I opened my mouth to protest the ridiculous idea, but then a memory disrupted my thoughts. It was a familiar song, ringing so clearly in my mind that I thought I was actually hearing it.
I approached Faye, and began to hum the dreary elegy we first heard from the mouth of a child outside the cabin.
“Sooouuul me aaahhh doooo…Souuuul meee aaahhh doooo…”
Faye’s eyes darted around behind her eyelids. She rocked her head back and forth a few times. Her arms jerked.
Angela’s voice rose behind me, carrying the same tune. Faye grit her teeth, then began to mouth the words we sang. Her breathing grew louder and faster, and a timid humming escaped her lips, joining us in chorus.
Suddenly, Faye jolted upright, the sudden movement silencing Angela and me. A few seconds ticked by, and then she fell backward onto the couch, twitching periodically.
“She’s fighting it,” Angela said, kneeling beside my fiancée.
“Faye?” I asked. “Honey, are you alright?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Do you know where you are?” Angela asked.
“I’m with you.”
Faye’s breathing settled into a slow and shallow rhythm. I knew it well; I’d heard it every night for the past several years. She was dead to the world.
Angela looked to the windows, then to the darkened staircase. I followed her gaze, suddenly very aware of the shadows that swallowed up most of the house.
“Who are you with, Faye?” she asked. “Do you know?”
“Felix. Angela… Erica.” Her voice barely penetrated the
air in front of her, forcing us to lean in close.
“Who’s Erica?” Angela whispered to me.
“Her boss,” I replied.
“Sweetie,” Angela said, touching Faye’s hand, “Erica isn’t here. Is there someone else here?”
Faye looked puzzled for a moment and rolled her head around, taking in the space around her like a satellite.
“No,” she replied.
“What about the one who follows you?” Angela pressed. “The one who calls out in the night. Is he here?”
“No.”
“Where is he now?” Angela asked.
Faye’s head craned from side to side as if she were emptying water from her ears.
“…Across the dark.”
“We need you to call out to him,” I said.
“No,” she replied.
“Bring him here,” Angela said, squeezing Faye’s hand, “and I promise we’ll protect you.”
Faye whimpered. The more we prodded, the more resistant she became. She started to cry, at first in her own voice, and then in the voice of a small child.
“Please no,” she begged. The sounds that came out of her mouth should have come from a five-year-old girl. Angela looked up at me wide-eyed. Goosebumps rippled down my arms.
“Sooouuul me aaaahhhh doooooo,” Faye sang. “Amma neta soouul me aahhhhh dooooo…”
Suddenly, Faye’s body stiffened and her eyes rolled forward. They landed squarely on me, then looked over my shoulder and focused on something a thousand miles behind me. Her mouth opened slightly, and a gurgling sound came up from her throat. She spoke in a wet and guttural voice, “Wachu…Wachu…”
Faye leaped off the couch and shuddered as though she
was trying to throw something from her back. Her body remained rigid, and she turned to face away from us. Every joint in her limbs popped and cracked in sickening symphony. She bent her head back and stared up at the place where the ceiling met the wall in front of her, balling her fists so tight her knuckles crackled like twigs. She snarled again, “Wachu, wachu, wachu.”
Angela jumped to her feet, ready to stop Faye from hurting herself or dashing off into the night. I played safety a few feet away, knowing how quick my fiancée could move in this state.
“Tell us where he is, Faye,” Angela commanded.
Faye put her finger to her lips and shushed us. She placed her fingers against the wall, like she was feeling for a pulse. She breathed hard through gritted teeth and forced out the word “Bedroom.”
I looked over my shoulder at the stairwell. I couldn’t see anything, but somehow, the darkness up there felt full, like it concealed a thousand terrible eyes peering back me.
“Is he talking to you right now?” Angela asked.
Faye grunted, trying to resist the force that contorted her body.
“His mouth is always moving,” she whispered, “but I can’t hear him. He’s facing the other way.”
I went upstairs, wading through the darkness of the hallway. Terror pushed back against me as I advanced. I could feel him now. As my hand touched the bedroom doorknob, I heard a window open on the other side.
