by Jaye Ford
‘There’s only crawl space between the floors, but if we’re eliminating alternatives, it’s worth a look. You should have a key for it.’
It was on the ring Howard had given her; she’d thought it was for a garbage chute. The manhole was in her ensuite, too, disguised as a ceiling panel above the vanity. She’d noticed the small brass disc that covered the keyhole when she moved in, had figured it was heating- or electrical-related and forgotten about it.
‘I had some rewiring done last year,’ Nate told her when he’d fetched a ladder from the storeroom and propped it in front of the basin. ‘Had a bit of a crawl around up there.’
The cover dropped down on a hinge, dust falling like ash, a black hole now in her ceiling. Nate took the torch from Carly, his head and shoulders disappearing into the dark space.
‘What’s there?’ she called.
‘Wiring and plumbing.’ His feet shuffled about as he shone the torch beam around. ‘More wiring and plumbing.’
‘That’s it?’ she asked as he started down.
‘There’s nothing but pipes and conduit.’ He stopped halfway, held a corner of the manhole cover. ‘Look at this.’
There was something written in the layer of dust. She squinted, tipped her head, felt a jolt when she finally worked it out: Talia 14/11/14.
‘Talia was up there. Last summer.’ Carly tried to work out the time frame. ‘A month or so before her accident.’
‘She wrote on the manhole cover. It doesn’t mean she got into the ceiling.’
‘I suppose, but why open the latch in the first place?’
‘She might’ve figured out what the key was for, like you just did.’
‘She might’ve been looking for the same reason we are.’
‘Can’t rule that out. Doesn’t look like anyone else has used it, though. The only other marks in the dust are mine. And it’s a one-way lock. You can only open it from the bathroom side.’
Carly stared up into the void, arms folded, wanting more.
‘Take a look for yourself,’ Nate said.
The air as she reached the opening was warmer, dry, musty. She’d imagined blackness stretching in all directions, huge and endless like the warehouse. What she saw was a low tunnel that ran in a straight line across the top of the apartments along the east wall, enough room, maybe, to crawl on all fours. The walls on either side were formed by single lengths of timber, the light from her bathroom creating a plume of illumination through the manhole. No discarded balaclavas or glinting rats’ eyes. No footprints or scrape marks in the thick layer of sticky dust that coated everything.
‘Filthy and creepy up there,’ she said as she climbed down.
‘Impressive, though. The warehouse was built before concrete or steel was used in this kind of construction.’ Nate pushed the manhole cover back into place. ‘Those huge timbers up there are the original beams, they hold up the fifth storey. The ceiling in there is the strip flooring of the apartment above. It’s the same on every level. This ceiling,’ he touched the one above his head, ‘was added in the renovation. Before it went up, the timbers were exposed and you would’ve been able to count the rows of parallel beams from here to the atrium.’
‘How far did you get when you were up there before?’
‘Just a couple of apartments over. You can’t put any weight on the ceiling and I figured my neighbours wouldn’t appreciate me dropping in.’ He folded the ladder. ‘Satisfied?’
‘That no one came in through the ceiling, yes.’ She stepped back into the bedroom. ‘And that the doors were locked.’ She eyed the bed and tugged her sleeves over the scratches.
‘Wait and see, Carly. Get your mobile.’
They rigged a makeshift stand for it on her chest of drawers opposite the bed.
‘Let’s do a test run.’ Nate tapped the screen, activating the motion-sensor app.
As Carly walked into the frame, there was a quiet, continuous ch-ch-ch of the camera taking its fifteen shots per second. It stopped and started when Carly sat on the bed, and again as she lay down.
‘Hold it there a second,’ Nate said.
While he fiddled with the phone, memories began filtering back: grappling and gasping, the pain in her neck as her head snapped away.
‘Try a small movement,’ Nate said.
She slid a leg out of the ball she’d curled into, the ch-ch-ch of the shutter reaching her like a whisper. You’re good tonight, Carly. ‘Are we nearly done?’
