Stolen Tongues

by Felix Blackwell

  Angela’s expression grew more and more horrified as we proceeded down the list of terrible things we’d suffered. Her questions became fewer and farther between, until she was utterly silent, staring back at us with a colorless face.

  “Faye,” she said at last, leaning back against the couch and taking a measured breath, “this man who visits you. Has he told you his name?”

  “No. I’ve asked.”

  Angela stood up. Her eyes moved all around the room, searching for something.

  “May I have a look around upstairs?”

  The three of us headed to the second floor hall.

  “That’s our bedroom down there,” I said, pointing to the left, “and the guest room’s over here.”

  Angela seemed more interested in the windows than the rooms. She wandered around the top floor of the house, gazing out each window for several seconds. Her eyes always moved to the grove across the street.

  “His voice,” she said, fixated on the trees, “does it sound like wind?”

  Faye crossed her arms and shuddered.

  “Yes,” Faye said, nodding at the window. “He waits until I fall asleep. Waits until I’m dreaming.”

  “Is this where he stands?” Angela asked.

  “We’ve both seen him,” I said, putting my arm around Faye. “At the cabin, out the kitchen window. And I’ve seen him out here too. I think he even came to the door one night.”

  Faye looked up at me with fear in her eyes. Up until this point, she probably thought the figure outside was only visible to her, in her dreams.

  “Oh yes,” Angela replied, voice low and dreary, “he’d wait right down there by the front door. Whisper to your fiancée for hours and hours.”

  Faye pushed herself away from me and left the bedroom.

  “What does he want?” I asked. “Faye says he just asks about all kinds of random stuff. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Angela traced something on the window with her finger, then took a step back and regarded it.

  “Did she say if she talks to him? If she told him anything?”

  “A little,” I replied. “What does it matter? Who is he?”

  Angela turned and walked back into the hall, looking at the window out there. Still trying to retain some level of skepticism about all this, I mentioned that Faye had drawn a ‘5’ on the glass here, and I believed it was a signal to the man outside. What I said was true, except for the fact that I’d intentionally chosen the wrong window. Angela studied it for a few moments and then walked toward the staircase. As she passed by the guest room, she said,

  “Something about that room feels really off. I think that’s where she lets him in.”

  Faye was downstairs on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket. She looked pale and exhausted, as if ready to disappear again for another few hours. I moved the chair closer to her and put my hand on her forehead.

  “You have to take this with a grain of salt, you guys,” Angela said, sitting back down on the couch. “I’m not really sure what I think of this stuff. I go back and forth every day. On the drive here I was a skeptic, but I’m leaving as one of the devout. Who knows what I’ll be tomorrow? School and life in California have turned me to stone, but I still get those old feelings. I got them here, in your home. They’re not quite visions, but they’re something. Tíwé makes fun of me when I get them. He calls me a ‘daytime atheist.’”

  I laughed. This whole experience had certainly made me into a believer, if only late at night.

  “He won’t tell us anything,” I said. “I’ve tried asking.”

  “Our beliefs are a very private thing,” she replied, “but given your circumstances, I think Tíwé wants to make an exception – and I agree with him. Faye, your family has visited Pale Peak over the years, right?”

  Faye nodded.

  “My people tell a lot of stories about the mountain,” Angela went on. “Like any old place, there are legends and folktales about things that happened long ago. Unfortunately, Pale Peak has a terrible history, so most of our stories are sad. Or scary. It would take a long time to explain how the Creator and the soul work in my culture, so I’ll try to say it like this.

  “There are a lot of magical beings in our oldest stories. Most are manifestations of the Earth, or the spirits of ancestors and those who have passed on before us. But what you both are telling me reminds me of another creature. This one doesn’t come from the world of the dead, but somewhere else, farther beyond it. I don’t exactly know how to translate his name for you. You could call these creatures the hollow ones. They’re jealous of living things, and the joy of this world. Jealous of its sunlight. They have none of it.”