The bedroom was empty, disturbed only by the cool night air that wafted in from the window near Faye’s side of the bed. The dim glow of the backyard’s automatic lights poured in. I approached and looked outside.
At the far end of the yard, just beyond the reach of the lights, stood a huge figure. The shadows smoldered around him, but his size betrayed him and outlined his wretched body against the blackness. He looked taller than ever before, and faced away, staring up into the trees that lined the property. His arms lay pressed against his sides, and his fists were balled, tightly clutching pieces of paper – Faye’s drawings.
“Wole my…wole my…” he growled.
I locked the window and raced back downstairs. Faye was now sitting on the couch, head still craned up toward the ceiling, Angela rubbing her back and whispering to her.
Outside, a voice howled. It sounded like a little girl crying out for her mother. Another voice erupted – Lynn’s – shouting “Greg, we need to take her to a hospital!”
My fiancée started to convulse. Angela wrapped her hand around Faye’s forehead and began to speak in her native language, repeating a few phrases over and over.
An infant shrieked in the backyard, and then slowly moved down the side of the house to the front door. There was a loud, slow knock, followed by more voices. The knock repeated again and again, and Becca’s voice called out, “Faye? Where are you? Help me, please help.”
Angela shouted something I could not understand. At last, Faye sucked in a huge breath and leaned back on the couch. Her head returned to a normal position and she frantically gasped for air. The pounding on the door grew louder, and the voices began to overlap, as though several people were standing in front of our house, crying out in the dark.
“He’s here, he’s here,” Faye stammered, clutching herself with shaking hands. Her eyes shrieked louder than a scream ever could.
A man’s sobs filtered through the door from outside. Greg’s voice bellowed, “He was my son too. My son. Did you think a weekend in the goddamn mountains would make us forget?”
Faye covered her ears, trying to block out the wicked
lures that snared her. The words were so clear that I nearly believed Greg stood on our doorstep.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Lynn’s voice cried out. “Just let her forget. This doesn’t have to be her burden too.”
Faye burst into tears and wobbled to the door. I followed just behind, ready to block her from opening it. The wails of a baby echoed through the house, followed by a little girl saying, “It’s Faye. Faaayyee. What’s yours? I can’t see you.”
Faye crumpled to the ground. She leaned her back against the door and brushed a handful of tear-soaked curls out of her face. There came another knock. My own voice followed it, saying, “May I…come in? It’s freezing out here. Looks like another storm’s coming.”
Faye looked up at me. Our gazes locked, and time slowed to a drip. I saw an abyss of terror and uncertainty in her eyes, mirroring my own state. But then, a look of conviction fell over her face. The fear seemed to dissipate from it.
“I have to tell you something,” she said, gently knocking on the door. Her eyes never left mine. “I know what you really want.”
The vo
ices fell silent all at once, and only an uneven wheezing remained.
“I had a baby brother,” she said. “His name was Christopher. He was number five.”
The breathing cut out.
Faye knocked on the door again. After a minute, something knocked back.
“I remember now,” she continued. “I couldn’t remember for years. Or I guess I didn’t want to. It’s easier for me to just pretend it never happened. Some kids make things exist. Friends, monsters, places. But I made Christopher not exist. That way I didn’t have to lose him. His death was just make-believe. And eventually, so was he.”
A long, slow scratching noise crisscrossed the door. The thing outside was dragging a claw over the wood, drawing symbols or pictures. Faye put her palm on the door, feeling the weak vibrations of the scratching.
“For a long time,” she said, “that number was all I could remember. I knew it meant something more, but every time I thought about it, my whole body would hurt. I’d feel sick. And then I’d just fall asleep. Or, if I was dreaming, I’d just wake up. I always knew it meant something more. But I wanted to forget.”
The doorknob rattled and a wet, clunking sound emitted from it. The Impostor was gnawing on it from the other side. The clatter of a hundred jagged teeth rose in vile symphony throughout our living room.
