Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

Peters groaned again and mumbled something.

“Shhh!” she said, because she had heard another sound. Yes. The sound of something or someone crashing through the bush, quite far away now. She listened to the sound recede until it was gone. It could have been an animal, spooked by all the noise. She didn’t think so. Summoning up her courage, she holstered her mace and knelt on one knee beside the old man.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Hell, no!” he said. “Give me a hand?”

He weighed a ton. And he stank. She wondered if he had pissed himself.

It took all her effort to get him to an upright position. She had to shove the flashlight in the waist of her jeans, and it shone up at them, underlighting his bony old face like some ghoul. He was as dizzy as a drunk, though she couldn’t smell alcohol on him. Only fear and hot anger and the disagreeable odor of someone who didn’t wash any too often. She scrunched her nose shut as she placed his arm over her shoulder and staggered back toward the house. But he couldn’t be too injured, she realized. It was not by chance that his limp hand brushed against her breast. At least it wasn’t chance the second time it happened.

When she had deposited him, as quickly as she could, in a chair at the kitchen table, she found a facecloth and doused it in cold water to clean the wound on the back of the old man’s head.

He was bent over the table, his head on his arms. But the moment the facecloth touched his scalp, his head flew up and Mimi jumped back, his nobbly skull just missing her jaw. The man reached up and took her hand in an iron grip and wrestled the cloth from her. She pulled away, rubbing her hands on her jeans.

“What happened?” she said.

He stared at her, his eyes unfocused. “What do you think happened?” he said. “I got my head stoved in is what happened.”

“By who?”

Peters didn’t answer her. He took the cloth, now smeared with blood, and staggered to the sink.

“Let me do that,” said Mimi. But the old man paid her no attention. He turned on the tap, and bending his long frame forward, he splashed his face with cold water, getting a great deal of it on the linoleum floor while he was at it. Mimi leaned on the other end of the counter, still trying to catch her breath. After a few moments, the old man stood up straight and turned off the tap. Mimi handed him a towel. He took it from her with shaking hands, muttering the whole time, and began to dry himself off. There was a lot of blood on the facecloth and towel, but the wound on Peters’s head did not look too deep, as far as she could tell. He walked by her and examined his head in the mirror in the bathroom-seemed to know his way there, she thought, but then the door was open so maybe she was wrong. She watched him from the doorway. His crowlike eyes were darting back and forth in the mirror as he felt the welt on his head with his gnarled fingers.

“Hit me with a two-by-four,” said the old man after a while.

“You saw him?”

“No,” he snapped. “Saw it, though. Just as it come at me-the two-by-four-out of the corner of my eye. The bastard.”

Now that he was on his feet again, he was feisty, ready for a fight. His face scowled at her from the mirror as if she was somehow responsible for what had happened.

“That’s the one who’s been stealing from you,” he said. “Not me!” He poked himself hard in the chest, and the cold expression on his face left no doubt he was referring to the visit he’d had from the cops.

“Would you like a drink or something?” she asked.

He turned from his ministrations and looked her up and down as if she had propositioned him. She stepped back, wishing now she had left him outside. He was tall and farm-hardened. His forearms were leathery and strong.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a dram of rye,” he said.

She shook her head. There was wine and a can or two of light beer, but she didn’t want him to get any ideas. He shambled out of the bathroom, across the kitchen to the window, where he pulled back the curtain and scanned the darkened yard.

“He’ll be long gone,” he said.

“Who?”

“That right son of a bitch who crowned me.” He shook his head and winced. Then he turned to look at her. “Maybe if I had a little lie-down,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit woozy is all.”

Mimi moved away from him until she bumped up against the counter.

“How about I call 911?” she said.

He grinned. “With this?” he said. He reached down and picked up her phone, but he didn’t hold it out to her. His eyes said, Come and get it.

“Mr. Peters,” she said. “You’d better get home.”

“And how am I going to do that?” he said, leaning hard on the table as if any minute he was going to faint. It was a feeble performance. “Maybe you could drive me?”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Jay’s phone is just upstairs. How about I go and phone the cops, and they can drive you home?”

He glared at her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said. “You like siccing the cops on your neighbors.”

“That’s not how it was,” she said.

“Oh? So how was it?” he said.

“Mr. Peters-”

But he cut her off. He poked himself in the chest again. “You owe me, girl,” he said, and mingled with the hostility in his eyes was a strong dash of lechery.

Mimi saw it clearly, and any misgivings she had vanished.

“He’s been watching you,” he said, pointing his thumb back over his shoulder. “That critter, whoever he is.”

“Really?” she said.

He nodded. Made himself tall, tucked in the tails of his pewter-colored work shirt, with its worn and oil-stained cuffs.

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “This guy was watching me, but it was you who got hit over the head from behind.”

He stopped tucking in his shirt and glowered at her from under steel-gray eyebrows. “I was passing by on the road, when I seen someone.”

“Really?”

“Damn right. Some shadowy figure messing around that pipsqueak car of yours. I stopped, see. Come back to take a look.”

“Lucky me,” she said, and she made no attempt to hide her contempt.

He took a step toward her, and her hand immediately went to her hip. She slid out her trusty mace and held it where he could see it. His eyes swayed from the canister to her face. And she wondered if he could read in her eyes just how ready she was to use it.

“You sure got yourself a heap of attitude,” he said.

“I’m not in the market for a Peeping Tom, Mr. Peters.”

He glared at her but didn’t say another word. He sniffed and headed past her to the door. With every bit of courage she could muster, she stayed put. Just let him so much as touch her and she’d fill his lecherous eyes with something really hot!

He stopped at the doorway, turned, and pointed a finger at her.

“A word of advice,” he said. “You keep parading around with next to nothing on, you’re going to have more than you bargained for. You hear me? More action than a feral cat in heat.”

Mimi stepped toward him with the canister aimed and watched him flinch, throwing up his arm to guard his face. “What I wear parading around in my own house with the curtains drawn is my fucking business. Now get out of here and don’t come back. Ever.”

He left, muttering darkly. She slammed the door after him and locked it. And as soon as he was good and gone-as soon as she heard the engine of his truck roaring-she gave in to gravity. She slid down the face of the door all the way to the floor and burst into tears.

Harry never did actually get together with Sally. Not that night. Mimi was already in bed when she realized she had left the two of them frozen there on the screen. She crawled into the front room, to her desk, and shut down the computer. Then she crawled back.