Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Fifty One
Two nights and three days of crisscrossing east to west through the woods behind the edges of the family estate heading farther and farther to the north and what Felecia assumed would be the woods giving way to some rocky and uninhabitable beach. The only map of the island Felecia ever saw in the estates library was an ancient thing pressed into thick yellow paper that smelled faintly of vanilla. A map of the island very much as the Conway’s and the other founding families discovered it. That map and her father’s words always lead her to believe that Rotary house, standing on its hills overlooking the ocean, buried in the trees of the surrounding forest, had the sea on three sides. Everything in those woods in three directions and as many days march in those directions was all family land. Yet Felecia had never traveled to those farther beaches or outer reaches. The village rested in the bay slightly southwest of the big house, as did the town much farther south down the road from there. Besides the city on the mainland, those where the only places Felecia had ever seen or traveled to.
Pushing through the brush and out into a clearing was a surprise for Felecia. She stopped and squinted against the sudden, harsh sunlight. A sea of black-eyed Susan’s, milkweed and pale blue chicory stretched out like a painting until it reached the back of a shack built from the brown unfinished boards of all to familiar ocean bound packing crates. The boards were the same color and seemed just as weathered as the walls of sour Marge’s tiny cabin at the outskirts of the village. The building over all held the same tar paper roof quality of the rough buildings at the edge of the village. A collection of sickly-looking chickens and goats with staggered gates and extra sets of horns, clucked and called out as Felecia walked cautiously across the field, her bow in her hand and an arrow nocked for safeties sake.
Felecia considered walking away from the place altogether. Hadn’t her dealings with others, with strangers, with the murderers and morons who called the village home been enough of a lesson? Wasn’t she running away from everything and everyone she knew for their sake? Hadn’t she been out in the woods by herself, to be just that?
The eyes were what kept her standing in the field. Bright blue orbs surrounded by porcelain lids; they were puffy and looked heavy, threatening to swallow the little blue orbs. Felecia saw the small face if for only a moment as the breeze shifted a length of drape or washing hung to dry. Those eyes looked tired and worried, they looked glassy too. Some little girl looked at Felecia if for only a moment and it was a look she knew well coming from another, smaller child.
“Hello?”
Felecia contemplated the likely options and decided that if anyone was home, they probably already saw her stumble out into the field. There was someone there, a child if no one else. Still, Felecia knew well enough not to trust strangers. She could have walked through the flowery field up to the back of the shack, keeping low and trying not to be obvious but she didn’t want to get within striking distance of anyone. Stay out in the field, get within shouting distance, and start shouting. Better to let them come out at me if they plan to, better to keep them at range where the bow can be of use.
No one responded and Felecia heard no noise beyond the breeze rustling through the grasses and plants in the field. The thirty or so, slow and deliberate, steps taken up to the back of the shack were torturous. Every few steps brought her closer to having less time to take aim and a deep breath while she fired an arrow. The last ten steps meant getting closer and closer to having to use the knife if needs be. Felecia didn’t want that need.
The back of the shack as seen from the edge of the field because the back of a rather larger building, crudely nailed together and roofed out of what appeared to be packed straw. The structure wouldn’t be likely recognized as a house, more like an outbuilding built out of dump yard finds. Yet by the standards of those who lived in the village, the place was a proper house. Maybe even a house of means as it seemed to be water tight and sided, albeit, haphazardly in untreated pine shingles.
“I mean you no harm, but I am armed. I was hunting in the woods and I didn’t know about this place. I’m just passing through and I want to let you know I’m on your land.”
There was no response, and no further breezy view of some sad eyed child. Felicia followed along the back wall of the simple home until she reached a porch that could have been Phillip’s. The lane leading through the woods was replaced by a path made of crushed shells and pebbles. The trees waiting at the end were replaced by a calm beach. Yet the utilitarian build of the small home very much mirrored the game keepers home. The supposed window or collection of drying laundry wasn’t recognized upon closer inspection. Not until Felecia had already come around the bend of the back wall of the small home until a bare window frame became obvious due to the constantly shifting breeze showing off the bare face of a porcelain doll.
The doll, just as large as a real toddler leaned inside the pram that held it. The doll and its lifelong bed were laid out like some sad decoration for what womanhood might look like, shown for the sake of the less fortunate to reflect upon for sad eternity while they waited their turn.
Felecia looked at the doll for a few minutes, taking notice of the open window and the casual back and forth of the lace curtain partially in the way of the whole scene. Someone cared a great deal about the doll, and the old house, and everything else in it, but they cared a long time ago. Everything inside was carpeted in dust and the house outside was overgrown in the thick patches of moss and lichen that covered all parts of the woods not immediately claimed by man.