While hiking deep in the mountains, we decided to spend the night in an abandoned chapel. In the middle of the night, I was violently awakened by the unmistakable, sickening sounds of my best friend and my boyfriend sleeping together. I quietly sat up in my sleeping bag to eavesdrop. "You're a genius for using this hiking trip as an excuse." "I locked the heavy wooden doors. She can't escape. There's an old stone well out back. After she falls asleep, we'll smash her skull in with the hatchet and dump her at the bottom." My blood ran completely cold. Trembling, I silently crawled behind the crumbling altar at the front of the chapel to hide. They had absolutely no idea that my hometown was just a few miles from this mountain ridge. And they had absolutely no idea that the deity worshipped in this specific chapel wasn't a saint. It was a demon. Listening to my boyfriend and my best friend whisper about my murder, a freezing, unnatural gust of wind swept through the room, sending a shiver down my spine. The deep wilderness. A ruined chapel at midnight. Three people. There's an old superstition in the mountains: Never enter a haunted shrine alone. Looking at my situation now, three people shouldn't enter one, either. Murdering me. That was the real reason they dragged me out into the wilderness for this hiking trip. I didn't have the time to feel heartbroken over my boyfriend's betrayal, and I didn't have the luxury of wondering why they wanted me dead. Right now, my only thought was how to make it out of here alive. My boyfriend, Carter, had bragged before we went to sleep about securing the heavy iron deadbolt on the main doors. My best friend, Riley, had tightly latched the only two windows. The only remaining exit was a jagged, gaping hole in the chapel's rotten roof. Right now, this abandoned building was a perfect locked-room trap. If I tried to make a run for it, I would instantly alert them. One against two. I had zero chance of winning a physical fight. Was I really destined to die here tonight? As my heart hammered against my ribs, my eyes darted around and caught sight of the wooden idol resting on the altar. By the pale moonlight filtering through the roof, I could clearly see the idol's features. It was a carving of a short, hunched old man squatting on a pedestal. He had a round face, a creepy smile, a crescent moon carved into his forehead, and a massive beard that touched the floor. He wore a complex, blood-red crown. It was the Caretaker of the Earth. I instinctively looked at the idol's eyes. Normal statues of the Caretaker always have intricately carved eyes. But the eye sockets of this specific idol were completely hollow, resembling two pitch-black, bottomless pits. This was the exact entity from my hometown's darkest urban legends! It was only then that I remembered I had never told Carter the exact location of the rural town where I grew up. Because I hadn't been back in years, and Carter had driven a completely unfamiliar backroad to get here, I hadn't even realized we were on the outskirts of my hometown. This meant that if I could just escape this chapel and run into the woods, I would eventually hit familiar territory and find the neighboring villages. But the only way out of this chapel... was him. But local lore always warned: Once you invite the Caretaker, it is almost impossible to send him away. I gritted my teeth. Walking on my tiptoes, I carefully bypassed the corner where those sickening, intimate noises were coming from. I crept up to the idol, reaching into the shadows behind the pedestal to pull out a single, unlit wax candle. Placing candles or offerings behind the idol was a tradition in these parts, meant to make it easier for passing travelers to pay their respects. Lighting three candles was a standard prayer of respect. But lighting exactly one candle... was a desperate summon. This was something my grandmother had taught me. But at the same time, she had given me a terrifying warning. "If you ever find yourself facing certain death, light a single candle to the Caretaker and sincerely whisper your plea. The Caretaker is immensely powerful and can solve any problem. But successfully summoning him is a massive gamble. It all depends on your fate!" "However, unless you are completely out of options, absolutely never light a single candle to him. Inviting a demon is easy, but banishing it is hell. Catastrophic things will happen." My grandmother had repeated that final warning to me countless times. But right now, I was truly facing a brutal execution. I had no choice but to follow her instructions. I quietly pulled a lighter from my pocket and lit the wick. The tiny, flickering orange flame