It has to make sense, he tells himself. As he tells himself every night. In the ancient world, all monuments and structures were tools intended to work with the alignment of skies and seasons. Their operations were calendrical. They meshed with the landscape and the environment. Therefore, conditions around the fogou on the night his wife disappeared had to happen again one day. There was nothing special about that day – no eclipse, no meteor shower, no unique event he has been able to pinpoint.
And so, every night: the tables, the maps, the notes, the constant futile attempt to puzzle out the locks of a door he cannot even see.
But, as the dark creeps up on him, he sees numbers, lines and asterisms closer together than before.
He paces around the table. Looks again. Pours himself a cup of homemade blackberry mead, circles the table as he drinks, looks again and again. Wondering if he’s fooled himself. Wondering if he’s made a mistake, or has just convinced himself something is there when it’s really just a madman’s mess of scribbled spells.
He decides, tentatively, that the numbers are right. There is a clear convergence.
Even if he’d believed the detective? There was no way he could leave now.
And that is when the lights go out.
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