Darkest Place

by Jaye Ford

  Carly’s forehead tightened with a frown.

  ‘Benzodiazepine. Your sleeping pill.’ He watched her, a smile spreading his lips. ‘No, you didn’t take it. I have to ask, though. Discounting that anomaly, how did you find it?’

  She couldn’t keep her silence. ‘Find what?’

  ‘The experience.’

  ‘You drugged and molested me.’

  ‘I’m interested in subject response when it’s available,’ he went on. ‘I don’t know about you but I find that particular dream experience fucking mind-blowing.’ He raised his eyebrows, a question of their shared experience.

  He still held her ankle. She wanted to break his nose with her foot but his amused, casual tone filled her with fear. ‘You hurt people,’ she said quietly.

  A nod, acceptance. ‘There have been some losses. It’s the nature of an experiment of this kind.’

  Experiment? Losses? Carly sensed the void at her side, his hand tight on her skin, and wondered if she was his next loss. Pushing down her terror, trying to dredge up something she hoped would pass for a genial expression, she said, ‘I hope you don’t consider me a loss, just because I found out. I was frightened before, that’s why I was fighting you. But I understand now.’

  Blinking, nodding, his lips widening. She thought it was a good sign, until she heard the flat, hard edge to his voice. ‘Nice try, Carly.’

  ‘No, listen. I could help. I could give you my responses.’

  He huffed, scorn and contempt. ‘I’ve heard your responses when you’re fucking your arsehole neighbour. Like a rutting zoo animal. Except you like it on top, don’t you, Carly? Buck-naked and riding hard.’

  Her face snapped away.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve watched. I thought about taking photos but I prefer to arrange those scenes myself. How’s your neighbour enjoying the hospital?’

  She frowned back at him.

  ‘He was proving a persistent visitor in your bed so I thought a chat in a quiet laneway might give me some time to correct your dosage.’

  ‘It was you?’ Nate hurt on her account?

  ‘And a friend. I can’t take all the credit, my hands weren’t made for that kind of work. A wasted effort, I see now.’ The wrench on her ankle came without warning. Stuart dragged her across the insulation, close enough to twist a fist into the front of her top and craned his long neck until his face was in hers. Smiling, amused. ‘Looks like it’ll have to be an overdose.’

  She shoved at his hands, pushed at his chest, aware of the black drop beyond her elbow. She raised her voice, hoping the sound carried to the apartments. ‘No!’

  He slapped her face, hard. It knocked her to the insulation. It felt like he’d torn her cheek open. There was no smile when he spoke. ‘Don’t fight it, Carly. It won’t hurt.’ He tightened his hold on her jacket, pulling her upright.

  ‘No, no.’ She tugged away from him, saw the void and found herself back in his grasp. ‘No one will believe I’ve killed myself.’ It was a lie but she said it anyway, hoped Stuart hadn’t seen her hospital record.

  ‘People believe what they’re told. Drivers have accidents. Old ladies mix up their medications.’

  His face was so close she could feel his breath on her skin. It wasn’t the first time but there was a light between them now. She could see the pale streaks in his brown irises and she wasn’t drugged. ‘Drivers. You mean Talia.’ Had she found him too and he tried to get rid of her?

  He dipped his head. ‘It was a new blend. It obviously didn’t agree with her.’

  The anger she’d felt on other nights, that had been trapped within her, was hot on her skin and tightening her jaw. ‘And Elizabeth?’

  ‘I told you she wouldn’t like the stronger medication.’ He dropped away from her as though the dispute was over now and she’d go with him willingly.

  She swung an arm out wide and slammed the side of his head with bunched knuckles. ‘You fuck!’ It rocked him sideways. She went with him, shoving with both hands, hitting him again, catching his chin hard. ‘You fuck. You fuck.’ He held a hand over his head like a shield. Carly rose to her knees and pressed forward. She didn’t know how to punch, that sport had never reached her. There was no skill in the blows she aimed but they pounded throat and sharp bones. He laughed, like he had in her loft. She found his teeth with her fist and drew blood.

