The Lost Lights of Cwm Derwen

The sun was already brushing the ridge when I noticed it through the kitchen window. That golden light on the mountains meant I had perhaps an hour before full darkness, and everyone in Cwm Derwen knew what that meant.

Stay indoors. Lock the doors.

Do not even peek through the curtains.

I had been staring at Callum Price's message for ten minutes.

Party at The Miner's Rest tonight. You coming?

I was 30 years old and still felt like a boy asking permission to stay out late. That was what living in these mountains did to you. Whenever the sun began to set, I heard my grandfather's voice in my head.

"The lost lights take what they want, Rhys."

Nineteen people had vanished since I was a child, and not one body had ever been found.

The Miner's Rest was in Bryn Glas, about 18 miles along the winding mountain road. If I left immediately, I could reach it before darkness settled properly. Getting home was the problem.

"You're not seriously thinking of going out tonight."

Bethan came into the kitchen with Iwan balanced on her hip. Our four-year-old son was rubbing sleep from his eyes. She had seen the mobile in my hand and probably recognised the expression on my face.

"It's just Callum's thing at The Miner's Rest. I could be back by-"

"The Whitakers."

She said it flatly, as if those two words explained everything. They did.

The previous month, the whole family - mum, dad and two children - had broken down on the A487 at about eleven at night. Their estate car was found two days later with its doors open and its hazard lights still flashing. The Whitakers had vanished like all the others.

I put my mobile on the worktop. "I'll be careful."

"Leave early. Take the main A-road back."

"That adds nearly an hour."

"I know."

I took my keys from the hook beside the door. "I'll take it anyway."

Iwan stirred against Bethan's shoulder and looked at me with the large green eyes he had inherited from my side of the family.

"Daddy, are you going to see the pretty lights?"

The words struck me like ice water.

I crouched until we were eye to eye and put my hands on his small shoulders.

"Iwan, listen to me. If you ever see lights outside at night, any lights that move or dance or look pretty, you don't follow them. You don't even look at them. You come and fetch Mummy or Daddy straight away. Do you understand?"

He nodded with solemn concentration. Children in Cwm Derwen learnt those rules before they learnt to tie their shoelaces.

Bethan kissed my forehead. "Message me when you get there and when you leave."

"I promise."

I went out to my pickup. The evening air already carried the crisp edge that meant autumn had settled into the valley in earnest. Across the valley, the ridge was turning purple and the first stars were appearing. Within an hour, the whole place would be different. Dangerous.

But The Miner's Rest would be bright and warm, filled with people, laughter and ordinary problems such as who was buying the next round. For a few hours, I could pretend I lived somewhere else. Somewhere you could drive at night without checking your rear-view mirror for things that should not exist.

I started the engine and pulled out of our gravel drive, the headlights cutting through the gathering dusk. In the wing mirror, I watched our house recede. Bethan and Iwan were silhouetted in the kitchen window. They looked safe there, surrounded by electric light and solid walls.

Eighteen miles to Bryn Glas. I could make it easily if I did not waste time.

The radio crackled with static as I joined the main road. Folk-rock fought through the interference, which always worsened after sunset. I switched it off. The silence felt better: only the hum of tyres on tarmac and the steady labour of the engine climbing the first hill.

Behind me, the last of the sunlight disappeared beyond the ridge and the mountains went dark.

The Welsh whisky burnt on the way down, although not as much as the third measure. Or perhaps it was the fourth. I had lost count somewhere around the time Callum began telling everyone about his promotion to shift supervisor at the timber yard and sawmill.

The Miner's Rest buzzed with Friday-night energy. People had come from three different towns for decent drink and live music. The band in the corner was mangling old folk-rock songs, but nobody seemed to mind. Nia Pritchard was laughing at something Saira Khan had whispered to her. Both women were flushed with drink in the warm crush around our corner table.

"Another round."

Callum caught the barmaid's attention. She was a tired-looking woman in her fifties who had probably been serving pints there since before I was born.

"I'm all right," I said, but Callum was already holding up four fingers.

"Come on, Rhys. When was the last time you got out without Bethan checking the time every five minutes?"

Nia snorted. "She's only looking out for him, unlike some people."

She gave Callum a look that could have stripped paint.

"What's that meant to mean?"

"Nothing. Only that some of us remember why people don't drive these roads after dark."

Saira leant forwards, her dark eyes bright with alcohol and curiosity. "Do you really believe all that? The lights and the disappearances?"

"My gran saw them three times," Nia said. "She said they looked like coloured baubles drifting among the trees, except they moved with purpose. As if they were hunting."

Callum rolled his eyes. "Your gran also thought television signals were a form of government mind control."

The barmaid returned with our whiskies and set them down with the practised efficiency of someone who had done it ten thousand times. I stared at mine, the amber liquid catching the coloured glow behind the bar.

My mobile vibrated against my leg. Bethan. I had promised to message when I arrived, but that had been two hours earlier.

"Excuse me."

I slid out from the table with the mobile in my hand.

The night air struck me like a slap when I stepped outside, cutting through the whisky haze in my head. The pub car park was mostly empty, with only a handful of cars and pickups beneath the single streetlamp. My breath clouded in front of me. The temperature had fallen while we were inside.

I rang Bethan. She answered before the first ring had finished.

"Rhys, I was beginning to worry."

"Sorry. Lost track of time."

The words were slightly slurred. I could hear it, even if she could not.

"How much have you had to drink?"

"Just a couple of pints. I'm fine."

Silence. Bethan had a way of making silence feel like judgement.

"I'll be home soon," I said. "An hour and a half. Perhaps two."

"Be careful. And, Rhys, don't take any shortcuts."

After she ended the call, I stood in the car park for several minutes, hoping the cold would clear my head. The mountains rose around Bryn Glas like black walls, hiding half the stars.

Somewhere beyond them, our house sat quiet in Cwm Derwen. Bethan would be checking the locks and making certain every curtain was tightly closed.

I walked to the pickup and climbed behind the wheel, fumbling the keys from my pocket. The engine caught on the second attempt. I sat with it idling and both hands resting on the steering wheel.

The dashboard clock read 23:23 on Friday, 16 October 2026.

A tap on the passenger window made me jump. Callum's face appeared behind the glass, grinning as he swayed slightly. I lowered the window.

"You're not leaving already, are you?"

"Bethan's waiting up."

"Of course she is." He leant against the pickup, his breath rising in pale clouds. "Listen, I know a way you can get home half an hour faster."

