Candle Face Victim #36: The Assassin’s Confession

July 12, 2024

Tired from all the Hurricane Beryl cleanup, I decided to turn in early. The hours I usually waste on Facebook and YouTube could wait until tomorrow night. I turned off the living room light but left the kitchen light on, keeping a patch of shadow in the far corner for any Lost Soul that might want to visit. Just as I laid my head on the pillow, the shadow pulsed. I wasn’t in the mood for this. Not tonight. But I had a job to do. With a sigh, I sat up and got ready. An old man in his late sixties wearing a cowboy hat stepped out of the shadow and came toward me. Then he began.

I’m your standard grumpy old man. I hate everybody. I hate nearly everything. My “wife,” and I use that word lightly, nags all damn day. She tells me I never gave her the life she wanted and that every bad thing in her life is my fault. When I get tired of hearing it, I pull this big cowboy hat down low so folks won’t look me in the face, then I get in my van and drive. I used to wish I could disappear. Funny thing is, I did. Just not the way I had in mind.

One day, after I’d heard all I could stand, I got in my van and headed to a gas station. I was fixin’ to get on I-35 and leave the nagging behind for a while. I pumped my gas, went inside for coffee and snacks, and came back out to black helicopters easing over my van. I could see men in military-type uniforms dropping ropes down over the roof.

I knew what it was. I knew they were coming for me. I’m no stranger to the law. I’ve been in and out of jail for years for the things I got caught doing.

He stopped and sat there smiling to himself like he’d wandered into a pleasant memory. I cleared my throat to get him moving again.

“I figured my run was over,” he said. “Figured I’d spend the rest of my life in prison.”

“Why? What did you do? Why would they want you?” I asked.

His eyes widened. Then he glanced back toward the shadow he had come through.

The shadow in the corner grew, and the kitchen light started to flicker.

“Quick, turn on the living room light,” he said.

I hesitated.

“Now.”

I jumped up and turned it on.

The room lit up, though the bulbs still flickered. I sat back down. So did he. I knew what we had just done would cost me later, but I didn’t care. I had a job to do.

“I used to kill for Candle Face,” he said. “Back in the seventies and eighties. We didn’t call her that back then.”

“Why did you stop killing for her?” I asked.

“I lost my taste for it. When I first started, she was good to me. She made me feel like I was somebody. I’d do her work, and she’d answer. Then that dried up. I kept killing, thinking the next one would get her attention. It didn’t. I was turning into just another killer. Years later, my wife told me Candle Face would come for me one day. I told her I didn’t care. So I quit. The last one I did was in the summer of 1987.”

“Who did you kill?”

“I don’t remember her name. Asian woman. Those Asian names are hard to remember.”

“Tell me about her. What happened?”

“A fellow Deliverer asked me to ride with him on one near Killeen. I’d already finished my own list, so I went along anyway. He was good. Not just at killing. At working over the Marked before he took them in. We got in a car he’d stolen and headed that way.”

“You said Deliverer and the Marked,” I said. “What are they?”

He looked at me, then at the dim shadow.

“Deliverers are the ones who’ve proven themselves. We hunt the unbelievers, the Marked, and take them to Mother’s Lair.”

“I’ve heard that name before,” I said. “Mother.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Her children call her that. But don’t get this twisted. Everyone in her Lair is her child, and she doesn’t treat them all the same. She favors the Tlazopilli and hates the Icnopilli.”

“Anyway,” he went on, “we got lucky. Saw her out walking in her neighborhood. We jumped out, dragged her into the car, drove her past Copperas Cove, killed her, buried her, and laid big rocks over the grave. Nobody ever found her.”

He stopped again with that same satisfied look on his face. Then we both heard soft footsteps upstairs while the lights flickered again.

“It’s just my son upstairs,” I said.

“Anyway, we drove back to Austin. It was a satisfying kill, but I was done. I don’t kill for free. I killed for Candle Face’s attention, and she wasn’t giving it anymore. So that Asian woman was my last.”

“How were you killed?” I asked. I reached over and touched his right arm to see whether he still had flesh. He did.

“I got sick of my wife’s nagging one day and got in my van. I stopped for gas.”

“Oh, is this when you saw the black helicopters?”

“Yeah. That’s it. When I saw them, I called my wife and told her my past had finally caught up with me. The helicopters dropped lower. Their rotors pounded so hard I could barely hear her on the phone. Then the side doors opened and men in tactical gear came down the ropes fast. They hit the pavement running and boxed me in. One of them threw a rope around my neck, and before I knew it, I was off my feet. I was choking while they hauled me up.”

“They hanged you? That doesn’t sound like police work,” I said.

“That’s how I remember it. I know now that Candle Face did it.”

“So how did you really die? The police didn’t do that.”

“I don’t know. I only know what I saw and felt. That rope felt real enough. I was hoping you could figure out the rest for me.”

“Why should I help you? You were a serial killer.”

He looked down at his hands.

“Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe I deserve what I’ve got waiting on me. But I can still help you help the other Lost Souls.”

“How?”

“Ray, I just did,” he said with a grin and a soft laugh. “Now turn off the light and let me go back. It’s where I belong, I guess.”

I stood up and switched off the living room light.

The old man walked toward the shadow as it swelled again in the far corner. Just before he reached it, he turned back and spoke quickly.

“Ray, the arms that are about to drag me in belong to the man who was with me when we killed that Asian woman.”

The pull was savage. The arms jerked him back in hard enough to snap his body sideways and slam him against the edge of the portal before swallowing him whole. His boots kicked wildly for a second, scraping at the floor, then vanished into the black. One strangled scream burst out of him just before the shadow sealed shut.

The living room went silent except for my own heavy breathing. The shadow in the corner shrank back to its normal size, as if it had satisfied its hunger for now. I stood there for a moment, staring at where the old man had disappeared.

Personal Note to My Readers

This testimony gave me several new terms, and I don’t think any of them were used loosely. The old man used Deliverer as if it were a rank. From the way he spoke, Deliverers go after the Marked, the living who reject Candle Face and draw her attention. They take them to the Lair.

He also used the name Mother. I have heard that word before from other Lost Souls, but this time it came with more shape. Candle Face is spoken of as the head of a family. That family is divided. Some serve her. Some are taken by her.

That brought me back to Icnopilli. Earlier, Candle Face used that word for one of the Lost Souls. After tracing the sound and narrowing the spelling, I found a Nahuatl word that fits. If I heard her correctly, the Lost Souls may be the Icnopilli, the abandoned children, the children kept in the Lair. Then I looked up the other word the old man used. Tlazopilli appears in the same language. If I’m reading it correctly, the Tlazopilli would be the children she recognizes as her own, the ones she raises above the others. Deliverers may fall into that side of the hierarchy.

I’m still putting this together, but the outline is getting clearer. Mother stands at the top. The Tlazopilli appear to be her favored children. The Deliverers work under her and go after the Marked. The Icnopilli may be the Lost Souls, the children taken into the Lair and held there. I can’t say yet whether these words came from Candle Face herself or whether her followers built this language around her later. What I can say is that each new testimony is giving me more of her internal order, and it is starting to explain how she separates the children she uses from the children she keeps.