Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 114
A small stack of half written aborted missives were as close as Felecia ever got in real life to explain what she saw. Bartholomew never read of her nightmare account with the unexplained phenomena of the seas. He never heard it either. No one did. Felecia tried to write about the horror out there in the sea and then she tried to hold onto the terrifying image so as to faithfully explain it but after a few nights doubt crept in.
A few trips to the nearly forbidden family library, her father’s inner sanctum, also helped to convince her of her failures that night. The thing appeared to be massive, and distant, but the sea was well known for playing tricks on the eyes of sailors. Then there was the fog, such a sudden and dense fog on what seemed a clear night. Felecia spent all the time she could steal away reading up on weather phenomenon and old sailors stories until she thoroughly convinced herself that what she saw couldn’t possibly be real. It all grew into a lie she had swallowed for that last six or seven years.
“Sea foam. Moon light bouncing off of low clouds. Swamp gas. Bullshit.”
Felecia heard the words, she felt herself waking up, half leaning, half sitting on the very bench she saw only briefly under threat of abuse as a child. The voice was hoarse, water parched, it sounded as much like Jacqueline as it did her own. She tried her tired voice once more and heard the worrisome croak.
“Bullshit!”
No need for some intrusive voice by that point. Felecia knew the truth and so did the awful monster that waited out in the bay by the beached wreck of an all too familiar fishing boat. It would be there, now, tomorrow, whenever she managed to reach the pebble beach north of the swamp. The monster would be waiting because it knew, and she knew, that no mere harpoon rifle would be its end.
Felecia looked down at the bronze rifle with its blueish green patina and shrugged. All that time, all that work, all the diligence and stubborn pride. She fled the cave and left so much undone. She left that poor chicken alone and the beds of mushrooms and worms and squirming what nots. She didn’t keep studying, which is the one thing she could have, and should have, done to make herself prepared for not only the monster out there in the water, but her own future.
There was no light coming from the seams of the cellar door outside. Felecia had wasted a full day already and wouldn’t be getting back until near morning. If she was lucky, she would beat Jacqueline by a few hours, if that, and for what? An old oversized rifle with little ammo and probably no reliable way to fire said ammunition.
Felecia looked down and opened her hand and looked at the sickly yellow paper cartridges, even if the powder still worked, how could she hope to keep the giant rifle stable to get a shot at one of those massive, platter sized eyes from any distance that could be considered safe.
“Best to be sure, take it all.”
Felecia mumbled out loud and realized she was not only sounding like her great aunt but talking to herself like the old witch did as well. The oversized rifle and its ammo got wrapped in an old tarp that was twisted and tied over Felecia’s shoulder to create a sort of papoose on her back. The stack of profane books in their burble gurgle language were also tied tight with a belt and cinched around Felecia’s waist. A handful of other useful old items were collected from the moldy refuse of the family line before Felecia left the fetid cellar for the last time.