Nate was tapping on his own phone now. ‘In a minute.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’ve connected to the cloud file. Just checking it’s uploading. Close your eyes, have a rest, all that posing must be exhausting.’
Relax. She focused her vision on the seam of her jeans, the weave on her mattress, Nate’s boots … and Nate as he watched her, unaware she was watching him back. Phone in his palm, his head lowered as though reading it, his eyes on her. It made her pulse pick up. Not a beat of desire but a tap of uneasiness. Something about his presence, his silence …
And then she was standing, moving out of the shot. ‘That’s enough.’
‘The pictures are uploaded. You want to look?’
She was already on the stairs. ‘Not now. Not up there.’
‘You don’t have to do it tonight,’ Nate said as he shoved his dishwasher closed.
Carly’s squeezed her interlocked fingers, anxiety like a small animal scurrying around her rib cage. ‘I need to know.’
‘When you’re ready.’
She’d spent two nights in Nate’s bed. ‘It probably won’t happen tonight.’
‘No.’
She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck.
‘We could test the motion sensor over a whole night,’ he said, giving her another option. ‘Make sure it works when you’re ready to stay there on your own.’
She had to sleep in the loft again sometime. ‘Okay. Let’s do that.’
As she set the phone up on top of the chest of drawers, Nate said, ‘Don’t switch it on yet.
‘Why not?’
‘I want to take your clothes off without having you distracted by a camera.’
‘In that case.’
He peeled away her pyjamas, walked her naked to the bed like he was leading her onto a dance floor, the sex slow and sensuous and unreserved on her covers. It felt like a statement, like he was reclaiming the loft for her.
Afterwards, as Nate set up the camera, Carly pulled her pyjamas back on before sliding between the sheets. If it happened tonight, she didn’t want to see pictures of herself terrified and naked.
34
‘Still snapping?’ Carly sat up as Nate collected her mobile from the chest of drawers.
‘Two-hundred odd photos and still downloading.’ He held it out to her.
The screen was black. ‘How can you tell?’
‘I checked on my phone.’
It had seemed logical for Nate to have access to the cloud file, but now, after being photographed in her sleep, Carly wished he’d waited for her before looking. She switched on her phone. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘Just you.’
Tapping her screen. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You move a lot. Toss and turn. You rose onto an elbow once.’
‘Onto an elbow?’ On a good night?
‘It doesn’t mean anything. Not yet. Take a look on the laptop, the images are hard to make out on the phone.’
Downstairs, she flicked through grainy thumbnail pictures, a time stamp indicating the hours that had slipped by. Around 3 am, her scattered movements turned to restlessness. As Nate lay curled beside her, she tossed and jerked about for half an hour. At 3.37, her head rose from the pillow, the elbow pushed into the mattress, her face aimed at the camera. For five minutes. Did she do that on other nights?
Did she do more than that – and scare the hell out of herself?
The last shots were of Nate waking and walking naked towards the lens,
facing the bed for fifteen frames before he turned the camera off.
‘From the someone you met?’ Carly asked, watching the smile on Dakota’s face as she read a text message.
‘Yep.’ She pushed the phone into her pocket, looking uncharacteristically coy.
Carly unwound her scarf, the warmth in the courtyard outside the campus cafe finally making it through her winter layers. ‘Made any decisions about him yet?’
‘Still a maybe but edging towards approval.’
‘Ticking the right boxes?’
‘So far.’
‘Has he got a name?’
Dakota made a face. ‘Bruno. Don’t laugh.’
‘Wouldn’t think of it.’
‘How’s your scary neighbour’s eye?’
‘Not black anymore. A little pink scar right here.’ Carly touched her eyebrow.
‘Bet you had to get close to see that.’
Carly hesitated … and reminded herself friends shared. ‘Yeah, I looked pretty close.’
‘I knew it.’ She tapped her coffee cup against Carly’s. ‘Good for you. Hope he ticked all the right boxes for you.’
