We needed to speed up the search, so we decided to not waste time with looking around other stuff and just focus on finding the skulls.

I went through another door, looking around the room really quick but not letting myself get distracted. It seemed that it was another guest bedroom. I looked under the bed and the chest of drawers but didn't find anything. Paintings were everywhere on this room and they all were messing with my head, distracting me. I almost started tearing the room apart till I finally found the skull, conveniently placed as the head of a figure in a drawing. It was a picture of a man dressed in a suit; I couldn't tell much more since it was black and white. There seemed to have been an empty space behind the painting. I looked around the frame of the picture and it was then that I realized that it was a door on hinges. I pulled the painting from the right to myself and it opened away from the wall. I was expecting to see a hole in the wall, but there was just another envelope which I picked up and read carefully and as quickly as I could:

I did the math really quick: there was a total of four skulls, we had found 3 so far, so only one remained and I had an idea of where I should look for it, but we still had five rooms to search. What was inside the other four then?

I went outside to check the candles; only one was still burning. Flaming Star seemed to have been busy searching around but we didn't have any more time; we needed to head for plan B.

“Flame!” I called him, “Flame!”

“What is it?” he came out of one of the doors.

“We are out of time, did you find anything?”

“No, I've been searching that room for a while but I found nothing. It seems to be a place where he keeps records or something.” He sounded quite disappointed. “But I guess the rest is up to you.”

As he finished his sentence, the last candle went out.

The doors slammed. We were left standing in the hallway that has light, which was slowly being overtaken by the chilling darkness. I heard the sound of Flaming Star's sword being drawn out but I was unable to see.

We both shined our lights at the doors; they were shaking! Intensively! But not all of them. Just four of them: three of the doors on the right side and one on the left. It was then that the doors flew open!

Out of each door, came a skeleton. Each standing tall and staring at us with the dim light deep down in their eyes.

“Hide in one of the rooms!” Flaming Star said. “I'll lead them downstairs as planned.”

“But-”

“GO!”

The skeletons started charging at us.

I ran to a room and closed the door shut. I could hear the screams that the skeletons made.

“Good luck, Flame!”

I turned around and found myself in a guest bedroom. There was a big bed in the room, it had purple bed linen on it. There was a closet which I checked first but it was empty, not even clothes. This one room, however, also did not have anything hanging on the walls, which compared to the other rooms we’d seen looked a little fishy. Now that Flaming Star was not just dealing with one skeleton but four instead, I needed to look around four times faster.

I checked in the drawers of the dresser near the bed, under the bed and even all the walls. I hoped there might be a secret door as with the picture but this room had nothing on the walls.

As I was looking around, a blinding light shone my way. For a second I wondering what it was, but then I realized that it was the reflection of my cell phone flashlight in the mirror that was part of the dresser.

I took a step back and looked at myself in the mirror. There was not much light but it was enough to see if I was still wearing my costume. The cheap fangs, the wig, even the dress looked fine.

*SCREAM*

As I heard the skeleton scream, I got out of that room and went to explore the other ones since I figured the skull was not there.

Kicking the doors open and looking around in the rooms as fast as I could required a lot of attention. Unfortunately, I actually don't remember what exactly was in those rooms. Although, it doesn't matter. Mainly because the skull was not there either!

I thought I missed one of the rooms, but I've checked them all. I even double-checked the ones Flaming Star did, but there was nothing.

“Aaaaah!”

That was Flame! I guessed he was not in a good situation. I wanted to run downstairs to help but I quickly realized that wouldn't do any good.

I was standing in the hallway, lost and paranoid about what was happening and what I needed to do. “Think Sunset, THINK!” I told myself. I reviewed which door I chose and what was in each room. Once, twice, till I thought of something: where did the skeletons come out?

Three from the right, and one from the left; I checked two of those doors and one of them was the file room that Flame had checked before. I wondered; “Does this mean that wherever they came out of, those rooms don't hold any skulls?” If my theory was correct, then there would be one door to check.

I rethought about the order that I went into the doors, and realized I was right! The one that the skeleton came out of did not have any skulls inside. But the last room on my side didn't, either. Or did it?

I went into the guest room again; it had to be here! I checked around again, but no luck. I could have been totally wrong but at that point in time, that was the best thing I could do. So I stuck with it.

I tried to remember the words of the last letter that I found: “You will not find the last remain even by looking deep/look at yourself and break the barrier to take the true peek.”

So first off, I couldn't find the last skull, so I assumed that by looking deep, it meant looking everywhere. But what about the second part? What did it meant by looking at yourself?

I was looking around the room when I found myself looking into the mirror again. It was then that it hit me! The mirror! I was literally looking at myself. I was amused how I overlooked it. But wait! If that was the clue, then by breaking the barrier, I should break the mirror.

“Let's hope it worth the bad luck it's going to give me!” I pulled open one of the drawers out of its place and threw it at the mirror as hard as I could. It did break and I saw the skull behind it. There were broken pieces of mirror everywhere but I managed to not cut myself extracting the prize.

My bag did not have any more space so I just held the skull in my hand and headed downstairs as fast as I could.

“Flame! Flame!?” I shouted as I was shining my light around.

“I'm over here!”

I followed the voice and found him standing against a wall; his face had cuts and bruises. He seemed quite tired.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I'm fine ... they really weren't much of a threat.”

He seemed quite confident in what he was saying, but for an amateur fencer, fighter, brawler or whatever, if you are dealing with multiple opponents, you are pretty much screwed. Especially if they are skeletons that don't really care if they get hurt or not.

“Flame, are you sure that you are fine?”

“Yeah, don't worry, I held them off. Now let's get out of here.”

“Ok, bu-”

It was then that we heard something fall. Something small, probably metal. We followed the sound and found ourselves in front of the black door again. There was another envelope on the ground but this time there was also a key with it. I picked them both up, the key did not feel like something that was made out of metal. I opened the envelope and read it out loud.