"Callum-"

"Hear me out. You know the Bwlch y Saer forestry road? It cuts through the pass and brings you back onto the A487. It's half the distance of going round on the main road."

I stared at him. "That road goes through the deepest part of the forest."

"So?"

"So that's where-"

I stopped myself. Even drunk, I knew better than to say it aloud.

That was where people saw things.

Callum laughed, and the sound carried too far through the still air. "Things like what? Bigfoot? UFOs? You know what it is? Mist, Rhys. Or forestry workers with torches. Maybe a few youngsters trying to frighten people."

He took out his mobile and flicked through several videos.

"I drove it last week with Saira. Middle of the night. No trouble. Look."

The screen showed shaky footage from inside a moving car, its headlights illuminating a narrow gravel road between tall ranks of spruce. Saira's voice came through the tiny speaker, laughing at something. The timestamp read 02:17. There was nothing in the video except trees and rocks.

I handed the mobile back. "My grandfather always said-"

"Your grandfather lived in a different age, before science explained these things."

Callum straightened, suddenly serious. "Look, I understand. The stories are part of growing up here. But we're adults now. We don't have to spend our whole lives frightened of shadows."

The whisky made everything feel remote and unreal, as if I were watching another man's conversation. Callum was right about one thing.

I was tired of being afraid. Tired of checking the time every few minutes after sunset. Tired of taking the long way round. Tired of living like a prisoner in my own village.

"Half an hour faster," he said. "Easy. You could be home before midnight."

I glanced at the dashboard clock. It was 23:26. If I took the main A-road, I would not be home until nearly one in the morning. Bethan would remain awake the entire time, pacing and checking her mobile.

But if Callum was right about the shortcut...

"Message me when you're home safely," he said, stepping away.

I put the pickup into gear and pulled out of The Miner's Rest car park, turning left towards the mountains instead of right towards the main A-road. In the rear-view mirror, I watched the pub's illuminated sign shrink until it was only a pink glow against the darkness.

It was a reckless decision. I knew I was impaired, knew I had no business driving at all, let alone taking an isolated road at night. Even then, with the alcohol blunting every sensible instinct I had, I understood that. I drove on anyway.

The approach to Bwlch y Saer began as ordinary tarmac. After five miles, it deteriorated into a short stretch of broken surfacing before reaching a timber wildlife gate. Beyond the gate, the forestry road was gravel all the way.

My headlights carved a tunnel through the upland forest. Spruce trunks crowded close to the track, interspersed with larch and patches of older native woodland. The radio crackled with static, losing the old rock programme from Bryn Glas and finding nothing but white noise.

At 23:47, I passed the wooden sign marking Bwlch y Saer and wildlife-gate number 6. Beyond it, the gravel road vanished into absolute darkness, narrow and twisting between trees whose oldest roots predated my great-grandfather.

I pressed the accelerator and drove into the black heart of the mountains, where the old warnings seemed to live and breathe in the spaces between the trees.

The Bwlch y Saer forestry road was narrower than I remembered. Thick branches scraped along the pickup's sides like fingernails on metal. The whisky was wearing off quickly, replaced by the brutal clarity that comes when the body realises it may be in serious danger.

Five miles in, my headlights caught something moving between the trees.

A soft blue orb, about the size of a football, floated beside the pickup, matching me perfectly at 35 mph.

My hands tightened around the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. It had to be a reflection. Perhaps another vehicle's headlights bouncing off low cloud.

Except there was no low cloud and there were no other vehicles.

A second light appeared on the opposite side. This one pulsed green, and the sight of it made my stomach contract.

I accelerated to 45 mph. The lights matched my speed without effort. They moved as if alive, bobbing and weaving through the trees with purpose.

More appeared ahead, dancing across the road in patterns too precise to be accidental. A red orb dropped from above and hovered directly in front of my windscreen for three seconds before shooting away into the darkness.

Its glare left spots drifting across my vision.

My grandfather Emrys's voice returned to me.

"Gareth Llewellyn followed those lights into the forest in 1990. They found his pickup a fortnight later. Doors open, radio hissing. There was an uncapped thermos in the cab, but Gareth was gone."

I had not known Gareth. In 1990 I had been an infant, if I had even been born when he disappeared. But I knew his face from photographs and from the stories my grandfather had told so often that they felt like memories.

I should have turned round. I should have reversed to the gate and taken the long route home as Bethan had asked. But the road was too narrow to turn, and more lights were appearing behind me, cutting off the way back.

They hemmed me in on every side, a moving constellation pulsing in rhythm like a heartbeat.

As I drove deeper into Bwlch y Saer, the lights began to form shapes. First a circle, then a triangle, then something far too much like a human figure with outstretched arms. The blue orb that had followed me since the fifth mile shot ahead and joined the others in their impossible dance.

At the seventh-mile marker, they converged in the centre of the road.

The lights merged into a single glowing mass and rose from the gravel, taking shape as I watched. It stood roughly nine feet tall and possessed the general outline of a human body, but every detail was wrong. Its arms contained too many hinged joints. Its head tilted at angles that would have snapped a human neck. Within the glow, darker shapes shifted like the shadows of bones.

I stamped on the brake, but the pickup was travelling too quickly for the narrow gravel road. The ABS shuddered through the pedal as I fought to slow down.

Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty.

The figure did not move. It stood in the middle of the road as though the road belonged to it.

Twenty yards.

I wrenched the wheel to the right. The tyres screamed and skidded across loose stone. The pickup lifted onto two wheels for one heart-stopping instant, then crashed down again. My headlights swept across the low barrier, the empty drop beyond it and the enormous trunk of a mature beech at the roadside.

The collision hurled me forwards against the seat belt. The airbag exploded into my face with a noise like a gunshot, filling the cab with white powder that made me cough and choke. My forehead struck something hard, perhaps the steering wheel or the door frame.

Pain tore through my skull. Warm blood ran into my left eye.

The engine died with a shuddering cough. Steam hissed from beneath the crumpled bonnet, and the cab filled with the smells of coolant and hot metal. My ribs ached where the seat belt had caught me. Every breath felt as though somebody were tightening a band around my chest.

Through the spiderwebbed windscreen, I watched the lights gather again.

They moved differently now. More deliberately.

The blue orb circled the pickup once, then twice, before settling beside the driver's window. Up close, it was beautiful in a way that made my skin crawl. Its light swirled and pulsed, and for an instant I thought I saw something moving within it.

A face, perhaps, or what had once been a face.

Other lights joined it. Green, red, yellow and purple. Colours too intense and pure to belong in nature.

