Stolen Tongues

Lynn tells Felix more about that visit. Faye’s sister didn’t go with them. One day, as Faye and Greg played outside in the snow, Faye wandered off to the forest edge. When they found her, she appeared to be answering someone’s questions about her family. As he listens to Lynn, Felix realizes that whoever has been questioning her has been doing it for decades.

Lynn’s flashback continues. All of a sudden, Faye began screaming; she went rigid and her eyes rolled back. They drove to the nearest hospital, but when they got to town, Faye was acting normally again. The nightmares and sleepwalking started a few days later.

The next day, Greg gives Felix his truck keys and apologizes for not saying something about the weird things at the cabin. Felix takes this as a sign of Greg’s trust.

As Felix arrives, he has the bad feeling that he is unwelcome. Pike meets him there, telling him he could just go stay at a local motel, but Felix demurs. That night, he decides to go out and see if the “dreamcatcher” is still there, as he wants to show it to Tíwé. It’s there, but Felix sprints back to the cabin when he hears voices in the woods.

Felix searches for the engagement ring, with no luck. He eventually falls asleep but is woken by a tapping on the window. He sees a huge shadow through the curtains, then hears a knock at the door. The voice begins to mimic his own, as though it’s learning how. This is the most frightened Felix has ever felt, and when he threatens the entity, it repeats his words back in his voice. Then it declares that it knows where Faye is and bounds into the woods on all fours. Felix begins to feel delirious and experiences suicidal ideation.

Felix wonders if the entity will lose interest in Faye if Felix gets the ring back. Before dawn, he sees the familiar figure at the tree line. When the sun rises, he tries to get some sleep.

Pike arrives with Tíwé and Tíwé’s son, Nathan. Tíwé asks about Angela and suggests that the academics who come to study their culture remind him of “Jane Goodall, living among the chimps!” (164). Tíwé confirms what Angela said about their community being reluctant to share their history with outsiders. He explains that the real name of the “hollow ones” refers to water’s formlessness until it is put inside something; Tíwé calls this creature “the Impostor” because he fills himself with others’ life force.

Tíwé explains that Colorado has been home to many groups over the centuries, and war, famine, and weather often moved them around. However, when the Gold Rush happened, thousands of Indigenous Americans were displaced or killed. Mining companies forced them off their ancestral land, where their dead were buried. When they were forced to leave the land to which their stories were tied, they began to forget the stories, and their spiritual power weakened.

On Pale Peak, two Indigenous groups—the Pozi and the Ineho—allied to fight the miners, and they warred back and forth for years. Eventually, however, colonizers used bribery to turn these two groups against each other. Tíwé says his people believed that the Impostors snuck into their world to take things they wanted, possibly drawn to sites of suffering. One day, every child in one Ineho village disappeared; Tíwé’s people believed the Impostor was responsible. Tíwé and Nathan say it only appears at night, facing away from its victims, because it cannot pass for human no matter how hard it tries. Tíwé wants to speak with his community leaders about this situation.

Felix takes Tíwé and Nathan to the “dreamcatcher,” but Tíwé says that’s not what it is. His people don’t make dreamcatchers, and few Indigenous groups do. Dreamcatchers, he continues, are made for protection and balance; this object is comprised of symbols of death, and the woven pattern signifies chaos. It seems to be some kind of totem, or “crafted object with a link to the spirit world” (174). Tíwé tells Felix not to touch it and that he and Nathan will be back tomorrow. He gives Felix a small pouch with some sage for protection.

Felix passes out from exhaustion and wakes up around midnight to a freezing cabin. He takes a hot bath to get warm and, in the steam fogging the window, he sees a “5” drawn backward. It seems old, and he realizes Faye was signaling the creature before they returned home. He goes around the cabin and finds 5s on every window, all written backward to be legible to someone outside.

Suddenly, he hears a knocking at the front door and then his own voice calling out to him. He thinks of Faye, which seems to upset the creature. When Felix recites a poem in German, it also upsets the creature, and it leaves, howling. However, when Felix draws the curtain back, he sees a “5” the creature drew in mud on the window. He concludes that the Impostor is practicing his voice so it can trick Faye. The entity seems to be stuck, needing something from her that she won’t or can’t give.

