“Sweep the aisles. Empty the trash. Don’t go above the fly floor after eleven.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll ask you to finish his shift.”

Raul laughed. He had cleaned courthouses, offices and a movie theater where rats ate the seat cushions. A dead janitor seemed manageable.

On Friday, a dress rehearsal ran late. At 10:46 p.m., the students and teachers departed, leaving cardboard scenery, costume feathers and strips of colored tape across the stage. Raul locked the lobby, switched on the work lights and began sweeping.

At eleven, another broom answered overhead.

Push. Scrape. Lift.

Push. Scrape. Lift.

Dust drifted from the catwalk.

“Building’s closed,” Raul called.

The sweeping stopped.

A man stepped into the work light forty feet above the stage.

He wore gray coveralls, though a carpenter’s belt hung from his waist. One moment he was stooped with age; the next he stood young and narrow-shouldered in a student’s white shirt. His face changed whenever Raul blinked.

The man lifted one hand.

Then he fell.

Raul threw himself backward. The body passed through the stage without a sound.

A second later, something struck the catwalk above him.

He looked up.

The man was falling again.

The work lights went dark.

Raul ran for the stage door, but his keys no longer fit. Each key entered the lock and turned into a short piece of chalk. Behind him, the auditorium seats folded down one after another.

Hundreds of unseen people took their places.

The curtain opened upon an older stage. Half-built walls surrounded raw timber scaffolds. Electric cables hung like vines. The shifting man stood at center stage holding a push broom.

“House clear?” he asked.

Raul tried the door again.

“House clear?”

The invisible audience began stamping its feet.

“Yes,” Raul shouted. “The house is clear.”

The man pointed toward a narrow iron stairway beside the stage.

“Clock me out.”

A punch clock had appeared on the landing. Beneath it hung a single yellow time card.

Raul climbed three steps, then stopped. The card bore no name. Its date changed as he watched—1938, 1956, 1971, 1989, the present year. The job title changed with it.

CONSTRUCTION WORKER.

STUDENT.

JANITOR.

UNKNOWN.

“Who are you?” Raul asked.

The man looked toward the audience.

Whispers moved through the seats.

A worker fell.

No, it was a boy.

A janitor died here.

With every version, the man changed. A hard hat appeared and vanished. Gray hair became black. Work boots became school shoes. His push broom turned into a hammer, a notebook, then a ring of keys.

“They remember the fall,” he said. “They don’t remember me.”

The unseen audience applauded.

Raul understood that the auditorium was not haunted by three people. It was haunted by one death told so many ways that the dead man no longer knew which life had been his.

“What was your name?”

The man opened his mouth. From it came only the sound of a body striking wood.

Raul reached for the blank time card.

The man seized his wrist.

Raul saw the fall.

He saw it from the scaffold as a worker reached for a loose board. He saw it from the balcony as a student leaned too far over the rail. He saw it from the catwalk as a custodian stepped backward into darkness. All three memories occupied the same second. All three bodies wore Raul’s face.

He tore his arm away.

“That isn’t me.”

“Not yet.”

Above them, the broom resumed its slow path.

Push. Scrape. Lift.

The man climbed toward the catwalk. His body shifted with each step. The invisible audience whispered new versions of the story, trying names that belonged to no one.

Raul followed because every exit had vanished.

At the fly floor, the auditorium stretched below like a dark well. The stage lights formed one white circle at its bottom. The man stood at the railing with his back to Raul.

“Clock me out,” he said.

The punch clock was now bolted to the catwalk rail. Two time cards hung beneath it. One was blank. The other displayed Raul’s full name.

“What happens if I do?”

“The last custodian leaves.”

“And who stays?”

The man turned.

This time he had no face at all.

The audience began to boo.

The catwalk trembled. Bolts rose from the metal one slow turn at a time. Raul watched the railing tilt toward the stage. He had seconds before the entire walkway gave way.

He pulled the blank card from its slot and wrote a name across it.

THE AUDITORIUM.

Then he punched the building out.

The clock struck midnight.

The sound passed through the walls like a hammer blow. Seats tore free of the floor. Curtains collapsed. Scaffolds, lockers, hospital beds and decades of scenery flashed beneath Raul as the auditorium shed every story it had collected.

The faceless man smiled with a mouth that appeared only for that purpose.

“You can’t clock out a building,” he said.

“Then why did it take the card?”

The floor opened.

The auditorium fell around them.

Raul landed on the stage beneath the ordinary work lights. The seats were empty. The doors stood unlocked. On the catwalk above, no one swept.

His watch read 11:01 p.m.

Raul left his keys on the manager’s desk and resigned before sunrise.