  Then the air was heaved from her lungs. The knee he thrust into her gut lifted her, drove her away. A hand out, Carly caught a cross-timber – and felt the nothingness beyond her fingertips. She scuttled backwards, stopped by the beam wall at her back.

  Stuart’s fingers closed around at her ankle again. Blood coated his lips, his teeth were bared in a grimacing smile. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he got to his haunches, moving towards her, head pressed to the timber above. The hand on her leg travelled with him, inching upwards, forcing her knee wide and into the void. Carly hunkered hard against the beam.

  ‘Have it your way then, Carly. Forget the overdose.’ He glanced over the edge. ‘Not as easy to explain, if it comes to that, but my work is safe here.’ He fisted a hand in the front of her jacket.

  Beneath it, Carly’s heart thumped. The edge of an abyss. She’d been here before. With friends, laughing and terrified. Come on, it’s fine. She’d killed them and she’d wanted to die. She’d craved it for a long time but she’d only been broken – bones, heart, mind. She’d been on another ledge in the bedroom at her mother’s house, pills in her hand, broken then too, not strong enough to fall one way or the other.

  Here again, she thought. Grief and shame, like before. Elizabeth was dead and this man had exposed Carly – her damage, her fears, her body. She’d come here to this ledge, she’d made that choice, but what had happened wasn’t her fault. And that made other things burn bright inside her.

  Rage, loathing, retribution. And as Stuart lifted her from the wall, gathering his strength to lever her over, she felt them sharp like knives. Sharp like the memory that opened behind her eyes. The photo on her fridge was old but Carly was in that moment now, sweaty and exhausted and exhilarated. The person she once was, who’d tried to save her friends, who’d survived a freezing night on a cliff. Three faces smiling with her: young, sunburnt, full of daring. Full of life. They’d taken risks, all of them, and Carly had been left to live with the consequences. She’d spent thirteen years wishing she could make things right.

  Maybe that had changed her. Maybe it was enough to change the ending. Maybe all that mattered was that she knew.

  She let her hands drop, pushed them into the insulation as though it was the last sensation she would ever feel. Drew up a knee and slammed her foot into Stuart’s chest.

  It caught him on the right side of his rib cage. Not hard enough to knock him down, only to push him off balance. He thrust out a hand to catch himself, but it was beyond the lip of the tunnel, suspended over the void, and as he leaned, as the weight of his shoulders tipped towards it, he realised his mistake.

  Carly saw the flash of alarm in his eyes. He flung himself towards her, grappling at her jacket, her legs. His feet came out from under him, a hip thwacked the ledge as it dropped out and over. There was a grunting from his throat, rasping as his nails scratched at her, at the timber. Fingertips white on its edge.

  In the fleeting seconds it took to happen, Carly saw how it could end: her blistered hand extending, the painful grip, the heaving and pulling, a life saved … Then she saw it again: hand and grip, a twist in the other direction and Carly feeling the weightlessness of the fall.

  She could save a life and she could lose her own.

  She could follow old friends into death or help new ones.

  She could take a risk and live or die with the consequences.

  Making a decision, shifting closer to the edge, she took a breath, gathered her strength and slammed with her foot. Reaching into the ventilation shaft, snapping Stuart’s head back. And, like a ledge breaking away, he was launched into the void. Arms and legs flung wid
e for the briefest moment before his body crumpled into the brickwork. A guttural, involuntary sound pushed from him, the light on his head falling away and illuminating the shaft before it hit the bottom and went out.

  Carly watched the rest in the beam of her paler light, his black shape rebounding downwards like the crumpled cut-out of a person. Leaning out, peering over, she waited – for a noise, a flicker of light. Her eyes eventually finding the contours of a shape on the flat concrete floor below.

  Ninety per cent fatality rate. He was dead. She’d killed him. She’d kicked him in the face and shoved him into an abyss. Risk, consequences. Lives lost and saved, and as she watched, she wondered what poisonous concoction would rise up and engulf her this time.

  The trembling started in her hands. She pushed away from the edge, her breath spasming in her chest.

  ‘Fuck.’ She’d killed him. ‘Oh fuck.’

