TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (6 page)

Did he say, “Ex?”
The question came to the surface of her thoughts. But she ignored it. She looked at the man again, this time with a more... well, observant eye. He wasn’t what you’d call a small man; not so short, but not so tall either; broad at the shoulders, with beefy arms and chest. His stomach wasn’t exactly flat and looked to have the potential for expansion. She guessed him to be about six feet or so, but his width masked his height somewhat. “Husky” would be a good word to describe his physique. She guessed his age to be somewhere in his forties. Although his first impression repelled her, something about him excited her.

Punch looked around trying to think of something to change the subject. “You out here fishin’?” he asked. But he didn’t see any gear, only a burlap bag with a few lumps in it.

“Oh, no, I don’t fish. Fish are a part of Mother God’s order. I wouldn’t do anything to harm them. Besides, I don’t eat meat. I was out here looking for rocks; spirit stones to put in my garden. Their energy is better out here near the water.”

Punch laughed a little, being unsure; thinking this might be some kind of joke. Grinning, he asked, “Who’s this Mother God? Is that like Oprah?”

Sunny’s expression changed, but she kept her smile. “Mother God is The Goddess. She’s the Supreme Creator of all things,” she said coolly.

Punch removed his Bass Pro ball cap and scratched the top of his head in puzzlement. Then a light went on. “Oh, you mean Jesus’s momma. Mary?” He knew Catholics prayed a lot to Mary and all of them had little statutes of her.

Sunny sighed and said in a condescending tone, “No, not Mary.”

Now Punch was genuinely perplexed. “Wull, you mean this Mother God is
God’s
momma? How can that be?”

Sunny looked at Punch and shook her head. “I don’t think I can explain it to you. You obviously aren’t capable of understanding this.”

Punch squinted at her. He wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t catch a belittling insult hurled at him. He decided maybe this high and mighty little lady needed a lesson in comeuppance.

“You know,” he said, looking back over his shoulder to the left, then right. He tried to show fearful concern on his face. “You really shouldn’t be traipsing around out here in these woods by yourself. Especially when it’s starting to get dark.”

Sunny bent and picked up a hand-sized smooth brown river rock. She turned it this way and that, examining it to see if it met her requirements as a spirit rock, and said with an amused and somewhat snooty tone, “Oh? And why’s that?”

“Well, you’ve lived around here before. I reckon you know about what’s in these here woods.” Punch nodded and looked grave.

“What, bears? Mountain lions?”

“Well, there’s them,” Punch said. “But that ain’t all.”

“Oh, come on,” Sunny said with a dismissive laugh. “Those animals haven’t been seen around here in years.” Then she looked at Punch with suspicion. “And, just so you know, if there’s any other kind of animal out here that wants to threaten me, I have a black belt in Karate.” She actually only had a green belt with just six months of training at the Y, but this guy didn’t need to know that.

Punch smirked. “Don’t flatter yourself, girly. I ain’t talking about me.”

Sunny was curious... and a little disappointed. “What are you talking about, then?” she asked.

“Hell, ain’t you never heard of the Tsalagee Hill Man?”

Sunny burst out laughing. “The Tsalagee Hill Man,” she repeated when she got her breath. “Don’t tell me you actually believe all that Bigfoot stuff. That’s just a story parents made up so their teenagers wouldn’t go parking.”

Punch did know that, although it’d never stopped him in his adolescence from visiting some of the back roads on a Saturday night. That is, until the Saturday night in his junior year when he, parked with Waynette Heilmach on a road out by that very lake, heard a low guttural snuffling somewhere close to the back of his daddy’s Rambler. That sound so chilled Punch’s spine that he jumped behind the wheel, fired up the Rambler, and sped away. When he looked in the rearview mirror, he could make out a large dark form standing in the moonlight. He’d never forgotten that night, nor had Waynette. When she asked what had gotten into him, the terrified Punch had said to her, “Didn’t you hear that? Something was back there. Something big.”

“Hear what? Whadda you mean something big?” she’d whined with disappointment as she went about re-adjusting her clothing.

