Chapter Twelve: Faces from the Past
"Memory never returns the way it was…
It returns the way it hurts."
— Edgar Wilmore
It all began with a photograph.
An old, worn picture,
placed on Eliza's desk with no envelope, no note.
A child standing in front of an orphanage.
His clothes too large for his body.
His eyes not looking at the camera…
but at something behind it.
In the background, barely visible,
the name of the place:
St. Bartholomew Home
Eliza's fingers trembled.
This wasn't a threat…
It was a reminder.
That night,
Edgar sat in front of the mirror.
He didn't see his face.
He saw the child.
He wrote in his notebook:
"They used to say silence was survival.
But silence…
was the first thing that taught me how to kill."
He remembered the night that was never recorded in any file.
A night with no blood…
but with a choice.
He was eleven years old.
Another child in the home.
Weaker.
More fragile.
The same man.
The black coat.
The cold voice.
This time,
Edgar didn't close the door.
This time…
he pointed.
A single gesture.
One step.
He didn't touch anyone.
But he was the reason.
By morning,
the child was gone.
And that night,
Edgar slept for the first time without nightmares.
Since that night…
I understood that participation
is more dangerous than action.
She received a new message from Edgar.
Not a letter.
Not a direct confession.
But an unpublished excerpt from his journal.
She read it slowly…
then stopped.
The sentences…
were like her.
The way of analysis.
The choice of words.
Even the silence between the lines.
Why do I understand him so easily?
A question she didn't dare to write.
Howard wasn't only watching Edgar.
He was watching the change in Eliza.
Lack of sleep.
Sharp focus.
The tone of her voice when she spoke about the crimes.
He arranged a "casual" meeting.
A café.
A crowded hour.
A simple topic.
Then he suddenly said:
"If you were in his place…
when would you have started killing?"
She looked up immediately.
"That's an unprofessional question."
Howard smiled calmly.
"But your answer came faster than it should have."
Heavy silence.
The trap wasn't closed yet…
but she felt it.
On her way back,
Eliza noticed something that terrified her more than any crime:
She was thinking the way Edgar thinks.
Predicting people's reactions.
Reading fear before it appears.
Understanding silence… far too well.
She stopped suddenly in the street.
Am I studying him?
Or becoming him?
Edgar read her latest article.
She didn't mention him.
She didn't hint at him.
But the article was a mirror.
He said quietly:
"You're not writing about me anymore…
You're writing from my place."
And for the first time,
he felt something he couldn't name.
Not jealousy.
Not fear.
But an existential threat.
At dawn,
a new body was found.
But this time…
the method wasn't Edgar's usual one.
No flower.
No message.
Just a scene too clean… too precise.
Howard stood for a long time in front of the body.
"This isn't his signature…"
Then he whispered:
"Either he's evolving…
or someone else is writing in his place."
His eyes moved to the journalist's name in the file.
That evening,
Eliza received a short message:
"Tell me the truth.
If I didn't exist…
would you have invented me?"
She sat for a long time in front of the paper.
Then she wrote in her notebook — not to him:
"The worst thing about monsters…
is that sometimes they appear
because someone was ready to understand them."