In the morning, Felix calls Faye, who sounds empty and distant. She tells him to keep looking for the engagement ring. He checks his email on the spotty Wi-Fi and finds an urgent message from Tyler. Faye wanted to go home, he said, so he went with her, and she’s been acting strangely since their return. One night, while sleepwalking, she told Tyler, “We sent [Felix] there to die” (184). Something else happened as well, but Tyler wants Colin to tell Felix about it.

Felix leaves a voicemail for Colin and goes outside to clean the muddy “5” off the window. He sees that the big stack of firewood normally under that window was scattered, revealing a heavy cellar door, bolted and padlocked. It’s clear the Impostor was trying to get inside.

Colin says Faye’s behavior makes him willing to believe in the supernatural. He and Tyler stood outside her bedroom door, listening to her sing in the voice of a small child. They opened the door and saw her standing in the corner, facing the wall; she was lifting framed pictures and looking behind them. When Faye spun around to look at Colin, she glared with unmitigated hatred.

Tyler turned on the lights, and they saw a little kid outside the window. Colin ran outside and chased him into the trees; the child’s laughter turned into an adult’s, and that’s when Colin saw the huge man, his back facing Colin. The creature began to speak in Felix’s voice, begging for help.

When Colin and Felix hang up, Felix is so terrified that death seems like a welcome relief. He tells himself to rest, then find the ring.

Tíwé wakes Felix, who—for the first time in his life—has sleepwalked. He is outside, in the snow, near the woods when Tíwé finds him. Felix declares that he’s leaving that night, with or without the ring, but Tíwé points out how meaningful it is. Tíwé knows that no one in his community can or is willing to help, so he too wants Felix to go home to be with Faye.

Tíwé expects Felix to stay one more night and leave the next day, but Felix wants to go immediately. When Felix stands up, however, he is overcome by nausea. Tíwé leaves, and Felix sleeps. He dreams of going back to the totem in the woods; when he reaches it, he finds the engagement ring in it. When Felix wakes, he yearns to know if it’s there.

Felix notices that Greg’s tires have all been slashed. He finds the totem in the trees, and it does contain the ring. Despite the warnings, Felix grabs it and tears it apart. Just as he does, a massive being moves into his periphery. He is horrified by the abomination as it turns toward him. He is horrified to see the thing with Tíwé’s face, and he scrambles back to the cabin.

Back inside, his terror is so extreme that Felix blacks out after barricading the door. He awakens in a bed, an arm draped across him. The arm’s owner looks like Faye but it’s not her. The cabin is freezing, and he finds the kitchen window open. Not-Faye hisses his name and asks him, “What makes five?” (203). She says she cannot remember in this place. Felix regrets breaking the totem, thinking it must have protected him somehow.

Not-Faye again asks about the number five, and Felix realizes that the creature needs this information. Faye refuses to provide it, and Felix doesn’t know, so he tells the creature that it will never get an answer. This prompts the Impostor to say that it no longer needs Felix, and it grows to epic proportions and attacks. During the scuffle, Felix grabs the sage and smashes it into the creature’s face, driving it back. It takes off into the night.

Felix has never felt so alone, but he has the ring. He lights the rest of Tíwé’s sage on fire and wafts the smoke throughout the cabin. Later, he hears Faye’s voice calling out to him that she needs help.

Suddenly, all the windows shatter, and the cabin is filled with light from the trucks that have pulled in. Pike and five other men are there to rescue him. Pike tells him that Tíwé is dead, that he seems to have gotten lost in the blizzard and was attacked by a bear.

On his flight home, Felix realizes that the Impostor gave him the ring back, like it wanted him to destroy the totem to get it. When he gets home, Tyler and Colin tell him that Faye hasn’t done anything unusual in almost two days. Her return to her usual state seems to coincide with the time he got her ring back.

That night, in bed, they sleep well. However, in the middle of the night, Faye leans over to thank Felix, then licks his face.