“Oh it ain’t all legend.” Punch said to Sunny. He shook his head and looked at his feet, crossing his arms at his chest. “There’s been some incidents reported just recently, and I’ve seen the thing myself.”

“Oh, really,” Sunny said. “So where did you see it?”

Punch had never been entirely sure that whatever spooked him that night with Waynette was actually the Hill Man, but he’d heard enough stories and seen enough evidence over the years to convince him the creature was more than just a myth. As far back as the 1850’s the Native Americans who lived in that region had tribal stories of a large hairy man-beast who roamed the woods and hills in the eastern and southeastern part of The Nations. The Choctaw people called him Hill Man Who Yells at Night; the Cherokees called him “He Who Lives in the Hills” and later simply “The Hill Man.”

Every year or so someone would claim they’d seen the Hill Man ducking back into the woods, or lurking around their out buildings at night, and when an animal—livestock or pet—would turn up dead or missing, the Hill Man always got blamed. Usually, when a rash of sightings and animal harassments would escalate to more than five in a two-week period, Bigfoot investigators would scurry into town from out of the urban newsrooms and academia woodwork to look for physical evidence, and take some pictures. They always left with volumes of eye-witness accounts, a few strands of hair, some plaster casts of big footprints, and some photos of deer, coyotes, and cows their motion-activated game cameras took.

In all the years of reported sightings, no one had ever gotten a clear or up close photograph of the Hill Man. That continued into the first decade of the Twenty-first Century when having a camera ready at any opportunity became as easy as reaching in a pocket and taking out a cell phone.

Punch had seen his friend White Oxley’s eighteen seconds of Super 8 movie film he shot in 1977 of what he claimed was his encounter with the Hill Man. It showed some seemingly large bipedal creature walking across a road and into some woods at a distance of some two hundred yards. The film was grainy, jerky, and overexposed in spots with no discernable details of the thing, but White claimed it was no hoax and was willing to sell it to any investigator for a hundred thousand dollars.

So Punch knew what he was talking about, and he aimed to put as much of a scare in this snotty woman as he could.

“I seen it not far from here, out near this lake.”

“Uh-huh. When was that?”

“It was, um, well, back in high school. I’uz out here one night.” Punch smiled. “Me and this girl.” Sunny looked back at him with distaste. Punch continued. “And this thing, this creature,” He raised his hands above his head, fingers in a claw form, looking very much like a bear in a two-legged battle stance. “...huge, maybe eight, ten feet tall, came out of the woods and started pounding on the truck of my car and growling like nothing I ain’t never heard, and don’t never want to hear again.”

“What did you do?” Sunny asked, not looking overly impressed.

“Well, I done what anyone woulda done; I got the hell outta there.” He stopped and thought for a second, then added, “I needed to protect the lady.”

“Right,” Sunny said with a doubting smile and nod.

Punch looked toward the lowering sun, at that time about fifteen minutes from dipping below the horizon. “Anyway, don’t think you want to be out here after dark. How far away is your car?”

“Not far,” Sunny answered. “About a quarter mile or so.”

“I expect you better get going, then. I’d walk you to it, but I got to get my boat back across the lake. You just stick to the path and I reckon you’ll be awright. I wouldn’t dilly dally, though, if I was you.”

Punch thought she definitely looked nervous and a little apprehensive by then. Mission accomplished.

“Well, yes. Maybe I should be heading on back.” She looked here and there, trying to see into the darkening woods. She gathered up her things, her bag of stones, and trudged off into the forest. That little excitement she’d felt fought with her sudden disdain for this man, and that angered her.

Grinning, Punch watched her for several seconds as she walked away. “You watch out now,” he shouted after her before she disappeared amongst the trees. A sudden gust of wind moved the trees and brush behind him, and he looked about uneasily, his grin fading. He hurriedly returned to his boat, and pushed it quickly off the bank and into the water. Drifting five feet from the shoreline, he yanked the cord to start the outboard motor, but it didn’t catch. During his third yank, he wondered if the Hill Man could swim.

