Candle Face's Lair: The Tour She Gave Me

February 25, 2024

Main subjects:

• Arthur (Ray) Mills
• The Lost Souls

• Candle Face

At night, when everything is quiet, I get no peace. The spirits of Candle Face’s victims keep coming to me, telling me how they died and asking for help. In the beginning, their stories came in pieces. Now I remember them clearly. But tonight, something changed. Candle Face herself took me into her lair.

A wave of heat came over me as I drifted into the shadow portal in my living room. For the first time in four decades, Candle Face stood in front of me. The wax-faced figure I had imagined as a child had become something worse than anything I had pictured. The name I gave her as a boy now felt childish compared to what she really was. Her face was a mass of charred flesh, twisted like melted wax. Her eyes were hollow pits lit by a wicked glow. Her voice was rough and raw, like it had been burned down over years of smoke and heat. Every word came out through breath so hot it felt dangerous. Her skin hissed and popped like oil over a flame, and the air around her felt close to catching fire. She was no figment. She was real, and so was the dread that came with her. As she led me through her lair, her blackened face and scorched body stood as a warning of what waited there.

“Ray,” Candle Face said, her voice carrying around us, “you have been chosen. Chosen to witness this and chosen to act. Look at what becomes of those who remain here.”

As we walked, I saw thousands of souls. Their faces were twisted in torment. Their bodies were held by something that looked like invisible chains burning into them. The air tasted like ash. Sorrow hung over everything. The heat coming off her body seemed to poison the whole place.

“Why me?” I asked. “You put them here. You could end this. Why would you put that on me?”

“Why me, you ask? Why do all of you ask that?” Candle Face answered, laughing. “But you are different, Ray. You faced me before and came out alive. Very few can say that. Your resilience impressed me. So did your ability to put horror into words.” She fixed that empty stare on me. “The way you wrote about me in The Empty Lot Next Door was flattering, other than the silly name. You have a gift with words, Ray, a power that rivals mine with souls. That is why you were chosen. Our shared history. Your fight. Your victory. You beat me once. That makes you suited for this. You understand the fear, the pain, and the cost. Who better to help them than someone who has faced me and won?”

The thought that my earlier encounters with her, and the fact that I had survived them, had led to this moment felt like a challenge I never wanted. I had been dragged into a fight I never asked for. The path ahead was dangerous, and it was clear my history with Candle Face was nowhere near finished. Still, somewhere under the fear, something in me pushed back.

Then Candle Face laughed again, and there was nothing human in it.

“Ray, you still do not understand the game. Yes, you beat me once. Very few can say that. But do not make the mistake of thinking that means you can do it again. Their torment feeds me. It is my power. And you, without meaning to, have become useful. Your efforts to help them only stir things up and make their suffering worse. That is the irony. If you keep trying to save them, you deepen their pain. If you walk away, you doom them and yourself in another way. The rules are not the same now. Beating me once was your miracle. Thinking you can repeat it is your mistake. You are in my world now. Here, I do not lose.”

Her words were meant to trap me. I had beaten her once, and it had nearly destroyed me. Now she was using that history against me, admitting it while trying to break my confidence. But the fact that she admitted I had beaten her at all gave me something to hold onto. If I had done it once, then she wasn’t beyond being challenged.

What was becoming clear was worse than a simple haunting. Candle Face was using my need to help these spirits against them and against me.

As we kept moving through her lair, her threat became even plainer.

“Help them, Ray, or join them,” she said. “And if you join them, your punishment will be crafted with such care that what you have seen here will seem minor beside it.”

I woke drenched in sweat, my heart pounding as if I had been running. The dream felt too vivid to dismiss. I made my way to the computer to write it down, but when I sat there, misery hit me all at once.

What had I become? A vessel for the dead. A man hounded by spirits and now threatened directly by Candle Face. My attempt to help the Lost Souls had become its own kind of curse. Walking away offered no comfort. It only made the whole thing feel darker.

At my lowest point, I questioned everything. My sanity. My purpose. My place in any of this. The shadows in the living room, where the portal opens, seemed to mock me. For a moment, I thought about suicide. Just for a moment. I wanted the torment to stop. Death felt like the only way out.

But that passed. Defiance came in behind it.

I couldn’t let Candle Face win. The spirits who had come to me with their stories deserved better than to remain pieces in her game. I owed them something. I owed myself something.

So I started writing.

As I wrote, another thought took shape. Candle Face had shown me all of this for a reason. She wanted exposure. She wanted her story told. She wanted the stories of her victims spread too. She wanted me to be the one to do it.

That changed how I saw this. She was trying to use me. She wanted me to help build her legend. She wanted me as her mouthpiece for the Lost Souls and her messenger at the same time.

But that cuts both ways.

If Candle Face wants her story told, then I can tell it on my terms. I can tell what she is, what she does, and what her victims have endured. I can also tell the stories of those who resisted her, those who didn’t give in quietly, those who still push back even from inside her lair. She may want exposure, but exposure can work against her too.

That realization changed the shape of this fight for me. Helping the Lost Souls is still an act of mercy and resistance.

Candle Face thinks she handed me a role in her plan. Maybe she did. But in doing that, she also gave me a way to fight back. She wanted me to become a tool for hopelessness. I don’t intend to give her that.

I know now that my role is to keep telling the truth about what she’s doing. For the Lost Souls, for the people still living under her shadow, and for myself, I’ll keep writing.

Candle Face may want attention. She may want fear. She may want the world to know her name. Fine. But if I tell her story, I’ll also tell the stories of those who suffered under her and those who fought back. I’ll tell the truth about her cruelty. I’ll tell the truth about the damage she leaves behind. And I’ll not let her control the meaning of those stories.

As I kept writing, I felt less alone. The thought that other people might read this and decide not to look away gave me something solid to hold onto. I know what lies ahead will be dangerous. I know Candle Face and whatever serves her will not make this easy. But this is about refusing to let her define the whole story.

One thing I do know is this: I’m not alone. My readers and I are tied together in this whether we wanted it or not. There is strength in that. There has to be.

So I’ll keep going. For the Lost Souls. For the living. For myself. I’ll use words the only way I know how.

Candle Face wants her story spread through me. In her arrogance, she may have handed me the very thing that could work against her. I’ll tell her story, and the stories of the Lost Souls, in terms she can’t control.

Who’s with me?

I’m asking that plainly now. If Candle Face wants to spread fear, then the answer has to be people willing to stand together against it.

I plan to write more often about Candle Face, about what she has done, and about the Lost Souls still trapped in her lair. I’ll keep sharing these testimonies through every outlet I can use, books, podcasts, interviews, the website, whatever helps get their stories in front of people.

I’m still moving forward. The question is whether others will move with me.

Visit me at www.candleface.com and take part in the investigation.