They surrounded the pickup completely, floating level with the windows and pressing close without quite touching the glass. The temperature inside the cab dropped by about 12 degrees Celsius in as many seconds.

I fumbled for my mobile with shaking hands. Blood from the gash in my forehead dripped onto its cracked screen. The signal indicator flickered between nothing and a single bar.

I rang Bethan. She answered before the first ring had finished.

"Rhys? Thank God. Where are you?"

My voice came out scarcely above a whisper. "I've crashed."

There was a moment of dead silence.

"Where?"

"Bwlch y Saer forestry road. Past wildlife gate 6, near the seventh-mile marker."

I wiped blood from my eye and looked at the lights surrounding the pickup. They brightened when I spoke, as if they were listening.

"The lights are here."

Her voice became cold with a fear I had never heard in it before. "Oh God. Rhys, listen to me. I'm calling 999. Stay on the line while I send them the location."

I heard her use another phone, giving the operator the forestry-road name, the gate number and the nearest marker. The intermittent signal crackled.

"Bethan-"

"Promise me you won't leave the pickup. Whatever happens, whatever you see or hear, stay inside. It isn't absolute protection, but Grandad Emrys always said walls and iron could slow them. Promise me."

Through the passenger window, a yellow orb drifted closer. Shadows moved like smoke within its glow, gathering into almost familiar forms: a woman's silhouette, then a child reaching out with tiny hands.

"I promise," I whispered. "I love you."

"I love you too. The police are coming. Hold on."

The reception failed and the line went dead.

I stared at the mobile for several seconds, then looked up at the lights pressing against every window. They had heard every word, and somehow I knew they were smiling.

The blue orb that had followed me from the fifth mile floated to the driver's window. It hovered perhaps six inches from the glass, pulsing with a cold light that made my skin tighten.

This time I could see inside it.

A face stared back through the glow. The features were human but stretched and twisted, as if pulled through deep water. The mouth hung open in a soundless scream.

The eyes were the worst part. They moved. They tracked from side to side, then focused on me with an intelligence that turned my stomach.

I knew that face.

Gareth Llewellyn, who had vanished in 1990, 36 years earlier. I recognised him from the old photographs and my grandfather's stories. Emrys had described Gareth as too curious for his own good, forever poking about in places where he had no business being. Search parties had combed the mountains for weeks and found nothing beyond his abandoned pickup.

Gareth's mouth moved within the light, forming words I could not hear but somehow understood.

Help me.

More orbs crowded the windows, each containing a face. Some I recognised as people who had vanished over the years, names whispered in chapel and faces preserved in framed photographs on mantelpieces. Others were strangers, perhaps from decades or centuries before, all wearing the same expression of trapped horror.

The radio came alive without my touching it.

Static filled the cab, loud enough to make my ears ring. The tuner moved by itself, cycling through frequencies that should not have reached this deep into the mountains. Every one carried the same low, throbbing buzz. It vibrated through my bones and made my teeth ache.

It was not random. It had a rhythm, almost like a heartbeat or slow breathing.

I reached to switch the radio off. The moment my fingers touched the dial, the lights flared.

The buzz grew louder and more insistent. Beneath it, I began to hear something else: dozens of voices, perhaps hundreds, whispering the same words again and again.

Come.

Follow.

Join.

The lights moved into formation above the pickup. They formed a C, then an O, then an M and an E. The word remained suspended for several seconds before dissolving. Other letters replaced it.

FOLLOW.

Then:

JOIN.

I shut my eyes and began reciting the charm my grandfather had taught me. The words returned like muscle memory, handed down from nineteenth-century quarrymen and miners who had encountered the lights in the hills.

"By iron and salt, by running water and morning light, I claim protection for my soul. What walks in darkness has no power over the living. What feeds on fear finds no sustenance here."

When I opened my eyes, the lights had retreated from the pickup. Not far, perhaps 10 feet, but it was something. They wheeled in agitated circles, their glow flickering like candles in a strong wind.

The radio fell silent.

But the lights did not leave. If anything, more were approaching.

Through the trees I saw fresh lights converging from every direction: red, green and shades of purple that hurt when I looked directly at them. They drifted among the spruce and larch like coloured baubles suspended in water, gathering in numbers that made the first encounter seem like a warning.

My mobile vibrated. Bethan again.

"The police are ten minutes away," she said without preamble. "How are you holding up?"

"They're getting bolder."

A green orb passed through the rear window as though the glass were no more substantial than air. It floated inside the cab for a heart-stopping moment, then rose through the roof.

It brushed my shoulder as it passed.

Cold plunged so deeply into me that I felt it in my bones. For that fraction of a second, I sensed something probing my mind. It searched for cracks, weaknesses, ways inside, and I understood that close contact had made it aware of me in a way the others had not been before.

"Rhys?" Bethan said. "What happened? You went quiet."

"One of them came inside." I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself. "It felt as if it was looking for something."

Through the windscreen, I watched more lights stream from the forest. There were dozens now, all different colours, all moving with the same deliberate intelligence. They formed a loose circle around the pickup and pulsed together like a heartbeat made of light.

"Ten minutes," Bethan said, and I heard the fear she was trying to conceal. "Just hold on for ten more minutes."

The lights began to dance. Not randomly now, but in patterns that seemed choreographed. They wove around one another in spirals and figures of eight, building shapes that almost made sense before collapsing into chaos. It was beautiful and horrifying, like angels performing a rite intended for demons.

One red orb separated from the group and floated towards my windscreen.

Inside its glow was a little girl, perhaps six years old, with plaits and a gap-toothed smile. She pressed her hands against the glass from within the light. Although the windscreen separated us, I heard her as clearly as if she were whispering into my ear.

"Daddy, why won't you come and play with us?"

My heart nearly stopped.

For a second, through the red glow and the blood covering one side of my vision, she looked exactly like Iwan. But Iwan was safe at home with Bethan, probably asleep beneath the glow of his dinosaur nightlight.

The little girl's face began to change. Her features shifted like smoke. The plaits lengthened and darkened. Her gap-toothed smile widened beyond the limits of a human mouth. Her eyes turned black and reflected nothing.

"Come and play, Daddy. Come and play for ever."

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands over my ears, but I could still hear her giggling. The sound echoed inside my skull, mingling with radio static and the whispers of all the faces imprisoned in the lights.

When I opened my eyes, the girl was gone. The red orb remained, pulsing with malevolent patience.

Then, in the distance, I heard the most beautiful sound in the world.

Sirens.

