* * * *
The snowstorm slowed. I don’t know what made me stop on the long and weaving driveway to the manor, but I did. Perhaps anxiety. Perhaps weakness. I sat behind the truck’s steering wheel and could see the distant manor atop the ominous peak. Six stories of granite. Two towers reached into the foreboding heavens. Few golden-white lights flickered in its massive windows. I’d never seen such a large dwelling in my life: hulking, titanic, disruptive to one’s eyes. It was a shadow against the lake, like a canopy hanging off a window. Gray-black stone, like a massive crypt, squatted atop Mount Castelul, lurking with its many window-like eyes. How disheartening. How terrifying. I should have turned my truck around immediately. But I didn’t. How foolish of me. The edifice appeared, disappe
