Darkest Place (24 page)

Younger, eager Carly got instructions from her cautious older self and stopped at a hiking store on the way back to the warehouse. Not thinking about the cost or the risks, she bought a brighter torch with a head strap and a smaller one with a belt clip, eighty metres of rope, a harness, carabiners and a belay device that would stop her descent if she fell. It felt like a hundred years since she'd even thought about climbing anything, and this was a ladder, not a sheer cliff face, but it was a long way down and the fall would hurt the same.

‘Have an awesome climb,' the guy in the store said as he handed her the receipt.

 

‘What the fuck are you doing?' Carly paused on the bottom rung of the A-frame in her wardrobe, tipped her face to the gloom above the shelves – and climbed.

Snick
as the trapdoor came down. She hitched her butt over the edge of the vent frame and pressed a button at her forehead. A brighter, wider beam filled the width of the tunnel and lit the way like a headlight.

As she pulled her feet into the ceiling, apprehension began to gather. It was nine thirty in the morning, she told herself. He came at night. He'd only ever come at night.

That she knew of.

On her haunches, anxiety sparking, she listened to the silence.
You need to do this, Carly.
Or go back to Burden.

It only took a few minutes to reach the void, the lunging familiar, her ankle loosening up as her body warmed with the exertion. On her stomach again, pushing her head out over the drop, she tipped her forehead down to shed light on the drop beneath her.

Under the brighter beam she could see a yawning, rectangular space. Red brick, pale stud walls, the hint of something less black in the bottom, too far away for the torch beam to define.

She uncoiled the rope and reached into the void, both hands suspended in the updraught, her hips anchored behind the last cross-timber, instinct insisting she was about to fall … and it rushed back at her – the whoosh of air, black space filled with screaming. She shook her head, shook it off, slung the rope around the closest rung of the ladder and fastened a knot, fed the other end through the carabiner and the belay device. Spent time checking and rechecking her gear, fingers trembling, mouth dry. Sipping water, glancing into the abyss, telling herself to be brave, assertive, happy, goddamn it. Then slowly, cautiously, keeping her butt anchored to the lip of the tunnel, she found rungs with her hands, then feet and, before she thought about it, before her memory threw back the last time she was on a rope, she thrust her torso into the void.

Adrenaline swept through her veins. She gulped at the air. Hung for long, paralysed moments. Skin tingling, scalp damp, fear wedged in her throat like a hunk of
unchewed bread – and something steely and euphoric pulsing inside her.

Hell, yeah.

Her goal was the bottom of the ventilation shaft. Carly felt the way with her feet, one rung at a time, dropping her head every few steps to aim the torch into the space below. The brickwork in front of her face was cold and held the tangy smell of masonry. The stud wall on her right was close enough to touch with her elbow. It was about five metres to the next tunnel, but it felt like half a day before it appeared as a wide, black mouth in the wall below her.

The ladder ran out where it reached the beam above the third floor and started again underneath it. On the way back up, it would be safest to climb into the tunnel to reach the upper set of rails. On the way down, though, it was a short abseil – easy in theory, but as Carly prepared herself, soles of her shoes flat to the wall and her hands clasping the last rung, she heard Debs' voice and froze. Not words, but laughter. Loud and raucous, like it had been from the top of the canyon that last day.

The water in Carly's stomach tried to come back up. A hiss droned in her ears. In Carly's mind, Debs chucked her gear to the ground. ‘You should come home more often, Carl. I'm a lazy-arse when you're not here to kick my butt.'

‘Well, you're here now.' Carly whispered the words she'd crowed back then.

‘And thank god for that,' Debs replied. ‘I forgot how fucking brilliant this place is. So stop pissing around with your gear, get yourself on that rope and let's do what we came for.'

Carly fingered the harness at her waist, remembering how that day had started. Remembering that Debs, not the
one she saw in her dreams. Wondering what her best friend would say to her now.

‘Well, you're here now.' Carly said it again. Then held the rope, released the rung and leaned out. Walked down the wall and pressed her body to the next section of ladder. Like she used to do it. ‘Like I came to do.'