Blue emergency lights broke through the forest darkness like salvation made visible. Two marked response cars wound along the narrow gravel road, their headlights sweeping over the trees and illuminating the nightmare that had surrounded me for the previous twenty minutes.

Through my cracked windscreen, I watched Sergeant Alun Davies and PC Jamie Fletcher climb out of the lead car. Alun carried his radio and had one hand near his baton. Jamie raised his torch as they approached. Even from 50 yards away, I could see the tension in their shoulders.

They had clearly seen the orbs surrounding my pickup, dozens of them now, pulsing with that slow rhythm like a heartbeat made of light.

Alun was the older of the two, perhaps in his mid-forties, with grey threaded through his dark hair. He approached with the careful steps of a man who had learnt not to trust what he did not understand. Jamie looked much younger, perhaps recently out of police training college, his confidence still visible in the rigid set of his uniformed posture.

"Sir, can you hear me?" Alun called, stopping about 10 feet from the driver's window. "Stay exactly where you are while we assess the situation."

I tried to reply, but my voice emerged as a croak. Blood had dried across my forehead and my ribs screamed whenever I breathed.

"I'm hurt," I managed. "Crashed trying to avoid them."

Jamie swept his torch beam across the orbs. The light passed through them without effect, as though they occupied another layer of the world.

"What the hell are those things?"

"I don't know," Alun said, although something in his tone suggested that he had at least heard of them. "Some kind of atmospheric phenomenon, perhaps. Ball lightning."

A blue orb drifted towards Jamie and stopped at chest height, about three feet away. Gareth Llewellyn's face appeared again within its glow, his mouth working in a silent scream.

Jamie stepped closer and raised his torch as if it might serve as a weapon.

"Jamie, stay back from it," Alun ordered.

"Come on, Sarge. It's probably a discharge of some kind. There was bad weather earlier."

Jamie laughed, but the sound was forced. The orb brightened and Gareth's features sharpened. His eyes fixed on Jamie. His mouth formed a word I could not hear and yet understood.

Run.

Jamie took out his mobile and began recording.

"This is incredible. I've never seen anything like it. We'll need documentation."

More orbs gathered around him, drawn by his movement, his voice or perhaps his refusal to believe. They formed a loose circle, each containing a face I recognised from old missing-person appeals.

Mei Hughes, who disappeared in 2003.

The Parry twins, lost in 1995.

People who had entered these mountains and never returned.

"Jamie, I'm ordering you to step away from those things now," Alun said.

But Jamie was absorbed by what he was seeing. Perhaps he imagined a chief constable's commendation for documenting the phenomenon behind the disappearances. He reached towards a purple orb floating at shoulder height, extending one finger as if he meant to burst a soap bubble.

"Don't touch it!" I screamed through the broken driver's window.

The instant his fingertip made contact, everything changed.

The purple orb expanded and swallowed his arm to the shoulder. It pulsed once, then twice, and began to pull.

Jamie screamed. The sound was pure terror and pain, echoing through the forest like the cry of a wounded animal. His feet left the ground. The orb dragged him towards the trees while his free arm flailed for something to grasp.

Alun lunged forwards and caught him around the waist, but it was like trying to halt a train with his bare hands.

"Help me!" Jamie's voice broke with panic. "Something's inside my head. It's trying to-"

The orb jerked harder.

Alun's boots slid across the gravel as he fought to hold on, but the force was too great. Jamie was wrenched from his grip and dragged into the darkness between the trees. His screams stopped abruptly after three seconds.

Silence settled over the forest like a blanket.

Alun stood at the edge of the tree line, staring into the darkness where his constable had vanished. His hands shook as he lifted his radio.

"Jamie," he called. "Jamie, respond."

Nothing answered except wind whispering through spruce needles.

The remaining orbs began moving again, circling my pickup more tightly. They had tasted blood now, or whatever passed for blood in their existence.

The blue light bearing Gareth's face drifted closer to Alun. Gareth's mouth shaped fresh words.

You're next.

Alun ran back to the pickup, seized the twisted door handle and hauled it open despite the bent metal.

"We're leaving. Now."

He pulled me from the driver's seat and supported my weight when my legs buckled. Every step drove bolts of pain through my ribs, but I forced myself onwards.

Behind us, the orbs formed letters in the air again.

STAY.

We staggered towards Alun's response car through a tunnel of light. The orbs crowded close on both sides, near enough for me to feel cold radiating from them like winter air.

A green orb brushed Alun's shoulder. He gasped and nearly dropped me.

"Christ. It feels as if something's trying to crawl into my mind."

I caught his arm, steadying both of us. "Keep moving. Don't let it in."

We reached the car. Alun pushed me into the passenger seat and dived behind the wheel. His hand shook as he started the engine. Sweat stood on his forehead despite the cold.

The orbs swarmed around the response car as we pulled away. Alun pressed the accelerator and sent us hurtling down the narrow forestry road. In the wing mirror, I watched the lights pursue us like a river. Dozens of faces hung within their glow, all straining towards the car with desperate hunger.

We reached the A487 at 60 mph.

The lights stopped.

They hovered at the margin of the forest as if they had struck an invisible barrier. Perhaps it was the running water in the drainage culvert, the iron beneath the road or some boundary none of us could see. Whatever the reason, they would not cross onto the A-road.

They pulsed with frustrated energy. One by one, they retreated among the trees and faded until nothing remained but darkness.

Alun did not slow until we passed the bilingual sign marking the edge of the village: "Cwm Derwen - Croeso / Welcome". The boundary appeared to hold as firmly as the A-road that night.

He pulled onto the forecourt of a closed petrol station and left the engine running. Both his hands gripped the steering wheel.

"Twenty years in the force," he said at last. "I'd heard the stories. I'd even kept copies of reports that didn't make sense, more out of professional unease than anything else. But I never accepted the explanation people gave them. I thought it was folklore, panic, perhaps youngsters playing tricks."

I touched the wound on my forehead, where the blood had finally begun to clot. "What happened to Jamie?"

Alun looked back towards the mountains, where the forestry road disappeared into darkness.

"The same thing that happened to the others. He's gone."

He used his radio to ask for a Welsh Ambulance Service crew to meet us on the forecourt.

While we waited, I gave him a brief account of the lights following my pickup, the faces trapped within them and the thing that had tried to enter my mind. He listened without interrupting, noting only the essentials in a small pad. He told me the full statement would have to wait until A&E, where there would be better light and I could be medically assessed.

"You need to get your family out of Cwm Derwen," he said when I had finished. "As soon as practicable. Don't stay in the valley if you can avoid it. Those things appear to mark some of the people they touch, and the old reports suggest they don't give up easily."

