Stolen Tongues

The next morning, Felix overhears Greg telling someone over the phone to check on the cabin. He says he suspects a gas leak, and Felix tells him someone was talking to Faye while she slept. Faye sleeps late, then all the way home, then until noon the next day.

Greg calls to say that he learned the cabin was burgled, but Felix knows he’s lying. He confirms it when he calls Pike, who knows nothing about a break-in. Pike doesn’t want trouble with Greg, but he took an Indigenous friend, Tíwé, to the cabin with him, and he could tell someone had been inside. Pike told Tíwé what Faye and Felix experienced, and Tíwé believes he knows what they saw. The men didn’t see the “dreamcatcher.”

Faye seems like herself during the next day, but she starts behaving oddly as it gets dark. She “wolf[s] down” pizza despite her distaste for greasy foods, and she grows very anxious. At her request, they put on a movie, but she falls asleep within 15 minutes.

When Felix goes to get a drink, he hears something upstairs and rushes back to Faye, waking her. She says she dreamed of a man carrying a body bag filled with snow and twigs. They go upstairs, and she falls asleep again.

Hours later, her voice wakes Felix. She is whispering, which is strange because he’s never once heard her whisper in her sleep. When he tries to touch her, she pushes him away. He imagines the man from the cabin windows now lying under their bed with a nasty grin.

Around 5:45, Felix is awoken by Faye returning to bed, and he realizes she’s been sleepwalking. Felix recalls that he caught her returning to bed around the same time when they were at her parents’ house.

Later that morning, Faye acts stranger than ever. Felix calls Tíwé, who cracks jokes about white people’s expectations of Indigenous people. He says they aren’t all “shamans and wise men” (83). Felix fills him in on Faye’s behavior, and Tíwé says he wants to talk to some friends to make sure he’s right—he thinks he knows what might be going on. He tells Felix to hold onto his love for Faye, that it will keep them strong if she gets worse. Felix wonders why only Faye is affected. He considers the possibility that it’s because she believes in the supernatural and he does not.

That night, Felix decides to catch Faye sleepwalking. He sets an alarm for 4:15 and goes to sleep. He’s awoken by an unfamiliar, raspy voice around midnight. Faye is mimicking someone; it sounds like she’s “testing a new mouth for the first time” (87) as she answers more questions. He hears a man grumbling outside; he opens the curtain to see a huge silhouette in the distance. It is nearly seven feet tall and shuffles like an intoxicated person.

When Felix turns around, Faye’s head is hanging upside down off the bed, her eyes looking unsettling, her mouth “gurgling”; she looks like someone having a slow-motion seizure. She watches Felix with malice. His fear turns to rage, and he wakes her, watching the “rabid hunger” subside. They go back to sleep. Later, he sees her lying with teeth bared as though she might bite off her own fingers.

Felix watches Faye throw off her covers and walk into the hall. Her movements are robotic and inhuman, and she begins flicking light switches in patterns of five. She beckons someone up the stairs, but as soon as Felix touches her, she goes limp. He is sure that the entity from the cabin followed them home.

The next morning, Faye looks awful. Though she never eats eggs, she consumes an entire plate of them. Felix takes her to the doctor, who prescribes sleep and anti-anxiety medications, recommending she talk to a psychologist about her dreams. He also advises her to keep a dream journal.

That afternoon, Faye remembers dreaming about a particular section of woods the night before. She could see their window from there, and she could see a man watching her from that window. He stood over Felix while he slept. Suddenly, she feels like she’s going to pass out, and they head home. On the way, she hears a little boy singing.

Felix remembers the way the little boy sounded on the mountain and the awful things he said. The child seemed like “a hollowed-out thing, a desperate mockery of a person” (99). Likewise, the man in Faye’s dreams also seems to be inhuman.

Felix and Faye go out to dinner at their favorite spot, where they always order the same meals. Tonight, however, Faye orders a steak, bloody rare, and forgets Felix’s usual. She gets defensive and snaps at him when he says he’s worried about her, then says she’s never been to the cabin before. She “wolf[s] down” the steak. As they leave, Felix affectionately calls Faye “Noodle,” asking if she still likes when he calls her that. She says she does, but he has never called her that before. Felix feels like she is becoming less and less herself. His skepticism about the supernatural decreases.

