Town of the doomed souls

Chapter 2

"27th of May 1991 the abandoned car - blue Honda Accord of 1990 manufacture year is discovered on the forest road outside the town limits. The car is locked and has no visible damage. Twenty meters from the road there is a corpse of a young woman under a tree, with a gunshot wound in the head. The shot was fired of 10 mm self-loading Makarov pistol, which is found nearby.

According to the expert opinion the shot of this weapon led to the death of 24-year-old girl in May 26, 1991. The fingerprints of the deceased are found on the weapon indicated above, which confirmed the version of a suicide. The car keys are found in her jacket.

In the car, there are three letters on the passenger seat, bearing the same date of the May 26th 1991.

The first letter is addressed to her parents and her younger brother, the second to the police and the third one to a fictitious person.

The result of the third message's examination confirms that the girl was insane by the time of the suicide. No criminal case has been opened".

Farther on there were the detailed description of the location and the position of the corpse discovered by the locals, the testimony of relatives and acquaintances of the dead, all of them unanimously claimed her to be anything but insane.

No one has ever noticed any strangeness or any kind of mental disorders in her neither at an early nor at a juvenile age. All evidence came to one: she was quite sociable, kind, cheerful girl and a good friend. However, no one was able to remember anything of her personal life. Some asserted that she was lonely and rejected all the relationships with the opposite sex; others said she was a man-eater and changed partners as often as she changed her socks. The close relatives described her as a modest and a little secretive girl who did not like to share her problems, rarely took someone else's help and sought independence.

Less than a year before the incident, she bought a car on credit, which she subsequently used to get out of town to commit suicide.

The loan was not paid in full, and the car had to pass into the bank's possession, but her parents paid the remaining amount and bought the car out. To the question "why?" the mother of the deceased said: "She wanted this car; I won't be able to look her in the eye, if we are ever to meet in some other life".

"So, you believe that there are several lifetimes, as your daughter wrote in her letter, and one does not actually die but starts a new life?"

"My daughter believed that her soul was immortal, so why can't I?"

To the question, whether the deceased was related to any sect both friends and relatives agreed to be impossible. The girl always spoke negatively of such organizations, and opposed strongly to any sectarian agitation.

The faded photos showed the scene of the disaster: the left car on the muddy road, the notorious letters on the passenger's seat, and a broken body of the young girl in a still low grass under the canopy of an old oak as an abandoned rag-doll outstretched in an unnatural angle. Nearby there is a cold steel of a pistol fallen out of the weakened hand. Sopped in the rain threadbare jeans, windjammer over a striped T-shirt, white running shoes – there are no dark and depressed colors but brightness full of life and bloom. There's nothing that could threaten disaster.

Andrew turned a thin envelope in his hands; there was an inscription in an uneven female handwriting with high letters: "To our valorous police officers."

The message took only a half of a doubled sheet of once white writing paper.

"My dear representatives of the law and order,