The Silence Under the Red Moon

I stared at the calendar on the kitchen wall, my eyes fixed on the weekend Bethan had circled in bright red marker. She had added little stars and a crescent moon, the pen strokes so heavy they had nearly torn through the paper. The circle looked less like a date than a warning.

'It's only two nights,' I muttered, taking a sip of coffee that had already gone cold.

Two nights sleeping on the ground. Two nights among everything that crawled, stung or prowled through Coed Celyn Forest. Two nights without toilet facilities or a proper loo. There would be ticks, stinging nettles and, according to one page Bethan had sent me, the remote prospect of encountering an angry wild boar.

But I loved Bethan Price.

That was the simple truth behind my packing a rucksack instead of inventing an excuse. We had been together for a year and had recently begun sharing my rented flat in Cardiff. In that time, I had learnt that her love of the outdoors was as much a part of her as her laugh or the way she tucked her hair behind one ear when she was thinking. She had been talking about this trip for weeks.

'Elliot, it's a blood moon weekend,' she had said, her amber eyes lighting up as they always did when she talked about the night sky. 'We can't miss it. Coed Celyn under a total lunar eclipse will be magical.'

Magic was not what worried me.

The morning of our departure arrived too quickly. Bethan had loaded her dark green estate car before I was properly awake. Its roof bars were strapped with gear, and she wore a smile that made backing out impossible.

'Ready for an adventure?' she asked. She kissed my cheek, stepped into the flat and collected my rucksack from the hall.

'As ready as I'll ever be,' I said, with more enthusiasm than I felt.

I locked the door behind us. Each click sounded like a farewell to safety, central heating and indoor plumbing.

Bethan drove. The journey took roughly three hours, carrying us out of Cardiff and through the Welsh valleys before climbing on to narrow upland A-roads. The hills grew emptier, the bends sharper and the villages farther apart. DAB reception dropped in and out until the car radio gave up and fell back to a thin hiss.

I sat rigidly in the passenger seat as Bethan guided the estate car along a single-track road with a steep drop on one side. She seemed completely at ease, pointing out ridges and distant reservoirs while talking about what we might see that night.

'A blood moon happens during a total lunar eclipse,' she said, tracing an invisible diagram above the steering wheel whenever the road straightened. 'The Earth passes between the sun and the moon, so its shadow falls across the lunar surface. Some sunlight still bends through our atmosphere. The shorter blue wavelengths scatter away, while the red light reaches the moon.'

'Sounds pretty,' I managed.

A sheep bolted from the verge directly into the road. Bethan braked hard, stopping just short of it. The sheep stared at us with blank indignation before scrambling through a gap in the hedge.

'It's more than pretty,' Bethan continued once we were moving again, apparently unfazed. 'People have attached meanings to eclipses for centuries. Medieval Welsh chronicles sometimes treated red moons as signs of upheaval. Other traditions saw eclipses as moments when the boundary between worlds became thin.'

'That's comforting.'

She gave my shoulder a playful shove.

The tarmac eventually narrowed into a forestry lane, and we followed it to a small car park at the start of a waymarked walking route. It was close to midday when Bethan pulled in. The only other vehicle was a mud-spattered Land Rover parked beside a Natural Resources Wales-style information board. The board showed colour-coded routes, access rules and warnings about steep ground, forestry operations, ticks and changing weather.

Bethan was opening the boot before I had unfastened my seat belt. She sorted the equipment with practised efficiency, dividing the weight between our rucksacks.

'Gareth taught me all this,' she said when she caught me watching. 'Dad could probably manage out here with a pocket knife and half a packet of mints. We used to camp at least once a month when I was little.'

I pictured Bethan as a child, learning to pitch a tent beneath Gareth Price's watchful eye. Despite my apprehension, the image made me smile.

'Here.'

She handed me a rucksack that looked large enough to contain emergency accommodation for a small family.

'You take the tent and cooking kit. I've got the food, sleeping mats and everything else.'

I nearly toppled backwards when I put it on.

'Christ, Bethan. Are we camping or moving house?'

She laughed and adjusted the straps with expert hands.

'Trust me. You'll be grateful when you're warm and fed tonight.'

The route began gently, following a damp track between regimented stands of Sitka spruce. Bethan took the lead with the easy confidence of someone who belonged there. I followed, already feeling sweat gather beneath my clothes despite the cool air.

'How much farther?' I asked after what felt like several hours of relentless climbing.

Bethan checked her watch.

'We've been walking forty-five minutes, city boy.'

'That cannot be right.'

'Another hour or so. I want a decent clearing before the light starts to go.'

By the time she stopped, my legs were burning and the rucksack straps had carved aching grooves into my shoulders. I let the pack slide to the ground and sat beside it with a groan.

Bethan turned slowly, assessing the clearing.

'This is perfect. Flat enough for the tent, sheltered around the edges and open to the sky where the moon will rise.'

I looked around, trying to understand what made this patch of wet forest floor superior to any of the others we had passed. Sitka spruce enclosed most of it, while rowan and silver birch marked the more open boundary. A fallen trunk lay along one edge, furred with moss and bracket fungi. Damp needles covered the ground.

As I recovered my breath, I became aware of something odd.

I held still and listened.

Nothing.

No birds called from the canopy. No insects stirred in the undergrowth. There was not even the faint rustle of an animal moving through the dead needles.

'Bethan,' I said quietly. 'Do you notice anything strange?'

She glanced up from the tent bag.

'Strange how?'

'It's completely silent. No birds, no insects. Nothing.'

Bethan paused and tilted her head. Then she laughed, and the sound seemed indecently loud in the clearing.

'Wildlife often keeps away when people arrive. It probably heard us crashing along the route from a kilometre off.' She returned to unpacking. 'Nothing to worry about.'

I accepted the explanation because she was the experienced one. Even so, the silence felt wrong. It was not peaceful. It pressed against my ears as though the forest were holding its breath.

'Come and help with the tent,' Bethan called. 'I'll show you how to do it properly.'

For the next hour, we made camp. Bethan showed me how to choose the flattest ground, fit the poles and drive the pegs into the damp soil at the correct angle. We sealed the food in a dry bag and hung it well away from the tent to deter foxes and rodents. The forecast promised rain the following afternoon, but for now the air remained merely cool and damp.

As we worked, I kept expecting the forest to resume around us. I waited for birdsong, the buzz of insects or the rustle of something small beneath the nettles. None came. The silence persisted, broken only by our voices and the sounds of our equipment.

Daylight was fading by the time we finished. Bethan lit the compact camping stove and prepared couscous with dried mushrooms and peppers. It smelt far better than it had any right to after the walk.

'See?' she said, passing me a steaming bowl. 'Not so bad, is it?'

'The company makes it bearable.'

That earned me a smile.

We sat together on the fallen trunk while darkness gathered beneath the spruce. We talked about work, friends and our plans for the following week, but I could not shake my unease. Every so often I stopped speaking and listened for some natural sound beyond our clearing.

There was nothing. Not even wind moving through the branches.

'You're still thinking about the silence,' Bethan said.

'It doesn't seem right. Shouldn't we hear something? Anything?'