"What about you?"

He stared at the notes he would have to turn into a report about his missing constable.

"Somebody has to stay. Somebody has to stop people using that road." He paused. "And somebody has to remember what really happened to Jamie Fletcher."

The ambulance arrived with blue lights flashing. The crew helped me onto a stretcher and secured me inside. As we drove towards Bryn Glas District Hospital, I watched the mountains recede through the rear windows, dark and burdened with secrets that had claimed another victim that night.

But I was alive.

For the moment, at least, I was getting away.

A&E at Bryn Glas District Hospital struck me with the force of fluorescent reality after the nightmare I had escaped. Everything was white, clean and ordinary. It was the kind of place where the worst immediate concerns seemed to be waiting times, forms and layers of NHS bureaucracy, not whether something might crawl into your mind and drag you into the forest.

It was now the early hours of Saturday, 17 October 2026. I sat on an examination trolley while a nurse removed fragments of glass from my hair. I had been assessed and would need to remain under observation for several hours because of the head injury.

Bethan rushed through the doors with Iwan asleep in her arms.

The sight of her face, streaked with tears and taut with the fear that comes from learning your worst nightmares are real, struck me harder than the airbag had.

"Oh God, Rhys."

She hurried to my side. Careful not to wake Iwan, she reached out and touched the dressing over the gash on my forehead.

"When Sergeant Davies rang and said you'd crashed, and then told me about the lights..."

"I'm all right." My voice sounded rougher than I intended. "Battered, but all right."

Iwan shifted against her shoulder, his small face peaceful in sleep. He had no idea that his father had met the monsters from our warnings face to face.

For an instant, I remembered the child in the red orb and the way her face had resembled his in the bloody light.

Daddy, why won't you come and play with us?

I shuddered and forced the memory away.

Dr Anjali Shah approached with a clipboard and the calm efficiency of somebody accustomed to emergencies. She was small and precise, with her dark hair tied in a neat bun and wire-rimmed glasses that made her appear younger than she probably was.

"Mr Morgan, I'm Dr Shah. Let's have a proper look at those injuries."

She worked quickly, checking my pupils with a pen torch, gently examining my ribs and cleaning the cuts on my hands and arms. Her touch was professional but kind. She did not immediately question how I had managed to drive into a tree on a narrow forestry road.

"You have a mild concussion," she said at last, making notes. "Three cracked ribs on the left side and several lacerations, but nothing that shouldn't heal. We'll observe you for several hours because of the concussion. If your neurological checks remain normal, you may be discharged later this morning, provided a responsible adult stays with you."

She discussed head-injury monitoring, warning signs that would require an immediate return to A&E and follow-up with my GP. She also mentioned that short-term medication could be considered if pain or sleep became difficult, but only with care while the concussion was being monitored.

"You're lucky," she said.

Lucky.

I nearly laughed.

Lucky would have meant listening to Bethan and taking the main A-road home. Luckier still would have meant not driving after several pints and measures of whisky. Lucky would have been staying at The Miner's Rest until morning or ringing for a taxi.

Lucky could have meant many things that did not involve meeting the lost lights face to face.

Sergeant Alun Davies appeared in the doorway. His uniform was rumpled, and one hand still trembled slightly as he took out his notebook. He looked as if he had aged ten years in the previous hour.

"Mrs Morgan, I'm sorry to intrude, but I need to take your husband's formal statement while the details are still fresh."

Bethan shifted Iwan to her other arm. Her jaw settled into the stubborn line that meant she was fighting panic.

"Can't this wait until morning?"

"I'm afraid not. What happened tonight?"

Sergeant Alun Davies paused, glancing around the quiet A&E cubicle as if checking for eavesdroppers.

"This is the worst incident we've had in twenty years. I need everything documented."

He pulled a chair beside the examination trolley and clicked his pen. The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the sterile hush of Bryn Glas District Hospital.

"Tell me everything, starting from when you first saw them."

So I did. I told him about the blue orb following my car from wildlife gate number five, about the lights forming shapes over the gravel road, and about the faces trapped inside them.

Alun wrote without comment, his pen scratching quickly across the paper. When I reached the part about Gareth Llewellyn's face inside the blue orb, his pen stopped.

"You're certain it was Gareth?"

"Positive. I recognised him from the old photographs. My grandfather, Emrys Morgan, used to tell me about him."

Gareth had vanished in 1990, before I was old enough to remember him, but his face had been part of the folklore of Cwm Derwen throughout my childhood.

Alun set down his pen and rubbed his temples.

"I've spent twenty years in the force telling myself these stories were nothing but local folklore. Youngsters playing tricks with torches, frightened people seeing patterns in the dark. I kept notes because some of the reports troubled me professionally, but I never accepted what people claimed they meant."

He looked up, and I saw the weight of that night settling upon him.

"But after what happened to Jamie..."

His voice faded. Bethan tightened her arms around Iwan, who was asleep against her chest.

"What happened to your constable?" she asked.

"He's gone," Alun said. "Taken."

He picked up his pen again, but his hand was trembling.

"Those things have become more aggressive over the past six months. They've appeared closer to the village, even around dawn and dusk. They used to be seen only in complete darkness."

He turned to a fresh page and began writing a list.

"Three families have left their homes on the eastern slope after seeing lights pressed against their windows at night. The Cartwrights, the Nowaks and the Tanakas. All of them packed up and left without giving notice at work."

Dr Anjali Shah finished cleaning the cut across my palm and looked up.

"I've treated more anxiety cases recently," she said. "People coming in with panic attacks and insomnia, reporting nightmares about lights among the trees. I thought it was seasonal depression."

"Dyfed-Powys Police sent additional response officers here twice," Alun continued. "They found nothing and dismissed the reports as collective panic. Frightened villagers spooked by shadows."

There was bitterness in his voice.

"They'll have to reconsider when they explain what happened to PC Fletcher."

Bethan rocked Iwan gently when he stirred.

"How long has this been happening?"

"The warnings go back to nineteenth-century quarrymen and miners," Alun said. "Iron, salt, running water and dawn. Those were the protections they passed down. But the frequency and aggression are new."

He reached into his jacket and produced a buff cardboard folder.

"I've been keeping unofficial records. Wildlife cameras used by Natural Resources Wales contractors have caught some disturbing images."

He opened the folder and spread several photographs over the trolley. The pictures were grainy infrared images, but they were clear enough to tighten my stomach. Orbs hung among spruce, larch and the twisted branches of older native woodland. In some photographs they appeared scattered at random; in others they formed perfect geometric patterns, too precise to be natural.

