Stolen Tongues

by Felix Blackwell

  “And you thought sending us back up there was a good idea?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t know!” Lynn said, a bit too loud. More tears welled up in her eyes. “I honestly didn’t think that trauma would resurface after all these years! What do you expect me to believe, that there’s some phantom up on Pale Peak that likes to talk to kids?”

  Lynn abruptly left the table and headed upstairs, apologizing as she went. I couldn’t tell if she was more embarrassed by the fact that she’d doomed her daughter in sending her back to the cabin, or simply that she was crying in front of her future son-in-law. I threw my hands into the air and retired to Faye’s old bedroom for the night.

  I’d seen the home videos. Little Faye was adorable and curious. A kid like that would certainly hold a conversation with a stranger, maybe even one from another dimension, if he interested her enough. Whoever it was that called out to her from those woods, he was delighted that she spoke back. Perhaps he became fascinated with her, or something he thought she knew, and had been digging through her mind for years trying to unearth it. Faye’s strong personality might have prevented him from fooling her while she was awake, but while asleep, she is as gentle as a lamb, and naïve. Almost like a child.

  I believed that if Faye had remembered what had happened to her at the cabin, she’d never have agreed to go back – not even with me. It made sense then that she had probably repressed that experience or forgotten it entirely. What few physical details about the cabin she remembered were probably repackaged by her brain as dim flashes from an uneventful trip.

  I was awoken the next morning by a text message from Tyler. He told me that Faye had slept through the night without incident, and that his fiancée Allison had been cheering her up. Colin and Gabriella were planning on making the drive to our town, so Faye would have plenty of company for the weekend. Knowing that our friends were rallying to her side made me smile.

  As usual, Greg was up early, tinkering in the kitchen and grumbling to himself. As I made my way down there, he stopped what he was doing and watched me approach. For a moment, it almost looked as if he didn’t know I had even come to visit – but then I realized he was simply unable to bring himself to speak to me. Maybe Lynn told him that we’d talked. Maybe he’d heard everything from the top of the stairs.

  “Be careful with her,” he said, tossing a ring of keys on the bar counter that separated us. “Weather’s warming up but the roads are still icy up there, I’m sure.” He brushed past me and headed out to the patio for his morning cigarette.

  I examined the keys. That truck was Greg’s favorite child. It had belonged to his father Alfred, and when he died, Greg had rebuilt the engine and restored the interior. He worked on it every week, rain or shine, always finding new problems to solve. Faye maintained that this was his way of managing the pain of Alfred’s death; the ability to fix one thing balanced the inability to fix another. I couldn’t help but wonder if Greg’s gesture meant that he trusted me.

  “Look,” he said, holding the patio door open with his foot, “I didn’t say anything, and I should have.”

  Of course you fucking should have, I wanted to snap at him. If it wasn’t for Lynn and Greg’s horrible negligence, none of this would have happened. Faye and I would be living normal lives like regular people, and I wouldn’t be missing work and pissing off my advisor and colleagues. I wouldn’t be heading back up to that god-forsaken place all alone. I swallowed the urge to bite back and nodded instead.

  “We honestly wanted to believe there was nothing wrong with the place,” he said. He forced the last words up with considerable effort: “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter 21

  No matter how bad my mood was, the drive was undeniably beautiful. Seas of emerald grass washed over the landscape, frosted with big clumps of snow and perforated by jutting rock formations. In the distance, icy mountains glimmered under a sapphire sky. A blood red ring would ignite the Rockies by sunset.

  The cold still clung to the earth out here, but thankfully the snow had diminished a bit. Big patches of it caked the trees, occasionally sloughing off and battering the truck or the road as I drove past. The trees thickened to forests, mountains erupted from the earth, and then the shadow of Pale Peak fell over my path. The massive thing loomed over the highway, darkening it in broad daylight, and almost seemed to taunt me. My resolve wavered, and doubt plagued my mind. A cruel voice in my head whispered, “You’ll die up here. There’s no hope for Faye.”