She set her empty bowl aside and took my hand.

'Forests can be quiet, Elliot. Especially around dusk, when the daytime creatures are settling and the nocturnal ones haven't properly emerged. It's normal.'

I wanted to believe her. I squeezed her hand and nodded, but this was not the quiet of nature at rest. It felt deliberate. Watchful.

As we cleaned the bowls and secured the remaining food, I kept glancing towards the trees. Their shadows stretched across the clearing, and in the failing light the spruce seemed to lean closer.

'You're going to love the eclipse,' Bethan said, checking her watch. 'The moon should be well above the trees in a couple of hours. We've got the perfect view.'

I forced a smile. I did not want to spoil her excitement with what was probably irrational anxiety. If Bethan was not worried, perhaps my instincts were simply misreading a place I did not understand.

Yet when night fully enclosed us, the silence deepened until it seemed almost physical. I could not rid myself of the feeling that something beyond the clearing was watching with a patience I could not comprehend.

The eclipse developed slowly. The moon climbed above the tree line as the Earth's shadow moved across it, and its surface darkened into a vast crimson disc. It seemed too large and too close, hanging over the forest like an open wound.

'Look,' Bethan whispered. 'You can see the shadow moving.'

I followed her pointing finger. Despite the dread coiling in my stomach, I was genuinely impressed.

'It's beautiful,' I admitted.

Red light washed over the clearing. It touched the tent, the pale birch trunks and Bethan's face, turning familiar shapes strange.

'People used to think this meant war, famine, the death of kings,' she said. 'And then there were stories about doors opening between our world and somewhere else.'

I wished she had kept that last thought to herself.

Moira Mercer had filled my childhood with family stories from the Welsh Marches. Most were harmless tales passed from one generation to the next, but one had never quite left me. It concerned a night-walker that appeared during red moons and borrowed familiar faces to draw people away. I had dismissed it along with every other monster from my childhood. Beneath that blood-red sky, it felt less like an old superstition than a warning whose meaning I had forgotten.

Bethan and I shared oat bars and fruit-and-nut mix as a late snack. We barely spoke. Normal conversation felt intrusive in that listening silence, and without deciding to, we both began to whisper.

'Why are we whispering?' Bethan asked softly.

'I don't know,' I said. 'It just feels right.'

She nodded as though she understood.

At about 22:00, we crawled into the tent and settled into our sleeping bags. The ground was hard and uneven despite the sleeping mat Bethan had insisted I bring. I shifted a dozen times while she fell asleep almost at once.

Red light seeped through the fabric above me. Shadows from the trees moved across the roof like reaching fingers. Eventually, exhaustion overcame discomfort and I drifted into troubled dreams.

I ran through dense woodland filled with red light, fleeing something I could never see. Figures stood beyond the limits of my vision, watching and waiting. Moira's voice travelled through the trees.

'They walk under red moons, Elliot. They've been hunting since before we had names for them.'

In the dream, I was a child again, sitting on my bed while she checked beneath it for monsters.

'How do you know they're real?' I asked.

'Because someone in our family saw one,' she whispered, her expression grave. 'They look almost like us, but they move wrongly. Sometimes they borrow a face you trust. And they're always hungry.'

A sharp sound tore me awake.

For a moment I did not know where I was. The tent was dark, its interior washed in dim crimson. My heart pounded as I lay still and listened.

The sound came again.

Footsteps crunched softly over the wet needles outside.

They were too measured to belong to an animal. Whatever made them was moving slowly, exploring the perimeter of our camp.

My watch read 02:00.

The footsteps continued around the tent.

I nudged Bethan's shoulder.

'Bethan,' I whispered. 'Wake up.'

She rolled towards me.

'What's wrong?'

'There's something outside. Listen.'

We fell silent. The footsteps completed another slow circuit.

'Probably a deer,' she murmured, though she did not sound convinced.

'Deer don't keep circling a tent.'

We listened as the steps traced the same route again and again. On the third circuit, I began counting. By the twelfth, my mouth was dry.

Then the footsteps stopped directly outside the entrance.

The silence that followed was worse. Bethan's body tensed beside me. We both stared at the zipped doorway and waited.

Without warning, Bethan reached for the zip.

'What are you doing?' I hissed.

She did not answer. She pulled the zip down with slow, deliberate movements and crawled outside. The sound of the opening seemed deafening.

'Bethan? Come back.'

There was no reply, only her bare footsteps moving away from the tent.

I waited, hoping she had gone no farther than the edge of camp. Perhaps she needed the loo. Perhaps she had seen something she recognised. One minute passed, then three, then five.

Bethan was too experienced to wander alone through a plantation at 02:00. Whatever explanation I tried to give myself collapsed under that fact.

I crawled towards the entrance, pushed the flap aside and looked out.

The blood moon hung almost directly overhead, immense and impossibly red. Crimson light poured between the trees and transformed the clearing into a place from a nightmare. The tent, the moss and my own hands were stained the colour of raw meat.

Then I saw Bethan.

She stood about 6 metres away, completely motionless, with her back to me and her face tilted upwards. She wore only the T-shirt and shorts in which she had gone to sleep. Her bare feet rested on the wet carpet of spruce needles.

'Bethan,' I called, no longer caring what might hear me.

She did not move.

I approached slowly, repeating her name.

'Bethan, can you hear me? What's going on?'

There was no response. Her posture was rigid, unnaturally still. When I reached her, I hesitated before touching her shoulder.

Her face was blank. Her eyes were wide open, reflecting the red moonlight like mirrors. For an instant, they did not seem to belong to her at all.

'Bethan, please.'

Her skin was cold and clammy beneath my fingers, far colder than the damp night could explain.

I followed her gaze, expecting her to be staring at the moon. She was not. She was looking into the forest beyond our camp.

I turned.

A woman stood among the trees roughly 45 metres away.

She was close enough for me to make out the gaunt outline of her body and the shredded remains of a dark wool dress. A weather-stained shawl hung from her shoulders. Both dress and shawl drifted and rippled as though submerged, although the air was utterly still. Long, tangled hair obscured her face.

Like Bethan, she did not move. Unlike Bethan, she radiated awareness.

She was watching us.

I could not see her eyes, yet I felt their attention settle on me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. She offered no greeting and made no gesture. She merely stood between the spruce, studying us with what felt like patient, hungry interest.

I wanted to seize Bethan and run. Instead, I remained frozen beside her. We formed a dreadful tableau: Bethan staring at the figure, the figure watching us, and me trapped between them, apparently the only one who understood that something was profoundly wrong.

The woman's garments continued their slow underwater motion. Her hair drifted with them. Everything about her was impossible: the absolute stillness of her body, the movement of her clothes, the weight of her presence. I could not see her face, but some instinct warned me never to try.

I gripped Bethan's arm.

'We need to go. Now.'

She remained rigid, her mirrored eyes fixed on the woman.

When I pulled, Bethan resisted with a strength I had never felt in her. Her bare feet seemed rooted to the ground, her whole body leaning towards the trees as though an invisible cord joined her to the figure.

'Bethan, please. Something's wrong. We have to get back inside.'

Then movement at the edge of my vision caught my attention.

