Note: this episode with Peter is the same scene as the previous post from Nine's perspective. Choose your path.

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Walking up the hill, Peter quietly made his way through the cemetery. The time, nine after nine, his phone told him. Looking up, he found Nine approaching. It felt as though the universe was trying to tell him something. Nine never came after nine. There was only Nine. He had seen her earlier in the evening inside the funeral home, and here she came again, on the time.

Nine after Nine.

She wore a coat over what appeared to be a nightshirt leaving her legs bare with wool socks scrunched down to her sneakers. Her attire made her appear younger, childlike.

“Tara has been in your head, Peter.”

“Tara is as real to me as you are standing before me now.”

Nine stepped closer and twirled her hair the way girls do when they want to be noticed. Unlike that other Nine he had found playing dead in the mortuary, this was the Nine he knew. Throwing an arm around her shoulder, he pulled her close into a hug. She squeezed him back.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better now,” said Peter. “You had me worried earlier.”

Releasing hold, Nine stepped back and shook her head. “I’m sorry I missed your calls. My phone’s battery had died.”

“Not that. In the mortuary.”

She shot him a peculiar look. “What about the mortuary?”

Was she trying to forget her embarrassment? He hugged Nine.

Peter walked with Nine between a row of graves making their way up the hill. Reaching out he wrapped his fingers around hers. Nine squeezing his hand reassured him of her support. Seeing her free hand twirling her hair left no doubt about her interest.

Approaching the back end of the cemetery behind the funeral home, Peter spotted a shadow melting out of the woods and stretching along the path. Defying the lamplight, the shade grew bolder oozing into a woman’s curvy figure. It stopped near a sepulcher.

Freezing in place, Peter gawked at a shadowy, nearly ethereal woman dressed in denim. He hadn’t expected to find Kandy haunting him outside the restaurant.

Releasing Nine’s hand, he folded his arms and dove straight into business about the strange letter that had accompanied Kandy’s belongings.

“Do you know Steve Reynolds?”

The reply came hammering into his head. Not words exactly, but a voice of thought his mind translated for him.

Steve? Of course I know Steve! Where is he?

“Peter,” said Nine, “is your sister with us?”

“He sent me your car, weapons, some blood, and a serum.”

The bags of blood and serum had arrived within a coffin along with a sword and a notebook full of chemistry notes. He had gathered from Steve’s letter, Kandy had used a coffin as a lockbox. The odd delivery apparently held sentimental value.

“Who are you speaking with, Peter?”

“Nine, Kandy is here.”

Kandy glanced around. Her gaze returned a menacing bolt.

Who the hell is Nine?

Realizing Nine and Kandy couldn’t see the other dampened any semblance of sanity, but he remained resolved on getting answers.

“The serum is supposedly a cure for you and I.”

Let’s have it then.

“Peter, I think that stuff might be drugs and will give you hallucinations.” Concern filled Nine’s voice.

“I’m sorry, it was stolen.”

The thought pierced his head as Nine’s voice reached his ear; the two women spoke as one, “We need to get it back.”

Glancing at Nine, Peter found her expression twisting between concern and confusion. Returning his attention on his visitor, he found the path empty. Nothing stood among the graves. Beside the path, the lone stone tomb slept soundly.

Kandy’s sudden disappearance forced doubt, a dagger piercing into his head.

Only Nine stood with him, his Nine after Nine.

Note: this episode with Nine is the same scene as next post from Peter's perspective. Choose your side.

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After locking the front door and turning out the light in the office, Nine headed downstairs and out the back. Holding her coat closed over her nightshirt, she made her way down the hill and into the graveyard. Checking her phone, she found two missed calls from Peter, one left while she had been inside the Thyme Tomb. After nine o’clock in the evening was an unexpected time to find Peter visiting the graveyard considering his restaurant remained understaffed.

Peter had come to visit the grave of his sister, Tara Gray. At the restaurant, Peter had been imagining his dead sister helping out, delivering wine and filling in behind the bar. Tara had supposedly been there for the team photograph. Of course, no one else had seen Peter’s sister. Records had pointed Peter to Thyme Funeral Home and the graveyard on the hill.

