Stolen Tongues

by Felix Blackwell

  Chapter 34

  Later in the week, I phoned a local carpet cleaning service, unwilling to devote any more time to removing the stains myself. A paunchy man showed up in the late afternoon, dragging in with him a big machine. He set to work in the living room while I hammered away on a research summary at the dinner table. After considerable effort, the man snorted his contempt at the stain, and moved to the one at the staircase.

  “This ain’t vomit,” he called, prompting me to join him.

  “What are you talking about?” I said, brushing my fingers against the wall. “I saw it happen.”

  The man shook his head and grunted.

  “Ain’t vomit. Vomit I can get out. You sure she didn’t drink oil or some shit?”

  Seeing that I wasn’t laughing, the man cleared his throat.

  “Need to be painted over, I reckon. You know how to sand and prime?”

  “I’m almost a Ph.D.,” I said, pointing at the mountain of books on the table. “I can’t do anything that could even be remotely considered an employable skill.”

  The man laughed and slapped the back of his hand against my chest.

  “I’ll cut you a discount on today’s rate, since I can’t get this stuff out. If you want I can drop by on the weekend and fix this wall up for ya, nice and proper. Hunnerd bucks.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, wondering how hard it could be to do it myself.

  “Try to keep the exorcism shit to a minimum until then,” the man said. He lifted a cigarette from behind his ear and dragged his machine out the door.

  Faye got home from work later than usual. The color was back in her cheeks, and she claimed she’d experienced no nausea throughout the day. She mentioned that her sister Becca had called and wanted to fly out to visit. Becca lived in Arizona with her husband and infant son Caleb, and hardly ever visited family. I figured it was probably a good idea that Faye spend some time with her sister, so I gave her the green light. Becca would sleep in the guest room, and I’d set up my office downstairs at the coffee table for a few days.

  As we lay in bed, Faye snuggled up against me and tugged at my shirt.

  “She’s gonna bring the baby. Can you handle that?”

  I laughed and shrugged.

  “Just don’t make me hold him. I’ll drop him and he’ll break into a million pieces.”

  “I think you’d be good with kids,” she said. A big smile grew on her face.

  “They throw up a lot,” I replied. “Little barf factories. Don’t need any more stains in this place.”

  Faye yawned and rolled over to her side of the bed.

  “I’d like one,” she whispered. “Just one. Maybe a mini-Felix. For some reason, I’ve always wanted a little boy.”

  My dreams have always tended to be elaborate and fantastical. They brim with surreal creatures, Dali-esque landscapes, impossible situations. To this day, Faye is the only other person I’ve known who experiences equally vivid dreams – and nightmares. On more than one occasion we’ve discussed their significance, and whether they are meaningful or merely the fragments of a semi-operational brain. I’ve never fully made up my mind.

  But on this night, a dream came to me that felt like an urgent message, whispered into my ear by some potent being. In it, I was trying to clean the wall in the stairwell. It was night time, and for some reason I went about my task in the dark. Only a bit of moonlight seeped in from elsewhere, illuminating the scene in an eerie glow. As I crouched there with a rag, scrubbing fervently, the stain looked bigger than before. The shape of a disfigured man towered over me, desperately reaching a hand toward the second floor where Faye slept.

  I worked quickly, commanded by a fear that something terrible was about to happen. The wall beneath the stain suddenly putrefied to a mush, and gave way to the pressure of my hand. My fist pushed right through the drywall. When I pulled it back, a beam of pale light came through the hole. Curious, I pushed more and more of the spongy wall away. It crumbled and plopped onto the floor like oatmeal. The hole widened as I dug into it, and in a moment, it was big enough to squeeze through.

  It led to a familiar place. A dim room with a stone floor lay before me. Old wooden shelves lined the walls, each cluttered with dozens of dusty jars. The air felt cold and dank, and in the distance, the wind screamed. Although I had never been here before, I knew I was inside the hidden cellar beneath the cabin on Pale Peak.

  I climbed to my feet and examined the jars. They brimmed with a brown, stringy substance.

  Hair.

  Others held bones and teeth and clumps of a pinkish substance.

  Sensing that I was unwelcome in this place, I backed up to the hole – and bumped into a stone wall. The only other way out was up a short flight of wooden stairs that led outside. The cellar door had been ripped from its hinges, and now a gaping square framed the night sky. Trees loomed over the edges of the doorway, and snowflakes drifted down inside, frosting the steps.

  As I moved toward the exit, something caught my eye, hidden behind the jars. It glimmered, as if calling to me, and suddenly I felt as though I was on the verge of a revelation. My hands reached out to grab the object, but the moment they touched its warm surface, a child shrieked in the distance. A hand fell on my back.

  I woke up.

  “Shhh,” Faye whispered.

  It was still dark. We lay in bed together, but she sat propped up against the pillows, looking down at me. I could make out faint dimples of a smile on her face, but she brushed her hand over my eyes.

  “Sleep,” she whispered. Her voice cracked.

