Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 154
Felecia slept under the stars for a few hours, near the rise where her old lean too used to lay nearby Phillip’s hovel. She didn’t go back into the hovel, not even to collect her things. Phillip hadn’t been dreaming or sleep walking, he wasn’t delusional or confused, Felecia had been allowed a rare audience with Phillip as he was and had always been; judgmental, hypocritical, constantly moralizing, a general pain in the ass and a man who seemed to drown in his faults more and more with each passing day. Sure, the morning would likely see him once again mumbling at the walls or talking nonsense at the crud encased ladle, that wouldn’t be Phillip though, not really.
The youth came out in the morning, he shrugged at Felecia as she rose and tried to dry what clothes she had that the ground had made wet. He managed to come over after seeing to a few abysmal chores.
“The smell gets to me too.”
Felecia shook her head. Honesty fit both the moment and her own moral code. “Phillip came back to himself for a few moments. He threw me out, probably remembered how I left things, that or he decided he didn’t want another mouth to feed. Either way I can’t blame him. Like I said, I’ll get to putting something together for myself a ways out into the woods and I’ll come and visit and help as I can.”
The youth looked directly at Felecia, something he almost never did except for when his anger got the best of him. “He was himself, with you, in the dead of night?”
“Yes, just long enough to tell me to leave and never come back. It was a singular instance most likely, like I said, I’ll be back and often.”
The youth was walking away and near to the bottom of the rise before Felecia heard him mumble, “Don’t do us no favors.”
“I don’t owe you any. I came to help and I’m trying,”
That was the start of the watershed, the youth marched back up the rise and began talking and he didn’t stop until the sun was high in the sky. Felicia heard all about how Phillip went cap in hand to Nana dearest when Felecia’s life was hanging by a string, how the old groundskeeper had gone to bat for her after she exiled herself to the woods and the meadow. Then the youth told Felecia about the time she missed during her black out, how she had murdered the fiend and gone wandering through the woods and swamps like something truly feral.
“I went and tracked you twice, hoping you was back to your senses but I lost track. I figured you for dead after that when Emeh told me you was in the swamps.”
Felecia was long ago in the reeds, disassociating from the one-sided conversation the youth was having when she heard him mention that name.
“You talked to Emeh?”
“Yeah, she and her gran came back talking and talking about the new hermit in the woods. Crying how he wasn’t dead, how there was still justice for the village. I knew better but I couldn’t say it. Finally, the villagers hung them as liars.”
Felecia couldn’t allow herself to be angry or surprised, the stupid village girl and her idiot gran weren’t the brightest after all. Still, Felecia pictured the poor black-eyed girl keeping her head down and her voice unheard all those long years only to finally speak up and get her neck stretched for her trouble.
“They killed her for meeting me? They killed her being pregnant and all?”
Felecia nearly howled those questions as she looked to the hovel for her bow and arrows, knowing that they would be there waiting for her when she went to gather them for some dire purpose.
The youth stood in her way of a sudden and stood tall. “Naw, they killed her gran for being a liar, then they killed her for killing her bearing. After that they came for her cousins simply by knowing her. That’s what they do, they kill anyone foolish enough to live life on their own terms and everyone close to them. They only spare Pa and I because they think I still have the rifle.”