Stolen Tongues

“The structure was huge. Unlike the fragile little ones I’d seen in bedroom windows and on rear-view mirrors, this dreamcatcher was over two feet in diameter. Its construction looked frantic; the gnarled branches and twine held each other together in an unnatural, almost menacing way. Some of the feathers and bones had dried blood on them.”

Felix’s description of the “dreamcatcher” he and Faye find in the woods makes it clear that it isn’t actually a dreamcatcher, as these are meant to provide protection. Felix’s ignorance on this point speaks to The Problem of Explaining the Supernatural Through Appropriated Folklore. This description also darkens the mood with its haunting and ominous imagery and connotations, as well as with the personification of the branches and twine.

“I stood there for a long time, listening carefully, but heard only the eerie howls of the wind. As it rushed and seeped through a million branches, it occasionally formed the sounds of a human voice.”

Felix’s personification of the wind makes it seem more portentous and threatening, giving it the ability and intention to rush through trees and sound human. The hyperbole—his reference to the “million branches”—makes the woods seem vaster and the cabin more solitary, as though it were caged or cut off from others by these branches.

“But he didn’t feel like a person. He felt empty. Like he didn’t have a soul […] I think he wanted to eat me […] I could feel this terrible hunger that he had. Like he was hungry for a thousand years.”

When Faye describes the man in her dreams, who turns out to be the Impostor, she describes his “hunger” and longing to take consume her, along with all her experiences. This foreshadows the revelation that this is precisely what “hollow ones” do to fill the voids inside them.