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𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄, the witches and wizards weren't even sure that it was morning. There were no windows in the attic, making the space as dismal and bleak as it had been the night before. The torches were still burning by their own magical devices, but they seemed to have dimmed throughout the night.

The group of witches and wizards acknowledged each other as they awoke, but they kept their voices to themselves. They were still absorbed in their thoughts from the previous night. Somewhere below, they could hear a clock ticking faintly, pulsing through the Shack. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock...

"So..." Jackson said, breaking the unnerving silence at last. "What's the plan?"

"We need to investigate," Willow answered, rubbing her weary eyes as she stretched out her legs.

"But how are we supposed to do that with the inferi still lurking around?" Thomas asked, the sleepy tone in his voice turning to nervousness. He wrapped his arms around Mr. Boddy, who was still fast asleep in his lap.

"We're going to need more torches," Penny spoke up.

"I thought we couldn't burn the Shack down," Jesse argued.

"We're not going to burn the Shack down," Penny replied with a roll of her eyes. "But we can at least use the torches to fend them off. They don't like fire so they won't come near us as long as we're holding them."

"Are you confident about that?" Luc asked, his brow arched.

"If you have any better ideas, I'm all ears," Penny retorted. Luc remained silent.

"So what are we supposed to be searching for?" Madelynn asked, taking the opportunity to change the topic before Luc thought up a witty response.

"Anything out of the ordinary," Willow answered. "Anything that stands out."

"So, the entire Shack then?" Jesse quipped.

"We found the host's initials, didn't we? There's got to be more clues that they've left behind."

"Okay fine, but no splitting up this time," Jackson announced. She stared intensely at each group member in turn until they met her eyes and nodded their heads in agreement.

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"Scooby-Doo didn't prepare me for this," Jesse whimpered as he clambered down the attic ladder. The group had listened intently for any inferi below, and after hearing none, decided that it was safe to start investigating.

"Scooby-what?" Luc asked, arching an eyebrow.

"It's an animated cartoon about a group of a teenagers and their talking dog who solve mysteries," Jackson answered, grabbing a torch from the wall.

"Wadsworth, is that one of those things you watch on the muggle picture boxes?" Luc asked, eliciting a small gasp and a look of surprise from everyone else in the group.

"Wait, are you two getting along now?" Willow asked, filling the silence that enveloped the group.

"No," Luc retorted instinctively, his brows furrowed and his mouth set tight. After a second to think, his face softened and he added, "I mean, I guess."

Thomas offered Luc a small smile in forgiveness when Luc's eyes landed on him. "Yes, and it's called a television, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, right," Luc replied quietly, his cheeks turning a light shade of pink in embarrassment.

"Shall we get a move on?" Jackson offered, extending her arm down the hallway.

"Where are we even going?" Thomas asked. Mr. Boddy meowed in agreement at his ankles.

"I think we should re-examine the rooms where we found the bodies," Willow answered. "Maybe there's some clues that we missed."

"The first one was on the second floor," Jackson reminded them.

"Let's go," Willow said as she took the lead, heading down the hallway to the stairs.

The rest of the group nodded and followed after but they were stopped cold by an unearthly scream coming from the second floor.

"Inferi," Penny whispered, straining her ears for any other movement. Slow, heavy steps accompanied the scream, moving closer and closer to the stairs.

"Looks like the stairs aren't an option," Luc sighed.

Willow paused for a moment before turning back towards the group. "I know another way."

The group of witches and wizards watched in confusion as Willow disappeared into a room halfway down the hallway. Their confusion grew even more when they entered the room and found a billiards table and no way out.

"How's this supposed to help?" Jackson asked, glancing around the room for any trap doors or exits.

"Just wait," Willow replied. Once the last person had stepped foot in the room, the door slammed shut behind them, startling everybody and causing Jesse to scream.

"Sorry," Jesse apologized sheepishly.

Willow skirted the room until she reached the door, carefully pulling it open and peering outside to make sure that they were alone. When she was satisfied that there were no inferi waiting on the other side, she pushed the door open further and crept out into the hallway. The inferi they had heard below them had already climbed the stairs and they could now hear it tramping around on the floor above them.

