Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part One
Summers in Old Beach were a brief spectacle measured in weeks, not months. A mysterious time of the year that expressed itself between that first solid week of cool sunshine afternoons through to the first solid week that everyone kept indoors and to themselves do to the rain and the wind that ruled the rest of the year.
If the girls in town found even two solid weeks of glory to skimp down to their bathing suits it was surely going to be a scandalous season. Someone would break someone’s heart up or down the coast between Puritan Rock and the old lighthouse on Shankill mound. If some stupid girl caught pregnant it was all anyone could do to hope it wasn’t due to a case of kissing cousins. Even if it was though, shotgun weddings were the standing party theme of those warmest months.
Rotary house stood alone on the dark side of a rise of old growth elm and poplar trees that kept the place shrouded in dusk and gloom except for the very center of midday. Summer, as brief as it was for the rest of town seemed briefer still in the shadow of the forest that overlooked the ocean. She was twelve the first time she found herself out on the second story balcony with nothing but the warm sun to keep her company. Reading and needle point took a very necessary backseat for her as she laid one of Nana’s old shawls down on the porch, pretending it was one of those blankets people used for sun bathing on the beach below in town. She dared to go naked and let the sun do its worst, her life wasn’t that awful, surely not yet, but it was just boring enough that she was willing to see what would really happen.
Felecia Conway didn’t have her mother’s large, sharp eyes or her Nana’s pretty, shiny silvery scales. She didn’t have her father’s proud build or the sea sworn senses her two brothers possessed, but the girl was smart, smarter than the rest by half and most of them hated her for it. Nobody likes a know it all, that was her mother’s saying but Nana seemed to cut it even sharper that last winter as they all found themselves huddled for warmth on the ground floor of the old massive house. “Sharp tongues and hard hearts make for empty beds, girl. Best you mind yourself and listen to the men around you and take to heart what they say if you don’t want to die alone and unloved.”
Felecia could think of far worse outcomes in life than dying alone and unloved. Everyone in the house, all the way from sainted Nana down to Mildred the chamber maid knew that Nana had murdered grandpa Samial back when Felecia was still on the tit. It was understood that she killed him in self-defense during one of his rages. No one in town questioned it, not even the constable. Samial took to the bottle and had his fits and for what must have been the thousandth time he took to beating his wife and she finally had enough.
That was ok. Serial abuse and municipally recognized murder were seemingly understandable. A contrary twelve-year-old proudly proclaiming that she preferred to be alone over the alternatives though. That required intervention and routine checkups. Felecia was already weeks into being prodded and measured on her willingness and ability to play well with others when she took to that second story balcony and let the warm sun have its way with her.
We have a condition. We are a special breed. We have our own beauty and we measure ourselves by different standards than those people down in town.
Felecia had heard it all by then, she had plenty of questions sure, but so many assumptions were made before she even had the thought to contemplate if something was amiss. Small children don’t know that something is wrong until you point it out to them and once you do and reinforce it a few times, well, the cats out of the bag. There were only so many times that Felecia’s mother could point out their differences from the folk in town before it became an obvious and self-conscious issue. There were only so many times Nana could proudly boast of their odd lineage while explaining the fragility of their wealth and standing in the area before Felecia learned to be afraid of herself, the old house, and everyone there until she finally refused to be afraid anymore.
Father, the same year he disappeared at sea, walked a trembling Felecia down to the cellar when she was ten years old. Words were said at the dinner table, ones that wouldn’t stand while the man of the house was home. He took it upon himself to make an impression since he was home from sea on rare occasion.
Felecia was walked past the floor to ceiling shelves of canned goods and jarred preserves, past rows of old family furnishings and relics that had fallen out of favor, all the way back to a faint bare bulb that hung over a wooden table and bench that stood plain and unadorned next to all of the old, partially covered finery.
“Both of your brothers got their trips down here for one thing or another back in their day. Here is the part where I tell you the same thing that I told them. I’m no brute made to swing leather at his kin, but your mother and grandmother…those witches, they would have me go at you something fierce if it meant keeping the peace here while I’m gone. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any words of advice when it comes to dealing with them. The way I learned best early on was to be gone as much as I could be. Like I told your brother Bartholomew a few years back, maybe its best you do the same, from the neck up, while you’re still stuck here. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Felecia was already terrified and expecting some unknown awfulness. She didn’t really consider what was being said she only looked at her father and then over at the plain wooden bench and table and the bare bulb that hung over it all before she nodded her head.
Her father reached out then and cupped her chin in his large, callused hand. He held her head up and let the tears pool onto his hand before letting go as he rubbed at the salty water. “Between the ocean water and tears, I’d rather feel the ocean. I bet you would too, if I was a betting man. If only you were born a boy, what a fine member of my crew you would make.”
Her father shrugged and shook his head and instantly dismissed that wish, reaffirming himself in the purpose at hand. “As is, you’re meant for marriage and babies, and minding your mother and grandmother, do I make myself clear?”
Again, at ten, Felecia was more than ready and thankful to nod her head and avoid the imagined alternatives. At ten she breathed a sigh of relief as she was led away from the awful bench and table and back up to the better lit and less smelly parts of the house.
At twelve though, at twelve and nearly two years past her father and her brother Bartholomew being lost at sea. At twelve and able and ready to dodge out of reach of her Nana’s swats with the kitchen spoon, Felecia didn’t care a fig for the repercussions of youth.
“We Conway women avoid the sun. It doesn’t do well for our fair complexion.” That was mother’s most recent words spoken for the generally given avoidance of the sun. Nana, as always had been more direct and vocal. “That bastard yellow thing in the sky burns tender flesh and winkles hardened skin besides. Fye on it and those who flock to it. We Conway’s stay well away from the thing. Evening moon glow and rain give us the coat that our men lust after.”
At twelve, going on thirteen out there on the second story balcony Felecia figured that at worst, Nana would happen upon her and give her yet another earful of old Conway wisdom. Worst case scenario she would be howled at until she ducked back inside to cover her budding shame. Instead, she laid out there under the sun, basking in its glorious warmth for hours, the sun invigorated her, it almost seemed to feed her in some way and more than any other experience ever had before. She only relented when that glorious sun fell away leaving her cool and growing cold as the sky overhead grew dark.