by Ellie Marney
I set the screwdriver down while I use both arms to lever myself onto the top of the tank. The surface is solid, gritty and cold. I wipe my hands on my bodysuit before I grab the screwdriver and turn to the ventilation grate. Four quick revs and the four screws holding the grate are disposed of. I unhook the grate carefully and lay it at my feet. Then I go back to the edge of the tank and lean my upper body off the side, folding down so I can see Zep.
He looks up at me, fascinated and serious. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got your inhaler?’
‘Yup.’ I tap my velvet-covered chest, where my puffer is tucked into my sports bra. I hold out the screwdriver. ‘Take this.’
He accepts it and returns it to his hoodie pocket. ‘If you get stuck, come back.’
‘I won’t get stuck.’ It’s important to embark on new experiences with an appearance of confidence. I touch the watch on my left wrist. ‘Three minutes.’
Zep hesitates, then nods. ‘Good luck.’
‘You mean “break a leg”.’ I grin, tilt myself back, stand up and contemplate the open maw of the ventilation shaft.
It’s one and a half feet square on each side. I put a penlight torch between my teeth. It’s not until I’m easing myself inside the shaft that I think of spiders. I’m not in love with spiders. But the metal tunnel of the shaft seems to be spider-free. My bodysuit protects me from some sharp edges, although it’s not much help against the cold in here.
I stretch, wriggle forward, trying to be as silent as possible. Noise was my biggest concern with this method of entry, because the metal creaks, and the shaft acts like one long amplifier. My second concern was dust, and there’s plenty of dust. The only way to handle it is to go slow and smooth. I try not to hold my breath–that only makes things worse. My nose itches, but I control it.
A bodylength in, I hit the first serious double turn. If I wasn’t bendy, this would be an issue, but lucky for us, I can fold myself around the corners. I can’t say this job is pleasant–the shaft is tight and absolutely black, and I’m compressed inside it like a worm in a straw. But I wouldn’t call it difficult, either.
The torch tastes like pennies in my mouth. Only another six feet to the next turn, an easy one. Once I’m through that turn, the shaft narrows a little. Then a final bend, and the end of the shaft beckons.
I loosen the screws on the grate from the inside this time, just with my fingers. I’m clammy and wheezing a little, and dust swirls in the torchlight as I work. There’s no way to collect the screws, and one slips away–I hear the plink as it falls.
The grate loosens enough that I can push it aside. I leave it hanging by one screw as I ease myself out of the shaft. There’s a two foot drop, then I’m stepping onto the roof of the shipping container inside the shed.
I take the penlight out of my mouth and inhale. I don’t understand it–a shipping container inside a shed? But at the moment, I don’t care; I’m only relieved to be breathing cool, clean air. My watch says two minutes and eighteen seconds have elapsed. Some of that was the time it took me to unscrew the grate. Wah, I’m good.
I skip to the edge of the shipping container and peer down. Nothing on this side, nothing on this side… Bingo. A stack of filing cabinets and a bookcase, pushed up flush against the outside wall of the container. I flow down the stacked junk like honey running downhill, slip on silent feet to the door of the shed. Listen. Tap sharply once on the door, disengage the deadbolt, pull carefully to avoid squeaks. Zep slides through the opening like a dark ghost.
‘You did it.’ His teeth shine. The rest of his face looks equally happy. ‘No asthma?’
‘Pfft.’ I toss my braid. ‘No asthma. Lots of dust, though.’
‘No shit.’ He peruses me up and down.
It’s the first time I’ve realised that my bodysuit is covered in long grey streaks of grime. ‘Guess I won’t be using this suit for practise again.’
He pulls his eyes away, his expression firming. ‘Time to get to work.’
The front of the shipping container is blank and forbidding. Zep grimaces when he sees the padlock protecting the door release.
My heartrate spikes. ‘Too hard?’
‘Are you kidding?’ His voice, like mine, is a muted whisper. He pulls a soft fold of cloth from his hoodie pocket, shaking his head. ‘These kinds of padlocks, you can crack them with a hammer. Angus should know better.’ He glances at me. ‘Give me five seconds.’
