Candle Face Victim #6: The Man Who Ignored the Flyer

December 13, 2023

Main Subjects: Candle Face

• Victim #6

My wife and I were getting ready to watch another episode of Breaking Bad when I felt an odd nudge, almost like a reminder that I should go to bed earlier than usual, in case another spirit showed up. I went up, and as if that thought had called him in, a figure in a sharp business suit stepped out of the portal and walked toward my bed. Each step made a clean, measured tap against the floor.

He didn’t greet me. He went straight into what he had come to say:

I moved through the downtown crowd with tomorrow’s numbers already running through my head. The streets were packed, all bright signs and the kind of noise that never really stops. Beggars sat in doorways. Cafes were full. Somewhere off in the distance, there was live music.

My own life felt far removed from all of it. It was meetings, calls, quarterly targets, and one deadline after another. In the corporate world, people knew me for getting results. Boardrooms were where I made my living, and my mind was the only thing I fully trusted. I did well in that world, and I told myself that was enough. I didn’t spend much time thinking about what I had pushed aside to keep it going. Calls I let go to voicemail. Birthdays I missed. Nights in an apartment that was too clean because nobody was ever in it. When those thoughts came up, I buried them under work.

Then I noticed someone watching me.

He stood at the corner of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street, a ragged man holding out a worn flyer. His clothes were old, and his hands shook, but his eyes stopped me. They looked desperate.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Please, take a moment to read this. It’s about our mother. She has saved countless lives. You could be next.”

I barely looked at it. I took the paper, crushed it in my hand, and let it fall.

“Not interested,” I said.

I kept walking, already back to thinking about a morning meeting, a client call, and what the market might do before noon.

But that night, back in my apartment, I kept seeing that man’s eyes and hearing his voice. The place, expensive and spotless, was warmer than usual. It felt tight, like the walls were pressing in. For the first time, I saw it clearly. Clean counters. No dishes in the sink. No sound except the vent. No one there but me.

I told myself it was nothing. Stress, maybe. A long day. But as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I heard a female voice this time. It was faint, like something trying to get through the noise in my head.

Then the light flickered.

When I turned, she was there.

Candle Face.

She was horrifying, and there was something about her I still can’t explain. She looked as if she were made of shadow and light, her body flickering like a candle flame.

“Do you still disbelieve, businessman?” she asked, her voice low and calm.

I couldn’t move. When I tried to speak, the words came out broken. “This... this can’t be real. You’re... you’re not real.”

Her laughter held no warmth. “You ignored my warning,” she said. “You brushed aside the man I sent to you. That brought me here.”

She reached toward me, her hand more shadow than flesh, and I felt the heat from it before it touched me. I was so scared, I thought I might black out. All the things I trusted, logic, routine, control, meant nothing with her standing over me.

When her fingers touched my forehead, it felt as though something had split open inside me. My whole life moved in front of me. Not the big moments. The smaller ones. Calls I let ring out. Dinners I canceled. Faces I hadn’t thought about in years came back to me. Family. Friends. People I had pushed aside. They looked tired of waiting on me.

Too late, I understood what I’d traded away. Again and again, I had chosen work first and told myself everything else could wait.

I begged her for mercy. I told her I could change, that I wanted to believe. It made no difference.

“It is too late,” she said.

She took my soul and pulled me into her Lair.

The next day, the city kept moving. People at work would have noticed I was gone, but the streets didn’t. My apartment stayed exactly as I had left it, clean, quiet, and empty.

And somewhere on those same streets, the ragged man stood at another corner, holding out his flyer. His eyes searched the crowd, pleading for someone to stop and listen.

After the businessman finished his testimony, he stepped backward into the portal in the corner of my bedroom, his shoes tapping just as they had when he entered. Before he disappeared, he said one more thing:

Slow down long enough to listen to the people around you. Don’t wait like I did.

Personal Note to My Readers

The businessman didn’t do anything unusual. He brushed past a stranger with a flyer, the way people do a hundred times a day downtown. That’s what stays with me.

His final words were the only thing he had left to offer. We already have chances every day to listen better without something supernatural forcing us to see it.

The investigation continues in the three most recent entries below. Each adds to the record on Candle Face (Isabel), the Lost Souls, and the Fugitives. You’ll find every entry to date in The Journal.