Joe was a very good artist, although a very morbid one. He specialized in drawing things of a morose nature. He was extremely good at drawing skulls, gravestones, acts of violence, and agony of all kinds. These things readily flowed from his imagination, down his arm and onto the paper. He
believed that his mind was in tune with darkness. As good an artist as he was he could not draw anything outside of his dark genre. Given a still life of a bowl of fruit, a picture of a mother and child or a peaceful forest scenery his hand would become retarded. If the fruit was rotten, the mother dead and the forest dreary then the possibility of the formation of a drawing was greatly increased. It was as if he could not envision beauty, even if he was surrounded by it.

 One of the reasons he had went out to the forest that day was to try to capture the scenery on paper. It was not the first time he had tried to do so, it was actually one of many attempts. This visit had not been as productive as others. On some occasions he would be able to draw an entire
tree, sometimes two or three even, with some what limited success. On those occasions he viewed his work as the equivalent of a 4 year old's. But no matter what ended up on the paper after his visit,
Joey was pleased with it.

He had sat there watching the forest since he had abandoned his drawing. It was a very nice morning. There was a warm breeze flowing through the trees, the sun lit the woods with bright red light that cast long shadows through the canopy. The sounds of birds and crickets chirping were like music that morning. Joe might not have been able to draw beauty, but he could appreciate it. He saw it all around him, as he always did in the forest. He liked going there, it was so peaceful and tranquil.  While he was there all his problems ceased to matter. Sometimes he would not even come with a drawing pad, he would just bike to the forest to think and to admire the woods. It was like home to him, he felt more comfortable there than anyplace else.

Whenever Joe went to the forest he would always go to one particular spot. It was about ten miles out of the city, it took Joe about an hour to bike there and then another half an hour riding on the forest bike trail to get to his spot. He always sat underneath the same oak tree, it was a large
tree, much older than the others Joe guessed. It was in the middle of a small clearing and light shined onto it from a break in the canopy, when the sun was out to shine.

 Joe noticed that the sun was getting higher up in the sky. He stood up, stretched, brushed the dirt off his pants and checked his watch. It was ten sixteen according to his Timex sports watch. He had spent roughly three hours out of the city, including the bike ride to the woods. It was about time that he started to head back.

Joe was bending down to pick up his bicycle when he felt it. He paused bent over, frozen into place. A chill went up his spine and goose flesh developed on his arms. It was hard to explain what exactly he felt. He was not frightened and it was not cold on that morning. To his knowledge he was not ill, he had felt fine up until that moment. It was not a natural sensation. It was more like a sixth sense, like when people say they can sense danger or a person coming up behind them.

 Joe stood up and started walking southward, the opposite direction of the way that he had came. He did not know why he was walking that way. He had never gone that deep into the woods before and he was not quite sure what was in that direction. It had to do with the feeling that he had
gotten. He just felt that he should be walking in that direction.

After fifteen minutes of walking Joe came upon thick brush that he could no longer see beyond. The weeds that grew there had thorns and Joe thought absent mindedly that he should not walk through them just before he stepped into them. He was wearing khaki shorts so the thorns scratched his legs leaving cuts and itchy spots behind, but he was not thinking of that. He just felt that he needed to get through the weeds to see whatever it was that laid beyond. 

He pushed his way through and found himself in a weedy field. They were not thorny weeds like the ones he had just walked through, they were mostly leafy and flowery weeds. Beyond the field he saw a row of telephone poles, which he assumed ran along side a road. Joe had never known that there was a road there, he had just assumed that the forest went on for a mile or so. He decided that it was probably just a dirt road, not even paved, that only farmers used.

The feeling had not gone away and he was still nowhere near being able to describe what it was. Its intensity had increased as he had approached the road. He did not dare move any closer than he was. He did not have any real desire to find out what the feeling was, although he did want to know
what had drawn him there.

Joe scanned the road to the west then to the east. As he looked to his left he saw a figure in the distance. At first he did not recognize what he saw as a person, it just looked like a dark, moving shadow. Finally Joe realized that it was a person, a rather strange one to be dressed completely
in black on a day in August, but a person nonetheless, moving slowly down the road. Joe thought that man looked exhausted by the way that he was walking. His steps were slow as if he were greatly fatigued. Joe kept his eyes on him as he crossed the landscape, he could not take his eyes away.

When the man finally moved behind a tree in the west Joe was able to unlock his stare. He turned his back to the man across the road. As he turned and reentered the forest Joe realized that the man had been the focus of his feeling. The sensation had increased as the man had gotten closer and subsided as he walked away. Joe viewed this with some amazement. He was a believer in such things as spirituality and ESP, but he had never thought that something of that sort was ever going to happen to him, until that day. He did not know whether he should have been awed by the
experience or be afraid that it would ever happen again.

Joe walked back to his bicycle and went out back to the main road to ride back home.