Murder Mystery Part 5

This is how it all started...

And then we suspected our own...

Then we've lost one of our own....

And another...

Is there an end to this misery...?

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The atmosphere in the camp got even heavier when another comrade lost her life right in front of them.

In the span of three days, three of their own have been murdered in what every Greek demigod considers the “safest” place for halfbloods.

What was truly happening? What was the reason for all of this? Did the safest home for demigods nurture another traitor? Was it all a mistake that couldn’t be undone? Or was it simply done for… fun?

“Well this is officially a killing spree,” Kale said as he broke the bone-chilling silence that followed Diana’s death.

“Three murders in three days, it counts as a killing spree,” he responded to the confused look shot at him by the other remaining counselors.

“And how would you know that?” Shin challenged Kale’s seemingly amused take on the murders.

Kale shrugged and replied, “I read a lot of True Crime.”

“Can we please stop making light of these murders as if losing more of our comrades is such a trivial thing?” Levi interjects with obvious pain in his voice.

Levi suggested that they should trust each other and keep each other within their own sights. Not one counselor shall be left by themselves. Mr. D had to leave for a business in Mt. Olympus, while Chiron had to travel, himself, to the three dead campers’ families and attempt to explain their child’s death.

The chilling tale continued as the remaining four suspects gathered together in the big house, unsure of how to feel about each other.

“Would anybody like some tea?” Levi asked the three other counselors. They looked at him as if he was going mad. He can’t blame them though, after what happened to Diana. “That’s one cup of tea, then. I’ll be right back.”

“‘Not one counselor to be left by themselves.’ Your own words,” Shin said as he stood up to follow Levi.

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“But why would you make me lie about your alibi, Kale?” Shin and Levi heard Wild say as they were coming back from getting Levi’s tea.

The two men looked each other in the eye as if confirming that they should hear the rest of this conversation.

“I wasn’t lying. I really WAS with you.”

“Do you really think I wouldn’t notice? Making me untangle an impossibly tangled rope wasn’t enough to distract me for 30 minutes, at least!”

Kale sighed in annoyance, brow wrinkling as he looked around trying to find an out before his chest deflated and he mumbled his confession.

“Fine. You got me. I sneaked out of the Haunted House for a while, okay? But that wasn’t to murder Albert. I was tailing Shin!”

“Huh?” Wild was genuinely confused.

“Look, I wasn’t going to say anything about this for blackmai-,” Kale caught himself. “For personal reasons, but fine. I saw Shin sneakily leaving his duties and heading to the cabins suspiciously. He was very fidgety, too. So I decided to tail him wondering if something was wrong with him.”

“And?”

“And oh boy, you won’t believe what I discovered! You see, our badboy Counselor Shin was-” Kale was interrupted when a large flying object suddenly fell on him. That large flying object was the subject of his story, Shin himself.

“What in the name of Zeus are you-” Kale was again interrupted as Shin covered Kale’s mouth with his huge hand and dragged him away from the others.

Levi shook his head at the sight of his friends. It gave him the feeling of nostalgia, despite the current situation.

“Typical Shin and Kale,” Levi commented as he sat in one of the chairs placed by the window.

“You look oddly serene, as if you know for sure those two are innocent,” Wild sarcastically provoked Levi, but to no avail.

“Look, those two might seem too dangerous for their own good, but I hardly see them as murderers. I just can’t,” Levi responded as he sipped on his tea.

“Oh, really? That’s not how you acted on the first night of the murders. Or on Grace’s murder. And do you know what’s more bizarre? You look relieved after Diana’s death.”

“Relieved,” Levi let out a pained laugh at the insulting word used to describe him. “Well, you know what? Maybe I am. To be honest, I don’t even know what to make of this anymore. Until the end, I don’t want to believe, or confirm, that any of us could have done these killings. I just can’t. This is all so surreal, I feel like I’m trapped in my own nightmares, unable to wake up.”

“That’s nice and all, Levi, but look at the reality. How would I even know you’re not just baiting me right now?!” Wild’s nose flared up.

“Wild’s right,” Kale, hair and clothes quite disheveled from his wrestling with Shin, came back just in time to hear Levi’s heartfelt statement. “Whether we want to it it, or not, one of us did it.”