The cloth in his hand contains a set of fine metal filaments, some thicker and flatter, some thin as wire. I’ve never seen lockpicks before.
It hits me all at once: I’m attracted to a boy who owns lockpicks. I am attracted to a thief, and I can tell myself that and still feel the pull of him as he stands beside me now, as we break into a rival circus lot in the middle of the night, as we do this terrifying, dangerous, exciting thing.
I am a degenerate.
It actually takes longer for these thoughts to coalesce in my brain than for Zep to open the padlock. He leaves the lock cracked apart, slips the lockpicks back into the cloth to fold and tuck away. He slides the bolt of the door release across–the creak echoes in this cavernous space–and opens the door of the shipping container with a flourish.
‘After you, m’lady.’ He ducks his head, rubbing a hand across his face. ‘That sounded stupid. Ignore me, I’m just showing off.’
He’s kind of adorable when he’s embarrassed. ‘The flourish wasn’t showing off. Picking the lock in five seconds? That was showing off.’
The inside of the container is a combination of storage and office space. We play our torches around. There’s a lot of junk in here that I wasn’t expecting: shelves of machine parts, a metal press, an electric lathe. But Zep’s dad is an engineer, I remember. Whatever his other evil qualities, Angus Deal has helped keep Lost Souls going–much like Mr Gibson at Klatsch’s. It seems weird, to draw that parallel, but even villains have useful skills, I guess.
Zep pushes back his hood, rakes the shelves of crap with his eyes ‘We’re looking for an old-fashioned wooden filing cabinet.’
‘Okay. Wooden filing cabinet. I’m on it.’
We separate to search. The shipping container is long, so I take the far end and Zep starts from the front, each of us working our way towards the centre. It’s like the Room of Requirement in here. But there’s a kind of order to things: the front area holds more utilitarian objects, mostly circus-related, and the rear area holds personal belongings. There are boxes marked, ‘Books’ and ‘Fishing’ and even one temptingly marked, ‘Zeppelin–photos’.
I try to be methodical and ignore the smell and furtive scurries of mice, which I am no more enthusiastic about than I am about spiders. My watch reads one a.m. We need to find the filing cabinet and the ledgers and get out of here before–
‘Anything?’ Zep pokes his head around a rack of garment-bagged costumes.
‘Not yet.’ I exhale, try to settle my nerves.
He waves me closer. ‘Most of the office stuff is near the middle. Come see.’
I edge past a huge armoire, scooch around a pallet holding a collection of mechanical clown heads with open mouths and a long, painted box with an arched lid. Pushed up against the ridged-metal wall in the centre area is a large wooden desk, an office chair parked in front of it.
The desk is one of those old ones, with solid drawers on each side instead of legs. A desk lamp and half a dozen boxes litter its surface. The armoire I passed corrals the area on my side. This is a private office nook–the junk is all part of the disguise.
‘Let’s make this easier,’ Zep mutters. He takes the electric screwdriver out of his pocket and puts it on the desk, then presses the switch on the lamp.
Bright light spills over the desk. My eyes aren’t used to it, and I flinch. ‘Wait, someone might see the–’
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‘We’re inside the container.’ He searches the area around the desk. ‘Check behind me?’
I do, peering through the rubble of old stage lighting and props arrayed on shelves or just lumped together. ‘Nothing here.’
We search for five more minutes. Zep is getting increasingly frustrated.
‘This is Dad’s desk.’ He’s almost humming with pent-up nerves. ‘This is his chair. I know he had the ledgers in the filing cabinet here, I’ve seen them.’
‘How recently?’
He grimaces. ‘Dad locked me in here the night of the Spiegeltent fire, to stop me from blabbing about him to the police. They were here then, and a few days later he was arrested. He didn’t have a chance to move them. So where the hell are they?’
I’m getting a bad feeling. ‘Could he have asked someone to move them?’
‘The whole point of the ledgers is that they’re secret.’ Zep pulls at his hair. ‘They were his fallback, he wouldn’t have–’
He stops at the same time I freeze–at the sound of voices. Deep, gruff voices, and the crunch of footsteps outside.