 

The bottom of the void looked flat and grey in the torch beam now. She sensed more than she saw as she descended – a change in the sounds that bounced back at her, cooler, fresher air moving across her face and, eventually, a soft, rhythmic whirr, as though the shaft was a giant mechanical lung.

Finally, she hung above a concrete floor in an empty room, elated to have made it, disappointed that was all there was. The fan, she now saw, was on the outside of the wall, in a unit fitted into what must have been a doorway in the original warehouse. A thick layer of dust clung to every surface of the space, as if it was the filter for every piece of fluff, lint and microfibre that was sucked from the apartments above.

On the wall behind her was a door.

She descended the last rungs, disconnected from the rope and took photos – of the ladder going up and the door leading out – then she stood at the door and listened. The only sound was the hum of the fan.

The door pushed into another dim space. She cocked her head around, let the torch on her forehead light the narrow, windowless room beyond. There was a group of machines huddled in the middle. One looked like a ride-on floor waxer, another some kind of hoist on wheels. She couldn't identify the others. Maybe they were Transformers waiting for a signal to reassemble into weapons.

There was a second door on an adjacent wall. Carly crossed the floor and opened it, recognising the light and shadows on the other side. The foyer. Its centre was ablaze with sunshine, the columns closest to her casting long, dark shadows that seemed to point right at her. A man with a large box on a trolley was waiting for the elevator. Up above, someone was on the stairs.

Surprised, relieved, already thinking about catching the lift back up, Carly had taken a step out before remembering the harness around her waist, the powdery dust covering her clothes and the fact she didn't have a key to her apartment.

At the bottom of the ladder again, head down as she reconnected the rope, Carly saw footsteps in the dust. Hers. Which meant the man in her loft hadn't walked through here. She grimaced at the darkness overhead – no evidence and a hard climb up.

She had to pause twice before she reached the first tunnel, her thighs burning with each upward step. Sitting on the edge of the first-floor tunnel, flicking her gaze around the void as she gathered herself for the next set of rungs, she saw a hole at the opposite corner. Just like the one she'd seen yesterday from the fourth-floor tunnel. In the stronger beam of light, she saw two rows of rungs around the brick walls, foot- and handholds that led to the opening. What was there, she wondered? It was shortlived, though, replaced with
I'm not climbing over there to find out
.

She stopped three times on the next section, breathing hard and blowing on the blisters in her palms. On the ladder to the third floor her thighs and arms burned, her neck ached from looking up and her sprained ankle pulsed inside its shoe. At the crawl space she rolled over the lip and sank
on her back into the insulation. It was scratchy and stank of dust and she wanted to keep going, but her body refused.

Somewhere further along the padding, Brooke's ceiling opened into this passage. The giant beams on either side of the tunnel held up the apartments on Carly's floor. She aimed the torch at the timber above her. Strip flooring for the living room above. Her own living room was three apartments from the void. Had he come through her floorboards?

She sat, shone the light down the tunnel. There was no hatch in her floor, nothing to suggest he'd got in from underneath, but she was here and her body ached from climbing and she didn't want to go home empty-handed.

It was the same as the tunnel above: beam walls, insulation and cross-timbers, square vents like the one in Nate's bedroom and rectangular ones like the trapdoor in her wardrobe. The third one along made Carly sit back on her haunches.

Its white frame was clean except for a couple of smudges. Just like Carly's.

Blood beat in her ears. Was this
his
apartment?

She glanced up. The apartment overhead was hers. Did he live beneath her?

Leaning over the vent, shining the head torch through the grid, the shelving appeared in the glow below. She pulled the small torch from her harness and angled the beam around. There were rows of neatly stacked boxes on the top shelf, clothes hanging below. Long items. Dresses. And one very high-heeled boot by the door, on its side. Carly frowned, ran her beam across the top shelf again. They were shoe boxes, lots of them.

Okay, a man could collect shoes, but the one boot she could see was a stiletto. And there were dresses. Maybe
the man in Carly's loft was the shoe-collector's partner. Or a cross-dresser. Or … Splaying fingers across the vent, she gave it a push.
Snick
. It dropped away on a hinge, opening into the apartment below – and she heard his breathy voice again.
You're my best, Carly.

