The Lights Beyond Blackthorn Ridge

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as another hairpin bend sent my battered dark-blue Vauxhall Astra leaning hard to the right. The engine groaned as though personally offended by the steep upland road, but at least it kept climbing. We had endured nearly three hours of bends, single-track lanes and awkward passing places, and Blackthorn Ridge Campsite still felt a long way off.

Behind me, Elliot Shaw had given up trying to find a mobile signal. Reception had vanished shortly after the last village, several miles earlier, but he continued staring at the screen as though another refresh might reconnect him to civilisation.

Rhodri Evans pressed his forehead against the front passenger window and watched the spruce plantation blur past. He was still wearing the open-collar office shirt and chinos from whatever meeting he had rushed out of to make the trip, along with a pair of leather shoes entirely unsuited to the hills.

Nathan Cole looked as though he was trying to disappear into the rear seat. His head rested against the upholstery and his eyes were closed. Every few minutes he released a long sigh which expressed exactly how much he wanted to be anywhere else.

This was not the enthusiastic road trip I had imagined during the two months I had spent persuading them to come. At university, we had done things like this all the time: spontaneous trips, sleeping under the stars and spending whole weekends together without an itinerary. Now, getting the three of them to commit to two nights away felt like negotiating a business merger.

"How much farther?" Nathan asked, his voice flat with exhaustion.

"The satnav says another forty minutes to the start of the footpath."

I checked the rear-view mirror and caught his expression.

"Come on. Once we're there and the tents are up, you'll remember why we used to love this."

"Right."

He did not sound convinced.

Elliot finally looked up from his mobile. "There is literally no reception out here. What if something happens?"

"Nothing is going to happen," I said.

The assurance felt hollow even as I gave it.

"It's only camping. We've all done this before."

Rhodri shifted in his seat and rubbed his eyes. "I should have changed before we left. These trousers aren't exactly walking gear."

"We've got spare kit if you need it."

I had packed enough equipment for all four of us, knowing that at least one of them would arrive unprepared.

"Look, I know you're tired and stressed, but that's exactly why we need this. We can get away from work and mobiles and all the rest of it. Just be friends again."

The silence that followed felt heavier than the mountain above us.

I had been planning the trip since spring, sending messages about dates, researching campsites and buying supplies. Every discussion had been like pulling teeth. Nathan constantly found excuses, while Elliot behaved as though I had asked him to climb Everest. Only Rhodri had seemed genuinely interested, and even he looked shattered now.

The road eventually levelled as we reached a bleak upland plateau above the Elan Valley. At the start of the footpath, a weathered Forestry-style sign read, "Blackthorn Ridge Campsite 3 km", with an arrow directing us down a rough forestry track.

I turned off the minor road. The Astra immediately began bouncing over stones and deep ruts.

"Jesus," Nathan muttered as his head knocked against the window.

"Nearly there."

I tried to sound cheerful, but winced at every pothole. The last thing we needed was a puncture out here.

The forestry track wound through dense commercial spruce, mixed here and there with larch, birch and patches of native oak. The canopy was so thick that only scattered fragments of late-afternoon light reached the ground. After what felt like twenty minutes of careful driving, we emerged into a clearing where several marked pitches formed a rough circle around a communal fire area.

I parked beside a weathered picnic table and switched off the engine. After hours of road noise and mechanical strain, the sudden silence felt oppressive.

Through the windscreen I could see that one other pitch was occupied. A small green tent, a tarpaulin and an assortment of camping equipment had been arranged with surveyor-like precision.

"This is it," I announced, forcing enthusiasm into my voice.

We climbed out, stretching stiff limbs and looking around. The clearing was larger than it had appeared in the photographs online, with plenty of room for our tents and a good view of the surrounding Cambrian Mountains. The clean, resinous smell of spruce struck me at once after the stuffiness of the car.

Elliot walked to the nearest tree and held his mobile above his head.

"Still nothing."

Nathan lit a cigarette, drew deeply on it and surveyed the clearing as though it were a prison yard. "How long are we supposed to stay here?"

"Two nights," I said, opening the boot. "Tonight, tomorrow night, then we drive home on Sunday morning."

Rhodri stood beside the car with his hands in his pockets, taking in the campsite. At least he was not complaining.

"It's quiet," he said.

"That's something."

I began unloading the boot: tents, sleeping bags and the overloaded cool box I had packed with enough food for a week. The others moved slowly, taking their gear without much conversation. Nathan continued smoking and checking his watch as though he had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Elliot had given up on his mobile and simply stood with his arms hanging at his sides.

We had barely begun pitching the tents when footsteps approached from the occupied pitch. A man in his fifties came towards us. He had greying hair, a weathered face and clothes that had plainly seen years of outdoor use. He moved with the easy confidence of someone completely at home in the woods.

"Need a hand with those pegs?" he asked Rhodri, who was struggling with one corner of his tent. "The ground is hard here. The trick is finding softer patches between the roots."

Rhodri looked up with obvious relief. "Yes, actually. I'm not exactly an expert."

The man knelt and demonstrated how to angle the pegs, driving them into the ground with quick, economical movements.

"Gareth, by the way. Gareth Pritchard."

He stood and wiped his hands on his trousers.

"I've been camping here for about three weeks."

"Three weeks?" I set down the cool box and walked over. "That's quite a stay."

Gareth shrugged. "My wife left in April. I needed time to think things through."

He said it as matter-of-factly as if he were commenting on the weather.

"The mountains are good for that sort of thing."

Rhodri shook his hand. "I'm Rhodri. This is Callum, Elliot and Nathan."

Gareth nodded to each of us. Nathan gave him a brief wave before returning to his cigarette. Elliot managed a polite hello, although he kept glancing at his useless mobile.

I was genuinely grateful for Gareth's presence. At least someone seemed pleased to be in the woods.

"You've chosen a good pitch," Gareth continued as he helped Rhodri straighten his tent. "It gets the morning sun but stays shaded in the afternoon. I've been keeping an eye on it for weeks. I wondered when someone would claim it."

"You've been watching our pitch?" Nathan asked. There was an edge in his voice.

Gareth chuckled. "Not watching it like that. I merely noticed it was empty. Prime camping ground, this. You're close to the footpaths as well, if you fancy some walking."

I unpacked my own tent while listening to Gareth advise Rhodri about local routes and water sources. He clearly knew the area, and Rhodri appeared grateful for the information. At least someone was engaging positively with the trip.

Nathan moved to the far side of our pitch and smoked while staring into the trees, as though calculating possible escape routes.

Elliot tried to pitch his tent but repeatedly tangled the poles. I went over to help, and we worked in silence while Gareth and Rhodri discussed the condition of the footpaths.

"This is what I was hoping for," I said quietly as Elliot and I stretched the tent fabric into place. "Getting away from everything. Spending time together like we used to."

Elliot glanced around at Nathan's obvious misery and Rhodri's exhausted posture.

"We're not university students any more, Callum."

The remark stung more than I expected. I had known the trip would be different from our old adventures, but I had hoped some of that energy might return once we escaped our daily routines. Instead, it felt as if I were dragging three reluctant men through the motions of friendship.

Gareth finished helping Rhodri and started back towards his own pitch.

"If you need anything, give me a shout. I've got spare firewood and a decent camping stove if yours plays up."

"Thanks," I called after him. "We appreciate the help."

When Gareth had returned to his tent, I looked around at my friends. Rhodri stood back to admire his properly pitched tent with something approaching satisfaction. Elliot's was finally upright, although it leaned slightly to one side. Nathan had finished his cigarette and now sat on a log, staring at his mobile despite knowing it was useless.

