by Jaye Ford
37
Carly saw the whole tableau now – the stepladder positioned under the vent hole, the toolbox on the floor, its lid folded open, a screwdriver across its top shelf. Nate had taken the vent cover off.
Nate had access to the ceiling.
‘Can you look for a razor?’ Bec said. ‘And toothbrush and toothpaste.’
‘Sure,’ Carly said, staring at the scene a moment more. The ladder had five steps, high enough for someone to peer into the ceiling, but the square wasn’t much bigger than her laptop. A tight squeeze to climb through.
‘You okay?’ Bec asked.
‘Yeah. Razor. I’ll check the ensuite.’ Carly frowned in the doorway, remembering, rethinking. It was her bathroom but in reverse. Their lofts were back to back, mirror image. She lifted her face to the hole again. It was in the space between the bed and the side wall, opposite the ensuite and built-in wardrobe. Carly didn’t have a vent there. There were no vents in her ceiling.
Had Nate put this one in? When? She’d slept four nights here, couldn’t remember seeing it. Had she even looked?
She heard Nate in her head: Mine’s in the ensuite ceiling. He’d meant the manhole. She peered up at it, the brass key plate in the same place as hers above the vanity. She looked back out to the bedroom. The vent was off to the left, far enough left that she had to stand in the doorway before she could see it. Too far left to open into the tunnel Carly had seen through the manhole.
‘Found it yet?’ Bec called.
‘Still looking.’ What had Nate said about the tunnel? Those huge timbers up there are the original beams, they hold up the fifth storey. There would be more beams up there, parallel rows of tunnels in the ceiling.
Carly stared at herself in the mirrored cabinet. Nate had a hole in his ceiling that opened into a long, dark tunnel that ran above her apartment.
‘How are you doing?’ Bec was at the door.
Carly pulled open the cabinet, no idea what she was looking for as her gaze ran across packets of soap, shaving equipment and bottles of … pills. A bunch of them, Nate’s name on the label. What did you take? he’d said. I’m wondering if you took something else.
‘Drop them in here.’ Bec held up a small overnight bag.
Carly grabbed a razor, and toothbrush and toothpaste off the vanity, flipped them into the bag. ‘I’ll just be a second.’ She pointed at the hole above the bed. ‘I want to see what’s up there.’
‘Now?’
‘Maybe the cover should go back on while Nate’s in the hospital.’
Bec made a face. ‘Rats?’
Carly hadn’t thought of that. She made a face back. ‘Could be.’
Bec looked at the opening for a moment as though deciding how much time she had or whether Carly should be left alone in her brother’s bedroom, maybe imagining a stream of rodents spilling out of the ceiling. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll hold the stepladder so you don’t twist your other ankle.’
At the top, standing on tiptoes, only the crown of Carly’s head made it into the hole. If her shoulders had reached, she’d have to turn on the diagonal to get through, corner to corner. If Nate had used this ladder to get into the ceiling, it would’ve been a much tighter squeeze. She craned her neck to peer into the space. No tube or chute for air conditioning, no rats either. Just the sensation of dry air and space.
‘Careful of traps,’ Bec called. ‘He might’ve been setting baits.’
Yes, maybe that was all he was doing. She felt cautiously around, felt only the stiff padding of insulation. No wires or pipes – at least not within reach.
‘Anything?’ Bec asked as Carly climbed down.
‘No.’ Nothing that told her why Nate had taken the cover off.
‘No droppings?’ Bec asked.
‘Not that I could feel, thank god.’
‘Should we screw the cover back on?’
‘I don’t think my arms are long enough. We’d have to get a ladder from the storeroom in the foyer.’
Bec checked her watch. ‘Next time, maybe. I want to get to the hospital. Are you coming over?’
She was Nate’s neighbour, Bec suspected they were more. Twenty minutes ago when Bec told her Nate was in hospital, Carly had wanted to go straight there. Now she’d seen a hole in Nate’s ceiling.
She checked her own watch, as though deciding how much time she had. ‘I need to be somewhere soon. I’ll go over later.’