"This way," Willow informed the group in a whisper, leading them two rooms down to the room where they had found the first body.

Once the witches and wizards exited the billiards room, they were surprised to find that they were on a completely different floor, but another scream from somewhere deep in the Shack pushed them to forget about it and keep moving. They maneuvered around the black puddle of dried blood that slicked the hardwood floor until they were all crowded inside and the door was shut.

"Other than the blood, I don't know what we expect to find in here," Jackson said as she scanned the fairly empty space. The room appeared to be a guest bedroom, with only a bed, a nightstand, and a dresser pressed into the farthest corners of the room. The bed had only a ratty quilt folded over it and several of the dresser drawers hung open, displaying nothing but cobwebs inside.

"Doesn't the arrangement of the furniture seem a little...odd?" Penny pointed out, her eyes studying the angles of the bed and the dresser and how crowded the furniture was given the space.

"How do you mean?" Thomas asked.

"I hadn't noticed it earlier because I was distracted by the body, but doesn't it seem like somebody pushed the furniture out of the way to make room for the body?"

Hearing Penny's words, the group began to re-examine the room and were surprised to realize that the blood seemed to be center-stage in the room, not a spot of it touching any of the furniture.

"So the murderer...moved the furniture...before killing the boy?" Jesse asked as he put the pieces together. "But it doesn't make sense...Isn't murder messy? Don't people fight back? It seems too staged."

"Exactly," Penny replied. "Which makes me think...maybe nobody was killed here."

A collective exclamation of, "What?" echoed around the room.

"Miss Peacock mentioned how we haven't heard any screams..." Luc said, remembering their conversation from the day before. "You could be right."

"We should check the other rooms to see if they're the same," Willow suggested.

The witches and wizards didn't make it far down the hallway when they heard a loud thumping coming down the stairs, spawning the realization that the inferi from the third floor was making its way back down.

"I've got this," Madelynn announced determinedly with narrowed eyes. She took a deep breath before grabbing a torch off the wall and heading towards the stairs. The rest of the group stared after her in awe, as they were too scared to do anything else.

Madelynn's heart beat harder in her chest with every step she took closer to the stairs. She could hear the shuffling of broken limbs climbing up the steps, the labored grunts of the inferi's determination to reach them and kill them. Madelynn gripped the torch in her hands tighter, waiting for the inferi to round the steps and come into sight. Her fear was threatening to incapacitate her but she pushed past it. Whatever was coming up those stairs couldn't be worse than seeing her own mothers turn into monsters.

When the inferi's head came into sight, Madelynn charged, holding the torch out in front of her. Upon seeing the fire, the inferi screamed, a raw gurgling erupting from its mangled throat, and immediately began it's descent down the stairs. Madelynn pursued it until it scurried off into another room on the first floor, making the stairs clear.

When Madelynn re-emerged at the top of the stairs, the group of witches and wizards at the end of the hallway let out a small gasp, cowering against each other until they realized that it was Madelynn and not an inferi.

"Coming?" Madelynn asked. The group responded by sprinting towards her and nearly knocking her down as they passed her on the stairs. "You're welcome!" she shouted after them with a sigh, though nobody acknowledged her.

Madelynn rushed to keep up with the group, grumbling the whole way down, until she was stopped suddenly at the bottom of the stairs. "What is it?" she asked, trying to peer around the witches and wizards frozen in front of her.

When nobody answered, Madelynn began to push her way through until the group had split enough for her to see what had stopped them in their tracks. When her eyes landed on the source of their fixation, she too, froze to her spot. For before her, was something she thought she'd never see.

An inky blackness spilled into the foyer, curling around the furniture and licking the walls. But this was not what everybody was staring at, rather, they were staring at the source from which the darkness came...

The front door of the Shrieking Shack wide open on its hinges.

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A/N: A bit of a shorter chapter but we're getting closer to the end! And when I say end, I mean multiple alternate endings where anything can happen! If you've made it this far, thanks for keeping up with the story and I hope you have a great weekend!

Who do you think opened the door and why?