Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“What the hell-”

“Just do it!” said Cramer, his voice urgent but not much above a whisper. Jay climbed back in the car, to make the call out of the rain. He punched in 911. Cramer was looking back toward the house, his fists coiled, his face filled with a gravity that frightened Jay. He made the connection, gave the directions.

“Tell them she’s got a gun!”

“What?”

Cramer swore and grabbed the phone from Jay. “There’s a crazy woman with a gun,” he said. “Hurry!” Then he handed the phone back to Jay.

“You get that?” said Jay. The dispatcher did.

“Do not attempt a rescue,” she said. He flipped the phone shut and jumped out of the vehicle, because Cramer was already hotfooting it back toward the bridge.

“They said not to try anything.”

Cramer turned and cried out in a harsh whisper, “Don’t slam the door!”

Jay caught the door in midflight and closed it quietly. Then he ran to catch up.

“They said not to try rescuing her,” he said.

“Shhh,” said Cramer. “Keep it down.”

“But-”

Cramer turned to him, his face stern. “I heard you. I just don’t know if we’ve got that option.”

They had to cross the plank portion of the bridge single file, but as soon as they were on the other side, Jay caught up with Cramer. “For God’s sake, tell me something!”

Cramer took Jay by the arm. “It’s so fucked up.”

“But-”

Cramer’s hold on his arm tightened painfully. “Just stay with me,” he said. “We can do this, right?” Then he was moving again, without waiting for an answer, moving in a crouch as if someone in the house might see them. There was a bag attached to his belt and banging against his hip. They moved swiftly up the wet lawn to the house and stopped, near the shed.

“What do we do?” whispered Jay.

Cramer was breathing hard. His face was filled with consternation, but his eyes were quick with possibility, and Jay stopped pressing him. Under the shed roof, the noise was deafening from the rain on the tin. “They’re in the bedroom,” he said. “I’m going to go in through the storm door-”

“You can’t,” said Jay. “I locked it.”

Cramer shook his head. “I know,” he said. “I can get in.” His eyes slid away from Jay’s, embarrassed, but Jay didn’t press it.

“So I’ll go in the back door,” said Jay. “The noise of the rain will cover any noise.” Cramer nodded, then looked down.

“Take off your shoes,” he said. “Get as close to the bedroom door as you can. I could see through a crack in the curtains; the bedroom door’s open. Be ready, okay?”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” said Cramer. “I don’t the fuck know!” His eyes were filled with pain. He swallowed.

“So, be ready for anything,” said Jay. “Any opportunity.”

“Right,” said Cramer. His eyes widened. He nodded. “Yeah.”

So it was half a plan, but at least it was something. Then Cramer punched Jay on the arm-comrades-and disappeared around the shed.

It was like some nightmarish game. For all Jay knew, Cramer was nuts! But he didn’t look nuts. He looked scared shitless. And, anyway, it was Cramer who’d suggested calling the cops.

As soon as he opened the kitchen door, he heard voices: Mimi’s voice and the voice of another woman. There was an edge to her voice that confirmed the panic Jay had seen in Cramer’s eyes. He crept through the kitchen in his stocking feet, turned left, and slid along the wall toward the open bedroom door.

The woman’s voice grew louder, more strident, more threatening. They were talking about Marc, about a phone call. Jay hardly dared to breathe. He tried to place the figures in the room by the sound of their voices. Mimi was facing his direction; the stranger must have her back to the door. It would be safe to look, he thought, unless Mimi saw him and the woman noticed. But if she did-if she turned-maybe Mimi could hit her or something. No, it was too dangerous. And then suddenly nothing was as dangerous as what the woman was saying.

“Do what?”

“It. You. Shoot you.”

Jay hurled himself into the room just as the trapdoor flew open, and Cramer exploded up out of the hole like a jack-in-the-box. The woman crashed to the floor. Her hand flew out as she fell and hit Mimi’s hand, sending her mace canister flying.

“Run!” shouted Cramer.

“Mimi!” shouted Jay.

And then everything was happening too fast.

Jay dragged Mimi out of the room and there was a gunshot and Cramer howled with pain and the woman screamed.

“He’s hit!” cried Mimi, and Jay clamped her hard around the waist to stop her from going back in there.

Then the gun went off again, and Mimi didn’t need any urging to leave. They skittered through the kitchen and out the door into the shed.

“I called 911 fifteen minutes ago,” he yelled into her ear. “The cops are on their way.”

“He’s hit!” yelled Mimi. “She killed him.”

“They’re sending an ambulance, too. Come on. There’s nothing we can do!”

She was sobbing. She turned to him, looking lost and small, and he threw his arm around her, glancing over her shoulder, nervously, at the kitchen door, expecting to see the madwoman any minute. “Come,” he said. “Quick.”

They ran, hand in hand, down through the sopping grass toward the snye and were halfway there when they heard the third shot. They were far enough away now to stop and look back through the drifting veils of rain at the little house. And then they heard the sirens.

The gunshots of that night would stay with Mimi for a long time. It was as if the bullets had exploded inside her head and her bloodstream had carried the fragments to every cell in her body. She imagined minuscule shards of metal lodged in the mitochondria, or whatever subcellular organism it was that stored foreign bodies. So deep was the sense of those gunshots, Mimi wondered were she ever to have children whether the shots would be part of their memories, too.

The first bullet had ricocheted off the open trapdoor and smashed downward through Cramer’s cheek, fracturing his upper jaw and jawbone and lodging in the anterior skull base. In an emergency craniotomy, his contused brain was cleared of damaged flesh and metal splinters, the fractured bone plugged with bone wax and mashed muscle taken from the fascia lata of Cramer’s thigh. There were tubes to help him breathe and to keep down the orofacial swelling. There were cerebral decongestants being dripped into his head and antibiotics to fend off meningitis. There were anticonvulsants.

There were so many things that still might happen. Time would tell if there had been traumatic brain injury.

Mavis Lee was dead. That was the third shot. And Mimi found herself trying to imagine the madwoman’s last few minutes. What happened between shooting her son and shooting herself? Did she look down into the hole where Cramer lay, half his face shattered, and realize who he was? Because Mimi was pretty sure it wasn’t Cramer that Mavis thought she was firing at. “You,” she said. “You!” There was so much in those words. Surprise mixed with some kind of weird delight in the first “you” and then utter, soul-wrenching fury in the second. Did she think it was Marc? Was it Marc’s blue eyes she saw peering up at her from that face emerging as if from the grave? Is that who she intended to kill? And when she was alone, did she come to her senses long enough to realize that she had it all wrong?

The police dug the second bullet out of the wall above the desk in the front room. It was lodged in the plaster not a foot from where Mavis’s initials and phone number were framed in pencil-crayon splendor. The irony was incidental and unintended. Mavis had been shooting at someone in the doorway-two someones-who were there one moment but gone by the time the gun went off. Jay had saved Mimi’s life. And Cramer had saved her life, too, and might still lose his own.