Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 157
The eighth night of her new stay near Phillip, Taryn, and the village found Felecia standing behind the mansion that had been her prison for twelve long years. Her first thoughts fell to the barn and the animals there but she found the place empty. The alfalfa and hay up in the loft had turned in the moisture with no animals to eat it. The corral posts and the back walls were coated in rot. There were no tools left to tend the field and all of Phillip’s usually careful fence lines had been left to lean, some buried by grasses and weeds, some obviously carted off to be used as fire wood. The old barn was a derelict structure in every sense of the word and Felecia didn’t dwell long on the reasons why. The villagers working for the Conway’s had all been sacked, Taryn said as much. Although that untimely edict hadn’t likely included the maids or the cook, it surely included all the folk involved in tending to the barn and its animals. Nana had most likely sold the whole lot in town and called it quits, that or the animals were made off with by the villagers and all eaten or traded away.
The old gravel drive with its fountain still stood in place but the naturally acrid grounds of the cliff side were doing their level best to reclaim the territory. The bench Phillip had sat on while he unwittingly shaped Felecia’s future as she let the sun touch all of her was sagging and leaning back into the earth. Tall sprigs of one nature or another were stabbing through the gravel drive and all along the front porch. A significant patch of clinging vine had curled and dug into the porch, threatening to continue up the roof and onto the second story siding that held precious little of the paint that largely laid in curled sheets in the yellow grass before the old place.
Rotary house looked just as abandoned as the barn, only Felecia knew better, she came upon the place from the woodland side, just like before, and she watched the lights. All were made by candle now, not even the storm lanterns dared burn any more. First the kitchen came alive, then the tired dining room, then smaller lights in the parlor and the bedrooms up on the third floor. The last light to go out was in the kitchen and Felecia waited a few hours after that before she dared to creep up on the cellar doors.
The lock that waited for her there was old, weather worn, and complimented by a chain large enough to pull an anchor, wrapped three times around the sagging cellar doors. No one was going back in there without permission, and that was fine as far as Felecia was concerned, she had lost enough time to awful old memories and disturbing hallucinations down in the dark of that place.
The kitchen door was latched from the inside but easily overcome with a bent piece of fence wire. Elle didn’t work for the family any longer, surely, she couldn’t be. The kitchen was filthy, it’s pristine white paint and delicate flowery wallpaper was all scorch marks, grease stains, spilled excesses and vermin fed piles of waste, with the whole mess seemingly coated in a fine film of mildew that emanated from the ruined basins where the maids washed the household linens. Elle wouldn’t have stood a tenth of all that filth, had she passed of a sudden, disease maybe? Surely Nana hadn’t been rash enough to sack the house staff?
Regardless, Felecia had come for a reason and she had learned to live with filth. A small cast iron pan, a few utensils, a few pieces of crockery, all of it went into the bag Felecia came with. The pantry, all but empty, yielded up a few dusty prizes, including a small glass jar of Elle’s prized jam.
The parlor was nearly vacant, the prize family furniture, always rotating with the season or mother’s whims, was mostly missing from the room along with the art. Had it all been sold? Stored to gather rot down in the cellar? Made off with by angry former staff while Nana and mother cowered behind their locked doors?
The dining room and the sitting room were in the same condition as Felecia continued her tour. A chair here, a bench there, a bent or dented item or some tool that still proved useful in day-to-day life, were all that remained in the mansion on its first floor. The only things that hadn’t been lost, stolen, or sold, were the grand dining table and mother’s favorite chaise. The clock Felecia had mangled with her arrow no longer stood in the foyer but held a lonely court along one bare wall in the sitting room, looking at it for a moment allowed Felecia to begin to understand what must have happened.
Was there really a difference between sacking the villagers who worked for the family or merely turning them out because there was nothing left to pay them with and nothing to feed them? Would Taryn know the difference, or know enough to explain it if he did?
Felecia thought for a moment and remembered the careful steps to take along her way to the second story. She wouldn’t need to go further than that, not for anything she would care to steal anyway. Most of the rooms on the second story stood with their doors wide open, rooms used mostly by staff that had lived in the mansion longer than Felecia had been alive, rooms full of ample but common-sense furnishings, all stood empty or nearly as to make no difference. Felecia didn’t dare to look down the hall to where her old room was, yes that door would be open too, and absolutely empty, once more though looking on that room would leave her lost again, wasting precious time on sour memories she didn’t deserve to suffer through any longer.
The linen cupboard, that was the prize for the night and it was the one place that didn’t disappoint. Felecia could barely make her way back down the stairs in silence with the bundle of blankets, pillows, throws, knitted shawls, all wrapped up in a down comforter that still smelled like Nana’s room, lilacs and sea foam.
“I’da spared you seeing the place. Don’t be angry at me lying.”
Felecia was quite a few years separated from being surprised or set upon by anyone. She was nearly inside the framework of her shack, ready to place her stolen goods down and crawl into her bedding for the night when the youth spoke from behind the one wall they had managed to nail in place.
Once Felecia managed to catch her breath she growled, “It wouldn’t be the lying I’m cross about, laying in wait for me though, that’s another story.”
“Think about me and Pa then, next time you try an get killed.”
Felecia dropped her goods and came around to face Taryn in the dim moon light. “My folks may not have much love, for me or one another, but I hardly have to worry about dying in the process of taking what they can spare.”
“And the village? All that laying in the grass and stalking ‘em like a hungry wolf. What’s that but planning your own funeral!”
“So, I’m what, property for you to purview over? I’ve been by every morning to sit with the old man, I carry my weight. What is it to you what I do in my own time?”
“It’s…I’m…nerrymind. Sorry I scared ya.” Taryn was already stuttering again and looking for spaces between the leaves to stare at before he started walking away.
“You’re full of shit, you know that? You told me you aren’t scared of me but you can’t be bothered to look me in the face.”
Taryn stopped for a second before taking a deep breath. “What we did, down in the village, out in that field. You think God is punishing us for that? Is everything bad now, forever?”
Felecia heard the word God and thought only about the thing out in the waves. The profane thing, the monster that seemed to always meddle and darken the lives of all denizens of Aquidneck. There was no all-knowing, all loving being, not in a world where that creature was allowed to languish.
“No Taryn. Phillip got old; it happens. The village was always awful, so is my family. Things are bad here, now, because this place is bad, because these people are awful. We did what we did to survive, that’s all.”
Taryn turned and walked toward Felecia with a sudden purpose. She was on guard and unsure but wanted to believe that the youth wouldn’t be dumb enough to try and harm her. The gangly youth nearly tripped and when he did finally reach her, he did the one thing Felecia was entirely unprepared for.
Felecia had imagined kissing the girl in her dream, the blonde with her bathing suit on the beach down in the town. She had imagined what it might be like to kiss Rachel as well but in a much more honest and sincere way. Nothing Felecia had imagined felt like what was happening then. Taryn’s left hand found her hand and took it, his right hand tried awkwardly to find her cheek but only managed to slip down to her collar bone. His breath was hot and sour and his chapped lips felt course. There was a sweetness there though as well, something stirred and Felecia felt it welling up before she pulled away.
“I’m…I didn’t think you would, you were. I’m sorry…” Taryn started and stopped and then Felecia watched his entire frame sag as he apologized and turned away.
“So am I.” It was all she could manage while she was still in the shock of the moment. She didn’t need or want to have those sorts of feelings, those urges. Her entire life to date had been awful and hard enough, in equal measure, without the drama and complications of an affair.
That night was the most disturbed Felecia’s sleep had been in months, maybe even since she woke up in the woods after that night in the meadow. The next morning felt awful and she considered not going to Phillip’s at all.