“Let’s recap again,” Shin said as he dropped himself on the couch. “Now that Kale has obnoxiously itted that he followed me during the time of Albert’s murder, that means Wild was left by herself in the Haunted House. Care to explain what you were truly doing inside by yourself, Wild?” Shin grabbed a throw pillow, snuggled it, and threw a questioning look at Wild.

“Like I said, I was untangling a rope that Kale threw at me!” Wild answered while glaring at Shin.

“And what was that rope for?”

“Ask Kale, he was the one who threw it at me!”

Kale shrugged, too busy fixing his hair. “Dunno, I just grabbed whatever I found to distract Wild for a while. And that rope was conveniently within my hand’s reach.”

Shin sighed at Kale’s uninterested response.

“Well, you saw what I was doin-” Shin cut-off his sentence, face bright red, when Kale smirked playfully at him. Shin threw the pillow he was snuggling with at Kale. Ruining, once again, Kale’s perfectly (well, almost) styled hair.

“Levi!” Shin shouted in an attempt to change the subject, which startled Levi and caused him to spill his tea on his lap. “You’re the only person left who saw Albert right before his death. The only other people who itted seeing Albert after the dinner horn was blown, were Grace and Diana. And the three of you met up AFTER you all have confirmed you saw Albert.”

“The only pattern I see in that statement is that I’m most likely the next one to die. Maybe of either a heart attack, or a third degree burn,” Levi responded, throwing Shin a deathly glare.

“How dramatic. I almost thought I was talking to Kale,” Shin retorted back, which earned him a smack on the head with the pillow he threw at Kale a few minutes earlier. “Fine then, let’s ask the most logical person in the room what she can deduct in that scenario. How about it, Miss Brainchild?”

Wild shot Shin a deathly glare.

Just how many deathly glares will Shin receive today?

Wild took a deep breath to calm her nerves before she responded. She closed her eyes, as if to picture the events that happened that night, according to Levi’s, Diana’s, and Grace’s statements. “After the dinner horn was blown, Levi was by himself doing the border patrol. He saw Albert sneak out of the dinner pavilion and intercepted him. Levi made Albert go back to the dinner pavilion, but never confirmed that Albert did go back to the pavilion. During this time, no one can confirm Levi’s statements, but we can assume that he was with Albert during this whole time. However, Grace said that Albert found her while she was waiting for Diana to come back. The last person who saw Albert, according to everyone’s statement, is Grace.”

“A dead lady. So much for being logical,” Shin tilted his head at Wild, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m not done yet! The following statements will be hypothetical, and I will be placing all of us in the place of the murderer. First, Shin and Kale. The two of you could have been working together this whole time. After Kale left my side, I tried to search the whole Haunted House for him, and then came back to the same spot to find him back in there. Kale could have met up with Shin and created a ridiculous, believable story, that sounds just like something the two of them would do. You could have committed the murder while I was out searching the other parts of the Haunted House until I found Kale back in the same spot we were working at together. The same goes for me. We could all deduct that I would have had the same amount of time to execute the murder while Shin and Kale were away doing whatever mischief they said they were doing in the cabins. Now, the problem with these three statements is the lack of knowledge as to where the murder weapon currently is at the time. Which brings us to the perfect suspect, the owner of the weapon. Levi would have the exact same opportunity Shin and Kale had while I was searching the other parts of the Haunted House. The only difference is that the murder weapon could be easily assumed to be with its owner. Opportunity plus murder weapon.”

Levi dropped his empty teacup a little carelessly on the table and spoke, “Speaking of murder weapons. I can’t help but notice that no one’s talking about the rope Albert was dangling from when we found him. Any thoughts on this? How about… oh yeah! I think it’s safe to say we can put that one in Wild’s own hands.”

“Or someone could have grabbed it while I was busy looking for Kale,” Wild and Levi exchanged a look, challenging each other.

“So we could all have killed Albert. And we could all have had the same motives. Albert was a piece of unmentionables we all would have been happy to get rid of. Let’s move on to Grace’s murder then,” Shin interrupted Levi and Wild’s battle of the deathly glares. “I was sound asleep during this whole conundrum, woke up to a scream and watched Diana out. Not long after that, Diana died right in front of all of us. Just what in Tartarus happened that night?” He threw the three other counselors a questioning look.