  The back of her hand stung from his gouging. The nail of her middle finger was torn away. There was skin missing from knuckles, an elbow. Blisters and splinters. A hot welt on her face from his slap. She pressed a palm to it and felt something reach through her.

  He was going to kill her. An overdose or thrown to her death.

  Stuart. No last name.

  He’d killed Elizabeth and destroyed Talia’s life and felt nothing. He’d beaten up Nate. He’d made Brooke fall down her stairs. He’d drugged his neighbours and photographed them for his own fucked-up experiment. And he was dead.

  Him instead of Carly. Him instead of her friends.

  And now it was over.

  She turned away from the void, got to her bruised knees and crawled. For a long time, everything hurting, no idea how many vents she passed. Thinking about conversations with police, explanations and evidence, discussions with residents, meetings and counselling and media. Consequences.

  Then she was above Nate’s loft. The cover was off, the light was on. Carly looked down as Nate hobbled into view, face bruised and swollen by the man she’d just killed.

  ‘Carly.’ It was barely more than a whisper, as though he was afraid she wouldn’t answer.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  He made sure she didn’t fall, just like he said he would. Helped her through the narrow hole onto the stepladder and to the bed, where he held her as adrenaline and shock rattled through her.

  Stuart was dead, she was safe. She wanted to feel relief or guilt or horror at what she’d done. But she didn’t. She only saw Stuart’s handiwork: the treasure boxes concealed in the ceiling, the rows of cards filed inside, the photos she’d seen and the hundreds still up there. She imagined Christina’s face once she knew, Brooke’s depression, the woman with the shoes. She remembered the wake under the atrium to celebrate Elizabeth’s life and the way this would change things.

  Carly had stopped Stuart. She’d protected people – she didn’t want to hurt them now.

  Finally lifting her head from Nate’s shoulder, she said, ‘Do you remember that first night we had takeaway?’ she asked. ‘At my place.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You wanted to know what was happening. You said it didn’t matter what it was, it didn’t matter what I’d done. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you still feel that way?’

  He watched her for a long moment as if he was trying to predict what his response would mean. ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t know if she had the right to ask or if it was a burden that would damage him more, but she thought he would understand. ‘If anyone asks, tell them I was here with you all day.’

  50

  ‘This is the last box,’ Carly told Bernard as she set it on top of the two others on the trolley. ‘It’s only the last bits and pieces from the kitchen now, Christina and I can carry them.’

  ‘I’ll get this lot into the lift then.’ He wheeled the load around and pointed it towards the hallway. ‘Are you going to lock up now?’

  ‘The place is empty and clean, no point prolonging it.’ Still, Carly stood a moment in the living room, watching him trundle the long hallway to the front door, turning and running her eyes over the soaring ceiling, the exposed brick, the stainless steel and, finally, the wedge of harbour beyond the balcony that was bathed in afternoon sunshine. She’d miss this place.

  ‘There are two muffins left over,’ Christina said from the kitchen. ‘I’ve packed them in plastic for later.’

  ‘Thanks. And thank you for your help today.’ Christina had baked and brewed in her own kitchen then turned up late in the morning with lunch and rubber gloves to feed and help with the last wipe-over of the apartment. It was a lot different to the last time Carly had moved, when she’d packed in stony silence and left behind more than she took.

  ‘Happy to be useful.’ Christina ripped off her gloves. ‘That’s the kitchen finished then. The only thing left is a walk-through with the broom on our way out.’

  Carly pushed it ahead of her down the hall, only pausing for a brief glance back along its length before pulling the door closed, giving it a tug and shove to make sure the lock had engaged.

  Bernard had held the lift for them and they squeezed in with the trolley. ‘We’ll miss having you just downstairs,’ Christina said.

  ‘You can visit anytime. Ring ahead and I can have dinner waiting,’ Carly joked.

  The doors opened on to the foyer, Carly leading the way through the geometrical shadows to Howard’s apartment. It was Carly’s now, at half the market rent for as long as she filled the role of building supervisor – at the interview, she’d admitted to being low on maintenance skills but on first-name basis with a classroom of tradies. The job wasn’t about the cost saving, she wanted to make sure her neighbours were safe and do it better than Howard had. She would be there for three years at least while she completed the social science degree she’d started a dozen years ago. Maybe longer if she was still keen on doing her Master’s after she’d worn the cap and gown.