  Greg must have called ahead, because the ranger was parked in the driveway by the time I pulled up. He stepped out of his SUV as I fumbled with the shifter.

  “Can’t believe the old coot’s lettin’ you use it,” he said,

  thumping the side of Greg’s truck.

  I finally jammed the thing into Park and got out. The air bit my face, reminding me of just how unwelcome I was up here.

  “Mr. Blackwell,” William said, giving my hand a firm shake.

  “Ranger Pike,” I replied.

  “Thought I’d have a look around the place again once y’all got here, make sure everything’s in order.”

  We stepped up onto the porch. As I sifted through Greg’s keyring, my eyes kept darting to the forest’s edge.

  “Ain’t nothin’ out there,” William said, patting my back. It felt good having someone there with me, especially someone bigger than me, but I knew that eventually I’d have to sleep. The ranger would go home to his family somewhere far away, and I’d be all alone out here.

  “You guys never found the dreamcatcher?” I asked, stepping inside the cabin.

  “Nope. Damn sure weren’t a thing out of place outside. In here’s a different story.” William casually rested his hand on his gun and swept his gaze over the living room and kitchen. “We cleaned it up real nice,” he added.

  Everything looked in order, save one little thing I hadn’t noticed until William flipped the light switch. The standing lamp next to the television was missing its lampshade. The bulb glowed fiercely, casting hard shadows across the room.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked, pointing at the light.

  William paused for a moment and replied, “Been like that since y’all left.”

  He poked around for a bit, making sure that no points of entry had been breached, and tried to avoid any conversation about the fact that someone had definitely been inside. He informed me that Tíwé was dealing with a family emergency and would drop by in the morning instead of tonight. My heart nearly died in my chest. I had expected to be alone at the cabin, but not before getting some kind of counsel from Tíwé.

  “You just make sure you call me at this number if anything goes wrong,” William said, handing me a card. “That’s my cell. It’s on 24-7, just in case.”

  With that, Ranger Pike dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder and turned to leave.

  “Hey, uh…you guys find a ring in here by any chance?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I really didn’t want him to leave.

  William looked back at me from the doorway. Cold air rushed in all around his bulky form.

  “I’d have pawned it if I did.”

  We both hesitated.

  “You know,” he said, clutching the doorknob, “you ain’t gotta be up here. Plenty motels at the base.”

  “You really think I’m in danger?” I asked, almost pleading for reassurance.

  “Naw,” he replied. “Maybe it’s just one a’ them things where if you stop believin’, it’ll just go away. But uh, you call me and I’ll come.”

  Darkness ate away at the sky. I rushed around the place, dragging my bags in from the truck and ensuring that the windows were locked and curtains drawn. The old CD player helped with the loneliness, but I still couldn’t relax. The dreamcatcher kept appearing in my mind. I had to know if it was still there.

  Against my better judgment, I bundled up and trekked across the open field behind the cabin. The last light of day rapidly withdrew across the mountains in the distance,
and in that moment I wished Faye were there to see it with me. We hadn’t been this far apart in years, and the ache reminded me that I didn’t want to know what life might be like without her. I had to find the ring, even if I had to pry it from the putrid fingers of this thing Angela called “the hollow one.”

  The snow felt thin and crunchy beneath my shoes. Each footfall sent a message throughout the surrounding area that I was here – and alone. It took every drop of my courage to move into the abyssal gloom of the woods.

  I circled a few trees, trying to remember which one had the dreamcatcher. Greg’s flashlight rattled in my hand, its beam moving over branches and rocks and trunks. Something gently brushed against my neck. It felt like a cold finger. I yelped in surprise and whirled around.

  And there it was – a long feather, fluttering softly in the breeze, attached to a string that dangled from a huge circular object.

  Not string, I realized. Sinew. And blood.

  “Ugly son of a bitch,” I mumbled, rubbing my neck.

  White bones gleamed in the flashlight’s glare. They looked slick, almost wet, as though someone had replaced the old ones with fresh pieces. The urge to tear it down surged through me, but I wanted to show it to Tíwé.

