The Gallery

Turns out the place Torrance was talking about was an art gallery.

It didn't look like much from the outside, surprisingly small. But supposedly it's sold some famous paintings.

A shock awaited us on the inside, though. I just...what the hell?!

Lining the walls were...

The paintings, some of them, they were normal enough. But oh, God. Sorry. Like I said, some were what you'd expect with modern art, like abstract and surreal. But my Lord! A lot of them were horrible, just horrible. The colors hurt my eyes (though, not as bad as that Playtime with Mikey show) and some of the imagery that's burned into my mind will surely fuel nightmares for some time to come.

Worst of all were the ones where...explicit...acts...on animals... Blood...lots of blood, and children...torture...wrongwrongwrongwrongWRONG!

I can't fully describe it without feeling like throwing up again. After I vomited (and I think the others almost did, too, especially after I did) I literally said out loud, "How in the hell is this legal?"

Fine art my ass. Excuses for perverts, more like. Torrance said something about how the artists must've been inspired by some red hooded spirit thing. Some folkloric depiction of a demon? Something real? I don't know.

But why we were there was to go into some secret place. I guess it's supposed to be a front for STAB. Why an art gallery? To show off their madness and depravity--that's my theory.

As we walked around, I noticed it was devoid of people, aside from us. Torrance said they must have known we were coming. I can't help but wonder if he tipped them off.

We went into the secret back meeting room or whatever, but it was also empty. Nothing but empty desks and shelves and file drawers. It seemed we had nothing to work with.

"Now what?" Torrance didn't have an answer.

Back in the main gallery, Larry said he remembered hearing stories of haunted paintings, like The Hands Resist Him where the work was supposedly haunted and the figures interacted with the real world.

I didn't know what that had to do with anything, so he explained that if these people were involved with the occult and paranormal stuff, and if they were inspired by an evil spirit to paint these images, maybe we could in some way communicate with that spirit or spirits to get information.

I started to tell him that seemed silly, but immediately stopped, realizing the idea of ghosts wasn't too different from the other stuff I've learned about. Larry began looking over the paintings, hoping to find signs of movement, and would occasionally call out to them.

While he was doing this, however, Frank yelled, "No! Not here! Not now!" After Fran and I came over to see what was the problem, he explained he thought he saw his mysterious marble woman in the painting before him. I looked and saw that it was an ordinary figure holding an umbrella (though I won't say what exactly was happening under the umbrella). But I do have to admit the figure did look a bit off before my eyes centered on it.

Finally, Larry said he had to conclude there were no spirits in the paintings, but he did find something intriguing. When he examined the paintings as he perused them all (he'll surely have those images stuck in his head forever) he noticed that some of the shadows were darker than others, and that some of them looked so out of place, like puzzle pieces. Maybe they would line up and form a hidden image if they were placed side by side.

Doing this revealed a number scrawled across several of the paintings in a weird stylized font: 1325. That was the address of the building we were at when Lina went blind. Time to go downtown.