Nine said, “Tara has been in your head, Peter.”

Peter offered a polite smile and said, “Tara is as real to me as you are standing before me now.”

And the restaurant owner was right, wasn’t he? Peter didn’t strike her as a crazy person. He always seemed so calm and understanding. After all the reading about vampires, all she knew about the semi-secretive Itoril people, how could she deny that Peter saw his sister? Tara’s ghost may not be an actual spirit, but Tara could be something only Peter saw.

Reaching out, Peter pulled Nine into a hug. Warm and wonderful, Nine squeezed him as she imagined life without corpses, murders, and vampires. The simple life of working with Peter in the restaurant was a dream where the biggest concern was running out of booze.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better now,” said Peter. “You had me worried earlier.”

Releasing hold, Nine stepped back and shook her head. “I’m sorry I missed your calls. My phone’s battery had died.”

“Not that,” said Peter. He nodded up the hill at the funeral home. “In the mortuary,” he said.

Nine winced. She asked, “What about the mortuary?”

How much had Peter heard about the murder? As far as anyone knew the shooting took place in town, and her father had been arrested at the funeral home. No one needed to know she had sawed the head from that Itoril man.

Her stomach began twisting about, and she buried her face against Peter’s chest to hide her guilt. The hug worked its magic melting her sin away.

Together they walked quietly between a row of graves. His hand took hold of hers, and she squeezed his fingers feeling like a teen sneaking through the cemetery for a naughty night of passion.

At the top of the hill nearing the family sepulcher, Peter stopped suddenly and released her hand. He gazed at something with intensity. Nine searched the rows of grave markers, the stone tomb, and the path leading back towards the woods. She found nothing, but whatever Peter had seen made him tremble.

“Do you know Steve Reynolds?” said Peter. He stared at the area between the path and the sepulcher.

“Peter,” said Nine, “is your sister with us?”

“He sent me your car, weapons, some blood and a serum,” said Peter.

He appeared calmer now, but he continued watching the same ghost or whatever he imagined there. It couldn’t be his sister, Tara, though. The car had come from someone else. Steve? No, a woman, Nine felt certain the car had belonged to a woman.

Nine asked, “Who are you speaking with, Peter?”

Peter glanced over and said, “Nine, Kandy is here.” Looking towards the sepulcher, he continued speaking to the invisible woman. “The serum is supposedly a cure for you and I.”

They had found the bag of clear goo within the coffin, and though it hadn’t quite appeared like venom, Nine held a growing suspicion the serum was based on Itoril venom. That it could be a cure for anything seemed crazy. A cure for reality, perhaps.

“Peter,” said Nine, firmly. “I think that stuff might be drugs and will give you hallucinations.”

“I’m sorry,” said Peter, addressing the other woman, “it was stolen.”

A bag of venom that big could solve her quota problem for the year.

“We need to get it back.”

Peter flashed Nine a peculiar look. His expression darkened, and he began glancing around as if searching for something. The invisible woman. Kandy had left him.

Peter Gray had lost track of how long he had spent in the cemetery on the hillside. He gazed at the grave and studied the markings. Both there and not, he stood, caught between one second and another.

Checking his phone, he found the time. At seven minutes after nine in the evening it was getting late. He thought he should get back to the restaurant. No call had beckoned him, though. They could manage without him for a few minutes longer.

The grave consisted of a block of stone among a crowded grid of stones. All that remained of his sister was dust in a box buried beneath grey stone marked, Tara Gray.

Hit by a car three decades ago, according to reports, but her memory followed him still.

Weekly visits at the restaurant, wine deliveries, her presence found and never missed. His big sister had watched over him, had argued with him, and had teased him before going on her way. And she always returned, each week at the restaurant, to this very day.

Tara hadn’t followed him here, naturally. Her ghost standing over her grave would shatter this reality. Another Tara Gray, she would say. He’d listen, and dream his life away.

And for good reason. The stone beside hers marked the grave of her sibling, Peter Gray.

Not other Grays, Peter decided. Ghosts were lingering memories, and he held onto the ghost of Tara Gray. He wondered to whom his memory belonged if not to the dead resting on the side of the hill.