We stare at each other in horror.
My whole body tenses into alertness, like a wild animal. Quiet. Listen. Closer? They’re coming closer. It’s not until Zep’s hand grabs mine that I realise my fingers have gone cold as ice cubes.
My voice is whisper-thin. ‘Hide in the vent?’
‘No time.’ Zep looks frantic. ‘Oh fuck.’
Now is not the moment to panic. Now is the moment to think. I scan quickly. ‘The armoire.’
‘Obvious,’ Zep says, and I have to agree with him. His neck twists as he scans for a better hiding place. ‘Okay, here.’
He yanks me away from the desk towards the pallet of clown heads. From the footsteps, two people are now walking towards the door of the shipping container.
‘The lamp!’ I hiss.
Zep darts back, clicks the lamp off, returns.
There’s a clank at the door of the shipping container, and I whip around. My breathing ratchets higher–then Zep is lifting me, stuffing me lengthwise into the long painted box.
He tosses a black velvet curtain over me. I’m about to tell him that the curtain isn’t going to hide me at all, but my ability to make words dissolves when he climbs into the box and lays face-down on top of me, pulling the arched lid closed.
It’s like a coffin in here, and dark as the inside of a shoe. But I’m less aware of that than I should be, because Zep’s entire body is flush against mine. His face is beside my face, his cheek against my cheek, his breath on my neck. His scent is all around me. Awareness ricochets from my head all the way down to my toes.
I close my eyes, but that only increases my sensitivity. I wonder what Zep’s feeling: my heartbeat thumping against my ribs, thumping against his chest. He must have his arms braced against the sides of the box–I can feel it from the position of his shoulders. His hips are against my hips, my pelvis a cradle. His stomach is against mine.
I make a whimper, and Zep’s cheek brushes my ear, his voice barely a breath. ‘Shh.’
Heavy footsteps, and the reverberation of moving bodies nearby.
‘Where is he?’ A male voice. Raspy, cocky. I’d already assumed maleness from the depth of the tread.
‘He’s here someplace.’ Cooler, more dangerous. That’s Malcolm’s voice. I feel Zep twitch.
A bone-deep shiver starts in my torso and spreads out to my limbs until my whole body is trembling. Zep nuzzles my neck, breathes into my hair to calm me.
How did they know? Fuckity fucking fuck. We are in trouble. We are in so much trouble. My body quivers, prepping for action.
‘Zepp-elin…Come out, come out, wherever you are are…’ That has to be Cecil.
‘Shut up, idiot. Search the back’
Shelves being kicked. I hear the door of the armoire creak. Tramping-around sounds. In the darkness, Zep’s finger strokes my hair back from my forehead.
‘Close your eyes and don’t move.’ His lips are brushing my ear, but his words are barely audible.
I close my eyes. Cloth falls across my face. Our coffin is rocked as the lid comes open.
‘Lookie what we’ve got here!’
I can’t see. But I feel the weight of Zep’s body lifted off me. He kicks, struggles. As his warm heaviness is removed, another weight replaces it–stiff, unyielding, enclosing. A sheet of wood. The false bottom of this coffin we’re in falls over me, fits into place.
I’m in a magician’s box.
Ahh–so much makes sense now. At the same time, nonsensical things are happening outside the box. Scuffles and thumps, a coughing sound.
‘Nice of you to stop by, Zep,’ Malcolm says.
After a small delay, Zep replies. He sounds hoarse. ‘You’re welcome. Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here?’
‘No need. We figured you’d come back for your dad’s paperwork at some point. That’s why we set up the switch on the lamp, see? You turn on the light, and a little alarm goes off in the boss’s office. You’re smart, kid, but sometimes you’re dumb.’
The lamp! Of course! I can appreciate the cleverness of it, because I’m not the one being punched in the gut. I test the false panel above me, but it doesn’t budge. I fight the urge to kick. There must be a release here somewhere. I can’t grope for it too loudly.
