hair out of her face and studied a map on her phone.

  “Half a mile to go!” she said, glowing with excitement.

  It was Thursday afternoon and we were on our way to her family’s cabin, high up on Pale Peak. The mountain was about a two-hour drive from her parents’ house in Avonwood, Colorado. We’d set out that morning after her mother surprised us with the key. Faye and I had just gotten engaged a few weeks earlier, and her parents had flown us out to celebrate.

  This month marked our fifth anniversary as a couple. I was a graduate student working on a Ph.D. in English, and Faye had recently begun her career as an animal keeper at a wildlife sanctuary. We had always talked about taking a trip, but life never stopped flinging new hurdles at us, and somehow that talk of escape never came to fruition. The time we spent together faded to brief moments before bed.

  It took an engagement ring and a war with our bosses to pull it off, but at long last, we were finally on vacation: a romantic cabin getaway, totally unexpected, and far removed from the humdrum of California living. On the plane I’d imagined a week with Faye’s waspy parents in their immaculate house, but I was delighted when they lent us their cabin for a few days. I pictured myself and Faye wrapped in blankets by a crackling fire, sipping hot chocolate and whimsically debating the terms of our marriage. She’d demand regular back rubs, and in return, I’d be allowed to buy video games whenever I wanted.

  “Oh my God,” Faye said, interrupting my train of thought and swatting my thigh. “Felix, look!”

  As we rounded another corner of the winding road, a little house came into view. It wasn’t much more than a cottage tucked against an idyllic tree line. The whole scene might have climbed straight out of a Kinkade painting.

  “Damn,” I mumbled.

  The car practically died in the driveway. Faye jumped out and raced in a circle around the cabin, taking it all in.

  “Oh my God, it’s adorable!” she yelled from behind the building. I could hear her laughter as I unloaded the car. “And look back here, Felix! A hiking trail, right out the back door!”

  I followed the tracks she left in the snow. There was barely a half-inch of it, just enough to tint the earth white, but a boyish giddiness brimmed inside of me at the sound of each crunching footfall. As I rounded the back of the cabin, a brown and white snowball pelted me in the neck.

  “Faye!” I shouted, “that had rocks in it!”

  My fiancée peeked out from behind a pile of firewood

  with a huge grin on her face. As I reached down to make a snowball, she burst into laughter and took off running. She darted across the little field that constituted the backyard, then slipped into the dark woods behind it. I rushed after her but stopped short of the tree line.

  “Uh, babe,” I called out, “are there like…wolves and bears up here?”

  Faye popped out of the woods about twenty yards away.

  “There’s a whole bunch of hiking trails!” she replied, motioning for me to come over.

  I turned around and headed for the car.

  “Hike tomorrow, sweetie,” I said over my shoulder. “Unpack today.”

  “Ugh, and look at the view from here,” she said, framing the cabin with her fingers and peeping through it. “I’m gonna draw the shit out of this place.”

  “Pencils are in the luggage, babe. Gotta take it in first.”

  She huffed in defeat and followed me back.

  The inside of the cabin was white and modern, and had obviously been remodeled over the years. It didn’t quite match the rustic exterior, but at least it had a fireplace. There was a combined living room and kitchen, and a short hallway that led to the bedroom and bathroom. We dropped our bags on the floor and explored the place; Faye headed to the bedroom while I inspected the entertainment center. There was a newish flat-screen TV, a stereo unit from the early 90’s, and a little DVD player.

  “Why didn’t you tell me to bring movies?” I called down the hallway.

  “I didn’t know they had a TV up here,” Faye replied. “Hey, come feel this bed. It’s like, space foam or something.” She groaned in relaxation.

  “What do you mean you didn’t know?” I said, fumbling

  through the drawers in search of DVD’s. “Haven’t you been up here?”

  “Not since I was fourteen, and I was only here once. A lot has changed.”

  “Only once? You visit your parents almost every Christmas…you guys never spent one up here?”

  “They haven’t come here in years. I think they wa—”

  “Oh my God,” I blurted out, staring down into one of the cabinets of the entertainment center.

  “What?” Faye called.

  “Oh Jesus,” I said, reaching a hand inside.

  Faye stormed down the hall into the living room.

  “What’s going on?”

  I pulled an object out of the cabinet.

  “It’s…it’s a Super Nintendo,” I said, barely able to form the words.

  “Yeah? So?”

  I turned to face her directly.

  “A Super. Nintendo. Faye.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “My dad was obsessed with it when I was little,” she said dismissively, then walked back toward the bedroom. “He bought it for Becca but she never got into it. I guess he brought it up here to rot.”

  “Oh Jesus Christ!” I said, stopping her in her tracks.

