The Fourth Watch

Overview

The ancient Greeks divided the night into four sections; the last watch before morning was called the fourth watch. In the hours before dawn, an endless succession of rooms is inhabited by silent film figures occupying the flickering space in a midcentury house made of printed tin. Their presence is at once inevitable and uncanny. A boy turns his head in dread, a woman’s eyes look askance, a sleepwalker reaches into a cabinet that dissolves with her touch, and hands write letters behind ephemeral windows. The rooms reveal themselves and fill with impossible, shadowed light. It is not clear who is watching and who is trespassing in this nocturnal drama of lost souls.

Janie Geiser