Shadowy figures were visible inside several lights. They looked human, but their bodies seemed stretched or crushed, as though they had been forced into spaces that could not contain them.

Alun selected one photograph and placed it in front of me.

"A contractor's camera took this three weeks ago near Bwlch y Saer forestry road."

A blue orb floated about 6 feet above the ground. Within its glow, unmistakable even through the grain of the image, was Gareth Llewellyn's face. His mouth was open in a scream and his eyes were wide with terror, madness or both. He stared directly into the camera as though he had known it was there.

Cold spread through me.

"That's impossible."

"Gareth disappeared thirty-six years ago," Alun said. "But there he is."

Bethan bent to look, then recoiled.

"Dear God. Are you saying those things don't kill people? They trap them?"

"I don't know what they do. I know only that Gareth's face has appeared in that blue light at least a dozen times over the past six months. Always the same expression. Always looking as though he's trying to scream."

Dr Shah had fallen very quiet. Her pen hovered above my chart.

"I need to ask whether you've experienced anything unusual since the incident. Headaches, nausea, voices or other disturbances?"

"Why?" Bethan asked sharply.

"Because I've treated several people in recent months who claimed to have close encounters with unexplained lights. They reported the same symptoms afterwards: persistent nightmares, the feeling of being watched, voices speaking languages they didn't recognise."

I remembered the green orb passing through the bodywork of my car, the sudden drop of about 12 degrees Celsius, the cold reaching my bones and the sensation of something trying to crawl into my mind.

"One came inside the car," I said. "Only for a second. It felt as if something was trying to get into my head."

Dr Shah made a note.

"We'll continue monitoring your head injury while you're here. We can discuss short-term medication if sleep becomes impossible, but you must be supervised by another adult after discharge and contact your GP for follow-up. Return to A&E immediately if the headaches, nausea or confusion worsen, or if you experience nightmares, voices or visual disturbances."

Alun gathered the photographs and returned them to the folder.

"Mr Morgan, I'm going to be direct. Those things appear to mark some people after close contact. Once they have touched you, they return until they get whatever they want. Solid walls may delay them, but they aren't an absolute defence."

"What do they want?"

"I wish I knew. You should take your family away from Cwm Derwen as soon as practicable. Go somewhere distant and don't tell people where."

Bethan stood, still holding Iwan.

"We can stay with my sister near Norwich. Carys has been asking us to visit."

"Good. Don't remain in the valley while you make arrangements. Stay with relatives or in a well-lit hotel, and return only in daylight to pack."

Alun closed his notebook.

"I'll file the collision report, but certain details won't appear in it. Officially, you lost control while avoiding a deer."

At the curtain, he looked back.

"Unofficially, what happened tonight will happen again. Those things are growing bolder and coming closer to the village. It is only a matter of time before they stop hiding in the forestry altogether."

After he left, we sat beneath the bright hospital lights, surrounded by the ordinary sounds of medical equipment, rubber-soled shoes and distant conversation. Normality felt fragile, like a shell thin enough to crack beneath a fingernail.

"We should leave," Bethan said at last.

I nodded, although I wondered whether it could ever be that simple. The lights had followed me to the main A-road and halted there, as if some boundary held them back. But boundaries weakened. Rules changed. Running might buy us time and nothing more.

I spent the next several hours under observation. Dr Shah confirmed that I had concussion and cracked ribs, but no bleeding inside my skull and no injury requiring admission. Early on Saturday, 17 October 2026, I was discharged with painkillers, head-injury instructions, a sheaf of NHS forms and repeated warnings that Bethan must supervise me and bring me back if my symptoms worsened.

We did as Alun advised. Bethan, Iwan and I stayed outside the valley with relatives while we arranged the move, returning to our post-war semi-detached house in Cwm Derwen only during daylight to pack. It took two weeks to put our lives into boxes.

On Friday, 30 October, we made a calculated exception. The removal van was due at first light the next morning, and we needed to be there to finish packing and let the crew in. We decided to spend one final night in the house. We knew it was dangerous, but we told ourselves the lights had never crossed the village boundary and that dawn was only a few hours away.

By evening, boxes stood in every corner of the living room like cardboard tombstones, each labelled in Bethan's careful handwriting: KITCHEN, IWAN'S TOYS, BOOKS.

I sealed another and added it to the stack beside the front door. By Saturday night, 31 October 2026, we were meant to be at Carys's home near Norwich, starting a new life while we worked out what came next.

The house felt wrong. It was not merely hollowed out by packing. It felt watched, as though something pressed against the windows whenever our backs were turned. Every shadow seemed deeper, every creak of the floorboards like a footstep belonging to someone else.

Bethan entered carrying Iwan, who clutched his stuffed dinosaur and stared at the chaos in confusion. She had scarcely let him out of her sight since the crash.

"That's the last of the kitchen things," she said, setting him beside his toy box. "I've left out enough for breakfast."

I reached for another empty box, but my mobile buzzed. Callum Price's name appeared on the screen, and my stomach tightened. He had rung every few days since the incident, apologising repeatedly for suggesting Bwlch y Saer, as if he had forced me onto that road.

"Hello, Callum."

"Rhys, mate, I'm so sorry. I keep thinking about that night, about what I said outside The Miner's Rest. If I hadn't suggested the forestry road-"

"It wasn't your fault."

I had said it every time, but he never listened.

"I chose to drive after Welsh whisky and pints of bitter. I chose the shortcut. It was reckless, and that's on me."

Bethan glanced over. She still blamed Callum, although we both knew I could have refused.

"Listen," he said, lowering his voice. "Things are getting strange here. Properly strange."

I went into the kitchen so Bethan would not hear.

"What do you mean?"

"Saira Khan saw lights outside her flat three nights running. They floated against the glass as if they were trying to get in. She called the police, but they were gone before anyone arrived."

My skin turned cold.

"Is she all right?"

"She left yesterday. Packed whatever fitted in her car and drove to her cousin's in Bristol. Didn't even give notice at work."

I pictured Saira laughing in our corner of The Miner's Rest, dismissing tales of coloured baubles drifting among the trees. Two weeks earlier, she had been sceptical. Now she was running.

"Nia Pritchard moved back in with her parents in Shropshire last week," Callum continued. "She couldn't sleep. Kept hearing voices outside her park home. She lives near the forestry, so perhaps the lights reached her there."

It was not our conversation at the pub that had marked them. The phenomenon itself was spreading beyond Bwlch y Saer, reaching people whose homes stood near the trees.

