Candle Face Chronicles: Why I Went Silent and Why I'm Back

My last real entries here were in December of last year. The Master Shadow had been to my house twice. He was hunting the Fugitives, and he made it clear he knew I stood between him and them. I wrote then that I was losing control of the case, and I meant it. I was watching my house at night. I was checking the attic. I was waiting for the next inspection and wondering what would happen when he stopped inspecting and started acting.

Then The Journal, the running record of Candle Face Chronicles, went dark. The one exception came this May, when I posted Where the Investigation Stands. That entry was a status report. What I left out was why I'd been gone, and why I went quiet again after posting it. Seven months of silence with one report in the middle. I owe you the reason.

The Help That Never Came

Here's what I expected: help. I had spent more than a year documenting testimonies, publishing what the Lost Souls gave me, and asking the paranormal community to work this case with me. I believed that when things turned dangerous, some of those people would stand with me. Readers. Investigators. Mediums. Psychics. People who told me for months that they believed.

Most of them ran.

I don't write that with anger. I understand it better now than I did then. This case frightens people, and belief costs nothing until something asks you to act on it. When the Master Shadow entered the picture, the messages slowed, the offers dried up, and the people I counted on found reasons to be elsewhere. I was alone with thirty-one souls hidden in my house and a hunter circling it.

Defeat wore me down slowly. One morning I realized I had nothing left to work the case with. So I stepped away. No podcasts. No Facebook. No Journal. I went quiet on every front and let the case sit. I told myself it was temporary. Then weeks became months, and the silence got easier to keep.

What Happened While I Was Gone

Nothing.

No Candle Face. No Master Shadow. No heat in the garage, no crystal ball, no movement in the attic, no dreams I couldn't explain. Seven months of ordinary nights. Two years ago, I would have called that mercy.

And the Lost Souls stopped coming.

That's the hardest line in this entry to write. The visits ran for more than a year. Testimony after testimony, spirits waking me in the space between sleep and morning with names, roads, and last moments. At some point during my absence, without ceremony, the visits ended. I can't give you a date because I didn't notice at first. That's what the exhaustion had done to me. The most extraordinary thing in my life went quiet, and I registered it late.

I've sat with that silence for a while now, and I keep landing on the same question. Do they take a vacation? Does something like Candle Face rest? Does the Master Shadow pull surveillance off a house because he lost interest?

I doubt it.

Two explanations fit what I know. The first is that the scrolls worked. The Fugitives' energy is sealed, and the trail went cold. If that's true, the silence means the plan is holding. The second is that nothing went cold at all, and he's waiting for me to relax. I've worked surveillance. Waiting is what patient hunters do.

Either way, I can't account for the quiet, and in this case, what I can't account for is what worries me.

Why I'm Back

So why come back? If the Lost Souls have stopped visiting and the enemy has gone silent, why not let Candle Face Chronicles rest?

Because of the scrolls.

Thirty-one Fugitives sealed themselves away on my word. I told them I'd find people to protect them, and I told them I'd keep searching for a way to set them free. Those souls don't get a pause. They sit in parchment, waiting, while I decide whether I have the stomach to keep going. The Lost Souls left me their testimonies, and that record still holds clues we haven't run down. The Fugitives left me their trust, and trust has a clock on it.

That's the whole reason. An obligation I accepted with my eyes open.

The investigation looks different now. The Lost Souls may not come any longer, but the ones who did still need our help. I need readers looking for clues that identify them, locate their remains, and find their killers. The active front is the Fugitives. Three scrolls have already found Guardians; I’m Crystal’s Guardian. Twenty-eight still need one, and every scroll placed makes the whole group safer. My next entry will cover what a Guardian is and what I'm asking of the people who take that on.

I went quiet because I was beaten and alone. I'm back because thirty-one souls are still counting on the person who told them they'd be safe. Candle Face Chronicles was never a story I could put down, and if you stayed through the silence, thank you. The work starts again now.

Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash.