Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 131
Nothing good or rational would be gained by responding to the thing lying in wait out in the waves. Felecia knew very well where the voice was coming from, the one in her head before and now the faint whisper coming from the direction of the pebble strewn beach and the bay beyond.
Instead, she focused on resting the harpoon rifle atop a convenient divot left in the notch of an old rotten fence post. The thorn covered berry bush that wrapped around and overhung the post would make good cover as well. Felecia was ramming a harpoon home down the muzzle with a yellowed wad of powder behind it when she saw the fire begin to light up the night sky.
“All you have to do is call on me now. I won’t even make you beg.”
Felecia grimaced and looked angrily past the old packing crate house to where the beach waited beyond. The old ruin was catching fire nicely, despite how damp things always seemed in the meadow, the place was as dry as kindling and just as happy to ignite and burn with uncanny speed. Flames were already curling the old tar paper roof and licking hungrily through the holes of the window sills. The posse was lit up well by the fire but so was the surrounding carnage.
“They cut Gilly’s head off!”
“That old bastard did for Ferik too, opened his neck right up.”
Even Phillip’s boy chimed in, whistling and nearly shouting, “So much blood, you could near swim in it.”
Ganly waved to where Jacqueline still laid out in the meadow, only a ways away from where Felecia was hidden with her old, copper penny colored rifle. “We knew they were gone. It changes nothing. The kid said the old man was over there. Come on!”
Felecia pushed her shoulder against the stock and tried to rest her check so as to see through the massive rifle sight. The thing wasn’t like Phillip’s rifle at all, this had a large bronze circle with two different notched columns that crossed one another. The small markings on the columns were nearly illegible from corrosion. She also thought about how much Phillip’s rifle kicked and the powder charges for that were tiny by comparison.
The harpoon was three feet long and still sharp, so sharp that it and the handful of other harpoons Felecia took from the cellar had cut up and through her poncho. Felecia relaxed her hold on the rifle stock and considered it better to try and keep the rifle from climbing too much rather than worrying about a perfect shot. Even if the harpoon caught the fiend in the arm, it would likely rip it off and leave him to bleed out slow on the meadow ground. A fitting end.
Ganly and his posse began trudging through the thorns and clinging vines, closer to where Jacqueline lied and there to the point of where Felecia would spring her trap. It felt cheap to use the old witch’s body for such a stunt but there would be no better place to keep them all gawking and stood still for a few precious moments.
“It won’t work. The powder got wet down in that hole. You’ll waste your chance and give yourself away.”
Felecia still refused to respond but she did find herself impatiently making a shushing sound at the awful, intruding whisper.
The last part of loading that the old harpoon rifle required was a priming cap, Felecia carefully dug through her bag of stolen heirlooms from the Big House until she found one of the pinky finger sized caps. Gently pressing it onto the pan before pulling the heavy bronze hammer back to full cock.
“Fuck me! Thomas is dead as a doornail!”
One of the villagers was the first to stumble through the foliage to find the scene.
The other one, Merl, he looked back to the blazing house fire and pointed at the figure standing next to Ganly. “Little shit blew a hole right through Tom’s guts!”
Ganly and Phillip’s boy started walking faster until they reached the scene only by then the other villager was shouting. “He got the old man too! Shot ‘em both!”
There was a moment of silence after that as everyone reached the scene. The villager was bent over for a few moments, likely long enough to realize the thin figure splayed out in the weeds was wearing a wooden mask.
“Last chance. You can have it all, the fiend dead, the old codger back in charge of the grounds. Just call on me, now.”