The woman had begun to travel between the trees.

She did not walk. She glided sideways and then forwards, her limbs following angles no human joints could manage. Her feet appeared never to touch the ground. She neither stumbled nor paused. Her tattered dress and shawl continued to billow in the windless clearing.

She moved in a wide arc around our camp, maintaining the same distance. Her hidden face remained turned towards us throughout.

The truth struck me with sickening certainty. She was circling us as a predator circles prey, learning our movements and testing whatever hold she had over Bethan.

This was not a chance encounter. It was deliberate.

'Fuck this,' I whispered.

I moved behind Bethan and locked both arms around her waist. With every bit of strength I had, I lifted her from the ground.

She was surprisingly light, but the instant her feet left the needles she began to thrash. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked.

'Bethan, stop. Please.'

Her elbow drove into my ribs. Pain flashed through my side, but I held on. I half carried and half dragged her towards the tent while the woman continued her impossible circuit. The hidden face turned smoothly to follow us.

Bethan fought with feral desperation. She clawed at my forearms, leaving burning scratches across my skin. The 9 metres to the tent felt impossibly far. My lungs burned from effort and terror.

When my back struck the tent, I fumbled behind me for the zip while keeping one arm clamped around Bethan. I forced the entrance open, dragged us both through and collapsed across the sleeping bags.

Bethan immediately tried to scramble back outside. I threw my weight over her and reached behind me, hauling the zip closed so violently that I thought it would tear free.

'Bethan, stop. Please, stop.'

She struggled beneath me for several terrifying seconds. Then the tension began to leave her body. Her rigid posture softened. Her shallow, rapid breathing slowed.

I kept my arms around her, afraid that releasing her would bring the thing back.

After a long moment, Bethan shifted and blinked as if waking from deep sleep.

'Elliot?'

Her voice sounded like hers again. Confused, but hers.

'Why are we awake? What's going on?'

I loosened my grip without letting go completely.

'You don't remember?'

'Remember what? I was asleep.'

My hands shook as I sat beside her. Red moonlight leaked through the tent fabric.

'You walked out. You got up, opened the tent and walked into the clearing. I followed you and found you staring at...'

The image of the woman's sideways movement crowded my mind.

'At what?' Bethan asked.

'There was a woman in the trees. She was watching us. You were staring at her as if you were in a trance. When I tried to bring you back, you fought me.'

Bethan frowned.

'Elliot, I don't remember any of that. The last thing I remember is falling asleep.'

'It happened. She was wearing a torn dark dress and a shawl, and they moved as if she were underwater. Then she started circling the camp. She was watching us like she was hunting.'

Bethan took my hand. Her skin was warm again.

'Listen to me. You had a nightmare. A very vivid one.'

'It wasn't a dream. I was awake. I saw you standing there. Your eyes reflected the moonlight as if something else were looking through them.'

She squeezed my hand.

'Think about it. We're sleeping somewhere unfamiliar. The silence has been unsettling you all day, and there is a great red moon hanging over the tent. Your mind took all of that and turned it into a nightmare.'

'What about you being outside?'

'People can dream that they've woken up. They can sleepwalk as well. Maybe you moved around without realising it.'

I wanted her explanation to be true. I wanted the whole thing to become something absurd we could laugh about in daylight. But I could still feel her cold skin. My ribs throbbed where she had struck me, and the scratches on my arms stung.

'It felt real,' I said.

'I know. I'm not saying you're making it up. Brains play tricks on us, especially under stress.'

I looked at the closed entrance. Beyond it lay only silence and the red light seeping through the fabric.

Had I imagined everything? The alternative was that something inhuman had taken hold of Bethan and drawn her barefoot into the clearing. That possibility was too terrible to accept.

'Maybe you're right,' I said, though I did not believe it.

'Let's try to sleep. Everything will seem clearer in the morning.'

Bethan lay down and pulled me beside her. Her breathing soon settled into the deep rhythm of sleep.

I remained rigid, watching the red shadows shift across the roof.

'I know what I saw,' I whispered.

The words sounded hollow inside the tent.

My watch showed a little after 03:00. There were hours until dawn. The scratches Bethan had left across my arms were raised and red, physical proof that something had happened even if she remembered none of it.

Every few minutes, I thought I heard a twig break or cloth rustle outside. Each time, I held my breath and listened, only to meet the same oppressive silence. I kept my eyes fixed on the zip, expecting it to descend by itself and reveal a gaunt face behind tangled hair.

Bethan shifted and murmured something unintelligible. I envied the peace of her sleep.

Perhaps nothing had happened to her. Perhaps I was losing my mind in a forest I had never wanted to visit. I pulled the sleeping bag higher, though I knew the thin fabric offered no protection.

The ground seemed to become harder with every passing hour. Roots and stones pressed through the sleeping mat. At some point, exhaustion overcame fear.

I woke with a start to Bethan moving around the tent. Ordinary yellow sunlight shone through the fabric.

'Morning,' she said cheerfully, already pulling on her walking clothes. 'You look dreadful. More bad dreams?'

I sat up, disorientated.

'What time is it?'

'Nearly 07:00. I was going to let you sleep, but we should get moving if we want to reach the car park by midday. The rain's meant to come in this afternoon.'

Outside, birds called through the trees, their songs overlapping in a bright morning chorus. Something small rustled in the undergrowth.

'Do you hear that?' I asked.

Bethan paused with one sock in her hand.

'Hear what?'

'The birds. The animals. Everything's making noise again.'

'Yes. That's what forests do, Elliot.'

'But yesterday...'

I stopped myself.

'Never mind.'

I dressed while Bethan went outside to retrieve the dry bag. The restored sounds were nearly as unsettling as the silence because of how abruptly they had returned.

In daylight, the clearing appeared entirely different. Dew clung to the grass and damp moss. Shafts of sunlight passed through the canopy. Nothing in the peaceful scene suggested that a predatory figure had circled us only hours before.

Bethan was rolling her sleeping bag when I approached.

'About last night...'

She sighed before I could continue.

'I told you. It was a nightmare. You were already anxious about being out here, and your mind played tricks on you. It happens.'

'But you were outside. I dragged you back. Look.'

I pushed up my sleeve. The scratches had faded since the night, but faint pink lines still crossed my forearm.

'They were much redder before,' I said.

Bethan shook her head.

'You probably caught yourself on a branch while we were setting up.'

She returned to packing.

'Can you take the tent down? I'd like to leave before the rain reaches us.'

I wanted to argue, but the marks looked insignificant in the morning light. I knelt to remove the pegs, feeling increasingly foolish.

Had I imagined the woman and her impossible movement? Had Bethan's trance, her cold skin and the struggle inside the tent all belonged to a dream?

While she organised the rucksacks, I walked to the edge of the clearing, towards the place where I had seen the figure standing. The ground looked untouched. There were no footprints, snapped twigs or impressions in the wet needles.

I crouched and searched through the debris with my fingertips.

'What are you doing?' Bethan called.

'Nothing. Just checking something.'

'Well, hurry up. I'm nearly packed.'

I took one last look between the spruce and returned to camp. Bethan had stowed almost everything. Only the tent remained.

