Have you ever heard of a small Welsh village called Afon Fach? No, of course you haven’t. Why would you? In fact, the only reason why I know of it at all, is because my friend Dylan has been obsessed with it since we were kids.
Let me start from the beginning.
-——————-
Dylan and I have always been a pair of oddballs and two unlikely companions. Him a Jimmy Eats World t-shirt wearing and jaffa-cake obsessed X-Files fan. Me, a stubborn introvert, with unruly dark corkscrews, round glasses that were way too big for my oval face and an affinity for loud punk music. The one thing we had in common was our mutual love for unsolved mysteries and unexplained phenomena.
In our little Welsh town, which is about an hour from Cardiff and its only notable landmark a Norman castle long past its age of glory, as well as a wide river with its waters whirling all the way down to the Bristol Channel, we stood out like sore thumbs. We didn’t care, though and the first time I met Dylan still remains a vivid memory in my mind even though it’s almost fifteen years ago now.
While other kids were busy playing football on the tarmac playground which consisted of nothing more than a couple of questionably stable swing sets and a seesaw nobody ever used anymore or gaping over their new Furbys, Dylan always sat with his back against his peers on a rock at the far end of the playground. It wasn’t that the other kids bullied him or made fun of the way he dressed when he was out of uniform or excluded him from playing with them, it was more that he chose to be alone. You’d have thought that a twelve-year-old kid wanted to play with his friends, but Dylan had always been a little more precocious than what would be considered “normal” for a twelve-year-old.
That day, I finally plucked up enough courage to go and speak with him. I was new to the school myself as my family had recently moved from a larger city in England back to Wales where Dad grew up. Back then, before racism became a more openly talked about subject, it wasn’t easy for a kid like me to make friends. Now that I’m older, I think maybe that’s why I wanted to get to know Dylan; because he seemed to be the most like me. An outcast.
“The Loch Ness monster isn’t real.” I said with the kind of cockiness that only a twelve-year-old kid could have.
“It is too!” Dylan protested and turned around to me, his big blue eyes wide and curious as he studied the person who’d dared make such an outrageous claim. “What makes you so sure he isn’t real?”
“What makes you so sure it’s a he at all?”
“Well, for one thing, Loch Ness is over 220 meters deep and scientists haven’t even explored the whole thing yet. Besides, don’t you know that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the oceans?”
My eyebrows furrowed as I crossed my arms, studying this strange kid who seemed so sure about his words. Yet, there was something about him that I liked.
“That’s not true!” I countered with a pout and sat down next to him. It was lunchtime and a rare day when the sun decided to bless us with its presence in the otherwise grey and rainy Welsh landscape. “Is it?”
“It is! I watched this documentary on the telly and they said the reason why people believe in sea monsters and stuff is because we don’t know what’s down there! People aren’t able to explore that far down so it makes sense that there would be things like giant squid and who knows what else. It’s terribly exciting isn’t it?!”
For some reason, the way he said that with such excitement a chuckle erupt from inside me until we both sat there, giggling hysterically as if we’d both been smoking something we shouldn’t. By the time we finally caught our breaths and the noise from the playground faded away behind us, we sat in silence for a few moments. A brisk wind ruffled his unkempt fringe, but Dylan didn’t care.
“You’re strange.” I told him, “My name’s Megan. I just moved here with my family.”
“I’m Dylan! Oh are you the ones who live by the chippy! My gran told me a new family moved in. You could come over after school if you’d like, I have more of these books if you’re into that sort of thing that is…”
“You mean strange mysteries? I love that stuff. Sure, I’ll ask my parents if I can come over.”
A smile tugged at Dylan’s lips and as he was about to say something else, the bell rang for the end of break and I knew we had to hurry otherwise Mrs Harris would tell us off for being late to English.