  “What,” she snapped, cracking a smile.

  My lips trembled.

  “It’s…it’s Donkey Kong Country 2,” I said. I held the game cartridge to my chest, embracing it as a childhood friend.

  “For God’s sake,” Faye grumbled.

  “It’s my all-time favorite game. It took me forever to beat. Best soundtrack ever.”

  “Huh. Becca liked the music too, actually,�
� she said.

  “I’m marrying the wrong sister,” I muttered.

  “Excuse me? I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “Leave us,” I said, tossing the car keys at Faye. They bounced off her chest and fell to the floor. She remained motionless, unimpressed. “You can go home,” I continued, sliding the cartridge into the Nintendo and taking a seat on the couch. “I…we need some alone time.”

  I heard the keys sail across the room, and felt them smack into the back of my skull.

  The sun set, and a deep cold swept over the mountain. I rummaged through the food we’d brought, trying to figure out what to cook for dinner, and Faye relaxed on the couch with a few of the magazines she’d picked up at the airport.

  “Wow, Garden of the Gods looks neat,” she said, holding up a picture for me to see. It was one of those must-see travel destination magazines for tourists. She wanted me to look at a spread of some weird rock formations, but my attention was drawn to a photo of a Native American headdress on the opposite page.

  The Rocky Mountains are rich in Native American history and lore. Virtually every place you can visit here used to be home to an Indigenous community, and there is some effort to preserve that fact in the local economy, for better or worse. It is possible to find “authentic” Indian wares in any of the thousand gift shops that dot the region, but finding portrayals of Natives as anything other than fantastical heroes or mysterious savages is quite difficult.

  Pale Peak was no different. While buying groceries in town, the cashier eagerly regaled us with stories of magic and war. There is an industry here that sells a certain picture of the people who once inhabited these mountains: mysterious Indians who performed rituals and fought with cowboys, then vanished altogether, leaving behind only arrowheads and legends about constellations. But that enthusiasm for all things Native American, however commercial, really does make the land itself feel alive and humming with memory.

  I leafed through Faye’s magazine after she passed out, scavenging for less sensational tidbits of the area’s history. As the crackling of the fire died away, other noises came to my attention. The wind whispered across the mountain in short gusts, and new snow battered the windows. A few sounds rang through the forest, probably from animals, but I couldn’t make them out. They were eerie and forlorn, like the howls of dying wolves. The longer I listened, the more my skin crawled, so I took out my laptop and tested the cabin’s ancient WiFi. The connection was weak and repeatedly dropped while I browsed the internet. I gave up after a half hour and went to bed, leaving Faye on the couch. Waking her up from a dead slumber didn’t always end well.

  Sometime around midnight, I woke to the sound of Faye’s voice.

  “Felix, babe, get up. Get up. Someone’s outside.”

  She stood there in the doorway with a blanket wrapped around her. She’d been on the couch the whole time.

  “Wuh…what?” I said, rubbing my eyes into focus. It was dark. The only light in the room came from the moon; it poured in from the window and bathed Faye in cold silver. Her ghostly appearance and the fear in her voice frightened me.

  “I heard someone outside,” she continued. “Someone calling for help.”

  I kicked the sheets off and shuffled to the living room in my boxers. It was even darker here. All of the curtains were drawn.

  “Uh, I don’t hear—”

  “Shh!” she said, grabbing my arm and holding me still.

  Eventually, I did hear a sound. It was the pained cry of an animal, or maybe a person. It sounded more sorrowful than injured. Faye and I exchanged concerned glances.

  “Peek out the door,” she whispered, handing her blanket to me. I rummaged through the bags on the kitchen counter and found the flashlight that Faye’s dad had given us. The cry resounded again, this time louder, and seemed to say “Leave me alone” or “I’m alone.” It was so distorted by wind and echo that it barely sounded human.

  The moment I cracked the door open, a blast of frigid mountain air stung my face. It burned the last bit of sleep from my eyes and sharpened all my senses. The light’s beam moved across the deck and out into the clearing. It lit up a fluffy wonderland of snow, but revealed nothing unusual. I swept the light back and forth across the tree line, but its glow was too weak to penetrate the blackness.

  “Nothing,” I said, withdrawing into the warmth of the cabin. “Probably an elk or something. Those things make some frickin’ weird noises. Probably even more so when they’re hurt.”

  Dissatisfied, Faye walked around the room, peering out each window. “That was a person, Felix. You know it was a person. Maybe a camper got lost.”

