Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 109
Death came in stages at Rotary house, and so did the belongings of the dead. Back when it was Bartholomew and Felecia down there in the cellar it was Grampa’s things that were toward the front, trunks of his personal affects left to rot, his chosen decorations and household items, covered, catalogued, set on cinder blocks and lengths of old boat planks incase of minor flooding. So much care and time spent to preserve things that would never see the light of day unless some descendant got a soft spot for golden oldies.
When Felecia was walked toward the bench with its bare bulb overhead a few years later most of Grampa’s old things had been further packed down or reduced and set atop shelves further into the cellar interior. At the time it was to make room for the expanded hope of canning and storing spring and summer crops. After that the cellar overall fell into a state of disuse. Felecia couldn’t recall the last time any of the servants were sent down to the cellar for any purpose other than to make sure it hadn’t flooded after a storm.
“Three or four rows in, any further and it will be great Grampa’s things.”
Felecia hadn’t heard hers or anyone else’s voice since Jacqueline left the hovel that morning. It had only been the better part of a day but it felt like a week, or more. The voice sounded foreign at first, not her voice at all, maybe something otherworldly and therefore frightening.
Felecia wasted more precious predawn moments looking furtively around the pitch-black interior of the cellar before she tested her voice a second time.
“It was three feet, maybe more, the spears had to be two feet each.”
The first sets of shelves Felecia came to once her eyes adjusted to the low light enough for her to find the cord to one of the three small bulbs that lit the entirety of the cellar showed her lines of dusty mason jars. All of the jars were empty of course. Those spring and summer crops that were supposed to grow and yield plenty for saving never sprouted, not in force, not enough to be saved by pests or blight each year to be saved for any purpose.
The next set of shelves after that should have shown Felecia old fishing gear, stuffed trophies, small boats built inside of bottles, bones and tusks depicting all manner of scrimshaw scenes, old multi-colored lanterns of unusual size. Fist and head sized glass weights and weighted steel hooks the size of dinner plates, not to mention old yellow bone ones whose shape defied description.
Felecia also remembered coming down to discover trunks full to brim of silk jackets covered in amazing patterns, most coated in unfortunate burn marks around the sleeves and collars. Flasks and decanters all still sticky and stinking of liquor. Pipes made from all manner of material, even two very long ones made of some dense wood that smelled sickly sweet and nothing like tobacco. Letters stuck in old captains journals written largely to no one that seemed to always describe a longing for a home and a sense of purpose that was always out of reach of the writer. There were also knives, small double-sided affairs, some curving at odd angles, most seemed totally ceremonial, later she would understand they were sold to tourists. Tourists like Grampa. There were others though, a few long machetes still flecked in blood. Felecia even managed to unearth in all her lengthy rummages of the Conway treasures the harpoon gun she remembered as a young child.
The last time Felecia saw the wicked looking thing it was packed away in a trunk with its ammunition and a set of primer caps nearly as large as the tip of Felecia’s thumb. There were five or six of the harpoons set next to it and set away far enough not to scratch at its brass work. Each harpoon was a solid metal rod that ended in a razor-sharp blade with a jagged hook reaching a hands length back toward the rod.
The harpoon gun was built to slay giants. The powder load dropped in the catch from a paper cartridge once closed and set under the primer cap and fired using a set of adjustable sites would make a harpoon break the barrier of sound itself as it speared through the ample flesh of its prey, anchoring itself for good and carrying with it weights or even secured explosives that would serve to further damage the giant animal after impact.