The sun was dropping behind the plantation and casting long shadows across the campsite. I had imagined this moment differently: all of us working together, laughing about old times and looking forward to the evening. Instead, the silence was weighted with unspoken reluctance.

I took the camping chairs from the boot and arranged them around the fire pit. Each action felt mechanical, as though I were going through the motions of a trip already falling apart. Nathan glanced up to watch me, then returned to the blank screen.

"I'm going to light the fire," I announced to no one in particular.

Rhodri came over and picked up one of the chairs. "Good idea. It's getting cold already."

At least someone was trying.

I knelt and arranged kindling in the fire pit, concentrating on the task rather than the growing conviction that the weekend would be a disaster. Three months of planning, money spent on supplies and campsite fees, weeks of persuading everyone to clear their diaries - and for what? So we could sit in uncomfortable silence while Nathan counted the hours until departure?

I struck a match and held it beneath the dry spruce needles I had gathered. The flame caught quickly and spread to the smallest twigs. At least something was going to plan.

Behind me, Elliot unzipped his tent and rummaged inside. Nathan remained on the log, occasionally looking towards the woods as if he expected something to emerge. Rhodri lowered himself into a chair and watched me build the fire, though even he seemed lost in his own thoughts.

As the flames rose and the first real warmth reached us, I could not shake the feeling that bringing everyone here had been a serious mistake. We were not the same people we had been at university, and nostalgia could not alter that.

The mountains were beautiful, the air was clean and we had everything required for a perfect camping trip. Yet as I looked at my friends' faces in the growing firelight, I began to think the weekend was already doomed.

Two hours later, I stirred the tinned chilli warming on the grill over the fire and watched it bubble. The smell of woodsmoke and simple camp food should have felt nostalgic, like our old university trips, but the silence around the flames remained forced. Even after pitching the tents and settling in, we had failed to recover our rhythm.

Nathan sat opposite me, moving chilli around an enamel plate without eating much. Every few minutes he took out his mobile, woke the screen, stared at the words "No service", then shoved it back into his pocket with visible frustration.

Elliot had abandoned his phone entirely and was eating a bread roll, although he too seemed distracted, glancing towards the woods between bites.

Rhodri was the only one attempting ordinary conversation. He asked Gareth about fishing and water sources while our neighbour sat forward in his chair, both hands clasped around an enamel mug of strong tea, plainly grateful for company after weeks alone.

"There's a cold beck about eight hundred metres east," Gareth said, gesturing towards the dark trees. "It holds brown trout, even in summer. Most people fish the obvious pools, but the trout hide in the deeper pockets where the current slows."

"Might be worth a look tomorrow," Rhodri said, glancing around at us. "If anyone fancies trying to catch something."

Nathan looked up from his plate. "How long are we staying here again?"

"Until Sunday morning," I replied quickly. "Two nights, as agreed."

"Right."

His tone suggested that he was already counting down every hour.

Gareth sipped his tea and studied him. "Not much of an outdoorsman, then?"

"Not really."

Nathan lit another cigarette and took a long drag. "This was Callum's idea. He thought it would be fun to relive the glory days or whatever."

The comment hurt, but I tried not to show it.

"We used to do this sort of thing all the time at university," I said. "Camping, walking, getting away from everything."

"Yes, well." Nathan flicked ash into the fire, where it sparked and vanished. "Things change."

Gareth nodded slowly, as though he understood something the rest of us did not.

"Change isn't always permanent. Sometimes you find things out here that remind you who you really are."

Elliot stopped eating. "What do you mean?"

Gareth leaned back, his weathered face thoughtful in the flickering light.

"I've been in these woods for three weeks. You see things differently when you spend enough time away from civilisation. You notice details that most people miss."

"Such as?" Rhodri asked.

Gareth was silent for a moment, staring into the flames. When he spoke again, his voice had acquired a more focused, intense quality.

"Lights moving through the trees at night. Not torches or campfires. Something else entirely."

Nathan stopped eating and looked sharply at him. "What kind of lights?"

"They're difficult to describe."

Gareth put down his mug and leaned forwards.

"Blue-white. Roughly the size of a football. They move between the trees as though following a pattern. There is nothing random about it. They're purposeful."

My stomach tightened. The last thing we needed was a ghost story, or whatever Gareth was building towards.

"Probably other campers," I said.

Gareth shook his head. "I've seen enough torches and lanterns over the years. These are different. They pulse, almost as if they're breathing."

Elliot put down his bread roll and gave Gareth his full attention.

"How many times have you seen them?"

"Five or six nights over the past two weeks. Every night during the last week. They always appear between midnight and 03:00. They emerge near the southern boundary of the plantation and travel north-east towards Cwm Du Ridge."

He pointed into the darkness beyond our pitch. Rhodri followed the gesture, although there was nothing to see but black forest.

"Any idea what causes them?" he asked.

"I followed one about a week ago," Gareth said. The reflected firelight in his eyes made me uneasy. "Tracked it for nearly three kilometres over rough ground. I lost it near the crags on Cwm Du Ridge."

Nathan dropped his cigarette and crushed it beneath his heel.

"And you think that's normal? Following strange lights through a forest in the middle of the night?"

Gareth chuckled without humour. "Nothing about this place is normal once you start paying attention. Dangerous, though? No. The lights themselves aren't dangerous. They're only mysterious."

"You said they were blue-white?" Elliot asked, completely absorbed now.

"Blue-white, but never steady. They pulse and shift. Sometimes brighter, sometimes dimmer. And they move smoothly, as though floating just above the ground."

Gareth lifted his mug and took a slow drink.

"You may see them yourselves if you keep your eyes open tonight."

The thought of strange lights moving through the darkness around us made my skin crawl. I had brought my friends here to reconnect and relax, not to pursue unexplained phenomena with a man who had lived alone in the woods for three weeks.

"Perhaps we should concentrate on ordinary camping," I said, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere. "Walking, fishing, spending time together without all the weirdness."

Nathan nodded emphatically. "Exactly. I vote we pack up tomorrow morning and go home. This entire trip was a mistake."

"A mistake?" Elliot's voice suddenly sharpened. "We haven't even been here a day."

"Long enough for me to know I don't want to be here."

"You might enjoy yourself if you actually participated instead of complaining about everything."

"Participated in what? There is nothing to do except sit around pretending this is still fun."

"It could be fun if you gave it a chance instead of making yourself miserable."

Nathan stood so abruptly that his enamel plate slipped from his lap and struck the ground.

"Fun? Do you want to know what would be fun? Having a job that doesn't make me want to kill myself. Having a girlfriend who doesn't threaten to leave every other week. Perhaps sorting out some real problems instead of hiding in the woods and pretending everything is fine."

"Nobody is pretending anything," Elliot said, rising to face him. "But running from your problems won't solve them either."

"That's rich coming from you. When was the last time you committed to anything for longer than a weekend?"

Rhodri raised both hands. "Come on, both of you. Let's not do this."

Nathan was only gathering momentum.

"This whole trip is Callum trying to recreate something that doesn't exist any more. We're not students. We're not best friends carrying on as if nothing has changed. We're four people who used to know each other, pretending we still have something in common."

The words struck harder than I expected. I knew our friendship had changed, but hearing Nathan describe it so brutally made the failure of the trip feel complete and final.

Gareth watched the argument with what seemed like genuine interest. His eyes moved between Nathan and Elliot as though he were studying their conflict. When the shouting subsided into an angry silence, he spoke again.

"You know," he said quietly, his voice carrying through the still air, "I've met plenty of people in these woods over the years. Walkers, campers, people passing through. Some became curious about the lights as well."

