Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“Why am I crawling?” she wondered out loud.

So as not to be a silhouette on the curtains, that’s why.

She lay in bed, reliving the scene over and over.

She had no doubt that Stooley Peters would have tried something if she hadn’t stood up to him. But what about the other person? There had been someone else there. Peters didn’t strike himself on the back of the head with a two-by-four. And she had heard someone fleeing. So who was watching whom? And why, suddenly, was she the attention of sneaks and creeps? She had run away from New York to escape the increasingly alarming focus of an ex-lover. But it seemed as if her safe house in the pretty forest was anything but! And that made her think a disturbing thought. Watching Hitchcock’s Psycho, she had come to the morbid conclusion that the Bates Motel was what the Janet Leigh character deserved for her crime. She’d only robbed a bank, but, still, the Bates Motel became her own personal hell. Was that what Mimi was getting? Shit. And why did she have to start thinking about Psycho!

Blame Lazar. And only then, in replay, did she realize what she had not recognized while talking to him. She sat bolt upright in bed. The empty echoey sound behind him on the phone had been an airport.

He was on his way.

She turned her lamp back on and checked her watch. Somehow two hours had passed. It was 1:30 in the morning. What could she do? The trip from New York probably wasn’t much over an hour if he got a direct flight. If he rented a car, he could be here any minute!

She jumped out of bed, but with no idea what to do. She could look up flight schedules on the computer-wait, no she couldn’t: no Internet connection. She combed her fingers through her hair and walked in circles, swearing bloody murder.

She flicked off the lamp and padded to the front window. Carefully, she pinched back the curtain. There had been a full moon on July 30, and half of it still shone in a clear sky. The world outside was bright with lively shadows. She would see anyone approaching from the snye. And she would hear a car arrive, wouldn’t she?

She watched for a full moment, shivering a little, turning the shadows into a stealthy crew of intruders. Her heart was beating out of control. This was ridiculous! She stamped her foot and swore at her father for his utter uselessness-no, it was worse than that, his betrayal! That’s what this was. He was not only the world’s worst father-he was a traitor! He was also potentially the accomplice to a murder.

She had the advantage over Lazar, she figured. She had never been so outraged in her life. Was this what they called a bloodlust? Because she wanted blood, a lot more blood than she’d seen trickling down the kitchen drain from the head of an old pervert. She wanted revenge. And she wanted it now. She checked her watch again. Almost 2:00. She followed the LED to her cell phone charging on the desk. She sat and dialed her father.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

“No,” he said, sounding perfectly awake. “Mimi?”

“Yes. I thought I’d better phone and say my good-byes before the psycho arrives here to kill me.”

There was only the slightest of pauses before he chuckled. “Ah,” he said. “Mr. Cosic, I presume.”

“Yes, Mr. Cosic. So, it is true? You told him where I was?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he said.

“Father, do you know what you did? That man is mentally unstable. I am truly frightened.”

“Don’t be,” he said.

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re safe in your loft in the middle of safe old Manhattan. I’m in the middle of nowhere with a maniac on his way here because of you.”

“Right, the middle of nowhere. And you’ve met your half-brother, I hear.”

“Don’t even get me started on that.”

“You aren’t getting along?”

“Marc! I swear I am going to scream. Yes, I am getting along with Jackson. He’s wonderful. You should meet him sometime. But that is not what I’m talking about.” There was a pause at the other end. You should meet him sometime: that had been a low blow. Well, hell; it was as much as he deserved. “Dad,” she said, trying to rein herself in. “Lazar Cosic is the reason I’m here. How could you tell him where I was?”

“Mimi, do you want to hear the whole story?”

She was about to let loose a string of invective the likes of which this man had never heard from his worse critics. But something snagged her up. The whole story?

“What did you say?”

“I said that I think you should hear what happened. I think you might find it amusing. And by the way, hi, how are you?”

He was playing with her. Testing her. He had something up his sleeve. “Fine. Thanks for asking. Now talk.”

And so her father told her about Lazar phoning him. How he had told Marc that Mimi was up for a teaching assistanceship in the fall semester and the school needed to get a contract to her pronto.

“You know it’s all a big fat lie,” she said.

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” said Marc. “I humored him. ‘Couldn’t they e-mail her the contract?’ I said. But he was ready for me-a smooth operator. ‘No. Not in the case of a contract. Had to be on letterhead. Had to be the real thing.’ He was good, Mimi.”

“And it’s all crap,” she said.

“I know. I remembered seeing him with you at Caprice.”

Mimi was taken aback. “Really?”

“Of course. And after you were gone, I looked for the gentleman’s name in the gallery guest book. It was right after yours. That’s how I knew who he was when he called.”

Mimi leaned into her desk, hugging the phone to her ear. He had noticed Lazar that day at the gallery. He had noticed her. But it wasn’t just that; she actually found something like comfort in her father’s casual manner, his seeming indifference, after the theatrics-and geriatrics-of the evening. She only hoped that he was not so detached as to have actually given Lazar what he wanted.

“So even though you knew he was lying-”

“Oh, surely it was just prevarication,” said her father. “Maybe they do want you to TA at NYU?”

“Knock it off. They don’t hire sophomores. And this is serious. Did you or didn’t you give him my address?”

“I did,” he said. And Mimi went cold all over. But before she could say anything, her father continued. “I told him about the old family cottage on the South Shore of Nova Scotia where you were holed up.”

“What?”

“You remember, don’t you? Oh, wait. You weren’t there. It was just your mother and me. Lovely place. About two hours out of Halifax. Down near Liverpool. Sandy beach, quiet bay, wonderful privacy. I gave him very precise directions.”

Something welled up in Mimi. Something horrified mixed with something warm. She wanted to scream and laugh-she could hardly hold it in.

“You didn’t,” she said.

“I did.”

“Oh, my God.”

“So, I presume that that is where he is heading. He struck me as precipitous enough to fly off with nothing more to go on than that.”

Mimi couldn’t speak. What was it she heard in her father’s voice? Behind the affected world-weariness and the complete lack of proper fatherly disdain at the mess she had got herself into. “You are wicked,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“I am and I did.”

“You knew he was going to come after me.”

Her father sighed. “I gathered,” he said, and the humor in his voice slipped a notch. She heard a glass clink. Heard him take a sip of something. Wine, she assumed. Maybe Scotch at this late an hour. “I was also able to deduce that this Mr. Cosic-Professor Cosic?-”

“Associate professor.”

“-??Was, as you say, the reason you had bolted in the first place.”