We Bear Witness

Beyond the glass separating him from the outside, snow fell. Lazy fat flakes that beat against the window with a soft wump, wump.

Ed blinked—slow, with one lid trailing behind the other. He didn’t feel in his body. Even if he recognized the spill of white reflected over the exhausted sheen of his eyes, it didn’t feel like he was really seeing.

He was there—he just wasn’t there.

Next to him, the grandfather clock chimed. A muscle clenched in his jaw. The old wood rattled with each note. Eight strikes and Ed flinched along with the shaking wood. His breaths only became more shallow with each resounding bong.

Ed wondered who it would be this time.

At his sides, his palms were damp; clenching and unclenching like he’d lost feeling in his fingers.

He felt the marking of time in his teeth long after the clock fell silent again. He knew he should move, should leave this room in search of who’d gone next, so he could stand vigil at their door—lock it—lest they reappear.

So far, they hadn’t.

In a shuffle, he made his way down the hall.

It was a narrow thing with threadbare carpet; old, with wood-panneled walls. It reminded him of the church he’d grown up going to. The same worn trail had been trekked over the crimson carpet under similar migrations of the back and forth, this one less holy. Picture frames hung along the walls at odd placements, some too low to be standard—their width not always large enough to cover the jagged hole in the wall.

His fingers trailed that wall now, more for balance in order to aid silent steps than any sort of nostalgia. A few of the doors gaped open, soft light spilling from within; the others were shut. The yawning dark within did nothing to spotlight the wood shavings nestled in the carpet fibers, evidence of the new deadbolts screwed into the outside, winking bronze in the hall’s low light.

Of the ones open: Gigi, Leonard, Michael, and Celia, their names penned and tacked on paper to the center of their doors. Those closed—nineteen. Too many to name.

Passing the first, he peered around the door, the knob cool under his touch. Gigi sat at the foot of her bed, staring out the window at the falling snow, one shaking hand pressed over her mouth. Tears painted her sallow cheeks wet.

The drag of his foot was too loud as he made to move again, and her gaze cut to his. A muffled shriek sounded from behind her hand. Her face did not soften as she saw him, but her eyes drifting towards the furthest wall of her room, to the room beyond, was enough.

He left her door slightly ajar as he moved past.

Across from Gigi was Leonard. He did not turn as Ed ambled in front of his door, hands fisted stiffly at his sides. Shadow starkly contoured the tendons of his arms. It was only his eyes that followed Ed’s careful progress in the dark reflection of the window, his thick brows set in a hard line.

Ed did not look in at Michael, whose room was next to Leonard, but he heard the soft creak of springs as the man stood.

Breath held, he peered inside the now dark room.

It was the kind of dark that felt like an arterial bleed. A violent knife wound and an end that felt forever frozen in fear.

What was left of her curtains stirred lightly in the breeze.

It looked as if a bite had been taken of the building, then the evidence sucked away. The single window looking back to the trees, and the wood of the wall were gone, leaving only shards behind that could have been teeth.

No debris was left in its wake—no Celia. Just an absence that seemed to scream into the night.

From his pocket he pulled out a new deadbolt, metal warm, and a screwdriver. The screws tinked together until, one by one, they disappeared into the door, and all was sealed. A whistling breeze pulled from the slight space separating the door from the frame, and the door from the carpet. It harmonized with the others—adding it to the chorus of the lost.

He felt him. Knew by the quiet hitch of his breath that Michael was now at his back—gaze like the narrow miss of an arrow’s quiver.

“We bear witness,” he murmured low, voice shaking.

Just as softly, Ed repeated the mantra, pressing three fingers to his brow, and bowing his head.

Beyond the walls, a creature that wasn’t the wind howled, the sound of it altogether too close.

Lifting his gaze, he found Gigi watching him, hand still pressed over her mouth, like she was afraid what might spill out if she dropped it. Brown hair crowned her head in a wild tangle, eyes sunken and terrified.

“Back to your rooms,” Ed said, voice still hush, but the tremor had gone. “There is nothing to be done. When it comes again, we bear—”

“Nothing to be done?” Leonard hissed from his own door, sucked his teeth. At Ed’s look, his fingers tightened where he was gripping the frame, like the weight of it could have pushed him a step back if he hadn’t held on. The man’s eyes flicked to the watch on his wrist. “The devil is at our door—has taken twenty. Will he not be satiated?”

Michael made a pained sound in the back of his throat, opened his mouth.

Ed held up a hand. “We have been found wanting.” Leonard flinched, Gigi pressed a choked sob into her palm. Ed fixed his gaze on a faded photograph of a blonde-haired child in a black, plastic frame. “Go back to your meditations and we might survive this yet.”

Leonard’s face paled as he backed away, pulling the door with him until only a crack of light was visible. The shadow shifted under the door, floorboards creaking, and he was gone.

Michael cast a lingering look at Gigi, who skittered away like a frightened animal, before bowing his head in deference and retreating.