Elliot sat down, still glaring at Nathan. "What happened to them?"

Gareth drank his tea and watched the fire for a long moment.

"That's the interesting part. Some follow the lights and return with stories. Others..."

He shrugged.

"Others follow them and never come back to tell anyone what they found."

A chill passed through me that had nothing to do with the mountain air. The casual manner in which he said it made the statement worse than any deliberate attempt to frighten us.

Nathan remained standing over the fire.

"Brilliant. Mysterious lights and missing people. This keeps getting better."

I barely heard him. Gareth's words echoed in my head, and I could not rid myself of the sense that something was deeply wrong. He had appeared conveniently when we arrived. He was intensely preoccupied with the lights, seemed to relish the conflict within our group and had now mentioned disappearances almost in passing.

I looked around the fire at my friends' faces: Nathan angry and agitated, Elliot fascinated despite himself, Rhodri exhausted but still trying to keep the peace. None of them seemed to appreciate the weight of what Gareth had said, or perhaps they were too consumed by their own problems to care.

The fire popped, sending sparks spiralling into the dark sky. For a moment, the only sound was the soft crackle of burning wood. Beyond the edge of the campsite, the forest pressed in from every side, black and silent and suddenly far less safe than it had seemed an hour earlier.

Cold mountain air bit through my sleeping bag when I awoke. My body was stiff from the uneven ground.

Something had disturbed me, some sound or movement that did not belong. I quietly unzipped the tent flap and looked outside.

Nathan sat cross-legged on a log about three metres away, fully dressed and staring into the dark plantation beyond our pitch. His shoulders were hunched, and even in the dim light before sunrise I could see the tension in his posture. A half-empty packet of cigarettes lay beside him.

I crawled out and walked over, my joints protesting after a night on hard ground. Nathan did not look at me. He kept watching the forest as though he expected something to step from the shadows.

"Couldn't sleep?" I asked, sitting beside him.

"Not for a minute."

His voice was hoarse, as though he had been awake for hours.

"Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about work. My boss has been on at me all month about the Ashcroft account. If I don't sort it when I get back..."

He trailed off and lit another cigarette with trembling hands.

"What about Leah?" I asked.

Nathan drew deeply and exhaled slowly. "Leah gave me an ultimatum before I left. She said if I don't work out what I want and stop being miserable all the time, she's finished. She'll move out and find somebody who actually wants to be alive."

He gave a bitter laugh.

"I can't blame her."

The admission hung between us in the quiet morning air. I had known Nathan was struggling, but hearing the extent of his problems made me realise how badly I had underestimated them.

A tent zip opened behind us. Rhodri emerged looking as though he had been struck by a lorry. His hair stuck up at odd angles and dark circles shadowed his eyes. He moved slowly, as if every joint ached.

"Morning," he mumbled, running a hand through his hair. "Does anyone else feel as if they've been run over?"

Elliot's tent rustled. Muffled swearing followed as he apparently fought his sleeping bag, then another zip opened and he crawled out looking equally exhausted. His shirt was twisted sideways and his pillow had left red lines across one cheek.

"Jesus, what time is it?"

He squinted around the campsite, trying to orient himself.

"About six," I said, checking my watch. "The sun should be up soon."

Confident footsteps approached from Gareth's pitch. He appeared entirely refreshed, as if he had slept for ten hours in a comfortable hotel rather than in a tent in the Welsh hills. His clothes were neat, his hair combed and his eyes bright and alert. The contrast between him and the rest of us was startling.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said cheerfully. "Beautiful day to be in the mountains."

Rhodri rubbed his eyes and managed a weak nod. Elliot merely stared at Gareth, apparently unable to understand how anyone could possess so much energy at that hour.

"I'll make coffee," I said, grateful for an ordinary task.

I took out the camping stove and the instant coffee. The familiar routine of lighting the burner and heating water steadied me after the tension of the previous night.

Gareth sat in one of the chairs we had left around the dead fire.

"I saw them again last night," he said. "The lights. Brighter than ever, actually."

Nathan's head snapped round. "What?"

"The lights I told you about. They appeared at about 02:00. Same area as before, but there were more of them this time. Three or four, perhaps, moving in formation through the trees."

His voice possessed the same intense focus it had acquired beside the fire.

"I've been recording their patterns in my field notebook for the past week. They're certainly following some kind of route."

Elliot became attentive despite his exhaustion. "You've seen them every night?"

"Every single night for seven days. At first I thought the movement might be random, but the timing is too consistent. Always between midnight and 03:00. Always emerging near the southern plantation boundary and travelling north-east towards Cwm Du Ridge."

The water boiled. I occupied myself with spooning instant coffee into mugs and pouring it out. The mundane task gave me something to think about besides Gareth's increasingly obsessive fixation.

"Here," I said as I passed the drinks around. "Everybody needs caffeine."

Gareth accepted his mug without looking at it. His attention remained fixed on the trees.

"The interesting part is the way they respond to being watched. If I observe from a distance, they move in predictable patterns. But when I try to approach them -"

"Perhaps we should do some normal camping today," I interrupted, taking cereal bars from my pack and handing them out. "You mentioned good fishing in the beck. We could walk there or explore the area."

Gareth finally looked away from the plantation. Something in his expression made me uncomfortable, as though I had interrupted a matter of great importance and he resented it.

"Of course," he said, although his tone suggested that fishing and walking were trivial distractions. "But if you're going to explore, you ought to understand the lights. They're part of this place now."

Elliot unwrapped a cereal bar and took a bite.

"I think we should investigate. If something unusual is happening, why wouldn't we want to know what it is?"

"Because it's probably nothing," Nathan said sharply. "Just Gareth seeing things after spending too long alone in the woods."

Gareth's expression hardened. "I know what I've seen."

"Right."

Nathan stood abruptly and threw his cigarette end into the cold fire pit.

"And I know what I've seen. A man who's been camping alone for three weeks and talking about mysterious lights. That does not make him the most reliable witness."

Rhodri sipped his coffee and tried to mediate.

"Whether the lights are real or not, we're here to relax and spend time together. Perhaps we can do both. Explore during the day and see whether anything looks unusual."

"Exactly," Elliot said, warming to the suggestion. "We could walk towards Cwm Du Ridge. If something really is happening, we might find evidence."

I felt the mood of the group shifting in a direction I did not like. The purpose of the trip had been to reconnect as friends, not to pursue whatever had captured Gareth's imagination during his isolation.

"We should stay together," I said carefully. "If we explore, we do it as a group. Nobody wanders off alone."

Gareth laughed, and the edge in the sound made my skin prickle.

"The forest isn't dangerous to people who understand it. I've walked these woods alone for weeks without trouble."

His dismissive tone bothered me. He seemed to regard the rest of us as incapable of comprehending whatever he believed he had discovered. I saw him glance towards the plantation again, scanning it with the concentration of someone waiting for a particular event.

Nathan finished his coffee and put the mug down more forcefully than necessary.

"This is exactly what I meant last night. We're supposed to be on an ordinary camping trip, not following a stranger in search of imaginary lights."

"They are not imaginary," Gareth said quietly.

There was steel in his voice.

"Of course they aren't." Nathan lit another cigarette, his hands still trembling. "Like everything else in my life, this trip is becoming precisely what I didn't want it to be."

Elliot put down his cereal bar and turned towards him.

"Perhaps if you stopped being negative about everything, you might enjoy something for once."

"Enjoy what? Sitting here listening to ghost stories? Arguing about chasing lights through the woods? This whole thing is a waste of time."

He inhaled and blew out the smoke with deliberate aggression.

