Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

just in case he ever felt like coming back. Thus, the electrics. We gave up a couple of decades ago, though. Owl seems happy the way he is. Or maybe ‘happy’ isn’t the right word. Content.”

“Do you know what made him give this place up?”

Crow passes the soap across the back of her neck. “I’m not sure it was any one thing,” she says. “I visited him three times while he was here. The first was when he’d just arrived, off the boats and looking for a place to settle. He only spoke French back then, and he seemed excited, about America, about exploring, about building his own place, somewhere among the trees here. I think he fell in love with this bit of land as soon as he set eyes on it. I stuck around while he built the house, and he was up every morning at the crack of dawn, doing twice as much as the rest of the labourers: importing the strongest, finest trees, and embedding them in the strongest, finest chunks of stone, and hammering tiles into the roof all through the day, lord of his land.

“The second time I visited, he was speaking English. Heavily accented, mind you, and he still insisted on wearing his old brocade coats, like he was determined to remain as French as possible. He had a lot of servants, all of whom were beloved to him, and he had friends all over the country, always visiting and marvelling at his wonderful house, and his wonderful forest, and his wonderful hospitality. I stayed for a few months, and he lavished me with expensive gifts imported from Europe, and took me all around town in his ridiculous coach, introducing me to all the shopkeepers and judges and mayors, and they all had nothing but good things to say about him.

“Then, the third time I visited, he was alone at the house. Barely speaking any more. The roof tiles were falling off, and nobody was coming to visit him, and he was spending his nights out among the trees of the forest, flying around and hunting. I don’t know what happened, but I do know that it was long enough between visits that everybody he introduced me to the last time would have passed on. He was still kind to me, though, even up to the point where he stopped pretending to be a person any more.”

“Just Owl, again,” says Adam.

“Just Owl.” Crow smiles.

When Adam feels somewhat cleaner, he heaves himself free of the bath, towels himself down with a stiff piece of coarse cloth, runs his clothes under a cold tap, and shrugs them back on, enjoying the way they steam against his skin.

“You should take a look around,” says Crow, still soaking. “I’ll join you soon.”

Doing as he’s told, Adam goes to explore, finding a few bedrooms with rotting sheets and open windows. Birds have made their nests on the dressers and among the silverware, and the Louisiana climate is present throughout; there is little divide between outside and inside. Eventually, he opens a door into a library, but his excitement is short-lived. Every single book is no more than a useless, ruined pulp. Adam mourns the loss of all those words – all those worlds, ruined by neglect.

The truth is, he can imagine Owl alone here, slowly growing weary of his books, of his grief. It would be nice, Adam thinks, to fly out into the forest, into the sky, and leave all that weight behind.

While making his way back to the staircase, Adam notices a pair of eyes watching him from behind a semi-closed door. Pushing it open, he enters an enormous chamber filled from ceiling to floor with shelves upon shelves of taxidermised animals. They are hideous, he thinks – twisted parodies of the creatures they once were – birds and beasts of all kinds fixed into unnatural poses, dead eyes glaring open forever. But they are eerily untouched by the rot inflicting the rest of the house. They seem like a recent addition.

“Adam!” Crow, calling him.

She is waiting in the main hall. “I found some animals,” he tells her, as he makes his way down. “Taxidermy. They look new.”

She laughs. “Magpie’s definitely been here, then. But I found something else.”

Through a dripping, drooping kitchen, Crow leads Adam to a metal door, half hidden between piles of rusted tin cans. The door is untouched, and looks strong, and beyond it there is a stone staircase illuminated by clean bulbs, leading below. There is a touch-pad beside the door, flashing green, and Adam frowns. “Was there a code?”

“No code. It was open.”

Down the steps, the air is dry and crisp. The whirring of machines filtering out the Louisiana humidity becomes more apparent as Adam descends, until he emerges into an enormous rectangular chamber, perhaps the length of the entire house. The walls are made of cold stone, and so is the floor, and the low ceiling is lined with rows upon rows of bar lamps, currently dark. Otherwise, the chamber is completely empty.

“Watch this,” says Crow, and she flicks a switch. The bar lights all flicker on, and they are bright and blue.

Adam crouches, running a hand along the empty stone floor. “Ultraviolet.”

“What do you think?”

“Drugs.”

“That’s what I thought, but it doesn’t add up. If it was drugs, then Magpie would be making money, not spending it. Whatever he was growing here, I don’t think it was drugs.”

“What, then?”

She shrugs. “You’re the gardener.”

Pacing the long chamber, Adam searches the ground and the walls for any clue, but they’re naked – maybe even scrubbed clean. He pauses at the centre, and turns on the spot, but he can find no reasonable explanation for the hidden greenhouse.

There is a muffled thump from upstairs, and a loud cry, echoing down the stairwell.

“Owl’s here,” says Crow. “Time we got going.”

“Where next?”

She flicks the UV lights off, and the chamber is darkened once again. “Scotland,” she says, as she climbs the stairs.

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