Where the Forest Leads

I did not know what to expect when I accepted the countryside ranger post at Glyn Du National Park. The interview had gone well. My experience walking these mountains since childhood had impressed the interview panel. They had nodded as I spoke about my familiarity with the paths, the local wildlife and how I had always dreamt of protecting this place.

What they had not mentioned was Malcolm Price.

I had been in the job for less than a week when Malcolm cornered me in the equipment store. I was checking the inventory and making sure all the radios were charged for the following day's shift when his tall frame blocked the doorway. The late-afternoon light cast him in silhouette.

"Got a minute, Mercer?" he asked, his voice as rough as gravel underfoot.

"Of course," I said, setting down my clipboard.

Malcolm stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He looked around as if making certain we were alone, which struck me as odd. The equipment store was hardly a busy place.

"Need to tell you something important," he said, leaning against a shelf of emergency supplies. "Something they don't put in the training manuals."

I waited, expecting some useful advice about dealing with lost walkers or handling aggressive wildlife.

"Never, and I mean never, investigate strange sounds after dark in this park," he said, his blue eyes fixed on mine. "Radio the control room. Record the location in your report, but wait until morning."

I tried not to smile. It had to be some sort of initiation, a way of winding up the new ranger.

"What sort of sounds?" I asked, playing along.

"Screams. Voices calling for help. Crashes that don't make sense." He counted them off on his weathered fingers. "You hear any of that, you stay where you are and wait for support. You understand?"

I nodded, keeping my face neutral.

"Understood."

"I'm serious, Daniel," he added, using my first name for emphasis. "Twenty-eight years I've worked these woods. Seen rangers come and go. The ones who listen to me tend to stay."

"And the ones who don't?" I asked, still believing this was an elaborate joke.

"They don't," he said simply.

Then he turned and walked out, leaving me alone with the equipment and my thoughts.

Later that night, I laughed about it with my partner over the phone.

"The old hand tried to frighten me with ghost stories today," I told her. "Probably does it to every new ranger."

"Maybe he's trying to keep you safe," she suggested.

"From what? I've walked every path in this park. There is nothing out there I can't handle."

I truly believed that then. I had grown up in these mountains, spent weekends camping with my father and later explored them alone. I knew the terrain, could read the weather and had all the training I needed to manage an emergency. Malcolm's warning seemed like a superstition from another age, something a man of his generation might come to believe after too many years alone in the hills.

I was wrong.

The first time I heard one of the sounds Malcolm had warned me about was three months into the job. I was conducting a night patrol along the eastern boundary, checking the campsites for unauthorised wild campers and overnight parking violations.

The moon was nearly full, illuminating the path well enough that I scarcely needed my torch. Then I heard it: a woman's voice, distant but clear, calling for help.

My first instinct was to go towards it. That was what rangers did. We helped people in trouble. My hand was already reaching for my torch when Malcolm's warning returned to me.

I stood there, paralysed by indecision. The voice called again, sounding more desperate this time. It seemed to be coming from Quarry Ridge, perhaps half a mile away. I knew that area well. Old slate-working tracks crossed the hillside, and visitors sometimes explored them despite the warning signs.

"This is ridiculous," I muttered. Someone could have been hurt.

But I remembered the look in Malcolm's eyes. He had not been joking. I keyed my radio.

"Control, this is Ranger Mercer. I can hear calls for help near Quarry Ridge. Over."

"Received, Mercer. Do you have a visual? Over."

"Negative. It is too dark to see anything from my position. Request permission to investigate. Over."

There was a pause before the control room answered.

"Negative, Mercer. Record your position and continue your patrol. We will send rangers to search at first light. Over."

The response surprised me, but I was relieved to have the decision taken out of my hands.

"Understood. Recording the location now. Out."

The following morning, I joined the search. We combed Quarry Ridge for hours and found nothing. There were no lost walkers, no signs of disturbance and not even any footprints except our own.

I told myself the wind must have been playing tricks, or that I had mistaken an animal call for a human voice.

Over the next two years, there were five more incidents. Twice, I heard screams. They were not ordinary animal sounds but distinctly human. Once, I heard what seemed to be someone calling my name, which sent a chill down my spine. On another occasion, there was a tremendous crash, like a mature tree coming down, although there was no storm and we found no fallen tree when we searched the woodland the next day.

Each time, I followed the rule. I radioed the control room, recorded my position and waited until daylight to search. Each time, we found nothing.

My colleagues never discussed the incidents afterwards. They completed their reports, shrugged and carried on. I began to wonder whether Malcolm had given every one of them the same warning he had given me.

The absence of evidence reinforced my original suspicion that he was merely superstitious. Perhaps he had heard similar sounds during his career and built a private mythology around them. The rational explanation was that sound travelled unpredictably through steep mountain valleys, particularly at night. What sounded like a human scream might easily be a red fox, whose calls could be disturbingly human. What sounded like my name could have been wind passing through the slate outcrops.

That was what I told myself, at any rate.

Even so, I never investigated the noises after dark. Call it respect for a veteran ranger or simple caution. I recorded the location, waited for daylight and then searched thoroughly. Finding nothing unusual only strengthened my belief that Malcolm's warning had no substance.

One evening, I encountered him at the ranger base as our shifts overlapped. He was hanging up his weatherproof jacket and preparing to leave when he noticed me gathering my equipment for a night patrol.

"Eastern boundary tonight?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Yes. Checking the campsites and making sure no one has wandered off a waymarked route."

He studied my face for a moment.

"You've heard them by now, haven't you? The sounds."

I hesitated before answering.

"Yes, a few times. And nothing came of them," I said with a shrug. "I follow the procedure and wait until morning. We never find anything."

A faint smile formed on his face.

"Good. You're brighter than you look."

I laughed. "Or perhaps there is simply nothing out there, Mal."

His smile disappeared.

"Keep believing that if it helps you sleep. Just don't break the rule. Report it, record the location, wait for daylight and never go into the darkness alone."

I wanted to press him, to ask what he believed was really out there, but he picked up his keys and headed for the door.

"Stay safe tonight, Mercer," he called over his shoulder.

"Always do," I replied.

As I drove the park 4x4 to my starting point that evening, I thought about Malcolm and his warning. Part of me still believed he was being superstitious. Another part wondered whether he had experienced something he could not, or would not, explain.

Either way, I trusted my own abilities. I knew these mountains and this forest. If anything dangerous was out there, I was trained to deal with it. If the mysterious sounds were merely tricks of the landscape, there was no harm in being cautious.