“He was stillborn,” Faye said. “Do you know what that means? He died inside my mom. All this time I’ve avoided burying Christopher. I couldn’t imagine him going into the ground, down in a hole where he’d never see the sun. But you’ve finally helped me realize why it’s time I laid him to rest.”
“Faye, come hold him,” Becca’s voice called from outside. “I don’t get it. He falls asleep so fast when you’ve got him. You want her to be your new mommy, Caleb?” The scratching noises persisted.
Faye wiped tears out of her eyes and took a deep breath. “Now you know everything. I wanted you to know. And now you can leave. I’m not going with you.”
A chorus of voices rang out in the night. An infant screamed, a toddler laughed, Greg and Lynn and Becca and Tíwé and Nathan and the ranger all spoke at once. Decades of pain washed through the door; words of anguish and sorrowful cries drowned out the world. Angela and I exchanged horrified glances, but Faye remained motionless at the door, staring up into my eyes. She didn’t blink.
The knocking on the door swelled to violent pounding. The entity used every possible trick he could. He tried to hit her right where the wounds were fresh, tried to tear open the oldest scars. But Faye never budged. She held her ground, and never took her eyes off me. They were filled with a knowing calm, as if to say, “Enough.”
When the Impostor got no response, he stomped from the front door to the nearby window. Angela shut off the light so she could see his silhouette on the curtain.
”Wole my, wole my,” he bayed, rolling his nails across the glass.
Faye’s lips quivered, but she said nothing. A titanic scream erupted from the creature, and he slapped the side of the house with an open hand. The sounds shook the room and struck a lightning bolt of terror in the pit of my stomach, but Faye did not react. She didn’t even flinch.
Then, the entity said something I did not expect. Instead of assuming the voice of someone we knew, he spoke in several I did not recognize. He uttered only one labored sentence, but each word was formed with a different tongue:
”I…walked…a thousand…years…across…the dark…to find you.”
The message petrified me. The finality, the sheer longing of it seemed incomprehensible. But Faye just shook her head.
“Go,” she said.
The creature howled. His shadow receded from the window, coloring Faye’s body silver with the dim kiss of moonlight. Sullen footsteps lurched across our yard and vanished into the backdrop of cricket songs. Angela and I looked down at Faye. A relieved smile spread across her face. She wasn’t crying anymore.
Epilogue
My fiancée has finally laid her demons to rest. Several days have passed since Faye made her confession to the Impostor, and he appears to have given up on his sinister quest. He returned only once since that night, merely to sing his morose lullaby. Faye slept right through it. I didn’t mention it to her.
A dreadful weight has been lifted from her shoulders, allowing her to mourn properly. At night, she sleeps soundly. During the day she cries. She cuddles with me and talks about her childhood. She Skypes with her parents and sister. They cry too. I have shed many tears with her, and for her loss, but now I finally understand why she did what she did.
As a child, Faye repressed the pain of her brother’s death so completely that Christopher himself disappeared with it. The number five became the lockbox in which he was hidden. The coffin she buried him in. And she buried him so deep that she couldn’t even dream of him anymore. That is why the Impostor never fully understood what she was hiding.
I believe that Faye’s lifelong sleep disturbances were her brain’s attempts at keeping that pain repressed. But by talking in her sleep, Faye invited dark attention to herself. I suppose that if you speak long enough into the void, someone is bound to start listening. Someone, or something, heard Faye’s pain and saw it as a weakness. He saw those cracks in her heart as a passage into her soul, and so he chose her. The Impostor became transfixed with my fiancée not because she was an easy target, but because she was a monolithic challenge. A worthy opponent.
But Faye’s brain is not just a factory of denial. It is also a work of art. She is able to see the world in ways that I cannot, and her vision granted her insight into the monster. Faye realized that the Impostor could tug on her puppet strings by invading the darkest parts of her mind. In all those hidden places, he found weapons to use against her. To wear her down. But instead of burying her secrets deeper, Faye unearthed them and brought them into the light. By moving Christopher out from the depths of her subconscious and into her waking thoughts, she unleashed a tidal wave of anguish upon herself. But at the same time, she took away the Impostor’s power over her. She cut off her own puppet strings, and now there was nothing left for the creature to grab onto. And so he left.
