Sun kissed Innsmouth
Part 174
Felecia would let the overeager youth batter at her walls long enough and let him into her shack one night or another. Things never lasted too long though. Taryn smoked too much, argued too little, was always quick to anger and then just as quick to retreat behind his mental walls in order to not treat others how he had always been treated. The whole affair would turn tedious until Felecia had enough and found herself once again rebuking him.
“One winter, you’ll get tired of throwing me out!”
Taryn had said that more than once now in the heat of some argument or another and the thing that bothered Felecia about the youth’s statement was the fear that eventually, he would be right.
Most all parts of Felecia’s life had ground to a predictable and lackluster halt. Although it was hard to keep track and grew harder by the season, she was pretty sure she would turn nineteen this year and that would mean Taryn would be twenty-two, or was it twenty-three? Phillip was the only one who would be able to answer that for sure and only if Felecia caught him in the right frame of mind, on those very rare occasions when he still had a hold of it that was.
Phillip was the hardest part of Felecia’s new reality. Taryn grew accustomed to leaving him to his own devices more and more, especially when those devices turned to sleeping most of the day away. There were still fits, moments of terror when Taryn would come by banging on the door of Felecia’s shack because the old man wandered off again. Violent outbursts when Phillip would become bewildered and forget who or where he was, other violent moments when he would be dead sure he was back in the war. Felecia and Taryn had both suffered through playing the part of any number of people either long dead and gone or possibly people who never really were.
Once, just a few months after Felecia’s final encounter with the monster out in the waves, during the dead of winter, Taryn had come by pounding, breathless, begging for help. Phillip had wandered off and was nowhere to be found.
There was no obvious moment where she simply knew where the old man would be, no notion or preconceived idea in her mind as she woke and pulled her clothes on hastily. Felecia put on as much clothing as Taryn gave her time to and walked as fast as the snow and ice allowed until they reached the small house where the two had and likely always would live.
The tracks were still fresh enough and they lead in a direction that should have seemed obvious to anyone who knew the old groundskeeper. Felecia was surprised it had taken as long as it had. When she started up the remains of the gravel path she wondered if Phillip had made it all the way to the Big House.
There was a lantern light glowing in the firmly leaning remains of the barn and she found Phillip there. The old groundskeeper was sitting on the railing of one of the stalls and gesturing around forlornly.
“Not a damn lick of hay anywhere in the place, and the rats…bastards are near as big as the goats used to be. Not sure what they could be eating out here though?”
Phillip raised his wet, droopy eyes and looked through Felecia as though she wasn’t even there. “Where did it all go? Where did they go?”
It was early days and Felecia hadn’t gotten as used to playing parts as she had to learn to be later on, she looked at the old man and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Shit, I don’t know, Nana probably sold them all or let the damn villagers pilfer them one by one.”
“The witch wouldn’t sell off the livestock, don’t get me wrong, that bitch would cut off her nose to spite her face, but she wouldn’t sell those goats, not for any price.”
Felecia was tired and cold; she went to gather up the lantern and try and get the old ruin walking back in the direction of his hovel. Phillip looked up and was suddenly looking right at her, not through her or off in the direction of someone who wasn’t there.
“Those goats fed this house; their milk made this house what it is; the chickens gave eggs besides. Think of Elle, and her little one, think of the women who maid tirelessly for that old witch, think of the girls from the village who help keep this place afloat. None of them eat if this barn is empty, girl.”
Felecia knocked the snow off the front of her jacket and kicked the excess off her boots before she dared to lean against some of the interior railing of the dilapidated barn. She looked around in hopes of seeing Taryn but knew that the coward would wait beyond earshot, always willing to let Felecia deal with or meet the brunt of the old man’s ire during his fits of delirium.
“Elle and Kat are gone, Phillip. Josephine and Rachel too, Mildred, Enid, all of them. This place is deserted. Let’s go back home now.”
“They might have moved on, the most of them, or near the lot of them, but I know she’s still here, I can smell her.”
Felecia woke up then, she stopped fussing with the hard pack stuck to her boots and she locked eyes on the old man with his wide, wet eyes and his thick, wormy lips.
“Smell who?”
There was no answer and Felecia closed the distance and looked hard at the old man stuck standing in front of her and nearly shouted, “Who do you think is still here?”
Phillip winced and shied away, suddenly looking around like he tended to do when he was really awake and aware that he was so very lost and so obviously out of touch with the world.
The three of them were together and walking slowly back to the three-room hovel before Phillip spoke again.
“Jackie said she talked to her cousin for me, we’re gonna take a walk by the beach next week. Margaret is a lovely name, don’t you think?”
Taryn dared a spectral look at Felecia until she looked down and grimaced. The snow already made her think of that night in the village, hearing that name made it all come alive again and threaten to spill over into the present once more.