I parked at the start of the path and checked my equipment one last time before entering the darkening woodland. The sun had just gone down, leaving fading bands of orange and purple in the sky. Soon it would be fully dark, with only my torch and whatever stars were visible through the canopy to guide me.

As I stepped onto the path, I felt the familiar mixture of respect and comfort these woods had always inspired in me. This was my place. It had been since childhood. Whatever strange sounds might echo through the night, I was at home here.

Even so, I kept my radio close.

The scream cut through the close, rain-heavy night of 22 August 2026, high-pitched and unmistakably human.

I stopped in the middle of the path, my torch beam wavering as I waited for it to come again. Three years into my post at Glyn Du, I knew every part of this northern section. Yet that night, something felt different about the familiar woodland.

There it was again: a woman crying out from the direction of Willow Beck, perhaps half a mile north-east of my position.

I checked my watch. It was 1.17 am.

The full weight of Malcolm's warning settled over my thoughts.

Do not investigate strange sounds after dark. Radio the control room. Record the location. Wait until morning. Never go alone.

But this did not sound like the other screams I had heard during my first two years. Those had been strange, almost theatrical, like something attempting to imitate a human being without quite understanding how. This cry had a raw, panicked edge that made my skin prickle.

I unclipped my radio, my thumb hovering over the transmit button. The procedure was clear. I had followed it for three years without question.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" the voice called, weaker this time.

My hand fell away from the radio.

What if someone genuinely was hurt? What if she needed immediate assistance? I could not have lived with myself if I left someone suffering all night when I was so close.

"This is different," I muttered, trying to justify breaking the rule that had been impressed upon me from my first week. "This isn't one of those sounds. This is real."

I tightened my grip on the torch and started towards Willow Beck, pushing through dense undergrowth where the path ended. The close air clung to my skin, and my park-authority fleece stuck uncomfortably to my back beneath my weatherproof jacket.

Several days of storms had softened the ground, and my boots sank into it with every step. The forest seemed to close around me as I went deeper. Ordinarily it would have been alive with night sounds: insects, frogs and the occasional owl. Now the woods had fallen strangely quiet.

I tried to ignore my growing unease and concentrated on the beck, which I could hear rushing ahead.

"Hello?" I called, sweeping my torch across the tree line. "Park ranger. Is anyone there?"

No answer came.

I continued until I reached the bank of Willow Beck. The water was flowing faster than usual, swollen by the storms earlier that week. My light caught something at the water's edge: a figure huddled on a flat slab of slate beside the beck.

I approached cautiously, keeping the torch trained on the shape as it resolved into a young woman. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest, her clothing torn and caked in mud.

"Are you all right?" I asked, keeping my voice steady and professional despite the relief washing through me.

This was a real person, not some unexplained phenomenon. I had made the right decision.

She looked up, her face pale in the harsh torchlight. I lowered the beam so that I would not blind her.

"Thank God," she whispered, her voice raw. "I thought no one would find me."

I crouched several feet away, not wanting to crowd her.

"I'm Ranger Mercer, with Glyn Du National Park Authority. Are you injured?"

She shook her head.

"Just frightened and lost. My name is Lucy. Lucy Harcourt."

"What happened, Lucy?" I asked, looking for injuries she might not have noticed or disclosed.

"I was walking with friends," she said, pushing wet strands of brown hair away from her face. "We were trying to reach the viewpoint before sunset, but I slipped at the beck crossing. The current was stronger than it looked. It pulled me downstream, away from the group."

She gestured vaguely upstream.

"I've been trying to find my way back, but it became dark so quickly."

I nodded, although her account did not sit properly with me. The beck was high, but not high enough to sweep away an adult. The viewpoint routes were on the southern path network, miles from where I had found her. No university walking group should have been anywhere near this remote part of the park.

"How many people were in your group?" I asked.

"Four, including me." She hugged her knees more tightly. "Do you think they're looking for me?"

"I'm sure they are," I said automatically, though no missing-person report had reached us.

"When exactly did you become separated?"

"This afternoon," she said after a slight pause. "At about four, I think."

That made even less sense. If she had been missing since four in the afternoon, her companions should have reported it hours ago. Rangers and mountain rescue would have been mobilised before dark.

I noticed that she was shivering despite the warm night. The temperature had been about 24 degrees Celsius earlier and could not have fallen far.

Yet Lucy trembled as though she had been caught in a winter storm.

"Are you cold?" I asked.

"Yes," she said simply, her teeth almost chattering. "The water was so cold."

But it was not. Willow Beck was cool, certainly, but not icy at that time of year, particularly after days of summer warmth.

"Let me help you up," I said, holding out my hand. "I'll take you back to the ranger base. We can contact the mountain rescue team to look for your friends and find you some dry clothes."

She stared at my outstretched hand for a long moment before accepting it. Her fingers felt like ice against my skin, and I almost recoiled from the unexpected chill.

"Thank you," she said as I pulled her upright.

She was unsteady and leaned against me more heavily than I had expected.

"Can you walk?"

She nodded. "I'm just tired."

I guided her away from the beck and back towards the path, my torch cutting a narrow route through the darkness. The strange silence persisted. None of the usual night sounds returned. There were no frogs or insects, nothing except our footsteps and breathing.

"The ranger base isn't far," I told her, though questions were racing through my mind.

Why was she so cold on a warm August night? How had she reached this remote northern section? Why had no one reported her missing?

I kept those thoughts to myself. Getting her to safety mattered more than satisfying my curiosity. Still, I could not escape the feeling that something about Lucy Harcourt and her story did not add up.

I led her along the path towards the ranger base. It was a familiar route, one I had walked hundreds of times during my three years at Glyn Du. The compacted earth should have taken us directly to the base in roughly half an hour, giving us plenty of time to get Lucy somewhere warm and establish what had actually happened.

"There are dry clothes and a first-aid kit at the base," I said, glancing back to make certain she was keeping up. "We can call mountain rescue from there and organise a search for your friends."

Lucy nodded but said nothing. She walked several paces behind me, her arms wrapped around herself despite the warm air. My torch swept over the path ahead. At first it caught the occasional glint of animal eyes in the undergrowth.

Then I realised those reflections had disappeared.

In fact, every normal woodland sound had vanished. There were no insects, no small animals rustling among the leaves and no distant owl calls. There was only silence.

Our footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. Every twig breaking beneath our boots cracked like a gunshot.

