Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 110
Great grandfather’s trunks were set out on the floor up against the third and fourth rows of dusty old shelves. Yellowed journals and old sea charts had been dumped haphazardly against the packed dirt walls and floors of the cellar. Ancient instruments and collections of Pacific Ocean specimens had been haphazardly stuffed onto already crowded shelves, leaving them exposed to the elements.
Had the offering of Felecia’s worldly possessions, stuffed into one of those trunks with her deeply personal letters splayed out for all to see, been such a pointed attack? Surely Nana had orchestrated the use of the old trunks, but had she ordered them all emptied out? What were they being used for then? The attic held all the family luggage, Nana had enough trunks to take every stitch of clothing she owned, there were twelve of the damn things up there with her initials stenciled on them. Mother had half as many, Father and her brothers had a three or four a piece, even Felecia had three older trunks and a fancy steamer for trips abroad she had never, and would never take. Surely Nana didn’t need more old trunks that stunk of mildew and rat droppings to store her things or take on a trip.
Felecia opened one of the old trunks and looked at it dumbly. She stood there and looked at the old trunk and its new cargo and cocked her head to the side for nearly a minute before she closed it, opened another, and then another one, before she moved on, looking to the next rows of shelves.
All those rows of empty mason jars and they chose to use old family trunks. Felecia’s banishment and the ugly opening of her life’s secrets may have been a byproduct after all, or at least the choosing of what her things were dumped in was.
All of great grandfather’s things were dumped to make room for potatoes.
Potatoes that would surely grow stale and dry in mildew laden, rat dropping coated trunks. The staff hadn’t preserved them or sought to store them properly in open bins. Things at the big house had truly gotten worse and gone strained to be sure.
None of that was of import to Felecia, not personally or in what she came to find there. Grampa’s things, when she finally recognized them, were in even worse shape than his father’s. The old tourist’s once loved belongings were scattered and stuffed loose on shelves that sagged under their weight. There seemed no rhyme or reason and as with his father’s things a lot of the collection seemed pilfered, disheveled, and denuded.
Was Nana having trusted servants go into town to pawn old family heirlooms, had it finally come to that these last few years? Were the once trusted servants helping themselves by padding their pockets in the face of the once proud flag ship sinking under the weight of its own maintenance?
Felecia poked around and pushed and pulled at all manner of trinket and largely worthless artifact of memorabilia while she kept her eyes peeled for the oversized rifle and its lances. She dug through one shelf after another, row for row and winding up another two rows over before she found one of the harpoons. The thing was leaning on its side, its wicked barbed head buried between a stack of books made nearly illegible with age and rot. Another harpoon was found among a stack of books that Felecia suddenly recognized, maybe not individually but certainly by their style of binding. More books written in that ridiculous burble gurgle language that Jacqueline read and also fell into when in times of stress.
Felecia picked one of the nonsense books and looked at the absurd scribblings, she felt a sudden uneasiness in her stomach and guts. Something down there shifted and she leaned over and retched up a tea spoon of something black and awful onto the packed dirt floor of the cellar near the stacks of make shift bookshelves.
Her eyes grazed over the nearest upturned page and she felt suddenly hot and cold all at the same time. The ache of her period throbbed and she winced under the strain of yet another cramp that started in her guts but settled sternly in her lower back.
The gun is gone, girl.
That awful outside voice, Felecia wondered when she would hear it again in earnest. Of course, if came when she was feeling at her worst.
“So now I know it’s still here, and I can’t wait to kill you with it!” Felecia dared to shout, in spite of the dark and in defiance of her fears that somehow a servant upstairs might here her.
Felecia scoured the next set of shelves on both sides of the isle and the ones after that but she finally came away with her hefty prize. The harpoon gun was wrapped in old sheets and left to gather dust by itself. The gun had ben separated, by purpose or happenstance, from its ammunition, as well as it oversized percussion caps and the yellow paper cartridges so readily showing signs of wear and age.