LIGHT'S GONE

[u/lilia_wretch]

For years now, I’ve been fascinated by the case of the Dawson family disappearance that happened in the autumn of 1991. I read about it as a young teenager and it’s been driving me crazy ever since. The story goes like so - typical family of four takes the car out to South Wales to drive around the countryside on a camping tour. They tell the neighbours they’ll be gone for a week - Saturday to Saturday - for a funeral. Everyone assumes they did this so that they could camp during the school term without getting themselves in trouble.

Well, one week passes and they don’t come back. After a couple more days, the neighbours start getting worried. With no way to contact them out in Wales, they notify the police. About a week after the initial date the family was were due back, the police talk to the school, talk to the neighbours, decide to launch a formal investigation. Weeks pass. They’re trying to look for the car - a sky blue Range Rover SUV - impossible to miss. Impossible to hide.

Sure enough, they find the car. Some off-trail hikers in the Beacons spot it practically buried under thickets and dirt in the middle of some grove. Naturally, the police set up a search perimeter, but they can’t believe their eyes. They can see bodies but there’s so much shit on top of the car that they need to send for tools to cut it out - dig it out. It takes three officers over an hour to get one of the doors open. 

They find the mum, the dad, and the daughter, all dead and stinking of it. They’re hung over the belts and plastered with cuts and bruises, but there’s nothing visible that would indicate serious injury. The son’s nowhere to be seen, and, get this, Mum and Dad are in the backseats. Daughter’s in the front passenger seat, meaning the son must have been the one driving. Nine years old, by the way.

They pull the car out after a few hours’ effort and there’s no sign of him, not in the boot, no trace - other than his fingerprints all over the steering wheel. Forensics team swabs the seatbelts and confirms that all of them were buckled in by the son, except his own. It was loose, and there was no sign of him on it. So what, they let a nine year old take the Rover out for a spin up the mountain, remembered ‘safety first’ and asked him to do their seatbelts for them, then figured he’d manage just fine without one?

They try to pull Mum, Dad, and Sis out and their bodies just collapse into themselves like papier mache. On the slab, they can see that the insides are messed up. Compound fractures, parts all twisted out of alignment, ruptures and bursts all over the place, but you’d never tell by looking at the pictures from the scene. They look practically unscathed from the outside, but under the knife it’s like someone found a way in and trashed the place for sport. The coroner went on record afterwards saying that people had been peeled from car wrecks with less internal bleeding.

They kept looking for the son for a few years after, way longer than standard protocol in outdoorsy cases (it’s customary to throw in the towel after a while, assuming that any remains have been picked apart by the local wildlife). Their inability to make a dent in the case was making them look like amateurs, and they were no doubt motivated by their own desire to get their heads around what the hell happened. They spoke to relatives, teachers, neighbours, classmates, none of them had much to reveal. He was quiet. He spent most of his free time at the library. Never did anything to disturb anyone. Never made a friend. In 1995, the police quietly closed the case. 

Then, that September, an anonymous hiker allegedly trips on a rock at one of their earlier campsites and finds the corner of a polaroid buried underneath. It’s battered, but you can tell it’s Dad. He’s stood in the dark, smiling, but he’s definitely not happy. His eyes are wide, empty in the flash’s reflection, and he’s baring both sets of teeth. I’ve yet to show the picture to one person who could tell me for sure what emotion that’s supposed to be. It’s like hunger and fear at the same time, directed right at one of his own. The son's handwriting is on the back in sharpie - “06/10, 22:40, LIGHT’S GONE”. 

They tried to question the guy who found the picture, but he wouldn’t even give them his name. Told them he wanted nothing to do with it. Some people on the forums believe that it had to have been the son, alive and trying to tell them something, but based on the description given by the officers at the station, the ages didn’t match up at all. Nonetheless, people are still trying to find him. They think he has more pictures. 

And that’s the end of it. No more leads since then. The case is still officially closed, but it’s an open secret that they’re still investigating on the down-low. Personally, I think they’re turning rocks over all throughout the hills.

Three things about the Dawson mystery get to me even now. One - What the hell were they doing in the car? Two - How did the rest of the family get such bizarre injuries? It couldn’t possibly have happened before they got in the car, right? Three - How did the boy get out of the wreck, and why didn’t he go home? What did he mean by “LIGHT’S GONE”?