Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 127
Everyone who could see, or smell, what was going on nearby the old ruin and the animal corral knew what flushing anyone out entailed and that had them all arguing. The man out at the far-left side of their flank kept on about enemies in the swamps and the man at the far right kept on about ghostly footsteps, every man in between them bleated complaints or shouted demands for safety or some assured status against the encroaching unknown.
Every man out there was a hard and steady voice until Ganly nearly howled, “Stand your damn ground and be ready! We have numbers and time. We’ll stay out here until sun up, see them hide then!”
Ganly managed to steady the rest of them, their lanterns and torches turned toward the ruin, he convinced them by demanding that the rest of his reluctant posse step out into the meadow. “The rest of you get on out there, now!”
Felecia couldn’t see the fiend as he continued his shouting but she could see two more torch lights begin to slowly step out into the meadow from the protection of the trees. She could also see the collection of cooling bodies, all resting around or along the edge of the gravel walk way. Jacqueline wouldn’t wait until light and she wouldn’t retreat either. There were still four men close by in the meadow, a couple of them not even bright enough to be trying to duck or hide in the thorny bushes. The old witch was already working her way over to the unfortunate on the far right behind the ruin.
The man who was still busy shouting about ghostly foot falls wasn’t crouched down or shining his torch over at the ruin. He wasn’t responding to Ganly as the fiend called out for the members of the posse to close up near the old building. Jacqueline would be on him soon and Felecia decided to wait for the commotion that might cause to make her way out through the rear window that became her first portal into the sad, old place.
Felecia only had three arrows left but she could get close and make them count. If the man nearest the swamp was as distracted and adamant about staying put, he would be the easiest target. If they were careful and patient, she figured they could work at the rest by tossing pebbles or waiting for the rest of them to make more grisly discoveries out in the thorny underbrush and lose their nerve.
Even as the rest of the men calmed and quieted down, as most were starting to form up and would soon converge on the slaughter field near the entrance to the ruin, the man on the far right was still bleating about there being more enemies. Felecia waited for the man to shout in terror, to gasp suddenly and then be silent ever more. Neither happened.
The rifle shot ripped through the other sounds of the night, quieting everything, even the incessant insects of the meadow and the swamp beyond. The very waves of the ocean seemed to stop of a sudden, if for only a few moments.
The villagers had no guns, not any left by the time Felecia was living with Phillip at least. Most never had the money for arms and those that did were inevitably found out by father or Phillip and made to hand them over or sell them off. Rumors of the odd pepper box or single shot belly gun persisted and Felecia assumed but couldn’t swear that the candle maker might have had one since she saw a few stray lead balls in his work space once. The shot that echoed out through the night, deafening all other sounds, that was no belly gun.
Felecia crawled over to the back window and dared to lean out, she could see torch and lantern light coming from around the side of the ruin and on the far side of the animal corral. The men near the entrance were looking in the direction of the man who had so recently been complaining. They didn’t seem interested in walking through any more of the thorns or brambles to investigate but Felecia could hear Ganly shouting from the safety of the trees.
“Well kid? Did you get him?”
There were no answers, not at first. Felecia thought she heard a pained gasping but it was hard to pick out above the sounds of the ocean.
“Well? Answer me, damn it!”
Felecia was still eyeing the lantern and torch lights wearily, wanting to make a move and crawl out into the underbrush of the meadow, when Ganly yelled a second time and a timid voice stuttered in response.
“I…uh…Pr…pretty sure I got him; he was crawling up on Thomas.”
The fiend yelled again, from the safety of the tree line. “Tom? Hey Tom! Answer me you coward!”
Felecia pushed out into the meadow as she saw the direction of the lights change. Everyone was looking at the conversation being had to the south, and Felecia had a sinking feeling settling into her already cramping guts.
The voice that answered Ganly was familiar. Sadly, angrily familiar. It made a certain sickening sense though, the angry youth, Phillip’s only remaining boy. Of course, he would do the new groundskeepers bidding, if for no better reason than it meant keeping a hold of the hovel he and his father scrapped by in. Phillip’s rifle was the only real gun left on the north half of Aquidneck, rationally Felecia knew it had to be his rifle that made that sound.
Felecia had already managed to pick her way through the ground cover nearest the old ruin and was already up on her bleeding hands and knees, crawling through the thorns and thistles to where Jacqueline and the man they called Tom was when the group of them turned their lights and attention on the busily shaking underbrush of the meadow.
Tom wasn’t answering and neither was Jacqueline from their cold and quiet corner of the meadow, but directed lantern and torch lights were beginning to show the gathered retinue a scene of absolute horrors and that light was threatening to reveal Felecia as she crawled through the thorns and thistles just beyond.
One man, one of the men who was already about to discover the pile of warm bodies near the front door of the ruin tripped over one of the bodies and came away without his light sources but with a fresh source of anguish. He rose from the bushes with his hands held high and covered in viscera. “They’re all dead, all of ‘em. God help us all!”
Felecia continued to crawl as the members of the posse found their already slaughtered comrades. She reached a patch of nightshade and sharp witch grass where a man was splayed out. He was clearly dying, his breath slowing, his eyes glassy and dazed.
Thomas was on his way out, there was a two-finger sized hole blasted through his chest and the way he was gripping at the wound and the way he was hitching his breath and looking around desperately told the tale. A man was dying and nothing was going to change that fact.