Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 159
The morning of the twentieth day found Felecia waking within the walls of a finished yet nearly empty hovel with no amenities, no food, little in the way of bedding after leaving most of her ill-gotten gains with Phillip, and absolutely no prospects for making or growing what she needed to continue living.
Felecia also woke with the same numb and exhausted feeling she had woken to since her one and only round of questions about what had happened to everyone who worked for her family. Haunting the village wasn’t going to answer her question and neither was asking Taryn any more questions. There was some small consideration given to the idea of making the long trek on foot down to the town to see for herself but the idea of what she might see there stopped her cold, that and the idea of being noticed and ridiculed or worse by the normal looking townsfolk. It seemed little Kat’s and Rachel’s fates would go unknown, no matter how much the not knowing ate away at Felecia.
Going over to Phillip’s wasn’t going to be pleasant, Taryn would have to see to the old man solo for a few days and he would be ready with a number of ludicrous and equally far-fetched ideas for how Felecia could survive without needing to leave the immediate area.
“I figured. I can handle Pa for a few days solo.”
Taryn could have knocked Felecia over with a feather, she stood outside their shack and waited with her mouth open for the follow up, surely there would be another shoe to drop. Then again, ever since the fateful kiss and her insistence to know more about the fate of the old household staff the youth hadn’t been as forthcoming, as demanding, or as friendly as he had been before.
“I’m coming back, I just need the basics to well, live.”
Taryn nodded and continued to salt meat atop a length of fallen log next to an out-door fire he was using to dry what meat could be preserved for the winter. “Smart money is taking a boat around the island; takes just as long only you could load the boat.”
Felecia nodded; she had already given a great deal of thought to how best to get her things from the cave to the shack. A boat wouldn’t do though, Felecia had no interest to ever see the ocean again, much less stir nervously atop its waves knowing what laid in wait there. No, a conveyance would have to be found but it wouldn’t be a boat.
The trip started the next day, the last true vestiges of autumn were setting in and the nights in the woods would be downright cold. The swamp wouldn’t be but this time of year spelled other problems for traveling in the swamp, namely earth that was at its most liquid for the year after so many months of rain. Felecia took only her bow and a bag of boiled water for drinking and made good time until she reached the meadow. The plan was to do a bit of gleaning here and there and then move on to the swamp and cave before dark.
The meadow was bathed in the last light of the day as it filtered through the trees to the west. Felecia could hear the ocean waves in the distance and that was disconcerting enough but then she saw the marker near the remains of the old crate home.
Gleaning was ignored as Felecia jogged through as much of the meadow as she dared until she reached the truly dangerous and entangled plants. What at first looked like a stick crudely driven into the ground became the majority of the stock of a familiar rifle. Phillip’s old war piece had been hammered into the ground until the metal barrel was buried up to the wooden foregrip. The cracked stock was woven over with dried seaweed that also secured a sun mummified tale of some large fish. Felecia couldn’t say but the wicked sickle the tale created looked to be that of a shark. The rest of the fish was nowhere to be seen save for a tangle of sharp, spikey teeth tied up with sea shells, dried carapaces of crabs, and a collection of dull glass beads. The odd spider web like structure looked to be held together by hair and was draped loosely over the stock of the rifle making some obscene occult blanket for the whole gruesome affair. That there was a dirt mound below the stock was certain, the fact that the earth looked wet and recently disturbed was undeniable.
The odd grave hadn’t been there before. Felecia considered and reconsidered that statement, turning it from a question to an article of fact and then into a belligerent demand. She hadn’t brought herself to walk through the middle of the meadow, not since that fateful night but the stock would have stood out against the contrast of the flattened, ashy earth where the shipping crate home once stood. The earth was freshly turned, the vast meadow free of all and any trees held few secrets, and certainly none big enough to hide a burial from view.
“It can’t be, it isn’t.”
The words sounded choked up and distant, as though the warm, humid air of the meadow was consuming them as they left Felecia’s mouth.
It can, it is, it has to be. After all, who else would it be.
Blissful months and nearly a year had gone by without suffering to hear that awful intrusive voice, and yet, was it the monster, or just some other part of Felecia. Had something shaken loose in the storm, some bit of piling yanked away from the pier and left to softly, annoyingly, scrape and thud against the remainder of Felecia’s rational mind.
Go ahead, you have two good hands.
The implications of that stray thought left Felecia stepping away from the earthen mound and leaning over. She had to close her eyes and breathe deep to stop the impulse to vomit. The air was heavy, too heavy for her to keep from being sick but there was nothing worth bringing up. Felecia jogged away from that place and south west until she was out of the meadow and at the edge of the swamp.
Someone had buried something. Something had buried someone. Someone had buried someone and then something came along and…
It wasn’t Jacqueline, there were no bodies to find, no evidence of that night in the meadow at all save for the burnt remains of the old ruined house.
You never went back, how would you know.
Felecia shouted, “Shut up!”
The abundance of croaking and chirping life at the edge of the swamp fell still and Felecia drove her hands over her mouth and stifled a scream of genuine terror. This had been a bad idea, the worst sort of idea. Coming back to the meadow, going back to the cave, wasn’t just succumbing to madness, it was welcoming it. Summoning it even.
I went back, I went back and there was nothing, that’s what kept me guessing for so long, what kept me unsure of what had happened.
Felecia screwed her eyes closed and flooded her mind with that thought, driving the statement into every dark corner so that there was no room for any other voices to whisper or shout. She would keep that up until she reached her destination because she knew anything else, any faltering of that pattern would leave her open to a voice stating that no, no she did no such thing and that she let cowardice rule her soul until Taryn came along and all but forced her to rejoin some small part of the real world.