Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

Keep her on task, thought Mimi.

“My father,” said Mimi. “Marc. You want me to phone him?”

Mavis looked suspicious, as if this was somehow a different proposal than the one she had made. Slowly she nodded. Then she smiled expectantly. “Bet he’ll be surprised.”

“Yeah,” said Mimi. She cleared her throat. “But my phone is in the kitchen.”

Mavis shook her head. She backed away toward the bedroom doorway, tripping on the mattress, but righting herself too quickly for Mimi to do anything. At the doorway she picked up her handbag and reached inside. “Your little phone was just lying there on the kitchen table,” she said. She pulled it out and crossed the room, stepping around the mattress this time. She handed the phone to Mimi.

Mimi stared at her. This was totally insane. Even if her father could pay whatever Mavis asked for, how did she expect to get her hands on the money or get away?

“Do it!” said the woman.

“Mavis, it’s just that…”

“It’s just that what?”

Better not try to explain, thought Mimi. So she punched in Marc’s number. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Leave that to me,” said Mavis. Her beat-up eyes glowed as she waited. But after a long moment, Mimi handed her the phone. It was an answering machine.

“You want to leave a message?”

Mavis glared at her. “Don’t get smart with me,” she said. She handed back the phone. She looked bewildered, as if her crazy plan had not included Marc being out. Mimi glanced at the phone’s clock. Where is Jay? Is he here? If he was, he was being quiet, which meant he must have realized something was up. Her only hope was to keep talking and be ready to create some distraction. She quailed inside.

“Do you know what my boy did? My good boy?”

“What?”

Mavis moved closer to her, leveled the gun inches from Mimi’s chest. “He destroyed merchandise worth thousands of dollars. Plasma televisions. Destroyed them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He made some people very, very unhappy. And do you know why? Do you know why he did it?”

Mimi heard a clunk. Surely Mavis must have heard it, too, but she seemed beyond hearing anymore. “I don’t know why he did it,” Mimi said. “Tell me why, Mavis.”

Mavis poked her with the gun. “Shut up! What kind of game are you playing?”

“I’m not playing anything.”

“You think I won’t use this thing? You think I have anything left to lose?”

“No, no,” said Mimi. “I mean… I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t have any idea what you are talking about.” There was another clunking sound, but Mavis only stared at her as if her anger was using up all her attention. As if whatever dimension Mimi was in was fading on her.

“Cramer went berserk,” she said. “That’s your doing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You drove him out of his mind,” said Mavis, poking Mimi in the chest.

“Ow! Stop it!”

“I ought to just shoot you for what you did to him,” said Mavis. And she brought the gun right up under Mimi’s chin.

“That hurts!”

“You wanna know about hurt? Huh? Do you?”

“If you shoot me, you won’t get anything out of Marc,” said Mimi. She watched the woman try to piece together in her shattered mind what she was telling her. “He’s got lots of money,” said Mimi. “He’ll probably pay anything you want. But not if I’m dead.”

At first Mimi thought she had gotten through to Mavis. The woman’s eyes seemed to clear. But as Mimi watched, the look on Mavis’s face went well beyond anything rational. She looked sad-deeply sad-and Mimi had the feeling that Mavis was realizing the terrible lunacy of what she was doing.

“He’ll never give me anything,” she muttered. She lowered the gun but not far. “Why would I have thought Marc would ever give me anything?”

She seemed to actually be asking the question, and Mimi was about to answer her when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Her foam mattress moved. She stared into Mavis’s eyes, hoping the woman wouldn’t see the hope in her own eyes.

“Let me try him again,” she said. “He might have just been on another call.”

Behind the woman with the gun, the trapdoor was opening slowly, silently. Mavis, oblivious, only shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Don’t bother to call.”

“Let me try,” said Mimi, her voice a little shrill.

“No,” said Mavis, her voice resigned. “I didn’t think this through very well.” Then she smiled, as if a new idea had come to her. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Maybe you should phone him. Yes. It isn’t what Marc should give to me that matters,” she said, her voice getting louder, more enthusiastic. “It’s what I should give to him.”

“Okay,” said Mimi. “So I phone him again?”

“Yes,” said Mavis, her eyes wide now, as if everything was suddenly becoming clear. “You phone him. And after you say hello, I talk to him, tell him where we are, the two of us. Tell him exactly where we are and that I’ve got a gun. And he starts talking about all the things he’s going to give me so that I don’t shoot you. And maybe I say, ‘I’ve heard that before, Marc Soto.’ I say that and then, with him right there on the other end of the line, I do it.”

“Do what?”

“It. You. Shoot you.”

The mattress erupted behind them as the trapdoor flew back on its chains, and in the same moment that Mavis spun around and Mimi drew the canister, Cramer emerged, head and shoulders, from the hidey-hole, his arm shooting out across the floor, grabbing Mavis by the ankles and pulling her off her feet.

She crashed to the ground, and her flailing arm knocked the canister right out of Mimi’s hand. Mavis writhed on the floor, kicking out at Cramer’s grasping hands.

“Run!” shouted Cramer.

Mimi pasted herself against the wall behind Mavis, inching toward the door, but Mavis, from where she lay, twisted around, so that the gun was aimed up at Mimi.

“Mimi!” Now Jay was at the bedroom door, and Mavis swung around to face him.

“Don’t do it!” screamed Cramer, clawing at his mother’s leg.

“You!” said Mavis, swinging her attention back to him. “You!”

Then the gun went off. The trapdoor shuddered with the impact of the shot, and Cramer, howling in pain, crumpled out of sight.

There was a man standing on the bridge over the snye, squinting into the light of the Mini Cooper’s headlights, holding up his hands to shade his eyes. His shoulders were hunched, pelted by the rain. It wasn’t even six, but the storm clouds made it seem like twilight. Jay switched off the lights but not the ignition. The guy was his age but looked huge somehow, standing like that alone on the crumbling bridge, muscular, his head shaved, dressed only in a T-shirt and black jeans. Cramer.

He wiped his face with both hands, squinting from the rain. It was still coming down hard. He waved his arm urgently, then made his way toward the car. Instinctively, Jay locked the doors. What was going on? Where was Mimi? But now Cramer was at his window, his hands pressed against the glass, framing his face, and his face was filled with earnestness and fear. His mouth was moving. He was saying something. Jay turned off the engine. “Mimi!” he said, pointing toward the house. “Hurry!” Jay nodded and Cramer stepped back to let him out. Jay opened the door.

“It’s Mimi,” said Cramer. “She’s in trouble.”

“What did you do to her?”

Cramer looked exhausted. He shook his head. “Have you got a cell phone?” Jay nodded. “Call the cops. And you’d better call for an ambulance, too.”