Gareth watched the exchange with open interest, as if he were examining our group for a purpose I could not understand. When the argument dwindled into sullen silence, he spoke in the same conversational tone he had used the previous night while discussing people who never returned.

"Most people who come here miss the interesting things because they're too concerned with what they think camping ought to be."

Rhodri finished his coffee and stood to stretch. "What do you mean?"

"You can walk or fish almost anywhere. How often do you have an opportunity to witness something genuinely unexplained?"

Gareth looked from Elliot to Rhodri, conspicuously excluding Nathan and me.

"Most people spend their lives trapped in routine. They never experience anything that challenges what they think they know about the world."

Elliot nodded slowly. "That is a fair point."

With growing unease, I realised that Gareth was actively dividing us. He encouraged Elliot's curiosity while dismissing the concerns Nathan and I had raised. His calm certainty about the lights, the authority with which he spoke about the area and the intense attention he gave the forest even during ordinary conversation all felt wrong.

By the end of our simple breakfast, the divisions were plain. Elliot wanted to investigate Gareth's claims. Rhodri remained diplomatically neutral but seemed willing to accept whatever the group decided. Nathan wanted to pack immediately and leave. I was caught between a desire to keep everyone safe and a fear of sounding as paranoid as Nathan.

Throughout the discussion, Gareth continued to scan the plantation and point out places where he claimed to have observed the greatest activity. His manner had changed from that of the friendly, capable neighbour who had helped us pitch our tents. Now he seemed driven, as though he had a specific objective and needed us for it.

The morning sun finally cleared the mountains and cast long shadows across the campsite. Instead of marking the start of an ordinary day outdoors, it felt as though we were all waiting for something to happen - something Gareth was certain would happen whether we wanted it or not.

Once we had cleared away breakfast and packed the stove, I made a decision which seemed necessary despite the tension. We needed to leave the campsite for a while and escape Gareth's constant scrutiny of the trees.

"There's a reservoir roughly three kilometres north of here," I said, lifting my daypack onto my shoulders. "It should be a good place for lunch, and there may be decent views. Anyone fancy a walk?"

Rhodri agreed immediately, plainly relieved to have something concrete to do. Elliot looked up from the woods, still absorbed by Gareth's stories. Nathan gave an audible groan and lit another cigarette.

"Three kilometres through this?" he said. "I didn't bring walking boots."

"It shouldn't be too bad," I replied, trying to sound encouraging. "The footpath is waymarked, and most of the ground is fairly level."

Gareth had been sitting quietly in his chair, but he rose with renewed energy.

"Excellent idea. I know the reservoir well. I've been there several times during the past three weeks. Beautiful spot. It's also quite close to Cwm Du Ridge, where most of the activity occurs."

The way he said "activity" made my stomach tighten, but I forced a smile.

"Good. A change of scene will do us all some good."

Twenty minutes later, we followed a footpath winding through dense spruce and larch. I led with Rhodri close behind. About three metres back, Elliot walked beside Gareth. Nathan brought up the rear and was already complaining about stones in his trainers.

Gareth carried a sighting compass and checked it every few minutes despite the clear waymarkers. An Ordnance Survey map protruded from his jacket pocket, while binoculars and a weatherproof field notebook hung from straps on his pack. He repeatedly looked over his shoulder, not towards the campsite but into the woods around us, as if expecting movement between the trunks.

"Your wife," Elliot said as they walked. "What was her problem with camping?"

Gareth's expression darkened.

"Catrin never understood the value of real experiences. She preferred shopping centres and gastropubs to the wilderness. To her, roughing it meant staying in a comfortable hotel without room service."

"Some people simply aren't outdoorsy," Rhodri offered diplomatically.

"It wasn't about being outdoorsy," Gareth said, an edge entering his voice. "It was weakness. She was afraid of anything that threatened her comfortable little world. Solitude, discovery, a genuine connection with the natural world - none of it mattered to her."

I glanced back. Elliot was hanging on every word, absorbed by Gareth's bitter account of his failed marriage. The resentment was unmistakable, and I wondered what other grievances the man had nurtured during his weeks alone.

"So you came here to think things through?" Elliot asked.

"I came here to find what she was too frightened to look for," Gareth replied, checking the compass again. "Some people are content to live their entire lives without witnessing anything extraordinary. They prefer the safety of a predictable routine to the possibility of real discovery."

Behind us, Nathan caught his foot on a root and muttered a stream of curses.

"How much farther is this reservoir? My feet are killing me."

"About a kilometre and a half," I called back.

I could hear the blisters forming in his voice. His trainers were not designed for a forest footpath, and years of chain-smoking had hardly prepared him for sustained exercise.

"This is exactly why I hate camping," Nathan said, stopping to lean against a tree. "Everything hurts, nothing works as it should, and none of it has any point."

"The point," Gareth said, turning towards him with obvious irritation, "is to experience something beyond your ordinary existence. That requires being open to possibilities instead of complaining about every minor discomfort."

Nathan straightened, his face flushed with exertion and anger.

"Right. Sorry I failed to appreciate the spiritual benefits of sore feet."

Gareth stared at him for a moment, then turned and continued along the footpath without another word.

The hostility between them was worsening. I found myself torn between wanting to defend Nathan and not wanting to provoke Gareth any further.

The footpath climbed gradually through dense stretches of spruce and larch, occasionally emerging into small clearings where filtered sunlight reached the ground. Gareth kept consulting his sighting compass and Ordnance Survey map with an intensity that seemed excessive even for unfamiliar country. I noticed that he was forever glancing towards Cwm Du Ridge, although the closely planted trees blocked any view of the distant ground.

When we reached the reservoir an hour later, the view was genuinely beautiful. Clear blue water stretched roughly 180 metres across, enclosed by rocky banks and forested hills. Two grebes drifted near the far bank, and the whole place possessed the sort of pristine stillness that made the walk worthwhile.

Gareth immediately went to the northern edge of the water and pointed towards a rocky crag visible through the trees beyond the opposite bank.

"There," he said, with the same intense concentration he had shown that morning. "That's where I've seen the brightest activity. The lights appear just below the trees, then move down towards the water."

Rhodri sat on a broad rock and took out his water bottle. His unsuitable leather shoes were already dusty and scuffed.

"Could they be aircraft?" he asked. "Military exercises, perhaps?"

Gareth shook his head dismissively. "Aircraft don't pulse like living things. These lights have rhythm. Purpose. They respond to observation, almost as though they know they're being watched."

"What do you mean, respond?" Elliot asked, sitting beside him on the rocky shore.

"When I watch from a distance, they follow predictable patterns. They emerge near the southern boundary of the plantation and travel north-east towards Cwm Du Ridge. But when I try to approach, they change direction. They move faster, or disappear altogether." Gareth kept his eyes fixed upon the ridge. "It's as though they're testing me. Seeing how committed I am to understanding what they really are."

The way he described it made my skin crawl. Gareth was not merely observing some peculiar natural phenomenon. In his mind, he was engaged in an ongoing exchange with it. His obsessive focus, his bitterness about Catrin and his weeks of isolation all suggested a man who had lost his sense of proportion.

Nathan finally caught up with us, breathing heavily and favouring one foot. He dropped onto the nearest rock and immediately took out his cigarettes.

"Right, we've seen the reservoir. Can we go back now?"

"We've only just arrived," Elliot said. "This is exactly the sort of place where you might see something unusual. It's remote, quiet and close to where Gareth's had his sightings."

"Yes," Nathan said, lighting his cigarette with unsteady hands. "Because seeing whatever's been driving him round the bend is exactly what I want."

Gareth's head snapped towards him. For a moment, his expression was openly hostile.