“The three of us were woken up when Diana came crashing into the Big House,” Wild explained. “We didn’t even notice when Diana went out, but she was deathly pale when she came back. That’s when Levi offered to make her some tea. But I went with Levi to prepare tea for the four of us.”

“I prepared the tea itself, and Wild helped with the condiments,” Levi confirmed.

“While I was alone with Diana, waiting for the tea, I her mumbling something about all of us being there, so it should be okay. I was worried about what happened to her so I tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t responding to me. She only had this blank look on her face. So I waited for the other two and just let Diana mumble to herself,” Kale shared his part of the story.

“So what I’m hearing is that either Levi and Wild slipped poison on Diana’s tea, or Kale could have subtly asked Diana to swallow something while Diana isn’t being herself, and no one is around to see it,” Shin deducted from everyone’s statements.

“Maybe, but I feeling very sleepy right after I drank the tea that Levi and Wild prepared. I almost thought I was next when I watched Diana die right in front of me,” Kale responded.

“Now that you’ve said that, I feeling very sleepy as well,” Levi said and turned to Wild.

“I- I did, too!” Wild replied to Levi’s questioning look. “Maybe it was an effect of the tea?”

“Possible. It was chamomile tea,” Levi confirmed.

“Again, any of us could have gone out and murdered Grace while everyone else was asleep. Motives? I can’t imagine any of us having a grudge for Grace and Diana. Weren’t they our role models? So what was the motive? Envy? Perhaps they were way too popular? Grace’s killer did try to frame Diana. Which one of us is envious enough of these two that they’d want them both gone? It’s the only motive that makes sense to me,” Shin rubbed his temples as he tried to make sense of the situation.

As he did, his own statement started to make sense to him. It would be the only motive, wouldn’t it? If it was that person who did all of this, it does make a lot of sense. This person has never been as close to those two after all. They followed around, sure. But the closeness made him question everything. Were they just being too close for the sake of revenge? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer? Yes, of course. That must be it.

“This is exhausting. Let’s stop talking about this for now,” Shin told the group, his eyes hovering on his suspect. He would rather confirm all of this first himself, before dragging the others.

“Good call,” Kale agreed. “It’s almost time for my beauty nap. Aphrodite would curse me if I neglected my beauty routine, even in the current situation.” He picked the biggest couch, and comfortably snuggled a pillow before he went on his merry way to the dreamland.

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After a satisfying nap, Kale woke up to an empty living room.

“So much for ‘not one counselor shall be left by themselves,’” he mumbled to himself as he stretched and lifted himself up from the couch.

He was about to look for the others when he heard a crash coming from the kitchen’s direction. He frowned, and groggily made his way to the kitchen. He heard another crash, this time it was accompanied by a heavy thud that sounded like something huge just fell on the floor. This prompted Kale to run for the kitchen.

The sight that greeted him almost made him think that he was still dreaming, or in a more appropriate term, he was having a nightmare.

Shin was sprawled on the floor, unconscious. If that was even the right word. Should he say… dead? Right on top of Shin was the gruesome image of the killer. An image he couldn’t even describe. The killer had a blank expression as they turned to look at him. The killer was holding a syringe, still filled halfway. Does that mean Shin could still very well be alive? Or was half of whatever is in that syringe enough to kill a huge guy like Shin?

Kale made very big mistake. It was too late when he realized it, though. Frozen on his feet... what was he doing there, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, when the killer was looking at him with bloodthirst in their eyes? Still frozen, he felt as the syringe pierced his chest. He felt the cold liquid coursing through his body. His eyes were entrapped by the killer’s own eyes, unable to look away. Was this how Shin felt? Kale felt powerless. Was it shock? Unbelievable shock that he couldn’t move a muscle? Kale wanted to ask a lot more questions. Never in his whole existence did he ever imagine that his last moments will be filled with unanswered questions, the feeling of betrayal, and utmost regret.

As his consciousness started to slip away, his last thoughts were…

The floor… it was cold.

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Please note that this is a collaborative project from all of us (the mod team). We encourage you to engage in the story and try to find out who the killer is. The comment section is open for all!

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