Chapter 4 - AlexThe ruins of the house on the hill stood out in stark silhouette against the backdrop of an overcast, forbidding sky. Once a grand mansion owned by a family steeped in the traditions of the old nobility, it had been many years since the walls had resounded with the sounds of the balls and grand banquets that had attracted the wealthy and the noble from miles around. By the light of a baleful moon the remaining walls of the mansion appeared as though framed by the moonlight; a snapshot photograph of a ruined reminder of what had once existed atop the hill. It had been so long since anyone had resided within those walls. Even longer than the years of communism under which the peasant folk of the mountains had laboured for so long, and not a living soul in the valley could rem
