The man walked to the sitting room at the far end of the building and knelt before the small door. When he opened it, the creaking would give him away, but the stairway behind was the only means to get to the attic. He turned the handle and jerked the door hard. It opened easier than he expected, and he fell against the sofa.
The silence erupted into a cacophony of horrific screams as he climbed the familiar stairs to face the reality of the Toulouse Street horrors once again.
He stood in the attic the police had found less than twelve hours ago. Then it had been quiet. Tonight it was anything but. He was alone in the room, but the sounds were close. As he walked down the aisle between the rows of metal cots to the far wall, everything went silent again.
They know I’m here.
He strode the length of the room to the two closet-like cells. Between them a wall of bricks — the chimney of the fireplace below — extended from the floor to the ceiling. Its construction had withstood the ravages of time and kept its secret well hidden. He reached into the seam where a wooden wall abutted the chimney, gave a slight tug, and a section of wall panel slid noiselessly aside.
He stepped through the opening into the chamber of horrors.
Dressed to the nines as always, a tall man stood in the middle of the room. The only light came from a few candles here and there. From the shadows came rustling sounds and whispers.
Jack Blair walked to Empyrion Richard and said, “Hello, Charles.”
“Welcome, Lucas. We’ve been expecting you.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Landry was not happy. He'd just about had it with Jack. Landry wanted to believe he was on the straight and narrow, but it had been days, not weeks or months, and the desire for a drink must be tormenting. Every time the man wasn't where he should be, Landry imagined him somewhere, passed out and sleeping it off.
Sometimes Jack got sidetracked when he was doing his research, but now that he had a phone, there was no reason not to check in. He was an hour late for work, and this time Landry would not call. When and if he showed up, he'd better have an explanation.
He opened the shared network drive where Jack stored hundreds of documents he'd found relating to the LaPiere family. There were photocopies of records, stories, articles and photos from the archives, and links to other material, all neatly cataloged in a folder. Landry found the research part of his job boring, and he was glad his new assistant seemed to enjoy it. This morning, with no assistant and no pressing agenda items, he looked at the records.
For an hour he looked through a lot of things only peripherally related to the Toulouse building, but he came across something Jack hadn't mentioned. He opened a document from the Orleans Parish records in March, 1832.
The flourishes and swirls of old handwriting were beautiful to look at but difficult to read. A record from Lucas LaPiere's estate, it provided an interesting glimpse into those times. For tax purposes, a list of the decedent's assets was required, and this was Lucas's.
The first page listed the building, the plantation, furniture and personal effects, a fancy carriage and two horses, and four house servants, one of whom was Caprice, whose name lent credence to the veracity of what they'd seen in the courtyard.
The second page was a somber picture of the atrocities that had occurred back then. It was a list of fourteen human beings held for resale. This was Lucas and Prosperine's stock in trade — slaves. He presumed these were Africans, brought over on slavers like the ship the LaPieres themselves took, and the fourteen names on the list had been Anglicized. Each had a first name and a brief description. He saw a Mary, a John, a Joshua and a Grace.
But then he raised his eyebrows. "I'll be damned!"
Two names stood out. Charles and Richard.
Charles, a seven-foot-tall healthy male aged around twenty. Speaks some English.
Richard, the brother of Charles, aged around fifteen. Stocky. Would make a good field hand.
Charles Richard. Not one man, but brothers.
Then who was Empyrion Richard?
He called Detective Young for an update. The cops were wrapping up their fruitless search at the building. That was what Landry expected. There was so much more to this story, and he had a hunch where to find answers.
Hoping once more Jack wasn't in trouble, he got in his Jeep and headed toward I-10 and Edgard.
Landry drove through the brick columns and down the narrow lane. He looked for the cemetery but didn't see it. He walked across the tall grass to the trees and searched until he stumbled across it. Tall brambles weaved in and out through the fence, and saplings grew everywhere. The tops of the LaPiere crypts were just visible through the heavy foliage.
There was no explanation for the condition of the cemetery after only eight days, but he was about to see something even more inexplicable. He became dizzy as he approached the house. A chill and a sense of dread swept across his body. What he was experiencing — these things he saw with his own eyes — weren’t possible.
The veranda was far more covered in vines than before, and the front door was a mass of tendrils as thick as a man's finger. This growth had been here for a very long time — the gaping hole they had followed Empyrion Richard through didn’t exist, but Landry saw a much smaller hole through the tendrils down in one corner. He knew what it
