RUTH TURNS ONTO A PRIVATE ROAD lined with narrow trees stationed evenly apart, like stealthy sentinels. “Don’t be alarmed when you see him, because the man is pretty scary looking. He’s blind, but he can see people’s auras. Ramey’s dad met him when he was living in the Amazon jungle. His family is loaded, but he chucked it all to live with the Shaman of the Andes. I’d guess all the peyote and mushrooms he ingested scrambled his brain for good.” We pass enormous sculptures of winged knights on horseback flanking an ivy-covered brick bastion and enter the grounds of the estate. “Roger is Ramey’s dad’s brother. He’s obsessive too, but in a different way–he has a fixation with medieval history. He studied all the great castles of Europe before he had his built.” A Tudor mansion, with six turrets and a lowered footbridge spanning a narrow moat, looms ahead. “Uncle Roger has collected replicas of some of the most gruesome torture devices in his dungeon. The iron maiden chills my bones.
