Young Writers Society

The next day, Willow woke up to the unpleasant sight of sunlight. Having the forecast expected rain, she had been very disappointed to find that it had now changed. It was supposed to be sunny all day instead.

But no matter, hoping out of bed, Willow drew out a crime scene investigation board complete with suspects and motives. When she was complete she found that she had gotten nowhere. She sighed, Willow knew that without questioning everyone in Reaper Manor, she was not going to have solid evidence.

Grabbing her recording device and knife, she headed down the spiraling staircase past the 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and down to the 1st. As she stepped off of the last step, she headed towards her mother, her first suspect.

“Hello, Mother,” Willow said, taking out her recorder and pushing the button to begin.

“Why Willow!” Her mother said, snapping her head around in surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

“I am here to question you,” Willow said bluntly

“I need to ensure that everyone in the Manor is irresponsible for the crime.”

Hazel’s face went blank and she began to stammer, “Why how nice of you!”

Willow rolled her eyes, she was done with her mother’s pleasantries. She wanted the truth, and she wanted it now.

“Mother,” Willow said, beginning to raise her voice, “tell me now, what is wrong? You seem to be rather jittery.”

Hazel continued to stammer, “Why — er — nothing is wrong with me. I simply was taken aback by your statement!”

“Mmhmm.” Willow muttered, “Then you won't mind answering a few questions, now will you?”

“Of course not sweetie! Why don’t you begin?” Her mother said.

Her voice was more even now and the possibility of her simply being surprised was slim, however, there was a chance, and therefore, Willow continued.

“Okay.” She said, “Question number one: where were you at the time of the murder?”

“Oh! Why that’s easy! I was in the library!” Hazel said, “It was a new moon out and I wanted to practice my transformation rituals!”

“Fine then. Next question.” Willow said, “How did you discover the murder?”

“Well,” her mother began, “I was transforming into a rat so that I could find the root of the rodent problem we’ve been having. I was following the other’s when I heard a scream. So I followed it into a secret room in the hidden basement and found Persephone Conner lying in a pool of blood.” Her mother shivered,

Remembering, “there were guts everywhere” she recounted, “she was dead, so I ran out of the room as fast as I could and alerted the police. I shouldn’t have however because they now think that it was me. But enough of that! What are you doing here?”

Willow glared at her mother, “I’m the one asking questions here, not you. But I do need to interview some of the others so you are free to go. At least for now.”

Returning to her room, Willow replayed the message over and over before finally copying the recording into a transcript. Her black hair fell loosely into her face from the sweat of the hot day.

Groaning, she leaned back into her chair. Why couldn’t she figure it out? There was clearly something wrong with the recording, but she couldn’t find what it was. Willow wasn’t used to this new feeling, and it was driving her insane.

she was about to crumple and throw out her sloppy transcript when there was a knock on the door.

“Willow?” A voice said as Mitchell stepped into the room “You good?”

“Oh yeah. I’m great.” Was her sarcastic reply

Mitchell grunted knowing that he was now dealing with an unhappy Willow, something that no one, not even her parents wanted to do.

“What do you want?” Willow snarled clearly not in a place to be spoken to, but MItchelle continued anyway, “I just interviewed Moone Delver, your butler, he said that he was howling at the full moon last night, but there wasn’t one, was there?”

Willlow’s eyes brightened at the realization and her mood began to lift, “You’re right!” She said jumping out of her chair “We need to confront him right now!”

She raced down the hall and spiraled down the twisting staircase before smacking into her brother, but she continued on paying no attention to him. He looked quizzically at Mitchell who just shrugged his shoulders and chased after Willow.

When Mitchell finally caught up with Willow, he grabbed her arm,

“We need to plan our approach.” He said, “If he really is the murder, he will likely have some sort of way to get himself out of hot water like this.”

Willow begrudgingly agreed and they both headed back up to her room to begin the plans.