Chapter 5

The first thing I saw was a picture of a guillotine. My eyes wandered around the room, and I saw that it was not just one picture, but a set of pictures. We walked past them down the hallway, and I couldn't help but notice how each picture showed the guillotine raised higher than the previous one.

At the end of the hallway, there were stairs leading downwards. Directly across from the stairs was the last picture, where the guillotine was no longer visible. I swallowed. I had a really bad feeling about this.

Terra stopped walking. She, too, seemed to notice the odd pattern of the guillotine pictures. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, Kasey started heading towards the stairs, Terra grabbed her and jerked her back with such force that they both dropped to the floor. All three of us watched as an actual guillotine flew down and smashed the ground before us. Then it slowly rose up again.

Terra stood up, narrowing her eyes at Kasey. "Are you crazy? What were you thinking? That thing could've crushed you to bits!"

Kasey was breathing hard, and it seemed as though she realized just what would have happened if Terra had not pulled her back in time, She was visibly trembling.

Terra's expression softened and she gently pulled Kasey to her feet. She squeezed her hand. "It's okay. You're okay... Just try to be more careful next time, all right?"

Kasey gave her a small nod but didn't say anything. The three of us hurried past the large cracks on the floor where the guillotine had crashed down and went downstairs.

The room was now red. We paused for a second to acknowledge this before continuing on. When we came near the end of the hallway, I saw a shadowy figure quickly dash past, out of sight. I glanced at my sisters to see if they noticed. The color was drained from Kasey's face, so I could tell they did. I let out a shaky breath and we kept going, with Terra trying to comfort the two of us.

Once we reached the end of the hallway, we turned left. I didn't know what I was expecting, but there was nothing there except a large painting and another turn at the end of the room, The shadowy figure, whatever it was, was gone.

The painting was titled "Breath." It looked like a bird blowing through a horn, releasing a small puff of pink smoke.

We moved on and turned left again. At the end of the hall, there was a red door. It wasn't locked, so we ventured inside. The room was large and it was filled with many different exhibits. There were two roped-in sculptures and several paintings. There was also a door, but it was locked.

"Figures." Terra sighed.

"Wh-Where do we go now?" Kasey asked, her words coming out in a bare whisper.

"We'll just have to search around a bit more, that's all," Terra replied, clearly trying to keep Kasey as relaxed as possible. And though Kasey was calming down a little, she was obviously still on the edge.

We looked at each of the displays. The two sculptures looked similar, except one was red and the other was blue. The blue one sort of reminded me of the melting blue woman sculpture I saw back at the gallery. Maybe it was the same thing? Except that I wasn't able to read what it was called, but I could read this one easily. It was titled "Uh." The red one was titled "Ah." I furrowed my brow. The names were very... original.

We looked at the different paintings. I couldn't read certain words in some of the paintings, such as "? Pattern" and "Smoking ?" Two of the other paintings were called "Heartbeat" and "Heart Wounds." Lastly, we looked at a painting that I recognized from the gallery, "The Lady in Red." With everything examined, we thought maybe we should just backtrack and head back to previous rooms to see if there was anything we missed.

As soon as we turned around, I heard a crash coming from behind us. We whipped around and were shocked to see The Lady in Red separate herself from the wall and fall onto the floor. She was still in her painting, and her body was literately coming out of the canvas. She started dragging herself toward us, and she was surprisingly fast even though half her body was stuck in her painting. My insides turned ice-cold. Kasey screamed. Terra grabbed our hands and pulled us away. We ran around the room with The Lady in Red in hot pursuit. It became obvious that she wasn't going to stop chasing us. But we were already running out of breath, and I knew we couldn't keep running forever.

We were now back at where The Lady's painting used to be. I saw something shiny on the floor. Kasey practically bolted toward it and she snatched it off the ground. I couldn't see what it was until she ran back and showed us. In her hands lay a crimson key.

Terra gasped. "Kasey! You're a life saver! Now let's get out of here!"

We ran as fast as we could to the locked red door. Terra shoved the key in and turned. The Lady was coming closer. Then the lock clicked and the door opened. We burst inside and slammed the door shut behind us.

When we finally started to calm down, there was a loud banging sound coming from outside the door. We didn't move until the noises stopped. I gazed around the room to take in my surroundings. There were two rows of bookshelves on both sides of the room. In the center of the room, there was another door. We turned the handle. It was locked.

"You can't be serious," Terra muttered. "How the hell are we supposed to get out?!" Then she remembered me and Kasey and cleared her throat, her face turning the slightest bit pink. "Um, I'm sorry, girls..."