"Can you hear that?" I asked.

"Hear what?" Lucy's voice was flat.

"Nothing. That's what's wrong. The forest is too quiet."

She did not respond.

I turned and let the torch beam pass briefly over her pale face. Her expression was blank, almost indifferent.

"You said you were walking with friends," I said, trying to draw her into conversation. "What are their names? We need them for the missing-person report."

"Just some people from university."

"Which university?"

She waited several seconds before answering.

"West Mercia University."

I knew it was more than a hundred miles away.

"That's a long journey for a day's walk. You must have left early this morning."

"We stayed at an inn last night."

"Which one?"

Another long pause.

"The inn by the A-road."

Her answers were becoming vaguer rather than more precise.

I tried another approach.

"You said you were heading for a viewpoint. Was it Red Kite Tor or Quarry Ridge?"

"The one with the view," she said.

I stopped questioning her and concentrated on the path.

We had been walking for about twenty minutes. The junction for the ranger base should have appeared at any moment, marked by a wooden fingerpost where the route divided. I shone my torch ahead, expecting to see it.

The path continued straight between the trees.

That could not be right. I had walked this route so many times that I could practically have followed it blindfolded. The junction was unmistakable, with carved arrows pointing towards the ranger base and the eastern path network.

I kept going, thinking I might have misjudged the distance. Five minutes later, there was still no sign of the junction.

"We need to stop for a moment," I said.

Lucy stopped as well, still hugging herself and watching me with those dark eyes.

I took the handheld GPS receiver with Ordnance Survey mapping from my belt. It was standard park-authority equipment, dependable and accurate. I switched it on and waited for a satellite fix.

When the display lit up, I stared at it in disbelief.

Rather than showing our position on the path network, it placed us in a blank area. There were no paths, landmarks or contour details. There was only empty terrain.

"This doesn't make sense," I muttered.

I had walked these woods for more than fifteen years, first with my father and then professionally. I knew every path, beck and ridge in Glyn Du. Yet the receiver claimed we were standing in unmapped country.

I looked up, trying to orient myself by the stars, but the canopy was too dense to reveal much of the sky.

"Is something wrong?" Lucy asked, her voice still oddly calm.

"We should have reached the junction by now, and the GPS isn't showing any mapped paths." I tried to hide the unease in my voice. "I'm going to call for assistance."

I unclipped my radio.

"Glyn Du base, this is Ranger Mercer. Over."

Static crackled from the speaker.

I tried again.

"Base, this is Mercer. Does anyone receive? Over."

More static, then a voice broke through.

"Mercer, this is Idris. What's the problem? Over."

Relief swept through me at the sound of Idris Vaughan's voice. He was one of the more experienced rangers, and we had worked together on numerous incidents.

"Idris, I have a lost walker with me. We are trying to return to the ranger base, but I believe we're off the path. The GPS is not showing any mapped routes at our location. Over."

"Where did you find her? Over."

"Near Willow Beck in the northern section. We have been moving south for about twenty-five minutes. We should have reached the main junction by now. Over."

There was a pause before Idris replied.

"That's strange. You should certainly have reached it. Stay where you are. I'll take the Land Rover out and meet you. Can you deploy a signal flare so I can locate you? Over."

"Negative on the flare. The ground is still wet, but I don't want to risk a moorland or forest fire unless we have no alternative. Head to the northern trailhead and follow the main path. We should be somewhere along it. Over."

"Received. I'm setting off now. Keep your radio on. Over."

"Thank you, Idris. Will do. Out."

A scream tore through the radio.

Idris's voice was filled with raw terror. The sound was so loud and unexpected that I nearly dropped the handset. Then it stopped abruptly.

"Idris? Idris, do you receive? Over."

I waited, my heart hammering.

There was no reply.

"Idris, this is Mercer. Do you receive? Over."

I spoke more urgently now. Nothing answered except static.

"Idris, come in. Are you there? Over."

The radio remained silent apart from its soft electronic hiss. I changed channels in case he had switched frequency for some reason, but every channel gave me the same result.

"What was that?" Lucy asked, still sounding remarkably calm despite the blood-curdling scream we had just heard.

"I don't know," I said, trying the radio again. "Idris, this is Mercer. Please respond. Over."

The silence felt heavy and ominous. Idris had screamed. There was no mistaking it. Then there had been nothing.

Something had happened to him, something terrible enough to make an experienced ranger cry out in terror.

I clipped the radio back onto my belt but left the volume high so that I would hear him if he called again. The woodland around us remained unnaturally silent, as if it were holding its breath.

"We need to keep moving," I said, more to myself than to Lucy. "We need to find the junction."

I looked at her standing in her torn clothes, apparently untroubled by Idris's scream or our increasingly inexplicable situation. Her calmness no longer seemed reassuring. It was disturbing.

"Come on," I said, turning back towards the path and lifting my torch. "Stay close to me."

As we continued, I began to notice that something was wrong. We had been walking for at least forty minutes along what should have been a direct route back to the ranger base, but the trees around us looked oddly familiar.

"Wait," I said, stopping abruptly and raising my torch.

The beam found the distinctive trunk of a lightning-split rowan, bracket fungus layered along the broken wood.

"We've passed this already."

Lucy stopped a few paces behind me, her arms still wrapped around herself despite the warm night. She did not answer. She merely watched me with those unnervingly calm eyes.

"This rowan. We walked past it about fifteen minutes ago."

I moved the beam beyond it, illuminating a leaning pair of slate outcrops.

"And those as well."

I turned to Lucy, expecting her to share my confusion or concern. Her face remained blank, almost expectant.

"Don't you find that strange? We should have reached the junction, but somehow we're going in circles."

She gave a slight shrug.

"Maybe we took a wrong turn."

"There haven't been any turns. We've followed a straight path."

I checked the GPS receiver again. It still displayed nothing but empty terrain.

"This is impossible."

I looked at the canopy. The trees obscured any stars that might have helped me navigate.

My training told me to stay where I was and wait for rescue when lost. But Idris had screamed over the radio, and nobody else knew where we were.

"We'll keep going," I said, more to myself than to Lucy.

We moved on with my torch leading the way. Its beam seemed weaker now, while the darkness around it felt thicker, almost as though it were pressing physically against the light. I struck the torch against my palm several times, but the beam continued to fade.

Ten minutes later, the lightning-split rowan and leaning slate outcrops appeared before us again.

"This isn't possible," I muttered, stopping dead.

