Darkest Place

by Jaye Ford

  Excellent.

  ‘Terrible thing. Terrible,’ Christina said. ‘It happened to me once, back when we were on the farm. These two cretins robbed the house. Just walked right in and, oh …’ She huffed an exclamation, anger and horror. ‘They hit me over the head with a roof tile and tied me up. Poor Bernard came back for dinner and found me covered in blood and his good wine gone. Ridiculous, the whole thing, of course. There was nothing valuable in the house, it was all in the paddocks.’ She paused, shook her head. ‘Oh, but you. Howard said you weren’t hurt. It’s not all about stitches and broken bones, though, is it?’

  No, it wasn’t, Carly knew. She took a second to let the image of a blood-covered Christina fade. ‘That must’ve been awful. Were you badly injured?’

  ‘Just a few stitches. Bernard always said I had a thick head. It upset me for a while, though. A nasty business.’ She gave Carly’s arm a firm pat. ‘Best not to let that go on if you start feeling that way.’

  Carly had always thought feeling that way was part of her punishment. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and Carly,’ Christina called, moving into the centre of the cab, talking as the lift started to close. ‘I wasn’t sure if I had the number right but I left you a …’ The last word was cut off. It probably happened a lot with Christina.

  There was a package by Carly’s door. Three books tied together with string, a brown paper bag on top. A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. An appropriate selection, Carly thought. There was a muffin in the bag and a note scrawled on the side. White chocolate and raspberry. Happy reading. Christina.

  Carly glanced back at the lift. Christina wasn’t all talk.

  It was a long time since Carly had sat in a classroom. This one wasn’t a lecture hall, there were no professors and no one was talking social theory, but three days in it felt full of promise.

  Almost fifteen years ago she’d started a university degree in Sydney. She’d planned to forget small-town New South Wales, get educated, explore the world, have a career, live a big life. Halfway through she went home on a cold June long weekend and never left.

  Back then she’d been studying social science with a major in anthropology. Unendingly fascinating and totally pointless in the job market, which was why she’d spent a decade yearning to finish and now that she had a chance to study again, she’d enrolled in a twelve-month small business certificate at TAFE.

  The house she’d owned with Adrian had been sold before they’d even spoken to a divorce lawyer. Carly had used most of her share to buy the warehouse apartment and enough money left to support herself for six months, if she was frugal. She’d need a part-time job after that but for now she was a full-time student.

  She was one of twenty-four students – the oldest was a fifty-something bloke who’d left a desk job to open a cafe, the youngest a pimply plumber. Carly was the only student with no plan for a business. She’d worked in her parents’ post office most of her life and figured all that experience would point her somewhere by the time she’d finished. The teacher warned that having no concept might make some of the assignments more difficult. So what? Carly had thought. She’d be doing assignments and being someone new.

  She spent the afternoon sitting next to a guy in a high-vis shirt who smelled like he’d been digging sewers before he came to class.

  ‘It’s Carly, right?’ the girl on her other side asked as the class broke up. She had blue streaks in her jet black hair and a dad who was funding her mobile hair salon on the proviso she did the course.

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name,’ Carly said.

  ‘Dakota. Never been there, snows a lot.’ She grinned, which made the stud in her nose bobble about. ‘God, I’m starving.’ She yanked opened a packet of biscuits, held it out to Carly. ‘Pizza flavour. You want one?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Do you drive in?’

  ‘Yes.’ Carly smiled cautiously. Was she asking for a lift?

  ‘Great. Company to the car park. I hate walking in the dark.’ Dakota leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘I was worried stinky guy might offer.’

  Carly glanced around, checked he’d gone. ‘You could smell him where you sat?’

  ‘Smell him? I’m going home for a shower.’

  Carly had been aiming for serious-older-student but it was too late, she was already laughing behind her hand.

  It was after five when they started the ten-minute walk to the car park. Carly gave Dakota only the basics: she’d just moved to Newcastle, had an apartment a couple of Ks away. Dakota said she lived with her dad, broke up with a boyfriend three months ago and needed something new in her life. And her streaks had been pink until last weekend. As they stopped under floodlights in the parking lot, Dakota offered to do Carly’s hair when she next needed a cut, ‘mate’s rates’. Carly glanced at the blue and said, ‘Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.’