  Faye ran her fingers down my back, then up to my head, leaving a trail of goosebumps on my skin. Her hair dangled in such a way that it shrouded her face in shadow, but even in the gloom I could tell she looked different. Her body and slithering locks seemed familiar, but the bone structure in her face looked warped – the jaw too boxy, the cheekbones too low. When she tilted her head, I caught a glimpse of her skin. It had aged. At that point I noticed that her hand felt different, too. It was rough and heavy, like a man’s.

  I lay there motionless, paralyzed by the amalgam of familiar and unrecognizable features that comprised Faye’s visage. Dreadful memories of the Impostor lying in bed with me at the cabin raced into my mind.

  “Where’s Faye?” I asked, preparing for another brawl.

  She abruptly climbed out of bed and stood in the middle of the room, tilting her head as if listening for a distant sound.

  “There it is again,” she said. This was unmistakably my fiancée’s voice. The killer instinct within me faded. Faye walked to a wall and reached for a doorknob that wasn’t there, then tried to flip on a light switch that didn’t exist.

  She’s remembering the layout of our old bedroom, I realized.

  Faye began arguing with someone, as a couple might in public – she kept her voice low but sharp:

  “I already fucking told you, we don’t know any of them. I don’t know anybody.”

  “Is that you making all that noise? That’s sick. You’re sick.”

  “Who’s with you? Let me see him.”

  As I crept out of bed to grab her, Faye shrieked at the top of her lungs, “Are you just gonna stand there and cry all night?! Why don’t you just come up here already?!”

  Her own screams woke her. She looked around in confusion and swayed. I caught her before she fell.

  “Get off me!” she yelled, batting my hands away. I tried to hold onto her, but she squirmed loose and bolted into the hallway. There, she fell to her knees and vomited all over the floor.

  For the third time since we’d moved into the condo, I found myself assessing a grotesque stain in the dead of night. Faye sat at the top of the staircase, leaning her head against the wall, looking at the hideous work of art she’d sprayed all over it a few days prior.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a mousy voice. “I know you’re

  sick of all this.”

  “You’re sick, Faye,” I snapped
. “We need to go to a hospital.”

  “After all this, you think that’s the problem here?” she replied. “You think they’re gonna give me a prescription and all this will just go away?”

  I had no response. She was right.

  “I know you tried to fix this,” Faye continued, “and I know you feel helpless. I really do appreciate how much you’ve done.”

  I looked over at her. She traced a finger along the part of the splotch on the wall that looked like a gnarled hand.

  “Maybe this is something you need to fix,” I said angrily.

  Without any response, Faye brushed past me and went downstairs, presumably to give me some space. While I cleaned up the mess, guilt for attacking her gnawed at my insides. I finished up and went downstairs to find her. She was lying on the couch under a blanket, trying to hide the fact that she’d been crying.

  “I’m sorry too,” I said, taking a seat next to her.

  “I keep hearing a baby,” she replied, ignoring my apology. “It cries and cries all night. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”

  “A baby?” I repeated.

  “Yeah. It freaks me out more than all the other sounds. I don’t know why.”

  I glanced at the windows that flanked the living room on two sides.

  “He wants to trick you, Faye. He’s always trying. He tried to lure you with your grandpa’s voice. Maybe he’s going after your motherly instincts now.”

  She shuddered and tucked the blanket up under her chin.

  “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I feel like I can’t fight him

  anymore. I wish he’d just end it.”

  I leaned in and kissed her forehead.

  “You’re not licked yet,” I said. “He’s getting desperate. I saw it on the mountain. We just need to hold on.”

  “He wants something from me that I can’t give,” she said, finding my hand and squeezing it.

  “Five?” I asked.

  The hedges rustled outside. We both looked to the front door.

  “I don’t know what it means,” she whispered. “I swear I don’t.”

  “Maybe Becca knows,” I said, getting up and looking through the peephole. Leaves blew across the empty walkway outside.

  Faye elected to sleep on the couch for the remainder of the night. I didn’t argue. As I sulked back to the bedroom, I noticed something about the stains: they all shared similar features and looked like a man. And each time Faye threw up, the man seemed to get closer and closer to our bedroom.

  Chapter 35

  Becca wasn’t kidding about her intention to come stay with us. As soon as Faye told her I was fine with it, the two organized an itinerary and booked a flight. The short notice didn’t bother me; I looked forward to having a full and lively house for once, and prayed the visit would distract Faye’s mind from the darkness that possessed it. Becca was scheduled to arrive Friday night and leave Tuesday morning. Faye would pick her up from the airport while I ran errands and cleaned the house.

  I spent the intervening time searching for information on Pale Peak, and for the last name of the family who had built the cabin. Since I didn’t know Jennifer and Tom’s surname, all I could find were brief mentions of the mountain and the weird experiences that campers had reported there. One forum, populated by enthusiasts of the paranormal, declared Pale Peak “one of Colorado’s ten most haunted tourist destinations,” but offered little more. Elsewhere, a user posted a story about her encounter with the “skin-thieves” of the Rocky Mountains, but other members of the community dismissed her as a phony.

  I thought about calling Lynn, but then I reasoned that

  she was just as likely to lie as she was to help. Instead I gave Ranger Pike a ring. He seemed reluctant to disclose Tom and Jennifer’s last name, but with enough pestering, he caved. In exchange for the promise that I wouldn’t “kick up the dust on that grave,” William mumbled one word and hung up: Ball.