Kasey shrugged. "Never mind that; we need to find a way out of here."

"You're right. Let's search through these bookshelves and see what we can find."

We came upon one article that was titled "The Girls in the Canvas." I couldn't make out some of the words, but it said, "The women here become very ? once they ? a desire for humans. They'll always ? chase things until they're satisfied, it seems... Anywhere, everywhere, to the ends of the earth... But if they have one weakness, it's that they can't open doors on their own."

I let out a shaky sigh of relief. At least they couldn't follow us in between rooms.

Another book was filled with many different drawings by Guartena, but I flipped through them without really getting a good look on any of them. Between two books, I found a scrap of paper with the ominous message, " ?"

There was another book that had various pictures of art galleries, but there was nothing there worth looking at. In one of the shelves, I came across a moving storybook called, "Carrie Careless and the Galette des Rois." It was drawn in crayon. After a moment's hesitations, I turned the pages...

It was about a girl named Carrie who was having a party for her birthday. One of her friends, a girl drawn in pink, told her that the set up a "Galette des Rois" for her birthday, which meant that they hid a coin inside her birthday pie, and whoever ate the slice with the coin in it would be "a happy person." Carrie ended up eating the slice, and the pink girl went to clean up the plate and large knife, where she found her mother. Her mom was very upset because the key to the study was missing. On the table, where the key should have been, was the coin. The pink girl realized that Carrie must've eaten the key, and she didn't know what to do. When her mom left the room, the knife slipped from the plate onto the floor, and she picked it up and walked away. The last scene showed the pink girl, splattered in blood, holding up the key and squealing, "I found the keeey! I'll open the door now!"

A click came from the door. It was unlocked.

Terra muttered, "That was morbid... Let's move on now, girls."

We went through the door. There were two more doors on either side of the room. The only thing in this room was a vase and a painting that highly resembled the vase. The painting was called "Eternal Blessing." I looked at the vase again. I didn't notice before, but the water was bright and clear, and filled the whole vase, unlike all the other vases we'd come across. Terra told me to place my rose in there, and after the petals regrew, the vase refilled with water.

"How odd," Terra marveled.

She had Kasey replenish her rose next. The water refilled again, and Terra put her rose in. Once we were all ready, we went to the door on the right side. Inside the room, there was a painting called "? Art." But I wasn't looking at the painting. Something else in the room had my attention.

There was someone lying on the ground. A man, it looked like. I couldn't get a good look at his face because he was lying on his stomach, but I saw that he had wounds on his body. We slowly walked over to him. He was holding tightly onto a key. After she received a small nod from Terra, Kasey gently took the key from his hands. Terra looked upset for some reason, and she looked away. We continued on right.

The room we were now in had a door, but there was a headless mannequin blocking the way. It wasn't moving, but it was standing in front of the door. I asked Terra if she could just push it out of the way. Looking stricken, she said, "W-We can't just leave that man there... We have to find a way to help him!"

We went back to the room with the eternal water vase and went left this time. There were two notices hanging on the wall, but I recognized them from before. They read, "When the rose ?, so too will you ? away" and "You and the rose are ? Know the weight of your own life." There was also a vase, but it was out of water...

There was another door, and the room also had a window. When I peeked inside, I couldn't make out anything. It was too fogged up. Before we entered the room, we followed a trail of blue petals on the ground. There was some blood on the floor. On the wall, there was the title "The Lady in Blue." We looked around frantically, but we didn't see the painting. It was already off the wall. Where was it?

I didn't think I could bear to see any more Ladies... but I didn't have much of a choice. The three of us reluctantly went inside the room using the key we got from the man. My heart froze for a second. The Lady in Blue was in the room. She seemed to be very engrossed in something she was holding... it was blue, but I couldn't tell what it was. We slowly edged over until she was literately staring right at us, silently daring us to come forward. Terra breathed in deeply and then slowly exhaled. Then she bolted in front of The Lady, who automatically dropped the object she was holding and started to chase her. Terra yelled to me and Kasey, "You two, get out of here! I'll be right out!"

But there was no way we were going to leave her here alone. Kasey ran to get the item The Lady dropped and hurried back toward the door, narrowly escaping The Lady in Blue. Terra and I quickly dashed out of the room after her.

Seconds later, we heard banging coming from outside the window, followed by The Lady in Blue shattering through the glass. We screamed and ran out of there, shutting the door tightly behind us.

We stopped to catch our breath. I didn't see The Lady catch Terra, but she now had scratches on her arms. Kasey and I were still okay, so we waited while Terra healed her rose. Once the scratches were gone, she said, "Nice job, Kasey."

