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Saturday, April 24, 2010

Sleight of hand

Cally had always been repulsed by the withered hand her father kept in a glass box. It looked like a giant, wrinkled spider. She hated spiders.
"Why do you have to keep that thing?" she said, slumped over one of the tables in her father's pub, staring at it with a disapproving eye.
"Because it's part of the history of 'The Highwayman's Inn. It brings in visitors; and visitors mean money," her father huffed.
"I don't like it. It's creepy and just plain weird that people want to come here to see a severed hand," she retorted, turning to look through the window at the blizzard raging outside across the moorland.
"Not just any severed hand."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. It belonged to Red Crow, the notorious rogue gambler who had his hand chopped off for cheating the pub landlord out of five guineas," Cally recounted like a mantra.
No sooner had she said it there was a sudden smash behind the bar. Both her and her dad leapt back in fright.
"What was that?" Cally quivered.
"It was just a bottle," replied her dad. "It must have been unstable on the shelf."
Cally sat back on one of the wooden chairs, her heart thumping in her chest. She turned to look back at the thing in the glass case, only to find the door to the case open and the hand missing.

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