I folded it methodically, trying to reproduce the neat creases it had possessed before we opened it.

'You're quiet this morning,' Bethan said, handing me an oat bar.

'Just tired. I didn't sleep well.'

'I slept brilliantly.' She stretched her arms above her head. 'Must be the fresh air.'

We shouldered our rucksacks. Before leaving, I scanned the clearing for anything we might have forgotten and for any sign that the night's encounter had occurred. Apart from the flattened patch where the tent had stood, the place looked almost pristine.

The return walk was easier, mostly downhill and made in daylight. Bethan went ahead, pointing out plants and identifying bird calls. I answered with distracted noises. My attention moved constantly between the path and the trees behind us.

'You keep looking over your shoulder,' she said after perhaps the twentieth time. 'Are you expecting an angry boar to follow us?'

'No. I'm just making sure we aren't dropping anything.'

Her expression made it clear she did not believe me, but she let the matter go.

'We're making good time. We should be back at the car in about forty minutes.'

I adjusted my straps. Every bend and every dense stand of spruce made my shoulders tighten. I expected to see the gaunt woman waiting among the trunks, her shredded dress and weather-stained shawl moving in air that could not touch them.

There was nothing. Only trees, stones and the occasional startled bird breaking from cover.

The woodland sounded mockingly ordinary. Birds called to one another, insects moved among the nettles and unseen animals disturbed the undergrowth. Everything was as it ought to be, which made the night seem more dreamlike with every step.

'So, I was thinking,' Bethan said as we climbed over a fallen trunk. 'Next month we could try one of the longer routes on the eastern side of Coed Celyn. There are meant to be fantastic views from the ridge.'

I nearly stumbled.

'You want to come back?'

'Not to this exact clearing, necessarily. But yes. Why not? Apart from your nightmare, it was a lovely trip.'

I concentrated on a steep section where exposed roots formed uneven steps.

'I don't know. Perhaps we could go somewhere else next time.'

Bethan glanced back with a slight frown.

'You're really shaken by that dream, aren't you?'

'It wasn't a dream,' I said automatically.

Concern replaced her irritation.

'Elliot, I promise you, I don't remember anything happening. We went to sleep, and then we woke this morning. That's all I know.'

Her disbelief was sincere. That frightened me almost as much as the memory itself.

It would have been easier to accept a vivid nightmare than to believe that an inhuman woman had watched us from the trees and drawn Bethan towards her like a moth to a flame.

'You're probably right,' I said at last.

We continued down the route. I kept looking back, unable to rid myself of the feeling that we were being watched.

Each time, the trail behind us was empty, dappled with morning sunlight. The sounds of Coed Celyn had returned, but beneath them I imagined another silence waiting to close over the forest again.

Birds called and leaves rustled around us, but after the unnatural silence of the previous night, those ordinary sounds only made me more uneasy.

'You keep looking back,' Bethan said, pausing on the walking route to wait for me. 'Did you drop something?'

'No. Just checking.'

I hurried to catch up, my rucksack straps digging into my shoulders. The sensation of eyes upon my back remained with me throughout the walk. I fixed my attention on Bethan's mustard-yellow rucksack and counted my steps to distract myself.

Forty-five minutes later, we passed through the last ranks of Sitka spruce and emerged into the forestry car park. Bethan's dark green estate car stood where we had left it, beside the mud-spattered Land Rover near the information board.

Relief washed over me. I dropped my rucksack beside the boot while Bethan unlocked the car, then loaded our equipment and slammed the boot shut. Before getting in, I looked back one final time.

The trees stood motionless in the cool mid-morning light. Nothing moved between them.

But I knew something was still watching.

'Ready?' Bethan called from the driver's seat.

I climbed in, locked my door and nodded. 'Let's go.'

The farther we travelled from Coed Celyn Forest, along the single-track forestry lanes and narrow upland A-roads, the more the tension eased from my shoulders. Even when the trees had vanished from the rear-view mirror, however, I could not forget what I had seen: the gaunt figure in the shredded remains of a dark wool dress and weather-stained shawl, her clothes moving without wind; Bethan's vacant stare beneath the blood-red moon; her skin cold beneath my hands.

Bethan drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on her thigh, entirely at ease. She talked about the deadlines waiting for her on Monday and asked what I fancied for dinner. I answered automatically, my mind still trapped in the clearing.

'You're quiet,' she said after a while.

'Just tired.'

It was a lie.

'Next time we'll bring better sleeping mats,' she said with a smile.

Next time. As if there could be a next time.

The weeks after Coed Celyn passed in a blur of normality that felt more unreal than the horror itself. Bethan and I had only recently begun sharing my rented flat in Cardiff, and our new domestic routines resumed as though nothing had happened. I went to work, came home, cooked or collected food, and watched television with her in the evenings.

Bethan never mentioned the incident. When I tried once, asking whether she remembered anything strange about the night of the eclipse, she gave me a worried look.

'You mean your nightmare? I told you, Elliot, nothing happened. We slept through the night.'

She sounded sincere. I stopped raising it after that. Either she remembered nothing, or some part of her would not allow her to acknowledge it. Both possibilities left me alone with what I had seen. The faint scratches on my arms remained the following morning and took days to fade, but even they proved nothing. Bethan assumed I had caught myself on brambles during the walk.

Two weeks after the trip, she began planning another outdoor weekend, kayaking at Llyn Eirian, a reservoir in north Wales roughly three hours from Cardiff.

'The water should be lovely this time of year,' she said, turning her laptop towards me. 'And we can camp beside the shore.'

My stomach tightened at the word 'camp', but I nodded and tried to look interested. I could not explain my reluctance without sounding unwell. So I helped secure the kayaks to the roof bars of her estate car and even managed to smile as we pitched our tent near the reservoir that Friday evening.

I did not sleep. Both nights I lay awake, listening to the slap of water against the bank, a distant tawny owl and small animals moving through the undergrowth. Every sound made me tense, but the absence of sound frightened me more.

Over the following two months, I went on two more outings with Bethan: a walk along a section of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path and an overnight wild-camping trip in Bannau Brycheiniog. Each time, my anxiety worsened. I checked weather forecasts and lunar calendars obsessively, making certain we would not be outside during a full moon, let alone an eclipse. I packed spare torches and head torches, and kept one within reach at all times. Whenever there was any reason for one of us to remain awake, I volunteered for the final watch so that I could stay alert until dawn.

Bethan noticed the change but misunderstood it.

'You're really getting into all this outdoor stuff,' she said one evening as I meticulously organised my rucksack. 'I'm proud of you.'

I forced a smile and continued packing. I was not preparing. I was fortifying.

The woman began appearing in my dreams. Sometimes she stood at the foot of our bed, her face hidden behind a tangled curtain of hair. At other times she circled the block below our flat while I watched helplessly from the window, moving sideways without ever turning her body.

I woke gasping and drenched in sweat, my heart beating so hard that I felt it in my fingertips. Bethan would stir beside me, murmur something soothing and fall asleep again, while I stared at the ceiling until morning.

After one particularly vivid nightmare, I decided I needed answers. If I could not speak to Bethan about what had happened, perhaps I could find some independent evidence that I had not imagined it.

