Maggie Peters's Journal

January 5, 2009

At night these memories haunt me, despite my best efforts to direct my attention elsewhere. Momma and Daddy have asked that I no longer speak of it. They say it's for my benefit, but I expect it is primarily for theirs. My friends faces become drawn and guarded when I bring up the topic. It has gotten to the point where I can see the strain it puts them under to even be in the same room with me.

I do not resent them for this. How can I? It was horrific for them too. If I were my old self I would not speak of it. I used to do such a good job of keeping my deepest emotions under wraps, but it is too taxing now. Everything exhausts me. Even thinking, but thinking - or rather, remembering - is all I can do.

My family would have me start school at semester, and I will, but in order to do so I must be able to function.

This journal is a last resort. I must write the memories away. It's been four months, but I remember each minute with painful clarity.

It was the summer after high school. We, my friends and I, were staying at Alton's summer home on the northern corner of the east coast.

Alton's family was in business with all of our fathers who owned small-time energy businesses in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, a CEO of a large chemical manufacturing company in New York, was the driving force behind our parent's wealth and status. Alton's father was descended from old money but had continued to accumulate an immeasurable amount of his own wealth.

As children, Alton's visits were the highlight of our year. Alton was the inverse of what a rich child ought to be. He was kind, humble, and amiable. He loved to roll around in the dirt along with the rest of us. He disliked the boys at his private school, but loved the trio of us. Who were we?

There was Annie, with her smarts and sense of adventure; hair flaxen fair, eyes, blue and bright. Conner, who was near as rich as Alton, but was more backwoods than anybody to be found in any parish. His dirty blonde mop of curls and liquid amber eyes made the little girls swoon.

And there was me. With my dull, tawny colored hair and regular brown eyes (no, there are no proper words to describe them other than just brown), I was significantly less pretty than Annie. Which was fine. As a child, I was soft-spoken, loved stories and had a fascination with honeysuckles, and that was the extent of my personality. I kept mostly to my books, except when Alton came to town.

We three lived about an hour from the city in a community of well-to-do individuals of the same ilk as ours. The gated circle of gilded homes was encased by a miles of swampy lands. We were told to avoid the swamps, because of gators and wicked voodoo women, who would both gladly make a meal of us. This no more kept us away than the reprimand that the consumption of too much sugar would give us a tummy ache kept us away from the cookie jar.

Conner and Annie were the truest of friends. They both played video games religiously and loved anything that involved athletics. They did most everything together. They attended an academy together in the city, but I was home schooled by my grandmother. We all interacted primarily when Alton came to town.

We always had wonderful times when we managed to slip away unsupervised; running about on the outskirts of the swamps, getting eaten alive by bugs of every delineation, and imagining ourselves as anything from questing warriors to fearsome vigilantes.

At night we'd sit on the wrap around porch, swinging on the bench, and taking turns telling stories we'd memorized. Of course, none of us were renown for our ability to recall details with perfection, so the stories changed with each retelling. We Louisiana natives retold legends of voodoo and black magic, while Alton told us the ghost stories of New England. I was always made to go last, because they said that I had the best story-telling voice. They made me shy and nervous when they acted like this. Alton would always hold my hand to keep me from shaking. He would let go when I gained my confidence, lost in whichever tale I was reciting. I remember the first time - we were thirteen or so - when he held my hand for the complete duration of the story, quietly defiant of letting go.

I knew from then on that Alton was in love with me. Though I wasn't sure if I reciprocated his feelings, I was silently thrilled to have attained the admiration of one whom I was so fond of.

When we were older, swamp rendezvous turned into day long visits across the Mississippi border to old graveyards and historic sites. We were adventurers, fixated as in our childhoods on the endless quest to find a good story. As per predicted, in time Annie and Conner's constant need for each other's company grew into a passionate young love. The erudites, Alton and I, were obviously to follow suit, but we were both more reserved in our affection. Holding his hand, feeling his immovable, silent strength next to me - these joys were enough.

Alton was on the same track as his father, but he had declined Harvard school of business for the opportunity to go to Tulane. Coincidentally Annie, Conner, and I were also headed for Tulane in the fall.