Maybe not even then.
There were dried drops of blood on the floor where Carly had waited for Nate in the dark with a knife. There were more at the bottom of the stairs, smeared where she’d fallen. A rust-stained tea towel in the kitchen sink.
She needed a change of clothes and a shower but the loft seemed dark and ominous at the top of the stairs. The last time she’d been there, she’d been attacked and terrified.
She closed her eyes, remembering Nate in the moments after he arrived – inviting her to drive the knife into his throat. Voice calm, pain in his eyes.
He had a fucking hole in his ceiling.
Anger heated her fear but she cautioned herself. She was frightened and confused, burned by men who’d hurt her – and it might be just rats. Dread was always her first instinct, that hot, oily ooze of fear through her veins before the anxiety started. But what if he’d pulled the cover off to try to figure it out – how someone could get into one of the apartments, how they could do it silently and without being seen. Carly wanted it to be that, but …
She eyed the wall that separated their apartments, lifted her gaze to the loft above, thinking about their back-to-back ensuites. If he was getting into the ceiling through his vent hole, how was he getting into her apartment?
She crossed the room, stood under the loft and looked up. Their bedrooms were mirror image. Her ensuite was on the right, Nate’s was on the left. His vent was on the right side of the room, she didn’t have one. Unless … the vents weren’t mirror image. Unless the vents had been put on the same side of every loft, regardless of layout. She turned around, kept her eyes focused up, picturing what was there. Nate’s vent was on the right. On the right of her loft, there was an ensuite and … the built-in wardrobe.
She hop-skipped to the stairs, loped across the room, slid the wardrobe open and looked in. The storage space was deep enough to take a step inside, the top shelf low enough to reach with an arm extended over her head. Like the rest of the loft, it had no natural light, but it was like a dungeon in there. Carly flicked a switch and the rack of bulbs above the doors came to life.
Stepping in, peering past the shelving, Carly eyed the dark empty space that went all the way to the five-metre ceiling, black beyond the reach of the bulbs. All she could make out was the straight line where wall met ceiling.
After a detour downstairs for a torch and painkillers, she shone a beam around the upper reaches of the wardrobe, the circle of light bouncing and jerking before hitting its target, shining straight and still like an accusation.
It wasn’t a vent, at least not the same as Nate’s. It was a rectangle about twice as wide, covered with a grate of tiny squares.
Carly stared at it for a long time. She moved the light around, too, checking the walls, the shelves, the floor. But kept going back to the trapdoor – yes, it was a trapdoor with two little knobs on one side.
In line with the vent in Nate’s apartment.
Fuck. Oh, fuck.
She looked back into the loft, positioned herself where Nate must have when he climbed in at night, saw the chest of drawers where the mobile had sat, aimed at the bed. The sheets had been straightened since then, the doona pulled up. He’d done that while she paced the floor downstairs with her cut hand and twisted ankle. Clearing up the mess left after she’d fought back. She remembered the surprise in his panicked exclamation. And his arm against her throat.
A hand flew to her mouth as she lurched across the room, her throat filling with bile.
Nate’s girlfriend had drowned off a boat he skippered. He’d cal
led her name in the darkness and she never answered. His new neighbour, Carly, was the same age as the woman he’d loved. He’d called Carly through the door and she’d told him to go away.
Carly stood at the French windows, her gaze on blue sky while her mind reeled with dark thoughts.
Cut me. I don’t care, Nate had told her. Had he broken in and scared her so she’d need him? Had he wanted to redeem himself and save the girl this time? Sleep with her so it was closer to the original version of his tragic story?
She didn’t pace up and down, she didn’t need an outlet for the anxious energy – she needed to remember what had happened this time, to figure it out.
Nate had been outside her door every time she’d stumbled terrified through the apartment. He’d told her he was known to the police for an argument over his sister’s ex – and Carly had taken his word for it. Nate had attached her security chain and changed her locks. The visitor in black never came when Nate was in her bed. The motion sensor app had worked all night when he was there and it had stopped when he wasn’t, moments before she was attacked.