I looked back at Lucy.

"We're walking in circles."

She said nothing, only watched me with the same eerie composure. She had not once commented on the repeating landscape.

"Can't you see it?" I asked, pointing towards the rowan. "This is the third time we've passed this exact place."

"Maybe we should try another direction," she suggested, her voice flat.

I nodded, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

"Yes. We'll go this way."

I indicated what appeared to be a gap between the trees on our right, away from the path we had been following. We forced our way through the undergrowth, branches catching on my fleece and jacket. The forest seemed to become denser the farther we travelled, with the spaces between the trunks narrowing around us.

My torch had weakened to a sickly yellow glow that barely illuminated a few feet ahead.

"This isn't right," I said after what felt like hours of walking.

My watch showed that nearly three hours had passed since I found Lucy beside the beck.

"None of this is right. The batteries in this torch were new. They shouldn't be failing so quickly."

I struck it against my palm again, harder this time. The beam flickered, then steadied slightly.

When I raised it, something caught my eye through a gap in the trees ahead.

A structure. A building.

"There's something up there," I said, quickening my pace.

As we approached, more detail emerged: dark red timber, a wooden sign and the familiar shape of a ranger base identical to the one where I worked on the other side of the park.

I stopped and stared.

"This isn't possible."

The building stood in a small clearing, reproducing my workplace exactly, down to the arrangement of its windows and the slight tilt of the wooden sign.

But there was no ranger base in that part of Glyn Du. I knew the park's maps by heart after three years of service. The building could not exist there.

Yet it stood before us, solid and real in the beam of my failing torch.

"Wait here," I told Lucy as we approached. "I'm going to look inside."

She nodded and stopped at the edge of the clearing while I moved towards the structure.

The wooden steps creaked beneath my weight as I climbed onto the porch. The windows were dark, with no trace of light inside. I tried the door, expecting it to be locked, but the handle turned easily.

The door opened with a long, low creak.

I swept my torch across the interior and froze.

Dark stains covered the floor and walls. There were broad splashes and smears of what looked horribly like dried blood. Papers lay scattered around an overturned desk. Chairs had been knocked onto their sides, and a filing cabinet had been dragged over, spilling its contents across the room.

I entered carefully. The floorboards groaned beneath me, and the air smelt stale and metallic.

"Hello?" I called, although I felt certain the place was empty.

My voice echoed strangely through the silent room.

I approached the desk, my boots crunching over broken glass and loose papers. With the toe of one boot, I turned several sheets face-up. They were incident reports, duty rotas, weather logs and official park-authority forms, exactly like the documents kept at the genuine ranger base.

Something among the debris caught my attention: a rectangular piece of card lying face-down on the floor.

I crouched, picked it up and turned it over.

It was a photograph of a female ranger standing before the main Glyn Du National Park sign. She wore a park-authority fleece and branded cap, and her brown hair was tied neatly back. She looked to be in her late twenties. Her bright eyes seemed to stare directly at me above a professional smile.

I turned the photograph over.

Someone had written a message on the back in an unsteady hand:

"The forest takes what it wants. Helen Ward never left. Neither will you."

Beneath the message was a date in August 2019.

I stared at the words as a cold weight settled in my stomach.

August 2019, seven years earlier, before my time at Glyn Du. I had never heard the name Helen Ward. Yet the photograph proved that she had been a ranger here, just like me.

I looked again at the stains covering the floor and walls, the overturned furniture and all the signs of a violent struggle within this impossible duplicate of the ranger base.

The forest takes what it wants.

My hands trembled as I held the photograph in the failing torchlight. I needed to show it to someone. I needed to understand what was happening.

I pushed the photograph into my pocket and hurried towards the door.

"Lucy?" I called as I stepped down from the porch of the impossible ranger base.

The clearing where I had left her was empty.

I moved to the exact place where she had stood only minutes before, sweeping the torch across the ground and surrounding trees.

"Lucy!" I called again, louder this time.

My voice returned as an echo, but it sounded wrong: too hollow and prolonged. The forest swallowed my call and sent it back distorted.

I waited for an answer, but only that unnatural silence pressed around me.

I crouched and ran my hand over the earth where Lucy should have left footprints. The soil was soft enough for her boots to make clear impressions, yet the ground was unmarked. Even my own tracks appeared to fade after a few yards, as if the forest floor were erasing any evidence of our presence.

"This doesn't make sense," I whispered, rising and turning slowly in a circle.

I kept the weakening torch in motion, looking for any trace of her: cloth caught on a branch, crushed vegetation, anything at all. There was nothing to suggest that Lucy Harcourt had accompanied me into the clearing. Nothing to prove that she had ever existed.

I checked my watch. Barely fifteen minutes had passed since I entered the ranger base. She could not have travelled far in her condition or through that terrain.

"Lucy!" I shouted once more, cupping my hands around my mouth.

The returning sound was wrong again. It almost resembled someone mocking my call rather than a genuine echo.

A chill passed through me that had nothing to do with the temperature.

I widened my search, moving in circles around the clearing while taking care not to lose sight of the building. The photograph felt heavy in my pocket, its message burning in my thoughts.

The forest takes what it wants.

Had it taken Lucy as well?

After ten minutes, I had found nothing. There were no broken twigs, no disturbed plants and no sign that anyone but me had entered the clearing. It was as though she had vanished into the air.

I tried every radio channel again, but received only static. The GPS receiver continued to show empty terrain.

I was considering what to do next when I heard a crashing noise from the east. Something large was forcing its way through the undergrowth without any attempt at stealth.

I swung my torch towards the sound. My free hand tightened around the ranger's walking pole while the heavy torch itself was ready to serve as a last resort.

The crashing grew louder. Branches snapped and wet leaves thrashed.

"Who's there?" I called, stepping back.

The undergrowth parted and a figure stumbled into the clearing. My weak beam revealed a park-authority uniform, torn and filthy. Fresh blood shone on exposed skin.

"Idris," I said, recognising my colleague despite his condition.

Idris Vaughan lurched forwards, his movements uncoordinated. Deep scratches covered his face and arms, many of them still bleeding. His uniform hung in strips, as though he had been dragged through brambles. Most disturbing of all were his eyes. His pupils were dilated, his gaze unfocused, looking through me rather than at me.

"Idris, what happened?" I asked, moving towards him.

He crossed the distance between us with startling speed and seized both my shoulders. His grip was painfully tight, his fingers digging into me like claws.