  Faye shifted in her seat. Sweat glistened on her brow.

  “Why us?” she asked. “Why me?”

  “I don’t know,” Angela replied, offering a comforting smile. “The legends say they try to coax children and gullible people into the dark with them. Take them away. I don’t know much more than that.”

  I tried not to scoff at the exchange. It was still light enough outside that the analytical part of my brain hadn’t surrendered yet.

  “Okay, okay,” I interjected, “let’s just say this thing is real. What do we do now? How do we get rid of it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But Tíwé said you know this stuff better than he does.”

  “I know frauds better than he does,” Angela corrected.

  Another awkward silence fell. Angela looked down at her lap, deep in thought.

  “Have you lost anything important?”

  Faye burrowed her hands under the blanket.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “The story I remember tells of a boy who goes into the woods looking for pine nuts. He carries a pouch, one that his grandmother made for him. The boy hears strange noises all around him and gets scared. As he runs back home, he trips and drops the pouch. When he and his father go to retrieve it that evening, they see a man squatting on the ground, sniffing the pouch. The man then turns around and speaks to the boy in his grandmother’s voice. The boy and his father escape, but the man stands outside their home every night, calling out to the boy in familiar voices, begging for him to come outside.”

  “What happened to him?” Faye asked.

  “The rest isn’t important,” Angela said, wearing a warm smile. “It’s just a scary story, that’s all.”

  “But come on, do you really believe in this stuff?” I asked. “I mean for God’s sake, Faye’s Catholic. This isn’t the

  kind of thing we can talk to her priest about.”

  Angela sighed. I instantly knew I’d hit a sore spot.

  Just stop talking, I thought to myself.

  “Like I said,” she responded, “There are two halves that make me whole. One is the girl who grew up practicing our spiritual tradition, and who still feels a duty to uphold those beliefs. The other is the adult who experiences the world on its surface, who hasn’t had a sense for the ‘supernatural’ in decades. The believer and the atheist live inside of me together.”

  “I think it’s like that for a lot of people,” Faye offered.

  Angela spoke with us for a few more minutes and then we parted ways. As I walked her to her car, she looked again to the tree line across the street and back at me.

  “There’s a dark cloud hanging over both of you, especially Faye,” she said. “If this truly is a hollow one, I don’t know what he wants. But he’s not here to make friends.”

  Her words filled me with dread. I just stared back at her.

  “Don’t listen to it. Don’t talk to it. And don’t leave her alone with it. I’m sorry, Felix. I wish I knew how to help.”

  As soon as Faye went to bed, I headed straight for the closet with our luggage. As I had suspected, her engagement ring was nowhere to be found. There was little doubt in my mind that she had left it at the cabin – or worse, lost it in the snow. The likelihood of never getting it back crushed me, but the feeling wa
s swiftly replaced with the mental image of that creature wandering around with it in the forest, sniffing it with glee.

  That night, Faye sat up in bed, waking me in the process. As she tried to stand, I grabbed her by the arm and yanked her right back down.

  “Nope,” I said, pulling her close and wrapping her up in

  a tight hug. “Sleep. Now.”

  Faye rolled toward me so that our noses touched. Her eyes were wide open and rolled far back in her head. A big smile crossed her face.

  “They’re gonna kill you,” she whispered – then licked my face.

  PART III

  Chapter 19

  “I think that’s where she lets him in.”

  Angela’s words ran through my head on repeat the entire night. The rational and superstitious parts of me offered dueling explanations for our predicament: some backwoods creep stalking my fiancée after spotting her at the cabin, or a demonic entity from some distant dimension preying upon her soul. I even imagined the creatures from Faye’s drawings manifesting themselves in reality by the power of her own dreams. It was madness, and it pulled me ever downward to a place where I couldn’t trust my own reason anymore.

