Stolen Tongues

by Felix Blackwell

  in his voice actually made me consider it.

  “I…I couldn’t leave Faye here. Not like this. It’s been a few days, but you should see the way she gets, Tíwé. It’s…I can’t even describe it. The only thing keeping her down right now is the medication, and that’s gonna run out any day now. Doc only gave us a week’s worth.”

  Tíwé paused for a long moment, then sighed.

  “You guys aren’t the only ones who’ve been through something like this. It’s rare, but you’re not the first.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “There are things about this mountain that my people don’t fully understand. I think waiting around isn’t going to fix your problem, Felix. You guys did something up here, or something happened to you, and I think it can only be undone here. All the others who have left the mountain – the ones who ran away – it finds them in the end.”

  The urge to hurl my phone at the wall swept over me. I let it pass.

  “What is it, Tíwé? Faye talks to him in her sleep. I see him outside my house. Maybe even inside. Tell me what we’re dealing with here.”

  “Would you really believe me if I told you?” he shot back.

  He had a point. There wasn’t anything he could tell me that I’d readily accept. This entire experience had challenged my most fundamental understanding of the universe. All of those horror films I’d seen over the course of my life, and all of the superstitious nonsense people believed – how could any of it be true?

  “I think my mind’s a bit more open, given the circumstances,” I grudgingly replied.

  “Good. Truth is, I don’t know much of anything about this stuff. My father and grandfather knew a lot more, but they’ve been gone a long time. If you can’t get back here to talk about all this in person, I want you to see a friend of mine. Her mom knew my grandfather, and I trust her. Name’s Angela. She’s only a couple hours’ drive from you guys, I think.”

  “Can she help us?” I asked.

  “It’s not like that,” he said, careful not to get my hopes up. “I just want her opinion, that’s all. I’ll speak to her. Maybe she can come to you.”

  We discussed the matter a bit further, and I eventually said I’d have to defer to Faye. She already felt that I was treating her like a mental patient under careful observation, and she’d be pissed to have a stranger in our home – even if the woman was trying to help. Breaching that topic would be a small war. I’d have to choose the moment carefully.

  Tíwé accepted my judgment and told me to reach out to Angela as soon as I got clearance from Faye. He bade me farewell, and reminded me again to never waver in my devotion to my fiancée. His last words to me were, “but don’t get so caught up in protecting her that you forget – she’s protecting you too.”

  Chapter 16

  Saturday finally rolled around. In the days since Faye had returned to a semi-normal state of mind, I was able to catch up on a ton of work. Now, I planned to spend today completely severed from the mountains of books and research articles that cramped my office up on campus. I even closed the door to the guest room, blocking the view of my desk and all the grueling work I’d come to associate with it.

  Faye and I spent the afternoon in pajamas, lying all over each other on the couch and watching The X-Files. We’d made it up to season six before our visit to the cabin, but today was the first day she’d felt like resuming.

  In one episode we watched, a strange creature made of soil roams a quiet neighborhood, brutally murdering anyone who disobeys the rules of the Homeowners’ Association. When I was a kid, my stepfather was an X-Files fanatic, and he would let me watch the show with him after my mom went to sleep. I don’t remember much of the storyline, but this particular monster terrified me and plagued my dreams for years afterward. Because of its composition it was nearly impossible to see – it only seemed to have any substance at all when it moved, as its wet body glistened under the street lights. The monster could travel any distance at will, collapsing into a heap of dirt and popping out of the ground somewhere else. But the thing that scared me the most was that it always knew where to find its victims, and never stopped hunting them. Watching the episode now sent chills up my body, so I abruptly turned it off.

  “What’d you do that for?” Faye protested.

  I sat up so that I could look into her eyes. She burrowed her feet beneath my thigh to keep her toes warm.

  “How about something happy?” I said.

  She flashed a coy smile.

  “You’ve got me! I’m your happy.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You’re a frickin’ barrel of fun.”

  “What about a happy memory?” she said, prodding my knee with her foot.

  “You mean like the time in college when you went to visit Becca and I had our apartment to myself for eight days?”

  Faye drove the heel of her foot at my crotch. I blocked it just in time.

  “Even happier,” she threatened.

  I laid my head back on the couch and gazed up at the ceiling, trying to think.

  “Milkshakes,” I finally said. “In senior year, when we’d get all dressed up and go downtown to the burger place.”

  Faye smiled. She withdrew her foot from its attack position.

  “I remember how cold it was on those nights,” I added. “I always wanted you to eat cold stuff so that you’d want me to put my arm around you on the walk back to campus. Worked every time.”

  “Sly dog,” Faye said. She blew me a kiss. I pretended to dodge it and then watched in relief as it drifted past.

  “What about you? A memory, I mean.”

  “When we went out to the stoner meadow one night,” she replied. “Back when we were just getting to know each other.”

  “Porter Meadow,” I said, cracking up. A bunch of goofy memories from junior year flooded my mind. I’d never shared them with Faye.

  “We broke off from the group and just looked at the stars,” she said.

  “I recall a rather spirited exchange of creepy stories.”