"It is empty there, Daniel," he said. "The forest leads you where it wants you to go."

His eyes rolled wildly, never settling on my face. Blood from a wound on his forehead ran down his temple.

"Idris, you need to calm down," I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. "You're hurt. We have to get you out of here."

"It is empty there. The forest leads you where it wants you to go."

He shook me as he repeated the words.

I gently but firmly removed his hands from my shoulders.

"I know, Idris. I understand. But we need to move now, all right? We need to find the path."

He nodded vaguely, still murmuring the same two sentences.

I slipped an arm around his shoulders. He flinched at the contact, but allowed me to guide him away from the impossible ranger base.

I glanced back at the building once, wondering whether I should recover anything else from it, but Idris's condition was more urgent. I still had Helen Ward's photograph in my pocket. For the moment, that would have to be enough.

"We're going this way," I told him, pointing with the torch. "Stay with me."

Idris stumbled beside me, periodically muttering his refrain.

"It is empty there. The forest leads you where it wants you to go."

I checked the GPS again, hoping for some impossible change, but the screen still showed unmapped terrain. No stars were visible through the dense canopy, and I recognised none of the surrounding landmarks. I had to make a decision.

"Idris, I'm going to launch a signal flare," I told him, although I was not certain he understood. "The fire risk is worth taking now. We need to find a way out."

I removed the red emergency signal flare from my response pack, aimed it through a gap in the trees and fired.

The red light arced upwards, bathing the forest briefly in a crimson glare before passing above the canopy. I waited for some indication that anyone had seen it.

Nothing changed, but launching it gave me a moment to think.

If we were lost in some impossible place, conventional navigation might not help us. If this was still Glyn Du, still the real world, there had to be a route out.

"We're going to keep moving," I told Idris. "Stay close."

I chose the direction that felt right on instinct alone and began walking, keeping him beside me. His condition deeply worried me. The bleeding had not stopped, and his confused state suggested shock or a head injury.

We walked for what felt like hours, though my watch said only forty minutes had passed. Idris was weakening, and every step became less certain.

I deployed a second flare.

This time, through the trees ahead, I glimpsed something familiar: the silhouette of Beacon Ridge, a landmark I knew well.

"We're getting closer," I told Idris.

He nodded without comprehension.

With renewed determination, I guided him towards the ridge. Gradually, the forest began to feel right again. The trees thinned. The ground beneath our boots resolved into a recognisable path. When I checked the GPS receiver, faint outlines of mapped routes had returned to the screen.

"We're nearly there, Idris," I said. "Just a little farther."

He did not answer. All his attention seemed fixed on placing one foot in front of the other. The scratches on his face and arms looked inflamed in the failing torchlight.

At last, we emerged onto a marked route. I recognised it immediately as the main northern loop.

Relief flooded through me when the GPS displayed our position clearly on the Ordnance Survey map. Somehow, we had returned to mapped ground.

Idris collapsed onto his knees, his remaining strength spent.

I knelt beside him and checked his pulse. It was rapid, but present. His skin felt cold and clammy, all the classic signs of shock.

I pulled out my radio and tried once more.

This time, instead of static, I heard the blessed voice of the control-room operator.

"This is Ranger Mercer," I said, trying to keep my voice calm and professional despite everything. "I've got Ranger Vaughan with me on the Northern Loop path, approximately two miles from the start of the path. He's injured and in shock. We need urgent medical assistance. Over."

"Received, Ranger Mercer," the control room replied. "Emergency services are being coordinated through 999. Can you give details of his injuries? Over."

"Multiple lacerations to his face and arms, possible concussion and definite shock," I reported. "He's conscious but disorientated."

"Understood. Mountain rescue and the Welsh Ambulance Service have been notified. Can you confirm your exact location?"

I gave them the coordinates from my handheld GPS receiver and its Ordnance Survey mapping, then set about making Idris as comfortable as possible. I removed my weatherproof jacket and placed it over him, elevating his feet with my response pack.

"Help is coming," I told him, squeezing his shoulder gently. "Just hold on."

Idris's eyes found mine for a brief moment of clarity.

"It is empty there, Daniel," he whispered. "The forest leads you where it wants you to go."

Then his eyes lost focus again and he went back to staring at nothing.

I sat beside him, one hand around his wrist as I monitored his pulse, the other clutching the photograph from the impossible ranger base. I wondered what Idris had seen out there in the darkness, what had left those marks on him and whether it was the same thing that had taken Lucy.

I stayed with him until I saw the torches of the mountain rescue team moving up the path. They stabilised him, secured him to a stretcher and carried him towards the nearest track. I followed close behind, exhaustion finally catching up with me. At the track, ambulance clinicians took over, starting a drip whilst the stretcher party continued towards the trailhead, where the ambulance was waiting.

"Are you coming with us, Ranger?" one of the clinicians asked as they prepared to load Idris into the ambulance.

I nodded, too tired to speak.

Behind us, the forest stood silent and dark, keeping its secrets for another night.

I followed Idris's condition obsessively after the ambulance took him away. The A&E staff at Glynneath District General Hospital worked quickly, cleaning and stitching the deep lacerations that criss-crossed his arms and face. I sat in the waiting area for hours, the photograph from the ranger base burning a hole in my pocket whilst I replayed the night's events in my mind.

"Family only," the nurse at the desk kept telling me whenever I asked for an update.

"He doesn't have family in the area," I explained for the third time. "I'm his colleague. We work together at Glyn Du."

She softened slightly.

"He's stable. The doctor will be out shortly."

When the doctor finally appeared, her assessment was clinical and detached.

"Ranger Vaughan has severe lacerations, exposure and shock. We're keeping him in for observation and further tests."

"When can I see him?" I asked.

"Tomorrow. He needs to rest."

Idris ended up staying at Glynneath District General for a full week. His physical wounds required several treatments. The cuts were deeper than they had initially appeared, and several needed further stitches after the first sutures failed to hold.

The psychological damage seemed even worse. The nurses told me he had woken screaming during his first few nights, thrashing so violently that they had been forced to restrain him. When I was finally allowed to visit, I found Idris propped up in his hospital bed, staring through the window. The scratches on his face had formed angry red lines that stood out against his dark skin.

"Hello," I said, pulling a chair up beside him.

Idris turned slowly, his eyes taking a moment to focus on me.

"Daniel."

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I was dragged through hell."

His voice was hoarse, as if he had been screaming for hours.

"They say I'm lucky."

I leant forwards.