This catastrophe has taught me what it means to grieve. I’ve found the time to mourn for my dear friends, Tíwé and Nathan. Their deaths are terrible wounds on my heart, and I will always bear the agony of their loss. But I want it to hurt, as a permanent reminder. They gave so much to me and asked nothing in return, spare that I preserve the goodness of their people in my memory. By writing about their altruism and sacrifices, I am trying to fulfill that promise. May their spirits live on in the sacred land they protected.
Angela and I have spoken a few times since that night, mostly about the dreamcatchers, but the conversations go nowhere. We may never know for sure who built them. Perhaps they were crafted by the people who live on Pale Peak. Perhaps they wanted to protect fools like me who venture to that mountain without understanding its history. Maybe they were creations of the Impostor himself. Or maybe they had nothing to do with us.
We have also discussed the engagement ring. What the Impostor wanted with it, and what it enabled him to do to Faye, remains a mystery. Once the creature had possession of it, he slowly gained my fiancée’s trust and the ability to influence her — even while she was awake. After I retrieved the ring, he ceased visiting Faye for several weeks, and could only possess her through dreams. Angela has advised us to get rid of it for fear that it could be cursed. But to Faye, that ring symbolizes everything we’ve been through, and she refuses to part with such a meaningful thing. It still rests on her finger, and glitters like her smile.
There is a terrible being that still lives up there in those woods on Pale Peak. Some people believe him to be an Old Evil, a progenitor of the bad spirits that wander the Southwest and the Rocky Mountains. Others call him a soul trader, a demon who takes his victims out into the endless dark to feast on their suffering. Tíwé and Nathan thought of him as an apex predator with a remarkably effective
hunting style. But when I think of the At’an-A’anotogkua, I can’t help but think of another animal: Carrot. The Impostor reminded me of a parrot, always watching, always imitating, always practicing. And just like Carrot, he could only ever approximate the people he watched. He could never fully become one of them. But whatever the Impostor truly is, I have stopped trying to understand.
Faye and I plan to head back to Colorado in a few weeks to reconcile with her parents. I will return to the mountain alone to pay my deepest respects to Tíwé and Nathan’s community, and to witness the bulldozing of the cabin. In distant days I may regret not investigating it further. I may wonder. I may dream. I don’t know if it is better that we should remember, or forget. But I know that we have an obligation to help protect future visitors to the mountain. Whatever secrets that cabin on Pale Peak still hides, let them be buried deep beneath the rubble and the snows of decades to come.
A Word on Natives in Fiction
How should a non-Native person write about Natives in a work of fiction? Does he have the right? Is it unethical to do so?
These questions wracked my brain throughout the entire process of authoring this book. My fear was that I would misrepresent Natives, like so many Hollywood films have over the decades, and portray them as something other than what they are: people. Like anyone else, they are people with cultures, beliefs, histories, and ideas about how the world should work. They can be just as interesting or boring as anybody else, except they are lesser-known, and therefore somewhat mysterious to outsiders.
Why should I care about misrepresentations and stereotypes? Many books and films, widely regarded as masterpieces, portray Indigenous people (or black people, or women, or LGBT people) as flat and one-dimensional, often to terrible ends. And they do so with waning impunity. I care because Indigenous peoples are especially vulnerable to the effects of misrepresentation. They are perhaps the most submerged, marginalized, and underrepresented ethnic community in the United States (and in many other countries around the world). By this I mean, among other things, that Indigenous peoples do not have the public station they would require to combat or correct these misrepresentations. They are often ignored by the media. They are reduced to brief mentions in history classes. They are not cast in any significant number as actors or elected as politicians. They are mostly reflected through other lenses, like movies and TV shows – and books like this one. Historians refer to them sometimes as “peoples,” by the way, to indicate that they are not just one group.
Stolen Tongues Page 24