"I'm not mad. I'm the only person out here paying attention to what's actually happening."

Rhodri finished his water and stood, plainly trying to calm matters.

"There may still be a reasonable explanation. An animal's eyes reflecting light, an atmospheric effect, even some geological phenomenon creating an optical illusion."

"I've considered all that," Gareth said, his irritation sharpening. "I'm not a tourist getting excited over glow-worms. I've been walking and camping for thirty years. I know the difference between an ordinary experience outdoors and something genuinely unexplained."

"But how can you be sure they're not just-"

"Because I've seen them close up," Gareth cut in. "I've followed them, tracked them and recorded their patterns. They aren't random. They aren't natural, and they aren't imaginary."

The conversation was moving in a direction that made me increasingly uneasy. Gareth's resentment of any challenge suggested that his entire sense of himself had become bound up with the lights. If they were not real, then the weeks he had spent alone watching them meant nothing, and he could not tolerate that possibility.

We remained beside the reservoir for another hour, eating mixed nuts and raisins and drinking water. Gareth continued explaining his theories while Elliot asked detailed questions about times, bearings and patterns of movement. He was fascinated by every detail. Rhodri remained politely sceptical, offering practical explanations which Gareth dismissed with growing impatience. Nathan sat apart, smoking and repeatedly checking a mobile he knew had no signal.

By the time we set off for Blackthorn Ridge Campsite in the late afternoon, I had made up my mind. Whatever Gareth was pursuing in those woods, I did not want my friends involved.

The return took longer than expected because Nathan's blisters had worsened. We had to stop again and again while he adjusted his trainers and complained about the distance. Gareth became increasingly impatient, checking his compass and glancing into the darkening plantation as though our slow progress were causing us to miss something vital.

The sun was already dropping behind the western hills when we reached the campsite, throwing long shadows across the clearing. Gareth went straight to his small green tent and began taking out equipment: a folding chair, binoculars, a powerful torch, his sighting compass and a weatherproof field notebook filled with handwritten observations.

He placed the chair facing north-east towards Cwm Du Ridge, arranged every item within easy reach and sat with the concentrated air of a surveyor beginning an important night's work. The precision of it made clear that this was a ritual he had performed night after night. This was no passing curiosity. Gareth had fed his obsession alone in the woods until he could no longer distinguish evidence from expectation.

I turned towards Rhodri and Elliot. "We should probably have an early night. Then we can pack after breakfast and head home."

Gareth looked at me, and I instinctively took half a step back. The helpful neighbour who had greeted us the previous day seemed to have vanished. His eyes were hard, his mouth tight.

"That would be unfortunate," he said quietly. "You might miss something extraordinary if you leave too soon. Something that could change everything you believe about the world."

I could not have said precisely what he was threatening, but a threat lay beneath the words. Standing in the deepening dusk, watching him arrange his observation station with surveyor-like care, I understood that Gareth did not want us to leave without seeing the lights. Real or imagined, they had become the centre of his life, and he needed witnesses to validate them.

We were no longer simply neighbouring campers. We were the audience he had waited three weeks to acquire, and he had no intention of letting us walk out before the performance.

I busied myself with supper, hoping familiar tasks might settle everyone. I heated tinned chilli on the camping stove, passed round bread rolls and set out the enamel plates. Later, when people were still hungry, Rhodri helped me make cheese-and-pickle sandwiches from the cool box. Gareth barely touched his food. He remained in his chair with the binoculars and torch beside him, opening the field notebook to pages crowded with times, bearings and rough diagrams.

Elliot pulled his chair closer and sat beside him, sandwich forgotten in his hand. Nathan collapsed onto his usual log, lit another cigarette and stared at his blank mobile screen.

"Do you see them every night?" Elliot asked.

"Every night for the past week," Gareth replied, checking his watch. "I've seen them several times over the last fortnight, but lately they have been consistent. They usually begin around midnight. Peak activity is between 01:00 and 03:00."

I put down my plate. "I've been thinking about tomorrow. We ought to pack early, leave after breakfast and reach the valley before the Sunday traffic builds up."

Gareth turned his disapproving stare upon me. "That would be extremely unfortunate. Tonight may be significant. The activity has increased over the last several nights."

"How can you tell?" Rhodri asked, with more politeness than interest.

"Brightness, intensity, duration and movement." Gareth opened the notebook and showed us page after page of handwritten entries, compass directions and crude sketches of routes between the trees. "The data suggest we're approaching some sort of peak event."

Elliot bent over the pages, absorbed. "This is incredible. You've recorded all of it."

"Scientific observation requires systematic documentation," Gareth said in a professorial tone. "Most people witness something unusual and dismiss it because they won't take the trouble to collect evidence."

Nathan looked up through his cigarette smoke. "Right. Because writing down the times when you think you've seen lights makes them real."

Gareth shut the notebook harder than necessary. "Scepticism without investigation is merely wilful ignorance."

The fire had settled into glowing coals. I added another log and watched sparks rise into the night. The ordinary task steadied me, but I could not escape the sense that the trip had slipped beyond my control.

"We should seriously consider leaving," I said to Rhodri and Elliot. "We came here to relax and spend time together, not to chase whatever Gareth believes he's seeing. We've had a night away. We could call it a successful trip and go home in the morning."

"We've barely been here twenty-four hours," Elliot protested. "This may be our only chance to witness something genuinely unexplained. How often does an opportunity like this come along?"

Rhodri stretched his legs and rubbed his eyes. In his creased office shirt and chinos, he looked as though he had wandered out of a meeting and never found his way home.

"I don't know. I'm exhausted, and I've meetings on Monday morning to prepare for."

"Everything is meetings and schedules with you," Elliot said. "When did any of us last do something that wasn't planned and practical? We used to take off on spontaneous trips all the time at university."

Nathan flicked his cigarette into the fire and immediately lit another. "When did any of us last have jobs that didn't make us miserable and girlfriends who weren't threatening to leave? Maybe practical is exactly what we need."

Gareth listened with unsettling interest, studying the fractures in our friendship as though committing those to his notebook as well. When the argument dwindled into silence, he checked his watch.

"Nearly 22:00," he announced. "The best visibility should begin within the next few hours."

The last daylight had gone. Only our small pool of firelight remained, surrounded by the black mass of the plantation. Gareth sat motionless, raising his binoculars at intervals and scanning the trees with methodical precision. Elliot shifted even closer, plainly intending to keep watch with him.

I tried once more. "Whatever you decide about tonight, can we agree to pack first thing tomorrow? I need to get back, and Nathan is obviously having a rotten time."

"Speak for yourself," Nathan muttered, although he sounded grateful for the support. "I stopped enjoying myself before we arrived."

Gareth abruptly straightened and lowered his binoculars. He pointed towards a stand of spruce roughly fifty metres from the campsite.

"There. Can you see it?"

I followed his finger but saw only darkness between the trunks. Elliot raised his torch and swept its beam across the indicated area.

"I can't see anything," Rhodri said, squinting.

"About five metres above the ground," Gareth said with absolute certainty. "Moving sideways between the larger trees. Blue-white, pulsing slowly. It's following the same pattern I recorded three nights ago."

Elliot rose and took several steps towards the edge of the clearing. "I think I can see something. A faint glow, perhaps."

I caught his arm before he could go farther. "Stay here. Whatever Gareth thinks he sees, we don't need to stumble about in the dark looking for it."

Gareth stood, his attention fixed entirely on the distant trees. "I'm going closer. I need to document its behaviour from another angle."

"Gareth, that isn't a good idea."

He was already walking towards the plantation, powerful torch in hand.

