Pipes

The first clang came in the middle of the night. Like someone in another part of the building was banging on the pipes with a wrench, sending the noise and vibrations all the way up to my apartment.

I live in an old neighbourhood in downtown Toronto in an old three story apartment building. I prefer these old buildings, they have more personality. In this particular neighbourhood, most buildings and houses have hot water radiators for heating.

It being September turning into October, I assumed the noise was the heat being turned on. The noise was consistent and obviously coming from the pipes of the radiators. An odd noise, it sounded like it was at once right in the radiators and coming from somewhere else in the building. I didn’t think much of it and contacted the building property manager. Because I know how these property managers work these days and figuring the banging noise will have stopped by then, I grabbed my phone and made some recordings. After a minute or two, I played it back to make sure you could hear the clanging.

The next morning, as I usually do, I went for a walk in the huge urban park near my place. While I was making my way through the park, I started seeing these flyers and notifications taped to lampposts. The flyer had three different pictures of a man about my age with the text: “Missing Person: Have you seen this man?” He was last seen three days ago and the flyer alluded to foul play. They were asking for any help and seemed to cling on to little hope he would be found. The man in the photographs looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

Upon returning to my apartment building, the property manager was in the foyer talking to a police officer. The property manager saw me and said: “When I’m done with this, I’ll come up to check your radiators.” The police man looked me up and down and motioned to me: “While you’re here, you haven’t seen this person, have you?” The police officer showed me one of the photographs from the flyer of the missing man. I studied it like I hadn’t just been seeing it on every lamppost and finally shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t know him. What happened?” I asked. “Just someone that used to live in the building,” the property manager said.

I went upstairs to may apartment and the property manager knocked on my door about twenty minutes later. Like I assumed, the clanging noise had stopped. He pretended to check out the radiators and said, “Sometimes when we turn the heat on the first time, air is trapped in the radiators. When the water hits the air, it makes the banging noise.” Sure, whatever. I wanted to play him the recordings, but he was very disinterested. I just hit play and we waited. And waited. The recordings were still on my phone, but they were silent. No clanging. The property manager wasn’t impressed. He left saying, “Just turn the radiators fully on. When we turn the heat on, the water will knock the air out. No more clanging.”

Of course, that night the clanging returned, even though I followed instructions. Now I couldn’t sleep. Not necessarily because of the noise, but what to do about it. There seemed to be a pattern to the banging. It seemed to be three short bangs, three longer bangs, followed by three more shorter ones. I got out of bed and went to my desk, turning on the light and opening my notebook. I wrote this pattern down and looked up Morse Code. Three taps = the letter S. Three longer bangs = the letter O. And three more taps, another S.

SOS.

I put on some clothes and went outside into the hallway. I could hear the SOS in the walls. I lived on the third floor and followed it downstairs. On the second floor, it got a bit fainter, but picked up again on the first floor. The basement is a mess of pipes and other infrastructure. I stopped and listened. Again, the SOS was faint, but I could still follow it. The pipe above me vibrated and started getting louder once I turned a corner. It led to a door. I put my ear to the door and listened, it was definitely coming from this room. I tried opening it, but it was locked. The noise stopped when I tried the doorknob. I stopped again, listened. There was a brief pause in the clanging, but it soon picked up again.

I did the only thing I could: I started slamming my shoulder against the door. Like the building, it was an old door and only took a few times before it flew open. I stumbled into the dark room, the only light from the open door. Sitting on the floor was the man from the flyer. Tired-looking, he held a small wrench and sat beside an exposed pipe. “Are you hurt?” The man just smiled and pointed behind me. I turned around and the property manager stood in the doorway with an industrial-sized wrench. It brought it up over his head and struck down-

- and the world went black-