During my lunch breaks, I researched Coed Celyn Forest. Natural Resources Wales pages and local access information offered nothing unusual, only colour-coded walking routes, forestry notices, access rules and warnings about local hazards. I widened my search to Welsh newspaper archives, walking forums and local-history groups. Most reports were mundane: lost walkers, minor injuries, storm damage and occasional warnings about wild boar.

Then I found an article from eleven years earlier about a group of Aberystwyth university students who had camped in Coed Celyn during a total lunar eclipse. They had lost nearly five hours and could remember nothing of that period. They were discovered wandering near the forestry car park, confused but apparently unharmed. Dyfed-Powys Police and mountain rescue records referred to suspected carbon monoxide exposure from a camping stove used inside a tent.

The explanation was plausible. It was also incomplete.

I dug deeper. I joined walking forums and local-history groups and posted guarded questions about unusual experiences in Coed Celyn, particularly around full moons and eclipses. Most replies dismissed me or made jokes about the Beast of Bont and other invented local monsters. A few made my skin crawl.

One person claimed to have seen a woman in old-fashioned clothes moving between the trees at dusk, only for her to disappear when approached. Another described waking outside a tent without knowing how they had got there. A third mentioned a silence so complete that they could hear their own heartbeat.

None matched my experience exactly, but together they formed a pattern: lost memories, absolute silence and sightings of a solitary female figure at the edge of the trees. The stories clustered around lunar events, although there was too little reliable information to prove any connection.

I created a document and compiled every account I could find alongside my own recollection. There was no physical evidence, only anecdotes that could be dismissed as dreams, hallucinations, exaggeration or carbon monoxide poisoning. I could not prove to Bethan, or to anyone else, that the figure had been real.

One evening, while Bethan was at her weekly yoga class, I studied a lunar calendar online. A later total lunar eclipse was due the following year. I stared at the date until my mouth went dry.

Part of me wanted to return to Coed Celyn for it. With warning and preparation, perhaps I could record the figure or gather evidence. The more rational part of me recoiled from deliberately placing either of us beneath another blood moon.

I closed the laptop and stood at the window, looking over the Cardiff lights that held the natural darkness at bay. Beyond the traffic, concrete and human noise, something waited in forgotten places. It had watched us through the trees and called to Bethan while she slept.

What would have happened if I had failed to drag her back to the tent? What would have happened if the woman had reached her?

Moira, my mother, had told me family stories from the Welsh Marches when I was a child, tales of a night-walker that borrowed familiar faces during red moons. I had treated them as the sort of frightening folklore families pass down because children enjoy being scared. Now those half-remembered stories returned with an unwelcome weight.

When Bethan came home from yoga, she found me still standing by the window.

'Everything all right?' she asked, setting down her mat.

'Yes.' I turned away from the darkness. 'Everything's fine.'

It was not fine. I knew I would never feel safe sleeping in the wild again. Whatever had watched us remained somewhere beyond the city, waiting in the spaces between trees and in the silence between heartbeats.

The changes in Bethan came gradually. At first they were subtle enough to explain away: a lingering glance towards the night sky, a moment of stillness beside the window whenever the moon was visible. Then they became impossible to ignore.

About a month after Coed Celyn, I returned from work and found Bethan standing at the flat window, utterly motionless. Her body was rigid, her face tilted towards the waxing moon in the early evening sky.

'Bethan,' I called, putting my keys on the kitchen worktop. 'I picked up that Thai takeaway you wanted.'

She did not answer.

I crossed the room and touched her shoulder. She blinked several times, as if waking from a deep daydream.

'Elliot? When did you get home?'

'Just now. You were staring at the moon again.'

'Was I?'

She glanced back through the glass, then shook her head. 'I was thinking about work. I must have lost track of time.'

I did not press her, although I had found her like that three times in a single week. Once, I had watched from the doorway for nearly twenty minutes. She had not moved at all. I suspected she might have remained there for hours if I had not disturbed her.

I unpacked the food while she laid the table. For a few precious minutes, our routine felt normal. Then, while reaching into a kitchen cupboard for plates, I noticed the windowsill.

'What's all this?'

Bethan looked over, frowning. 'What's all what?'

On the sill, objects had been arranged in a precise semicircle: two acorns set at equal distances from a bed of dried sphagnum moss; several small stones threaded with red veins; a hazel twig bent into a loop; and an empty dragonfly nymph case, delicate and dry.

'This,' I said. 'Did you collect it on our walk last weekend?'

Bethan came closer. Her confusion appeared genuine.

'I didn't put those there.'

'They didn't arrange themselves.' I tried to keep my voice light, but my stomach tightened.

'I don't remember gathering any of it.' She picked up one of the red-veined stones and turned it over in her hand. 'Maybe I did it without thinking. I've been so tired lately.'

I wanted to believe that. Yet the spacing was too exact, the pattern too deliberate and methodical.

'Let's eat before the food goes cold,' I said.

I took the stone from her and returned it to its place. Something in me resisted disturbing the arrangement.

Over the next fortnight, the collection grew. New stones appeared, along with feathers, knotted twigs and, one morning, a perfectly preserved red admiral. Bethan never remembered finding any of them.

I began photographing the windowsill before leaving for work. By comparing the pictures, I confirmed that the objects were being rearranged during the day. The pattern grew more intricate, spreading in nested curves across the sill. Online searches produced nothing definite. Some shapes resembled old protective marks; others looked like offerings. I could not tell whether Bethan was trying to keep something out or invite it in.

One night, I woke from a dreamless sleep. The bedside clock read 03:17. Bethan's side of the bed was empty and the sheets were cold.

'Bethan?' I called softly.

There was no answer.

I got up. The floorboards were cold beneath my bare feet. The flat was small: one bedroom, a bathroom, a living room joined to the kitchen and a narrow balcony. There were few places she could be.

The bathroom was dark and empty. So were the living room and kitchen. The curtain across the balcony door stirred in a draught.

My heart beat faster as I approached. When I pulled the curtain aside, I saw her.

Bethan stood in the centre of the balcony wearing only a thin white nightdress. Her back was towards me, her face tilted to the three-quarter moon in the clear sky. Her arms hung at her sides, palms turned forwards.

'Bethan?'

She gave no sign that she had heard.

As I stepped outside, I saw her lips moving. At first I heard nothing. Then a stream of whispered sounds reached me, rhythmic syllables rising and falling in a pattern that made my skin crawl. It resembled no language I recognised. The sounds caught low in her throat, guttural and ancient.

'Bethan,' I said more firmly, touching her shoulder.

She turned with a smoothness that was not natural. Her eyes were wide but vacant, exactly as they had been in the forest. Moonlight gleamed in her pupils. She tilted her head and regarded me with detached curiosity while her lips continued shaping the strange words.

'Come back inside,' I said, struggling to keep the fear from my voice. 'It's the middle of the night.'

I took her hand. The instant our skin touched, a shock ran through me like static electricity.

For the briefest moment, Bethan's face flickered. Another face lay over hers: the gaunt, ancient countenance of the woman from Coed Celyn, framed by tangled hair, with hollow eyes and a mouth stretched far too wide.