That evening, Faye hums a tune, the one the boy sang on the mountain, and it hypnotizes Felix, putting him to sleep. He wakes to find Faye crawling around upstairs, wearing a malicious grin and moving like a huge spider. She says someone’s at the door. Suddenly, tears squeeze from her shut eyes, and she asks Felix to tell the man to leave; just then, Felix hears a knocking at the front door. Faye says the man’s been whispering to her for hours and that there’s also a woman downstairs.

Felix can see the dark figure of a woman, but as he approaches her, he grows horribly nauseated. The man knocks again, and Felix shouts. Faye wakes up, looking scared. Felix opens the door, but no one is there. He feels he’s becoming mentally ill. He tells Faye that she has to take the sleeping pills.

For the next few days, the medications help. Felix considers the conflicting things Faye told him about having been to the cabin. He calls Lynn, though he knows she cares more about politeness than sincerity. He tells her that Faye is worse. Lynn says she and Greg took Faye to the cabin often when she was a child. He cannot tell who is lying, Lynn or Faye.

Tíwé calls with more questions. He wants Felix and Faye to come back to the cabin. Felix resists. Tíwé says that there are things on the mountain that his people don’t understand, but he believes the situation can only be remedied there, insisting, “All the others who have left the mountain—the ones who ran away—it finds them in the end” (112). Tíwé wants his friend Angela to come talk to Faye too, and he reminds Felix that Faye is protecting him just as he’s protecting her.

Within a few days, Faye seems almost normal. One night, she and Felix reminisce about college, and Felix feels more hopeful.

Later that night, he wakes up when someone sits down on the bed. He sees a pale, bony man clutching Faye’s arm. The man leans over Faye, whispering hateful things. When Felix moves, the man growls and dives to the floor, wriggling underneath the bed. Felix runs for the light switch but is blinded with pain. He wakes up on the floor, wrapped in the sheet that tripped him. It was a dream, but it felt very real.

He looks under the bed and finds nothing. Felix asks Faye about the man, and she tells him the kinds of questions the man asks, especially how he wants to know about Felix. She says the man never talks about himself but that she thinks “one of [them] has something he wants” (119).

Felix realizes that Faye hasn’t been wearing her engagement ring; she says it’s still in her suitcase.

One night, Felix stays out late. When he gets home, all the lights are out, and he finds Faye’s dream journal on the floor. It contains two styles of handwriting, snatches of conversations, and numerous disturbing sketches. In one, a gnarled hand scratches the number five into a window.

He finds Faye upstairs, her head flopping and her spine rigid as she runs back and forth in the hall. He watches her until the sight of a man catches his eye out the hall window. The man sings in a small child’s voice as he runs back and forth outside. Felix realizes the man and Faye’s movements are synchronized. She will not wake. She runs away from Felix, and the man runs into the woods.

Felix follows him, sprinting across the meadow, but the man eludes him. Suddenly, Felix runs into a second “dreamcatcher,” its web made of Faye’s hair. Felix tears it apart and returns to the house, where Faye is now sleeping peacefully. Felix lies awake, realizing that the window in one sketch is the window in their spare room. That window looks out on to the grove where the man stands. Felix finds a “5” drawn backwards on the window, legible to someone outside. He hears singing.

Tíwé’s friend, Angela, comes over, and she explains that they’ve been friends since childhood. She describes the erasure of Indigenous cultures: The residential schools that taught children to talk and act European so that they’d forget Indigenous customs, the debate over how Indigenous communities should refer to themselves, the near-extinction of Indigenous languages. Angela came to California to study these issues rather than stay at home, and this alienated her from her family.

As Felix and Faye tell Angela about what they’ve experienced, she grows concerned. She asks if the man told Faye his name, what his voice sounds like, and more. Angela believes the guest room is where Faye lets the man in. Although their cultural beliefs are very private, Tíwé wants Angela to share her suspicions with Felix and Faye. She thinks the man is one of the “hollow ones,” a creature from another world who is jealous of the living.

Felix asks how they get rid of it, but Angela doesn’t know. Angela asks if they’ve lost anything important, and Faye hides her hands. Angela tells Felix that there’s a dark cloud hanging over them both, especially Faye. She cautions him not to leave Faye alone.

Later, Felix looks in vain for the engagement ring. That night, he prevents Faye from sleepwalking by holding her back. She turns to him and whispers, “They’re gonna kill you” (140), then licks his face.