The wind howled outside, whipping through the streets of WolfTown, Pennsylvania, with an icy ferocity that rattled the very windows of the Wolf’s Inn. Snow cascaded in thick, blinding sheets, and ice coated the roads like an unforgiving glaze. It was December 18th, 1936, and the Holiday Festival had drawn many to the town, filling every room in the inn with travelers who now found themselves trapped due to the storm. No cars could pass through, and no emergency services could come to the rescue. The guests had no choice but to wait out the blizzard together.
Among them was Mabel Arta, a retired detective from the neighboring town of Lonesdale. With a sharp mind honed by years of solving intricate cases, Mabel had come to WolfTown seeking nothing more than a few days of respite and merriment. But fate, it seemed, had other plans.
She sat at the desk in her modest hotel room on the fifth floor, the flickering light of the desk lamp casting elongated shadows against the pale wallpaper. A cup of coffee sat cooling beside her as she carefully inked her thoughts into her leather-bound diary, detailing her travel and the unexpected storm. The hotel, though quaint, carried a peculiar air about it. Something felt… off. But she dismissed the feeling as nothing more than exhaustion.
Then, a sound shattered the stillness of the night.
Glass breaking. Four doors down.
Mabel’s head snapped up. The walls were thin enough that the noise reached her clearly. Instinct kicked in before logic, and she rose, slipping on her overcoat over her nightdress. The hallway was dim, the wall sconces casting a dull amber glow, flickering as if in tune with the storm outside. A deep sense of foreboding settled over her as she neared the source of the noise.
The door to room 514 stood ajar, swaying ever so slightly as though someone had just passed through. Mabel’s breath hitched. She hesitated, then, carefully, nudged the door open further.
“Hello? Is everything alright?” Her voice was steady, but her heartbeat was anything but.
Silence.
She reached for the switch and flipped on the light.
The sight before her made her stomach drop. A broken lamp lay shattered across the floor, jagged glass glistening against the worn carpet. But more striking than that—was the body. A brown and black-furred wolf lay sprawled across the bed, his shirt stained crimson. Blood pooled beneath him, and a knife, the handle still protruding from his ribs, gleamed menacingly in the light.
Footprints. Bloody, leading from the bed to the door. The assailant had fled.
Mabel barely had time to process what she was seeing before a blood-curdling scream erupted behind her. She whirled around to find a young woman, one of the guests, standing in the hallway, her hands clamped over her mouth in horror.
Within moments, doors flung open up and down the corridor. Guests poured out, their groggy faces turning into masks of alarm as they saw the scene unfolding.
“What’s happened?” barked a voice, deep and commanding. The inn’s owner, Mr. Howard Hargrove, an imposing gray-furred wolf in a neatly pressed vest, pushed through the growing crowd.
Mabel straightened, her detective instincts already slotting into place. “There’s been a murder. We need to seal this hallway immediately. The killer may still be among us.”
As the guests gathered in the hotel’s lounge, the storm raged on outside, trapping everyone within the walls of the Wolf’s Inn. The victim was soon identified as Theodore “Theo” Lattimore, a traveling businessman with no known enemies—or so it seemed. Mabel sat in one of the plush lounge chairs, a notebook in her lap, as she eyed the gathered suspects. The diner’s warm lights flickered, and the occasional gust of wind rattled the windows. She knew one thing for certain—whoever had killed Theo was still in this very room.
Vivian Clarke, the woman who screamed, was a socialite visiting town for the festival. Was she truly just a horrified bystander, or was there more to her reaction? Samuel Hargrove, the innkeeper’s son, had been acting strangely all evening, lurking near the fifth-floor hallway just before the murder. Elliot Finch, a reclusive writer, kept mostly to himself but had a room directly beside Theo’s. Lucian “Lucky” Moran, a known gambler and conman, had been seen arguing with Theo earlier in the evening in the hotel diner. Then there was Agatha Wren, the hotel’s head maid, who had been cleaning the floor earlier that day. She knew the ins and outs of the hotel better than anyone.
Mabel knew she needed to act fast. The footprints showed a rushed escape—but where had the killer gone? And why had Theo been targeted?
She began speaking to the staff, asking about the last time Theo was seen alive. Agatha remembered seeing him leave the diner around 10:30 PM, heading toward his room with a drink in hand. The bartender confirmed this, adding that Theo had appeared uneasy, as though someone were watching him. A guest who had been playing cards in the lounge recalled seeing Vivian Clarke get up around the same time, saying she needed water. But if Vivian had only gone for water, why had she been the first at the scene? And why was there no glass of water found near her when she screamed?
Determined to get answers, Mabel examined the bloody footprints more closely. They weren’t random—they led to the room next to Theo’s, not Elliot Finch’s, but Vivian’s. When questioned, Vivian insisted she had nothing to do with it, that she merely stumbled upon the body. But Mabel had seen something odd—a faint smudge of red on the hem of Vivian’s gown.
Mabel pressed further, retracing her steps and interviewing others again. Lucky Moran admitted that Theo owed him money, but he scoffed at the idea of killing over a gambling debt. Samuel Hargrove, however, seemed nervous. “I saw Vivian heading upstairs before Theo left the diner,” he admitted. “I thought she was just going to her room, but… I don’t know. She seemed in a hurry.”
That was enough for Mabel. She needed a new approach—evidence beyond a knife. She found the inn’s records, searching for any past dealings between Theo and Vivian. It turned out Theo had been blackmailing Vivian, using information from her past against her.
A confrontation between them was inevitable.
Mabel called everyone together in the lounge and reconstructed the night piece by piece. She pointed out inconsistencies in Vivian’s story, revealing the lies woven into her alibi. Under the mounting pressure, Vivian finally cracked.
“Fine! Yes, I killed him! He was threatening to ruin me!” she sobbed. “I had no choice! I confronted him, and we struggled… It was an accident!”
As the storm continued to howl outside, the case was closed. The guests, though shaken, finally found a moment of peace. And Mabel, as always, had found the truth hidden in the storm’s shadow.
I felt that this story ran a bit short and fell into a bit of a creativity block so in the future I plan to make the story longer.