"I'll stay within shouting distance," he called without looking back. "I only want to confirm the movement pattern from thirty metres rather than fifty."

His beam vanished among the spruce trunks. Within seconds the forest had swallowed him, and soon the sound of his footsteps faded as well.

"This is exactly what I was afraid of," I told the others. "He's been alone here too long, and now he's chasing lights through the woods at night."

Elliot continued staring after him. "He may be right. There may genuinely be something out there."

"Or he may be seeing things that aren't there," Nathan said, lighting another cigarette with shaking hands. "Either way, I don't like sitting here waiting for him."

For twenty minutes we remained around the fire, listening. Occasionally a branch cracked beneath a foot or undergrowth rustled somewhere beyond the clearing. Once, we heard what sounded like Gareth calling to someone, but his words were too distant and muffled to make out. Rhodri checked his watch repeatedly, looking more uneasy with every passing minute.

"We should call to him. Make sure he's all right."

"Gareth!" I shouted into the trees. "Everything all right out there?"

Nothing answered. The plantation had fallen utterly silent, as though even the insects and small animals had stopped.

Nathan stood so suddenly that he nearly kicked over the log. He threw his cigarette into the fire.

"That's enough. I can't stand this any longer. I'm not sitting here waiting for a man I barely know to come back from chasing imaginary lights."

"What are you going to do?" Rhodri asked.

"Find him, drag him back and tell him we're packing up." Nathan snatched a spare torch from our equipment. "I'm finished with this whole business."

I rose to block him. "Nathan, don't. We don't know the plantation, and it's pitch-black beyond the clearing."

"I know where he went. It's the same direction he's been staring in all day." Nathan clicked on the torch and tested its beam. "I'll follow his trail, fetch him and tell him the camping trip is over."

Before I could stop him, he marched towards the trees, his light bouncing erratically.

"Gareth! Where are you? Time to come back!"

Elliot sprang up and grabbed his own torch. "I'm going with him. Neither of them should be alone."

"Elliot, wait."

But he was already following Nathan into the plantation.

"We'll be straight back," he called over his shoulder. "We'll find Gareth and bring everyone to camp."

Their torch beams dwindled among the trunks as they went deeper, calling Gareth's name every few minutes. Soon their voices weakened too, absorbed by the trees and darkness.

Rhodri and I remained beside the dying fire, straining after every sound. All we heard was the occasional pop of resin and the hiss of the burning logs. At first, faint echoes of our friends still reached us, but each seemed farther away than the last.

"This was a mistake," I said, stirring the coals with a stick. "The entire trip. Bringing everyone here. Allowing Gareth to pull us into whatever he's been pursuing."

Rhodri checked his watch again. "How long do we wait before going after them?"

I stared beyond the firelight and had no answer.

Five minutes later, he checked once more. "They've been gone fifteen minutes."

The fire had dwindled to orange coals which scarcely lit the edge of our pitch. I put on another log. As the flames climbed, the additional light seemed only to make the surrounding plantation more impenetrable.

"Give them another few minutes," I said without conviction. "They may need time to find Gareth and persuade him to return."

Rhodri went to the edge of the clearing and peered between the trees. "I can't hear them now. No voices. No footsteps. Nothing."

He was right. There was no buzz of insects, no rustle of small animals and no wind moving through the branches. The forest seemed to be holding its breath.

I took my torch and the first-aid kit from our equipment pile. "Come on. We have to find them."

Rhodri checked the beam of his own torch. "What if we lose our way as well?"

"We mark our route and follow it back." I put water bottles and our handheld GPS unit into a small rucksack. "I'm not sitting here until something terrible happens."

We left the fire burning and entered the plantation in the direction the others had taken. My torch moved over snapped twigs and crushed vegetation which suggested several people had recently passed. Every few minutes I called Nathan's and Elliot's names, then stopped to listen.

Only my own voice returned, fragmented by the trees.

Once we found their trail, it was not difficult to follow. Broken branches remained bent at shoulder height where someone had forced through thicker growth, and several sets of shoes had scuffed the damp earth. Yet the silence ahead tightened my chest.

Rhodri walked beside me, our torch beams parallel as we stepped over fallen trunks and wound between stands of spruce.

"This doesn't feel right," he said. "They should be shouting back. We should hear something."

Roughly eight hundred metres from camp, my beam caught a motionless figure beside a larch, its torch directed at the ground.

"Elliot!" I called, relief rushing through me.

His head turned, but he neither answered nor moved. As we approached, I saw his face in the torchlight. It was pale and vacant, as if what he had found had stunned every thought from him.

"Elliot, what's wrong? Where are Nathan and Gareth?"

Without speaking, he shifted his beam towards the foot of a short slate scree less than four metres away.

Gareth lay twisted beneath it. One leg was folded under him at an angle that made me wince, and his head had turned far too sharply to one side. The exposed line of his neck bent against the slate.

I moved closer and played my torch across him. His open eyes stared towards the canopy, reflecting the light like glass. Surprise remained on his face, his mouth parted as though whatever had happened had caught him wholly unprepared.

"Christ," Rhodri whispered. "Is he...?"

I knelt and pressed my fingers to Gareth's throat, although I already knew what I would find. There was no pulse, no warmth and no trace of breath. His skin felt cold and waxen. When I tried to close his eyes, the muscles had already begun to stiffen.

He could not have been gone long enough for that. The thought arrived cold and clear, but I could not afford to dwell upon it.

"He's dead," I said, sitting back on my heels. "It looks as though he fell down the scree and broke his neck."

Elliot finally spoke, his voice flat. "I found him like this. Just lying here."

"Where's Nathan?" Rhodri asked, sweeping his torch around us. "Where did he go?"

"I don't know." Elliot's hands trembled around the torch. "I've called him, but he won't answer. He was directly behind me while we followed Gareth's trail. Then suddenly he wasn't there."

I stood and backed away from the body. The slope was neither high nor particularly steep, but in darkness a careless step might have been enough. Gareth had been so intent upon the lights that he could easily have failed to see the loose slate.

Yet his cold, stiff skin remained in my mind.

"We find Nathan," I said. "Then we return to camp and work out how to summon help."

Rhodri nodded and called into the darkness. "Nathan! Can you hear us?"

We spread into a rough triangle, always remaining within sight of one another. My torch found spruce trunks, wet stones and low vegetation, but no sign of him. Elliot searched methodically behind the smaller trees while Rhodri climbed partway up the scree, testing each foothold.

We had searched for nearly twenty minutes when a faint moan reached us from deeper in the wood.

I stopped and raised a hand. "Did you hear that?"

It came again, weak and muffled but unmistakably human, from farther away from the campsite.

We followed it through dense vegetation which scraped our clothes and caught at our torches. We found Nathan slumped against the trunk of a storm-felled beech, folded forward as though he had collapsed there and lacked the strength to move. His shirt was torn across one shoulder. Four parallel wounds marked his left cheek, and matching slashes crossed his forearms where he had tried to protect himself.

"Nathan."

I dropped beside him and began checking for worse injuries. "What happened? Are you badly hurt?"

His eyes were open but unfocused, fixed upon something beyond my shoulder. When I touched his arm, he flinched and stared at me without recognition.

"Nathan, it's Callum. Can you hear me?"

"Callum?" His voice was hoarse, as though he had been screaming. "Is it really you?"

"Yes. Rhodri and Elliot are here. We came looking for you."

I eased him upright against the beech and checked his pupils with my torch. They appeared equal, but he was plainly in shock.

"Gareth," he whispered, seizing my arm with surprising force. "Something happened to Gareth."

"We found him. He fell down some slate and broke his neck. He's dead, Nathan."

