Cameron To Candy

The road out of Petalik was the kind that made a man think. Not because it was thought-provoking. It was not. It was flat, dusty, and lined with orchards that looked identical to each other. The carriage wheels clicked at a steady rhythm, and the late afternoon light turned everything the color of baked bread.

Candy sat beside Marcus with her arms folded, watching the last of the peach banners disappear behind them. She looked content in the way she never admitted to being content.

Marcus kept his hands on the reins and let the quiet do what it so often did: fill up with questions.

He had laughed plenty at the festival. He had eaten too much. He had even, at one point, felt normal. And now the normalness was fading, and the memory that had been waiting patiently at the back of his mind stepped forward.

Bindlewhack. Marcus stared down the road and spoke as if he were talking to the horizon.

“I do not remember seeing Bindlewhack at the muster point during the invasion drills.”

Candy’s head tilted slightly. “So?”

“So,” Marcus said, “I would have expected him there. All the men in our block report there.

Candy gave him a sideways look. “Isn’t he retired?”

“Yes,” Marcus agreed. “But he’s still young enough to participate in the civilian circuit. And if you served enlistment voluntarily and make it past even a Corporal, you’re put on the list for automatic rank reinstatement in emergencies. You get assigned.”

Candy made a sound that might have been amusement. “So. then, maybe he was assigned elsewhere.”

Marcus did not answer right away. The carriage rolled over a shallow rut and bounced them both a little. He tightened his grip on the reins, then loosened it again.

“Maybe, but I’m saying it’s odd..” Candy watched him, waiting. Marcus glanced at her, then back to the road. “Do you remember seeing Mrs. Bindlewhack at the shelter?”

Candy frowned and thought honestly, “No. But the shelter was big. People were packed in. I could have missed her.”

“The matrons were recording names,” Marcus said.

“They were,” Candy replied. “And from what I could tell, everyone who was supposed to be there was there. At least, nobody was shouting that someone was missing. Suzie was the last in. Otherwise, it was all very… efficient.”

Marcus’s mouth tightened. “I guess that’s good… It’s just, if she wasn’t there…. It’s worrisome.”

Candy’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Marcus scratched at his cheek with the knuckle of his free hand, an old habit when he was sorting pieces in his head. “Because if Bindlewhack was not at the muster point, and his wife was not at the shelter, then where were they during the drill?”

Candy shifted in her seat, still watching him. “The Ministry does things you don’t expect all the time. Hells, look at us… They could easily have been assigned somewhere else.”

Marcus huffed softly. “That is true.”

He let the road click under them for another dozen heartbeats. The sun dipped lower. The air cooled. Then his mind returned to the moment that had started this whole thread of suspicion, the thing he had nearly dismissed because it sounded like nothing. And he remembered it clearly enough that it played back like a scene on a scry-mirror…

It had been late. Not midnight, but close enough that the street felt emptied out and hollow.

Marcus had been in the yard, tightening the last strap on the carriage and trying to remember whether he had packed the spare lantern oil. He was thinking about travel times and whether Candy would complain more about dust or about people or about having to wear dresses.

A shape had moved at the fence line to his left, and he had looked up. His neighbor, Davin Plinkett, an ordinary man with an ordinary face and an ordinary desire to avoid extraordinary trouble, had leaned over the fence with a cautious expression.

“Hey, neighbor,” the man had said.

Marcus had wiped his hands on his coat. “Hey, Davin.”

“You takin’ off?” Davin asked, nodding toward the carriage.

“Yeah, tomorrow morning. We’re spending a couple of days down in Petalik. The Peach Festival.”

“That should be fun,” the neighbor said, and his mouth twitched like he wanted to smile but also wanted to be responsible. “Hey, before you go, though. Sorry, I should have told you this sooner.”

Marcus had felt his attention sharpen, the way it always did now. “What?”

Davin had lowered his voice a little. “My wife said the day of the invasion drill… she saw Bindlewhack on your property.”

Marcus paused. “Bindlewhack?”

