Orange glove

Orange glove

         The gray-blue of the ocean, gently touched by a shy sunray, suddenly transforms into a mass of glittering sparkles. The dirty quilt, carelessly thrown over the hills regains its usual turquoise color embellished with the appliqué of sheep and lambs. This island is like a huge opal – a dull boulder in the dark, a fairy-tale of colors when held under light.
         Anna picks up her backpack and closes the gate behind her. Today she plans to walk along the beach and have a cup of tea in the old hotel on the other side of the bay.
         She moves slowly, inhaling the fresh morning air pungent with iodine and the smell of the decaying see weed. Murmur of waves, chattering of birds, soft cracking of stones under her feet. She has to watch her step carefully – the walk is not unpleasant, but some of the stones are unstable and slippery. She stoops to pick up an interesting- looking stone or shell, sometimes pauses to take pictures, or for a sip of water from her water bottle. There are not many tourists on this island, and thus the beach is almost pristinely clean – just a couple of inevitable plastic-bags brought here from – who knows where?
         The sun disappears, the wind rises again, and she feels a shadow of cold on her back. Suddenly a bright spot among the rocks: an orange fisherman’s glove entangled in a mess of blue net. Looking very incongruous here. What if it is a severed hand? Gingerly she approached and turns it cautiously with the tips of her toes.
         Then she stands still gazing in disbelief at the crushed fragments of bone and blackened flesh protruding from the glove.


         This huge dark house, almost a castle, once belonged to a prominent local family. Now it is a hotel situated in the only wooded area on this side of the island. A visitor would ordinarily approach from the main road, among moss-covered alder-trees. Though late in spring, some daffodils were still blooming, mixing with sweet-smelling lilies of the valley and yellow irises.
         Oak paneled dining room adorned with the stuffed heads of deer was somewhat cheered by the profusion of geraniums.
         The guests just stood up from an excellent lunch of venison pate and oat-crusted herring and were filing out to the balcony and settling in iron-cast chairs with their glasses of sherry and cups of tea.


         Anna continues along the beach. It rains, but she doesn’t notice the slow relentless drizzle. She walks in a daze. She should do something – but what? Inform the police, of course. Should she return? Should she go on? She decides that it would be best to push on and to call from the hotel.


         The patrons at the deck of the hotel become impatient. It’s been an hour since lunch, and the beach is still empty. Besides, it starts to rain, and the rain further diminishes everybody’s chances. Suddenly a small figure turns the corner of the promontory. Everybody springs to attention. The croupier appears from the recesses of the hotel – a tall and slightly revolting young man with pomaded hair and the beginning of beer-belly carefully sheathed in a purple tuxedo.
          “Ladies and gentlemen, your bets,” – announces he installing a black and white board on the empty table in the middle of the deck. The board is divided into 12 squares.
          “Malcolm, may I bet on two adjacent squares?” – mutters a frail old lady over her pot of tea.
          “Mrs. Witherspoon, I would dare to assume that after 12 years you could learn the rules” – admonishes Malcolm.
         Mrs. Witherspoon blushes guiltily and drops a pad of fifty pound notes on number 11.
         Meanwhile the figure on the beach approaches the green expanse of lawn directly opposite the hotel. From where they sit the guests judge that this is a woman, but she is still too far for them to be able to observe any details.
         Mrs. Witherspoon eagerly fixes her opera glasses on the woman. She doesn’t look very young, but seems to be in a reasonably good shape. Tall, shorthaired – the type that live to twist their bodies in yoga, Pilates and other unnatural pursuits. Also must be an experienced hiker, judging by her outfit – number 11 should be a good choice.
         She walks fast with a sure steady pace. A scary though momentarily paralyzes old Eva Witherspoon: what if the woman simply walks on, bypassing the hotel? She betted her last 600 pounds, and if she doesn’t win, she’ll lose her farm and her home to the mortgage company. And she knows full well that if the game doesn’t happen after the bets are made, the jackpot goes to the hotel.
         But no, everybody on the deck sighs with relief as Anna turns toward the hotel and steps on the green grass.
         Here is number one – a spot slightly darker than the surrounding grass. A sheep drowned in this bog only yesterday in a matter of seconds. But Anna, blissfully unaware of the danger, steps over the treacherous spot.
         Number two, to the right – a patch of quick sand. She manages to escape with her life again.
         The atmosphere on the deck grows tenser as the unlucky gamblers lose their bets and those still in the game become more and more agitated.
         After many years of gambling on the bog the locals know within a decimal of an inch the location of the twelve deadly spots that have claimed the lives of dozens of unfortunate tourists since the hotel started its clandestine casino.
          The owner of the place, the last in the venerable McLeod dynasty, certainly did well for himself. After the war, when the island suddenly became popular with the city people, he decided to turn his family castle into an hotel. Unfortunately, the proceeds were never sufficient to maintain the place and keep up the ambiance at the level he was accustomed to. The gambling on the life of the irrelevant strangers was a great idea that occurred to him in the middle of a sleepless night – and it worked great, as long as he continued to screen the guests and keep the local police unaware, or, at least, not too nosy.
         Anna jumps lightly from one heather clump to the next, escaping number 11. Eva slouches in her chair. Tonight she will have to use the vial of arsenic she saved for herself in the bathroom cabinet.
         Behind the dark gabled window upstairs Old McLeod aims his gun carefully. He’ll pull the trigger as soon as the woman is past number 12. Very few manage to escape all the 12 traps, but the rules provide no space for survival: now the jackpot will go to the hotel. And his pit bulls will be satisfied too. They became pretty famished after the fisherman game three weeks ago.