Alton had promised to take us to his other vacation home after we had all graduated. One fine May morning we were delighted to find refurbished antique steamer trunks at our doorsteps, attached with the message, "Pack".

I put my entire summer wardrobe - a few sundresses, some khaki pants and shorts, running shoes, and lounging shoes - easily in the trunk, with room to spare. So I decided to bring my favorite novels, a few journals, and my SLR camera equipment along too.

We were so heartrendingly optimistic. That's the beautiful thing about wealth. You can afford to avoid cynicism.

We flew out of Jackson to Portland, Maine. Alton met us with a limo at the airport. From there we drove a couple of hours along the coast, commentating on the loveliness of the countryside and pleasantly recounting the past few months, to Alton's summer home.

Our first glimpse of Alton's home left myself and my other two friends reeling. The magnificence stole my breath away. The house was surrounded by fifty acres of green pastures and forests. The structure itself was a nice size- not grossly large, but nowhere near small. It contained over twenty rooms, which were divided between the ground level and the basement rooms. It was clearly designed to emanate the coziness of a cottage, with its dark wood outer walls, the ivy clinging to the windows, and gardens growing all round it. It was perfect.

A few yards out the ocean was visible. We all got out of the car and ran, laughing and screeching, down to the cliff. The waves licked lackadaisically at the great black rocks that made up the shoreline. Sea spray splashed upon our faces. Conner had a squealing Annie held up in an imitation of the famous Titanic pose. A breathless Alton was next to me, gray-green eyes sparkling with delight. I was so happy in that moment that I reached over and pecked him on the cheek. An adorable crimson blush flushed across his cheeks as he lightly touched the place where my lips had grazed his skin. He smiled, letting his hand fall away, and slip into mine. It was then that my attention was briefly drawn to a shadowy house resting on the breast of a cliff in the distance.

The land curved creating a semi-bowl of water, and then rose to create the cliff. We were at the lower point of the curve and the house was at the other end. It had the affect of looking like a great wave coming out of the land. And this mysterious, dark house was floating on its crest. The house was too far off to make out any but the distinct features. The best way I can think to describe it is to say it resembled a black castle.

I shuddered and drew closer to Alton. He, Annie, and Conner I noticed were looking at it too, as if inexplicably drawn in by it. I pulled at Alton, waking him from his reverie, and gestured to Annie and Conner until I had their attention.

"We should go unpack our things." I said, uncertain why, but sure that I wanted to be out of sight of the dark home.

The other conceded to this without protest. We walked back and set about making ourselves at home.

As we settled in, Annie and Conner asked Alton about the house across the way. Alton told us what little he knew. There was only one neighbor, a man of mystery and incalculable affluence, the richest man in the world his father had told him. A one Mr. Grayson. Mystery being the key word. Annie and Conner were intrigued, and, in spite of myself, I was too. They demanded we visit him. The allure of a potential good story was stronger outweighed our misgivings regarding the dark castle.

One cannot help but wonder what if. What if we had not gone to him? How would our summer and our lives have played out differently? Could we have continued our whole lives in ignorance of nature's abominations? I have followed the paths of what might have been to their end, and found that there is no situation in which we would have not gone to him eventually. The perfect storm had been brewing long before we arrived in Maine. When I think of this my throat tightens a little and I feel the suffocating hand of inevitability around my throat.

We went the next day, it was around noon, and called upon the estimable Mr. Grayson. Alton drove us in his silver Cadillac CTS (a graduation gift from his father). Up close, Mr. Grayson's house was not quite the black castle we had first taken it to be. The architecture was Victorian, not Medieval. The structure was made of a curious dark wood that was almost black. It was unpainted. The windows were stained glass, curiously barred by thick iron rods. At three stories, with its two adjacent towers, topped with crooked spires, it was the picture of mystery.

"It looks like something out of a Poe novel!" Annie gushed.

Annie knocked using a great iron knocker which resembled a bat with an open mouth. A lean, elderly, ebony skinned man with a hooked nose and a scarred face, in a butler's suit answered the door.

He eyed his with beady, black eyes. Before we could so much as get a word out out, he spoke. "Mr. Grayson is not taking visitors at the moment. He has asked that you come visit him tomorrow evening." With that he shut the door in our faces.

