Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 152
The hovel was always a poor place, it spoke of doing without, and being bereft of the ability to adequately make what was needed. The furniture was filthy, just as bad as the stuff in the cave had been when Felecia first moved in there. Everything that had been made of wood was gone now, the stools in the kitchen, the table there, the one bookcase that was nothing but storage for tools anyway. The frame for Phillip’s bed was gone, his and the youth’s mattresses had both been drug into the living room by the hearth.
Phillip plopped down on his dingy hay mattress and stared hungrily at the empty hearth while it barely showed ember sign of life. Felecia stood for a while until her feet grew tired and she picked the least filthy spot of the youth’s mattress to sit on. Still the youth hadn’t come in. Was he waiting for a miracle, for his old cantankerous, selfish, and all too angry yet sane Pa to come back to life?
If he was, he might as well have built himself a lean-too out on the rise and watch the stars burn out of the sky.
Given enough time with nothing else to do Phillip reverted to babbling nonsense at a metal ladle coated in an unfortunate amount of dried and rotten food stuffs.
The youth finally brought along Felecia’s gear as Phillip turned to talking to his dead mother about the lovely stew she was preparing for supper.
Felecia continued to listen to the sad show being put on by the hearth while the youth set there things down and stood next to her.
“He’s calmer, that’s something.”
Felecia shrugged and continued to silently observe the disturbing one man show.
“Well?”
The youth kept creeping over until his muddy boots were nearly on the mattress next to Felecia. “Well what.”
“What can you do for him?”
Felecia sighed; it was a tired sound. “I sleep here for a while, and I wake up tomorrow and find a good spot to start building a place of my own close by, then I come by every few days and make sure he hasn’t killed you or burned the place down.”
The youth started to shout and Phillip started banging the ladle against the hearth stones and shouting about some land deal we was done out of.
Once they both quieted down some Felecia stood and pulled at the youth until he followed her out of the hovel. “You’ll have to learn to be calm, and keep calm, he’s going to feed on what you put down from now on.”
The youth nearly whined, “Do something, fix him.”
Felecia felt for the youth, she didn’t know what it was like to be close to kin anymore. She was devastated when her brother and father died, but they died, all at once, and of a sudden. She was more angry at Jacqueline than anything. She didn’t know what it was like to have a loved one lose their mind; Jacqueline had already lost whatever she could lose before Felecia met her. Phillip was awful to the youth, but the old man was the only family he had.
“I told you when you came upon me in the swamp. There is nothing I can do. He knows some old name, that’s all. I can make teas that help him sleep, that’s about the best thing for him now.”
The youth wasn’t listening and wasn’t interested in being calm. Felecia was glad she pulled him outside as he began shouting again. “Horse shit! I’ll go to town and find a doctor!”
“No, you won’t. You have no money and you might pass for town but he won’t and he can’t travel.”
“I can’t just let him…I can’t…I won’t.”
The youth got a determined look after searching for words he didn’t have at his disposal. Determined was normally a good thing, but not in the face of what had happened, and what was happening.
“Look, you said it yourself, my being here, it’s calmed him. That’s something, we can both be here for him and do what we can with the time he has left.”
The youth wasn’t satisfied with that but he stopped shouting, he mumbled something about chores and did what he did best, blending into the background while Felecia walked back into the hovel and did her best to entertain the reeking husk of Phillip.
The lie was convincing enough, it had to be. As lies go it was the best kind, the sort laced with truth. There was probably nothing Felecia could do, and even if there was, how likely was the old man to survive. Whether the monster out in the waves was to blame or not, whether it was still silently tugging the strings of Felecia’s life and the lives of everyone she knew or not? Phillip wasn’t in his right mind and that wasn’t likely to change.
That first night back, the hovel, the proximity to the village and all the awfulness that had happened there, the proximity to Rotary House as well…
There was no way to tell how early or late it was when she woke. The hovel was cold, colder than the coals in the hearth should have allowed. The youth had refused to share the mattress and likewise refused to let Felecia sleep on the bare floor, he was curled up in a ball in the tiny kitchen and still fully asleep. The other mattress, the one large enough for all three of them was empty. The door to the hovel was hanging half way open.
Phillip was outside just beyond the spot were the porch used to be with a thick blanket wrapped around him like one of the illustrations of the Romans of old.
This will be life now, minding the old man, suffering through his tantrums, sitting with him through the night in hope he doesn’t do something like this.
Phillip spoke over his shoulder, threatening to cut off Felecia’s selfish internal monologue.
“The hell are you doing here?”
Felecia stopped and took a deep breath. The monster out in the waves was cruel beyond measure. Was the youth having to constantly do this? Explaining himself to his father in an endless loop of mind obliterating anguish.
“It’s me Phillip. It’s Felecia, I…”
“I know who the hell you are Fee, I’m not daft. Why did you come back here?”
Felecia didn’t have an answer for that question. She had been wondering ever since she made the decision to begin packing back in the cave. Why was she coming along, really? What did she hope to accomplish? As was often the case of late, that awful wooden mask came to mind, though she was still unsure what if any purpose the ghastly thing could possibly serve.
Phillip turned and was holding the wooden mask in his hands. “You have things to do, more important than babysitting me.”
Felecia knew she was awake, even her worst nightmares weren’t lucid enough to make her worry what was truly real and what was not, and still Felecia looked around and grabbed at her self to make sure she was really there. The mask was hidden in her pack, stashed between a few yellowed shifts, how had the old man found it?
“Do you know what you did to your boy?” Felecia wasn’t trying to counter with accusations, she wanted to gage just how in his own mind Phillip really was.
“My boy died when you were a small child and it wasn’t my doing.”
Felecia motioned back to the hovel. “No, your boy is alive, the other one, the one you stabbed. Tell me you didn’t mean to do that.”
Phillip held out the mask. “Don’t change the subject. You made this, you’re the hermit now, you have work to do, so go do it.”
“And what possible work would that be?”
Phillip walked up to Felecia and pressed the mask into her hands.
“The work I tried too damn hard to save you from. You were supposed to build bridges, Fee, not burn ‘em.”
Felecia started to follow until Phillip stopped and pointed in the direction of the village. “Go do his work, you made your choice. Don’t come back here anymore.”