Sunkissed Innsmouth
Part Twenty Four
“Marge was already a local fixture when I was coming up as a boy. She liked her laudanum and was willing to love anyone who had some. When your family’s fortunes began to dwindle, she took to trying to grow poppies out in the hills. They never took, too cold and damp here on the island. After that she did it for food and drink until no one wanted to pay.”
“And after that?”
Phillip turned and looked at Felecia, he titled his fishy head and shrugged. “These folks may choose to come running to me, but really, I’m just the groundskeeper. Their day to day is theirs to track. I assumed, like many, she lived off the land. Since she was still alive until tonight, I assume she was doing just that.”
“What about the marks on her back?”
Phillip looked away and mumbled as he marched on, “Those weren’t done tonight.”
“I know that, but someone surely hated her. Someone did that to her long ago and then they came back and killed her. Hell, they tried to erase her from all existence. Maybe its connected.”
“It’s not.”
“You just said it yourself, you don’t keep track of the day to day lives of the people here in the village so how can you be sure?”
Phillip stopped and let his boots settle in the thick mud. “There are things adults do, Fee. Things that don’t make sense and they don’t seem right, but the world becomes an awful place for many and folks do things to each other so that they can feel better. They do things to each other that are agreed to. Do you understand?”
Felecia did understand, though the idea made her feel sick. Phillip calling her Fee also disquieted her but the use of ridiculous abbreviations for names seemed an argument for another time.
The two of them marched through the mud and snow back to the village proper and over to the seaward side before they reached the candle maker’s house. This location was known to Felecia, rather well in fact. The tallow works of course but also the small attached hovel the candle maker called home. If Mullens’ shack was the first stop, and the worse for wear tar paper hovel that sour Marge called home was the second stop, then it seemed the candle maker’s house and works should have been the final scene of the three events.
The tallow works were quiet and still clean from where Felecia saw them last a few days before. The house proper was more recently lived in and disheveled but not nearly to the point of the two previous residences. Someone had been there recently and they surely left in a hurry after packing sparsely.
The candle maker’s small house was vacant, drawers were left open, miscellaneous items were strewn about, but the place hadn’t been ransacked like the previous locations. If it could be surmised that Mullens was relieved of all his hoarded foodstuff and that sour Marge was likely killed for whatever, if anything, she owned of value, the person or people who ran through this place didn’t bother turning over pillows or yanking open cupboards. The person or people who had at this place, knew were everything was already.
The candle maker’s chest of drawers was mostly left untouched, his pantry only partially emptied. The kitchen was a mess, the front door had been left open, a basin of pink water was resting by the bed, but really, the place didn’t look half as ravaged as the first two hovels.
Felecia looked through the place once and then gave it a second pass before Phillip arrived, he grunted and scrapped his muddy boots against the door frame. “It’s like you said, his workshop is untouched. Where’s the body?”
“There is no body.”
Phillip narrowed his eyes and stepped into the small house.
“No body, no bloody mess, no weapons, no signs of anyone being poisoned or beaten to death.”
Phillip had a look around and stopped for a few seconds by the basin of water before he returned to the front door. “They said the candle maker was one of the victims. Except for the water in that basin, this looks like a slob packing for a trip.”
“So, what’s next?”
“We go and find the mob and have a talk with the ringleaders about their suspicions. If there are any witnesses, which I doubt, we hear them out, then we do away with Mullens’ boy and go get some sleep before dawn ruins that hope.”