Candle Face’s Twisted Game: The Boxes Marked “ISABEL”

Subjects of Interest:

• Candle Face Chronicles

• Isabel: The Forgotten Daughter of La Llorona
  
  

January 18, 2025

Yesterday, I went to Mr. Smoe’s house, a modest one-story home tucked into my old neighborhood in South Austin. It was quiet, eerily so, with no sounds of children playing or dogs barking. His brother had called me earlier in the week, asking if I wanted to go through Mr. Smoe’s belongings. I wasn’t entirely sure why I agreed, but something seemed to be pulling me there—his insistence that I should be the one to come and his cryptic remarks about the items left behind.

When I arrived on January 17, 2025, his brother—a wiry man in his seventies with a face as weathered as the peeling paint on the house—met me at the door. He was polite but distant, his handshake firm and his eyes restless. The first thing he told me, almost immediately after I stepped inside, was that no one had claimed his brother’s body. He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I didn’t know how to respond, even though he had already told me this on the day he informed me of his brother’s death.

“I thought maybe you’d want to,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. His voice was flat, but there was something in his tone—a weight that felt more like obligation than grief.

I asked where the body was, but he wouldn’t tell me. He simply shook his head and muttered something about “not wanting to get involved.” The whole exchange left me nervous. If Mr. Smoe’s own family didn’t want to claim him, why did they think I should? I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to this, something they weren’t saying. Adding to the strangeness was the fact that there hadn’t been a single mention of Mr. Smoe’s death in any of the local papers or online obituaries. It was as if he had simply ceased to exist, his life erased without so much as a footnote.

The house was cluttered but not chaotic, just like when I was here for our first interview. Dust covered most surfaces, and the air smelled faintly of mildew and something sweet, like decaying flowers. His brother led me to a small back room that must have once been an office. The brother mentioned that this was once his bedroom when he was growing up. Three boxes sat on the floor, each labeled in black marker. One of them caught my attention immediately. Written across the top in all caps was a single word: ISABEL.

“These are the ones I thought you might want to look at,” his brother said, gesturing at the boxes. “He was obsessed, you know. Always writing stuff down, keeping track of things that didn’t matter to anyone else. I figured you’d understand it better than I could.”

Curious, I asked him how he had known to contact me. He hesitated, then said, “I found your number in his phone under the name Ray (The Conduit).” The explanation felt plausible but didn’t make me feel any less nervous.

He sat on an old rocking chair and watched me go through the boxes, not saying a word. The first one I opened wasn’t the one labeled “ISABEL,” but another that was simply marked “NOTES.” Inside, I found a stack of notebooks, their pages filled with cramped handwriting. Flipping through them, I saw lists of dates, random observations, and sketches of what looked like sigils or symbols. Some notes were about TV shows and cooking recipes. A lot of random notes. None of it made immediate sense. There were also several loose sheets of paper with what appeared to be instructions or rituals, though they were incomplete, with whole sections scribbled out or torn away. One page caught my attention. It had a single sentence scrawled across it: “She watches those who watch her.”

The second box held what his brother had vaguely described as “stuff from his addiction days.” Among the items were old receipts, empty prescription bottles, and photos—but Mr. Smoe’s brother quickly took those after I looked at them briefly. Most of the photos were of places—abandoned buildings, overgrown fields, creeks and lakes, a crumbling house—but a few were of people, mostly women.

The last box, the one labeled “ISABEL,” contained what seemed like a mix of random items. There was an old map of Austin, Texas, folded so many times that it was on the verge of falling apart. Small sticky notes were scattered across its surface, each marked with a dot at a specific location. None of the notes had any explanatory text, just the dots. As I unfolded the map and examined it, I felt a creeping sense of restlessness. What did these locations mean? Why had he marked them?

As I studied the map, Mr. Smoe’s brother's face tightened. “He spent a lot of time on that,” he said, his voice low. “Never told me why. Just said it was important.” He then got up and left without another word.

Beneath the map were more handwritten notes, some likely in Mr. Smoe’s handwriting and others in what looked like a child’s scrawl. One of the notes read: “She’s forgotten but not gone.” Another said: “Find her before she finds you.”

At the bottom of the box was a mason jar filled with what looked like ash. The lid was sealed tightly, and a piece of duck tape was wrapped around it with the word “REMNANT” written in block letters. Next to the jar was a candle, its wax blackened and cracked as if it had been burned too many times.

When I told his brother I wanted to take the boxes home, he didn’t hesitate. “Take it all,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “I don’t want any of it in this house.”

As I loaded the boxes into my car, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. His brother didn’t come out to see me off. He just stayed in the house.

Now, sitting here with these boxes in my living room, I’m not sure what to make of any of it. I'm sure Candle Face has something to do with all this. The notes, the map, the ash—they all feel like pieces of a puzzle I don’t have the edges for yet. The word “REMNANT” keeps circling in my mind. Does it mean what’s left of someone or something? Or is it something left behind intentionally, a relic with meaning? “She’s forgotten but not gone” feels like a warning—a reminder that Isabel’s story isn’t over, that her presence remains, waiting to be recognized. And “Find her before she finds you” suggests urgency, even danger, as if there’s a race I didn’t know I was part of. I’ll need to go through everything carefully, but one thing is already clear: whatever Mr. Smoe was involved in, it’s far from over. And somehow, I’ve been pulled into it. One thing is certain: Mr. Smoe’s story didn’t end with his death, and now, it seems, neither will mine.