The Legend of Bush Man — Chapters 46 and 47: The Answer

Chapter 46: The Answer — Not To The House

Her mouth opened.

Marcus heard Chloe inhale beside him — one sharp, frightened breath, quickly swallowed, because even a gasp, out here, might count as a reply. Chloe’s mother said nothing at all. The warm light from the six-inch door lay across the toes of their shoes, patient as a hand held out for a tip.

“Come in,” the house had said, in everyone he loved. “You’re letting the cold in. Lunch is getting cold.”

And Marcus’s mother, who had answered doors for forty years, who had never once let a guest stand unacknowledged on a step, answered.

But she answered him.

“Baby,” she said, to her son, eyes fixed hard on the dark street ahead, voice low and shaking and entirely her own — the real one, the one that still could not find his name, “we were just leaving.”

Not come in. Not thank you. Not yes. A farewell, spoken to a person, in the wrong direction entirely.

Behind them, something in the lit house changed. Not a sound — the house had given up sounds, that was the Welcome, that was the horror of it — but a quality, the way a held note changes when the singer finally, slightly, runs out of air. The warm light in the kitchen window thinned by one shade.

“Was that a beginning?” Chloe whispered, to the street.

“I don’t know,” Marcus whispered back. “Walk. If it was, walking is already started. If it wasn’t — walk anyway.”

Gallows logic. It was the only kind left in Oakhaven.

From the AOP3D Forum — Page 77: “The Farewell”

Posted by rootcellar, Hollow Creek. Timestamp: now.

“A host can use almost any answer you give it. Yes seats you. No seats you slower — a guest arguing about dinner is still at the table.

“The one answer it cannot keep is a farewell said to a person. Not to the house. Never to the house. To a person you love, standing next to you, about leaving.

“And then you must actually leave, friend, and you must not thank it on your way out. Gratitude is a kind of beginning. Politeness built this whole night. Do not let it finish it.”

Chapter 46 — Five Sets Of Steps

They walked.

Four abreast down the dark walk, not holding hands now — holding would be a kind of staying — past the place where the hedge began, past the mailbox Marcus had painted, badly, the summer he was twelve. The street smelled of ordinary things again: cold pavement, somebody’s woodsmoke, wet leaves. The leaves on the Henderson side of the road trembled violently in air that was dead still, and nobody fed them eyes.

They did not go to the car. The car was a wooden box with an engine, and it was its address, and they had learned that lesson at twenty-three miles an hour with no one driving.

They walked toward the corner, toward the one streetlight on the block that still burned honest orange.

Halfway there, Chloe’s mother said, very quietly, “Count.”

“Count what?” Chloe said.

“Steps. Ours.”

Marcus counted. He wished, immediately and with his whole heart, that he had not. Four sets of shoes on pavement: his, Chloe’s, both mothers’, soft and uneven and human.

And a fifth set, behind them, keeping perfect time. Crunch… swoosh… crunch. Dry leaves, on a street swept clean. Not hurrying. It never hurried. It did not need to catch them — a host seeing guests to the edge of the property is not chasing anyone. A host is being polite.

“It’s walking us out,” Marcus’s mother said, and gave one short, dry, disbelieving laugh. “All my life I did that at this door. Walked people out. Stood and waved.”

“Don’t wave,” Chloe said.

“Baby,” she said, “I am unlearning as fast as I can.”

At the corner, under the honest light, the fifth set of steps stopped. Theirs did not. That was the moment — like the house, like the car, like the hallway — escaped. A moment was all anyone ever escaped.

It was also, Marcus would understand much too late, exactly far enough.

Chapter 47: The Shadow Answer — The Wrong Way

The streetlight was the problem. Of course it was. Every light had been the problem since the porch lights learned to open like eyes.

It stood behind them now, between them and the house, burning warm orange — her orange, porch orange, the colour of being welcomed — and it threw their shadows out long in front of them across the pavement, where Marcus could not help but see them.

Four shadows. Walking.

Except they were not walking away. Shadows point away from the light. These pointed toward it — stretched thin and black and eager back along the sidewalk toward the house, while their owners walked the other way. Wrong-direction shadows, the oldest signature in the forum, the first wrongness Toby ever filmed.

“Don’t look down,” Chloe said, looking down.

“I’m looking down,” Marcus said.

“I know. Me too. Don’t make it worse.”

His mother’s shadow was the tallest, thrown longest, reaching almost to the walk they had just left. As Marcus watched — feeding it eyes, he knew, he knew, and could not stop, because it was only a shadow, and that was exactly the trap of it — his mother’s shadow did something the woman herself, beside him, white-faced and silent, did not do.

Its mouth opened.

From the AOP3D Forum — Page 78: “The Other Mouth”

rootcellar, replying to page 77, timestamp: now:

“You are wondering why I never wrote about shadows. It is because there was nothing useful to write.

“When you refuse a host your voice, it does not go hungry, friend. It borrows the mouth you cast. A shadow is a guest that already faces the house. It has stood in every doorway you have ever stood in. It has been seen by everything that has ever seen you.

“The Witnesses were never only the people.”

Chapter 47 — Saying Goodbye

No sound came out of it. That was the courtesy of it, and the cruelty. Shadows do not need sound. The house could read.

On the pavement, his mother’s shadow mouthed, slowly and clearly, in the warm light: Thank you.

Beside him, the real woman clamped both hands over her own mouth — too late, and also not too late, because her mouth had never been the one that mattered.

The shadow’s head turned. On the ground, black as turned soil, it turned and looked back at the house with a face that had no eyes, while its owner stared straight ahead and wept without a sound. Then, finger by finger, courteous as a held door, the shadow raised its welcoming hand.

“That’s a beginning,” Chloe breathed. “Tell me that isn’t a beginning.”

Nobody told her.

Down the street, the front door — which had opened six inches for a host — opened wide for a guest who had finally, properly, said thank you. Warm light poured across the porch, across the walk, all the way to the corner, laying itself like a path at their feet.

And from inside his own house, in his mother’s real voice — not the finished one, not the braided choir, her real, warm, worried voice, the one that still could not say his name — the house said:

“There you are, baby. I was worried you’d leave without saying goodbye.”

Marcus’s feet slid one inch backward on the pavement. Not a step. He had not stepped. The sidewalk itself, very slowly, had begun to tilt toward the light — and all four of their shadows, in perfect unison, turned around and started walking home.