Lamont Breaux had expended years of study and much of his family's money in search of the wild dream based on murky myth that either would start to pay out tonight or he'd be stuck with this white elephant of an old, moldering plantation house on the Mississippi that would be worth nothing to anyone. He had kept his research and reasons for buying Fontnet's Retreat entirely to himself; if he'd revealed what he was doing to anyone, they would have branded him as completely crazy. But he had researched the two local myths well. Legend had it that the Fontnets had been fabulously wealthy, the richest planters in the south. But suddenly their money was all gone and legends arose that their wealth had all been converted to gold and was hidden somewhere here on the property.
Breaux only needed to look around what had once been the ballroom at Fontnet's Retreat to see evidence that others beside him had pursued this legend. The interior of the house was a wreck, victim to more than a century of nocturnal treasure hunters. Holes in the walls, holes in the floor, even holes in the ceiling, marking where the furtive searches had been conducted in the dark of night. And the outbuildings and even the gardens and lawns themselves had been worked over in what Breaux assumed had been totally unsuccessful searches. He knew his research would have turned up some hint of the fabulous treasure having been found if it, in fact, had been.
The other legend revolved around the strange demise, one by one, of not only the Fontnet family, but of all of their servants and slaves as well—at least of all of those who stayed on the property. Those in the neighboring plantations came to blame a son-in-law of the family, Emile LaCour, for this strange wasting away of everyone around him by some unknown blood anemia disease. The malady seemed to have taken everyone in Emile's household, including the wife who had married him in Paris and brought him home to the Mississippi. Despite the withering away around him Emile himself remained robust—and if the chronicles were to be believed—was the sexual scourge of the neighboring area as well. No one talked, much less wrote, of such things in the era in which he lived, but the hints were that Emile was so monstrously endowed and was of such perverted sexual proclivities that he had nearly killed every young man in the lower reaches of the Mississippi plain he had taken a fancy too in the attentions he had given them.
Not long after Emile was the last of the Fontnet family, the region rose against him, declaring him to be the son of Satan, the murderer of his own family and extended household, and the brutal debaucher of Louisiana's most promising youths. Even the newspaper reports from the time recorded that the mobs descended on Fontnet's Retreat and that a bloody battle, in which Emile had exhibited inhuman strength, had ensued. In the end, the great numbers of his attackers took their toll, and a half-dead Emile LaCour was entombed alive in the Fontnet family burial vault beyond the garden outside the ballroom's French doors.
After his extensive research, Breaux had bought Fontnet's Retreat on a wild hunch, and here he was, on the cusp of learning if his wild hunch was going to either make him a very, very rich man or hobble him with a very expensive failed throw of the dice. He should know either way very soon, he thought, as he drifted over to the French doors and gazed out at the flickering lights beyond the once magnificent, but now overgrown boxwood garden. He had selected two very comely, virile lads to test his theory out. Any time now he should know one way or the other.
* * *
"Well, surprise, surprise. This ain't no hidden treasure, Philippe; this is just a moldy old skeleton. Just what ya'd expect to find in a stone tomb."
"Treasure? Wadya mean, Jacques? I thought that Breaux fellow was expecting to find some jewelry on these old corpses in the old tomb that would add a bit of worth to the played-out farm he'd bought. I just thought he wanted to cut his losses as much as possible."
"Ain't you heard of the Fontnet legend, Philippe? That Breaux guy didn't fool me a bit. He's just lookin' for that hidden treasure that's said to be on this property somewhere and is usin' us to look for it."
"Fontnet?" said Philippe. "This ain't no Fontnet. This says Emile LaCour chiseled in this stone here."
"Yeah, well he's the guy they blamed for killing off all the Fontnets. They say they buried him alive in here." Jacques replied. "And look at that grimace on that ugly old mummified face there. Looks just like he was buried alive."
"Yep, that's one ugly puss," Philippe agreed.
"Well, you go on up to the house and let that Breaux guy know we didn't find anything but a dead guy in this stone coffin, while I'll pull the lid back on, and then we can get our pay from Breaux and head on back to Biloxi. He's sure yellowbacked to be payin' someone else to rob this grave."
Philippe took one of the flashlights and shuffled out of the tomb and headed up through the garden to the house. The hulky and hunky Jacques stretched his torso and biceps out, loosening his well-defined muscles to start pushing the stone lid back onto the upper half of the coffin.
But what was that he saw in the coffin? Something gleaming? Might there be something of worth inside there after all?
He leaned down toward the coffin and brought his flashlight around to inspect. But as he did so, a skeletal arm shot out of the coffin, and sharp fingernails at the end of bony fingers grabbed him by the throat and dug into his neck.
Jacques let out a loud scream that was quickly reduced to a gurgle as blood flowed freely from the multiple piercing wounds in his neck both down his throat and up through his sinuses, suffocating the handsome bodybuilder so fast he couldn't bring his muscle power to bear in his defense. At the same time blood was gushing down into the coffin onto the corpse's face. Another skeletal arm shot out of the coffin, slashing the young man's shirt off his massive heaving chest and digging into a vein running down to and beyond his navel.
* * *