Kasey beamed. "Thanks." She pulled out the object she'd gotten - it was a blue rose. It was beautiful, but slightly withering.

Terra froze for a second, and a look of realization crossed her face. "That wounded man... isn't this... his rose?" She took the rose and placed it in the vase. Once the rose was replenished, she pulled it back out and examined it in her hands. "It has ten petals," she told us.

"That's not fair," Kasey pouted. "That's way more than me... And that's double Ib's amount!"

Terra chuckled. "Well, it probably has something to do with age."

"So that means he's older than you?"

"Er..." Terra's face turned a little bit red. "...Anyway! Let's go check up on him!" Without another word, she turned on her heels and went into the next room. We trailed behind her.

The man's wounds were gone, but he still wasn't moving. Terra frowned slightly and kneeled down in front of him, trying to look at his face for any signs of movement. She held out the blue rose. The man began to lift his head and he said to himself, "...What's this? The pain's gone... ah?" He looked up, and his face was just inches away from Terra's. They locked eyes and stared at each other for a while before Kasey cleared her throat.

The man seemed to come out of his trance. He blinked and abruptly stood up. "I... d-didn't mean to..." His pale face was a bit red now. He had lavender hair with a few darker streaks at the top, and his hair covered his left eye. The eye that I could see was blue-violet. He was wearing an olive green shirt with a ragged black coat over it and light brown khakis. He looked to be around eighteen. He also seemed a bit familiar. Had I seen him before? In the gallery, maybe?

"W... wait... Dear me, could you be... someone from the gallery...?!" he stammered.

Terra stood up as well, but didn't say anything.

The man's gaze traveled from Terra to Kasey to me and then back to Terra. "So you are! Oh, thank heavens! There's someone here besides me!"

Terra blinked. Then she held out the rose and gave him a small smile. "Um, I think this belongs to you..."

His face lit up. "Oh, you found my rose! Thank you! How can I ever repay you for this?"

She blushed. "It's, uh, not a big deal."

"But it is! You saved my life!" He flashed her a smile, and hr face reddened even more.

"It's really nothing," she insisted. "I'm glad that I was able to help."

Kasey giggled.

The man took a step toward her and gently took his rose back. While taking it from Terra, his hand brushed against hers, and it seemed like they were holding hands for a couple of seconds. But then he took the rose and put it in his pocket. He smiled at Terra again, whose face by now was a flaming red. "Well... Thank you."

After we explained how we ended up in this situation to him, he said, "So I see... You three don't have any clue how things got to this point, either... It would seem we wound up in very similar situations, I have to say..." He pulled out his blue rose and looked wistfully at it. "Even down to these roses. Wounds appear on me when my rose loses its petals... I thought I was a goner there... Once again, thank you for getting it back." He smiled at Terra, and then smiled at me and Kasey, too.

He put his rose safely back in his pocket. "Now, first thing's first... We'd better find a way out. I think I'll go mad if I stay in this dreadful place for too long..."

"Ah, I still haven't asked your names. My, that was rude of me!" he said, looking a little embarrassed. "Well, my name's Garry. And you three are...?"

Terra blinked. "I'm Terra. It's nice to meet you, Garry."

"Likewise," he replied.

"I'm Kasey!" the twelve-year-old declared. "And that's Ib!" She gestured to me. I waved at Garry.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Kasey and Ib." He nodded at us and smiled.

Kasey beamed. "Thanks! You too!"

I took note of her sudden brightness. And of Terra, whose face had just barely stopped being red since we'd met Garry.

His face suddenly became serious. "I think we should all stick together. I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you girls... I can't just let you wander around aimlessly all by yourselves in this dreadful place." Though he was referring to all of us, I could tell he was directing his words at Terra. He was peeking at her from beneath his lavender hair, as if he wanted to see her reaction.

When the words left his mouth, Terra seemed to return to her old self. She crossed her arms and raised her eye brows at Garry. "Oh? Do you mean to say that we can't take care of ourselves?" Despite the edge in her voice, she was grinning, a clear sign that she was only joking around.

Garry grinned, too. "Oh, that wasn't what I was implying at all."

"So then what were you implying?"

I found the fact that they were teasing each other to be really cute. And Kasey clearly did too, since she kept gesturing to them at me with her eyes and forming a heart shape with her hands.

Garry glanced at Kasey for a second, who quickly dropped her arms. He chuckled and responded to Terra's question, "I just... don't want to see any of you get hurt, that's all."