  When Howard left for the UK two weeks ago, Carly cleaned and painted his two-bedroom apartment, discovering his record keeping was as hopeless as his supervising. She’d already started a new database for residents, adding the tenant who was moving into her place and updating old records.

  The first she’d refiled was the information on Stuart Mayberry, owner, south wall, second floor, whose death just over a month ago had shocked the warehouse. A cleaner replacing supplies in the storage room had noticed a funky smell, investigated, and found Stuart’s body at the bottom of the ventilation shaft in the south-east corner of the building.

  Police believed his body had been there for around three days. They’d found a rope tied to a ladder in another shaft and concluded he’d been climbing and fell. For almost everyone at the warehouse it seemed a bizarre thing to be doing, but it matched information from Stuart’s university colleagues in the school of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, who said he was an experienced member of their caving team.

  ‘The table’s arrived,’ Bernard called.

  Carly left Christina unpacking crockery, reaching the hallway as Dietrich walked backwards through the front door, heaving one end of the dining table Carly had found with Dakota in a second-hand store. Now it was here, it looked huge. ‘Wait till you see it, Christina,’ she said. ‘It’s got dents and gouges and paint slops. It’s fabulous.’

  ‘Where do you want it?’ Nate asked, managing the other end easily, his limp improving every day.

  ‘Right here.’ Carly stood between the kitchen counter and the wall, where it would fill the space and seat a dozen people with a few extra chairs.

  Christina looked it over with a frown. ‘Needs a bit of work.’

  ‘Just a good scrub,’ Carly said. ‘The scars are its history. It looks like it deserves a good home, don’t you think?’

  ‘Chairs! Coming through!’ They appeared ahead of Brooke, two stacked together and towering above her head. She’d lost five kilos now she was walking again. She was off the antidepressants an
d looked happy. She’d wielded a paintbrush with Carly a couple of times during the last week and had developed a sudden interest in cycling since she’d started chatting with the guy who chained his bike to the stairs. Brooke set her load down and looked around at the stacked boxes and jumble of furniture. ‘You sure you want to do dinner here tonight?’

  ‘So long as no one minds a hint of disaster with their lasagne,’ Carly grinned. ‘It’s already made and taking up room in Christina’s fridge.’ And it felt like something she had to do to mark another end and another beginning.

  There’d been no official signing-off of Stuart’s activities in the ceilings and no funeral to mark his passing. A cousin in Adelaide had made arrangements for the body to be transported across the country for burial. Carly hadn’t signed the card that went around: she’d written her name in neat, clear handwriting at the top left-hand side, like the start of a list. Maybe thinking it was to fit all the names, or maybe because no one seemed to really know him, the other residents followed suit and when it was finished there were five rows of names. Carly knew by then which ones he’d visited at night, knew also that he’d betrayed them all.

  On the pretext of needing to tie up business with the apartment, Carly had called the cousin. She’d only had to ask a few questions before Phil Mayberry got talking about the relative he hadn’t spoken to for three years, maybe feeling responsible for providing some sort of explanation for Stuart’s unusual death.

  ‘I keep thinking about him up there in your ceiling,’ Phil had told her. ‘He was always a strange guy.’

  Stuart was five when his high-achieving parents divorced and began a long custody battle for their only child. He saw his cousins once a year – the quiet, scrawny, nerdy kid in a big, boisterous family gathering. ‘He used to have this calm smile all the time. He got smacked in the head with a tennis racquet once and just smiled like he didn’t know what else to do.’

  According to Phil, when arguments started, Stuart would stand back and watch as though he was keeping out of the firing range. ‘He started half of them himself. We all knew he did it but it sounded like we were picking on the shy kid if we accused him. He’d steal toys and hide them, pinch the cricket ball so the game couldn’t be finished, push the little kids over and walk away. My sister nearly drowned once, she said Stuart had pulled her into the pool but he denied it and no one saw him.’