  ‘Have you found the campus cafe yet?’ Dakota asked.

  ‘No, have you?’

  ‘I scouted it out on my way to class this afternoon. We should check it out tomorrow, do a taste test on the coffee.’

  Carly played it cool, like she got invitations to coffee all the time. ‘Sure.’

  Dakota grinned. ‘Great. A class buddy already.’

  Carly’s smile was wary. She’d come here to make friends but now the opportunity had arrived, it made her anxious. The last friends she’d had, she’d killed.

  7

  The mattress lurches like a dinghy in rough water.

  Harsh, fast gasps fill Carly’s head. They are sharp in her chest.

  She is afraid. It’s not the sound or the lurching. It is what is above her. Large and silent.

  On the bed with her.

  She wants to scream. It’s building in her chest. Trapped there, scratching at her lungs as though her ribs are the bars holding it back.

  She hears breathing. Not her own. Deep and unhurried. It whispers across her face like a warm cloth. It turns her skin to ice.

  She lashes out. Hits, twists, kicks. She sees it in her mind, feels it in her muscles. But it doesn’t happen. She doesn’t move.

  Neither does he.

  She sees him now. A shape in the darkness. Above her, black and motionless. He is watching. She watches back. Fear roaring through her bones, pulse thumping in her ears. Her voice is wedged in her throat now and choking her.

  No. Something else is squeezing, pushing down, making blood pound in her face. Warm hand, hard fingers.

  She doesn’t want to see. Doesn’t want to feel. She shuts her eyes. Waits.

  Shivering by the front door, Carly held tight to the hair dryer, adrenaline pricking across her scalp as she listened to the footfalls in the corridor outside. The knock made her jump.

  Different officers: a woman asking the questions, a man keeping an eye on the corridor.

  ‘In my room,’ Carly told them, mouth so dry she could barely get the words out. ‘He … he was … on the bed.’

  Same procedure – lights glaring and a brief, alert search. Carly watched from the hall, saw for herself the apartment was empty. She hugged her hair dryer to her chest as more officers arrived, grateful for their bulk.

  ‘Carly.’

  She blinked at the uniform in front of her.

  ‘Dean. I was here last week. We talked, remember?’

  Dark hair, dark eyes, kind voice. She grabbed his forearm like it would stop her from sliding to the floor. ‘He came back.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’

  She shook her head. ‘He … was … on the bed. On the bed.’

  He steered her to the kitchen. She gulped water from the tap, coughing and gagging in her hurry to slake the dryness, then leaned against the pantry, arms tight across her chest. ‘I locked the doors. The doors were locked.’

  He pulled a notebook from his jacket. ‘Let’s start with what happened.’

  Carly went through it – waking up, someone on the bed, silent except for the bre
athing, still except for the hand at her throat. Her voice trembled through the retelling but her eyes, when she was done, were hot and dry, the tears waiting like steam behind her lids.

  ‘Did you get a better look at him?’

  ‘It was dark and … he was a shape.’ She used shaky hands to draw a hood in the air around her head. ‘Like before. A balaclava and hood.’

  ‘You saw that?’

  ‘Not the detail. The shape.’

  He left her to speak to the female cop who’d been at the door. A low-voiced conference, nods and references to his notebook, fingers pointed at the doors and the loft. Carly assumed he was telling her about last time. Twice, two visits. Not someone letting a prowler in, not her stupid enough to leave her door unlocked. He’d come back. Fuck. The realisation made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and the fists tucked into her armpits to tremble. He returned with the dressing-gown another officer had fetched from the loft.

  ‘The doors were locked.’ She said again. ‘I made sure.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘I checked them both before I went to bed around ten.’

  ‘Have you given anyone else a key?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A neighbour, maybe? You know, in case you lock yourself out.’

  ‘No.’ She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘I’ve only been here a week and a half, I don’t know my neighbours like that.’