I recoiled and nearly released her. The vision vanished, leaving Bethan before me in her trance.

Every instinct urged me to run. Instead, I tightened my grip.

'Come on. Let's get you back to bed.'

This time she followed. Her movements were stiff and mechanical. I led her into the bedroom, where she lay down without a word. Within moments, her breathing deepened and she appeared to be asleep.

I sat on the edge of the bed, shaking. Human faces did not flicker and change. Yet I could not deny what I had seen. For a fraction of a second, the forest woman had looked out through Bethan's eyes.

I remained awake beside her until dawn, assembling the pattern in my mind: the moon, the missing time, the objects on the windowsill, the whispered language and the vacant stare. The thing in the forest had not remained in Coed Celyn. It had followed us home and attached itself to Bethan.

As pale light entered the room, I decided we had to return to the place where it began. Whatever had connected with her beneath the blood moon was not going to release her by itself.

I studied folklore from the Welsh border, obscure discussion boards and every account of the forest I could find. The fragments contradicted one another. Some recommended sea salt, others iron or rowan. Smoke from juniper and rosemary appeared in several accounts, though never in quite the same context. There was no reliable ritual, only conjecture repeated until it resembled tradition.

I gathered sea salt, hand-forged iron tacks and dried rowan from credible local sources, then bought juniper and rosemary from alternative and occult shops in Cardiff. I knew I was constructing an improvised mixture of Welsh-border folklore and internet guesswork. I had no idea whether any part of it would work.

To persuade Bethan to return, I claimed I was preparing a landscape portfolio for an evening course at a Cardiff further-education college. The clearing, I told her, would be ideal in late light. Her eagerness frightened me more than reluctance would have done.

On the chosen afternoon, I loaded our ordinary camping equipment into the boot of my hatchback. Beneath it, I concealed the mustard-yellow rucksack containing the salt, iron tacks, dried rowan, juniper, rosemary and a lighter.

Bethan stood beside the passenger door, smiling as she scrolled through her mobile phone.

'The weather should hold all weekend,' she said. 'Your portfolio ought to get some lovely light.'

'Golden hour should be good in that clearing.' My voice sounded steadier than I felt. 'Ready?'

She climbed in with an enthusiasm that surprised me. For weeks she had been distant, losing time, gathering strange objects and whispering words I did not understand. That day, she seemed almost like her old self. She laughed at my jokes, pointed out landmarks and suggested stopping for snacks.

If I had not seen her on our balcony at 03:17 with another face laid over hers, I might have believed everything was normal.

The roughly three-hour drive from Cardiff through the valleys and onto the narrow upland roads passed too quickly. As we approached Coed Celyn, my hands tightened around the steering wheel. DAB reception began dropping out. A few kilometres later, the car radio fell back to a low hiss.

'Remember how quiet it was last time?' Bethan asked as we turned onto the gated forestry road, which was open to visitor and authorised traffic. 'Like the whole forest was holding its breath.'

I looked at her, searching for any sign that she remembered the rest: the woman, her own freezing skin, the violence with which she had resisted me. Her expression was open and excited. Whatever had taken hold of her had buried those memories deep.

The forestry car park contained two other vehicles and a marked warden's 4x4. I parked near the Natural Resources Wales-style information board, in almost the same place where Bethan had left her estate car on our first visit.

She was already reaching into the boot when I got out.

'Let's use the same route,' she said. 'I liked that clearing.'

Of course she did. Something was drawing her back.

I shouldered the mustard-yellow rucksack, feeling the iron tacks shift inside. 'Sounds good.'

For the first half-hour, we walked in companionable silence. Birds called among the Sitka spruce, insects hummed and branches stirred in the damp breeze. The forest sounded ordinary.

For the moment.

'You've been quiet lately,' Bethan said as we stepped around a fallen tree. 'Is everything all right with us?'

'Of course. I've been busy with work and thinking about this trip.'

'You seem different. More serious.'

She took my hand and squeezed it. The gesture was so familiar, so entirely Bethan, that I questioned myself for a moment. Perhaps grief, exhaustion and fear had turned one nightmare into a conspiracy.

Then I remembered the photographs of the windowsill and the face on the balcony.

We reached the clearing at about 16:00. Rowan and silver birch bordered the open ground, with the darker plantation pressing behind them. The moss-covered fallen log remained where we had left it. The surrounding trees seemed to lean inwards.

'Perfect timing,' I said, lowering my rucksack. 'We should have a couple of hours of decent light.'

Bethan put down her pack and stretched. 'Shall I pitch the tent while you sort your camera gear?'

'Please.'

I took out my camera and made a show of checking lenses and settings while watching her. She worked with her usual efficiency, spreading the tent, fitting the poles and securing it. Meanwhile, I crossed the clearing as if scouting compositions, but I was choosing the position for the boundary.

The centre offered level ground, open sight lines and distance from the tree line where we had first seen the woman.

Bethan came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

'Getting anything good?'

'A few. The light isn't quite right yet.'

We ate fruit-and-nut mix, oat bars and flapjacks while the sunset faded through muted orange and pink. Bethan chatted about work and her plans for her birthday. Her conversation was perfectly normal at first. As darkness crept in from the edges of the clearing, however, her sentences shortened and her replies became delayed.

The moon rose, nearly full but not quite. It was not another blood moon. I had chosen the night deliberately, hoping that ordinary moonlight might draw out whatever had attached itself to her without granting it the power of an eclipse.

Bethan stared increasingly towards the trees, tracking something I could not see.

'Are you cold?' I asked, touching her shoulder. 'We can get the sleeping bags out.'

She took several seconds to respond. When she turned, her smile looked forced.

'No. I'm fine. Just enjoying the night air.'

By 20:00, darkness had settled fully. I lit a small camping lantern. Bethan sat on the fallen log with her back unnaturally straight, turning her head by degrees as the moon crossed the sky.

'I'm going to take some night photographs,' I said.

My fingers closed around the pouch of iron tacks, but I released it and took out the tripod instead. The boundary had to be complete before the entity appeared. I could not risk trying to construct it under attack.

I carried the tripod into the centre of the clearing and marked out a broad circle around the position I had chosen. Under the pretence of adjusting equipment and clearing debris from the foreground, I laid the iron tacks point by point, pressed dried rowan into the damp earth between them, then poured an unbroken line of sea salt to close the boundary. I left Bethan outside only until the last possible moment.

She barely noticed what I was doing. Her attention remained fixed on the trees.

When the circle was ready, I coaxed her inside by asking her to stand where I could photograph her against the moonlit clearing. She obeyed without interest. I placed the juniper and rosemary within reach, together with my lighter, and set the camera on its tripod to preserve the pretence.

The forest grew quieter by degrees.

First the birds ceased calling. Then the insects faded. The faint movement of branches stopped, although the air in the clearing remained cool against my face. Silence gathered around us until even the distant forestry road seemed to have vanished.

When the moon reached its highest point, Bethan stood.

The movement was too smooth, too fluid. Without speaking, she stepped over the inner space of the circle and walked towards its edge, directly facing the place where the figure had appeared before.