His grip tightened. His eyes abruptly focused upon my face.

"No. It wasn't a fall. Something was hunting us. It killed Gareth."

The certainty in his voice raised the hairs along my arms. Rhodri and Elliot moved closer.

"What do you mean, hunting you?" Rhodri asked.

Nathan looked past us into the woods. Terror transformed his face.

"After we separated, I heard Gareth calling me. He sounded annoyed. He kept saying, 'Scepticism without investigation is wilful ignorance,' just as he did at the fire. Then he said, 'You might miss something extraordinary.' His voice came from ahead, so I followed it."

He swallowed with difficulty.

"But Gareth was already dead. It wasn't him. The voice was perfect, even his Welsh accent, but it kept repeating the same phrases. Then something moved behind me. It was watching us, following us, and it's still out there."

Nathan could scarcely stand. I draped his left arm across my shoulders and took most of his weight as we began working back towards the campsite. Rhodri supported him from the other side until the ground narrowed, then moved ahead to navigate. Every few steps Nathan stumbled or caught himself against a trunk, breathing hard and wincing.

"Keep moving," I whispered, tightening my grip around his waist. "We'll get you back to camp and sort this out."

His head kept turning towards the darkness behind us. In the shifting torchlight, the four wounds across his cheek looked deep and raw. Elliot ranged around us, sweeping his beam between the trees in measured arcs. It revealed only trunks and hanging branches, yet the forest no longer felt empty.

Rhodri checked the GPS on his mobile every few minutes and called back corrections. "South-west. Just over five hundred metres to the campsite. We need to hurry. My battery is nearly gone."

I tried to increase our pace, but Nathan's legs repeatedly buckled. Sweat covered his face despite the chill of the upland night.

"Nathan, you have to help me. Put more weight on your right leg."

He managed several steadier steps before sagging again.

"It's out there," he breathed. "It's following us."

Elliot swung his torch towards us and then resumed searching the trees. "I can't see anything."

"It's there," Nathan insisted, clutching my jacket. "I can feel it watching."

We had covered perhaps half the distance when a heavy footstep crushed dead needles somewhere behind us. It was too deliberate for a small animal and too solid to be a branch shifted by the wind.

I stopped and raised my hand.

Elliot switched off his torch. Darkness closed over us, broken only by the pale glow of Rhodri's mobile screen.

Another step sounded, closer now. With it came slow, laboured breathing, as though something large were forcing itself through the trees with great effort.

"We need to move," I whispered. "Now."

Rhodri checked the route once more. "About three hundred and fifty metres south-west. Straight through the gap between those large spruce."

I almost lifted Nathan from the ground and half carried him forwards. Elliot remained behind us, turning every few steps to listen. Rhodri led with his dying mobile, steering us around fallen trees and dense undergrowth.

The breathing drew closer: heavy, rhythmic exhalations from something that sounded far larger than a man. Branches snapped beneath its weight, and vegetation thrashed without any attempt at concealment.

"Faster," I hissed, dragging Nathan onwards as his feet struggled to keep pace.

Elliot spun and switched on his torch. The beam cut between the trunks, skimming the forest floor and tangled branches. Then it found something.

A figure moved among the spruce perhaps thirty metres behind us. It retained the rough outline of a man, but its head was canted at an impossible angle and its limbs seemed loose in their sockets. It advanced with a dislocated, marionette-like gait, pitching forwards and correcting itself in sharp, unnatural jerks.

Elliot held the light upon it for no more than two seconds before it stepped sideways behind a broad trunk and vanished. Those seconds were enough to fix the image in my mind: something that suggested a human being without moving like one.

Nathan began to hyperventilate.

"That's it," he whispered. "That's what killed Gareth. That's what caught me."

Rhodri seized a thick fallen branch and held it like a club, placing himself between us and the place where the figure had disappeared.

"What the hell was that?"

The breathing continued, but it no longer came directly from behind. It moved through the undergrowth on our left, keeping pace and circling towards our route. Whatever followed us understood enough to flank us.

Then Gareth's voice drifted from between the trees, perfectly clear and horribly close.

"I'll stay within shouting distance."

A pause followed, filled by the heavy breathing.

"You might miss something extraordinary."

Nathan made a strangled sound. Elliot kept his torch trained on the woods, but its beam seemed pitifully small against the surrounding blackness. Every shadow might conceal the thing. Every trunk offered it cover.

"We run," I said. The decision arrived with cold certainty. "Don't look back and don't stop. Get to the campsite."

I hauled Nathan bodily forwards and crashed through the plantation as fast as I could manage. Rhodri dropped the branch and ran ahead, the light from his mobile bouncing wildly as he checked the route. Elliot stayed close behind, sweeping his torch from side to side without pausing to examine the shadows.

The breathing behind us changed into a low, guttural sound which might have been an attempt at speech. Then, in Gareth's voice, it called, "I'm not mad."

Branches broke as the thing abandoned its circling approach and came directly after us.

Nathan's weight made every stride a battle. Roots caught at my shoes, low boughs struck my face and fallen trunks appeared without warning. I stumbled repeatedly but remained upright, concentrating upon the faint orange glow that had begun to show between the trees.

Rhodri's mobile died during the final hundred metres. Its screen went black, leaving Elliot's torch and the distant fire to guide us.

The sounds behind us intensified: pounding steps, tortured breathing and that dreadful voice trying out phrases it had heard beside our fire.

Then orange light flickered ahead.

Our campsite appeared through the trees, the fire still burning and my battered dark-blue Vauxhall Astra parked where I had left it. It looked like safety, or at least a convincing imitation of it.

Elliot reached the clearing first and turned, shining his torch back into the plantation. Rhodri and I emerged with Nathan sagging between us. At once, the forest fell silent again. That sudden silence frightened me more than the pursuit had.

We lowered Nathan into a camp chair beside the fire. He buried his face in his hands while Elliot remained at the edge of the clearing, sweeping his torch across the trees.

Rhodri began hurling our equipment towards the Astra.

"We're leaving," he said. His voice shook, but there was no hesitation in it. "We're packing and going now."

I stared at the black wall surrounding our fire. Whatever had chased us remained out there, watching and waiting beyond the reach of the light. Nathan had been right. Something was loose in the plantation. Something had attacked him, and Gareth lay dead beneath the slate.

"Get everything into the car," I said, grabbing sleeping bags. "We're not staying another minute."

Rhodri helped Nathan rise. His legs were steadier now, although he still needed support as Rhodri guided him to the front passenger seat.

"We have to call the police," Nathan said. His voice had regained some strength. "They need to know about Gareth. They have to recover him."

I shoved the camping stove and cooking gear into a holdall without arranging any of it. "There's no mobile signal here. We call 999 when we reach the valley."

Elliot stayed at the edge of the pitch, his torch moving ceaselessly across the plantation. Its beam revealed spruce trunks, larch branches and patches of birch, but his rigid posture showed that he expected the figure to appear at any moment.

I yanked at our tent without bothering to collapse the poles properly. The fabric tore, and I stuffed the whole tangled mass into the boot. Sleeping bags, food containers, spare clothes, Nathan's cigarettes and the first-aid kit followed. My hands worked from habit, but my eyes kept returning to the darkness.

Rhodri threw in water bottles and the handheld GPS. We abandoned the folding table beside the fire, along with cider tins and scattered food packaging. Careful packing no longer mattered. Nor did most of what we had brought.

A branch snapped in the woods behind Elliot. The sound was sharp and deliberate, as though something heavy had trodden upon it without caring whether we heard.

Elliot spun and drove the torch beam between the trees. It showed nothing.