‘Hope you’re not about to ask which ones.’
‘Ee-uw, no. Must be easy being next door, though. No biggie getting home at 4 am. No early-morning oh-no-I-need-new-clothes.’
‘That’s true.’ That part had been easy. ‘Possibly too easy.’
‘Oh, so he didn’t tick all the boxes?’ Her tone was still flippant.
Carly couldn’t match it. ‘It’s not that.’ She thought about the photos on her laptop, not the images of her raised on an elbow, but others before and after that. Of two bodies nestled together, Nate cuddling into her back, Carly with an arm or a leg draped across him. Not like new lovers but already settled into cosy, familiar sleeping positions. Like a couple. Like she’d done in another life with men who’d started out wanting to save her. ‘I have a tendency to jump too fast.’
‘I guess it depends where you jump to,’ Dakota said.
Carly wondered if a twenty-year-old was the right person to explain it to, but Dakota made it easy to talk. ‘I’ve been married twice. I’m bad at relationships. I screw them up.’
‘Maybe you don’t screw them up. Maybe you just choose the wrong guy.’
‘Same result either way.’
Dakota stirred her coffee for a moment. ‘You don’t have to jump, you know. You could just, you know, shuffle forward on your butt and lower down slowly.’
Carly smiled. It sounded sensible, but could she? She never had. And now? When she didn’t know what was happening, when she was scared, when Nate was the only thing that made her feel safe? Could she shuffle forward – when it was possible the man in black might never return if Nate stayed with her?
Nate stood at her door with a bakery box in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. ‘Steak and apple pie.’
Carly thought about shuffling, telling him she had study to do, that she was ready to stay in the apartment on her own. But it was a good-looking man with food.
Over dessert, he said, ‘I’m going to my sister’s again tomorrow.’
‘Nice.’
‘I won’t be back until late. Not much before midnight, probably.’
‘Right.’
‘Will you be all right on your own?’
The question made her hesitate. She’d been worried about slipping into togetherness because she was scared to be alone, that her neediness would screw things up. But his question flipped it around. She wasn’t a child, she could be on her own. It was part of the reason she was here, to prove it. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, not sure if it was the truth.
‘Call if you change your mind.’ Nate said at her front door the next morning. ‘Or text.’ He kissed her. ‘Anytime.’
‘I’ve got the message.’
She could still feel him on her skin as she watched him to the stairs. ‘You don’t have to be afraid,’ he’d murmured to her as they’d made love on the sofa. And again in the loft as he’d stroked the soft flesh at her throat, following the curves of her face with his lips. Shadowy memories had played at the back of her mind as her body ached and arched beneath his. Fear and pleasure, shuddering and breathlessness.
His presence stayed with her all day, his smell in her hair, his voice in her ear and the raw, sensual tenderness inside her. Underneath it all, like a thread stitching it together, was apprehension – for what might come in her apartment tonight and what it would tell her.
She can hear his steady breath. Her dread is harsh and hot. Something she doesn’t understand is pulsing deep within her.
The bed shifts. He is above her now. She can’t see him but she knows. She wants to open her eyes but they won’t move, so she waits. It won’t be long. She knows that too.
Warm, sweet breath on her neck, her hair, her face. A sharp gasp in her chest as the hand finds her. Firm and possessive, on her throat. Her breath quickens. Fear and … desire. He chuckles quietly. Amused, pleased. Shame washes over her.
He lowers himself, his weight presses the swell of her pubis, the mound of her breasts. Behind her lids she sees light and colour, a man above her. Muscular, freckled shoulders, thatch of hair on his chest, nipples puckered and dark. Rocking slowly, rhythmically. Watching her.
He has a face. It is Nate’s face.
The whisper is warm across her lips.
‘Don’t be afraid.’ Her breath catches. Fear and desire.
Wetness snakes a trail, cheek to temple. Her eyes open on darkness. Searching, straining for clarity.