Smashing down on the accelerator pedal and turning the wheel, I drove into the other lane and around a slow-moving SUV. I listened to the roar of the engine and felt the pounding pistons working inside me. Streetlights flickered like strobes in a dance club. God damn, I loved driving my old Ford Fairlane! It thundered like rock-and-roll and grooved like jazz.

I hadn’t bothered with the headlights allowing my eyes to feed on the glory of night. Gaseous clouds hung over street lamps, the light splashing cold fires onto tree limbs and the roadway. Twin stripes of irradiated flames marked the recent passing of a car headed around the corner and up the hill. Taillights bathed the trees in red, the blood forest welcoming me home. Pushing on the accelerator, pistons thundering, I raced around the car and into the night beneath a deep-violet sky dotted by embers.

Déjà vu all over again, I glanced in the mirror and spotted the wraith riding in back.➥ In a blink, I found the rear seat empty.

On the passenger side, Laura sat with her head slumped against the side window. Her eyes shut tight she held an expression of fear mixed with rage. Laura had become my anchor along the shore. If I let go of her, I went adrift in a sea of time. A twisted irony, my strongest hold turned out to be a teen addicted to Itoril venom and its synthetic replicant, vampire ice, along with all the disgusting habits that came with teens.

“Kandy, could you turn on the headlights?” Laura scowled. “I’d at least like to know if we’re about to hit a deer or a person crossing the road.”

The streetlights gave way to the darkness of the woods, the occasional house splashing its lights onto the roadway. The west hills over Roseland were home to well-to-do residents, old cemeteries, wildlife, and my Fairlane howling to the stars.

“Or, you know,” said Laura, “a goddamn driver pulling out onto the road unable to see our car!”

Another memory I didn’t share with Laura. Having my anchor with me also illuminated my future. Unfortunately, the predictions were full of useless information or mundane activities I could have guessed.

The Fairlane screamed up the hill, and branches sped by like gnarled fingers scratching at the star-filled violet sky. Cresting the top, I spotted a glowing figure on the roadway. I smashed on the brake pedal and swerved, but it was too late.

Memory creeping out of the shadows, I spotted the woman on the road. It had been the night after the space shuttle had exploded. Ghosts on collision, the Fairlane clipped the woman and sent her body into the air. I watched it happen, as it had happened, all over again, my purgatory pain crying in my head.

I slammed on the brakes, and the tires screeched on the pavement. Laura lunged forward, her hands striking the glove box, her legs floating, and the lap belt held her. The Fairlane came to a stop, and I slipped it into neutral. The engine responded with a throaty growl. I released the throttle letting the engine fall into a rumble.

“Shit, Kandy, are you trying to kill us?”

Looking out the driver’s side window, I found the city lights sparkling down in the valley below. Beyond the passenger side stood the hillside where the dead rested, one of several boneyards in the west hills. This one was the oldest and held a cold corner in my heart.

Up the hill a ways the entrance found me and pulled me inside. I parked beside an old hearse without wheels, hubs on cinder blocks. Darkness blanketed the lot. The shapes of the buildings stood in the fog. Only one shadow I recognized, the old house on the far left. Instead of the paved parking lot, my memory held a dirt drive snaking through the trees up to the house. I cut the engine, and the stillness crept inside carrying the whispers of the dead.

“What the hell?” said Laura. “Why did you bring me to a funeral home?”

“I’m glad I made it here without driving into yesterday.”

Opening the glove box, I retrieved my Colt 1911 pistol and checked the ammunition. Loaded since whenever I had put it there. Laura frowned at the weapon. Realizing I hadn’t worn my shoulder holster, I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket.

Leaving my Fairlane behind, I casually explored the front of the property with Laura at my side. The sidewalk led to three entrances, the first an office door and the second a showroom full of caskets visible behind the large window. Yellow police ribbon criss-crossed over both doors. The third entrance, double-doors to the chapel, was covered in spray-paint graffiti. No light. The lamps had all been broken, shattered glass on the concrete walkway.

Laura held up her phone using its light to read the graffiti.