  “Camping? In the snow?” I asked, incredulous. As a Californian, it seemed utterly absurd. “You know, there’s this thing called pareidolia. See, our brains come with a kind of software application that’s pre-installed when we’re born. Facial recognition, pattern recognition, that sort of thing. It helps us recognize our mothers when we’re babies, and helps us—”

  “Uh-huh,” Faye interrupted.

  “…Well, sometimes it misfires,” I continued. “You know when you’re a kid and you see a shadow on your wall at night, and it looks like a monster? Or when you see animals in the clouds? That’s pareidolia. And it happens with sound, too. The wind blows through a cave or something just right, and people think they hear a voice. Your brain even makes words out of it, in the language you know best.”

  Faye shook her wild hair out of her face and exhaled sharply.

  “Pareidolia my ass.”

  She climbed back into bed and closed her eyes. She tossed and turned for hours.

  Chapter 2

  Morning came, and with it a symphony of bird calls. My joy at the brilliant sunny day was tempered once I looked in the driveway. Our rental car was now encased in a brick of ice, waiting to be chipped free by future archaeologists. Restful sleep had only taken Faye around 3 A.M., so she remained dead to the world long after I ate breakfast. I put a good hour into Donkey Kong, then suited up in my winter gear to go poke around the property.

  Outside, I found no trace of last night’s visitor. No footprints pocked the white landscape; it must have snowed earlier this morning. But now the sky was clear and blue, and the sun perched high overhead. It illuminated the woods and made them bright and inviting, so I dashed across the short clearing and took a stroll inside.

  The snow now concealed the paths that Faye had mentioned yesterday, so I made my own. I promenaded between the trees, watching the frosty sunbeams that appeared and vanished before me as I moved. I lamented leaving my cell phone and its excellent camera back at the cabin. Faye and I had developed a special fondness for the outdoors; we regularly hiked in the redwoods during our time in Santa Cruz, and I eventually proposed to her while camping.

  “Felix!” a voice echoed from far away. Little birds and squirrels jumped around in the trees in agitation, knocking bits of snow off the branches. I doubled back to the meadow and saw Faye’s face through the little bedroom window.

  “Morning,” I called.

  “Wait right there – I’m getting dressed!” she yelled. Her voice boomed across the mountain and returned shortly after.

  We spent the late morning creating a mental map of the forest behind the cabin. We often did this before embarking upon a serious hike, to ensure we’d not get lost. The path we forged through the half-foot of snow took us to the western edge of Pale Peak, where we could see down into a gorge and over to the next mountain. A river rushed below, snaking between the rocks. The splendor of nature beamed from every direction, beckoning us further into the woods.

  On our way back, Faye thought she heard a voice. She mentioned it a few times as we walked, shushing me and spinning around, trying to locate the source of the noise. I strained to hear anything above the whistling of the wind through the trees and the fading gush of water.

  “I think you’re shaken up a bit from last night, sweetie,” I offered. The look she shot at me almost forced the w
ords right back into my mouth.

  “When have you ever known me to be paranoid?” she pressed. “I’m not some basket case, Felix. I heard someone.”

  “What did it sound like?” I asked. We waded through the shallow snow, carefully following our own tracks back to the cabin.

  “It was a man,” she said. “He was upset.”

  “He must have tried your mom’s casserole,” I replied. It was a big risk, but it paid off. Faye burst into laughter, her voice reverberating through the woods. I loved so much the way her eyes squinted when she laughed.

  We talked about food the whole way back, working up an appetite as we did. As we neared the edge of the wood, I stopped to take a leak. Faye wandered up ahead.

  “Felix.”

  Her voice came out flat and dead. As soon as the word hit my brain, I immediately felt a hot rush of panic. Something was wrong. She sounded afraid.

  There’s a fucking bear, I thought, imagining my fiancée standing face to face with one.

  “What?” I whispered, zipping my fly and sneaking toward the sound of her voice. My heartbeat rattled my ribcage.

  “Look,” she said.

  Faye stood a dozen yards ahead of me between two trees. Her hand was extended in front of her, pointing at something I couldn’t see.

  “What is it?” I whispered, still moving like a soldier behind enemy lines. I rounded a few trees and tried to make out what she was pointing at. Something odd came into view. A dangling, twirling thing.

  I moved closer, pushing a few needled branches out of my way as I did. There was an ornament on the tree, just above Faye’s head.

  “The hell is that?” I said, almost laughing. Relief washed over me, alleviating the sudden terror that we’d bumped into a grizzly.

  The thing was made of twigs and bones, expertly bent into strained and taut shapes. Pieces of ragged twine swung from it, some of them tied to hawk feathers. More string was woven through its center in the shape of a mangled spider web. It took a moment for me to figure out what I was looking at, but eventually, I recognized the object.