Before Nate attacked her.
‘Fuck. Oh, fuck.’
Not fate coming for her. Carly had done this herself. She’d reached out when she was lonely and scared, repeated things that had hurt her before. She’d behaved as though she’d learned nothing.
She tightened the arms that were folded across her chest, held on like it was a restraint. Her skin felt dirty, the view too bright, the apartment dull and ugly. The police hadn’t believed her. Neither had Liam. Nate, though, had been clever. He’d listened, he’d empathised, he’d let her think he was trying to solve the puzzle while he kept himself out of it. Then he’d left the warehouse with his vent open and didn’t get back to close it.
Anger threaded its way into her thoughts. And something else, something she recognised, that she’d tried to cull from her personality. The drive that had put her friends on a ledge that collapsed beneath them. The part of her that had pushed, cajoled and manipulated to make things happen. All through school, she’d wangled permission to parties and camping trips, she’d got them into the Rural Fire Service when it wasn’t taking recruits. She’d got herself into a uni in Sydney. And she’d talked Debs, Jenna and Adam into going to the canyon when none of them had wanted to be there.
With Nate hovering in her thoughts, Carly saw again the moment before she’d sealed their fate: Debs, Jenna and Adam turning as one to her. Do we stay or do we push on? For thirteen years, Carly had been haunted by her reckless, arrogant confidence. Only that wasn’t what she felt as she remembered the look in their eyes this time. They weren’t relinquishing the decision to someone else, they weren’t waiting to be told what to do. Not all of them, not Debs. They’d looked at Carly because she got things done, she found a way. She talked parents around, she hustled transport to get them where they wanted to go, she found the best climbing gear at discount prices. They never trekked until she’d analysed routes, assessed the risks, mapped the path. They’d looked to her because if anyone was going to get them down, it was Carly.
It wasn’t shame or guilt winding its way through her now. It was the emotion she’d felt standing on that cliff face in the darkness, the emotion she hadn’t remembered until now. Resolve and purpose.
It wasn’t over. Nate was in hospital and he was coming back. There was no fixing it but she could change it. Now, while he was in a bed, before he tried to stop her.
You should tell the cops, Bec had said. She’d meant the fight Nate had been in two weeks ago. But Carly could tell them other things, show them her bruises and what she’d found in her wardrobe. The police had been to her apartment, there were official records of the break-ins … yeah, and they could look up her file and escort her to another wing of the hospital. Have her sedated, too.
No, she needed more. She needed to get in the ceiling and see how he’d done it. Take photos and find evidence that proved Nate was crazy, not her.
38
It was miraculous Howard was home. He headed across the foyer to the storage room like Superman without a cape: long, emphatic strides, jaw squared, happy, he said, to take a break from his studies. Carly limped along behind, making sure he didn’t get distracted while he collected a ladder.
‘Where are you painting?’ he asked as she unlocked her door.
‘Up in the loft. Sorry, there’s another set of stairs.’
‘No problem. I’m going to miss these call-outs.’
‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘The UK.’
‘Oh, when?’
‘Next semester. I’m taking up a position in the physics faculty at Bath University.’
‘Nice.’ Not the physics but the Roman ruins and the new start.
‘So you’ll have a different me next year. The body corporate is advertising this month.’
Carly hoped they found someone who would actually supervise. ‘Okay, well, thanks for the news and the ladder.’
When he was gone, she stood at the bottom of the stairs and eyed the gloom above. Her ankle ached, the cuts on her hand stung. She drank a glass of water, ate a biscuit, not sure if she was hungry or nervous. Vents and rats and solid black ceiling space. What the fuck was she doing?
She should be calling a real estate agent and getting the hell out, not climbing a ladder. She should follow in Howard’s footsteps and escape to Bath University. Any university. Finish the social science degree she’d begun, forget sustainable work and live the student life on government allowances and loans, degree after degree, uni after uni, so she never had to stay, so she could leave when she made a mess of it.