'Bethan.'

She did not turn.

Her lips moved. The same guttural, rhythmic syllables from the balcony slipped into the absolute silence.

I caught her arm before she could cross the line of salt.

'We need to stay here.'

She was rigid beneath my hand, leaning towards the trees as though an invisible cord had drawn tight inside her.

Then something moved in the darkness.

At first it was only a shadow deeper than the surrounding night. It shifted sideways between the trunks without turning, crossing gaps no human body could have crossed so quickly. Then it took shape.

The gaunt figure emerged from among the rowan and silver birch. The shredded remains of a dark wool dress hung from her narrow frame, and a weather-stained shawl drifted about her shoulders as though submerged in deep water. There was no wind. Tangled hair obscured her face.

My heart hammered against my ribs. This was what I had come to confront, yet the sight of her emptied every rehearsed phrase from my mind.

Bethan's whispering grew louder and more urgent. She strained towards the figure.

I dragged her back to the centre of the circle and moved between her and the entity. With one hand gripping Bethan's wrist, I struck the lighter. My hands shook so badly that it took three attempts to catch the dry juniper and rosemary.

Aromatic smoke rose into the night.

The entity glided closer, then recoiled as the smoke drifted across the boundary. Its form rippled like disturbed water, solid one moment and transparent the next. Sometimes I saw the trees through it. Sometimes there was only a dense shape of black cloth and tangled hair.

I did not know whether the smoke, the iron, the salt or the rowan had stopped it. I did not know whether any of them had. But it would not cross.

'Stay back!' I shouted.

The figure began to circle us, moving sideways with predatory patience. It jerked forwards, then flowed several metres in a single impossible motion. Long, crooked fingers reached towards the circle, bending at joints no human hand possessed. Each time they neared the boundary, the creature shuddered away.

'You don't own her,' I said, raising the smoking bundle. 'Bethan belongs to herself.'

The phrases I had memorised returned in fragments. They were not an established spell, only scraps of Welsh-border folklore, family stories, prayers and internet conjecture forced together by a frightened man.

'By salt and iron, by rowan, fire and light, you have no power over her. What walks the boundary must return. What hunts in darkness must release what it has taken.'

The entity circled faster. Its clothes whipped around it despite the still air.

A sound came from it, not from any visible mouth but from everywhere at once. It began as a hiss like failed radio reception, then sharpened into a thin screech that drove through my ears like needles.

Pain exploded inside my skull. Warm liquid ran down my neck. I touched it and saw blood on my fingertips.

Bethan went rigid. Her back arched violently and her limbs began to convulse.

'Bethan!'

I caught her before she fell across the salt line. Remembering that restraining a seizure could injure her, I lowered her as carefully as I could while keeping her within the circle. Her heels struck the damp ground. Her arms jerked and her teeth clenched.

'Let her go!' I shouted at the thing. 'Whatever hold you have on her, break it now!'

The screech rose until it seemed to vibrate through my bones. Blood trickled from both ears and soaked my collar. I could barely hear my own voice through the pain and ringing.

I held the burning juniper and rosemary above Bethan, allowing the smoke to stream between us and the circling figure.

'Her mind is her own. Her body is her own. Bethan Price belongs to herself.'

The entity lunged towards the boundary. Its outstretched hand struck something I could not see. The salt jumped from the earth and several iron tacks trembled, but the circle held.

Its hair lifted.

For one terrible moment, I saw the face beneath: gaunt and ancient, its features shifting over one another as if it had borrowed too many human faces and forgotten which to wear. Eyes opened in patterns that hurt to follow. Its mouth widened into a darkness deeper than the night around it.

The sight of it tugged at buried memories of Moira's stories, of a walker beneath red moons that borrowed the faces of those it wanted.

I forced myself not to look away.

'What was taken must be returned,' I said, though my voice was hoarse and broken. 'What was bound must be released. Bethan returns to herself, whole and free.'

The creature struck the boundary again.

The smoke thickened. The iron tacks quivered. Somewhere in the circle, Bethan gave a strangled cry.

Then the entity's form broke apart. It did not shatter cleanly or vanish. It folded sideways into itself, thinning into strands of black vapour that writhed among the trees. Its final scream passed through me with such force that my vision went white.

When I could see again, the space beyond the circle was empty.

The ringing in my damaged ears remained.

Bethan went limp. I knelt beside her and checked that she was breathing. It was shallow but steady.

'Bethan? Can you hear me?'

Her eyelids fluttered. When they opened, her gaze was clear for the first time in weeks.

'Elliot?'

Relief almost broke me. I gathered her carefully against my chest.

'What happened?' she whispered. 'Where are we?'

'Coed Celyn. You're going to be all right.'

'I don't understand.' She tried to sit up and winced. Then she saw the blood coating my neck. 'You're bleeding.'

'It's my ears. The sound hurt them.'

She looked around at the iron tacks, salt, rowan and smouldering herbs. Beyond them stood the silent forest.

'What happened to me?'

I hesitated, then told her the simplest version of the truth. 'Something followed us home after the eclipse. It was affecting you. I brought you back because I thought this was the only place I might break its hold.'

Fear and understanding passed across her face.

'The dreams,' she said. 'Standing at windows and not knowing how I got there. Those things on the sill.' She clutched my arm. 'It was real?'

'Yes.'

Her face tightened as fragments returned.

'I remember a woman watching me. Not clearly. She was always behind something, like branches or a curtain. There was a voice in my head, but it wasn't speaking words. It made me want to go somewhere.' Bethan pressed a hand to her temple. 'That first night... I remember wet needles under my feet. I was barefoot. You were pulling me away, and I hated you for it. I wanted to hurt you because she wanted me to reach her.'

I held her more tightly.

'You saved me,' she said.

'I couldn't lose you.'

We remained inside the boundary. I did not know whether the creature had been destroyed, driven back into the forest or merely forced out of Bethan. The silence continued, although the oppressive pressure had lifted.

'The woman in the woods,' Bethan said softly. 'She was real that night beneath the red moon? Everything you told me?'

'Yes.'

'What was she?'

'I don't know. Something old, perhaps. Something that waits in places people have stopped looking at.'

'Will she come back?'

I watched the last of the dark vapour disappear among the trunks. 'The attachment is broken. I think that's what happened. But I don't know what drove her away, or how long it will keep her away.'

Bethan shuddered. 'Parts of me feel missing. There are holes in my memory.'

'They may come back. They may not.' I looked into her clear, frightened eyes. 'But you're yourself again.'

She rested against me, trembling, and drifted in and out of exhausted sleep while I maintained my vigil. The blood dried against my neck, and the ringing in my ears remained painfully loud. I knew that at first light I would ring 999 if Bethan's condition worsened. As soon as we had enough signal and could safely leave the clearing, I would seek help for her collapse and my bleeding ears, whether through the Welsh Ambulance Service, Dyfed-Powys Police or mountain rescue volunteers.

For now, moving her through the dark forest seemed more dangerous than remaining within the complete boundary.

I held the smoking herbs until they burned down and kept my eyes upon the tree line.

'She's not yours,' I called into the empty forest, my voice hoarse. 'You can't have her.'