"Time to go," he said, retreating towards the car without turning his back on the plantation.

I hurled the last holdall into the boot. Elliot climbed into the rear beside Rhodri, and I slammed the boot shut and ran to the driver's door. The keys slipped against my shaking fingers before I forced them into the ignition.

The Astra's engine caught on the second attempt. I threw the car into reverse.

Our headlights swept across Blackthorn Ridge Campsite as I reversed away from the fire pit, illuminating the scattered remains of the weekend we were abandoning. Cider tins, food packaging and the folding table we had never managed to use. All of it left behind in our rush to escape whatever was hunting us in those woods.

As the battered dark-blue Vauxhall Astra backed towards the rough forestry track, its beams passed over the edge of the plantation where we had heard the branch snap.

Nothing moved between the trees. There was no roughly human figure bent at impossible angles, no unnaturally canted head, no eyes reflecting our lights. Only empty darkness, which somehow felt more threatening than anything solid we might have seen.

I put the car into first and pressed the accelerator, spraying loose stones behind us as we fled Blackthorn Ridge. The track was barely wide enough for the Astra, with spruce pressing close on both sides. Our campfire dwindled in the rear-view mirror until it vanished altogether, leaving nothing behind us but the black forest.

"What happened to you out there?" Rhodri asked quietly as we negotiated the first steep bend. "After we split up to look for Gareth, I mean."

Nathan sat rigidly in the front passenger seat, staring through the windscreen. When he answered, however, his voice was steady.

"I heard Gareth calling for help. His voice was coming from deeper in the woods, as if he was hurt or lost. So I followed it."

My headlights carved a narrow tunnel through the darkness ahead. Beyond it, everything was invisible. I kept our speed as high as I dared, taking bends that would have seemed reckless under any other circumstances.

"But it wasn't Gareth," Nathan continued. "It sounded exactly like him, but when I got close to where the voice was coming from, there was nobody there. Just empty woods. That was when I realised something was wrong."

Elliot leaned forwards from the rear seat. "What do you mean, exactly like him?"

"A perfect imitation. The same Welsh accent, the same tone, the same way he pronounced things. It even used phrases I'd heard him say earlier at the campsite."

"But Gareth was already dead by then, wasn't he?" Rhodri asked.

"Already lying beneath that slate scree with his neck broken."

The forestry track began its steep descent towards the valley road, and I had to keep pressure on the brakes to stop us gathering too much speed. The Astra's engine whined as we rounded one hairpin bend after another. Nathan rubbed at the four parallel wounds across his cheek. The matching injuries on his forearms looked even worse in the dashboard glow.

"Something grabbed me from behind while I was standing there, trying to work out where the voice had gone," he said. "Its hands were bigger than any person's should have been. It was strong enough to lift me off the ground without any effort. It dragged me over to that fallen beech and just left me there."

"Left you?" I asked. "Why would it do that?"

"I think it was going after you lot. Maybe it was using me as bait, or just getting me out of the way while it hunted the rest of you."

The thought turned my stomach. Whatever had killed Gareth and attacked Nathan had been intelligent enough to plan. It had separated us and tried to pick us off one by one.

If we had not found Nathan when we did, if we had spent any longer searching those woods alone...

We drove in silence for the next hour. The steep minor road gradually levelled as we descended towards the floor of the Elan Valley. My hands had stopped shaking, but I kept checking the rear-view mirror, half expecting to see something following us down from the hills. The forest on either side looked no different from the place we had escaped: endless dark trees capable of concealing anything.

Rhodri dozed fitfully behind me, exhausted by the collapse that followed the night's terror. Elliot remained awake beside him, silent now. Nathan stared through the passenger window at the dark landscape passing outside.

None of us spoke about what we had seen, but I knew they were replaying the same images that tormented me: Gareth's body twisted beneath the scree, already cold and disturbingly stiff despite the short time since he had left us; the figure slipping between the trees with its dislocated, marionette-like gait; its head tilted at an angle no living person's should have held.

The first mobile mast appeared on a distant ridge as the sky began to brighten behind the mountains. Dawn was still some way off, but the absolute blackness was fading into deep blue. I checked my mobile and saw two bars of reception, our first connection to the outside world since shortly after we had passed the last village on Friday afternoon.

At the end of the valley road, I pulled on to the forecourt of a petrol station beside the junction with the A470. The fluorescent lights above the pumps seemed painfully harsh after two days of firelight and torch beams. They also felt safe in a way I had never appreciated before that weekend.

I rang 999 and asked for the police and an ambulance. The police control-room operator answered at once. I gave our location, Gareth Pritchard's name and the approximate coordinates of the place where we had found his body. I explained that Nathan was injured and that Gareth appeared to have fallen beneath a slate slope and broken his neck.

The conversation was brief and professional. Dyfed-Powys Police would send officers to meet us, while paramedics and volunteer mountain rescue were contacted to organise the recovery.

While we waited, I bought coffees and cheese-and-pickle sandwiches from the petrol station shop. None of us had any appetite.

Elliot sat on the bonnet of the Astra, watching the valley road that led back towards the Cambrian Mountains. Rhodri paced around the forecourt, repeatedly checking his mobile now that he had reception again. Nathan rang his girlfriend, Leah Morgan, although I could not hear what he said to her.

The sun was fully above the hills by the time the first uniformed police officers arrived. Paramedics followed, and a marked 4x4 carrying a volunteer mountain rescue team pulled on to the forecourt about twenty minutes later.

We told our story three times to three different people, and with each repetition it seemed less real. Gareth Pritchard had been camping alone at Blackthorn Ridge for about three weeks, after his wife, Catrin, had left him in April. He had been watching the pulsing blue-white lights for roughly two weeks and had seen them every night during the last week. He claimed they emerged near the southern plantation boundary between midnight and 03:00, then travelled north-east towards Cwm Du Ridge.

We described his growing obsession and how he had followed one of the lights into the woods. We explained that Nathan and Elliot had gone after him, that Rhodri and I had later mounted our own search, and that we had found Elliot beside Gareth's body beneath the short slate scree. We told them about finding Nathan farther into the plantation, injured and semi-conscious against a storm-felled beech. We reported the voice that had lured him away and the thing that had attacked him afterwards.

I left out the clearest description of the figure that had pursued us through the forest. In the bright Sunday morning, facing police officers in clean uniforms beside their vehicles, that part seemed too impossible to say aloud. The others did not contradict me.

Let the police believe Gareth had fallen down the scree and Nathan had become disorientated in the dark. Let them find their own explanation for the four wounds on his cheek and forearms, and for the way his voice still trembled whenever he spoke about the hands that had lifted him from the ground.

We gave the mountain rescue volunteers the coordinates, our Ordnance Survey map references and the best directions we could provide. Gareth's body remained where we had found it. With Nathan injured and that thing circling us in the woods, there had been no possibility of bringing him back.

As the police, paramedics and mountain rescue team prepared to head up the valley in the marked 4x4s, I realised that everything between the four of us had changed permanently. We had shared something in those woods that we would never be able to explain to anyone else, something that had shown us how thin the boundary was between the ordinary world and whatever waited in the darkness beyond it.

Nathan climbed back into the front passenger seat and lit a cigarette with hands that were finally steady. Elliot got in behind him, no longer searching the tree line for movement. Rhodri settled into the other rear seat and closed his eyes, ready to sleep for the first time in twenty-four hours.

I started the Astra, pulled out on to the A470 and drove us home.

In my rear-view mirror, the Cambrian Mountains looked peaceful and beautiful in the morning light. Nothing in that sunlit landscape betrayed what they had concealed only a few hours before.