"What about you?" I asked.

Callum was silent for a moment.

"I've seen them too. Not as close as you did. They appear at the edge of my property around midnight, floating between the trees and watching the house."

"Then leave. Pack and go tonight."

"I can't."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because somebody has to document this. The village is emptying, but nobody will say why. People vanish or flee, and the authorities talk about economic decline, anxiety, anything that sounds ordinary."

Excitement crept into his voice, and it frightened me more than anything else he had said.

"Callum, don't even think about it."

"Think about what?"

"Filming them. Getting footage."

"Maybe. If I caught clear video, I could sell it to a broadcaster or a streaming documentary producer."

"They took PC Jamie Fletcher. They've taken people for generations."

"They didn't take you. You survived. Perhaps there's a way to stay safe near them. Some kind of protection."

"There is no protection."

My voice came out louder than I intended. In the living room, I heard Bethan hush Iwan.

"The only chance is to get as far away as possible."

"I'll be careful. I'll use a long lens and film from a distance. I won't go close enough for them to-"

"Listen to me. Don't go looking for those things. Promise me."

Silence answered.

"I can't promise that, mate. This could be the story of a lifetime. It could change everything."

The call ended.

I stood in the empty kitchen, staring at the mobile and knowing I had heard my friend sign his own death warrant. Callum had always been reckless, always hunting for the next opportunity. This was different. This was suicide with a camera attached.

Bethan appeared in the doorway.

"Everything all right?"

"Callum plans to film the lights. He thinks he can sell the footage."

Her face drained of colour.

"Dear God. Can you talk him out of it?"

"I tried. He thinks a long lens will keep him safe."

She leaned against the frame, suddenly exhausted.

"Cwm Derwen is falling apart. Everyone who encounters those things is running or..."

She did not finish.

"Or losing their mind," I said.

Iwan wandered into the kitchen, dragging his dinosaur by one leg.

"Dad, why are we putting everything in boxes?"

I knelt until our eyes were level.

"We're going to see Aunt Carys near Norwich. We'll live there for a while."

"What about my friends?"

"You'll make new friends."

He considered this with the solemn expression he wore whenever he was thinking hard.

"Will the pretty lights be there too?"

Bethan and I looked at each other over his head. We had been careful never to discuss the lights near him.

"No, sweetheart," Bethan said. "The lights stay here in the mountains."

"Good," Iwan said matter-of-factly. "I don't like them now. They make my dreams frightening."

The words silenced us. Iwan had never knowingly seen the lights. Whatever influence they had exerted on me had reached into his sleep as well.

After putting him to bed, Bethan and I packed the final boxes without speaking. The house seemed cavernous, full of echoes and blank spaces where furniture had stood. We had sold most of the larger pieces rather than pay to move them across the country from Wales to Norfolk.

Just after eleven, we lay down on an air mattress in our empty bedroom, surrounded by suitcases. Three days earlier, Bethan had moved Iwan's mattress into our room. He slept against the far wall, snoring softly.

I listened to the building settle, each creak and groan amplified by its emptiness. Outside, wind passed through the spruce and larch with the murmur of whispered conversations.

At exactly midnight, something tapped on the bedroom window.

It was soft and almost polite, like a visitor gently asking to be admitted.

Bethan's eyes opened. Her hand found mine beneath the thin blanket.

Tap, tap, tap.

The rhythm was patient. Whatever waited outside had all the time in the world.

I slipped from the mattress and crept towards the window, careful not to wake Iwan. The curtains were tightly drawn, but light seeped around their edges. It was not the hard white of a torch or the yellow of the lamp by our front door. It was softer and somehow organic.

Blue light.

The same glacial blue I had seen on Bwlch y Saer forestry road.

Bethan caught my arm before I reached the curtain.

"Don't look," she whispered.

But I had to know.

I drew back one edge by an inch.

The blue orb floated about 6 feet from the window, pulsing like a slow heartbeat. Gareth Llewellyn stared from within it, his eyes desperate and terrified, his mouth moving in a silent scream. This time I could almost hear the words he was trying to form.

Help me.

More lights appeared behind him: red, green, yellow and purple, a constellation of imprisoned souls hovering in our back garden. They arranged themselves with terrible precision. One letter emerged, then another.

RHYS.

This was the first time they had shown me my name.

They knew who I was. They knew where I lived.

"Bethan," I whispered without looking away. "Get Iwan. Take him to the car now."

She did not argue. Behind me, she shook him gently awake and told him they were going on an adventure.

The lights moved closer, pressing against the windows like curious children. A low humming vibrated through the glass and into my bones, the same sound that had swallowed the old rock programme on my car radio at Bwlch y Saer.

"Dad?" Iwan's sleepy voice came from behind me. "Are the pretty lights here?"

"Don't look at them. Go with Mum."

Bethan lifted him and snatched up the case containing our documents and medication.

"What about you?"

"I'll bring the other cases. Start the engine."

She hesitated, kissed my cheek and hurried downstairs with Iwan.

The front door slammed. A moment later, the car engine turned over. The lights flared brighter. They flowed around the house towards the noise and movement, drawn like moths to a flame.

I seized our last two suitcases and ran. I did not lock the door. There was no point. The lights could pass through solid matter when they were strong enough, and walls had only ever delayed them.

Bethan already had the car in reverse when I threw the cases into the boot and jumped into the passenger seat. She pulled away, the headlights cutting through the darkness.

I looked back at our home for the last time.

Dozens of orbs surrounded it. They covered the windows, floated above the roof and clustered around the front door as if waiting for our return. Their pulses were perfectly synchronised, a rhythm like breathing or a single colossal heartbeat.

We drove through Cwm Derwen towards the main A-road, passing dark houses and deserted streets. At the village edge, beside the bilingual sign reading "Cwm Derwen - Croeso / Welcome", the lights stopped.

They hovered in a loose formation while our tail lights receded. In the wing mirror I counted perhaps fifty orbs of different colours, all beating with the same patient rhythm.

Waiting.

Bethan reached across and squeezed my hand.

"It's over. We're safe now."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to think distance would be enough and that the lights were bound to the valley by rules we did not understand. But as we travelled east through the darkness towards Norfolk, I could not escape the feeling that this was not an ending.

It was only the beginning.

Six months in Norfolk almost convinced me that the mountains had been a nightmare.

The builders' merchant where I worked smelled of sawdust, cement dust and metal polish, nothing like the wet upland forestry around Cwm Derwen. My colleagues discussed Norwich City and their weekend plans, ordinary concerns that did not involve checking the locks twice before bed or closing every curtain before sunset.