“Can your phone tell us what happened here?”

“Christ, Kandy, for the third time, it’s google. Yes, I can google that for you.”

Laura tapped her finger on the phone display summoning the help of google-eyed people. Before my fall from the position of Executioner, computers had sat on desks and phones had allowed vocal communication or texts. I had yet to witness Laura using her phone to hold a conversation. Instead, the device was her pocket computer she used to take photos, share pictures, or retrieve information the google-eyed individuals had aggregated.

“Thyme Funeral busted for manufacturing the drug, vampire ice.” Laura continued reading quietly, her eyes growing bigger. “Kandy, these dudes were up to their assholes in Vamp Ice. And I shit you not, the master-mind bad-ass is a woman!”

On the walking path cutting through the woods, I held Laura’s hand. I kept her from tripping over rocks and roots, and she held me against the raging currents of time. It seemed like every few steps the shadows clawed at me, and briefly silence fell over me as I snatched at the ghostly hand of my anchor until I found my way back to the path.

The graveyard hadn’t changed all that much, but recent residents were added to the bottom of the hill. Near the top, the dead of the prior century rested peacefully, unchanged since my early years.

Among the graves, an island of fog rolled into itself, swirling, and a shadow emerged. The figure strolled closer, and I recognized the ethereal face of Peter Gray.

Dressed in her nightshirt and wool socks, Nine carried the Thyme Guide to Vampires into the library. On the table a mug contained a moist bag of tea. She found bits of dirt on the leather chair, which seemed odd. She swiped the seat clean and sat down.

On odd sensation crept inside her.

Thumbing through the pages of the guide, she searched for a reference to January Nine. Stopping at the end of the third chapter, she reviewed the final questions Augustus had posed.

Upon consuming enough blood and memory could the vampire become its victim? Or was the consumed knowledge used for some other nefarious purpose?

Her father wasn’t the man she thought she knew. Hunting pseudo-vampire people was a secret worth keeping from her. Samuel Thyme was still Augustus’s son, though, wasn’t he? The idea that a vampire could disguise himself as, or worse become, her father sent chills splashing from head to shoulders.

Searching the Thyme Tomb so soon after the murder had been a mistake leaving her feeling drained and on the verge of catching ill. Thankfully Xavier had waited outside the gate to help her return home.

Nine continued flipping through the guide. If only Augustus had included an index, her search might be easier. A digital version would make this chore a snap. As she reached near the tail end of the book, she began to realize she’d need to read every page to be certain if January Nine appeared at all.

She slammed the book closed.

Looking at the mug on the table, Nine realized she hadn’t set it there. With her father in a holding cell at the police station, she was all alone at the funeral home. A puddle of tea remained at the bottom of the mug.

Someone had been inside the library.

Speaking quietly, she said, “ɘniИ?”

She felt silly calling the trickster out. Anyone sneaky enough to cut flowers behind her back and remain hidden in the chapel wasn’t about to jump out and share a laugh.

Nine set the book on the table and hurried out of the library. Down the hall and around the corner, she reached the office and opened the door. The light was on as she had left it.

She crept over to the open door and peeked into the showroom. The caskets remained in their usual positions. Perfect hiding place, though. She recalled as a young girl sneaking inside caskets to spook her grandfather. At the window, she pulled the curtain open and gazed outside.

Beside the hearse, the old classic car Peter had recently inherited from a stranger sat quietly beneath the lamplight.

What was Peter doing here instead of minding the restaurant? The car appeared empty, and no one stood out front. If the bell had rung, she missed it. Had Peter left the mug on the table? Nine o’clock at night seemed rather late for a visit.

Nine called out Peter’s name and listened.

As she waited for a reply, she began to recognize that odd sensation. Someone was watching. Besides the caskets, the big desk offered an easy opportunity for any kid playing hide-and-seek. Peter wasn’t the child-play type. ɘniИ, however.

Nine crept around the desk and bent over for a look. Nothing to her relief, and she felt ridiculous for checking. It was the mug out of place that had thrown her off is all.

Peter had to be outside, the graveyard perhaps. Nine went to fetch her coat. The sensation of a watchful eye followed her.