“Yeah,” Davin had said quickly. “I don’t know if you gave him permission. I don’t know if it was nothing. But eveyone should have been headed the drill by then, and it sounded odd. I figured you’d rather know than not know.”

Marcus had stared at his own yard as if the grass might explain itself. “I did not approve that.”

Davin had lifted his hands in a helpless shrug. “He is a busybody. Maybe he thought your gutters were crooked.”

Marcus had let out a tired breath and tried to make it a joke, because jokes were easier than admitting fear. “If my gutters are crooked, he will write a report and get me a fine.”

Davin had laughed, relief loosening his shoulders. “He did that to me once, actually. He told me my downspout angle wasn’t up to code.”

Marcus had snorted despite himself. “That sounds like him.”

“Anyway,” Davin had said, easing back from the fence, “have fun down in Petalik.”

“Thanks,” Marcus had replied.

After Davin had gone inside, Marcus had stood alone in the yard, listening to the soft night sounds of Verse Alley, and the humor had slipped away. Because even if Bindlewhack was only a busybody, a busybody did not need to be in Marcus’s backyard during an invasion drill. And Marcus had not had time to knock on Bindlewhack’s door, not with departure in the morning and a household to manage and a wife to keep out of trouble.

So he had done the thing he could do quickly. He had gone to the cupboard where he kept practical magic. He had taken out flash papers, thin, enchanted sheets designed to capture a moment the way some in more technologically advanced dimensions might call a Polaroid.

He had set it at the back gate, tucked into the latch seam where it would fire if someone touched it. He had set a second sheet under the shed eave angled toward the narrow strip of yard behind the house. He had murmured the activation phrase and felt the paper warm and settle. Then he had gone inside and slept like a man who had folded a worry into a pocket and hoped it would stay there.

***

The carriage bumped over another rut, and Marcus blinked himself back into the present. Candy was watching him again.

“That is what you were thinking about,” she said.

Marcus nodded once. “That is what I was thinking about.”

Candy looked ahead at the road, expression tight. “So you set flash paper.”

“I did,” Marcus said.

“And you did not tell me.”

“I did not,” Marcus agreed. “Sorry. It was a rush thing, and probably nothing. I will be talking to Brindlwack next chance I get, though.”

Candy made a small sound that could have been irritation or understanding. With Candy, it was often both. Marcus steadied the reins and kept his voice even.

“Plus, I didn’t want to make you worry over something I didn’t know was real. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

Candy huffed and said nothing. He wasn’t wrong. They rode the rest of the way with the question sitting between them like a third passenger. Was this going to be a thing?

***

By the time Verse Alley came into view, the light had softened into evening. The street looked tidy and harmless, as if nothing in Paddlewick had ever been wrong in its entire life.

Marcus pulled the no-carriage to the side yard gate and helped unload without saying much. Candy carried things inside without comment, which in her case was its own comment.

As soon as the last sack was through the door, Marcus turned toward the back gate. He crouched, fingers searching the latch seam. The flash paper had fired. He could tell by the faint smell of singed sugar and the curled edge where it had burned itself into completion.

Marcus swallowed. He opened the little packet where the developed print would sit.

A single sheet slid into his hand. The picture showed the back strip of yard, fence, shed, uneven grass, the angle of the gate.

And in the center of the frame was the unmistakable shape of a person.

Except it was not a person.

It was an absence.

A clean, human-shaped void where details should have been. No face. No clothing. No texture. Just a blank cutout, as if the world had been censored in the exact outline of someone standing there.

Marcus stared until his eyes stung.

“That is…” he whispered, then tried again, because understatement was not doing the job. “That is very weird.”

His first instinct was to show Candy.

He did not.

Not because he wanted to hide it, but because he knew how this would go: Candy would have an opinion, and that opinion would become a conversation, and the conversation would become a fight, and the fight would become loud enough for a neighbor to hear.

So Marcus folded the print and put it in his coat pocket.

Then he walked across Verse Alley and knocked on Mr. Bindlewhack’s door.

Bindlewhack answered promptly, as if he had been waiting for the knock. He stood straight, hair neat, eyes bright with the polite alertness of a man who considered observation a civic virtue.