Bethan found a teaching post at a primary school, and Iwan thrived among children who had never heard warnings about pretty lights in the forest. We rented another post-war semi-detached house on Hawthorn Close, surrounded by neat gardens and paved drives. The greatest social dangers were forgetting the council's bin-collection day or blocking a neighbour's drive.

Our neighbours chatted over garden fences, took parcels in for one another and complained about council tax. Nobody discussed things that moved in the night because nothing did.

The nightmares began to fade. For the first three months, I woke around two each morning with my heart hammering, expecting orbs against the bedroom window. Gradually, the dreams became less frequent and less vivid. Dr Oliver Bennett, the therapist Bethan persuaded me to see, said trauma symptoms often diminished once a survivor began to feel genuinely safe.

I was starting to believe him.

At 02:17 on Tuesday, 13 April 2027, my mobile rang.

I fumbled for it in the dark and squinted at the name on the screen.

Callum Price.

My stomach dropped before I answered.

"Callum, what the hell? It's after two in the morning."

His voice was frantic and breathless, the words tumbling so quickly that I could barely understand him.

"Rhys. Jesus Christ. They're here. They're inside the village. They came down from the mountains and they're everywhere."

I sat upright, instantly awake. Bethan stirred beside me without opening her eyes.

"Slow down. What's happened?"

"Seven people vanished last night. The Cartwrights, Councillor Eleri Vaughan, Inspector Huw Parry. Gone. Their houses are empty, but some doors are still locked from inside. No blood, no struggle. Just empty beds and open windows."

Static crackled across the connection. Beneath it came a low humming that made my teeth ache even through the mobile.

"Where are you?"

"Locked in my cellar. I've been here for six hours. The lights reached my house at about eight last night, but they couldn't get inside. Not at first."

My hands began to shake.

"What do you mean, not at first?"

"They're changing. They don't only float now. They're seeping through walls. Solid matter means nothing to them. And the faces, God, I can see faces in every light. Dozens of them. Everyone who ever disappeared, screaming without a sound."

I pressed the mobile harder against my ear.

"Get out. Take your car and drive to the nearest town."

"I can't. They're around the whole village. Nobody gets in or out. A regional police response car came to the boundary yesterday morning and lost contact. No one has heard from the officers since."

The humming grew louder and more insistent. It resembled the thrumming that had come through my car radio, but it was deeper now, a complex chorus singing in harmony.

"Listen to me," I said. "Find iron. Proper iron, not stainless-steel kitchen knives. A wrought-iron fire poker, an old tool, a horseshoe, anything. My grandfather said iron and salt could hold them back for a little while. Running water and dawn may help too. It won't defeat them, but it might give you time."

"They're forming into something," Callum whispered.

"What?"

"All the lights and faces are joining together. It's standing in the village square. It must be 25 feet tall. Almost human, but wrong, as if somebody tried to build a person from memory and made a complete bloody mess of the proportions."

Static tore at his words. Through it, I heard glass breaking near him.

"Too many eyes," he whispered. "It has too many eyes, and every one is looking at me. The mouths open in directions that shouldn't exist. Up, down, sideways, into places I can't see. Its limbs have too many hinged joints."

"Get out now. Do whatever you have to do."

"It knows I'm here. It knows I filmed them. I went into the forestry with the long lens, and that drew them to me. It knows I've documented everything, and it's angry. I can feel that anger pressing against my skull like a migraine."

More glass shattered, much closer. Callum gasped.

"They're inside. The lights are coming through the cellar walls like water through a sponge. They're touching me, Rhys. They're so cold they burn. I can feel them pulling something out of me. My soul, perhaps. Or my memories. They want to know about you."

"What do you mean?"

"They're asking where you went and how to find you. They're pulling it straight out of my head. I can't stop them."

Terror flooded me. I looked at Bethan, sleeping beside me, then towards Iwan's room down the landing. Our son was safe and warm, unaware that the nightmare we had escaped was reaching across the country to find us.

"Don't give them anything," I said. "Fight them."

"I can't. They're inside my mind, reading my memories like files in a cabinet. They know you're in Norfolk. They know Hawthorn Close. They know the house number. They're saying your name. Every face inside the lights is saying it together."

A burst of static forced me to hold the mobile away. When it cleared, other voices came through: hundreds, perhaps thousands, speaking in perfect harmony.

"Rhys Morgan."

The sound was inhuman, beautiful and terrible. Its frequency vibrated through my bones and blurred the edges of my sight.

"They're pulling me apart," Callum whispered. His voice sounded distorted, as though he were speaking underwater. "Taking me to pieces and putting me back together wrong. I can see myself from outside. I can see what they're doing. My face is stretching. Becoming something else."

His breath hitched.

"They want you to return to the mountains, Rhys. If you don't, they'll keep spreading. They'll take more people and grow stronger until they can reach you anywhere."

The chorus rose.

"Rhys Morgan. Rhys Morgan. Rhys Morgan."

Callum screamed.

It was a sound of pure agony that cut through the static like a blade. Then it changed into something no human throat should have produced, the sound of reality tearing and natural laws being rewritten.

The last thing I heard before the line died was the impossible chorus, now joined by a voice exactly like Callum's, speaking my name in flawless inhuman harmony.

I sat in the dark bedroom holding a dead mobile and listening to my heart pound.

Beyond the window, Hawthorn Close looked quiet and ordinary beneath the street lamps and the warm glow of porch lights. There were no floating orbs, no faces imprisoned in colour, no towering figure assembled from fused lights and human features.

But I knew that would not last.

I never heard from Callum again.

Two weeks later, the Eastern Daily Press website carried a short regional-news item syndicated from a national wire service. Its headline announced that a remote Welsh village had been evacuated because of environmental hazards.

The authorities cited methane leaking from disused coal and lead workings, unstable mine tunnels and contaminated groundwater. Their reasons explained nothing.

Cwm Derwen, where I had grown up, where Emrys Morgan had taught me the old warnings, where Bethan and I had fallen in love and raised our son, was declared uninhabitable. Its remaining residents were removed, its roads closed and its name allowed to disappear from public attention as though the village had never existed.

But I knew the truth.

Sometimes, on nights when Hawthorn Close is very dark and the street lamps seem dimmer than they should, I catch a faint blue glow at the edge of my vision. It lasts only a second, scarcely long enough for me to be certain I saw it.

And I wonder how far the lights can travel when they truly want someone.

How far they can reach when they have a name to follow.

When they know exactly where he lives.