  ‘That’s right, you’ve just moved in.’ He replaced the notebook in his pocket. ‘I’d like to look at the points of entry with you again.’

  She felt like she was walking on puppet legs, jerky and uncoordinated as she went back to the front door. ‘I make sure I shut it properly every time I come in.’ It was open now so she pushed it to the jamb, checked the deadlock like she’d been doing. ‘No way it can be pushed open.’

  Dean gave it a tug. ‘And the balcony?’

  It was the same lock he’d inspected last week, but she wanted to show him again, make sure he didn’t mix it up with another break-in with a flimsy back door. As they passed the three other officers standing in a huddle by the sofa, the woman broke away and joined them.

  ‘Carly, hi, Jacinda. How are you feeling?’ she said.

  Jumpy, fuzzy, thirsty. ‘Fabulous.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. Dean told me you had a break-in last week.’ The tone of her voice said I’m asking the questions now. ‘You thought the offender was still here when we arrived?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t see him leave. I thought he might’ve …’ She glanced around the furniture and benches that had cast shadows in the gloom from the street. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you hear anything down here?’

  ‘No, but …’ She knotted fingers together. ‘I was scared.’

  ‘Sure.’ Jacinda nodded. ‘Can you show us the locks here?’

  Carly turned the key, pushed, and a gust of cold air hit them.

  Jacinda rattled the right-side door, tried the top fastener. ‘Can you step out with us?’

  Carly stood on the balcony, something trembling inside her, and not just because of the bitter early-morning breeze. The two cops inspected the drop over the edge and the apartments either side, their equipment belts clunking on the railing, passing each other wordlessly as they swapped sides. Voices inside made Carly turn. A cop crossing the floor, heading into the hallway.

  He opened the front door and a voice carried to the balcony. ‘What are you doing here?’ It was the practised flat tone of a police officer but something in it made Carly pay attention.

  ‘I live in the warehouse.’ Male voice, muffled from the distance.

  The door swung wider and her eyebrows rose. It was Nate. Up and dressed. At four o’clock in the morning.

  8

  ‘Is Carly all right?’ Nate was trying to look past the cop and down the hall.

  ‘You know the owner of the apartment?’

  ‘We’re neighbours. Is she all right?’ There was a slight tussle of bodies as Nate tried to come in, the cop blocking the doorway with his body.

  ‘The situation is under control,’ the cop said. ‘You’re not …’ An exchange of low, harsh words, the cop’s stance turning stiff and broad, edging Nate back into the corridor.

  ‘I didn’t realise you could see the harbour from here.’

  Carly turned back to Jacinda, who was talking to Dean as though she was a potential buyer and he was the agent.

  ‘I wouldn’t climb up there,’ Jacinda said.

  Dean tipped his head side to side. ‘Not impossible, though.’

  ‘No.’

  Was that what they were thinking? Someone had climbed the outside of the building to get in?

  Jacinda turned to Carly. ‘When was the last time the windows were cleaned?’

  ‘Last week. After the fingerprinting was done.’

  ‘Makes sense. Leaves a mess, doesn’t it?’ She turned to Dean, lowered her voice. ‘I’ll get fingerprinting back.’ Raised it again for Carly. ‘Okay, we’re done. Sorry to keep you out in the cold.’

  There was only one cop left in the apartment, tapping on his phone. Jacinda called to him as she stepped through the door. ‘Hey, Flinto, put the kettle on for Carly. It’s freezing out there.’ Then she headed for the front entrance, looking both ways before disappearing into the corridor. The purpose in her stride made Carly wonder if Nate was still out there.

  ‘Carly?’ Dean’s hand closed around her elbow.

  She pulled away, goosebumps rising on her arm. ‘What happened with the fingerprints they took last week?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen a report.’

  ‘How long does it take?’

  ‘It can be a while. I’ll follow it up.’

  He flicked a look at the front door, made no attempt to move – it made Carly wonder if he was waiting for his colleagues to deal with her neighbour or deciding to stay for a chat.

  ‘Have a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘Better than coffee for the shakes.’

