The words he left behind
1551 Words
The journal smelled like old paper and aftershave.
It felt wrong to open it without him, to read what he never got to say. But Lia knew this was what he wanted — maybe even what he needed. Each word in his handwriting was a breadcrumb, a thread through the maze he’d died trying to escape.
She sat at a corner table in the back of the bookstore, light leaking in through the slats of an old shuttered window. The man — who’d only given the name Wells — had brought her tea but didn’t hover. He understood this kind of grief. The kind wrapped in paper, in secrets, in ink.
Lia flipped to the second page.
> August 9th
It’s starting again. I heard the static today. In my headphones. Same pattern, same distortion. Blackstrand always leaves fingerprints — no matter how well they think they’ve wiped the scene.
I told Marina I was remixing an old track. She didn’t ask questions. I wish she would. I wish she’d notice how often I’ve been checking the windows.
I’m tired of being a ghost in my own life.
Lia’s chest tightened.
This wasn’t the James she knew — or rather, this was the part of him she hadn’t been allowed to see. The paranoid hum beneath the surface. The man who smiled on stage while his private world cracked in silence.
She kept reading.
> August 12th
Noah thinks I’m being dramatic. “No one’s watching you,” he said.
But my drafts are disappearing. My unreleased tracks are being altered. I sent a demo to myself on two separate hard drives — one arrived corrupted, the other never showed up. I’m not stupid. I know what this means.
They’re not just listening. They’re editing me.
Lia looked up, heart pounding.
Had James tried to go public before? Tried to send someone the truth?
If so, what else had Blackstrand deleted?
---
She turned the page and froze.
A photo was taped inside. A grainy, overexposed snapshot of a concert crowd — hands in the air, people screaming his name — but in the far background, near the edge of the frame, stood a man in a dark coat and a wide-brimmed hat.
Her blood went cold.
She’d seen that face before.
Or rather, not seen it.
Because like Elias’s drawing, the face was turned away. A blur. Intentional or coincidental — she didn’t know. But it was him.
The man James feared. The man Elias had remembered.
Below the photo, James had scribbled:
> He’s been following me since February. Same clothes. Same timing. Always just out of frame. I thought I was paranoid. Now I know better.
Lia took a shaky breath.
This was more than corporate pressure or legal silence. This was tracking. This was surveillance. It was targeted, specific, and premeditated.
She turned the page.
More scribbles. More fragments.
> They don’t want me to die.
They want me to vanish.
No headlines. No protests. Just another artist who cracked.
Another “tragic story.”
Her hand shook as she read.
> If anything happens to me, it won’t be an accident. Not a drug overdose. Not a mental break. I’ve already stopped drinking. I’m clean. I’m sharper than I’ve ever been.
If they say I lost control, they’re lying.
Tears blurred her vision.
He’d known.
He knew they would come for him.
And somehow, even knowing that, he still smiled in his final performances. Still hugged Marina. Still played with Elias. Still told Lia that her poetry mattered.
How many truths had he buried in his songs?
---
Wells returned after an hour.
“Did you find anything useful?” he asked.
Lia looked up, her voice raw. “How long have you had this?”
“Since the night he disappeared. He mailed it to me two days before. No return address, just a note: ‘If I don’t make it, give this to Lia.’”
Her throat clenched. “You knew who I was?”
“I figured it out when the messages started. Blackstrand doesn’t go after fans. They go after anchors — people the artist trusts. You were his anchor.”
Lia blinked fast. “So why wait until now?”
“Because I wasn’t sure if you’d survive opening it.”
She nodded slowly.
She understood that now.
Knowing the truth didn’t give you power. It gave you burden.
---
On the subway ride home, Lia couldn’t stop thinking about the photo. The hat. The way the man seemed to blend in and disappear at the same time.
She scrolled back through James’s old i********: posts.
Concerts. Parties. Studio shots. Most were joyful, chaotic, messy in the way fame always is. But in two separate pictures, posted months apart, there he was — always in the far background.
The Watcher.
Her breath caught.
What if he wasn’t following James only?
What if he was still watching her?
She turned her phone off and got off a stop early, zig-zagging through a few alleyways before doubling back toward her street. It was late, and the city felt eerily quiet — like it was holding its breath.
She reached her apartment building and stopped cold.
Her door was open.
---
She moved cautiously, taser in hand.
Inside, nothing looked stolen. No shattered glass. No papers missing.
But something had been moved.
She walked toward her desk.
Her laptop was open.
The screen blinked.
A new document was on the screen — one she hadn’t written.
> Curiosity kills. But only if you ignore the leash.
Her hands shook.
She slammed the laptop shut and backed away.
They were in her system.
In her files. Her home. Her life.
She called Noah.
“Tell me you didn’t open any files today,” she snapped the second he picked up.
“Lia? What’s going on?”
“They got in. My laptop. They wrote a message on it — like they’re playing games. I don’t know how, but they’re watching everything. Listening. Maybe even through my phone.”
“Get out of there. Now.”
“No. Not yet. I need the drive.”
“You mean James’s?”
“Yes. And the journal.”
“Lia—”
“I’m not running again, Noah. I can’t. If I back down, they win. I’ve got the journal now, and I think there’s something deeper inside it. Something he didn’t write directly. Clues, maybe. Songs that connect.”
He sighed on the other end. “Then we’re going to need help.”
“Who?”
“A hacker.”
---
The next day, they met in a noisy bar near the pier — white noise, chatter, music thumping low. Perfect cover.
Across the table sat a girl who looked barely twenty-one, with bubblegum pink braids and round glasses too big for her face.
“Call me Pixel,” she said, popping a piece of gum. “No names. No photos. No questions I don’t want to answer.”
Lia and Noah nodded.
Pixel leaned back. “So, let me guess. Government-grade intrusion? Ghost files? Untraceable edits?”
“Yes,” Lia said softly. “All of that. And more.”
Pixel raised an eyebrow. “You’re dealing with Blackstrand.”
Lia blinked. “You’ve heard of them?”
“Everyone in my circles has. But we don’t touch them. They’re not just a label. They’re a program. Funded by money that doesn’t exist. Protected by lawyers who erase memories.”
Lia swallowed. “Can you crack them?”
Pixel grinned slowly. “I can. But the question is, are you willing to risk your name, your face, and probably your freedom?”
Lia didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
Pixel slid a burner phone across the table.
“Keep this on you. I’ll ping when I find a thread. And Lia?”
Lia looked up.
“If they know you’re still digging,” Pixel said, her voice serious for the first time, “they won’t just watch. They’ll act.”
---
That night, Lia placed the burner phone beside James’s journal on her desk.
The two objects looked so different — one made of cheap plastic and metal, the other leather and paper and heartbreak. But both were lifelines now.
She opened the journal again, flipping toward the end.
One entry stood out — different from the others.
It was written like lyrics.
Not a journal entry.
A song.
> You think I forgot how to sing in shadows
But darling, I was born in the dark
They tuned my chords for silence
But I rewrote every mark
They said keep your voice low
Let your light dim
But I laced my verses
With gasoline and sin
So when they come for me, darling
Don’t pray for my soul
Just play the last tape
And let the fire take control.
Lia felt goosebumps rise across her arms.
James hadn’t just left behind a journal.
He’d left behind a coded confession.
A song that had never been released — not officially. But the lyrics… she recognized a few lines.
They’d been scattered across his older live performances. Hidden inside outros. Backmasked into transitions.
He’d built a breadcrumb trail, disguised as music.
And now, it was hers to follow.
- Writer