Annie, Conner, and Alton exchanged wide-eyed looks of disbelief. Muttering they turned back to the car, but I stayed looking down at a curious engraving above the door. I squinted to read the scrawling calligraphy

Come freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.

"Maggie? Are you coming?" I looked back at him and masked my confusion.

I had read or heard that somewhere. I couldn't place where, but it was familiar.

I walked swiftly to the car with the feeling of eyes at my back.

Even all of this combined did not truly temper my high spirits. I was still unreservedly jubilant. My friends and I had stumbled upon what promised to be quite the adventure.

We went away brimming with excitement. Annie, Conner, Alton and I talked the night away creating fantastical designs of the origins of Mr. Grayson's wealth. Conner fried some herring, and Annie made sweet iced tea. The South ran strong in their veins. After Annie and Conner had gone to bed, Alton and I stayed up late into the night expanding on our previous conjectures.

In the morning we had decided arbitrarily to wear our finest clothes. Annie and I wore knee length, baby-doll summer dresses, and the boys wore slacks and white button downs. We spent all day getting ready. Alton insisted that we bring a bottle of his father's sherry - bottles of which had been a gift for us for the trip - for Mr. Grayson. We may have been juvenile enough to get excited about the mysterious next door neighbor, but we had not lost our heads completely. We didn't want to be rude.

Alton drove us there. The ride was stunning. The late afternoon sky was painted shades of vibrant pink and rich purple. A bright orange glow piercing the sky just beyond the low laying cloud bank. The trees had become silhouettes. There was a warmness to their darkness though, sweet and soothing. We were silent, drinking in the scene with a noncommittal intoxication, until Annie began to recite a quote.

"I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may."

We were both sitting in the back seat, and I looked over at her in surprise. "Annie, what is that from?"

"From?" She asked dreamily. "Oh, something. Shelley's Frankenstein." She furred her delicate brow. "No, that's not it."

We pulled up to the house. The last golden ray of sunlight directly illuminated the inscription above the door that I read it more clearly than I had before.

"Dracula," I whispered in realization.

"Yes." She said hitting her palm to her forehead with a grin. Then, raising her eyebrow, she asked. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess," I lied. I immediately felt guilty. I never lied to anyone, much less my friends. I didn't know why I had felt the need to lie then. But before I could amend the situation Annie and the others had already gotten out of the car and were walking toward the door.

This time Conner knocked. The same man from before answered the door.

An awkward silence ensued.

"We brought sherry." Alton said lifting up the bottle.

"Follow me." His expression was stony as he spun on his heels.

The inside of the house was decorated in the warm browns, violets, and burgundies of the Victorian era. The parlor the hooked nosed man lead us to was something else. It was done in deep reds. The light was provided by wax candles. The man gestured for us to sit, and promptly left the room.

Conner and Annie were atremble with eagerness. I smiled at Alton when they put their foreheads together and whispered frenziedly about the increasing enigma of our host. They shared a love seat while Alton and I sat in adjacent wing back chairs. The room was inundated in the rosy light of the evening which poured in from a solitary window in the corner. The glass was done in all reds like the room, giving everything a sensuous glow. I remember thinking how romantic, in the true sense of the word, the entire situation was.

I was the first to see him when he came in. I have no doubt this was done purposefully. The hushed babble of the others ceased when they saw him. We were arrested by his presence.

The thing that stood out to me primarily was his age. He was older than us, mid-thirties perhaps, but too young to have commissioned his servant to call us 'young folk'. His burning gaze held me sway. His head cocked to the side in a slow predatory manner, sizing me up. He was the singularly most handsome man I had ever seen.

His skin was flawlessly pale white. His hair was a deep shade of brown and slicked back with his eyes were a wan blue. His chin was embellished with a neatly trimmed goatee, and above his lips rested a sculpted mustache. On any other middle aged man it would have been creepy and pedificilic. But not on Mr. Grayson.

He was astral, he was chimerical. He was more than us. God, was he beautiful.

He wore a black sweater with a white collared shirt underneath. His hands were placed casually half-in the pockets of his slacks.

