(A.N.) I lied, sorry. But, it's updated now, so don't be mad, please! D:

Chapter Three

Garry's POV

The staircase seemed to go on forever. The walls around me faded slowly from white to a deep red. I had just started thinking that I should turn around when I reached the bottom. The first thing I saw in this large room was a vase of water with a single blue rose sitting in it. How strange, I thought, I've never seen a blue rose before. Is there dye in the water? But as I reached out to touch the rose, I saw that the water was perfectly clear.

When my fingers made contact with the smooth stem, I felt a strange prickling sensation. I suddenly felt very vulnerable just standing there. I turned around to go back up the steps, but the gap in the wall through which I had come was no longer there. I stood there for a moment, stunned. I felt my grip on the rose's stem slacken, and it fell to the ground with a dull 'flump'. Just then, I felt a sharp pain on my arm. I rolled up my sleeve and saw a rather nasty cut just below my elbow. Puzzled, I reached down to pick up the rose again, when I noticed a few petals had fallen off when I dropped it. I held the rose above the vase so that the stem touched the water, and it instantly grew its missing petals back. I noticed that the pain in my arm had gone, so I rolled back my sleeve again, and saw that the cut had gone completely, not even leaving a red mark in its wake.

Looking around, I started to realize just how familiar this entire situation was: this hall, the rose and its healing power, and the painting of a lady in a blue dress on the opposite wall. I started. I hadn't noticed her painting before. It scared me for reasons I couldn't explain. I hurried down the hallway and through a door, all the while keeping my eyes on the painting. I shut the door and leaned against it.

I held my head in my hands and slid down the door, trying desperately to make sense of all these disjointed memories. The gallery, the girl, the rose, the hallway, the painting; why do I recognize them?!

I took a deep breath, and focused.

I'm walking down an impossibly long staircase. I'm starting to get nervous, and I'm going to turn back when I notice that the staircase opens into a room in just a few dozen steps. I hurry down the last of them, and look around the room I've found myself in. I see a painting similar to one that I saw in the gallery, but she's wearing blue, not red. I spot a lovely blue rose in a vase. I gingerly remove it from the water, and examine it closely. With my back turned to the painting, I suddenly hear a large shattering sound. I freeze up for a moment, and slowly turn around. 'The Lady in Blue' had busted the glass out of the front of her painting, and her front half was sticking out of the frame. She was baring her fang-like teeth, and she was crawling towards me at an alarming pace. She was upon me almost instantly. The force of the impact knocked me on my back. She crawled up onto my stomach, and started biting and clawing at the hand that held the rose. I threw the rose away from me, and she scuttled after it. I hurriedly stood up, shaking. I had horrid scratches on my left hand and arm. I started backing away as the painting began gnawing at the rose. I noticed that as she ate away at it, the more pain I felt. I fled the room, and spotted a key lying near the doorframe. I used it to lock the thing in the room, and started down a long hallway. I had just barely made it through the door at the end, when the accumulated pain became too much, and I collapsed. Time passed in a blur, when I saw, through my fuzzy vision, a young girl looking down at me with a concerned expression. She took the key that I had clutched in my hands and turns around. I try to protest, but I'm so weak it hurts for me to breathe. I black out. I wake to the same girl shaking my shoulders and calling out. I realize that the pain is gone. I crawl backwards hurriedly, telling her to stay back. She responds by holding out the blue rose, now fully healed. I apologize and introduce myself, and ask her what her name is. She looks at the ground and, in a shy little voice says "Ib."

I snapped out of my reverie to the sound of someone pounding on the door I was leaning against. I quickly stood up. So, that was why I had vaguely recognized Ib. She and I had been here before. Five years ago. And I had wanted to stop her from going down that hallway because that was how she had gotten stuck here last time. And that meant…

I started down the hallway at a run. Ib was in here, and I needed to find her.

Ib's POV

I realized that I had stopped sinking, so I opened my eyes.

I was standing in a navy blue hallway that was decorated with unusual paintings. Where am I? Where's Maddi?! I thought, desperately looking around. I turned left and dashed down the hallway. At the end, there was simply a clear glass vase with a single red rose resting against the side. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I couldn't resist taking it. I turned around, and there was a word scrawled on the floor that hadn't been there a moment ago.

THIEF.

I took a deep breath and started back down the corridor. This all seemed uncomfortably familiar. There was a single door at the end of the hallway. It was locked. I looked to my right and saw a table with a pen and a piece of paper that said 'Sign In Here Please'. So I wrote my name in shaky penmanship. No sooner had I lifted the pen from the paper that it rolled into a tight scroll and disappeared. How strange.

I heard a click, and the door in front of me swung open. Slightly perturbed, I walked through the door-frame. The walls were a deep green, and lined with paintings of insects. I started to walk through the narrow room, but clawed hands shot from the walls, and scratched at my hair, my clothes, and any exposed flesh. I ran through the last of them, crying out from pain. There was another door, but it was locked from the other side, so I just stood there, looking down the room, my breath shaking.

"Hello again," I heard a tiny voice say.

I looked around but I didn't see anyone.

"Down here," It said impatiently.

I obediently looked down, and I saw nothing but a tiny ant.

"Oh, uh, hello," I said uncertainly.

"You're starting to remember this place, aren't you?" the ant asked in a flat voice.

"So I have been here before?!"

The ant nodded.

"It'll be alright. He's in here with you. He'll be along shortly."

"Who?"

"I never learned his name. You just need to stay calm and remember all you can, because things are changing, and you'll need all the knowledge you can get."

The sudden flood of memories caught me off guard. I remembered the carnivorous paintings, the rose that connected me to life, the mannequin heads; everything. The world started spinning, and I lost my balance. As I fell to the floor, that last thing I recalled was a man with purple hair and a friendly smile reaching out to me: my friend, Garry.

And then the world went black.

Not my favorite part of the story so far, but it had to be written. I'll update soon!

By the way, a lot of this is pre-written, and I had to chop it up, so if the end of the chapters seem kind of awkward, I'm sorry.

If you notice any grammatical errors, please point them out to me, and I will fix them; I wrote this pretty late at night, so I might not have caught them all.