I was reading a book called “And Then There Were None”. I started it today, and I was still in the first few chapters. The characters received letters that told them to go to an island called “Indian Island”. I found it boring and was looking at the sentences without knowing what they meant. Everything around me became blurry and all the sounds disappeared. I could not move, and could not speak. My eyelids were still half closed and I could not see things.
When things were all clear again, I found myself in a strange land. It was in the evening. The last half of the setting sun floated on the never-ending horizon of the sea, dying the sea water around it red and orange, and formed a light, pink veil on the clouds.
Everywhere in my vision of sight was peaceful. On the beach, there was a mere cluster of cottages with a few fishing boats drawn up. As I continued looking around, I spotted a group of people. I looked away from them, but, my attention was caught by a pair of cold, grey eyes. The owner of the eyes was an old half-bald man. He was in a black suit and had sparse grey hair around his ears, which gave him a serious and dignified appearance. I tried to escape his stare, but every time I looked away and carefully looked back, he was always looking at me directly into my eyes, into my brain, searching for everything he wanted to know from me. I turned around quickly and walked in the opposite direction from the man. I felt that there was someone looking at me from behind. I looked down instead of turning around, making every step on the road to look normal, easy, and buried my fear deep into my heart.
When I finally got to a small house, I hid on a side of the house and looked back carefully. The man was already talking with the other people in the group, but at the time I looked at him, he turned to my direction and gave me a weird smile: “You looked normal. You can leave now.”. As he looked away, I fled towards the other side of the beach.
I rushed to the edge of the beach and sat down to have a rest. Just then, I saw a middle-aged man driving a motorboat. Looking confused, he grabbed his fluffy brown beard every few seconds. He looked at me, and stopped the boat on the beach, then sat down side by side with me. He must have thought I was a villager living in one of those cottages. The man sighed first. He said no greetings, but started straight away: “I took a group of strange guests onto the Indian Island. They were so odd that they do not seem to know each other at all and do not seem like friends of a millionaire, which Mr. Owen must be.”
I could not understand him at first. What were “Indian Island “the strange guests” and “Mr. Owen”? And then, I remembered that I had read those nouns in a book, a book called “And Then There Were None”. Indian Island was a small island bought by a millionaire, Mr. Owen. “And the strange guests”, I thought carefully, and jumped. They were the group of people, including the bold man. I was in the book!
“Those guests were odd. There was an old maid-the sour looking kind, an old military gentleman-real Army by the look of him, a nice-looking young lady-but the ordinary kind, not glamourous-no Hollywood touch about her. And there was a retired tradesman, a hungry-looking gentleman with the quick eyes, and the last gentleman, the one who had arrived in the car.
“I suspected that this Mr. and Mrs. Owen were a strange kind of millionaires—I have never met him and he always gave me instructions by letters. Mr. Owen must be a different kind of gentleman. What if he was only a thief, or, maybe a murderer, that was gathering other criminals on the island to plan something? And maybe his name was also faked!” He continued. I then told him the strange man staring at me. We discussed the possible identities of the man and the reason he did this.
After the discussion, we realized that it was already late now. Fred, the owner of the boat, invited me into his small hut. I looked up and found a window on the top of the hut and counted the stars. It was a night of sleeplessness. I thought of the strange group of people and there was an inexplicable bad feeling in my gut. I wanted to get back to reality to read the book. Nothing dangerous had happened yet, however, I still felt safer to read the book than experience the things happened in the book.
The next day, Fred got up early to deliver food and drinks to the Indian Island with his motorboat. I stayed on the beach watching the sea. And here I could see the so-called Indian Island. There was no house visible on it. The island appeared as a boldly silhouetted black rock that looked like a giant Indian's head and was surrounded by an ominous gray haze. I shivered and buried my hands and feet into the sand. It felt warm and gave me a feel of safety.
After an hour or so, Fred got back. I saw him shivering. His face was pale and his lips went a little purple. He sat down and started. This was what he told me:
“I drove my motorboat to the Indian Island and walked to the house with the food and drinks. Just then I heard that all the people in the house were discussing something. When I heard it carefully I found out: one of the ten guests died yesterday—he choked himself when he was drinking. That was impossible. He must be poisoned by someone in the house. And also, the owner of the house—Mr. and Ms. Owen never appeared. Everyone was afraid and was trying to get out of the island. I was scared and left the island quickly. The murderer must be one of the guests, and if the other guests saw me, they would take my boat back to the mainland here, and the murderer must kill me—well he could have planned to kill the other guests and I broke his plan.”
He sat down and looked towards the Indian Island: “I will never go to that island again. It was dangerous and everything was strange.” We walked back to the hut, and I heard Fred yelling. He was holding a letter and, on the envelope, wrote “To Mr. Fred Narracott”. He took the letter out slowly. The first few lines of words appeared in front of our eyes, and Fred stopped reading. I took a look at the letter and also froze. A letter that was printed with a typewriter. The paper and the fonts were a little familiar. Through the text, I could see a blurry black figure waving at me, with a stare and a smile that I have seen somewhere. The man! The figure started to have a face and I could see that he was the man that had starred at me for a long time when I first got to the island. I gasped and focused on the words again. It was a short letter, simply telling Fred that he did not need to send food onto the island again.
“Then the guests on the island had no food!”
“And that was the intention of the murderer!”
We both looked at the signature at the end of the letter. “U. N. Owen.", the Mr. Owen that we were both suspecting. He must be the murderer.
We started to know that the guests on the island must be in danger. If we drove the boat to the island now they could be saved, however, both of us were too scared to even look at the black figure far away on the sea again. We were waiting, waiting for something that was predictable, but inevitable.
Soon after a few days, we saw police coming onto the island, and they were holding stretchers. When we came closer we were stopped by the guards, however, I still saw that in the stretchers were ten dead people. They were murdered by different things, but all looked scary.
I woke up and noticed myself sleeping on my desk, head resting on the book “And Then There Were None”. Instead of the beginning, the book was already turned to the end.
