Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 142
At the last of a very long log that noted a trip that went around the equator fully in the pursuit of cargo and even some passenger to help offset costs, Felecia’s father rounded out another wise dull and dreary trip log with something as stunning as it was impossible not to ponder.
August the 19th, Port of Halifax,
Between stopping here and forcing the men to look for likely folks needing passage to Boston, and putting in at the port of London for similar searches for Halifax I’ve delayed us by nine days, the weather did us by another seven. Much to their dismay I haven’t allowed the men to send notice ahead of our likely arrival by postal boat. The passengers have so far turned out to be surprising lucrative and pleasantly distracting for this voyage, they were so distracting in fact that they allowed me to nearly forget for a brief time that I am on borrowed time.
I couldn’t risk Mathers making the trek ahead of us and I couldn’t do without Keen aboard but we had to send someone ahead without word of what has become of us as a vessel, or a crew. I took my time and confided what I knew to both of them separately, Keen first as we reached the faithful Galapagos one last time, and then Mathers once we passed the Suez. I know both men were slow to see the truth, even after I presented all the facts.
I risked, for a time, that either or both would decide I had lost my mind and attempt to take control of the ship but eventually they both saw what waited in our wake out in the water on their night watches. Eventually both of them came to me with complaints of endless nightmares and sleepless days and yes, weeks.
The three of us convened a star chamber of sorts, we sat and talked over a couple bottles of port and came to the conclusion that I shall spell out now. Again, this is a ships log and there for this pertains to the safety of the ship and its crew, but also, anyone who might find this log later, if something should happen to us, if we should be called late, never to return to our home port, and somehow this log be found, we certainly met a grim end at sea.
We motioned forth the names of trust worthy men among the crew and then debated until we reached a joined conclusion. Emerson, Keen’s second, the lad would have to do. He was young and without family or even many friends, he was earnest, forthright, trustworthy, had been with the company nearly as long as Keen and had been a sailor since he was twelve. The lad would do, not only because he would have to, but in spades.
We all wrote our own messages, each man putting his pen to paper in slow and steady rhythm to describe the horror that tracks us all now, at all times. We all explained the monster resting out in the waves at night and also dared to explain how the thing crept into our dreams with ease, turning them ever regularly to nightmares. We all accessed our reason and did our best to explain the situation at hand and then we conjoined to review.
In the end, the statement we sent ahead was simple. Emerson was to board a postal carrier to Maine and send the message along to the Newport County sheriff as well as the Long Island revenue cutters office care of Timothy Adleman. I hate to drop this in ole’ Tim’s lap but I know he may very well be the only man able to help us when we finally reach home.
Sirs, we are the captain and officers of the merchant vessel Talia of the Conway Consolidated Shipping Company, Aquidneck, Rhode Island. We are bound for Newport harbor and should be there within the week, we have a remarkably suspicious body following us in the water and have noticed it these many days since leaving from the port of London. We fear sirs that a submarine or similar vessel of unknown origin has been following us with unknown intent and we wish to convey out alarm to you gentlemen and perhaps if you feel it necessary, to inform the office of the Navy of the issue.
Even if ole’ Tim buys it hook, line, and sinker, the whole six boat fleet in the port won’t do anything but anger the awful monster with their four and six pounders left over from the last century. Even if the Navy bothers to take notice the vessels they’ll send out to the harbor mouth won’t be much better. Every ship with a true gun in the whole bay wouldn’t likely kill the thing but we have to try. Not because our ship is in danger, not because the awful creature will lift us out of the water and turn our ship over and shake us out into its waiting maw, but because all three of us recognize what will become of us if the foul thing is allowed to continue gnawing at us at every turn, through every voyage.
My plan, my back up for when we sail into port and see no line of blockade waiting to great us, is to simply resign from the company. Fuck it. Let the old bitch find some other downtrodden sea dog to marry her siren of a daughter with one still on the tit. Phillip is always bitching about the work to be done there, I can swing a hammer and shovel shit with the best of them, anything to be rid of the awful horror that follows us and feeds on our fears in the night.
The last entry of the last log was hard to read and harder to understand. Father was many things but a doubting quitter? A coward ready to run from his duties both family and financial? Felecia wanted to be angry at the specter of her father but then she remembered how much the monster out in the waves made her doubt herself, her own beliefs and convictions.
No matter what her father had felt, or written in his last log entry before something came along to change him so as to at least keep his panicked thoughts to himself, father eventually came around to continuing his career and his family, until awful misfortune changed things once and for all, both for him, the company, and his family.
Felecia looked coldly down at the collection of ships logs, ready to discount the whole adventure and get back to cleaning out the space beneath the annex bed when a fresh and awful thought struck her.
What if Nana heard about the logs, or the letter to the constables down in town? What if some loyal company man told on everyone else? What if Keen’s mate, Emerson never reached town, or home? What if the monster did away with the evidence of its existence and Nana did away with the specter of even that?
The monster out in the waves could be persuasive. It could easily feign concern over your impending demise, sure, but the creature out in the waves wasn’t half as good as Nana at making you feel like you would never measure up, never be good enough, never try hard enough. You could likely never impress the God thing out in the waves, but you would never impress the cold, silver haired, silver scaled, sentinel that was Nana.
The final question that Felecia had to ask and finally answer was simple. What would Nana do about a son in law who came back from a round the world voyage howling with madness? What would she do about a son in law come along to abandon his duties with a mouth full of pure lunacy as an excuse?