She glanced at the view, at the cold, crisp day outside, the wedge of harbour in the distance. The French windows, the rustic brick, the sheen of stainless steel. Her apartment. It was hers. Brooke and Dakota had laughed here. Christina dropped by. Elizabeth’s silver vase was gleaming on the kitchen counter. She’d given it to Carly for courage to follow her dreams.
This place was her dream.
It took some manoeuvring to wedge the A-frame ladder through the sliding door and into the wardrobe. Carly was sweating before she’d started to climb. Grimacing, she pushed her sore foot into a walking shoe and laced it loosely, then tied her hair back, pushed her mobile phone into the back pocket of her jeans, picked up the torch and put her foot on the first rung.
It was like rising into a fog – visibility dropping, the atmosphere close, the sounds of her hands and rubber soles on the metal treads bouncing off the walls of the wardrobe. She stopped three rungs from the top, the trapdoor an arm’s length away and looked down. Her feet were just about level with the top shelf – if she was more agile, uninjured and less frightened, she could possibly climb the shelving, stand on top and reach the trapdoor. Was that how Nate did it?
Wanting both hands free in case she overbalanced – something that felt like more than a possibility as she tried to keep the weight off her sprained ankle – she slid the torch strap over her wrist, the light swinging and bouncing around the wardrobe as she reached for the grid of tiny squares. A slight resistance when she tugged, a snick as a magnetic catch released. Slowly, cautiously in case it fell, in case something fell out, Carly eased it down. It was hinged on one side; she smelled dust as the trapdoor passed her face. Remembering Talia’s name on the manhole cover, she lifted the torch and took a closer look at it.
The frame was white, a fine wire mesh covered the grid of squares. There were no names, only fingerprints, but not in the dust – there wasn’t any dust. The cover was clean, really clean, as though it had been wiped recently. The prints were dark smudges from dirty fingers. Someone had been there.
Carly’s torch went up first, then her hands, holding on as she climbed to the top of the ladder. Head and shoulders in the ceiling, she shone the light around. It didn’t tell her much, its weak beam casting only a small, pale circle on flat surfaces. What she saw, though, was another tunnel: sides formed by massive beams,
ceiling by the underside of the flooring above, the base a giant checkerboard of timber framework inset with pads of insulation. Beyond the short, filmy play of her torchlight was only blackness.
Uneasiness prickled across her shoulderblades. Nate was in hospital and sedated, she reminded herself. The worst that could happen was falling through a ceiling. Breaking a leg. Or her neck. Or rats. Shit.
‘Don’t think about it.’ She said it out loud, talking to the anxiety that was fidgeting in her muscles. ‘Do it now.’
She hauled herself up and sat on the timber frame that surrounded the vent, the ceiling so low her scalp was pressed to the floor above. A bubble of pale light glowed around her, the dust made her nose itch. It was uncomfortable and close but she was grateful for that – without it, the darkness and whispering echoes might have made her feel like she was alone at night on a cliff. It wasn’t entirely black beyond her torch beam. There was a patch of weak greyness in the direction of Nate’s loft, the dim glow from the open vent in his loft leaking into the pitch blackness. Her destination.
She tested the plasterboard between the checkerboard framework, feeling a slight give. She’d have to stick to the cross-timbers – only she needed a few seconds to think about how. They were too narrow to crawl along one without toppling, too wide apart to spread her knees across two, and the next cross-timber was more than an arm stretch away. She pushed the torch onto the padding ahead of her, squatted at a T-intersection and lurched forward with her undamaged hand … banging her spine on the ceiling before thumping onto the next timber. Then hung there as though she was playing Twister and deciding how to get her feet to the yellow dots. She thrust sideways and sat in one motion, butt on another cross-timber, beam at her back.
‘Like that,’ she said quietly.
Favouring her injured hand and ankle, she repeated the lurch and thrust five times before she was looking into Nate’s loft, lit only by the daylight from the living room below. Carly pulled the phone from her pocket and took photos: of the tunnel, the hole with its missing vent cover, the view into Nate’s apartment.