The Witness’s Objection

Agnes struck the glass four times, paused, and struck it once more.

Ruth flinched at the sound. “That isn’t random.”

“No,” Iris said. “She’s trying to be heard.”

The photograph lay on the closed ledger, its white border trembling against the leather. Agnes stood behind the glass partition in the image, one palm flattened against it. The covered body remained on the preparation table behind her. The scarred hand and chipped ring rested beyond the sheet.

The witness-form’s fingers were still wrapped around Agnes’s wrist.

Iris took the photograph by its edges. It was warm. Not developing-warm. Living-warm.

“Put it down,” Edwin said.

She looked at him. “You recognized the signal.”

“I recognized Agnes.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

Ruth kept her gun trained on the picture. “Can she hear us?”

Iris turned the image toward the room. “Agnes. If you can hear me, strike once for yes.”

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then Agnes struck the glass once.

Tomás released a breath. “All right.”

Iris crouched beside the ledger. The three cameras remained where she had left them: Tomás’s damaged body angled toward the clasp, Agnes’s camera resting between the two records, and the old Polaroid beneath the ledger’s cover. Their flashes had left a pale afterimage in the room, a triangular bruise of light.

“Can you answer questions?” Iris asked.

One strike.

“Is the record showing your death?”

Agnes struck twice.

No.

Ruth lowered the muzzle by an inch. “Then what is it showing?”

Iris watched Agnes’s face. The keeper raised one finger and pointed past the camera, toward the covered body. Then she pointed at Edwin’s name beneath the photograph.

“The witness,” Iris said.

Agnes struck once.

“The record is about Edwin witnessing something.”

One strike.

Edwin stepped backward. His shoulder touched the cracked wall. Through the nearest fissure, a hospital room glimmered and vanished.

“I told you,” he said. “I never reached the corridor.”

“You reached the preparation room,” Iris said.

“Years ago.”

“And Agnes brought this record to you.”

His silence answered before he did.

The witness-form moved inside the photograph. Its faceless head turned toward Edwin. The imitation of Iris’s shape had gone slack and unfinished, but its hand remained solid around Agnes’s wrist.

Agnes began pounding again. Three times. Then two. Then three.

Tomás frowned. “Three-two-three?”

“She’s spelling,” Iris said.

“Using impacts?”

“Agnes taught herself to communicate with a wall for twenty years. I doubt she needs an alphabet.”

Iris leaned closer. The glass in the photograph had fogged beneath Agnes’s palm. Letters appeared in the condensation, written backward from Iris’s side.

D O O R.

Then the witness-form dragged its hand across the words. The letters smeared into a dark stripe.

“Door,” Ruth said. “Which door?”

Iris looked at the cracks in the wall. Every one showed a different arrangement. A bedroom. A roadside ditch. A bath filled with black water. The archive’s unfinished records were still reaching toward Room 17, still seeking witnesses.

Agnes pressed both hands to the glass and shook her head.

Not those doors.

The preparation-room door.

Iris turned toward the sealed entrance behind them. The brass plate marked 17 lay beneath the floor, but the owner’s passage had closed when she disrupted the room’s attempt to record possession. The room had no visible exit except the corridor door, which stood shut and silent.

Edwin saw her looking. “Don’t open it.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And you’ve ignored me before.”

“Your success rate has been poor.”

His face hardened. “The preparation room is where the arrangement began.”

“Then it’s where we end it.”

“No.”

The word came out too quickly. Too forcefully.

Iris studied him. Her father had spent a year dead by official account and another year alive by inconvenient fact. He had transferred ownership to her, hidden the archive, substituted a body, and allowed the witness system to redirect pressure toward her. Every explanation he offered had arrived after the danger, never before it.

“What did you do in that room?” she asked.

Edwin’s eyes went to the photograph.

“I agreed to witness Agnes’s death.”

Ruth’s gun came up again. “You what?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be her death.” His voice had gone flat, procedural—the voice of a man reading a report he had memorized to avoid reading the truth. “Agnes said the archive needed a designated witness to close the old arrangement. She told me the subject had already been chosen. She said if I stood there, signed nothing, and took the photograph, the record would settle on the person who had made it.”

Iris felt the room narrow around him. “Who made it?”

“I never saw a face.”

“That answer is getting old.”

“I saw the hand.” Edwin stared at the scarred finger beneath the sheet. “My hand. The record had already prepared an image of me. It wanted me to witness myself.”

The covered body shifted in the photograph.

Not much. A settling of the shoulder. A small movement beneath the sheet.

Tomás lifted his camera. “Iris.”

She held out a hand. “Don’t.”

The body’s exposed hand curled. The chipped ring flashed once.

Edwin whispered, “I interrupted it.”

“You substituted someone else,” Iris said.

“I put a dead man under the sheet.”

“And then?”

“Then I burned the record.”

Agnes struck the glass once.

“No,” Iris said. “You didn’t.”

Edwin looked at her.

“You burned the photograph you had. The arrangement remained.” She raised Agnes’s image. “That’s why she’s still in it. That’s why you’re named as witness. You didn’t destroy the record. You abandoned it.”

The witness-form’s head tilted. For the first time, its blank face seemed to acquire attention.

Edwin’s mouth tightened. “I was trying to stop it reaching you.”

“You transferred ownership to me.”

“To keep the county from inheriting the funeral home.”

“You made me the nearest person in the system.”

“I thought I could finish it before it understood you were involved.”

“Your plan was to lie until I died?”

“No.” His answer was immediate. “My plan was to die first.”

The words landed harder than any confession had.

Inside the photograph, Agnes closed her eyes. The witness-form released her wrist.

For one hopeful second, Iris thought the record had accepted the admission.

Then the form turned toward the covered body and lifted both hands.

The sheet began to slide off.

Iris moved before anyone else. She placed the old Polaroid against Agnes’s photograph and pressed the shutter.

The flash blew the room white.

A new image ejected between her fingers. The preparation room appeared from above. Agnes stood behind the glass. Edwin stood beside the table, younger but unmistakable, one hand on the camera. Beneath the sheet, the body’s face remained hidden.

Across the bottom, fresh letters developed.

WITNESS PRESENT.

Then another line appeared beneath it.

SUBJECT UNCONFIRMED.

The ledger opened by itself.

The page beneath OWNER CONTESTED and KEEPER CONTESTED was no longer blank. A third designation had formed in black, wet-looking ink:

SUBJECT CONTESTED.

Agnes’s image went still. The witness-form recoiled from the new photograph as if the paper had become a flame.

Ruth stared at the ledger. “What does that do?”

Iris looked at the covered body, at the hand wearing her father’s ring, and then at Edwin.

“It means the record can’t decide who died.”

From behind the sealed preparation-room door came a slow knock.

Once.

Twice.

Then a third time, from the other side of the wall.

Tomás turned toward the sound. “There are two doors.”

Iris folded the new photograph into her coat.

“No,” she said. “There are two witnesses.”