Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Fifty Three
Felecia walked back over to the crude house and passed the chicken, not paying the chicken much mind as it jumped off the railing, flapping and flailing wildly until it landed in the living room behind her. Upon closer inspection the house made from the family’s old shipping crates wasn’t nearly as crude as it appeared from the back or on first inspection. Someone had gone to great care to join the walls to the leveled floor and again to the ceiling. Most houses in the village, even those owned by people of relative means had packed dirt floors with rough walls that were met directly by the beams and branch poles of tar paper or hay straw roofs. In the living room and the bedroom someone had even gone to the trouble of covering the crate wood in wall paper, long since left to peel and bubble with age and moisture. The floor was still serviceable but there was no denying that age and rain water did their damage, making it a creaking and sometimes soggy mess.
The furniture in the place was familiar, almost painfully so, the settee and loveseat upholstery were stitched by the hands of Conway women, the colors and patterns involved spoke of that much, as did the frequent characters of playful fish, seals, dolphins, and the misshapen merfolk that always seemed to find their way into the family art no matter the medium. Only, this furniture seemed dated, even by Rotary house standards. Also, the furniture was sparse, hardly enough for one person to get by in a place that was obviously built for two. The kitchen was completely barren, a set of bones picked clean by knowing scavengers. The simple wood stove that stood hearthside was left alone as the only testament to the rooms previous service and only because it had been carefully mortared into place, though cracks had grown aplenty since then and been deepened by moss and vines.
The cabinets, only two of them. The drawers, all four. The collection point for cast iron pans left empty and the cutting board mounted onto a counter grey with dust settled green into the cuts and cracks, all told of a place that had been cleared out and picked clean.
Felecia finished her tour of the house in the bedroom. The place she first saw as she came out of the forest into the meadow of flowers. The room with the doll still propped up in its covered pram, left for all eternity to admire and digest.
The bed, or what was left of it, sagged and seemed married once and for all to the floor beneath it. The frame, if there ever was one, had been removed long ago. There was a standing wardrobe as well but it was empty and it’s floor to ceiling doors were just as lost to the ages as the bed frame. The room was only a home for the doll now and the spider in its web, waiting for dinner to come to it while its brood pulsed inside their yellow sack.
The chicken clucked again and sent Felecia nearly jumping out of her skin as she caught herself staring at the back of the doll as though it might come to life. She turned and there it was, strutting, its head darting back and forth, up and down as it pecked at bits of inedible debris on the ground.
The chicken didn’t know Felecia but it recognized that people where were it got its food and water from. The problem was, there was nothing in the corral, the house, or out in the flower field for the animals to drink. The woods so far hadn’t yielded up any trickling creeks or flowing streams of fresh water. The estate and the village existed entirely on wells, as far as Felecia knew so did the town down the way. Maps of the whole island showed rivers and lakes but they were even farther than the town, days of walking south through established farmland.
Someone clearly knew a way to keep these animals alive, albeit remotely and away from the obvious comfort and stability of the long-ago abandoned house. The ocean waves lapped lazily along the gravel beach while Felecia considered the sickly chicken and the house. None of this was her concern and she didn’t much care to deal with other people anymore, yet she couldn’t watch the animals suffer.
Handfuls of dandelions and wild flowers were taken readily by the malignant, stary eyed goats. Collections of little green caterpillars however became the obvious choice for the all too eager chickens with their collections of scaley feet and tick chewed necks. Night fell and the cold piled on as Felecia finished collecting handfuls of food from the field for everyone. The house wouldn’t be a nice place to sleep in, but it beat staring up at the stars under a stand of trees with nothing but a coat for a blanket. The living room seemed the best place. A dry spot under the still intact roof with solid floor boards underneath and a wall to lean against. The view was that of the porch through the opening where a front door once stood and a side window, shattered long ago and henceforth left open to the elements. Felecia felt her hunger digging at her before exhaustion set in and the heavy lids of her weary eyes shut for a time.