"Idris, what happened out there? What did you see after we lost radio contact?"

He frowned, his forehead creasing with effort.

"I remember answering your call. You said you'd found a lost walker. I was heading out to meet you, and then..."

He shook his head.

"Nothing. Just waking up here."

"You don't remember screaming over the radio? Or what attacked you?"

"Attacked me?"

Idris looked down at his bandaged arms as if seeing them for the first time.

"The doctor said I must have fallen somewhere. Hit my head."

I pulled my chair closer.

"Idris, something happened to you out there. When I found you, you kept saying, 'It is empty there. The forest leads you where it wants you to go.'"

His eyes widened for a moment, then clouded with confusion.

"I don't remember any of that."

The doctor later told me this was common after traumatic events.

"The mind protects itself," she explained during one of my visits. "Between the possible concussion and the exposure, some memory loss isn't unexpected."

But I knew better. Something had happened to Idris in those woods, something that had left him physically and mentally scarred. The same something that had created an impossible ranger base and made a woman named Lucy Harcourt vanish without a trace.

The incident consumed my thoughts over the weeks that followed. I could not concentrate on my ordinary duties. Every patrol and routine task became background noise to my growing obsession with uncovering the truth.

I kept the photograph of Helen Ward in my locker, taking it out whenever I was alone to study her face and the ominous message scrawled across the back:

"The forest takes what it wants. Helen Ward never left. Neither will you."

I began with the park authority's staff records, searching for any mention of Helen. The digital archives went back ten years, but her name appeared in only a handful of documents. There were basic employment records showing that she had worked at Glyn Du for three years before her death in August 2019, and a brief mention in a staff newsletter welcoming a group of new rangers.

The park's memorial board offered another clue: a small brass plaque bearing her name, her dates of service and a simple inscription, "lost in the hills she loved". There were no details of how she had died.

I broadened my search to local newspapers, spending my days off at the county central library and scrolling through microfiche archives. At last, I found what I was looking for.

It was a small article from August 2019 about a fatal accident in Glyn Du National Park. According to the official account, Helen Ward had been walking alone on her day off when she fell from a cliff face near the northern boundary. Her body had been recovered two days later by a mountain rescue team supported by park rangers. The article quoted the then assistant head ranger, Gareth Pritchard, calling it a devastating loss to the Glyn Du family.

But as I dug deeper, troubling inconsistencies emerged. The accident report placed Helen in an area that had been closed for maintenance that month. Weather records showed heavy rain on the day she was supposed to have gone out, making a recreational climb unlikely for an experienced countryside ranger.

Most disturbing of all was what I found in back issues of the staff newsletter. Three weeks before her death, Helen had received a commendation for her diligence in documenting unexplained phenomena in the northern section, the same part of the park where I had found Lucy.

I took my findings to Malcolm first, catching him alone in the equipment store where he had warned me three years earlier.

"I need to ask you about Helen Ward," I said without preamble.

Malcolm froze, then slowly put down the radio he had been checking.

"Where did you hear that name?"

I showed him the photograph. His face went pale.

"Where did you get this?" he whispered.

"In a ranger base that shouldn't exist, on the night Idris was hurt."

Malcolm handed the photograph back as though it might burn him.

"You need to let this go, Daniel. For your own good."

"What happened to her, Mal? What's out there in the northern section?"

He shook his head.

"Talk to Gareth if you want to know more. But my advice is to drop it."

Head Ranger Gareth Pritchard was less subtle. When I requested permission to organise a search for the mysterious ranger base, he refused at once.

"We don't have the resources for wild-goose chases," he said from behind his immaculate desk. "Especially not ones based on hallucinations experienced during a high-stress rescue."

"It wasn't a hallucination," I insisted. "And what about Helen Ward? She was documenting something in that same area before she died."

Gareth's face hardened.

"Ranger Ward died in a tragic accident whilst walking off duty. End of story."

"The accident report doesn't add up. She was supposedly in a closed area during bad weather."

"That's enough."

Gareth stood. His stocky frame was imposing despite his average height.

"You're overstepping, Mercer. Whatever you think you found out there, it wasn't real. Idris got lost and injured himself. You found him and brought him back. That's all that happened."

But I could not let it go. I submitted formal requests for access to Helen's complete staff file and the full investigation into her death. I asked to review the mountain rescue and ranger logs from the night Idris was injured. Each request was either refused or returned with documents so heavily redacted that they were almost useless.

I began asking the other rangers about Helen, but most of the current staff had not worked at Glyn Du when she died. Those who had either changed the subject or claimed not to remember much about her.

Two weeks after Idris returned on light duties, I cornered Gareth again after a staff meeting.

"I need to talk to you about what happened that night," I said as the other rangers filed out.

Gareth's grey eyes were cold behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

"We've been through this."

"No, we haven't. Something happened to Idris out there. Something happened to Helen Ward in the same area, and the park authority is covering it up."

"Careful, Mercer."

His voice fell to a dangerous whisper.

"You're making accusations without evidence."

"I have evidence."

I pulled out copies of the weather reports, the maintenance schedules and the newsletter mentioning Helen's commendation.

"She was investigating something in the northern section before she died. The same place where I found Lucy Harcourt, a West Mercia University student who said she had become separated from a four-person walking group. She vanished without a trace. It's also where Idris was attacked by something he can't or won't remember."

Gareth looked at my documents without touching them.

"Do you know what I see? I see a ranger who is becoming obsessed with conspiracy theories. A ranger who might need psychological counselling before he can continue field duties."

The threat was clear.

"Are you saying I'm imagining things?" I asked.

"I'm saying stress affects people differently. Idris suffered physical trauma and exposure. You experienced the stress of a night rescue gone wrong. It's natural to try to make sense of chaotic events."

His tone was patronising, as if he were explaining something to a child.

"But pursuing these theories isn't healthy for you or helpful to the park."

"So I should simply forget what I saw? Pretend it never happened?"

Gareth straightened his already immaculate park-authority fleece.

"I'm advising you, as your head ranger, to focus on your assigned duties and leave the past where it belongs. If you can't do that, I'll have to record concerns about your fitness for duty in your next appraisal."

He walked away, leaving me alone in the meeting room with my useless evidence and unanswered questions.

That night, I returned to my small staff cottage and spread everything I had gathered across the kitchen table: the newspaper articles, the redacted reports and the photograph of Helen Ward.

The message on the back seemed to mock me.

"The forest takes what it wants. Helen Ward never left. Neither will you."

