The Keeper Beneath the Orchard

We never called it a farm—though technically it was. Twenty acres of gnarled apple trees, left to grow wild after my grandfather passed. No one had picked from them in years. No pruning, no tending. Just branches like skeletal fingers and fruit that dropped and rotted on the mossy ground.

My cousin Dean inherited the land after our uncle died in his sleep last spring. I hadn’t seen Dean in years, but when he called me out of the blue and said, “I need help clearing the orchard,” something in his voice made it impossible to say no.

It wasn’t the words. It was what they didn’t say.

The first thing I noticed when I pulled up the gravel drive was the silence. Not peace—just absence. No birds, no bugs, no breeze. Just the heavy hush of the trees watching us.

Dean looked worse than I remembered. Pale, unshaven, eyes sunk back like they’d been clawed from inside. But he smiled when he saw me and hugged me like the past decade hadn’t happened.

“You really came,” he said.

“You really sounded scared,” I replied.

He didn’t answer.

The work started the next morning. Dean handed me rusted pruning shears and a shovel. “If you see anything... unusual, just ignore it,” he said.

I thought he meant animal bones. Or maybe poison ivy. I was wrong.

It was late afternoon when I found the first stone.

I was digging around one of the older trees, trying to clear away the thick, coiled roots. That’s when my shovel hit it—hard, like iron—but it was stone. Carved, deliberate. Maybe part of an old well?

But no. It wasn’t circular. It was flat, rectangular, and covered in symbols I didn’t recognize. The surface was cold, even though the sun had been beating down on it for hours.

When I told Dean, his face drained.

“Don’t dig there,” he said quickly. “That’s not... that’s not for us.”

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer. He just walked back to the house and locked himself in his room.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

The orchard was groaning.

Branches clacked together, despite the still air. The wind chimes Dean’s mother had hung decades ago clinked softly in a rhythm that felt purposeful. Like something breathing.

I opened the curtain just in time to see the trees shift—not sway, shift. Their trunks turned ever so slightly toward the house. And between the trunks, deep in the rows of apples, something moved.

It was crawling.

The next morning, I found Dean in the barn. His hands were shaking as he drew in a dirt patch with a stick—those same symbols I’d seen on the stone.

“It’s a seal,” he whispered. “Granddad put it there when he was young. Said the thing underneath needed watching. Feeding. That’s why the apples keep growing. The roots touch it.”

“Dean,” I said carefully, “what is it?”

He looked at me, and something old and terrified stared out through his eyes. “It calls itself the Keeper.”

Over the next few days, I learned the rest.

The orchard had always produced too much fruit. Even during droughts, even during infestations. More than anyone could pick. Granddad used to say the land was “blessed.” But Dean had found journals—spiral-bound notebooks filled with drawings, sigils, and detailed accounts of “night harvests.” Descriptions of trees that bled when cut. Of fruit that whispered. Of a voice beneath the dirt that demanded attention.

“It sleeps unless it's forgotten,” Dean said. “If nobody tends the land, if no one watches, it starts to wake.”

And someone had stopped watching.

Uncle Dave.

The night he died, the roots punched through his basement. Dean found him lying on the floor, pale and rigid, apple seeds forced into his throat.

I should’ve left then. But I didn’t.

Because I started dreaming about it, too.

The orchard at dusk. Trees forming a perfect circle. In the middle, a pit lined with stone. And something in it—huge, insectile, and eyeless—turning its head up to the sky.

It wasn’t threatening. Not at first.

Just hungry.

On the seventh day, I saw the girl.

She stood near the stone I’d uncovered. Pale skin, dark dress, no shoes. Hair like tangled roots.

She didn’t speak, just tilted her head at me, then slowly walked behind a tree.

I followed her.

I shouldn’t have.

The orchard rearranged itself. The paths turned. I could no longer hear the house. Only the wind and a low humming from underground.

And then I saw it: the well.

Not a real one—more like a shaft dug deep into the earth and covered in carved stones. Most were cracked. The symbols bleeding light.

And something inside was rising.

I didn’t see its full shape. Only fragments—writhing limbs, a ribcage made of bark, a mouth too wide and too full of teeth.

Then I ran.

Dean was waiting for me at the edge of the orchard.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” he asked.

I nodded.

“We have to seal it again.”

He didn’t wait. He grabbed a tin from the barn, full of rust-colored powder and bones that looked suspiciously human.

“This is what Granddad used,” he said. “We just have to finish the sigils.”

I helped him.

That night, we lit candles. Walked the orchard’s edge. Drew in the dirt. Whispered names I didn’t recognize. The trees moaned. The ground pulsed.

When we reached the stone, Dean knelt beside it.

“If I die,” he said, “you have to stay.”

I tried to stop him, but it was too late.

He cut his palm, pressed it to the stone.

The orchard screamed.

Branches twisted. Leaves turned black. Fruit split open, spilling wriggling things.

And the stone drank his blood.

When it was over, Dean was gone.

Not dead—just gone.

The stone was whole again. No light, no crack. The orchard stilled.

I never found his body.

That was two years ago.

I’m still here. Watching the trees. Tending what I can.

And sometimes, when the moon is bright, I see him among the trunks. Hair grown long, eyes glowing faint gold, mouth full of roots.

He waves.

I wave back.

Because I understand now.

I’m the keeper.

And something must always be kept.