  By the time the sun rose, I had already emailed my boss, booked a flight back to Colorado, and left a voicemail on Lynn’s phone. I knew there was something going on at the cabin that she and Greg didn’t want me to find, but neither of them seemed the type to try and stop me. I told her that I’d already spoken to the ranger and his friends, and that I was beyond any capacity to tolerate one more lie. I ended the voicemail with, “This is an emergency. I’m doing this for your daughter, and I need your help.”

  I also texted my closest friends, Colin and Tyler, and

  asked if they’d be willing to check in on Faye while I was gone. By 11 A.M., I’d heard back from both of them, each offering to put her up in his home while I was away. I knew that Faye would never return to Colin’s house after the creepy incident with the bird all those years ago, but Tyler lived nearby, and his girlfriend was pretty friendly with my fiancée.

  Faye’s reaction to all this was nothing short of breathtaking. She simply nodded in agreement, and thanked me for doing what I thought was best for her. I had expected a verbal mauling for making such a serious decision without consulting her, but her expression made it clear that she was even more fed up with this chaos than I was. I understood why.

  I slept peacefully that night. Tyler and Colin had been in my life since we were kids, and they treated Faye like family. They’d guard her with their lives. I privately informed them of most of the things she’d been through, and why I was heading back to Colorado – but I spun it all in such a way that made our house seem haunted. Colin had always been a stone-cold atheist and didn’t buy a word of what I said, but Tyler believed in all sorts of hocus pocus, thanks to his fervently religious mother and conspiracy-theorist father. Together, I hoped they would make a well-rounded team. Maybe they would see something I hadn’t. Maybe they’d figure something out that I didn’t. The idea of Faye getting out of the house and being around other people gave me a glimmer of hope.

  The morning was frantic. I parried a dozen of Lynn’s attempts to dissuade me over the phone, threw some clothes in a suitcase, dropped Faye off at Tyler’s apartment, rushed to the airport, and just barely caught the noon flight out to Denver. My fiancée wasn’t around to hold my hand this time, and that dreadful cabin loomed at the forefront of my thoughts. I loathed every moment of the journey.

  One thing did bolster my resolve: Tíwé and I spoke briefly as I waited for the plane. He called just to check in, and was delighted to hear that I was on my way out to meet him. In the dizzying whirl of plans and plots, I’d forgotten entirely to warn him of my coming. On the plane, I wondered what else might have slipped my scattered mind.

  Find the ring. Get the ring.

  The reminder became a mantra to keep me focused. And if I ever pondered too deeply upon the what-ifs, I simply conjured the image of Faye, laughing and smiling. I tried to imagine her as she was before all this misery. I longed to see that Faye again, the wild-eyed lioness with a mane of fire. If I could get the ring back, maybe I could get my fiancée back too.

  I arrived in Avonwood after dark. My cheap rental car stood out in the fleet of Mercedes and BMWs that sat in every driveway. Lynn answered the door with her trademark plastic-but-well-meaning smile. Greg was presumably so furious at my intrusion that he remained sequestered upstairs for the whole evening.

  Faye’s mother and I sat at the enormous glass dining room table, sipping hot chocolate and working our way through the miserable pleasantries of in-law conversation. It didn’t take much to get her to hand over the cabin key. She burst into tears the moment I asked her, “Would you like to hear what your daughter has been through?”

  “I’m so sorry I lied to you,” she mumbled between sobs, “to both of you.”

  I was thrown off guard by the abruptness of her honesty. But I also recognized it as a rare moment that could vanish as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Don’t worry, Lynn,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s okay. Faye loves you, and I’m sure she forgives you. But you can make it up to us right now just by telling me what the hell is going on. What have you been lying about? I can’t help her if you don’t tell me everything.”

  Lynn looked up at me with an expression I’d never seen her wear before. It seemed devoid of any performance. What hung there on her face was a look of terror and sorrow, unleashed after weeks of denial. She gazed through me with bloodshot eyes, and fingered at the tiny gold crucifix that dangled from her neck.

