He walked on and on. He checked his Timex. Fifteen minutes since he had stood up from the log. Thirty-five minutes since he had parked and entered the woods. He hadn't worn the right shoes to be hiking so far on such uneven terrain, and his feet and calves started to ache. But he kept his eyes ahead now, looking forward, anticipating.
He thought he saw a break in the trees. A hundred yards away, up the path, he saw an opening, a broad space where the endless succession of dark brown trunks appeared to give way. He increased his pace, despite the pain in his feet, and as he moved closer, a tingling sensation began to spread through his midsection, as though a low-voltage electric charge were slowly and steadily passing through his body. He thought it was his age and being out of shape, but the closer he came, the stronger the sensation, and he began to wonder if it had anything at all to do with his own body. He knew the signs of being old. Shortness of breath, a litany of aches and pains. But the tingling he felt, the almost sexual surge of energy and adrenaline rising in his body, was unlike anything he had felt since his youth. And the stronger the feeling grew, the more intensely painful and pleasurable it became, the more he wondered if he had ever experienced anything quite like it, not even in his adolescence when he walked around in a permanent state of arousal.
He came to the edge of the clearing.
It looked just as it had been described in the surviving documents, and strangely, it looked just as he had imagined it. Smooth, half-buried rocks covered the ground, but nothing grew there. No grass, no weeds. Around the clearing's perimeter there were bigger rocks, large enough for men to sit on, and it wasn't hard to imagine those zealous founding fathers perched there, handing down edicts and orders like they were the gods themselves. It was a simple place, really, a simple and—if everything he thought had happened here really had happened—a terrible place as well.
"This is it," he whispered. "This is really it."
But he didn't enter the clearing. Instead he lowered himself to one of the large rocks at the edge, letting his tired weight sink against it. He wanted to observe the place, absorb it with his critical scholar's eye.
The tingling started to subside. His heart rate slowed as he rested, and being off his feet relieved their pressure and pain. He felt his body returning to something like normal, except for the hunger that slowly reasserted itself in his midsection. Why had the surge subsided? He knew immediately. According to the information he had from the eyewitness accounts, the clearing possessed the greatest power at night. Here he was in the middle of the afternoon, and even with the trees above screening the sun, there could be no doubt that it was bright daylight in the world. All the better, he thought. All the better to watch the place, to get a real sense of it without interference from whatever powers or influences might exert themselves at other times.
He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the disposable camera he had purchased almost a year ago at one of the large, chain drugstores that seemed to be on the verge of taking over New Cambridge. He had intended to use it during his research trips, documenting his travels through the county and recording the significant sights he encountered along the way. But he hadn't used it once. He hadn't seen anything worth documenting. Until now.
He started snapping away, catching the clearing from various angles, but just as quickly decided that the photographs weren't going to be the most important thing he might take away from his discovery. He didn't come close to using the twenty-four-picture allotment on the camera when he put it away in favor of more hands-on investigation.