That’s how it all began. That was the day Dylan and I became best friends. We spent almost every day after school hanging out in his grandmother’s house, playing on his brand new Playstation 2 gifted by a relative at Christmas or ploughing through as many articles or books we could find related to mysteries man had yet to solve. My favourites were always stories about UFO abductions, spontaneous human combustion or ghostly sightings in old castles. Quite frankly, anything that would send a chill down my spine and keep me up late at night would do. Dylan’s grandmother was much more relaxed than my parents and allowed us to stay up late as long as we were quiet. Our houses stood on opposite sides of the town’s only Fish n’ Chips shop called “Oh My Cod!” and so it was easy to visit each other.
Dylan on the other hand, loved stories that were more human in nature; serial killers creeping around in the dark of the night praying on unsuspecting victims, unethical experiments and strange stories of cannibalism in remote places of the world. It was no wonder really that his favourite book of all time was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The first time I ever heard about Afon Fach was one Friday night, during that first year of our friendship. I was staying over at Dylan’s house and his grandmother’s friend was over for a visit. It wasn’t unusual at all for her to have guests over, especially in a small town where everybody knew each other. Dylan and I usually played Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts in the living room, while his grandmother and friends were gossipping over a cuppa or the occasional glass of wine in the kitchen. As the two of us were focusing on a particularly difficult challenge at Hercules’ coliseum in Kingdom Hearts, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation in the kitchen that caught my attention.
“Dreadful what happened and you’re sure it was Afon Fach?”
A small spoon tapped against a porcelain cup, followed by loud slurping and then a moment of silence. Somewhere outside a wild goldfinch chirped cheerfully as the last of the evening sun set behind the grey bricked houses.
“Yes, that’s what said and you know Martin, he’d never make up such a thing.” said Dylan’s grandmother, “Poor love, his face was white as a sheet. He told the police, you know and they did nothing and you know why don’t you? They’re scared.”
Something about the way she said the word “scared” sent a shiver down my spine. Dylan’s grandmother was a woman of authority who was well-known and respected throughout town. There wasn’t a person who didn’t know her name and knew that if you ever crossed, there wasn’t a force on heaven or earth that could help you. As an adult, I realise of course that the reason why Dylan was never bullied in school was because people were afraid of his grand and rightfully so.
“What’s Afon Fach?” I asked quietly, as if I knew back then that I wasn’t supposed to be talking about it.
“It’s nothing,” Dylan replied and turned back to the TV, “Just some local legend.”
“So, tell me then?” I demanded, “I thought you loved those stories?”
Dylan paused the game just as we were about to complete the Hercules’ Coliseum challenge. He glanced behind him as if to make sure his grandmother couldn’t hear him and then gestured for me to come closer. By now, I was used to his strangeness, but there was something different about this.
“About a century ago, some settlers moved into a place somewhere in the countryside, far away from the cities and towns and built a community there. The area was surrounded by a dense forest with huge green trees that was guarded by hills.” Dylan began, “Long ago, even before the people moved in there, they say giants lived in wales. The villagers all thought it was just folklore, until they noticed a great number of children began to go missing in the area. Strange noises were heard at night and the villagers thought the stories of giants must be true. Of course they didn’t want to lose their own children, so they came up with a plan. They tricked travellers passing by to come and spend the night and sometimes, they went to bigger cities and told people that there was work in Afon Fach in a mine that needed more workers. Some people believed this and went to Afon Fach, but were never seen again.”
“What happened to them?” I asked in a whisper, completely absorbed by the mystery of Dylan’s story. Usually, he jumped at a chance to tell people about some new cryptid he’d read about a horrible human experiment somewhere in America, but now he seemed almost reluctant to talk about this.
“People say they were sacrificed to the giants of the valley, but the weird thing is that people have gone out to look for Afon Fach and it’s never been found.”
“So what happened to those people?”
Dylan shrugged and as we heard his grandmother’s footsteps coming towards us, that was the end of that conversation.