“Elwood,” Bindlewhack said. “Back from Petalik.”

“Yes,” Marcus said. He wasn’t surprised Bindlewack knew they’d gone, despite not being told by him or Candy. The man knew everything that happened on this block.

“And the peaches?” Bindlewhack asked, as if this was a required step.

“Juicey,” Marcus replied.

Bindlewhack’s mouth curled in approval. “Good!” There was a pregnant pause. Before Marcus could summon the nerve to speak again Bindlewack cut the silence. “I’m glad you’re here, actually. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

Marcus did not indulge the small talk. “Oh?”

Then Bindlewhack exhaled and nodded. “Yes. I, well, a bit ago, during the invasion drill, I saw someone, or at least I thought I saw someone on your property. I went to investigate but when I got back there all I saw was a fleeting shadow and a few boot prints. I suppose the prints could have been yours, don’t know if you were back there that morning. Anyway…”

Bindlewhack’s eyes sharpened slightly, the way they did when he was recalling a detail for accuracy. Marcus listened without interrupting.

“I do not know if I saw a person or if my mind made one up. In my age, the imagination tries to be useful. But I apologize for the trespass. Please forgive me.”

Marcus let a beat of silence pass, long enough for Bindlewhack to feel it.

Then Marcus nodded once. “Well… I don’t love trespass.”

“I understand,” Bindlewhack said,

“But if you genuinely thought you saw something,” Marcus added, “I appreciate the intent. That sounds… neighborly.”

Bindlewhack’s posture eased, just slightly. “Thank you. I try.”

Marcus stepped back. “Alright. Please, let me know if you see anything else.”

“Of course, neighbor.”

“Have a good night.”

“You too.”

He turned away without giving Bindlewhack anything else to read in his face. Then he turned back. “Oh, one other thing. I didn’t see you at the local muster point. Can I ask where you were.”

“Oh, yes, I have an active commission during emergencies. My rank is reinstated. It’s one of the few things I still do in my retirement. So I went to the main station in the ministry ring.”

“Makes sense. Do you take your wife?”

“Yes, we have a special bunker there for the family. Very fortified.”

“Sounds… safe.”

“Oh, it is!”

Marcus nodded and continued his walk home.

As he made his way the flash print felt heavier in his pocket than paper should. Once inside his yard again, Marcus unfolded it one more time and stared at the person-shaped void.

If Bindlewhack was telling the truth, then who, or what, had been standing in Marcus’s yard?

Marcus refolded the print carefully and made a decision he did not enjoy. He went to the Ministry’s local enforcement office, the place that handled reports that were not yet crimes but were too strange to ignore.

The clerk at the desk looked up as Marcus approached. The clerk’s eyes moved over Marcus’s posture, his coat, his expression, and decided this was not a man here to complain about noise.

“Yes, sir?” the clerk asked.

Marcus placed the folded print on the counter as if it were delicate evidence. “I set flash paper on my property before leaving town. It fired. The image came out wrong.”

The clerk’s gaze dropped to the folded sheet. “Wrong how?”

Marcus’s voice stayed level, but his words carried a quiet edge. “It captured the shape of a person in my yard. But it did not capture any details. It is as if something blocked the image.”

The clerk’s expression shifted into the controlled seriousness of someone who had heard too many “weird” things to laugh at them anymore. “That certainly is odd. Do you have any suspects as to who this could be?”

Marcus hesitated only a moment. “A neighbor reports someone on my property during the invasion drill. I verified the trespass. Now, during my vacation, there’s another incident, the flash paper suggests there was someone else. Or something else. I do not know which, and I do not know what else to do with it.”

The clerk nodded and slid the print into a document sleeve. “We will log it. We will have it inspected.”

Marcus exhaled slowly. “Thank you.”

As he turned to leave, preparing to fill Candy in on the events of the day, the unease did not lift. If anything, it settled in deeper. Because the paper had not lied, it did not show falsehood, it had simply been unable to show what it had seen. And that kind of thing just didn’t happen in Paddlewick.