It had taken Helen. It had tried to take Idris. And whatever was happening at Glyn Du, the park authority was determined to keep it buried.

My reassignment papers arrived on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. A thin envelope bearing the logo of Briar Tor National Park was waiting in my post box, the sort of thing management delivered when nobody wanted to face you directly.

Nearly three months had passed since 22 August 2026, when I had found Lucy beside Willow Beck, heard Idris screaming over the radio and entered the impossible ranger base with its bloodstained floors and the photograph that now lived in my desk drawer.

I read the letter twice whilst standing in the small kitchenette of my staff cottage. Restructuring. Budget pressures. Staffing requirements. Effective in two weeks. The language was bureaucratic and final.

The signature at the bottom belonged to Gareth Pritchard, who had spoken fewer than ten words to me since our confrontation about Helen Ward.

The telephone rang three times before he picked up.

"Ranger base, Pritchard speaking."

"It's Mercer. I've just received reassignment papers for Briar Tor."

There was a pause, then Gareth answered in a carefully neutral voice.

"Yes, that's correct."

"I didn't request a transfer."

"Nobody said you did. This is a park-authority decision based on restructuring, budgets and staffing requirements."

I leant against the worktop, gripping the telephone more tightly.

"This is about my investigation, isn't it?"

"There is no investigation, Mercer. There never was. You experienced a stressful night rescue. Your colleague was injured in an accident, and you've been fixating on conspiracy theories ever since. If anything, this reassignment is a fresh start. I'd take it as a favour."

"A favour would be telling me the truth about what happened to Helen Ward."

The line remained silent for so long that I thought he had hung up.

"Pack your things, Mercer. Your final day is 24 November 2026. Briar Tor is expecting you on Monday, 30 November."

The line went dead.

I spent the next two weeks carrying out my usual patrols and avoiding the northern section where I had found Lucy. The other rangers treated me as though I had something contagious. Even Malcolm kept his distance, although I sometimes caught him watching me with an expression that looked almost like pity.

On my final day, 24 November 2026, I arrived at the ranger base early. The park authority offices were empty, their computer terminals dark except for the soft glow of screen savers.

I sat at the records terminal, logged in and navigated to the incident reports for 22 August 2026.

There was nothing.

I checked the date range again, then expanded it to cover the entire week. There should have been my initial report about finding a missing walker, the medical response for Idris and the search parameters issued to mountain rescue and the other park rangers. The system showed no incidents on that date.

I tried the medical and staff absence records next. Idris had been in hospital for a week and then off field duties whilst he recovered. There should have been paperwork, rota changes, sick leave documentation and a fit note.

There was nothing.

My hands felt cold as I searched for any mention of my radio calls that night. According to the system, I had made no transmissions during my entire shift. The call log for my radio identifier was blank.

I sat back in the chair as the truth settled over me. They had not merely obstructed my investigation. They had erased the incident. As far as Glyn Du's records were concerned, nothing had happened on the night of 22 August 2026.

I glanced at the clock. The morning shift would arrive in twenty minutes.

Working quickly, I searched the staff archives for Helen Ward. The results contained only basic employment records: her start date, position and end of service in August 2019. I copied everything to the same USB stick I had brought with me, then searched the digital archive of staff newsletters.

There were only two references to Helen: a welcome announcement and the brief commendation I had already found for documenting unexplained phenomena in the northern section. I copied those as well, then opened the park's mapping system.

The northern section where I had found Lucy showed ordinary paths, bridleways and terrain features. There was no ranger base and nothing else unusual. I saved screenshots anyway, marking the approximate places where I had encountered her and where the impossible dark red timber building had appeared.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. I closed the programmes, pocketed the USB stick and logged out just as the door opened.

Gareth walked in and stopped when he saw me.

"Mercer. You're in early."

"Just clearing out my locker," I said, rising from the chair.

He watched me for a moment, his eyes dropping towards the computer I had just used.

"Everything sorted for your departure?"

"Almost. I only need to hand in my radio and keys."

"Good. Briar Tor is a pleasant park. Smaller than Glyn Du, but the paths are well maintained. You'll do well there."

I nodded and moved towards the door.

"One question before I go."

Gareth's expression did not change, but his posture stiffened slightly.

"What happens to rangers who investigate cries in the park after dark? The ones who don't follow Malcolm's warning?"

His face remained carefully blank.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Helen Ward was documenting something in the northern section. The same place where Lucy appeared. The same place where Idris was attacked by something that left him repeating, 'It is empty there. The forest leads you where it wants you to go.'"

Gareth stepped closer and lowered his voice, even though we were alone.

"Listen carefully. You had a difficult experience during a night rescue. Idris had an accident. Everything else is stress and an overactive imagination. Take this reassignment as the gift it is, Mercer. Some rangers never get the chance to leave."

The threat was not subtle.

I held his gaze for a moment, then walked past him towards the locker room.

An hour later, I stood beside the park 4x4 in the staff car park, the last box of my belongings secured in the back. Helen Ward's photograph was wrapped in a shirt at the bottom of my holdall, beside the USB stick containing the copied files.

I had taken one final walk around the ranger base, then handed my keys and radio to an administrator who barely looked at me. I climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine and studied the genuine Glyn Du ranger base in the rear-view mirror.

The questions still burned in my mind.

What had happened to Lucy Harcourt? What had attacked Idris? What had Helen Ward discovered in the northern section that had got her killed? And why was the park authority so determined to cover it all up?

The answers were not here. Not any more. But I had names, dates and files. It was not much, but it was a start.

I put the 4x4 into gear and drove away from Glyn Du National Park. The photograph and my memories were the only evidence that anything had happened at all.

I began work at Briar Tor National Park on Monday, 30 November 2026. I settled into the new post, but my memories of Glyn Du clung to me like a persistent shadow.

The routine was different there. Briar Tor was smaller, with fewer visitors and more maintenance work, yet I found myself scanning the tree line during night patrols and listening for sounds that did not belong. The rational part of my mind told me I was safe, hundreds of miles from whatever haunted the northern section of Glyn Du. That did not stop my hand from drifting towards my radio whenever I heard an unexpected noise.

My new colleagues seemed friendly enough. They invited me to their weekly pub quiz nights and asked ordinary questions about my reassignment. I gave them the sanitised version - restructuring, budget pressures and staffing requirements - and they accepted it without pressing for more.

