Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 158
Taryn was out in the yard, turning the ground and making disgusted sounds when Felecia finally stumbled down to Phillip’s hovel. She was preparing for awkward silences, possibly some form of sad apology. She surely felt like she owed Taryn one even though she couldn’t find a logical reason for feeling guilty. She hadn’t asked to be kissed, didn’t want it, and despite the initial stirring she was certain she wouldn’t want a repeat of the event again soon.
“I thought it was potato when I planted the stems.”
The youth wasn’t busy staring at the ground because of Felecia, that was a good sign. Another good sign was the fair crop of yams he was busy yanking out of the ground.
“They’re close enough. Tubers always get us through the lean months anyway, in one form or another.”
“Pa don’t care for these ones.”
Felecia wanted to have a pleasant day so she kept it to herself but she wanted to yell, let the old man spit it out, let him toss a whole plate of the stuff all boiled down to yellow mash. An easy five out of seven meals where Phillip wouldn’t even be home from the neck up, much less earn a vote.
“Come November he’ll be eating them all the same.”
Taryn smiled at that, before shaking his head a bit and letting the smile fall away.
The apology was coming already and there was nothing for it as Felecia tried to eat the words that started falling out of her mouth. “I’m sorry about last night. I know…”
Taryn was already shrinking inward and finding a spot of ground to fixate on before he interrupted. “I shoulda asked first, I just wanted to, an I knew you’d say no.”
“You’re right, but it isn’t…”
“No one’ll ever want to, not with me. I know it. I just wanted to with you the once is all.”
So much for a pleasant and drama free day. Felecia walked up and pulled the yams out of Taryn’ grasp. “Stop interrupting me, and listen. It’s me, not you. Something changed out in the swamps, something I can’t explain or fix or solve, there’s something wrong with me that can’t be changed. It’s for the best that no one gets or stays attached to me, that’s the truth of it.”
Taryn reached out and took the yams and stood up and stopped staring off at nothing, his eyes met Felecia’s if for only a few moments. “I’m a killer, same as you, and a freak to boot. Who else is gonna love us?”
The youth didn’t wait for Felecia to answer the question, he turned and dropped the yams in a pail and began pulling more of the tubers out of the ground. “Pa’s still asleep, but go sit with him.”
They didn’t say anything for the rest of the day until Felecia excused herself for the afternoon, Phillip was lucid but seemingly stuck thinking he was still in his hay day, standing about the house and barking orders at men who had likely been dead for some time. The closest to the present he got all day was taking notice of Felecia just long enough to remind her that she wasn’t welcome and to stop coming by.
“Get out of here, Fee. You know what you’re supposed to do now, you have him in your ear already, just sit still and give that old devil a listen.”
Felecia got busy working on another wall of her shack that night, not really expecting to see Taryn that evening or ever again out there in the woods. The youth showed up and started helping without a word.
Felecia stopped taking her nightly sojourns out to the edges of the village for the rest of the build, she also didn’t bother taking anymore trips to Rotary house. She had seen the deprivation, the resolute minimal survival her remaining kin had been sentenced to, there was nothing left there to steal.
Yet there where plenty of things that Felecia still needed, and much more that would be needed to help Phillip and Taryn survive once the snow set in for the year. There would have to be trips made in the near future, before the end of the month ideally. Trips to the cave for one, and trips to where at least some actual livestock and seeds could be gotten for free.
Felecia waited until the walls were up and the roof was near finished before she pried at Taryn for any details about the state of the big house.
“I know you and Phillip haven’t been around the Big House much, but do you know what happened to the staff, the people that worked and lived there?”
Taryn shrugged with all the concern you would expect a villager to have over news of a tragedy in some far away land. “Nope.”
“It’s just that, I don’t think most of them had any relatives in the village. There were a couple of girls…”
Taryn did what he was becoming increasingly used to doing, and started talking over Felecia as she tried to finish her sentence. “We ain’t shit to them, house never talked to field.”
Felecia couldn’t get the thought of little Kat and her mother nestled in some wretched doorway down in the town, begging for scraps or worse. Most in the house had what Nana called the upper Aquidneck complexion, replete with wide wet eyes, narrow wormy lips, scales that grew along their necks, arms, sometimes even over their brows up into unfortunately receding hairlines. Elle had lovely hands, slender, delicate, dexterous, yet strong and most unfortunately webbed between the wring, middle, and index fingers on both hands. The beloved household cook was a beauty among the people Felecia had always known in her life, but the woman would be viewed as an unfortunate at best down in the town, and a ghoulish mishap otherwise.
Mostly it was the thought of little Kat that distressed Felecia and kept her poking at the issue. “What about all the goods then? The house was nearly empty. There must have been some procession of wagons that drove by along the main road.”
Taryn stopped his work and set his tools down and sat down. “Fishermen in the village, ones that trade in town, call it a depression. Said a bunch of rich folk lost it all, some killed themselves. That was near two years ago. Stuff started leaving the Big House last year. Ike, the new candlemaker, said it’s just your Ma and Nan living up there like two lepers now.”