  They weren’t going anytime soon. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Take care, Carly.’

  She followed Dean and his partner to the corridor, wondering what had happened out there, wondering if Nate was in handcuffs being read his rights, but the floor was deserted when she looked out. Watching them to the lift, until Dean waved a Goodbye/Go back inside, she turned and saw a stripe of brightness under Nate’s door. Whatever had been said out of Carly’s sight, it hadn’t sent him back to bed.

  She shut the door, checked the lock. Twice. Hurried through to the French windows. Dean had fastened them but she needed to do it herself to try to calm the agitation that was building. She made tea with trembling hands, scalded her lips as she drank, impatient for it to cool. It was itching inside her now – under her skin, in her legs, her lungs. She wanted to walk but it was dark outside. She flicked on the telly to hear real voices, filled the sink and found things to wash to keep her hands busy.

  It. Her psychologist called it anxiety. That was the clinical explanation.

  It was her cross to bear, the memento of what she’d done, her penance.

  It was the face of guilt and grief, reproach and fear. The agitation that lay on the surface above it all, making sure she remembered.

  Carly picked up a tea towel and started on the small mound of dishes. A long time ago, she’d accepted the anxiety as a passenger on board her life – fighting it had always felt like denying responsibility. Staying busy, giving the restless energy an outlet, helped to keep the images turned down so they didn’t make her crazy, so the people she’d hurt wouldn’t have to be reminded that the sole survivor was the weak one. Thirteen years on, it was a low hum most days. Times like this, though, when fate seemed to be trying to even the score, it grew loud and strong inside her, trying to make her relive the night that had almost killed her too.

  She squeezed her eyes, felt glass snap inside the tea towel. Blood oozed from her middle finger, the sight of it felt like an explosion in her hea
d. She climbed the stairs, held her finger under water in the ensuite, telling herself tonight wasn’t about that, she’d paid her price for the blood she’d spilled. She taped her finger, cleaned the basin and the mirror and the loo while she was there, gritting her teeth on the memories that were clamouring to be heard.

  She finished in the kitchen and started on the downstairs half bath but it was too loud tonight and the effort to contain the restless, anxious jittering in her bones finally exhausted her, finally made the idea of just letting it out feel like comfort. A cigarette when you were fighting the addiction. The touch of a man’s body when loneliness was overwhelming.

  And there it was.

  Did you guys turn into wusses while I was gone?

  The challenging laughter of her own voice brought a cold sweat to Carly’s face.

  Come on, one more time before you all become boring old farts.

  She sat on the floor at the edge of the French windows, fists clenched as she waited for the show.

  They’d started late, all four of them slow with hangovers and tiredness. Debs complained of a headache, Jenna wondered if they were going to have enough time, Adam stopped once to heave. Wusses, Carly teased. She and Debs had been joined at the hip since preschool. They’d met Adam and Jenna on the first day of high school. Together they’d been the quartet, a royal flush, an Awesome Foursome. The canyon was an hour and a half out of town, an overnight excursion: waterproof gear, helmets, harnesses and ropes. They’d done it half-a-dozen times before, abseiling the falls, sleeping under the stars at the base of the cliff, hiking out in the morning.

  It’s fucking freezing up here, Carl, Adam said as they walked the ridge, the valley hundreds of metres below them. Crybaby, Carly called back. He was silent for a while, she figured he was battling his hangover or ticked off with her smug Sydney attitude again. Then his voice lifted: Emma’s pregnant. Their shock echoed off the high, sheer cliffs of the chasm. What? Bullshit! Pregnant? They stopped for details, Carly wasted more time leading a toast with energy drinks. It was late when they started the abseil.

  There were twelve sections, each dropping to a narrow ledge that stepped out to the next descent. Debs and Adam hadn’t been canyoning since Carly had left town, Jenna was working in an office and had lost her old fitness – and all three were slow. At the fourth shelf, they needed head-mounted torches in the dusk. Resting on the fifth, close enough to the waterfall for its icy spray to dampen their clothes, their spirits waned to anxiety about how far they still had to go.