  “I wanted to kiss you that night. That was the first time I thought about it.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Faye ran her foot up my chest and poked my chin with her toe.

  “Because your face looks like that.”

  I pretended to wipe a tear from my eye. She was delighted with herself. Just seeing Faye’s smile lit me up inside. It gave me hope that no matter what terrible or tragic things befell us in life, we’d always weather them together.

  “I still dream of you,” she added.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. Sometimes they’re about when we first met. Sometimes about the future. I see us with a little boy.”

  “You know,” I replied, “I actually think I’d like to have a little tiny Faye running around here someday.”

  She laughed. Her hand found mine.

  “Then again, I can barely handle you,” I said. “Don’t know how I’d manage.”

  She gazed up at me for a long moment. Her big green eyes moved over me, like she was trying to take in my memory before leaving on a trip.

  “I still dream of you,” she said again.

  For four days, Faye had slept soundly all through the night. She didn’t report a single nightmare, and I hadn’t heard any strange noises outside (or inside, for that matter). Privately, I feared that whatever – or whoever – was tormenting Faye had not given up. Instead I worried that this was a mere interlude before the onslaught of new horrors, and in the wee hours of the fourth night, my suspicions were realized.

  I was awoken by the feeling of someone sitting down on the far end of the bed. The mattress sank and pulled my foot with it, instantly setting off the siren in my head that wailed, “Faye’s up. Grab her before she falls down the stairs!” But when I opened my eyes, I noticed the tangled mess of blankets and limbs that was Faye, fast asleep beside me. Someone else was sitting on the bed.

  It took me a secon
d to make out the pale, withered hand that clutched her wrist. My eyes moved up the long arm and perceived the shape of a bony man, sitting with his back turned to me. His shoulder blades and ribs jutted painfully from his body, and the skin looked to be stretched over him like dried leather. A black and shaggy mane of hair dangled from his head and obscured his face as he glanced over my fiancée, but I could see that he was leaned over her with predatory intent. He whispered long strings of words I could not fully hear, but the hateful way they were enunciated told me enough. He seemed to be giving her a vile command. She lay there motionless, smiling every few seconds as if listening to a slew of comforting promises.

  I bolted upright, ready to tackle the man, but the second I moved he issued a slow growl. It rolled up from deep inside him like the warning snarl of a tiger and sapped the courage right out of me. He dove to the floor and wriggled his way underneath the bed. I screamed for Faye to wake up and threw the sheets from my body, trying to get to the light switch near the bedroom door. Before I could reach it, the impact of something heavy against my shoulder blinded me with pain.

  I rubbed my face and looked around.

  Bright light stung my eyes. The sun burned through the curtains and lit up the whole room. Everything was sideways. I was twisted up in the bedsheet, lying in a heap on the floor. Faye looked down at me from the bed, shocked at my appearance.

  “I sleepwalk, dude,” she said, lips curling into a smile. “Even when my eyes are closed, I know how to get out of a friggin’ bed.”

  “He was here,” I said, shrugging off her jab. “I saw him.”

  “Who?”

  “Him,” I said, scowling at her. “He went under there.” I reached a tingling hand toward the bed skirt and yanked it up. There was nothing but a few pairs of shoes.

  “I guess bad dreams are contagious,” she replied, half-joking.

  Faye sighed. She knew, just as I did, that we weren’t through the hurricane yet. We had simply been drifting through the lull of its eye.

  I hoisted myself from the ground and plopped onto the bed. My side of it was drenched in sweat.

  “Tell me who he is, Faye,” I said with defeat. “Please.”

  Her eyes narrowed in offense.

  “If I knew,” she said, slapping a lock of hair away from her face, “why the hell would I hide it from you?”

  “Then tell me what he wants. You must know. Every time you go to sleep, he’s right there talking to you. Just tell me what he says.”

  Faye leaned back on her pillow and gazed up at the ceiling. Her eyes sparkled like little green gems in the morning light.

  “It’s always hard to remember,” she offered. “It’s like

  fog, or static. He wants to know things, but he wants me to forget that he asked.”

  “What does he ask?”

  “Stuff about my family. My childhood. What I like…what I hate. What I want. He always asks weird things, like who I played with as a little girl, or which of my parents I like best.” She looked up at me. “And he wants to know all about you. So many questions.”

  “What do you tell him?” I asked, combing her hair with my fingers. It covered the pillow in a fountain of golds and reds.

  “I try not to say anything,” Faye replied. She swallowed hard. “But sometimes he wears me down. Tricks me. Makes me think I’m having a conversation with my dad or with Becca. He knows your name now, and a little bit about us.”

  I shuddered. The thought of some intangible husk lurking around in the dark, trying to get to know us, profoundly creeped me out.

  “Do you ask him anything? Does he tell you anything about himself?”

  “Never.”

  I cupped her cheek, pulling her gaze toward me.

  “Why does he want to know all this stuff, Faye? What does it matter to him?”

  She got out of bed and wrapped a little robe around herself, then headed for the hallway.

  “I think one of us has something he wants.”