‘Does he visit you, too?' she whispered.

Skin prickling with that thought, she glanced back at where she'd come from. This vent and Carly's were the third ones in from the void. Maybe he lived in an apartment between here and the void, with easy access to both of them. Or nearby or … She turned, lighting the way ahead of her, towards the other corner of the warehouse.

‘Maybe it's not just us.'

It took twenty minutes to reach the opposite corner of the warehouse. There was a void between the end apartments, she counted nine vents along the tunnel, five of them rectangular grids, all of which opened with a
snick
. Three had been cleaned recently. Carly took photos of them all.

On the way back, she sat above a rectangular vent trying to remember if Brooke's door was the third or fourth from the corner. She shone the torch around the wardrobe below, searching the clothing for something that looked familiar, wanting to call down
Get out of there
.

She didn't though. The idea that it wasn't just Carly, that a man in black might have crawled through here too and dropped silently into other apartments, had filled the darkness with something new and poisonous. There was urgency to her lunging as she headed back to her rope, her gasping and thrusting reminding her of the scrambling escapes from her bedroom. She'd sprained her ankle on the stairs and Brooke had broken her leg. Carly had pushed at the walls of her apartment and Talia had left holes in the plaster. Talia had opened the manhole and written her name in the dust. She'd driven into a tree with sleeping
medication in her system and Nate had asked Carly what she'd taken and told her not to drive.

Was she seeing connections that meant nothing? Brooke had no memory of how she'd fallen down her stairs. She wasn't scared in her apartment and she hadn't had nightmares.

Maybe Carly had it wrong. Maybe she didn't want to be the only one. Maybe the vents had been cleaned for … what? Maintenance? Who would know?

‘Nate. Maybe.'

 

There was something new inside Carly as she followed the corridors to Nate's hospital room. Something calmer, bolder. Not the same as brave and assertive but it felt good.

‘Have you seen yourself today?' she asked him.

Nate shook his head.

‘Probably best if you don't.' The swelling was a little better but the mass of bruising had spread. Deep purples and bright greens ran a mottled track from his eye socket to his chin. The bandage around his head looked like it was holding his face together.

He watched as Carly sat in a chair then made a throaty sound, pointing at her, waving his finger up and down.

She'd tried to hide the soreness in her muscles, it obviously hadn't worked. ‘I'm a bit stiff. The spare bed at Dakota's.' She shrugged. ‘How are you?'

He pulled his hospital table closer, wrote on the notepad.
Glad to see you.

‘Sorry I didn't get here sooner.'

You went back to the apartment.

It wasn't a question. Had he seen the change in her too? ‘Yes.'

Another noise from his throat as he tried to talk.

She took his hand, wanting to reassure him, but he turned hers over and found the blisters. He touched them gently, grunted.
What?

‘You're not going to like it.'

He made a face that said
What the fuck?
and
Don't do it again
and
I care about you
.

‘I know, I know. But I'm okay and it's an intriguing story, if you can overlook the danger.'

Deep frown, louder grunt.

‘Yes, it was dangerous but I need you to not freak out so you can help me understand what I found.'

Eyes wide, pointed look.

‘I won't tell you if you do that.'

He glanced away, took a few sharp breaths, looked back and nodded.

There were plenty of times he wanted to interrupt. Carly could see it in the stiffening of his spine and the twitching of his lips. He picked up the pen a couple of times and Carly pushed his hand back, wanting to tell it all before the details got lost in other explanations.

‘In the end, I needed to rest in the tunnel above the third floor and I found something I didn't expect.'

She told him about the three clean vents, showed him the photos she'd taken. Nate shook his head in response to her question: no reason for the vent covers to be cleaned for maintenance. More head-shaking when she asked him about building inspections or electrical work, heating or air flow or the big fans in the ventilation shaft. No obvious reasons for the vents to have been wiped down.

‘What are the holes in the stud wall?' On her way up the ladder, she'd seen them on every level.

