Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 156
Hermitage
Nineteen days.
From that first day and evening spent collecting dead branches and fallen logs and trying to haul them onto a small spot of relatively flat land to the first night spent sleeping without a view of the stars overhead.
Nineteen days spent sawing and hueing logs, sinking timbers into clay that constantly threatened to turn into quick sand at the slightest bit of rain. Days spent tacking tar paper to planks of wood still showing the signs of old family ship stencils. Days full of melancholy and sour memories. Yet every one of those days Taryn would come by, some days with nails, some days with new tools to lend, some days with what little bits of food could be spared. Every afternoon and evening, the youth would come and help Felecia build a proper village shack to live in.
Every night Felecia would wait for Taryn to excuse himself, or make up some excuse about needing to check traps or bring personal belongings from the cave. Every night Felecia would walk to the outskirts of the village and watch its filthy, disheveled denizens go about their nightly chores or petty distractions. She couldn’t blend among them, not anymore, she couldn’t play at being the candlemakers apprentice or pick up odd jobs sewing or repairing nets. The village had turned inward after their banishment from the Big House, and then they had turned on one another.
Winter was slowly setting in and Felecia could see how much worse off the village was without its tiresome connection to her family’s sinking fortune. The vast majority of men turned to drinking home made alcohols distilled from all manner of meager supplies, some would wait until it was dark, many didn’t bother. Most would quarrel with each other over loaned household goods or who was owed from what small catch was last made from the fishing boats. Quarreling would lead to brawls and whole households setting upon one another. Eventually the melee would break up and those who had families would retire to their hovels and dingy shacks. The other din usually wouldn’t start until near midnight. The sounds of arguing, sometimes hushed and hurried, other times squalling ended abruptly in the sounds of violence.
The sounds of women being beaten and hurt in the wee hours became a horrific choir, only to be displayed in the light of the following morning to a blind audience. The sickness would spread from there, beaten women went on to take it out on children who resulted in playing sick games on unfortunate animals caught too close to the perimeter of the muddy hell that was the village. Had it always been that way? Felecia tried to focus on her time working among the villagers, it was short and she certainly wasn’t privy to the everyday ins and outs that merely observing them all allotted her but no, she was fairly certain that although the village always had its squalor and its abuses, the place wasn’t nearly that bleak before.
Nineteen days of gently prodding Taryn for information about the village and the Big House, avoiding pointed questions, avoiding deliberate remarks about the circumstances that landed the youth in Ganly’s employ. Nineteen days of getting vague and honestly disinterested answers and remarks. For Taryn there was the hovel, the surrounding woods, and Pa. That was his life and all that seemed to matter to the youth.
Nineteen days of waking up shivering and going to bed hungry, nineteen days spent getting scant hours of sleep before wandering down to Phillip’s hovel to sit with or oversee his ruin while Taryn went about the days chores. Nineteen days spent watching Phillip float in and out of himself, sometimes replaced with an innocent being akin to a child, sometimes replaced by a lunatic looking to take a swing or strike a match. Though she had to admit, the more she saw him, the more the old man seemed to stabilize, not improve per say, but the shouting fits and the random acts of violence became more and more infrequent.
The sudden influx of food helped.
Felecia swore to herself that she wouldn’t visit Rotary house, swore that she would avoid the mansion up on its hill altogether. She contemplated walking all the way to the farms that butted up against the opposite side of the woods, a chicken here, a goat there, a pail of milk or a handful of eggs besides. Maybe a sturdy chair, a few warm blankets left out on a line. Surely the farmers closer to the town could stand to part with this or that.
Why?
Why was the question that ran through Felecia’s mind every time she gave thought to night time raids of those very distant farms. Those poor farmers probably hadn’t wronged anyone. Dearest Nana, that bitch had wronged everyone she ever knew. She wronged her daughter by raising her to be afraid of her own shadow, wronged her by contract marrying her to first man gullible enough to see the dollar signs attached to the union. Nana wronged her grandchildren, everyone and she had surely wronged the village by keeping them ragged and in fetters all these long years before wronging them worst of all by shutting them out.
Surely, Rotary house could spare all the things needed for the three of them to survive and then some. Surely, dearest Nana could dig deep in order to help, even if she didn’t know she was.