He smiled down at us and the mood lightened slightly. He spoke in a smooth British accent, in a tone that was unhurried and inviting. "Welcome to my home, friends. My name is Alexander Grayson."

We blinked at him stupidly.

Alton spoke for us. He stood awkwardly to his feet "Mr. Grayson, allow me to introduce myself." Grayson walked over and took Alton's extended hand with deliberateness. I watched Alton wince under Mr. Grayson's crushing clutch. "I'm Alton Coburn, and these are my friends Annie Sterling, Conner DeLeroy, and Maggie Peters." We stood up in turn. Grayson bowed to us.

"Here." Alton sheepishly offered the sherry bottle to Grayson. "We thought you may like it. We're not much for sherry ourselves."

Grayson accepted the bottle graciously, looked it over once, and sat it down on a side table.

"The Coburns have been my neighbors for some time. I'm glad to finally meet you."

"Well you can't have been here very long." I was surprised to find that I had made the comment.

He directed his reply to Alton. "A few years." He smiled warmly at the group, and clapping his hands he dispelled some of the tension. "Will you join me for dinner?"

"We wouldn't want to impose." Annie's eyes had lost their bashfulness. She never remained daunted for long. She stared confidently at Mr. Grayson.

Conner looked at Annie nervously, but smiled. "Yes, Mr. Grayson. We wouldn't want to be a nuisance."

"We just had to see if what they said about you was true," Annie baited.

Mr. Grayson's eyebrow upturned. His smile was tight. "What do they say about me?"

"All sorts of stuff." Her blue eyes sparkled with amusement. "You are shrouded in mystery Mr. Grayson, and we adore a good mystery."

I wished she would shut up. Couldn't she see that Mr. Grayson was not going to be played?

Conner nodded eagerly. "It's just that you are never seen outside of your home. They say you are fabulously wealthy, but they speak of you as an old hermit. While you are one of these things, you are most decidedly not the other."

Alton came to the rescue. "What my friends mean, is that we were curious as to who our neighbor for the summer would be."

"We wanted to make sure you were quite safe," Annie added with a slow wink.

"I see my reputation precedes me," Grayson chuckled startling us all. The sound was the rumble of the distant thunder.

"Are you bothered by it? Your reputation?" Conner asked him.

Grayson favored Conner with a lopsided grin. "Rumors are like mosquitoes. They often carry diseases, but to the adapted man they are nothing more than a nuisance." From over his shoulder Annie flicked her eyes from Grayson to me with a conspirator's glance. Alton noticed and smiled a watery smile. Annie and Conner could lighten any situation. They had their parent's charisma.

Conner nodded in grave respect at Grayson. I noticed that Grayson had cleverly picked up on Conner's Southern background and used an it is his analogy to make him more comfortable. Clearly the man was a master manipulator. My uneasiness increased.

"Will you stay to dinner?" Grayson asked again, turning to Alton.

Alton looked back at the man. His shoulders were tense with indecision. He shared my intuition, but he was well aware he had been backed into a corner. They had called upon Mr. Grayson. Alton would not risk being discourteous to such a powerful man. "How can we refuse?" He asked. It came out as more of an honest question than he had intended.

Grayson smiled, the predatory semblance returning to his face, though he didn't appear to be looking at anyone. I shivered involuntarily. "Cold Miss Peters?" He asked me without turning to face me.

"You must think us terribly foolish." I remarked. Annie, Conner, and Alton turned to me in blantant confusion.

Grayson switched his voracious gaze to me. Suddenly I felt as if he'd been addressing me the whole time. "How typical of the homely girl to demand honest intentions."

Conner's jaw came unhinged. Alton blanched. Annie got red in the face, looking like an entire torrent of insults were about to pour forth from her lips.

I burst into delighted laughter. My hand fluttered to my mouth in surprise - but not embarrassment. "I don't pertain to make demands of you Mr. Grayson. It was an observation."

Alton, Conner, and Annie laughed nervously, as if they just understood that there was some joke they'd initially missed. Grayson chuckled, but it was iniquitous, dripping of portends. His gaze bespoke into life a dreadful premonition that I'd just been damned.