  As I gazed upon the strange thing, a chorus of wicked voices erupted from deeper in the woods. One was an older man, and the other a boy. They shouted to each other, back and forth, but none of it made any sense.

  “What’d you put up there? What the hell is that?!”

  “Weeeee foouuuund ‘em, found ‘em down in the hole, daddy-o!”

  “Put us back. Put us back. God, please hear me.”

  I broke into a full sprint through the meadow, blazing toward the cabin like a meteor. Otherworldly terror fueled me, and the image of psychotic cannibals jabbering with their tongues hanging out of their mouths swirled in my mind. I flew inside and slammed the door shut, holding back tears. There in the stillness, I listened to the screams of the wind and the hellish beings that chattered over it. The light vanished. Darkness conquered the landscape and imprisoned me in the cabin.

  Chapter 22

  The relative safety of the cabin brought me no solace. I barricaded the door with furniture, set the gun on the counter, and blared the cheeriest music I could find in Lynn’s CD collection, but the primal dread of death never lifted. I tried to reach out to Faye, but my phone’s reception was so spotty that I couldn’t get more than a single text message out.

  The wind howled for my blood all night. Every noise it produced caught my ear, and I imagined unspeakable creatures slinking and slithering around in the dark outside. And whenever the wind died down, the voices returned, sometimes in the distance and sometimes close by. To busy myself, I searched every inch of the place, room by room, for Faye’s engagement ring, hoping that it had simply fallen behind the bed or under the couch. Deep down I suspected that it was far away in the woods, clutched in the gnarled hands of some ghastly creature that desired Faye as strongly as I did.

  After an hour of hunting, I found nothing, and retreated to the bedroom with Greg’s gun. The bed felt bigger and colder without my fiancée, and instead of dozing off to the sounds of her breathing, I listened with morbid fascination to the yammering of the madmen outside.

  “It’s so deep, deep down,” a child cried. “So deep you could crawl forever.” As he spoke, his voice occasionally splinter, becoming deeper and raspier – like a grown man impersonating a boy. He hacked and wept and choked. He begged for help. But I didn’t fall for a single word of it. Somewhere farther out, another voice shrieked, “They’re lying, they’re lying, the ones out there! La la la la la la.”

  I somehow managed to drift into a fitful sleep, but was awoken a little before midnight by a new sound. Someone tapped on the window in the living room. It was soft, like a neighbor who was reluctant to bother me. I stood there in the bedroom with the door open, holding my breath, trying to figure out if I’d imagined it. Then it happened again, so I crept down the short hall and peeked around the corner – just in time to see a figure walking past the window near the TV, heading toward the front door. With the curtains drawn, I only saw a lumbering shadow, but it was so huge it blocked out the moonlight and threw pitch blackness over the entire room.

  Then, it knocked gently on the door. A man’s voice called out softly,

  “Hello?”

  I remained still as death, listening to every noise he made. Eventually he knocked again, and said,

  “Hello? I…I need to speak with you.”

  The man spoke through clenched teeth. He sounded either very cold, or full of rage, but his words were frighteningly restrained.

  I tried to sneak back to the bedroom where I’d left the gun, but the old place betrayed me. As I moved I nudged the bedroom door, and it squealed like a dying pig. The man outside whispered, “I know you’re in there.”

  For just a moment, in my lethargy, I considered the possibility that this was Tíwé, or maybe somebody else who lived on the mountain. There was no way I’d open the door, but I stupidly figured that responding was a good idea.

  “Who the fuck is it?” I said as forcefully as I could. I grabbed the gun and marched to the front door.

  Whoever was out there repeated my question – while accurately mimicking me. It almost sounded like an echo. Then he said,

  “May I come in? Please?”

  It was my voice, filtered through gritted teeth. The words seemed shaky and uncertain, but it was an impressive mockery of the way I spoke. Icy terror swept over my body and every muscle in my back knotted up. I planted the barrel of the gun against the door.

