Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Fifty Six
When Felecia didn’t stand up in the lantern light or speak up the old woman grunted, “I’m old but my ears are good, I know you’re there. Fine! If you’re just passing through, so be it, but know the place is haunted. You’ll get no rest there; lord knows I never did.”
The woman set the lantern back down and continued positioning the pan and filling it with water. Felecia laid there on the creaky floor of the abandoned house for what seemed like an eternity listening to the animals lap and lick and fight amongst each other for a place at the tray to drink their fill.
Eventually Felecia dared a peak over the window sill and saw the old woman grunting and pulling with some exertion as she attempted to brush the malformed goats and pick parasites out of their fur as they fussed. It seemed as though the old woman decided to ignore the gasping apparition in the ruins of the old house. Maybe she lost herself in her midnight chores? Maybe she was senile and had already forgotten about the incident? None of that mattered to Felecia as she inched slowly across the creaky floor to get a better look at the dirtiest and unkempt version of her sainted Nana.
Felecia crawled along the creaky floor mostly to get a better look at the old woman. She already
saw that all too familiar face beaming out behind the bulk of the lantern light. There was no room left for presumption or moon lit aberration. The old woman out there tending to the live stock was Nana in everyway there could be, just so long as Felecia examined the old woman from her chin up to her forehead and back down again.
The old woman worked at the animals and collected stray eggs left inside the corral by the hens who managed to lay eggs inside the crude wooden ring. She drained the water skins into the pan as the thirsty animals drank and drank some more and only waited until they were all done and moving on to midnight grazing before she secured all the bags back in place and did so with the metal pan as well. The old woman was well on her way to fixing the long, shallow pan on her back with the now empty water skins before Felecia considered breaking the long silence. Even more time came and went as the old woman started to affix her mask and her filthy, mud caked poncho before Felecia finally sorted out a handful off words to introduce to the craziness of the night.
“Are you of the Conway line, the female lineage that is?”
The old woman ignored the question whispered from inside the shelter of the abandoned house as she grunted and spoke to the animals. “Sleep well pets, I’ll see you in a few days.”
Felecia stood carefully and kept her bow over her shoulder as the old woman turned and began walking westward toward the woods.
“Wait.”
Felecia hated that it kept happening, she had so many words at her disposal yet they always jammed themselves in the back of her throat, catching on one another and clogging like debris flowing down river. The only word that ever seemed to break the dam was wait, what a petulant, demanding, aggravating word. Yet it was a word that worked time and time again.