Briar Tor did not have the same atmosphere of secrets and unspoken rules that had permeated Glyn Du. Nobody pulled me aside to warn me against investigating strange sounds. No part of the park was quietly treated as forbidden.

But in the quiet moments at my staff cottage, I spread the evidence I had collected across the kitchen table and stared at the photograph of Helen Ward. Her eyes looked back at me from beneath her branded cap, bright and determined.

The message scrawled across the back seemed less threatening now that I had physically left Glyn Du, but no less disturbing.

"The forest takes what it wants. Helen Ward never left. Neither will you."

I often found myself wondering whether Lucy Harcourt had ever existed at all. Had I imagined her sitting beside Willow Beck on that close, rain-heavy August night? I remembered her vague answers about the other three members of her West Mercia University walking group, her unnaturally cold skin despite the temperature being about 24 degrees Celsius, and the way she had vanished without leaving a single footprint.

It all seemed more like a hallucination than reality. But if I had imagined her, what about Idris? His injuries were real enough. The impossible ranger base, a dark red timber duplicate of the genuine building where I worked, had felt solid beneath my feet. Its bloodstained walls had been real beneath the beam of my torch.

The USB stick containing my copied files became my most valued possession. I reviewed its contents almost every night, searching for patterns or clues I might have missed. The staff records were frustratingly sparse, containing only basic details of Helen's start date and post. The newsletter references were equally unhelpful, although the commendation for documenting unexplained phenomena in the northern section continued to trouble me.

What had she been documenting? And why had every record of her work disappeared?

Three weeks into my new post, I began researching other strange disappearances in national parks, forests and remote upland estates across Britain. The internet was full of conspiracy theories and unsupported claims. Beneath the noise, however, I found disturbing similarities to my own experience.

People had vanished without trace in places they knew well. Search parties had found no evidence despite extensive efforts. Witnesses described an unusual silence in the woods immediately before someone disappeared. Rangers, wardens and estate workers refused to discuss particular incidents or locations.

I created a spreadsheet to track the cases that seemed most credible, recording places, dates, weather conditions and witness accounts. The pattern was not immediately obvious, but it was there: a greater concentration of unexplained disappearances in older protected landscapes with large tracts of ancient woodland or remote upland country, particularly places linked to old local warnings, drovers' tales and Welsh folklore about crossing ancient woodland boundaries.

Glyn Du fitted that pattern perfectly.

I tried to contact Idris twice. The first time, he did not answer. The second time, he picked up but ended the call as soon as I identified myself.

I could not blame him. Whatever had happened to him in the forest that night had left both physical and psychological scars. Perhaps forgetting was his way of coping.

During my fourth week at Briar Tor, I was assigned to a night patrol along the eastern boundary. I was checking a campsite that had been reported abandoned after several days of storms when I heard it.

A scream echoed through the trees.

It was not the wind, and it did not sound like any ordinary animal call. It was a human scream, high and terrified, coming from somewhere to the north.

My first instinct was to run towards it, just as I had at Glyn Du. But something stopped me.

I remembered Idris's voice cutting out over the radio. I remembered the bloodstained walls of the impossible ranger base. I remembered Malcolm's warning about the rangers who had investigated cries after dark and never returned.

Report the sound. Record the location. Wait for support and daylight if necessary. Never enter the darkness alone.

I unclipped my radio.

"Control, this is Ranger Mercer on the eastern boundary. I've heard what sounds like a human scream approximately half a mile north of my position. Requesting support before I investigate. Over."

The control-room operator answered immediately.

"Received, Mercer. Remain at your present location. Rangers Shaw and Khan are twenty minutes away. Do not approach alone. Repeat, do not approach alone. Over."

"Understood. Holding position and awaiting support. Out."

I clipped the radio back onto my belt, took the heavy torch from its loop and swept the beam across the trees.

Nothing moved in the darkness.

The scream came again, more desperate this time. Every instinct told me to help, to run towards the sound. But I remembered Lucy's ice-cold skin, Idris's bloodied face and the photograph with its ominous warning.

I stayed where I was, counting the minutes until headlights appeared on the forestry access road.

Rangers Shaw and Khan arrived in a ranger Land Rover. Both looked alert but not especially concerned. For them, this was probably routine: a strange sound that would turn out to be a red fox, unauthorised wild campers or somebody breaching the overnight parking rules.

"I heard it twice," I told them as they approached. "A woman's voice. It sounds as though she's in trouble. It came from that direction."

I pointed north.

Shaw nodded.

"Let's have a look. We stay together. Standard formation."

Only then did we enter the trees.

We moved through the woodland as a unit, calling out at intervals and identifying ourselves as park rangers. No one answered. There were only the ordinary sounds of the night forest: insects, small animals shifting through the undergrowth and the occasional distant call of an owl.

The woods here were not unnaturally silent as Glyn Du had been around Lucy.

After forty-five minutes of methodical searching, we found nothing. There were no missing walkers, no signs of disturbance and no footprints apart from our own. Shaw called the result in, and the control room instructed us to return to our normal patrols.

"Probably a red fox," Khan suggested as we walked back. "Their calls can sound disturbingly human."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I knew what I had heard, and I did not believe it had been a fox. But I also knew better than to press the point without evidence.

When daylight came, I joined a larger search party that examined the area thoroughly. Eight rangers spread out in a grid, checking every gully and thicket and covering the search sectors assigned by the control room.

We found nothing unusual. There was no abandoned equipment, no sign of a struggle and no evidence that anyone had been in distress.

As we regrouped beside the vehicles, Head Ranger Eleanor Briggs clapped me on the shoulder.

"Good decision to radio it in, Mercer. It's always better to check and find nothing than to ignore a call and miss somebody who needs help."

I nodded, thinking of Malcolm's warning back at Glyn Du. For the first time, I truly understood the wisdom behind it.

Not because there was nothing to investigate. I was more convinced than ever that something strange was happening in remote places across Britain. But whatever it was, it was not something a lone countryside ranger with a torch should face.

I had survived whatever lurked in the depths of Glyn Du. The experience had changed me, and I carried the knowledge now, heavy as stone. Some mysteries could not be solved safely alone.

The forest took what it wanted, but it had not taken me.

Not yet.

That night, I added Briar Tor to my spreadsheet of incidents, recording the date, location and lack of physical evidence. Then I opened my drawer and looked once more at Helen Ward's photograph before carefully returning it to its hiding place.

I would not forget her, Lucy or what had happened at Glyn Du. I would keep searching for answers.

But I would be wiser about how I searched.