Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Fifty Five
The stooped figure set down its gnarled walking stick and fixed the mirrored lantern in a flat spot of earth nearby. The formless, flowing poncho the figure wore came off next, at first Felecia assumed it was the same color as mud, perhaps woven from old horse hair but no, the stiff garment once removed really was coated in the stuff. Thick clay sheets of dirty armor rubbed back and forth as the figure removed the filthy garment, sending fine sprays of dirt and dust into the air around it.
Without the garment the stooped figure became an even stranger thing to behold. The short, white and gray whiskers turned out to be lengths of dry reed pushed into a soft leather mask that covered the figure’s face. The exaggerated nose and chin of the mask looked to be made of polished sea shells but Felecia didn’t have long to study the thing before it was removed and set down next to the mud caked poncho.
As for the stooped appearance, once the poncho was removed the reason for that became clear. The collection was impressive, there must have been fifteen individual water skins, all tied and secured to a long, flat metal pan. The figure laid the pan down and pushed it up to the edge of the corral and began filling it using the water skins.
The chicken Felecia had been absently petting clucked loudly and sprinted for the corral, the sound caught the figures attention and Felecia got a good look at their real face for the first time. The woman wasn’t older than Nana after all, nor was she younger.
Felecia gasped so loudly that the figure’s head jerked and looked directly through the shattered window. She pressed a hand over her mouth and stifled a moan of recognition and awful misunderstanding. She knew that face, every wrinkle, every white and silver scale that ran from behind its jaw line, around its ears, and up to its temples, meeting the perfectly sculped waves of white hair. Only the hair wasn’t nearly so well kempt.
The face that leaned in and squinted, the figure that reached down for the mirrored lantern only to hold it up and aim it directly at the remains of the window Felecia was looking through, it was Nana in every detail except for the filthy clothes and the unkempt mess of white hair.
The following moments were the most excruciating of Felecia’s young life, worse than the night in the village, even worse than the stand off at Phillip’s porch with the fiend. Nana was out there in the weeds, watering the foul and inbred creatures in the field. Nana was busy making comforting cooing noises at the noxious animals and filling a pan with water until Felecia couldn’t contain herself anymore.
The natural world upended itself altogether for a time until the old woman continued to shine the mirrored lantern at the interior of the ruins of the old house. Everything obvious and real suddenly seemed both totally insane and absolutely plausible until the old woman spoke.
“Show yourself! Come outta there and we can still work this out!”
The old woman who looked so much like Nana that she could be her twin, the old woman who might very well be Nana’s twin, outed herself by speaking. The old woman was a villager, or someone so removed from life in the big house that she might as well be someone from the village. The language and speech were obvious, even if the face was still very confusing.