  “That cabin…” she said, taking a deep breath, “Faye’s been there before. Only once. It’s where her night terrors started. Something happened up there, Felix.”

  “Tell me,” I implored. I reached over and held her freezing hand. It trembled.

  “She was just a little girl,” Lynn whispered, new tears rolling down her face. “She was only five years old.”

  Chapter 20

  “When we first got the place, Greg used to stay there on fishing trips with his buddies,” Lynn said, regaining some of her composure. She wiped her face and looked over her shoulder to make sure her husband wasn’t around. “Mirror Lake’s on the other side of the mountain, so they’d go up there for some competition every spring.

  “One year was especially tough on us, emotionally. So we planned a little getaway for a weekend. Greg always loved the outdoors, and he wanted the kids to love it too. To be honest, I think he always wanted a boy, and he ended up trapped in a house with three ladies.”

  I chuckled. The image of Faye cleaning a rifle, or wrestling a bear for that matter, wasn’t too hard to imagine. She was as tough as any boy Greg might have had.

  “Faye’s sister was around ten at the time, and she didn’t come with us,” Lynn continued. “There was some kind of retreat with her Girl Scout troop that weekend, so she went with them instead.”

  “Has Becca ever been to the cabin?” I asked.

  “No. She’s never been interested. Not much of a mountain girl. In fact, she lives in Phoenix now.”

  The sound of a toilet flushing came from upstairs, followed by footsteps across the hall. We both went silent for a moment. A door closed.

  “They were outside the cabin,” Lynn said, voice barely above a whisper. “Greg and Faye. Building snowmen in the field next to the driveway. I could see them from the kitchen window. I had the news on, and I remember looking over at the TV for a few minutes. When I looked back, I couldn’t see Faye anymore. Greg was still rolling a big ball of snow.

  “Faye had walked over to the edge of the meadow to look into the forest. Greg said he heard her talking, but thought she was just singing to herself. Eventually he realized that she was answering questions, like there was someone in the woods. Faye was trying to follow a voice. As Greg walked over there, he heard Faye saying things like ‘just Mommy and Daddy’ and ‘she’s not he
re’ and ‘I can’t see you. What’s your name?’”

  Those phrases struck a nerve in me. They were just like Faye’s sleep talk now. Whoever was interrogating her had been doing it on and off for decades. But what was he looking for? The question was like fire on my brain.

  “All of a sudden, she started screaming,” Lynn continued. “It was like she saw something terrifying. I heard it and came running outside into the snow. I didn’t even have shoes on. Greg was already rushing over there, and he caught Faye just as she fell. She went rigid and her eyes rolled back in her head. Just seeing my daughter like that…I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

  Everything Lynn said resonated with me in a dreadful way. I glanced around the dark living room, sifting through the hundred questions that brimmed at the edge of my lips.

  “Do you think she fell asleep?” I asked. “I’ve read about soldiers falling asleep in the middle of a battle. It’s some kind of defense mechanism the brain uses to protect you from trauma.”

  “No,” Lynn replied. “She was definitely awake. We hauled her back inside, and for a few hours, she would either cry hysterically, or just sit there in silence. She couldn’t speak at all. We eventually decided to take her back down the mountain to a hospital, but when we got into town, she got better all of a sudden. Just went right back to normal, like turning on a light. The doctors thought she had some kind of seizure, but couldn’t find anything wrong with her.

  “To this day, Greg swears he never heard any other voices or saw anyone in those woods. We only stayed there one more time, about a year later – just the two of us, for our anniversary. And that’s when Greg’s night terrors came back. He never slept there again.”

  “And Faye? When did she start up with the nightmares and sleepwalking?”

  Lynn picked at her fingernails.

  “A few days after her incident. They’ve come and gone ever since.”

  A mixture of rage and fright churned in my gut, pushing the hot chocolate up to the back of my throat.