Tim Wynne-Jones: The Uninvited

He shrugged. “I can. I mean it’s on its own track. But it took me awhile to figure it out.”

Mimi looked at the screen, at the charts and graphs there that indicated the paused music. There were tracks arrayed down the screen; each instrumental voice had its own. And sure enough, there was a track labeled “cricket.” She pointed at it.

“Yeah, well, when I figured it out, I labeled it,” he said. “I mean, at first I thought it must have just gotten in the house and I’d picked up the sound of it. You see there’s an acoustic guitar track that isn’t recorded direct.”

“Eng?lish, please.”

“Sorry. I had to mike the guitar, and if there had been any ambient sound in the room, the mike would have picked it up. But when I listened to that track, it was fine. No cricket.”

“And the other tracks?”

“Direct.”

“And, like, there couldn’t be a cricket actually in the computer… No. I guess that would be your classic really stupid question.”

“So?”

Mimi wasn’t sure if she got it, but when she looked into Jay’s face, she could see that he wanted her to try.

She twirled around slowly in the chair and stared out the eastern window. A rough meadow rose to a low hill. Was this the tulloch that Marc had told her about? A hundred yards beyond it, there was an impenetrable wall of conifer green, as if that was the end of the magic vale and the beginning of the proverbial deep, dark forest. The one your father took you out to get lost in if you didn’t remember to bring your bread crumbs.

“You’re saying someone sat here and actually recorded that sound onto your piece-into it?”

“Yes,” said Jay.

“Weird,” said Mimi.

“And now listen to this,” he said.

“Now wait, enough already. We have to talk.”

“Just one more thing,” he said.

“Seriously, Jay-”

“Please,” he said, interrupting her. “I haven’t told anyone about this shit, and it’s been driving me crazy.”

She could see that. Okay. With one last glare, she put the headphones back on while he zipped around with the mouse, moving ahead in the score. Then he pushed the space bar again. The music had progressed into a driving rhythm with a wailing guitar over the top, and if it was Jay playing, he was pretty good. But she knew now that compliments were not what he was after. So she sank down below the sound, and this time there were no crickets. But there was something odd. Something that she didn’t think was supposed to be there. She scanned the instrument tracks. No. Not listed.

Someone was breathing. Breathing hard. But not in the sexual sense-it didn’t sound like that. It just sounded like someone breathing to be heard.

She took off the headphones and rolled her chair away from the table. She got up, wanting to be as far away from the computer and that breathing as she could get. “Okay, that is fucking weird,” she said.

Jay nodded, his face grave, but softened by what she guessed must be gratitude.

“Let me get this straight. You’ve changed the locks?”

“Yeah,” he said. He had taken the seat and was putting the computer to sleep.

“So this weirdo guy-does he come in through the window?”

“Who says it’s a guy?”

“It’s a guy,” she said. “Trust me.”

Jay threw up his hands. “Okay, whatever, Sherlock.” She walked over to the gable window and felt around the frame. Painted shut. No sign of being opened in years.

“I already checked,” said Jay. “They’re all like that, except for the one on the eastern wall. I had opened it to air the place out.”

“Ah!” said Mimi, turning and resting her butt against the sill. “In New York we have second-story men. Ever heard of those?”

Jay nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I was kind of slow on the uptake. Then I remembered the ladder.”

“A ladder? How convenient is that?”

He snorted. “It’s an old rickety, handmade thing. I found it out in the meadow. I think it was used for picking apples. I used it myself to fix some broken glass. Then I stowed it in the rafters in the shed. When I went to look at it again, the feet were muddy. I hadn’t put it back that way.”

Mimi nodded and looked around. “No muddy-footed ladder for our Jackson,” she said. “You’re a pretty anal guy, right?”

“If you want to call it that.” Jay stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets.

“All I mean is it’s so tidy, ” she said. “That isn’t exactly common among twenty-year-olds.”

“Twenty-two,” he said. “Twenty-three in September.”

“Ah, well. There you go.”

“People use the term anal as if it’s some kind of disease,” he said. “You know what it means to me? It means getting organized. Staying on track. Getting things done.”

“But you’re an artist,” she said. “What about creative chaos and all that?”

“Art is the opposite of chaos,” he said. Then he smiled. “And thanks for the compliment. If it was one.”

“It was,” said Mimi. “The music is dead cool. And hey, sorry about ribbing you. You’ve got like sixty million dollars’ worth of electronics here, so dust and crud are probably not a good thing. Let alone heavy breathing.”

“Thank you.”

“So,” she said, taking a deep breath. “You smashed the ladder to little bits with an ax and nailed all the windows shut and that was that, right?”

He shook his head. “No. But I did chain the ladder to the rafters and locked it with my titanium bike lock.”

“Ha!”

“What?”

“Those things are so easy to break,” said Mimi. “You just spray the thing with starter fluid- psssssssst! — pop it with a hammer andpoof! — titanium dust.”

“More wisdom from the city.”

“Hey, I lost three bikes before a cop finally set me straight.”

“Well, anyway,” said Jay, “nobody’s touched the ladder since.” He leaned against a post. “And still this he or she or it manages to get in, access my computer, and leave behind some heavy breathing.”

“Fairies?”

But Jay wasn’t listening. “There has to be a way in that I haven’t discovered,” he said.

Mimi smacked her palm to her forehead.

“What?”

She took his hand. “Come on.” She led him downstairs and into the bedroom.

Mimi got to her knees and started feeling the floor with her hands, fingers splayed. It was parquet, a pattern of squares of different-colored wood.

“Did you lose a contact?” he asked.

“Uh-uh,” she said. She ran the edge of her thumb along an almost imperceptible groove. “Move your mattress.”

“What?”

“Really. Just do it!”

He lifted the foam mattress and pushed it vertically against the wall. By then she’d found what she was looking for, a loose square of wood, which she lifted to reveal a circle of brass, laying flat on the underflooring. She lifted the ring and then pulled harder. A trapdoor opened.

“Voila!”

“Holy shit!”

“No,” said Mimi. “A hidey-hole. Kind of a nineteenth-century panic room.”

He joined her and lifted the door completely open. It was heavy. Chains held it from folding all the way back. They peered down into a space about five feet deep, a tiny earthen room.

“I’ve been using this house for years,” said Jay, “and I had no idea that was here.”

“There’s a tunnel to the outside,” said Mimi. She was glowing with the sweat of lifting the heavy door.

“How did you know about it?” he asked.

She looked up at him, pushed a wing of hair back from her eyes.

“My father told me about it,” she said. “He… Well, he owns this place.”

Jay stared at her, his mouth hanging open. Then he closed it and swallowed. “That’s really funny,” he said at last. “Because my father owns this place.”