  The search narrowed. I located Tom’s obituary in a Las Vegas newspaper database, which only mentioned that he was survived by his wife and his brother, Neil. Finding Neil was easy enough. He owned a small business in Vegas, and answered my email within a day. I apologized for the odd contact and told him that my fiancée and I were seeking a Jennifer Ball regarding some old photo albums we’d found in the cabin. Neil responded that after his brother had died, Jennifer had remarried and moved to a little town in Washington. The two had lost contact after that – but he did remember her new husband’s name.

  Henry Schoeffer was a pediatric dentist in Greenhaven, Washington, as well as a small-time author of children’s books with more than a dozen titles. The email listed on his goofy website was deactivated, so I took a chance and left a message at his practice, hoping that the sincerity and urgency in my voice would persuade him to return the call. I told him that the matter concerned his wife and my fiancée, and said that I needed to ask about a cabin in Colorado. Just after hanging up I realized how awfully creepy I must have sounded, and assumed that my little investigation was over.

  The week slogged by, full of endless reading and writing in a quiet house. Faye worked during the day, so I spent that time alone, with nothing but the stains to keep me company. Thankfully, Faye slept without disturbance during that time, and nothing went bump in the night. In the wee hours on Thursday, the eerie singing of a child wafted into the bedroom from far away, but it did not precede a worse event. The dreary song caused Faye to toss and turn in her sleep, and nothing more. By the time Friday rolled around, I found myself giddy with excitement for Becca’s arrival. Our dark visitor had not made a real appearance in weeks. Perhaps he would be dissuaded even further by a house full of people and noise and light.

  “He’s not a frickin’ cheese platter, you goon!” Faye said, laughing at me as I held baby Caleb. She had just returned from the airport with Becca, and caught me walking out the door to pick up some steaks. “Tuck him against your arm. And arch your back a little so he’s kinda nestled against your chest.”

  I had never held a baby before. I was the youngest child in my family, and all my friends with kids lived hours away in my hometown. Becca stood behind Faye, watching me with that hawklike stare that all new moms brandish. She looked a lot like her younger sister, but with a darker tan and chestnut brown locks that danced around her shoulders.

  “Three points of contact, Felix,” Becca added. She cracked up at my awkward fumbling.

  “That’s ladders,” I replied, swaying back and forth. Caleb closed his eyes a bit.

  “Is he having a seizure?” she joked to Faye. “He doesn’t dance like that, does he?”

  “His dancing is much scarier,” Faye chimed in. “He needs to learn before the wedding.”

  “Caleb thinks I’m a natural,” I said. His eyes were shut.

  “He’s been practicing this all week with a stack of books,” Faye grunted, squeezing past me in the entryway. She lugged Becca’s enormous suitcase, which probably weighed as much as her. “Jesus, Bec, is Kyle in here?”

  “Was hoping you could help me bury him,” Becca responded, taking the suitcase from her sister. She followed Faye up to the guest room. I cringed as she examined the awful stain on the wall as they passed. Excited chatter and giggling echoed from upstairs, no doubt over the travel crib Faye had splurged on.

  “Welp,” I said, looking down at Caleb, “good to have another dude around here for once.”

  That night, Becca and I caught up over hot chocolate in the living room while Faye unleashed the full scope of her maternal instincts upon Caleb upstairs. She sang lullabies, laughed, cooed, and otherwise demonstrated several shades of mommy-crazy. I knew immediately that when Becca left, I was going to have to endure a long conversation about how starting a family doesn’t necessarily have to wait until I finish my doctorate and get a job.

  Becca, like her younger sister, was tough as nails. Her wit and sense of humor felt instantly familiar. I struggled to imagine her carrying on at a baby shower and shoppin
g for miniature outfits; she seemed more the kind of person I’d find in a dive bar, engaged in a spirited belching contest. The best thing about the Spencer women, I suppose, is that they could happily do both.

  Becca’s roughness came from her upbringing in a stern military family, no doubt. But having a strict father also teaches girls how to be expert liars, and I wondered if Becca was selling me all sorts of bullshit when the conversation arrived at the cabin. She was five years older than Faye, and claimed that she had only visited the cabin at Pale Peak once. She said that mountain driving made her carsick, so whenever Faye and their parents took a trip there, she’d stay at a friend’s house instead. I searched her eyes for any sign of deceit, but after an hour of thinly veiled interrogation, Becca had deflected each of my inquiries with a joke or a shrug.

  When I knew that Faye had settled down and gone to sleep, I went for broke.

  “All of this,” I said, lowering my voice to a murmur, “the sleepwalking, the dreams, the talking – it’s all related to one single thing.”

  Becca studied me. Her incredulous expression never changed.

  “Like, some new medication she’s on or something?”

  “No,” I said. “The number five. She has this weird obsession with it. She draws it in her sleep. Can’t remember why when she wakes up.”

  Becca’s eyes broke from mine, just for a second, then returned.

  “Weird,” she said flatly. “What do you think it means?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me, Becca.”