Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Thirty Three
Felecia woke that night choking on blood, some of it hers, some of it clearly not. She rolled on her side with great effort and wretched up a river of the stuff. She couldn’t breathe out of her swollen, broken nose, she couldn’t move her jaw much and didn’t dare to try and flex the torn ruins of her lips. Her eyes only barely showed a blood hued world of doubles. The concussion, not that she understood that she had one at the time, was horrendous.
Still and in spite of her injuries, still and in spite of the fact that her right arm refused to answer her commands, Felecia got up onto her knees and pulled her knife free from the lout’s neck. Even with her world red hued and swimming, even with her ears wringing and endless waves of nausea washing over her, Felecia could hear the villagers, the mob, howling and jeering. The unthinking, unfeeling, mob had a new subject to torment and Felecia didn’t need to think long or hard on who it was.
I’m not getting killed by those people because you decide to rile them up.
Felecia could hear Phillip’s voice inside her head. She could hear his familiar sigh of disappointment. She hadn’t come to rile them up, they were already riled, but he was out there because of her.
Phillip shouted out, it was partial warning and an outcry of pain. Felecia realized that wasn’t inside her head and she tried for the hut door. The knob turned in her slippery, bloody hand a few times before she got purchase on it and managed to half walk, half stumble out into the mud and snow.
The villagers, the ones who hadn’t already fled the scene out of disgust or for personal safety, the ones who hadn’t already been murdered and left cooling in their huts and houses, the ones who weren’t busy making a moaning, miserable trail of wounded that led from the hut up a small hill away from the beach, were circling Phillip.
The groundskeeper was fallen, beaten, bloody and mostly disarmed and yet he was still barking orders at the mob. Demanding that they step away, go back to their homes, leave him be. Phillip didn’t balk at invoking the name of his employer, he marched the name Elizabeth Conway out and took it for a walk more than a few times but the mob didn’t care. The mob started out that night expecting a hanging and a hanging is what they would have.
Felecia slipped in the frozen snow and the caked mud, she righted herself the first time but then splatted down into it nearly face first. She was winded and one of the wounded was trying to reach for her, trying to make enough noise above the din of the mob to let them know the little murderess was up and about once more. Felecia didn’t like to think about how she felt then, she didn’t like to revisit that night at all, but she knew then and there while she stared angrily at the wounded twins before her that she would have been more than willing to stab them both down into death to shut them up and make them go away. So much for thinking better of herself, so much for assuming she couldn’t and wouldn’t have killed Mullens. The events of that night proved that she could, and that she would.
The only thing that spared the wounded villager that night was his coughing fit and the fact that Felecia was wounded, slowed, and seeing double. Phillip also helped, he stopped barking orders and started making wounded animal sounds as the mob beat him with their fists, feet, and whatever could be easily reached for. Felecia fought with the ground and against her own injuries to right herself once more. She inched forward in an endless see saw world and fought the need to black out once more as she held her knife out in front of her.
Felecia pushed and strained up the slope in the mud and over patches of crunchy, frozen snow with the blade held out in front of her. She watched in agonizing disbelief as the few hearty remaining members of the mob got busy throwing a length of old anchor rope over the crotch of an elm tree. She wouldn’t get there in time, and well, time for what? Time enough to be laughed at, to be struck one or two more times in order to finish the job. She wouldn’t be able to help Phillip and even as bad as she was, she could recognize that much. Unless the bastards lined up single file and ran themselves into her waiting blade there was nothing that she could do to help herself or Phillip.