Suicide Tree || ✓

9. The Suicide Horror

My straggly hair was slowly being combed by surprisingly delicate fingers. We were in Jasper's private dressing room (complete with a bathroom that consisted of a bathtub and a bed) in Abaddon. I didn't quite realize the full extent of his street-fighting fame till now. He had taken me here the moment he noticed blood dripping from my head.

The cold water was soothing to the previously burning sensation and my headache was no longer present. Jasper leaned across the edge of the bathtub and turned off the water before handing me a fluffy, dark blue towel.

"I'm sorry, but I can't really do more than clean it," I was carefully patting my hair dry when I froze. This is the first time I've heard him say 'sorry'. I glanced up at him too see him looking guilty but the moment he met my curious gaze he covered it up with the same mask of indifference.

"It's not your fault," I said, keeping my gaze trained on him. "I'll be fine," Jasper shrugged and avoided looking at me.

"We need to make a list of suspects," he stated, throwing the slightly bloody towel in the laundry bag. I nodded, sighing with disappointment at his inconspicuous change of topic.

"So, what do all the incidents have in common?" I asked, thinking back to the events of the past month.

"We know that they all have something to do with suicide -" Jasper began speaking.

"About that - what is the Suicide Horror?" I interrupted. Jasper shot me an incredulous look.

"How can you live here and not know about it?" I shrugged sheepishly.

"I only moved here like two years ago," I said defensively. "I do know that there were a lot of suicides done at the willow tree a long time ago but other than that I never really bothered to check on the full story..." Jasper exhaled deeply through his nose.

"The Suicide Horror happened around the 1900's where there were a series of suicides committed by people of this town - and they all took place at the willow tree - thus the name, Suicide Tree," Jasper explained quickly, robotically.

"But was there a reason? Like people lost in war or some sort of famine that caused depression..." I trailed off when Jasper began shaking his head.

"That's what's so weird about it, no one knows why - no close relatives, or family friends of the victims had any idea why it was happening. And the most peculiar thing was that just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Some say it was another witch trial but there's another, more popular theory. Legend has it that the entire thing was focused on two people, a boy and a girl, who had been affected badly by the suicides because every single victim was in one way or another related to one or both of them. Weeks after the suicides started, both of them disappeared. Finally, three days after their disappearance, the girl was found hanged at the Suicide Tree and her boyfriend somehow convicted for her murder. After that, the suicides stopped completely, and people began to wonder whether the boy and girl had something to do with it."

I could feel dread gnawing at my insides the more I learned of the Suicide Horror. I gulped audibly but Jasper took no notice as he continued to stare off into space.

"But that's just a legend," he said, suddenly snapping out of his reverie. A chilling thought came forth as I began to see the similarities between then and now.

"What if, this psychopath who is most probably behind the killings, is trying to recreate the past?" for a moment, it was so silent you could hear a pin drop.

"But then they're doing a pretty bad job of it," Jasper said shaking his head in disagreement. "I mean, they burned Melinda alive while she was a comatose patient - anybody can see that there's something wrong with that and Cindy didn't exactly commit suicide, the doctors killed her," he said, spitting out the last part. "I don't think they're trying to recreate the past," I nodded unsurely, still feeling the circumstances to be too similar to be considered coincidental.