Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 145
The older woman pushed at the cave doors and stepped down into the dingy interior, her grand daughter stayed out in the sun refusing to even look down into the cave.
Felecia was incensed, not only had the villager knocked, and knocked, not only had they refused to leave her in piece, but now that the tiny lock on the doors was open, against Felecia’s will, the villager was letting herself in and barging right into the only space Felecia had to occupy. The one remaining place where she felt she deserved to be.
“There was a book. The hermit read from a book. Where are the books?”
Felecia stood in place so that the older woman had to walk around her, nearly running into the settee as her eyes adjusted to the dark. The older woman repeated her question, impatiently, at Felecia and started walking into the kitchen.
“Stop it!” Felecia howled and then continued shouting when the older woman didn’t stop or reverse her course.
“Get out of here! This is my place; I didn’t invite you in. I told you the truth, I can’t help any of you.”
The older woman didn’t stop or go back the way she came, instead she started poking around the crafting desk and the shelves by the kitchen while she spoke. “I was there that night when they did for you and the groundskeeper, we all were, no matter who ran or stayed to watch, we all saw enough. You wanna hate me, go ahead, you want to hurt me, so be it, but not until I find that book and help my Emeh. She didn’t hurt you; she wasn’t there that night and couldn’t help you if she was. Emeh never hurt a fly and she doesn’t deserve this.”
Felecia stopped trying to converse with the noisome villager. The idiot considered this some personal vendetta. Bringing up the night in the village like that was even the worst or most recent awful event in Felecia’s list of endless miseries. She was honest, she was as patient as she could manage to be. She couldn’t help these people and furthermore, she didn’t want to. What had helping ever done her before, even if she could help, so what? Nothing mattered.
All Felecia wanted was to be left alone forever more and she had made that clear from the start. The older woman was busy poking around in the kitchen, poking at things that didn’t belong to her and things she had no business touching or grimacing at.
The bow was outside, hanging with its quiver of arrows nearby the outdoor fire pit. There was no reason to have it in the house, and no fear of being found, no fear of thieves, not until just then. Felecia walked outside, ignoring the older woman as she asked after a book once more and continued on mumbling about the worthless past.
The girl, Emeh, she ducked away from Felecia as she exited and took a few steps back. In the full light the girl looked older than Felecia originally assumed, but not my much. The girl looked malnourished, everyone in the village did. She was skinny, boney, her sunken skin made her look older than she was and it was her girlish voice that gave her away once she built the courage to speak at all.
“We’re sorry, miss. I told Nan this was a wasted trip. Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can get her out of there.”
The girl was walking toward the cave doors and that meant another dire intrusion. Felecia quick stepped over to the shelter above her outdoor fire pit and grabbed her bow and two arrows. Without wanting to waste time gathering the small quiver Felecia had to think quick so she stuck the second arrow between her teeth and knocked the first one, not looking to draw it back unless the girl made a fuss.
The girl screamed.
There was no fight to be had, no concern for if the girl would reach for something, anything to defend herself. Emeh howled for her Nan by name and cowered as Felecia spit out the second arrow and drew back, shouting at the cave and its entrance. “Get out of my house! Now!”
When there was no immediate movement, no scurrying of the older rat out of her only remaining place in the world Felecia followed by turning her bow and aiming it at the girl who whimpered and howled once more.
“Nan, please. She’s going to kill me!”
The older woman came out then, quickly as if she were much closer to Felecia’s age than her own Nana’s. She didn’t raise her hands up or try and step between Felecia and the pregnant girl she was aiming her bow at. The older woman didn’t move from the doorstep or even speak until Felecia dared to look away from her target long enough to see the older woman giving her the most vicious look she had ever seen. Ganly at his worst couldn’t look as dire and conspiratorial as the older woman did as she stood there in the doorway of a place that was not her own.
“You’d shoot a pregnant girl? You’d kill her for coming here for help?”
The questions were so obvious, so ugly, so accusing.
“I told you, plain, I can’t help you. Now leave me alone!”
The older woman smirked at Felecia. “Jaquo was right. You don’t deserve its gifts, or its knowledge. You’re nothing but a savage, a murderer like the men of the village and in the town beyond. Worse, you’re a cowardly killer dressed in frills and sheepish girly looks. You belong with them, you’re the worst of them, you don’t belong here, you don’t deserve its knowledge.”
Felecia turned her aim to the older woman and felt her hands slacken without warning or permission.
The older woman waved the book in her hand, the one from underneath the bed in the cave, the book that once babbled pure insanity to Felecia between its lines of nonsense printed text.
Suddenly it wasn’t the older woman who waited for acknowledgement, patiently or otherwise. Felecia couldn’t raise her bow or draw her arrow at all until she moved left or right from the older woman. She managed to swing to the left and drew on the girl once more who was still busy howling for her Nan and begging for help once more.
The older woman didn’t respond, she didn’t attempt to move or sooth the weeping girl.
“Nan, please! Help me!” The girl shouted it once, and then again, and a third time only without half the terrified sense of urgency as Felecia’s arms tired and she released back to a ready position with her bow.
“Shoot her if you want. She made her bed. I didn’t though and it answered my prayers by telling me to come here. I’m the only fitting successor to its glory. You can’t hurt me either way, so you leave. Get.”
When Felecia or the girl busy laying on the ground before her didn’t more the older woman held the strange book aloft and howled. “Get! Run! Leave here now, none of you come back to this place!”