Stolen Tongues

Grief is a central motif in the text, helping to bind the characters who experience the Imposter’s malevolent influence while at the cabin. The cabin’s backstory provides an important clue to what lies beneath Faye and Felix’s own disturbing experiences. Lynn explains that the couple who sold the cabin to the Spencers, Tom and Jennifer, retreated to the cabin after the death of their daughter. While staying there, Jennifer began to experience terrible nightmares and believed her daughter was calling her from the woods. Although the couple moved away from the cabin to escape these problems, Tom ultimately died by suicide while Henry, Jennifer’s second husband, tells Felix that Jennifer was never fully mentally well again.

Faye and her family are also tied by grief to the Imposter, although this is not revealed to Faye and Felix until close to the novel’s end. When Faye was very young, Lynn gave birth to a stillborn son. Faye was confused by the death and did not know how to process her feelings, so her parents took her to the cabin for a break. While there, Faye became disturbed by the Imposter the same way Jennifer had been years before. In returning to the cabin as an adult, her odd behavior while asleep—especially her fixation on the number “5”—alludes to the grief for her brother she has long buried deep in her unconscious.