Candle Face Victim #22: Beneath the I-35 Overpass

March 27, 2024

Main subjects:

• Victim #22

• Candle Face

I was stretched out on the couch, thinking about how often the Lost Souls had been showing up. Lately, none of them had acted hostile toward me. Maybe that meant nothing. While I was getting the couch ready to sleep on, the side door swung open, and a strong wave of body odor came in with it. A man, somewhere around my age, stepped inside. His eyes went straight to the fresh brownies my wife had made a few hours earlier. I offered him one. What surprised me most was that he answered. “I appreciate the offer, but taking part in the pleasures of the living isn’t something I can do without consequences.” I smiled and said, “Well, if you change your mind, they’re there.” We moved into the living room, and for the first time, one of my nocturnal visitors sat down. Curious, I asked, “What brings you here tonight?” This is what he told me:

I used to stand on a corner downtown with my torn sign, just another face in the homeless crowd. My days went in circles: ask for change, buy a drink, numb the pain, do it all again. It was the life I had, and I lived it.

One day, a man came up to me holding a flyer. His eyes had a strange intensity to them, like he was trying to sell me something bigger than what was in his hand. The flyer showed a drawing of a little girl. She looked sad, almost forgotten, like she was waiting for someone to notice her. She looked like she might have been from Mexico or Central America. He told me she could save people like me and give me a way out of the hell I was living in.

I didn’t take him seriously. What good is a savior when your stomach is empty and the cold is cutting through you? I threw the flyer back at him and said, “I need food, not another savior.”

That night, I crawled under the I-35 overpass, where I usually slept. My mind went back to that man and what he said about the little girl. I couldn’t decide whether it sounded like hope or desperation.

The next morning, an older man, one of the regulars on the street, came up to me. He had a look in his eyes like he had seen something he couldn’t forget. He warned me to stay away from the little girl because she was really Candle Face. He said nothing good came from crossing paths with her. But his warnings only made me more curious.

Over the next few weeks, I couldn’t get her out of my head. At first, I blamed the alcohol. The voices I started hearing had to be from drinking too much. But they didn’t stop, not when I was sober and not when I was drunk. They whispered things to me, secrets, promises, and they made everyday life harder to bear.

Eventually, I connected with a few other people who had also heard of Candle Face. We traded stories and tried to piece things together. We thought we were getting close to something, but the truth always stayed just out of reach.

Then came the betrayal.

The man who had handed me the flyer was working for her the whole time. He had been leading us to Candle Face all along. One by one, my friends fell under her spell. The noise in my head got louder and louder until it pushed me to the edge.

I thought I could take it, but I couldn’t. One night, I drank more than I ever had, hoping to shut everything off. I thought I was taking control. That was when she came to me. Candle Face herself.

She stepped out from behind a pillar, her face dimly lit, like melting wax with two flickering flames where her eyes should have been. Her voice was calm and cold. “Do you still not believe?” she asked.

I laughed without any humor in it. “You’re just in my head,” I said. “A drunk’s nightmare.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have been waiting for you to give up. Now you are mine.”

In the end, I gave up. I let her take me. My spirit was too tired to fight anymore.

Now my old street corner belongs to someone else, another Lost Soul who doesn’t know what’s coming. Candle Face’s power keeps spreading. She keeps pulling people like me under. The world keeps moving and doesn’t notice. Meanwhile, the homeless, the forgotten ones, keep dying.

And me? I’m just another name on her list. Another warning no one will hear.

He finished his story, then walked over to the brownies. The smell had clearly been pulling at him the whole time. I sat there and watched as he stood near them, his whole posture full of wanting. At last, he turned to me. “I’d give anything to taste the life I once knew,” he said quietly, “but sometimes it’s better to leave certain wants unfulfilled.” Then he walked out of the house. By the time he reached the sidewalk, he had already started to fade into the night, until nothing was left but the sound of a tired sigh.

Personal Note to My Readers

One detail in his story that really interested me: the flyer with the drawing of a little girl. He said she looked sad, almost forgotten, like she was waiting for someone to notice her. He thought she might have been from Mexico or Central America.

That makes me wonder who she was. Was she only an image meant to draw people in, or was there something more behind it? The spirits often leave pieces of themselves inside the stories they tell. This may be one of those pieces.

I don’t know what it means yet, but I’m keeping it in mind as these visits continue.