Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 151
The howling was discernable the moment they cleared the thickest of the woods and began the rise up the hill toward the Big House and the village. It would be arguable how much of it could be heard clearly from the village proper or up the hill in Rotary House but no doubt everyone around could hear something coming from the old groundskeeper’s hut.
The youth started fast marching through the thickets, nearly tripping himself on snaking roots, he was breathing so heavily that Felecia feared he might pass out. Old tricks, ones her brother used on her to keep her calm.
“How long has he been like this?”
The youth was so fixated on reaching the scene he didn’t seem to acknowledge the question until Felecia reached him and pulled at him to slow him down.
“Huh?”
Felecia repeated her question and the youth shrugged impatiently. “I dunno, couple weeks.”
With the question asked and answered the youth was back to fast marching, simple distractions wouldn’t do. The youth wasn’t ready to hear or see reason, best to come at him with something that he could worry about.
“Who is the groundskeeper now?”
Again, Felecia had to chase the youth and pull at him and repeat her question.
“No one. You killed the last one.”
“Who’s hunting for the Big House? Who’s tending the livestock?”
The youth tried pulling away and Felecia dug her hand in until the youth winced. “Phillip is out there screaming like an animal, if we can hear him from here, so can the village. I won’t run into that place without knowing who I have to worry about.”
The youth looked angry, truly angry, for the first time since Felecia was cold and wet and barely a teenager sitting on the small rise above Phillip’s hovel the youth looked at her like he might strike her.
“No one does any of it, no one does anything. The Big House closed up the night we went to kill the hermit.”
“Closed up?”
Felecia let go and the youth pulled away and started fast walking toward the howling once again, “Yeah, your granny threw ‘em all out, told ‘em to starve and die for all she cared.”
There was no distracting the youth after that and no point in trying to ask for more details. Felecia could barely keep up as the youth pushed through the trees and came out on the rise next to Phillip’s hovel. The place was a shambles, more so than ever before. The old leaning deck had been busted up and removed, leaving a square of dark, lifeless earth a good foot below the front door. The tiny outhouse was also gone, the trench it once stood over open and stinking for all the world to see and smell.
The remains of Felecia’s lean-too still remained, fashioned hastily to serve as a corral for animals that no longer lived there and that was where Phillip had decided to make his stand.
“Come on! Come and get it you miserable liar, slither up here and claim your prize!”
The fish faced old man was standing in the weather-beaten remains of the shanty corral, naked as the day he was born and holding aloft three sticks of dynamite gripped tight in one arthritic hand.
The youth started down the rise, raising his voice and adding to the chaos until Felecia pulled at him and shook her head. The youth wouldn’t understand what came next, or why it was necessary. Felecia understood crazy, she had lived with it for a few years by then, first with Jacqueline’s gibbering mania and then with her own cold, sullen miasma of angst and brooding. Negotiating a normal conversation, stepping into town to buy a pair of trousers, sitting at a dinner table and minding her manners, no, none of that made sense to Felecia anymore, she was too feral for all of that now.
Standing naked in a coop, a handful of dynamite, howling for the God thing out in the bay to finally come and chew up the remains of a life it had already supped quite thoroughly on? That kind of crazy made good sense and seemed just the right way to end another night on Aquidneck Island.
Felecia handed the youth her bow and arrows, and then her knife. She smiled at him maddeningly enough to make him start staring at the ground again, his sainted Pa howling and waving dynamite and all.
The staring at the ground turned to stuttering starts and stops and flustered motioning for some return to normalcy as Felecia set the rest of her things down and began to disrobe. The moonlight touched the scales along her neck and down her back and the youth gasped at the shine they made.
“Y…you’re a…”
Felecia smiled wide, letting the droop in her bottom lip catch a fine line of spit.
“A freak. I know.”
Felecia didn’t wait for the youth to argue nor did she have patience to listen to him stutter and demure any longer. She walked down the side of the rise and over to the corral, careful not to collect splinters as she stepped over the low fence and joined the old man.
“Yeah, come and get it! You took everything from me you son of a bitch, come and get the last bit!”
Felecia stood next to the mad man and howled and shook her fist in rage at the night sky. The mad man cheered and shouted some more and Felecia followed suit and they both carried on for a few minutes until the old man looked over and squinted and rubbed at his face with one callused hand.
“Fee…is that you?”
Felecia already knew what was needed, and now she didn’t need to guess hard at the rest. “Yes, Phillip. It’s me.”
The old man lowered the dynamite and turned to face Felecia before shaking his head. “What is it with you and always disrobing in public?”
“Being honest, I never much cared for clothes.”
Phillip shrugged, “Being honest, me neither. Though, it’s cold as a well diggers ass out here.”
Felecia motioned at the tired old hovel behind them, “Then let’s go start a fire.”