The next day, I sat at the kitchen table, picking at my dinner when Mum asked what was wrong. She always had a way of knowing, which I suppose is just one of those sixth sense parent things.
“What happened to Dylan’s parents?” I wondered as I swallowed a bit of now cold chicken, “Has he always lived with his grandmother? He never talks about his parents.”
I’ll never forget the way Mum and Dad looked at each other. There was a sort of sorrow in both of their faces that filled me with fear and sadness at the same time. Dad released a sigh as if he’d been waiting for this question to come while Mum squeezed his shoulder and removed our plates from the table.
“We hoped that maybe Dylan would tell you himself at some point,” Dad started, “But, his grandmother told us and said that if he doesn’t share it with you, then she doesn’t mind us telling you.”
“You see, Darling.” Mum took over, “A few years ago, when Dylan was barely five years old, his Dad went missing. He’d been offered work in a village further into the valleys for a week, but never came back. The police searched everywhere and just never found him again. Dylan’s mum took it very badly and when she realised her husband wasn’t coming back, well….she took her own life. That’s why Dylan lives with his grandmother.”
“Didn’t the police look for him in the village he went to?” I asked
My parents exchanged yet another glance that told me I was asking questions about things that I shouldn’t know about in the first place.
“It’s difficult to explain,” Dad said as he leaned back against the chair and wiped his glasses, “Sometimes people say they’re going to do things and then, they don’t. The police think that maybe Dylan’s dad never found work and that he chose to leave.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What was the name of the village?”
I already knew the answer before my Dad revealed it to me.
Afon Fach.
-——————-
I never asked Dylan about Afon Fach again, at least not directly. A couple of years passed and the last years of our childhood transformed us into teenagers whose personalities remained unchanged, but puberty became a constant antagonist. Dylan still wore his band t-shirts and ripped jeans and instead of being ashamed of my tomboyishness, I grew into my identity and eventually came out to my family and to Dylan of course.
We still shared a mutual passion for unsolved mysteries and were still a couple of outcasts, but every now and again we did make an effort to not completely alienate ourselves from our peers. By the time we were sixteen-years-old, Dylan even told me about his parents and how his Mum died. I confessed that I’d known for years because my parents told me and felt a bit of shame tighten as a knot in my gut.
About a year later on a Friday night in late spring, we decided to go to this party in a nearby abandoned quarry. For years, local kids used the area as a meeting place where they could get some privacy from the prying eyes of parents and usually it was all fine. In fact, I think parents took a great deal of comfort in knowing where their children were and that it was somewhat of a controlled environment. That’s what I loved about growing up away from the large industrial cities where it was so easy to disappear in a crowd; a sense of community. Sure, Dylan and I were known to be introverts, but people still knew us and when we grew up there was always a feeling of being looked after.
That night, when most of the party had died down, a few of us stayed behind and lit a fire. Up above, constellations of stars were twinkling and around us, the wind whistled in the trees. There were six of us; me, Dylan, Tez, Hazel, Niccy and Mark. Mark sat with his arm around Hazel while Niccy warmed her hands over the fire and Tez opened a can of cheap beer. It had been a good night, but Dylan wasn’t quite himself and as the light of the flames lit up his face, I saw that he was staring into the woods.
“What’s that noise?” Niccy asked, “Can you hear that?”
“It’s just birds, love.” Tez replied, “That’s all.”
“Those are some bloody large birds,” Niccy remarked, “Are you sure? Just listen…”
Niccy was right. Around us, I became aware of something that sounded like a very big animal moving through the trees. I thought it was going around in a clockwise circle, but then I realised it wasn’t just the trees on one side making noises - it was all of them. What sort of animal could make the trees create noises like that? Almost as if….as if they were alive. Pure fear trickled down my spine like a jolt of electricity and I immediately became very alert. For what seemed like ages, we just listened to the noises of whatever it was moving around us, until suddenly it stopped just as quickly as it
What followed was an unnatural silence. The usual sound of crickets chirping in the bushes ceased to exist and tirely and there was no wind. I looked at my friends, each of them with the same terrified expression in their eyes.
