Who's there?
The old couple didn’t know who was knocking on the door. The knocking continued. So the old woman opened the door a little and looked outside. There was a woman standing there. Her face was pale. She had come to buy a candle. Even though it was late at night, the old woman thought about the money she would make. So she didn’t send the woman away. The old woman showed the a box of candles to the woman. Then the old woman noticed the woman’s long black hair. It was wet and shining brightly in the moonlight.
The woman picked up a red candle from the box and carefully looked at it.
Then, she paid for the red candle and left.
When the old woman went back inside and looked at the coins, she found they were seashells. The old woman thought she had been fooled and rushed outside to find the woman. But there was no sign of here her. She was gone.
That night, the weather suddenly changed. The biggest storm that they had ever seen came to their town. The mermaid girl was already on a ship going surf south.
The old man said, Her ship can't possibly make it in this storm.
Night passed, and morning came. There were many broken ships floating in the black sea.
From that time, whenever a red candle was lit at the shrine, a storm came. So people people started saying that red candles were bad luck. The old couple thought they would were been being punihed by the gods, so they closed their candle shop.
Even though red candles were no longer sold, a red candle was mysteriously lit a at the shrine every night. And if you saw this, there would be a disaster, and you were would drown in the sea.
This story spread and no one came to pray at the shrine anymore. The shrine had brought good fortune to the town before, but it was now bringing them nothing that but bad luck. The people of the town wished that they didn’t have this shrine in their town. Sailors on their ships were even afraid to look at the mountain with the shrine.
The northern sea is always scary at night with the waves crashing against the rocks. And on a cloudy night with only a little moonlight, it becomes even scarier. On dark, starless, rainy nights, people saw candlenight floating between the waves. They said the light rose up the mountain and headed for the shrine.
After a few years, no one lived in the town any more and the town disappeared.