was glaringly obvious in the pitch-black room. Cold sweat poured down my face. I closed my eyes, pressed my trembling palms together, and silently pleaded in my head. Caretaker of the Earth, Carter and Riley are going to murder me. I don't want to die. I want to live. I don't want to die, please let me live... I placed the candle onto the iron tray at his feet. My grandmother had said that if the candle burned down completely within one minute, it meant the Caretaker had accepted your request. If it went out, you were doomed. My entire body shook as I stared at the candle, anxiously waiting, praying for it to melt faster. "Where are you? Sylvia—" Carter's cold, menacing voice suddenly pierced the darkness. A freezing chill shot straight up my spine. I scrambled up onto the altar and huddled directly behind the wooden idol. "Sylvia! Where are you? Where did she go?!" It was Riley's voice. I could hear the sheer, frantic panic in her tone. I crouched down, making myself as small as possible, using the idol to block my body. "Where is she?!" "I don't know! I turned around and her sleeping bag was empty!" "Find her, now! I have a really bad feeling about this. Do you think she heard us talking?!" "Check the corners! She has to be in here somewhere. I double-checked the locks on the doors and windows myself." My heart violently leaped into my throat. Because I could hear the crunching sound of heavy hiking boots slowly creeping toward my side of the room. I clamped both hands over my mouth, desperately trying to muffle my own rapid, terrified breathing. After what felt like an eternity, the footsteps in the chapel faded away. Riley's voice echoed again: "Carter, did she manage to run away? I literally can't find her anywhere. Did we just not hear the door open because we were too... focused?" "Maybe..." Just as I thought I had narrowly escaped death, Carter's next sentence made my blood run completely cold. "Why is there a lit candle sitting here?" After a moment of dead, suffocating silence, the brutal sound of a heavy hatchet violently chopping into wood echoed through the room. CRACK—! The top half of the Caretaker's wooden head was cleaved clean off. It tumbled heavily off the altar and crashed onto the stone floor, leaving the idol with only half a nose and a carved mouth. Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I was so paralyzed by terror that I couldn't even cry out loud. "Damn it, I missed," Carter's voice was dripping with annoyance. He stared directly at the spot where I was hiding, enunciating every single word. "Sylvia. I originally planned to chop your head clean off with one swing. That way, you wouldn't feel any pain." My legs felt like jelly, but I took advantage of his distraction, leaped off the back of the altar, and limped frantically toward the heavy wooden doors at the front of the chapel. "Sylvia, you really shouldn't have woken up. After all, our plan was to let you die peacefully in your sleep." Riley laughed maliciously, then ordered Carter, "Hurry up and get her. Stop wasting time." I pounded on the doors with everything I had, but the rotting, antique wood was unbelievably sturdy. It wouldn't budge an inch. "HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME! THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL ME! PLEASE!" My screams for help were entirely useless. In this isolated, abandoned mountain shrine, it was physically impossible for anyone to be walking by. "AHHHHH!" The heavy steel hatchet slammed into the wood right next to my ear. If it had been one inch closer, it would have sliced my ear clean off. Riley giggled flirtatiously. "You're so annoying, your aim is terrible tonight. Let me do it this time." I turned around and dropped to my knees, frantically bowing and begging them. "Please don't kill me! Whatever you guys want, I'll give it to you! I'll step aside, I promise I won't tell anyone you cheated on me! Just let me go!" Riley smiled sweetly. "But, Sylvia. Only dead girls don't tell lies." Suddenly, I felt incredibly cold. It wasn't a psychological chill. It was a visceral, physical, freezing drop in temperature. A violent gust of freezing wind swept through the closed room, and all three of us heard a strange, rustling noise. Carter violently whipped his head around. "Who's there?!" But there was no one behind them. Just shattered pieces of rotting wood and swirling dust. Riley suddenly looked terrified. She grabbed Carter's arm, her voice tight with anxiety. "Baby, I suddenly feel really, really cold. Is it because you hit the idol with the hatchet? Is the spirit angry?" Carter patted her hand, trying to comfort her. "Don't be scared, I'm right here. Let's just