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

“Not yet.” Adam can see the cherry tree in the distance.

“You go on, lad,” rumbles Crab. “I’ll be right behind you.” Rolling a body over with the tip of one of his boots, he takes a bloodied rifle and begins to wipe it clean.

Walking through the greenhouse is disorientating. The shape of some of the hills is all too reminiscent of paradise, enhanced by the trees that stand upon them. The sight is just as corrupted as Adam’s grief-warped memories, though. For every piece of Eden here, there are so many other worldly plants at various stages of their limited lifespans. The recreation of paradise is only partial, and the recognition it evokes in Adam is flawed. He feels unsteady, as if the ground keeps shifting beneath his feet. Nevertheless, he advances, and when he reaches the foot of the hill bearing the cherry tree he draws two of his pistols, expecting at any moment to be fired upon.

There are no more shots. Nobody raises a rifle at him.

At the top of the hill a handful of the garden’s occupants are gathered around a pink mound. They are unarmed men and women, and they cower at the sight of Adam, shrinking back from the muddled heap at their feet. Adam holsters his guns and examines their work. They have removed Pig’s body from the cherry tree and covered in with twigs, and leaves, and a layer of bright pink petals. The burial is crude, and as Adam crouches beside it he can feel the new thorn of grief in him, piercing him sharply.

He glances around at the gathered people, whose expressions are twisted into masks of sorrow and regret, some possibly genuine. “Where’s Sinclair?” he asks, and they raise their hands in unison. They are pointing at the airlock. The doors have been opened, a dark portal leading into the house. Adam rises to his feet.

“Adam,” says a woman, her voice breaking. “We’re sorry. We’re all so sorry.”

For a moment, Adam considers leaving them here at the foot of the cherry tree, where Pig’s body lies cold. There should be mourners surrounding him, Adam thinks. Their tears should soak the soil, and the noise of their weeping should fill the air. They should dig him a proper grave, burying him deep in the earth among the roots of Eden’s cherry tree, and each of them should lament for days and weeks and years over his loss. They should be allowed to grow old and die here, their every remaining moment tormented with regret and sorrow.

The moment is brief, and when it has passed Adam kills them all.

* * *

By moonlight, Adam considers his pistols. Blood glints like black pearls where it is spattered across the metalwork. The stink of powder is overwhelming, and each gun’s handle is gritty and slippery.

Were he to kill Frank Sinclair with these, it would be a quick death.

Moonlight leaks in through a gap in the tall curtains of the house’s grand entrance hall, and while it renders every white marble statue a pale figure in its allotted alcove, it does not reflect in the dark waters that engulf the ground floor. Adam stands on the balcony above that black pool and drops his pistols into it one by one, sending white ripples across the glassy surface.

Frank Sinclair deserves so much worse.

The walls groan, and the halls sigh, and the rafters creak, and moonlight illuminates the worst of the desolation: the sagging ceiling and peeling wallpaper. Where the wood panelling has come apart, it reveals the uneven brickwork hidden behind it. Once-proud faces stare down at Adam from the portraits, hollow eyes within tarnished frames, and a great many of them resemble Frank Sinclair, he thinks.

Rook is waiting before a thin staircase, ghostly in the gloom. Without his glasses, the deep shadows across his face make his features especially bird-like. “Are they all dead?” he asks.

“Almost all of them.”

“Good.” Rook nods at the stairs. “Frank is hiding in the attic.”

The staircase is slender enough that Adam has to shuffle up it sideways.

“Adam?”

He pauses at the wooden hatch. “What is it?”

“You have no guns.”

When Adam throws the hatch back, its rusted hinges moan. “They’re not cruel enough,” he says.

There are gaps in the roof where tiles have fallen. Beyond them is the looming sky, filled with whirling black clouds which have parted to reveal the full moon in all its glory. The moon glares like a great white eye, and Adam glares back, studying the wisps of clouds that swirl slowly across it. When he turns to the darker recesses of the attic, an after-image remains in his vision.

The attic is enormous. It seems to encompass the entire length of the house, and is filled with all manner of chests and furniture. The floorboards are dry, and they creak precariously as Adam slowly advances. He watches for movement in the deepest shadows.

All the remnants of the lives once lived in the house reside up here, and Adam reads them as he would a book. There are multiple television sets, and radios, and a handful of record players and gramophones. Pieces of damaged art badly in need of restoration are piled up together, and there are cots and toys and even a doll’s house packed away in one corner. A shaft of bright moonlight illuminates a heap of birdcages, and hamster cages, and an elaborate rabbit’s hutch, and there are multiple lengths of chicken wire still stained with guano. In some places the floor has fallen through, leaving great black gaps that Adam navigates around. The floorboards complain constantly as he makes his way through piles of ancient rugs, and chests brimming with clothes, and glass-fronted cupboards filled with old books and board games.

The blackened metal husk of a fireplace and its accompanying ornaments lie up against a chimney stack, and there among them is a garish sword rack holding a pair of crossed cutlasses. Heaving at the rack until it comes free, Adam bashes