Another series of scuffling sounds outside the box. Zep grunts, there’s a hiss of exhale and a thump–Zep gasps like he’s hurting. I am going to hit someone when I get out of this box. I will hit hard and often. Where’s the goddamn release?
‘That’s enough, Whip. Boss wants him back in one piece.’
‘Just havin’ a bit of fun,’ Cecil says. Brengsek. ‘This here’s one frustrating little shit.’
‘Wait,’ Zep pants, ‘wait. So Vas has the paperwork?’
There’s a pause. I imagine Malcolm lifting Zep’s head by yanking on his hair, but it might not be like that.
‘He’s known about Angus’s ledgers for years, boy. D’you think he runs this circus by being a total fool? Angus will keep his mouth shut in jail if Vas holds onto that bit of real estate. The ledgers are in the fridge, like everything else. Now let’s go.’
‘Vas wants to enjoy breaking my kneecaps himself, is that it?’
‘You’re being dumb again, kid. Vas is a respectable businessman now. Why beat on you when he can give you to the cops for breaking and entering?’
That chills my bones. Zep already has a record. He could end up in a cell beside his dad if he gets another conviction.
But I can’t do anything about it. And I can’t move out of this goddamn box. I’m stuck, as the sounds of grappling and walking away filter through from outside. I’m stuck as Zep makes a ruckus at the door of the shipping container, to distract Malcolm and Cecil so they forget about the padlock.
It’s not until all the actors have moved off and away, presumably towards Vas Cavendish’s office, that my searching fingers find the tiny catch along the seam where the false panel meets the side of the box. When I flick the catch, the stifling sheet of wood over me is easy to push off.
The lid opens and I sit up, pull the fabric off my face and look around. I’m alone. The shipping container is eerily quiet.
I spend very little time thinking, because I already know what I’m going to do, and if I think about it I’ll only get anxious.
My eyes have adjusted to darkness, so it’s simple to find my way through the junk and exit the shipping container. I don’t close up the padlock–I leave it as Malcolm and Cecil found it. Then I concentrate on following a series of actions. Walking out of the warehouse, letting the deadbolt click behind me. Skimming around the sides of the building until I reach the water tank. Climbing up to the vent and replacing the grate, so it doesn’t look as though Zep came in this way,
and slipping off the water tank. Walking slowly–without darting–back the way we came, sliding through pools of shadow. Scaling the wire link fence. Running to where we parked the car, opening the driver’s side and getting in.
My panting sounds loud in the quiet normalcy of the car interior. The upholstery in here smells of old cigarette smoke and engine oil. For a flashing second, I wonder what Zep is smelling right now, and a lightning strike of panic jolts through me. My hands start to shake. I force myself to control it.
Don’t lose it now, Ren. You have a long way to go.
I have a little moment when I think for a second that Zep must have the car keys in his pocket. The prospect of walking home, alone, in the middle of the night, almost undoes me. Then I make myself concentrate, and check the sun visor: the keys fall into my hand with a sweet, metallic clink.
I fit the key into the ignition and pretend I’ve been doing this for years. Clutch, gear shift, hand brake, check.
‘Ayolah, Ren. You’ve seen this done a million times.’ My whisper to myself helps me focus.
I switch on the headlights, rev too loudly, bunny-hop away from the kerb. Sweat makes my hands slippery on the steering wheel. I drive in this awkward, unlicensed fashion, under the speed limit, all the way back to Klatsch’s. Nobody notices, or if they do notice, they don’t care.
It’s not until I ease into the patron car park and kill the engine that everything falls away: my concentration, my bravado, my composure. Tears gather behind my closed eyelids and I start trembling. For five seconds, I let myself shiver, then I give myself another pep talk.
Don’t unclench now, or you’ll lose it altogether…you don’t have time for that…it’s best to just keep going…
It’s two in the morning, according to the clock on the dashboard. There are lights in and around the Spiegeltent, but no signs of movement. I abandon the car and jog until my legs start feeling watery, then I walk. I walk as fast as I can the rest of the way to Marco Deloren’s van and bang on the door. I keep banging until someone answers.