All of them except Dylan.
While the rest of us were scared shitless, Dylan’s face remained unchanged as he poked around in the slowly dying embers of the fire.
“Can we go now,” Hazel asked, “Please. I don’t think I want to stay anymore.”
“It’s alright,” Dylan said quietly, “They won’t come any closer.”
“They?” I echoed and raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean ‘they’?”
“Oh Christ, not this again.” Tez sighed as he folded his arms across his chest “We’re not kids anymore, Dylan. Nobody believes those stories.”
“What stories?”
I wanted Dylan to reply, but instead it was Tez who continued.
“Giants.” he said matter-of-factly, “When we were kids, people used to say that long before humans lived in these parts there were giants. Or nature spirits or whatever the hell you want to call them. People used to say that if you wandered too deep into the countryside, you would eventually end up at this place where villagers supposedly made sacrifices to the old gods. All bollocks of course.”
“Can we go?” Hazel said, her voice more desperate this time, “I’ve had enough.”
“You’re not scared are you? It’s all nonsense, Haze. Just bedtime stories parents tell their kids to make sure they don’t get up to mischief. There’s no such thing as giants or old gods. It’s all fairy tales.”
“So what was that noise then?” Niccy demanded, “It was something.”
“Sure, it was. Probably an animal or something scouting out the area and looking for prey.”
When he said the word “prey”, Tez made an ‘ooooh’ sound and pretended to tickle Niccy who playfully punched his arm.
“You’re such an idiot.” she said “I’m with Hazel though, can we please go home. It’s getting cold and I’m tired.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
With that, Tez, Mark and the girls said their goodbyes and drove off, leaving Dylan and I alone with what was left of the fire. Something in his eyes told me that his thoughts were far away and I couldn’t help but wonder where that was. If I’d learned one thing about Dylan over the years of our friendship, it was to never pressure him into talking and so we sat there in comfortable silence for a while, until he finally broke it.
“I think I’ve found it,” he told me
“Found what?”
“Afon Fach,”
Almost immediately my heart began to beat much faster than before and for a reason I couldn’t quite explain, a lump of anxiety grew inside me.
Afon Fach - a place that probably didn’t exist, but yet had its claws so deeply rooted in this small town that even now people still told stories of its horror. Not once in the years that I’d lived there had there ever been any proof that Afon Fach was nothing more than a boogeyman story told by parents at bedtime. Yet the look in Dylan’s face told me something different and that’s what scared me.
“Isn’t that just a story, Dyl?” I asked, “Something parents tell kids to make sure they don’t wander off alone, just like Tez said.”
Dylan shook his head and then exhaled a defeated sigh, as if he was disappointed in my reaction. Sure, I loved unsolved mysteries, but that was the whole point of them: they were scary because they were unsolved. Up until that point, I’d always just assumed that Dylan had come to terms with the terrible fate of his parents, especially as he was so young when it all happened. As we sat there listening to the silence of the woods behind us, I began to wonder if maybe Afon Fach is what started it all? Maybe that one legend is what made him absorb all the others.
I don’t know why, but something about that realisation frightened me. As if I understood then that we were no longer children absorbing whatever media outlets on the paranormal that we could find. This was very real, or at least it was to Dylan.
“Come on, Dyl.” I said in an attempt to change the subject, “Let’s go home. My parents will kill me if I’m too late.”
“You don’t believe me.” Dylan whispered, “I thought you of all people would understand. You love this stuff.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just….we were kids then and now…well we’re not anymore. I think I’d like to keep my mind in the real world.”
By the time I realised what I’d said, it was too late. I saw Dylan’s eyes grow darker and when we drove back to town, he didn’t say a word to me.
