Bird of Prey

“Bird of Prey” is a darkly amusing comment upon the realistic story of contemporary people and their problems: jealousy, adultery, sick pets, etc. JOHN

COLLIER makes it impossible to determine whether their problems were supernaturally created or whether magical circumstances merely made things worse. Collier, a man with a limber imagination, was one of the finest fantasists of this century and a master of irony and horror. Many of his stories have been televised by such respected directors as Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling.

Bird of Prey

BY JOHN COLLIER

The house they call the Engineer’s House is now deserted. The new man from Baton Rouge gave it up after living less than a month in it, and built himself a two-room shack with his own money, on the very farthest corner of the company’s land.

The roof of the Engineer’s House has caved in, and most of the windows are broken. Oddly enough, no birds nest in the shelter of the eaves, or take advantage of the forsaken rooms. An empty house is normally fine harborage for rats and mice and bats, but there is no squeak or rustle or scamper to disturb the quiet of this one. Only creatures utterly foreign, utterly remote from the most distant cousin-hood to man, only the termite, the tarantula, and the scorpion indifferently make it their home.

All in a few years Edna Spalding’s garden has been wiped out, as if it had never existed. The porch where she and Jack sat so happily in the evenings is rotten under its load of wind-blown twigs and sand. A young tree has already burst up the boards outside the living room window, so that they fan out like the stiff fingers of someone who is afraid. In this corner there still stands a strongly made parrot’s perch, the wood of which has been left untouched even by the termite and the boring beetle.

The Spaldings had brought a parrot with them when first they came. It was a sort of extra wedding present, given them at the last moment by Edna’s mother. It was something from home for Edna to take into the wilds.

The parrot was already old, and he was called Tom, and, like other parrots, he sat on his perch, and whistled and laughed and uttered his few remarks, which were often very appropriate. Edna and Jack were both very fond of him, and they were overwhelmingly fond of each other. They liked their house, and the country, and Jack’s colleagues, and everything in life seemed to be delightful.

One night they had just fallen asleep when they were awakened by a tremendous squawking and fluttering outside on the porch. “Oh, Jack!” cried Edna. “Get up! Hurry! Run! It’s one of those cats from the men’s camp has got hold of poor Tom!”

Jack sprang out of bed, but caught his foot in the sheet, and landed on his elbow on the floor. Between rubbing his elbow and disentangling his foot, he wasted a good many seconds before he was up again. Then he dashed through the living room and out upon the porch.

All this time, which seemed an age, the squawking and fluttering increased, but as he flung open the door it ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The whole porch was bathed in the brightest moonlight, and at the farther end the perch was clearly visible, and on the floor beneath it was poor old Tom parrot, gasping amid a litter of his own feathers, and crying, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

At any rate, he was alive. Jack looked right and left for traces of his assailant, and at once noticed the long heavy trailers of the trumpet vine were swinging violently, although there was not a breath of wind. He went to the rail and looked out and around, but there was no sign of a cat. Of course, it was not likely there would be.