Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 164
The pretext for the visit was thin, laughably so, even poor Taryn dared to keep needling while they walked from the forest edge to Phillip’s hovel.
“It’s just…Pa didn’t seem to know you visited us. I told him but he looked confused. He thinks you’re still run off.”
“Then this can be my big return.”
“Wh…what if he goes way again though, in his head.”
Felecia was too tired and too sick of the twisted way the world seemed to always work to be kind, “He’s going to, Taryn. He’s going to because he’s old and sick and that’s the way of the world. All we can do is enjoy what little time we have with him when he’s lucid like this.”
That got the youth to shut up for the remainder of their walk but it also made Felecia feel like the bottom of a summer outhouse trench. Taryn wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t do anything but grunt in response, until they reached the hovel.
Rough shod, uneven planks had been spread out around the frame work of a new, albeit smaller porch. Phillip was outside, standing upright for the first time in weeks, maybe a few months. The day was cold and gray but he was shirtless and slick with sweat. The old fish faced man was hewing and planking a length of still too wet wood as if nothing had changed since Felecia walked away from their conversation out in the woods and few years before.
Only that wasn’t entirely true. Taryn moved ahead, putting some distance between himself and the menacing young woman casting aspersions on the happiness of this sudden new reality. Felecia worked her tired legs and aching feet to catch up and noticed the red, puffy flesh around the old man’s wide, watery eyes. His distended pot belly and the ashen, flaky skin that covered his otherwise bony frame.
Phillip was up, he was moving, sweating. Phillip was shuffling about, but Phillip didn’t look well at all.
As Felecia grew closer, she saw burst blisters and the runny egg puss dripping down the shaft of the axe. She couldn’t help herself as she brought her hand up over her nose. Phillip looked like a man on his death bed but he smelled like a corpse waiting overlong for its place in the dark earth. The women growing brown and green as they weighed down the tree in the village didn’t smell as bad.
Phillip smiled wanly, showing a row of yellowed teeth. “You don’t have to say it. I know. I’m getting better though, one day at a time. I promise.”
Taryn nearly beamed and puffed out his chest at Felecia, “See, I told you so.”
All Felecia could see was the rictus smile pulled across the face of the shadow that stared unnervingly at her.
“Told you Pa, she’s all sour, I told her you was better.”
Phillip ignored the youth altogether and let the axe lean against his leg while he wiped the ooze from his split hands on his filthy pants.
“So, what have you been up to all these months, girl.”
Hearing that word, girl, made Felecia want to vomit, even worse than the smell the old man was giving off as he wiped the egg yoke puss along his pants leaving streaks of filmy off white.
Taryn lost his patience with that last unnerved reaction. “We ain’t got a tub like in the Big House, you know. I was gonna get water for a wash after we was done for the day.”
Phillip didn’t look to Taryn as he spoke, he kept those unnerving, unblinking, red rimmed eyes locked on Felecia as he spoke.
“I’m done, for today. Go get that water.”
Taryn started to stutter and find a place on the ground to lock his eyes on. Phillip grabbed the axe handle and raised the thing up as though it were a dead rodent. “Or finish hewing this log, then get the fucking water.”
Taryn winced and reached for the axe handle and Phillip let it go so that it fell to the ground before Taryn could get a grip on it. “Or realize you can’t do either right and go sleep out in the woods. Fee and I are going to go catch up, alone.”
Felecia watched as what little light Taryn had dared to let into his soul, went out, snuffed like a carelessly blown candle flame. What Felecia hadn’t managed to do, Phillip did easily and without a moment of concern. A stolen look was all Felecia needed, she could see those downcast eyes glare if for only a moment, the trust and concern and, whatever else there was, all of that was gone now and replaced by that same general level of loathing that the youth had felt for Felecia all those times before.
Following Phillip felt like a bad idea, refusing to follow him seemed like an even worse idea. Felecia clutched at the sack of herbal nonsense she brought with her, feeling suddenly foolish as she remembered judging all those characters in all those books she read as a child for clutching at their holy symbols in times of worry and strife.
The interior of the hovel hadn’t changed much at all. The mattress belonging to a frame that had long since been chopped up and fed to the hearth fire was back in its room but the old rocking chair and ottoman were back in its stead by the hearth. Speaking of, the crusty pot of constant cut up, watery leftovers was as rank as ever and the ladle that had served as Phillip’s lollipop, crutch, feeble weapon, and speaking stick was back to work resting in the eternal congeal.
The stink inside was noxious beyond compare. Phillip’s own retched state barely seemed to make a dent in the waft of burnt food, lamp oil, mold, night soil, and of course sweat.