After that night, Dylan and I grew apart. Slowly, at first, but then more noticeably. I was focused on getting good enough grades to apply for Uni in Edinburgh and during my A-Levels, I met my first girlfriend; Sarah. To say that I was head over heels in love with her was an understatement and we spent almost all our free time together. In fact, by the time we left Sixth Form, Sarah received an unconditional offer from Glasgow University and I got into my Media Studies and Journalism BA at Edinburgh, which was pretty much perfect.
I hoped that Dylan would find a way to move forward and do something good with his studies. Maybe a degree in Anthropology like he often talked about, but instead, Dylan never went to Uni. He stayed behind in that small Welsh town and looked after his grandmother, who as the years went by got older and less…healthy. It was during my last year at Uni when my Dad phoned me to say that Dylan’s grandmother passed away. Old age combined with sickness. She left everything to Dylan, including that old house next to the chippy and according to Dad, Dylan still lived there. I could tell he sounded worried, though, because nobody had really seen him for a few days and nobody answered the knocks on the door. Dad asked if I could call him, just to check if he was alright and I tried to tell him that we weren’t really friends anymore, but in the end I promised.
“Hello,” said a voice on the other line, but even though I knew it was Dylan it was different. He sounded much older and a bit like a person whose voice was hoarse after not drinking enough water.
“Hi? Dylan?” I replied, ignoring the quiver in my voice, “It’s me, Megan. I’m just calling to see how you are. I….I heard about your nan and I’m so sorry.”
“What do you want?”
“Well, like I said. I wanted to know if you’re alright. Look, I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but I still care about you, Dylan. You’re still my friend.”
“If you were my friend, you would have been at the funeral. She loved you like you were her own granddaughter, you know.”
Those words pierced through my heart like sharp shards of glass and it became clear to me that Dylan still held a grudge.
“I’m sorry things have been…different. That’s just life, though, Dyl. People change and sometimes we just have to deal with that.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” Dylan snapped, “Don’t talk to me like you’re better than me, just because you became one of them.”
“That’s not fair! I didn’t become one of them, I just…I made friends. That’s what kids do! And you were always welcome, you just chose not to. It’s no wonder other kids stayed away from you, you were always so bloody …”
My words trailed off and I stopped myself just in time.
“Go on.” Dylan challenged me sharply, “Say it.”
“No. No I won’t. Look, I just wanted to call and check in on you because people are worried. My parents are concerned. Just make sure to look after yourself, yeah? Maybe I’ll see you when we come home for Christmas.”
“Don’t bother, I’ll have left before then.”
I shouldn’t have asked, because asking never leads to anything good. Unfortunately, curiosity got the better of me and I couldn’t help myself.
“What do you mean?” I asked, “Where are you going?”
Honestly, I’m not even sure why I bothered asking because I already knew the answer long before Dylan said it. I’m ashamed to admit that I never called him back after that and my parents must have figured we argued because they didn’t ask. I did come home for Christmas that year, just as I promised. Despite living in the countryside, having actual snow in Wales was a rarity and maybe you could blame that on global warming, but that Christmas it snowed. Huge, white flakes with intricate patterns melted in my hand and I felt like a child again. My mind flashback to a Christmas when Dylan and his grandmother came over to our house for dinner on Christmas Day and I felt a pang of guilt in my chest. As I stood there on the street, I gathered courage and walked to the house on the other side of the chippy. I rang the doorbell and then knocked, but when there was no reply I grew worried. I don’t know why I didn’t just turn around, but instead I gently pressed down the door handle realised to my surprise that it was open. All the lights in the house were off, but when I flicked on the lounge light, I almost stumbled back into the wall.
The living room was in an absolute state. Newspapers lay haphazardly spread across the table, and just like in conspiracy thrillers, there was a whiteboard with old maps pinned to the whiteboard. I called out for Dylan, but he didn’t answer and I felt that same almost primal fear as I had a few years ago, when I first heard the stories.
I think he’s gone there, to Afon Fach and I have to find him.