Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 119
After the spectacle of emerging from the cellar of the big house, there was nothing to do but run to the edge of the forest. The servants that had gathered and had their feast in the quiet yard behind their masters home gathered their scant belongings and scattered. Those who slept inside went and met the scrutiny of the mistress of the house as she no doubt came down to see what all the commotion was about. The luckier ones, the ones who stayed out in the barn while the weather was pleasant or those who walked from the village and back every morning and evening fucked off to their hay beds and hovels alike, all likely thankful that they didn’t have to answer for a smashed family heirloom.
Felecia watched them all from her vantage point among the woods to the north. She watched them all as they walked and ran, this way and that, like a pile of uncoordinated ants. She watched until she saw candles and electric lights turn on in the windows of bedrooms she knew all too well. She watched as long as she dared to, not sure whether she wanted to see a glimpse of Nana or not, until the quiet voice in her head became a howl.
Run you stupid cow, run!
Felecia secured her cargo and made good to do just what the voice in her head was telling her to do just then. The woods weren’t made for running though, tromping really, marching at pace when an even line between the ruts of tree roots and vine strangled ground cover could be found for a few dozen steps before another obstacle surfaced.
All the while the girl who first made to run for the village would be there and spilling the news to every able man with a club or a bow who could be rousted from their drunken slumber. Felecia already accepted that she would likely run into Ganly and any men young and foolish enough to follow him into the woods. The big house was south and east of the point in the forest where it thickened north of the village and Phillip’s hovel, Felecia would have to cross the likeliest point for where the new groundskeeper would lead his posse on her way to the meadow before it gave way to the beach or the swamp or both.
It was nearly two years since that night in the village and still the thought and the knowledge of what she had done that night haunted her and made her sick to her stomach thinking about having to do it once again. Killing Ganly wouldn’t be so hard, or as hard, dropping him with an arrow from a distance at least didn’t seem an impossible endeavor. The other men though? No matter what malice or ugly carelessness they planned to meet her with out in the woods, she didn’t want to think that she was capable of killing them like wide eyed deer out in the woods.
Felecia had killed men that night in the village, more than one, she didn’t want to do it again, not under any circumstance. Not for her own sake for certain, and yet, she didn’t want any of them, and certainly not Ganly, trying to do anything to her. They wouldn’t just disarm her and take her to the town constables. They wouldn’t come out into the dark woods at night with their lanterns and their weapons to demand she go fuck off into the woods and leave them be once and for all. Even though after her ordeal and her pitiful epiphany had in the cellar, she was all together ready to write off Rotary house and the village once and for all.
The effects of her time out in the elements and without food or water and the still and awful cramping and nausea that coupled her time of the month, it all mingled and fed a feeling that no matter how fast or far she ran, she would run head long into calamity that night.
The constant downpour and heavy winds she spent the previous day and night out in were suddenly replaced by a cool and still night. There would be no cloud cover above, no inclement weather to impede the new groundskeeper and his posse as they advanced.
Felecia picked her way through the cold woods, careful to walk through the ruts of the slopy mud and the hard tree roots. She kept her footing best when lucky to see patches of green ground cover and she kept her footing better for looking for obvious patches of green. Still though, she waited for the inevitable as she worked her way ever to the west and somewhat north. The meadow was massive and the constant thick swell of ground cover underfoot as well as the sea of flowering plants and massive tangles of plants would signify her arrival.