The Subject in the Glass

The click came from inside the lobby mirror.

Edwin stood nearest it. His scarred, ringed hand was at his side, not raised to shield Iris or claim the camera. In the glass, the faceless witness-form held its shattered lens level with his chest.

Ruth had one hand on the lobby door. Tomás kept his camera lowered. Agnes stood by the reception desk, watching the reflection as if a form were being filled in where the rest of them could not see it.

Iris stayed where she was. The mirror showed her beside Edwin, although she was standing half a pace behind him. The reflection was already wrong. She had learned how little that mattered.

“Did it take the picture?” Ruth asked.

The mirror gave no answer. The witness-form’s camera lowered by an inch. Its empty face remained pointed at Edwin.

Edwin glanced at Iris. “I’m here.”

The words were plain. He did not ask her to move, or to let him take her place. That should have made it easier to stand still. It didn’t.

Ruth eased her hand off the door. “Nobody goes near the glass.”

A pale rectangle began to emerge from the mirror’s lower edge. It slid down as if pushed through a slot, though the glass was unbroken. The form stayed behind it, camera raised again.

Tomás shifted his weight, still careful not to lift his own camera. “Iris.”

She saw the photograph touch the wooden ledge beneath the mirror. If she reached for it, the form would have her in the same frame as Edwin. If she didn’t, the picture would sit there deciding what they were allowed to know.

She took it by one corner.

The image was dark and unsteady. The lobby appeared in it from the same impossible angle as before, but the counter and front door were gone. Edwin sat in a high-backed chair under a bare ceiling. His hands rested on his knees. The chipped ring caught a thin line of light. He looked alert, not injured, and not dead.

A door stood behind him, marked OCTOBER 22.

The photo’s lower margin was still developing. Iris held it level, resisting the impulse to shake it. She had spent enough time with Polaroids to know that a gesture could not hurry them. The words surfaced one by one.

SUBJECT: EDWIN CALLOWAY.

Then:

STATUS: LOCATED.

Ruth stepped closer, stopping short of Iris’s shoulder. “That’s tomorrow.”

“Good,” Edwin said. His voice had gone rough. “I was worried it had improved its calendar.”