  “You hear that?” I said, tapping it on the wood. “That’s a .357. If you don’t get outta here, I’ll turn you into a fucking milkshake.”

  We both stood there for a dreadfully long minute. The person outside began testing my voice, groaning and whispering and muttering. He spoke a few discernable phrases and a lot of gibberish, seemingly unconcerned that I was listening:

  “What’s your name? What’s your name?”

  “A sssssuper…Nin…Nintenun…Nintendo…”

  “What did you dream?”

  His voice wavered, cycling through other accents and cadences. The words seemed stitched together from different mouths, cobbled into phrases he strained to get out. At that point I immediately stopped believing there was a human being on the other side of the door.

  “Stop it!” I shouted. “Whatever you want, I don’t have

  it!” It took all my strength not to open fire. I was terrified that shooting him would only piss him off.

  “You go up in the trees…or down in the hole,” he replied, nearly perfecting my voice. “That’s where you go. Oh they’ll find you. Either way…either way…either way…”

  The wind picked up, rattling the windows. The man knocked again, gentle and polite.

  “You aren’t alone in there. I’m not alone out here. What’s your name?”

  “Leave now, or I will shoot you!” I screamed. I fumbled with the gun, uncertain of whether the bullet would travel through the door if I opened fire.

  “A little cabin for the weekend, for the weekend, shhhhhh-k-k-k-k,” he replied, making a slew of lip-smacking and chewing noises.

  I had never felt so terrified in my twenty-eight years of life, even after witnessing my own fiancée creeping around the house like a fleshy marionette. The experience of my own voice making those horrific sounds and phrases set every inch of my skin on fire. My body felt hot and cold and wet and sticky all at the same time, like waking up with a bad fever. I smashed the butt of the gun into the door in an attempt to ward off the terrible visitor, and screamed at the top of my lungs,

  “I will fucking kill you!”

  The man – the thing – outside fell silent. I stood there clutching the revolver, waiting for a response. Finally, there was a knock-knock-knock, this time a bit harder than before, followed by,

  “I…will fucking…kill you.”


  Before I could respond, he shouted, “I see her! I know where she is!” and bashed the door with a powerful kick. It sounded like two hooves striking against it; the impact threw me backward and shook the entire cabin. He barreled across the porch on what sounded like four legs and bounded off into the woods, laughing in the voice of a child as he did.

  An eerie silence fell. The wind and wretched voices died away, leaving me with only the throb of my temples and the labor of my breathing.

  I remained in a state of extreme paranoia for the rest of the night. The delirium of terror and insomnia stole my balance and blurred my vision. I stumbled around like a drunk and cowered between the bed and the wall, fantasizing about putting a bullet in my head and ending this nightmare once and for all. But thoughts of Faye anchored me to my sanity. The desire to protect her gave me strength. Still, the encounter haunted my thoughts, and I realized that this entity was intelligent and had a plan. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully, knowing that the right combination could weaken my resolve. He knew exactly what to say. If he couldn’t coax me outside, he would whittle me down until I let him in. And then he would drag me off into the forest, where the voices cry.

  Chapter 23

  We do idiotic things for love. It was a foolish decision to risk my life staying alone at the cabin, but I truly believed that if there was any way to stop this entity from harming us any further, I would find it here. Maybe he would lose interest in Faye if I could get the ring back. Maybe I could find a way to undo whatever we had done to attract his attention in the first place. As far as I knew, this “hollow one” had first discovered Faye here on Pale Peak, and thus it made sense to me that the solution too lay on the mountain. At least, that is what Tíwé seemed to believe, and at this point I had little choice but to trust him.

  Many possibilities ran through my faltering mind between midnight and sunrise. I considered the idea that the Faye who had returned home to California was not the same one who’d come to Pale Peak. What if the nude woman on my car was the real Faye, and she’d been out in the forest all along? What if she had died out there weeks ago, and the woman sleepwalking around my house was some wicked simulacrum?