Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“Okay,” he said.

“But, Jay? Stay on the line, okay? Did you get that?”

“Yeah. Sure. What’s up?”

“Just in case Mr. Peters accidentally forgets to stop and let me off.”

“Is he kidnapping you?”

“No. But better safe than sorry, right?” Thunder boomed again, louder on the phone than outside Jay’s place. The storm must be centered up that way. “Are you still there?” she asked.

“I’m still here,” he said. “I won’t leave.”

“I know it,” she said, and he marveled at her confidence in him.

“Ah, here we are, now. Hold on.”

“I’m holding.”

Jay listened, heard the sound of the car slowing down, muffled by the rain. Then the car door opened. After that he couldn’t hear anything but the rain pelting down and the car door slamming shut.

“Home free!” Mimi shouted above the clamor into her phone. “Thanks, bro!”

And she hung up.

Cramer wanted to go straight to her, straight to the house on the snye. He didn’t trust Peters, but it wasn’t just that. He had held too much inside for too long. That was part of what had gotten him in this mess. Somewhere along the line, he had let holding himself together get confused with holding back anything that he might really want. Maybe he could even put that into words for Mimi. He had this crazy feeling that he could say anything to her, and the thought of it pushed him on through the storm. But there was something he had to do first, en route. And soon enough he saw ahead, the mailbox, hanging on its chains from the cedar pole, bouncing around in the wind like a piece of flotsam on choppy water.

He looked inside. There was no letter there. So he ran up the steep drive, the gulley down its middle churning with brown runoff, and across the windswept yard to the house. The screen door was flapping, slapping back against the wall with each gust. The inner door was wide open, the doorstep and linoleum floor sopping wet.

The house had been turned upside down. There wasn’t a drawer that hadn’t been opened, its guts spilled out on the floor. Every cupboard had been raided, the studio torn apart. Upstairs was the same.

Cramer hadn’t known what he would find, but this mess did not fall outside of his expectations. He stood looking coolly around, realizing that this was something he could not clean up. This was the kind of disaster that would have happened ages ago if he hadn’t been there to stop it from happening. Why was this only clear to him now?

There was nothing he wanted from here. Well, almost nothing. In the kitchen, he found a blue velveteen bag with a yellow string to close it. A bottle of Seagram’s whiskey had arrived in that bag many years ago, but now all it held were a handful of silver spoons that had belonged to his grandmother. He chucked them out and went back up to his room to recover what it was he would take with him. He felt a sense of urgency, as if this house, like everything else around him, was on the verge of sinking. He found the stone and, under his mattress, the picture of Mimi. He wrapped it in a facecloth and placed the two objects in the little blue velveteen bag. Then he stepped back out into the storm.

Mimi changed into dry clothes and threw her sopping tracksuit into the bathtub. The rain clattered on the tin roof, and she wished that the fireplace worked. She brushed her hair in the bathroom. It was after five; Jay wouldn’t be long now. Then the knock came at the kitchen door.

She stood stock-still, suddenly panic-stricken, although she had been hoping for him to come. Cramer. It had to be Cramer.

The knock came again, louder, more insistent.

She was sure she’d seen the last of Peters. When he had dropped her off, he had not so much as glanced at her. He had looked like what he was: an old man.

So, Cramer then. Had he been up there at the end of the road? Had he heard her little speech? Had he read her letter? Was she ready for this?

She opened the kitchen door and was shocked to see a woman there, not old, but hunched over as if she were, her elbows pressed tightly to her sides, her face bowed, as if she were still out in the slashing rain.

“Good grief,” said Mimi. The woman looked at her, imploringly.

“Come in,” said Mimi, taking her by the arm.

She was shaking violently, drenched, injured. Her hair was flattened against her skull by the rain. A pink stain, high on her cheek, proved to be blood seeping from a head wound. Her eyes bled mascara.

She was wearing a flimsy baby-doll, which, plastered to her skin, revealed a body that was shapely but too old to be dressed this way. And the finishing touch to this apparition was a large pale blue leatherette handbag slung over her shoulder, as if she’d been caught in a downpour while shopping at the mall.

Mimi helped her to the table. “I’ll get a towel,” she said. And she did, a big one, but it was ridiculously inadequate. The woman was soaking head to toe, shaking violently and sobbing by now. “Hold on,” said Mimi, and dashed to her room. She came back with the comforter from her bed and wrapped the woman in it.

“Thank you,” the woman mumbled.

“What happened?” said Mimi. “Did your car break down?”

It was hard to tell whether the woman was nodding or just shivering.

Mimi took the towel and started gently drying the woman’s hair, careful of the head injury. Deja vu. This place was turning into a hospital for head cases! The woman didn’t wince. Perhaps she was too cold to notice. Mimi stopped and peered into her eyes. “Would you like something hot to drink?”

The woman nodded. Mimi dropped the towel on a chair and went to fill the kettle. She put it on the stove top and turned on the burner.

“There,” she said, turning back to her guest. Her guest who was now holding a gun.

“Hello, Mimi,” she said.

Mimi stepped backward, recoiling from the sight of the gun.

“Don’t move,” said the woman. Her voice was still shaky, but her hand, surprisingly, was not, and there was way too much resolve in her eyes to take any chances. Mimi slowly raised her hands.

“What are you doing? How do you know my name?”

The woman didn’t speak right away. She seemed to convulse from the cold, but her aim didn’t falter much. Her eyes were green but bloodshot. So bloodshot that Mimi wondered if there was internal bleeding.

“We’re going to make a phone call,” the woman said.

“A phone call?” said Mimi.

The woman nodded, then shuddered again, so hard Mimi hoped the gun would shake right out of her grasp. It didn’t and Mimi found herself staring at it. She’d never seen one up close. The barrel didn’t look more than four inches long. It was bluish black. The nose was snub and in its center was that darker blackness.

“I need dry clothes,” the woman said, trembling.

“Okay,” said Mimi. “I’ll get something.”

“Don’t move!” the woman barked. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Mimi. “Yes.” The woman’s face was distorted with anger. “Take it easy,” said Mimi.

The woman stood, slowly, clutching the comforter closed at her throat with the same hand that held the handbag. She waved Mimi forward with the gun. “We’ll go together.”

Once in the bedroom, Mimi got to her knees and looked through her suitcase for something warm. A sweatshirt, cotton pajama bottoms. Meanwhile, she closed her hand over the knitted holster with the mace in it. She glanced at the woman, who looked around the room distractedly. Mimi managed to slip the canister into the pocket of her hoodie. Then she got to her feet and held out the clothes to the woman. She was standing just at the threshold of the bedroom door, and her eyes surveyed the room as if searching for hidden cameras or something. No, it wasn’t that. There was an odd expression in her eyes and an eerie half smile on her face, as if there were pictures on the wall and the woman was delighting in the details. Then she seemed to remember where she was and returned her attention to Mimi. She waved the gun in a way that suggested she wanted Mimi to back up into the corner. And as Mimi backed away, the woman dropped the comforter and, leaning against the lintel of the doorway, began to slip on the pair of pants under her wet dress.