Chapter Six: After Emerging from the Shadow
"Some doors do not close behind you…
they close inside you." — Eliza Morgan
Eliza did not run.
She did not scream.
She did not look back.
She left the building as one leaves a funeral where they were never allowed to mourn.
The street was annoyingly ordinary:
a carriage passed,
a man laughed,
a gas lamp flickered to life.
How could the world go on…
while she now knew what she knew?
Each step felt heavy,
not out of fear of Edgar,
but of herself.
He didn't kill me…
Why didn't he kill me?
The question stuck to her like a second skin.
When she closed her apartment door behind her,
she collapsed.
She sat on the floor, back against the wall,
hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
She hadn't seen a knife.
She hadn't seen blood.
But she had seen something worse:
logic.
Edgar was not mad as she had expected.
He was aware.
Calm.
And he believed in what he did.
And that…
made it terrifying.
Her hand trembling, she opened her notebook
and tried to write.
But the words betrayed her.
Then, without realizing it, she wrote a single sentence:
"He does not see himself as a killer…
but as a judge without a court."
She paused.
Then added below it:
"And worse…
he convinced me to listen."
That night, she did not sleep.
And whenever she closed her eyes, she heard his voice.
Not as he had said it…
but as she understood it.
"Do you write to reveal the truth…
or to feel stronger than it?"
She suddenly sat up.
"Shut up…" she whispered.
But the voice was not external.
It was her analyzing him…
and it had begun responding.
And here she realized the true horror:
Edgar had not left her…
he had moved inside her.
In the morning, she went to the newspaper.
Her face pale,
but her mind working violently.
She sat in front of the editor,
placed her file on the table.
"I have a serial killer," she said.
The man laughed.
"All of London has a serial killer."
She opened the file.
Dates.
Texts.
Matches.
Silence.
Then he said slowly,
"This… is an accusation without proof."
She replied calmly, deadly calm:
"The proof… writes itself."
He shook his head.
"We cannot publish this.
We will be accused of obsession."
She left.
And for the first time…
she understood Edgar's feeling.
When you know the truth…
and no one wants to hear it.
When she returned in the evening,
an envelope awaited her.
The same handwriting.
The same drawn rose.
She opened it.
"You are silent today.
And that is unlike you.
Have you retreated…
or have you begun to understand?"
Beneath it, one final line:
"The next crime is not a message to the city…
but a test for you."
The envelope slipped from her hands.
A test of what?
My courage?
My silence?
Or… my loyalty?
She sat in front of the mirror.
She stared at herself for a long time.
Then she asked the question she had been avoiding:
_If I publish the truth…
will it stop him?
Then the darker question:
_If I do not…
will I become complicit?
There was no clean answer.
Only choices…
all stained.
At dawn, London awoke to new news.
A crime.
But this one was different.
No rose.
No note.
No signature.
Only…
a corpse.
Eliza recognized immediately.
_ He is punishing me.
She grabbed her notebook and wrote:
_ "When the artist is not applauded…
he breaks his canvas."
She stood by her window,
looking at the city.
She no longer saw streets.
She saw pages.
And for the first time,
she made a terrifying decision:
_ I will not chase him as a journalist.
I will face him as a reader…
reading until the end.
She opened a new page in her notebook.
And wrote a title:
"The Chapter Edgar Did Not Write"
Then she closed the notebook.
She smiled a small smile…
not brave,
not innocent.
But aware.
_ "If you write me, Edgar…
I will make sure to write you too."