Ex-newspaperman Roger Newton's adventure begins when Claude Lavigne, a power company employee, sees something in the forests of "the gore" ? a tiny swatch of unclaimed land created by a surveyor's mistake. His sense of reality unhinged, Lavigne commits suicide. When Lavigne's son, best friend, and an old black man risk an expedition into the gore, Newton, attempting to stop them, upsets a fragile balance and looses an ancient, nameless fear among the people of Vermont.