Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Ninety One
There was no recollection of the moments that transpired from that feeling of the creature reaching out and Felecia rejecting its offer or promise to when she woke on the beach. Logic dictates that she was out in the surf and then beyond it as the creature pulled the boat out and held it a loft. The north beach was shallow and rocky, she wouldn’t be out far before she was beyond the surf but she also had to have been conscious to swim and avoid the rocks. Felecia didn’t feel anything near conscious, not until she woke up on the beach, a few feet of wet pebbly sand between her and the most recent tide line.
Jacqueline. Her feeble burble, gurgle nonsense was the first thing Felecia woke to beyond the lapping waves. The worthless, superstitious, nonsense words. Felecia raised an arm at the old woman and saw a single, small row of purple, puckered imprints on the pale flesh of her arm. The image disturbed her but only for a few moments, the tepid bath water feeling of her rickety ocean bathtub was long gone. Felecia was freezing, hungry, thirsty, and covered in grit and sand. Most of all though she was numb, empty, robbed of all sense of purpose or direction. The fucking thing went and marked her after she refused to do its insane bidding, it left her with more sour reminders after simply showing her a clearer view of her already active nightmares. So be it. Fuck it! Felecia learned in that moment that her flesh was meager and transitory. Nothing but a vaguely uncomfortable shell made up of meat that would stop its incessant revolutions and return to the corrupted earth once it was done flapping about pointlessly.
“It showed you, it chose you. You’ve seen it, you know you have! We are the chosen ones, disciples just like my grandmother was. No more crazy Jacqueline!”
Felecia stood up and wiped the worst of the grit and sand off as she readjusted her clothes and her gear. It was night and she was freezing just as bad as she had been on the boat. Once more the poncho she had prepared for herself was washed clean and would provide no protection from the swamp’s many biting insects. She didn’t want to think about the rest of the march to the meadow, or the slow walk back. She didn’t want to think about the hard work ahead, not now, not after learning that none of it mattered. That none of it would ever matter.
When Felecia didn’t respond or even seem to notice Jacqueline changed her demeanor. “I remember the first time it showed itself to me. The feeling is awful, at first. The emptiness, loneliness, being shown that there is nothing waiting for any of us. The knowing that this is it. That fades, girl, the glory of being chosen doesn’t. The knowledge that comes besides doesn’t.”
As Felecia kept walking in her soaked socks and shoes, as she staggered through the swampy woods in the direction of the meadow Jacqueline followed and called after until she caught up. “The animals will wait another day, if you want to stop and build a fire here.”
The quick time, forget it all, twice a week march out and walk back through the swampy woods and out into the meadow, had never been made to wait before. Already there had been a few times where Jacqueline pulled the excess water skins off of Felecia and told her to go back, either due to exhaustion or her own antagonizing nature. Suddenly the old woman was concerned for Felecia, suddenly it was all about her feelings.
“No. Let’s just go. No reason not to.”
Felecia felt worse than ever as she let those words leak out and felt worst of all when Jacqueline chimed in, “No reason, none at all either way.”
The animals in the meadow got fed and watered and cleaned up and Jacqueline changed the perimeter of the corral so as to keep everyone grazing. All the needs got met and Felecia was only barely present for all of her associated duties. All the while she relived the moment when Jacqueline told her about taking animals back to the cave and having it “go bad.” The old woman said something about her man putting a spell on the meadow, giving life to a spot that once had little or none. Enjoining that spot of earth to life beyond. What magics did this “Abe” know, what was left in that man’s life where he saw life, or happiness, or potential in anything?
They were already back to the giant, twisting oak tree in the middle of the swampy woods before Felecia dared to speak. Felecia knew that she would hear some variation on a constant echo if she stayed silent.