kill her first..." Saying that, Carter looked at me, picked up a secondary hatchet from the floor, and took a step closer. But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something. The single candle I had lit... had completely burned down to a puddle of wax. Which meant... my summon had worked! WHOOSH— The previously dead-silent night suddenly exploded into a howling gale. I knelt on the floor, my face deathly pale. Because I could see the Caretaker. He had materialized, completely silently, directly behind them. He was staring at me with a sickeningly sweet smile, not saying a single word. His face was frozen in a perfectly symmetrical, terrifyingly cheerful grin. My trembling finger pointed over Carter's shoulder. "The Caretaker... he's right behind you..." Carter violently spun around. "WHAT THE FUCK!" He grabbed Riley and leaped backward, staring at the entity with pure, defensive hostility. "Where the hell did you come from?! We locked the doors from the inside!" The Caretaker maintained his creepy smile. "Someone invited me. So, I arrived." "Carter, Riley. You are committing murder for money." He was incredibly short, barely reaching Carter's chest. Because he looked so physically unimposing, Carter's hostility shifted into arrogant annoyance. Carter scoffed at him. "None of your damn business!" Riley tugged hard on Carter's jacket, lowering her voice. "Baby, he's terrifying. Let's just get out of here..." "Tomorrow at noon, buy a Powerball ticket. At 6:00 PM, buy the exact crypto coin you lost eleven grand on last month. At 7:00 PM, stand outside the Neon Tavern downtown." Carter remained deeply suspicious. "Why the hell should I believe you?" The Caretaker kept smiling. He slowly turned his head to look at Riley, his voice rattling like a mechanical automaton. "Tomorrow at 5:00 AM, go for a morning jog. At noon, take a walk across the downtown suspension bridge. At 9:00 PM, call 911 for the very first elderly woman you encounter." Riley clung to Carter, her voice trembling violently. "What... what exactly are you?!" "I am the Caretaker of the Earth." The entity's empty eyes seemed to glint in the dark. He looked incredibly sincere. "You are only killing her for the fifty thousand dollars in her savings account. Do exactly as I say, and you will walk away with tens of millions." Having their darkest secrets exposed so casually, the two of them exchanged a shocked look. For some reason, they began to actually trust this bizarre, spectral entity. Because everything he had just said was 100% accurate. "You cannot kill her, or I will be very angry," the Caretaker said, pointing a short, wooden finger at me. Walking away with tens of millions without having to murder anyone, and without having to live in paranoia about hiding a corpse. If they backed off now, they didn't even have to worry about me calling the cops. After all, they hadn't committed any actual crime yet. The worst they were guilty of was cheating. It was a guaranteed, zero-risk jackpot. After a few minutes of whispered debate, Carter and Riley chose to trust him. "Fine. But what happens if we do it and we don't get the money?" The Caretaker let out a raspy chuckle. "If you don't get the money, you can chop me to pieces. I will die in her place." The way he phrased it was incredibly disturbing, sending a chill down everyone's spine. Just like that, a brutal, backwoods murder was completely defused by a few sentences from a ghost. My execution was permanently canceled. But... I felt a deep, gnawing sense that something was horribly, terribly wrong. I just couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. Since all the cards were on the table and our relationship was officially over, Riley wordlessly packed up their gear, and the two of them hiked down the mountain in the dark. Leaving me alone with the Caretaker. "What about you." His voice made me jump out of my skin. "What?" The Caretaker stared dead at me. His face still carried that perfectly symmetrical, horrifyingly cheerful grin. "What do you want?" "I already got what I wanted. I survived. Thank you, Caretaker." "Not enough." I finally realized what was so horribly wrong about him. From the very beginning, every single time he spoke, his carved, wooden mouth had never once opened. My grandmother had warned me. Only a corpse-stealing demon speaks without opening its mouth. "Sylvia, the Caretaker isn't a saint. He's a demon." I finally remembered that exact sentence. That night, I fled the abandoned shrine in absolute terror. Not long after, Carter actually struck it rich. The Powerball ticket he bought won him a ten-million-dollar jackpot.
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