Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Eight Two
Phillip and Taryn’s house came into view and Felecia found herself smiling in spite of the winter weather, and the circumstances she knew she would find when she arrived. The old hovel wasn’t much more than it had been the day she first camped out in the tree line just to the east of the shallow property line.
An extra room built using mud bricks, covered in plaster with a roof sewn into the existing tar paper and thatch. The hovel was a proper house now by village standards, three room and all. The plaster had been properly painted the year before by Taryn using old boat paint so the place at least looked livable. The old chicken coop, the one built for the original chickens Nana offered for the sour dowery was still resting on the side of the building but it was empty now, as was the tiny corral built for the goats that didn’t even survive that first winter.
The snow still crushed under foot, reminding Felecia of her trial by fire in the village three years before, but seeing the old hovel, knowing who she was about to visit lifted her spirits.
Felecia took a moment to secure her care package of eggs and goat’s milk. Reminding herself how the precious packages weighed so much than the water skins she lugged along for so many countless months to the meadow.
Taryn was outside, busy with mending the new fence up the lane toward the village and Felecia was easily noticed up on the hill and subsequently waved toward the dank interior of the hovel with a casual smile and gesture. Phillip was propped up in the same old rocking chair, his feet propped up on the same old ottoman. Felecia still felt her time there in her bones, nestled near death on a make shift bed made out of such paltry furnishings.
“Come to offer us what a thief brings, girl?”
Felecia only chuckled and shrugged at Phillip’s leering remark. “Only bringing what was promised to you all those years ago, old man.”
Phillip huffed and turned away from the hearth fire and Felecia as she took her offerings out of the bag and left them on the table by the kitchen. “It isn’t on you to make good on old family debts or betrayals. Not if you had to steal to make good especially.”
Felecia didn’t have to consider or think about her answer this time around. “I never did, or have. Everything I have to give is what was owed and the big house is still in debt, big time.”
Phillip had his good days and his bad, mostly bad lately. He was in and out, mostly out. Felecia picked a rare good day to visit and Phillip was keen and sharp. Sharp enough to venture out and ask a hard question instead of merely piss and moan about “Fee” putting herself in imagined harms way to keep him alive.
“Where did you go, Fee? You left and you never came back?”
Felecia stood in the old hovel, setting the last of her offerings on the kitchen table when the cold streak ran down her back and threatened to make it all come back at once.
Phillip was right. Fee hadn’t come back, she never did, Phillip’s little Fee died out there in the wilderness, not from exposure like she had wanted to, but she still expired all the same. Little Fee got lost in the woods and drank deep from the well of the witch and met with the sort of insane knowledge that was always going to be waiting for the likes of her.
Felecia didn’t flinch as she finished emptying her satchel. “I never did, Phillip. I’m sorry for that. Maybe I never should have left. Then again, maybe that girl was going to die one way or another. I’m still me though, I promise, just well, bigger and bitter.”
It was a good day, maybe the best day, because Phillip kept looking at the tall apparition standing next to his kitchen. Phillip looked at the odd ghost and smiled at its words. “We all change, don’t we? So rarely for the better though. Are you better, Fee? Are you well my girl?”
Felecia didn’t feel well or better, but Phillip dared a smile and his thick, fishy lips widened while his wrinkled forehead grew by infinite degrees.
“I do and I am. We’re going to make it through another winter, all of us this time.”
Phillip’s eyes grew narrow and dim suddenly, he waved at the frigid breeze and the snow so ready to fall once more given the chance. “Not all, Fee. Not near half by far. You were the bridge, the new beginning. What happened to you Fee?”
Felecia found herself run dry of supplications and new ways to explain tired ideas. “I grew up, Phillip. I learned about the world. I saw the horrors first hand. What else could happen after
that?”
Phillip shrugged and closed his cataract eyes, “Nothing could. Nothing at all I suppose.”
The old groundskeepers milky eyes reminded Felecia of Jacqueline’s milky orbs and she fought the need to moan, to cry out, to howl at the cloudy grey sky in fresh outrage.