Pre-fab chutes
.

She frowned. Waited while he wrote an explanation.

The beams run parallel to the east and west walls of the building, forming the tunnels you've been crawling through. The vents draw air from the apartments, which is pulled towards the ventilation shaft by the fans at the top and bottom of the void.

When she'd finished reading, he raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded that she understood. He wrote again.

Along the north and south walls, where the ends of the beams butt up against the brickwork, there's no way for the air to escape. A metal chute was attached underneath the rows of timber to collect air from the apartments. The holes you saw from the ladder are the ends of the chute where the air empties into the void.

Carly took a couple of seconds to think about airflow and access. ‘So there would be vents opening from the apartments into the pre-fab chutes?'

A nod.

‘Big? Small?'

Same as all the other vents probably.

Carly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a bigger, uglier picture forming in her mind. ‘If someone has worked out how to get into the ceiling tunnels, they've got access to apartments on the east and west walls. If they've crawled around more than one tunnel, they've been in the void. Which means they've seen those holes.' She paused, thinking about the hand- and footholds that led to the pre-fabricated chutes. ‘I'm wondering how many other apartments they can get to.'

That's a lot of crawling around.

‘Yes. It would be a bizarre way to spend your time. So is climbing into a woman's loft while she sleeps.'

Understanding and apprehension were in Nate's eyes as they met hers. The arrival of his dinner tray interrupted their silent exchange.

‘I thought about telling Howard,' Carly said when they were alone again. ‘But it might be him. It might be anyone. It might be more than one person. There might be a team crawling around up there.'

Nate lifted the lid on his dinner, made a face at the soup and reached for his notepad.

Tell the police.

‘They think I'm nuts.'

Show them the photos.

‘That will convince them I'm nuts. It's just pictures of ladders and vents and creepy tunnels. The climbing gear is mine so, if anything, it'll look like I'm peering into people's apartments and trying to blame someone else. They'll probably charge me with trespass or stalking as they drive me to the psychiatric unit.'

Nate tipped his head, reluctant agreement.
Don't go home.

‘Believe me, I don't want to, but I can't couch-surf forever. And,' she held her hands out, palms up, ‘I need to know what's going on up there.'

Stay out of the ceiling.

She didn't say anything. Yes, it was dangerous up there but it wasn't just her now – and it wasn't his decision.

I'll be out in a day or two.

She frowned. He could barely sit up without help. Did he think he could do more than Carly in that condition? ‘You can't walk. You're having surgery soon. You're not going to be able to do anything.'

It was the wrong thing to say to the man who'd tried to protect her, and the sharp, pained look on his face made
her want to take it back. She ran a hand over her hair, wanting to give him something. ‘Can I sleep in your apartment?' It wasn't a solution, just somewhere she could think about her options.

Too close to your apartment. Dakota? Christina? Brooke?

‘I've run out of stories to explain what's going on.' And she didn't want to try out the real story until it made some sense.

Bec?

She lived an hour out of town, and what story would cover her need to stay at Nate's sister's house? ‘If I screw your vent cover back on, he won't be able to get into your apartment. He won't know I'm there. If he crawls by, he'll only know I'm not in my own loft.'

He watched her a moment. Indecision, frustration, concern.

Carly lifted the lid on his soup again. ‘You need to eat something. Come on, I'll help you.' She picked up his spoon.

You are not feeding me!

‘I'll swap you then – your key for the spoon.'

 

Brooke phoned as Carly was walking to her car. ‘I've spoken to Dakota and Christina and heard all about your fall and Nate. I've cooked a beef casserole and it's ready whenever you can get here.' Her voice was firm, determined to help.

Carly felt like a link in a chain, a nice chain to be looped in – and she wasn't ready to be on her own in Nate's apartment yet. ‘You're brilliant. I'm on my way.'

Brooke showed Carly in, handed her a glass of wine and ordered her to sit. ‘The rice is almost done, have
something to eat while we wait.' She pushed crackers and a bowl of dip across the kitchen counter. ‘Do you want to talk or are you sick of explaining it?'

