Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Forty Nine
"Felecia dreamed again that night for the first time in months. The event wasn’t one of her raving terrors of the night but it was surely a nightmare none the less.
The fiend, the older sibling of the felonious pair Felecia overheard as they charted the further course of their complicity in the village murders, was seated high on a piled thrown made of long, bound hair and stacked goods. Piles of combs and hair pins, little wooden pots of the crushed berry rouge some women in the village wore. Shawls and stained dresses all made a bottom layer of sorts for the other misplaced goods and still even there laid braids, and tied lengths of cut hair of all colors.
The fiend was smiling wide atop his mass of hoarded womankind. He was staring intently at nothing, the entire scene beyond him and his disgusting thrown, nothing but pure black. His intent eyes betrayed the creature using them. Still, cold nothingness was looking hard out at the world through his hollow eyes. Thin lips parted to show rows of jagged sharks teeth. An all too human togue drug back and forth along those awful teeth creating a slimy foam of bloody saliva.
The fiend continued to stare intently at the black nothing until his hollow eyes settled on Felecia in the awful nightmare. Then and only then did the malcontent fiend begin to look worried. To hell with mere worry, the fiend’s skin began to turn green and a look of sudden horror locked on his terrible, fishy face. The fiend began to choke and wretch, thick yellow steams of vomit struck the dais of goods below him until it ran clear and a sudden awful bulge appeared in his distended throat.
The fiend gagged and mewled in horror until he collapsed and then the bulge in his distended throat showed itself for what it truly and finally was. A fist thrusted angrily through the anguished opening of the fiends mouth. A delicate hand emerged and kept pushing and emerging until it took a life beyond its glassy eyed host. The hand and arm worked their way, coated in saliva and blood, along until something larger needed to move into the world. The fiends thoroughly lifeless jaw distended and cracked, his throat split and his ribcage bulged and broke open, giving life to something new and awful to witness.
The blood and gore began to pour forth from the ruins of the fiend, slowly mingling and soaking into the collections that coated the dais. The creature that appeared, the thing that came clawing its way from the ruins of the man’s body was hard to comprehend but thoroughly familiar. The dark blue pinafore dress, now black with blood, its delicately embroidered patterns of flowers so much jam coated blackwork.
Felecia didn’t startle awake or come alive into the world once again howling in terror or moral peril. She didn’t rise up with the sun light in quiet resignation of knowing what the nightmare meant. Was she just the same as the fiend? No. Worse, the fiend hadn’t murdered anyone, not to Felecia’s knowledge anyway.
No, Felecia woke to the realization that she wasn’t alone. The nightmare was already fading as she looked over at her bow and then down at her knife. No weapon would help her now.
One brisk march out into the woods wasn’t enough. Two wouldn’t have been enough either, or three most likely. Any amount of time spent trapsing through the woods and leaving trails that anyone could follow, much less a man who had spent his entire life hunting in those same woods.
Phillip wasn’t ever going to let it go easy, or leave it alone."