‘I can taste you.’ His tongue is in her ear, sliding, probing, worming its way into her head. Through her brain, reaching a memory. She is astride him, setting the rhythm, the blue of his irises is dark and sated and on her. Nate’s eyes. Nate’s hands on her. Desire driving the thrust of her body.
She stiffens at the sound of his guttural chuckle. The memory dies and she is beneath him, prostrate, pinned like an insect. She can’t see his face now but she knows. It is Nate and she has done this. She brought him here, she wanted him.
Her stomach pitches with disgust. A sound comes from her throat. Not a word, just the force of effort as she twists her face away. As her arms bend at the elbows and her fingernails scratch across smooth, thick fabric.
‘Fuck.’
There is surprise and alarm in his exclamation. His body jerks, rears away. Something falls hard across her throat, crushing her neck into the pillow, her jaw jammed shut, teeth locked together. She can’t breathe, beats her hands against the covers.
‘Fuck. Fuck.’ Panic in his voice. The pressure at her throat driving down, crushing her windpipe.
She stills. Scared to move, needing to breathe. Blood pounds in her face, her ears. A buzzing, speckling fog creeps at the edges of her awareness. Muscles are slackening as though the air she needs is to keep them inflated.
Then the choking eases, just enough for her to gulp at the air, chest and shoulders heaving.
Her eyes are open on blackness, his shadow. He is sitting on her, straddled across her pelvis. There is a bar across her throat. Her arms will move if she asks them, she feels that, only she doesn’t. She listens to the agitated, unnerved stuttering of his lungs.
There is something less than black in her eyes now. She blinks at the suggestion of light, wanting it to show itself. She senses indecision in him – kill her or rape her or not? Enjoy it rough or kiss her and tell her not to be afraid?
Anger itches in her veins, the cry that slips from her mouth is pitiful.
The bar lifts from her throat. ‘Carly?’ It is a whisper.
She’s not sure she can speak but she won’t answer. Fuck him.
Fingers probe the hollows under her jaw. A shout in her head: He’s checking my pulse! She turns her face away. A sharp snap, a thrust of her shoulders. Then her hands are grappling, scrabbling, hitting. It is not in her mind, she can feel the bursts of contact under her fingers.
He is grabbing
for her arms, her elbows, her wrists. Trying to hold her, pin her. Grunting, swearing. A palm covers her face, shoves it sideways, pushing it into the pillow. She is flinging her arms, pitching herself, wrestling him without skill or aim or strength.
Fighting for breath, for life.
35
She found the top step when she tipped over the edge, clutched at the bars as she tumbled downwards. On her feet again at the bottom then tripping, scuttling to the wall, cringing there.
Not a fucking dream. Someone had jammed fingers against her pulse. Acid leapt to the back of her mouth. She retched, forced it down, searched – kitchen, windows, stairs, the dark space above the edge of the loft.
Was he still there?
Legs clumsy, something wrong with a foot, she stumbled to the kitchen, fumbled along cold stainless steel, found what she wanted: the handle of a long, sharp knife jutting from the block on the counter. It felt too light and too heavy. The wooden handle was slippery in her palm. She needed two hands to stop it shaking.
What now? What the fuck now?
The answer came from the hallway. Noise at the front door, the flat of a hand slapping the timber. The voice from the other side froze her blood.
‘Let me in. Carly, let me in!’
Nate. Oh fuck, it was Nate.
Carly pressed her back to the wall at the other end of the hallway, its length between her and the front door.
The timber rattled in its frame. She watched it and waited. Whatever Nate had done, however he had done it, she’d taken him to her bed, given him her body – and a key.
The clunk of the pins inside the lock reached her through the silence. A metallic thump as the chain caught, his voice louder through the gap.
‘Carly, it’s Nate. I’m coming in.’
She heard the bump and scrape of metal on timber. Boltcutters. Then the door flew open and the shadow of him stepped inside.
She watched it pause on the threshold and knew something else. Something important. She wasn’t crazy. It was real, it was cruel. And she had a knife in her hand.