‘Maybe we could talk about something else.' Carly glanced around, saw two oversized computer screens on a messy desk, mismatched couches and a large print of the warehouse atrium. Nothing like Carly's sparse collection of furniture, but she still felt the deja vu. ‘I didn't realise your apartment was the same layout as mine.' She lifted her eyes to the loft. Where was her ceiling vent?

‘Talia and I used to laugh about that. Same apartments, different style. She was organised, I'm clutter-city. Oh, here,' Brooke stepped away to the fridge, pulled a photo from under a magnet. ‘This is Talia.'

It was a snapshot of a woman holding a cello. Late twenties, mass of tight, dark curls that fell past her shoulders, pale skin and plump cheeks that were dented with dimples from a smile. Her feet below the instrument were bare, legs either side of it in faded jeans with frayed hems. Possibly she looked sophisticated and gifted when she was performing but here she looked casual and a little cheeky. It made Carly wish she'd had a chance to meet her.

‘It was taken in your living room,' Brooke said.

Carly picked up the snap, saw the shadow of the French windows on the four sheets of music stuck to the wall behind Talia. It must have been before she lined the plasterboard with her pages. ‘I found her name written in dust under the manhole cover in the ensuite,' Carly said.

‘Oh yeah?'

‘Her name and a date. It felt like a message, only I didn't know what it meant.'

‘What was the date?'

‘Fourteenth of November. Last summer.'

Brooke's eyes slid up and away. ‘Oh. Only a month before the accident.'

‘Any idea why she was up there?'

She shook her head. ‘Why were you?'

‘Just taking a look.'

‘Maybe that's what Talia was doing. Did you write your name too?'

‘No.' But maybe she should have. Maybe it meant something that Talia had. A record that she'd been there? ‘Would you mind if I used your bathroom?'

‘No, go ahead.'

‘Actually, two birds, one stone: would you mind if I used your ensuite? I'm having problems with my shower screen, maybe you've got the same one.'

‘Go for your life. Want to check the manhole while you're there?'

Carly laughed as she climbed the stairs, no intention of using the ensuite, thinking about what Talia had left in the apartment – holes in the wall, her name on the manhole cover and … the nightlight. Carly had found it in the half bath, she'd assumed whoever had packed up Talia's apartment had decided she didn't need it. But why did she have it in the first place? For the same reason Carly was using it?

Carly pulled the torch from her pocket as she headed for the wardrobe, took a step inside and aimed the beam up. The vent was there, shrouded in darkness. Moving the glow around Brooke's shelves, she saw short and long hanging space, shoes and boots. Nothing Carly remembered seeing from above, but it looked different from this angle.

Over beef casserole, Carly considered telling Brooke about what she'd found and what she suspected, but she didn't know anything for sure – and why freak her out
with stories of intruders in her ceiling and questions about Talia if Carly was wrong?

A full, white moon hung above the atrium as Carly walked back to her apartment, its ghostly glow flooding the huge, hollow centre of the warehouse. She stopped at the turn in the zigzag stairs and ran her gaze around the layers of apartments and corridors.

Who knew about the hidden spaces in between? About the vents that looked into people's lives?

The third floor was a little below her, Brooke's door closed now. Carly counted eight others in the row – she'd crawled across all of them today, peered into five, opening the hatches and inspecting their belongings. Over on the left lived the woman with the shoe collection. What size was she? Maybe Carly could borrow a pair. A smile flickered on her lips, then she remembered the man in her loft and her face dropped.

How did he do it without waking people?

Carly had woken. She'd called the police. Anne Long had told her that other residents had reported intruders, sometimes more than once. Had he stopped visiting them or got better at not waking them? He'd called Carly his best. Maybe he didn't get so close to the others. Or maybe she was a light sleeper. Or …

None of it made sense. Her theories screamed of psychosis and invented worlds with bad men in secret tunnels. There were special wards for people with those kinds of fantasies. And yet … she angled her eyes to where she'd emerged from the equipment room. The tunnels existed and bad things had happened. To her. Maybe to Brooke and Talia. How many others?