Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Forty Three
The villagers nearly killed her, tried to hang Phillip, now they planned to starve them out slow. There wasn’t enough game left in the woods to keep even the three of them alive much less provide the big house with even more food all year around. Even if Phillip didn’t see that, Felecia understood then that the best way to deal with the fiend was to kill him, let Nana hire another groundskeeper, one that didn’t have something to do with the murders.
Phillip got in the way, he wasn’t looking at the men behind him, he was standing between his boy and the men, turning his raised hands into closed fists. “Put the rifle down, now!”
The first man who came up the lane spouting talk of peace, he turned and shouted at the man in the tree line with the bow Everyone else was looking at the man shouting or at Phillip as he commanded his boy to lower the rifle. Only Felecia never took her eyes off the fiend, she saw him reaching for his knife, she watched him as he started walking up on Phillip. The only thing that saved the fiend that day was the man shouting about peace.
“Mrs. Conway offered compensation. Please Phillip, we came here to make peace.”
Phillip’s boy lowered the rifle before Felecia had the chance to point out the fiend with his knife. The man out in the tree line was lowering his bow and Phillip turned away from the porch toward the man talking about peace.
Peace. Felecia didn’t trust the word then and she likely never would. The fiend would have stabbed Phillip in the back, and he seemed happy to do it. Her near death experience in the village taught her all she needed to know about trusting the folk there. Still, the boy lowered his weapon, the man out in the tree line lowered his. Felecia felt bound to lower her bow, but she kept the arrow notched and kept her eyes on the fiend.
“The old witch sacked me for getting hung by you lot, my compensation as far as she’s concerned is the cold earth. You want to bribe me, Carl, have the decency to use your own name in the deed.”
The man who was busy talking about peace turned beet red and started stuttering. Felecia only barely heard him while she watched the fiend smirk and stare right back at her. “No, Phillip, no bribery or japery here. She spoke to me herself, told me to tell you to consider it a dowry, for the girl.
Felecia felt suddenly sick when the man pointed at her.
Mother! Of course, mother had gone back to Rotary house with talk of her virgin daughter spending time with fish faced middle aged men and their nearly grown offspring. Didn’t sour Marge deserve a dowry? Didn’t the other difficult girls the Conway’s had decided to feed to the earth?
“The girl, is a free fucking agent, you dullard. She isn’t my chattel, or the old witches for that matter.”
“Fuck it. We’ll be glad to keep the offer then.”
The fiend was quick to react to Phillip but the man talking peace looked at him with genuine disgust. “We’ll do no such thing.” The man turned back to Phillip then and continued, “Consider it severance then. Most of us know we didn’t do right by you and we’re trying now. Mrs. Conway also wanted to make things right, given the circumstances.” The man waved his hand dismissively at Felecia and that action made her want to put an arrow in his belly more than ever, even more than the fiends.
Call it what you want, but we’re paying you off for the attempted murder, and paying you for taking in the trash from the big house. The man, Carl, only had to wave his hand the once and say all of that as far as Felecia was concerned.