  Chapter 17

  Whatever it was that our uninvited guest desired, he was having a lot of trouble finding it. He seemed committed to darkening our home until he got what he came for.

  Something struck me as I looked at Faye. When she tied her robe, I watched her hands, and realized that she hadn’t been wearing her engagement ring for several days. Only now did I realize that she hadn’t even worn it out to dinner last week. Faye never leaves our house without it. When I brought it up with her at breakfast, she dismissed the idea that it was lost and assured me that it was in a pocket of her suitcase. I reluctantly accepted this explanation; I couldn’t remember the last time Faye had misplaced her car keys, let alone an expensive ring. She was also one of the slowest unpackers in the world, and I knew for a fact that the luggage in our hall closet was only half-empty.

  During that conversation, I almost brought up Tíwé’s request to have his friend Angela visit us. At the last moment I held my tongue, reasoning that there was probably a better time to bring it up. Faye was a very headstrong person, and although I admired her confidence, she was quick to interpret my concerns as accusations that she could not manage her own problems. Having someone come “check on her” would certainly injure her pride and cause a fight. It would have to wait. But I made a mental note to check her suitcase for the ring.

  I barely had any friends, and as a graduate student I had virtually no time to spend with the ones I had. The only people I ever saw were the other students in my cohort, and aside from the shared misery of a Ph.D. program, we didn’t have much in common. Whenever they weren’t working, they were getting blind drunk at the bars downtown. Even when I showed up to their Pint Nights, I was always the sober introvert with the root beer, totally excluded from the festivities.

  Tonight, however, they invited me out for pizza, and I desperately wanted to go. I needed to get away from the house, which was beginning to feel more and more like purgatory. Surprisingly, Faye encouraged me to get out of the house and unwind. I promised to be home before she fell asleep. It would be the first night since her sleeping pills ran out, so I privately worried that something might happen. In fact, I dreaded it. Faye could read me like an open book and knew what I was thinking, so she grabbed my face and promised she’d be fine, then kissed me and shoved me out the door.

  It was great to see everyone. They were all in high spirits, celebrating the passage of another punishing week, and seemed glad to see me. I fought back my desire to tell them all about the awful things Faye and I had been through; they already thought I was a bit weird for being a teetotaler, and tales of shadow-men and dreamcatchers would surely make me look insane. That evening I pretended that my life was completely normal, and for the first time in a long while, it almost felt true.

  I pulled into our neighborhood just before 11:30 P.M. The moment I pushed open the door, I knew something was wrong. Every light in the house was off, including the cable box. Someone had unplugged it. The air was cold, and the memory of the freezing wind on Pale Peak bolted through me. I scolded myself for having lost track of time.

  “Babe?” I called out.

  Maybe it’s a power outage.

  I looked over my shoulder at the rest of the housing complex. Several windows glowed and all the street lights were on.

  I moved inside, cautious not to trip over anything. My hand ran along the wall until it found a light switch, and when I flicked it on, the empty living room appeared before me. A water glass lay on the floor, and a big pool of water soaked the carpet. Just beside it rested a large notebook, splayed open to a page filled with harsh scribblings.

  I scooped it up. This was the dream journal that Dr. Farmer had encouraged Faye to keep. For a brief moment I hesitated, partly because I didn’t want to invade her privacy, and partly because I feared what I’d find there – but a dark curiosity took hold.

  The page looking up at me had two styles of handwriting. Near the top, a neat and methodical script ran across the lines in perfect order. A much s
tranger, more frantic scrawl crowded every inch of the bottom, written lighter and faster than before. Words and letters collided with each other; some sentences were written over others. It bore resemblance to Faye’s handwriting, but seemed almost as though Faye were holding the pencil with a looser grip – the way a sleeping person might.

  Most of the lines described dreams, and were dry observations in shorthand:

  I’m on a beach in a place I don’t recognize. The sand is white and there are rock formations jutting out of the water.

  A storm approaches on the horizon. I’m alone.

  It’s night and I’m thirsty. I try to walk to the kitchen, but I trip and fall into a huge black hole in the floor. At the bottom, there’s a pool of things that look like human-crocodile hybrids. The sounds of splashing and thrashing wake me up and end the dream.

  I’m very young, maybe four or five. I’m with my mom at a restaurant. We’re eating ice cream. When I look out the window, there is a giant obelisk sitting inexplicably in the parking lot. It’s made from black stone, and there are strange carvings all over it. Everyone is afraid, but they’re trying to ignore it. I’ve seen this statue in other dreams before.

  The other handwriting was almost poetic, and reminded me a bit of the strange babble we’d heard at the cabin:

  Child don’t wander too far out, they’ll get you once they know, they pray you’ll every warning doubt, and meet them in the snow

  One was old in soul and skin

  Two was very small

  Three was watching over them

  And four was none at all

  What is your name? Tell me yours first

  What makes five

  What makes five

  Littered across the subsequent pages were remarkably disturbing images, no doubt snapshots from Faye’s dreams. I could barely make sense of them, but by their expert artistry I knew that she must have been awake when creating them. They were drawn in colored pencil, her favorite medium.