Gray

Chapter 25

Victor

Despite my best efforts, I'd fallen asleep at some point because when I looked up at the monitors, Owen was now in the dreamscape as a judge. I didn't see Sean or Kota, nor could I get them to answer on the walkie. I considered going to the cabin, but my gut told me to stay put.

A flashing light on one corner of the screen caught my attention. Gabe was standing with a mirror of some sort, moving it up and down. The glare caught on the side of the barn, almost blinding me. He stopped and looked directly at the screen for a moment then began again.

Wait, oh shit, he's doing morse code signals! I grabbed a pen and began scribbling as fast as I could as the letters built up. When he finished, he grabbed the silvery cat and using her paw, drew tally marks adding up to nine in the dirt before them. He erased six of them, then headed back to the house as Luke came out hollering something to him.

Kota

I sat up feeling like I'd been on a week-long drunk as I rubbed my neck. Hearing a book fall to the floor, I looked over to see Sean looking just as confused as me. "What the hell happened," he muttered. I shook my head, and then he snapped, "Wait, where the hell is Owen? Owen?" He began yelling, heading toward the small WC., then slamming the door as he began tugging at windows and doors, but they were all locked.

"Kota, Sean, can you hear me?" Vic's garbled voice came over the walkie. "Come on guys, answer me please!" He sounded just as panicked as we were.

"Vic, we're here, but Owen has gone missing," I said, grabbing the black radio.

"I know. He's in the dreamscape now."

Sean and I looked at each other in shock, "How..." he gaped.

"I may have an answer for that actually," Vic said, "Do you guys want to come back and I can show you?"

"Fuck, we'd love to man, but um, apparently we are staying put. All the doors and windows - even the broken ones are magically sealed somehow. I was shoved into the cabin before all hell broke loose last night, then Nate and Gabe, well you already know," I sputtered.

"Well, damn," he muttered, "Okay, so here's what I know so far. Owen popped up last night, just before dawn. He's the town's judge and just like most of the others, he has no idea of the truth."

"What do you mean most of the others?" Sean interrupted.

Vic gave a hopeful laugh, "Well, it seems Gabe still knows who and what we all are. Somehow he retained his memory when he got sucked in, and Gray, well she isn't who we think. She's the damn cat."

I almost dropped the radio at his little revelation. "But we saw her, hell most of us have kissed her, even had sex with her! What about the guys who she marked?"

"Slow down, Kota, just take a breath," Sean said, helping me ease into a chair. "Give him a chance to explain."

"Sean's right, just relax. Gabe is our ace in the hole right now. None of the others have a clue who they actually are, or who she is, except him. Think about the old wives' tales about how many lives a cat has, now think about how many of us there are."

"Nine, but what does it mean?" I asked.

"Gabe thinks that for each of us pulled in, it represents one of her lives."

"So what happens if we all get pulled in?" Sean asked, "And if Gray is the cat, then who or what have we been dealing with?"

"An echo," Vic said. "The reason she blips in and out is that she's an echo of herself. He isn't sure if she was once human or a witch, but somehow, she's been trapped inside the cat form for a long time now."

"And the nine lives?" I questioned.

"Well, that isn't so clear. He's not sure if all nine of us will free her, or kill her."

"That's comforting," Sean grumbled. "So do we have a plan, or are we just waiting for her to pick us off?" You could hear Vic moving around in the background as he muttered to himself. "Victor?"

"Yeah, just a minute, Gabe's doing something. I'll be back." Then the radio went quiet again.

I ran my hands down my face and groaned, "Did you find anything last night?"

Sean picked up the book that had dropped earlier, "Actually, this looks like a journal, but there aren't any dates. She talks a lot about being trapped in dreams. That might give us a place to start." He opened to a page he'd marked and read, "It was like I was looking at myself, but I couldn't control my actions. Mama was crying and Papa was yelling at me. I just stared at them as if they were strangers. When I woke up my cheeks were wet with tears and I had a bruise on my cheek from where Papa smacked me."

"I wonder if that was recent? Could she be hopping between timelines even now? I mean, I thought us going to that field was a memory, but what if we were really there?" I pondered. I pulled out my phone and groaned in frustration, "Of course no cell service!"

"What are you trying to do?"

"I was hoping to look up some of the times she has mentioned to see if we can add to Vic's timeline. The more information we glean, the better our chance of getting out of all of this." He nodded and read more of the journal as I dug through stacks to find similar books and hopefully more answers.

Author's Notes:  The downtime has helped, the muses are slowly beginning to talk again.  

Blessings - 

Eve