Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 169
There was no response from the gazebo and no sudden acknowledgement from the monster still hovering in the night sky either. Felecia whispered the question, barely able to comprehend what was going on and totally incapable of understanding the implications of what she was seeing much less hearing. Her feet took a few more steps and her arms began to raise and her eyes began to tell her the cruelest possible lie imaginable.
Shelly Conway, of the Aquidneck Conway’s, proudest member of a once proud lineage. A woman who once oozed elegance and refinement, the all-seeing, all-knowing master of Rotary house and all those who called it home as well as those unfortunate enough to live in its shadow, shown pale under the moon looking like a sick dog.
Felecia’s grandmother looked more like her crazy sister than Jacqueline ever had, from her yellowed chemise to the filthy helmet of her matted hair, from hands gnarled with arthritis and covered in dirt and grime to a skirt that looked and smelled like nightsoil. The filthy woman standing proud and shouting nonsense commands at a monster the size of a mountain was unmistakably Shelly Conway, and yet, even so far-removed Felecia could see the blazing forest fire in the old woman’s eyes, hear the haunting cadence of the noxious burble gurgle commands, and they were just that. With every line spoken the monster writhed as if in agony, with every phrase completed the jagged, rasping puckered mouths spasmed and mewled in fresh agony.
“A fortune, that’s what you owe me you dumb animal!”
The first and only complete sentence spoken in proper English since she came on the scene had Felecia trying to drown out the monsters cries as well as the pounding of the waves down at the bottom of the cliff. How was this possible? Nana was conversing with the monster, controlling it. What possible fortune could be tied to the hideous monster from the waves?
Felecia’s arms rose up and she felt the muscles tighten in her arms as she drew her bow. Her aim was obvious and true even as she did everything that she could to resist the monsters will.
“Nana!”
Felecia yelled as she fought to stop herself from letting the arrow go. She hated her grandmother and she felt she had every right to that hate. Hating the old woman and killing her, those were two very different things. She never would have come out of the mansion, never would have opened the kitchen door to step out onto the dead, dry grass, never would have armed herself and drawn an arrow, never would have aimed at her grandmother’s back. None of this was Felecia, not her will to be certain, no, certainly not.
Nana didn’t seem to hear Felecia’s shout as she raised her bony hands and flashed a small object over her head before pointing at the monster still hovering beyond. Nana spit out a line of burble gurgle words that sent the monster reeling and convulsing. The monster vomited thick streams of black ichor and seemed to steam and boil what vegetation clung to the cliff edge.
The monsters wild and terrifying mismatched eyes seemed to undulate and convulse nearly as one, a few of the small ones around the outer rim looked to squint shut once and for all and began leaking more of the awful looking ichor.
Sympathy.
That feeling was absolute, forbidden heresy given the circumstance. Felecia couldn’t possibly feel sorry for the mewling, vomiting spectacle held hovering under the moon light. She didn’t see some of herself in that sensation of being hurt by Nana and the dread of knowing that there would surely be more derision to come before the end.
The end for the monster seemed certain as it spewed rivulets of black acid over the stubborn weeds that grew between the gazebo and the cliff’s edge. The awful thing convulsed worst of all and then all of its countless multitude of tentacles both big and small, long and short, went limp. The sudden loss of undulating mass made the massive and dire monster suddenly look smaller and so much more vulnerable.
The creatures eyes grew dim, no longer pulsating with a thousand anguished horrors driving their way into the brains of all who observed them. The mass of the monsters tentacles fell limp around its disk like body, some falling forward over its multitude of eyes looking like ill-tempered bangs, others falling back or sticking out like ridiculous comb overs and cow licks.
Felecia’s arm began to ache from holding her shot in place but she was locked in her effort of examining the impossible scene laid out before her. Nana hadn’t heard her call out, the matriarch of Rotary house was still pointing accusatorily at the monster hovering above the cliff, still shouting at it in the burble gurgle nonsense language.
Worse than sympathy, Felecia began to feel empathy with the disheveled and dying thing held in place, dangling out over the end of the cliff. She wasn’t being controlled anymore; the monster didn’t even look conscious much less in control.
“I should have done this when you refused to kill that dullard who sullied my cow of a daughter. I should have turned you into bait fish when you failed to kill that stupid witch once and for all!”
Nana wasn’t in control either anymore, not entirely. The old woman in the filthy clothing stood tall and continued to point accusatorily at the monster as she howled out her words. Her arthritic hand shook and her face contorted into a vicious smile.
“I won’t make that mistake again. You have failed me for the last time.”
The monster seemed to shutter of a sudden as it ran out of black vomit, an invisible seem appeared to open along one its more prominent and tooth ringed tentacles. The monster mewled weakly and gave out a nearly human cry of despair.
One of its larger eyes, the size of a dinner plate rolled up white and then suddenly shot forward, no longer staring intently with white hot hate but rather looking directly at Felecia, as if seeing her for the first time.
The odd almond shape of the monsters pupil seemed to focus sharply and then fall out of focus. Felecia was watching the monster from under the waves die. She was watching it be tortured and eliminated, something she should have found joy in.
“Nana!”
That time it wasn’t an awe-struck whisper or a surprised shout, it was a howl, a command all its own. Felecia threw her head back and opened her throat and let out a decade of being made sport of, she forced out every moment of anguish and terror and turned it all into a shout so loud and forceful she felt something rupture in her left eye.