The words returned faintly from the trees. Nothing answered.

Bethan stirred against me but did not wake. I tightened my arm around her and waited for dawn, listening through the painful ringing for the first returning birdcall, uncertain whether the night-walker was gone or merely watching from deeper in the silent wood.

The convulsions grew worse. Bethan's eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, and her breathing came in short, sharp gasps. I felt utterly helpless as I watched her suffer, knowing that I had caused this by bringing her back to Coed Celyn.

But there had been no other choice. The thing had followed us home and spent weeks slowly taking her over.

Beyond the complete boundary of sea salt and hand-forged iron tacks, the entity stopped circling. It drew itself up to its full height, the shredded remains of its dark wool dress and weather-stained shawl drifting as though submerged. The darkness within its gaunt form deepened, seeming to draw the surrounding night into itself.

For the first time, its obscured face pushed forwards towards our barrier.

What I saw was not truly a face. It was ancient beyond comprehension, something that might have existed before human beings had words for nightmares. Too many eyes blinked across its surface in broken, conflicting patterns. Some were set sideways; others pulsed with a cold light of their own. Its mouth opened wider than any mouth should, revealing no teeth, only a deeper darkness within - a void that seemed to tug at something inside me.

I could not look away. Those eyes fixed upon mine, and pressure mounted behind my forehead. No voice spoke, yet the demand was unmistakable: step outside the circle. Bring Bethan with you.

'No,' I said.

The word was barely audible, even to me.

The entity lunged with impossible speed in one final attempt to reach us. It struck the boundary, and the air cracked like a sheet of glass breaking into a thousand pieces. Its form fragmented, streamed apart and dissolved into coils of mist, but I could not tell whether it had been destroyed or merely driven back among the trees.

A scream tore through the forest. It was high, piercing and utterly inhuman. Pain stabbed through both my ears, and the world lurched as the sound echoed between the Sitka spruce. Then it dwindled away, leaving absolute silence behind.

Bethan went limp in my arms.

The convulsions had stopped as abruptly as they had begun. I dropped the smouldering bundle of juniper and rosemary, now burnt almost to ash, and cradled her face in my hands.

'Bethan? Bethan, can you hear me?'

Her eyelids fluttered and opened. Her eyes were clear - truly clear for the first time in weeks. The vacant stare had gone, replaced by confusion and recognition.

'Elliot?' she whispered hoarsely. 'What... where are we?'

She looked around at the dark forest, the salt line and the ring of iron tacks surrounding us.

'Why are we back here?'

Relief flooded through me so fiercely that I almost cried.

'You're back,' I said, pulling her against my chest. 'You're really back.'

'I don't understand.' She pushed away slightly and stared at my face. 'Did something happen? Your ears - they're bleeding.'

I touched one ear. My fingers came away red. The entity's final scream had done real damage.

'It's all right,' I told her, though the ringing in my skull made the words sound distant. 'The worst of it is over.'

'The last thing I remember clearly is...' She frowned, struggling to concentrate. 'We were at home. I was standing at the window, looking at the moon. And there was something else there, watching me.' Her voice faltered. 'Watching through me.'

She shuddered.

'After that, everything is in pieces. Fragments of dreams, or things that weren't dreams.'

'Something followed us home from our last trip here,' I said, keeping my arms around her. 'It was affecting you. Changing you. I had to bring you back to the clearing to break its hold.'

'The woman,' Bethan whispered, her eyes widening. 'The woman in the woods. She was inside my head, Elliot. Talking to me. Using my hands to collect things and arrange them. Using my mouth to say words I didn't understand.'

Her fingers knotted in my jacket.

'Parts of me feel missing. As if there are holes where memories ought to be.'

'What remains is still you,' I said firmly. 'All of it. Perhaps the holes will fill in with time.'

I wanted to believe that. I could not be certain.

We stayed within the protective circle for the rest of the night. Whatever had worked - the salt, the iron, the burning juniper and rosemary, or some chance combination of folklore and desperate internet conjecture - I did not dare disturb it before dawn.

Bethan drifted in and out of sleep against my shoulder while I kept watch. My ears continued to ring, and dried blood crusted along my neck. The iron tacks remained untouched around us.

In the intervals when she was awake, Bethan described the fragments returning to her. She remembered standing at the window of our Cardiff flat for hours without knowing why. She remembered collecting peculiar objects from parks and roadsides, then finding them in her hands without any memory of picking them up. She remembered dreams of a woman watching from the corner of every room.

There had been voices in her head that were not hers, urging her to act and to speak.

'Am I myself again?' she asked at one point, her voice small in the darkness.

'Yes,' I told her, although I could not know it with complete certainty. 'You're you.'

At first light, the forest began to breathe again. A bird called tentatively from the silver birches, then another answered deeper among the spruce. Soon the clearing held the ordinary rustle and chatter of woodland at dawn. Only then did we feel safe enough to stand.

My legs were stiff and numb after a night on the hard ground. Bethan was unsteady and had to lean against me for support. I left the salt and iron where they were and packed our few belongings as quickly as I could. Neither of us wanted to remain in that clearing for another minute.

The walk out was quiet. Birds had returned throughout the forest, and their calls were a welcome reminder of normal life. In daylight, the route seemed shorter and less threatening.

By the time we reached the forestry car park, the sun had risen above the trees, turning the damp morning mist gold. I helped Bethan into my hatchback, shoved our gear into the boot and tried my mobile. A weak signal flickered onto the screen.

I rang 999 and asked for an ambulance. Bethan had collapsed after violent convulsions, I explained, and blood was still seeping from my ears. The operator kept me on the line while the Welsh Ambulance Service arranged to meet us at an accessible point beyond the gated forestry road. I did not attempt to explain the salt circle, the inhuman scream or the woman whose body had moved sideways between the trees.

Before driving away, I looked back at Coed Celyn one last time. It appeared ordinary now: Sitka spruce, wet undergrowth, rowan and silver birch stirring at the edge of the plantation.

But I knew better. I knew what had waited there, or what might still be waiting. Ancient, patient and hungry.

Perhaps we had broken this particular entity's hold on Bethan. Perhaps the improvised protections had forced it back into the silent spaces between the trees. I could not pretend to know whether it had been destroyed, or whether things like it could ever be destroyed.

'I'm never coming back here,' I said quietly, more to myself than to Bethan. 'Not to Coed Celyn. Not to any forgotten place when the moon turns red.'

Bethan nodded. Her face was pale, but there was determination in it again.

'When the next total eclipse comes, we'll stay in Cardiff,' she said. 'Somewhere with light and noise and people.'

As we drove away to meet the ambulance, I could not shake the memory of that face. Too many eyes. That impossible mouth. The scream still rang inside my damaged ears, and I knew the sight of it would return in my nightmares for years.

Some knowledge cannot be unlearnt. Some sights cannot be unseen.

We would carry what had happened in Coed Celyn with us, along with Bethan's missing memories and the fear that they might never return. Her immediate possession was over, but neither of us could know what had become of the night-walker itself.

We knew only that the world was stranger and more dangerous than most people ever realised, and that ancient predators still waited in silent, forgotten places.