Down the hall, Ed could hear the damning tick of the clock as it neared the next hour. Jaw clenching, he migrated back the way he’d come.

He found himself by the window again, his pocket weighted by another deadbolt. As the snow fell, he pressed a finger into the sharp end of a screw, his mouth moving silently over a litany. Snow shook itself loose from a tall pine on the edge of the forest beyond, his lips stilling for only a moment as his breath hitched.

Leonard did not go quietly.

In between the eighth and ninth strikes of the grandfather clock, a scream shook the thin walls. A time-worn portrait of a man fell from its hook, shattering against the floor between Ed’s desk and the wall.

His knees went weak, and he fell to them, forehead pressed to the cold glass of the window.

Another terrible scream, crash, then a sound like the muffled fall of a body.

In the corner of his vision, he watched as the snow reddened.

For long moments, he stayed there, breath fogging the glass. There was no rush, nothing to be done. The uneven weight of his pocket pulled him a bit to the right. At least, that’s what he told himself when he found himself leaning away from the direction of Leonard’s room.

Ed stood; looked at the clock.

Gigi now lay at the foot of her bed, body curled around her knees, palm fused over her mouth, even as she rocked. Around her, her comforter created a sort of enclosure—the blanket piled around her skeletal frame like a bird in a nest. She did not look to the door as Ed passed by.

Michael was already at Leonard’s door, staring into the room with an indecipherable look, hands tucked casually into his pockets.

“The snow is beautiful tonight,” he said as Ed stopped beside him.

Hand on the door, Ed waited as Michael looked his fill. A piece of fabric—white, stained red—hung from a broken piece of wall like a flag denied truce.

Finally, he stepped back.

As the door clicked shut, Michael pressed three fingers to his forehead. Into the hallway he whispered, “We bear witness,” as the smell of iron faded to just a note on their tongues, wind whistling through the empty room beyond.

When ten came, the clock’s tolls like the drag of claws over flesh, it was like the building exhaled a breath that had been held in aching lungs for too long.

It did not look like Gigi had ever lived in her room. Her belongings had been removed from the vanity, carefully tucked into a shoebox by the door. The bed had been made crisply, edges folded and exact.

Her door took the screws without a fight, wood shavings falling like snow to the carpet.

His gaze met Michael’s.

The man lifted his chin, touching three fingers to his forehead.

Together, they recited, “We bear witness.”

After a breath, Michael said, “And then there were two,” a slight upward tilt in the corner of his mouth. “I wonder which of us is more wanting.”

Ed swallowed, digging at a flap of skin on his thumb with a nail until he felt a sharp bite of pain; continuing his ministrations, even then.

Bobbing his head, Michael turned away, pulling the door of his room closed—leaving it slightly ajar.

Overhead, the lights flickered.

In his chest, Ed’s heart beat a furious rhythm, dictating the time of his pacing like a metronome. He was sure that if Michael was the one to find his room empty, he’d also be privy to the rut he’d pressed into the carpet before his window.

He thought, then, of the times he’d been to confession—the shadowed form of a priest hearing his sins, telling him how to repent. His throat tightened; his mouth was dry. He wanted something to drink.

The drumming of feet pulled him from those thoughts with a start. His eyes flew to the door, fingers curling around the deadbolt in his pocket.

In a rush, Michael ran past.

For a moment, Ed didn’t move.

At the sound of the front door being thrown open, wood cracking against the metal railing, he ran.

Outside, snow was still falling. It blanketed the world in white and silence, muffling even the sound of Michael’s screaming.

“I am here!” he yelled at the treeline, arms spread in supplication as he fell to his knees, turning his face to the sky. “I am yours!”

The chime of the grandfather clock felt loud at his back as he caught up to Michael. He gripped the collar of his shirt in a fist—tried to pull him to his feet, then began to drag him through the snow.

“You should be in your room,” Ed gritted through his teeth.

The fabric tore. A branch snapped beyond the treeline.

“Take me! I am ready! I am ready!” Michael screamed, seemingly unaware of Ed, now hauling him with arms hooked around his middle.

The clock’s final dong echoed over the white landscape, falling silent after eleven. Something hit Ed hard from the side, sending him flying through the air. A substance, hot and thick, licked the side of his face. It was the last thing he felt before the ground rushed up to meet him.

Ed’s eyes opened slowly, one lid trailing the other. He only distantly registered the cold wet of his shirt where his back was pressed into the ground, the fog of his breath curtaining what he could see of the night sky.

At his side, his fingers twitched.

Then, from somewhere inside, the clock began its toll.

A creature howled. Not even the snow dared to hush it, the sound of it rattling his teeth.

Snow cracked with each prowling step of the beast. It kept slow time with the grandfather clock’s chime until even that fell away, leaving only with the terrible sound of its approach.

Ed thought of closing his eyes—denying until the very last second that the crunching press of footsteps weren’t his own.

In the end, he didn’t, not even as the warmth of a gaping maw was a soft caress on his cheek. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the falling snow and the fat flakes drawing near, landing next to his ear with a soft wump, wump.