Chapter 5

Punch Goes Fishing

Punch’s Balsa Boogie Plum Crazy hook-up with Sunny Griggs had come not quite three months after Buck’s funeral, where he’d first seen her. Three days past their lakeside meeting, he decided to do a little research on her.

“You ever run into that Griggs woman?” Punch asked White Oxley, his booth partner at Arlene’s Café.

“Who?” White asked as he dumped another packet of Sweet N’ Low into the tan liquid in his coffee mug.

“Sunny Griggs,” Punch repeated.

“Ain’t she the girl Buck and Lorene raised?” White asked as he stirred the creamy sweet beverage that had once been coffee.

“Yeah. I run into her the other day.”

“Where at?” White asked.

“Out t’lake. I was out there fishin’ and I... well, she was on the shore and we run into each other.”

“On the shore?” White raised his eyebrows and took a slurp of his barely coffee.

“Yeah,” Punch said. Then continued, “So, anyway, there was this Griggs woman lookin’ like some kind of lumberjack or sumpin. Straw colored hair, flannel shirt and jeans. Kind of a good lookin’ woman in her own way. Out lookin’ for spiritual rocks, she said.”

Oxley looked up when Punch said that last part, and leaned his back against the booth’s cushion, his eyes intently on Punch.

“Anyways,” Punch continued, “we started talking. Started out friendly enough, then she started talkin’ about this Mother Goddess, she called it. I thought she was jokin’ around, so I tried to joke around with her, but then she started to get kind uh snotty and huffy about it. Don’t think she liked it much that I was fishin’. Said something about the fish belonging to that there Mother God. I tell you what. First I ever heard of it.”

“Yeah, I seen her around,” White said after another slurp. “She come back to town after Buck died. Heard she’s some kind of new-age hippie. Maxine Applegate says she practices witchcraft.”

Punch knitted his brow, then smiled. “Well, if anyone would know that, it’d be Maxine.” He leaned toward White, and said conspiratorially, “I thought she was kind of uppity, so I started telling her to watch out for the Hill Man in them woods, trying to scare her and all. She just laughed at me, but, I dunno, she might’ve wet her pants by the time she got back to her car.” Punch leaned back and shook in a quiet laugh.

“I seen the Hill Man several times,” White said without humor. “You seen my movie picture I got of him. If you put some fear into her, she oughta been scared. That thing ain’t no laughing matter. He’s sure enough out there.”

Punch continued with his grinning and head shaking. “Well, it was funny,” he said.

White took another sip and set his coffee mug back down on the tabletop. “Why you so interested in that Griggs woman, anyway?” He kept his right index finger crooked through the handle hole.

Jo Lynn swooped in from White’s left back shoulder and sloshed fresh coffee into White’s mug and then Punch’s. Some of the molten brown liquid splashed onto White’s index finger, and he jerked it away uttering a soft “Ow!” then sucked on the spot.

Punch winced a little at Oxley’s question and gave him a “shutup” look. He looked up at Jo Lynn who stood looking down at him, pot of hot coffee in one hand, the other on her left hip, and a blue norther swirling in her eyes. Punch smiled with apprehension. He thought she sort of looked like she might pour the rest of that pot of coffee onto his lap. “Hey, babe,” he said to her in an attempt to divert the conversation, hoping maybe she hadn’t heard White.

“Well,” Jo Lynn said after a few seconds. “Ain’t you going to answer White’s question?”

“What questions is that, darlin’?” Punch asked with all innocence.

“He wanted to know why you’re chasin’ after Sunny Griggs?”

“No, he just...” Punch said and looked at White for help. White examined his finger as if expecting a blister to rise. “Now, just a dang minute, Jo Lynn. I ain’t chasin’ nobody. All I— ”

“Well, that ain’t been my experience,” Jo Lynn said with a smirk. “Just about anyone with a skirt seems to get your attention.”

White slid down the booth bench closer to the wall, and picked a plastic creamer cup out of their basket. He cracked the sealed top and poured the contents into his coffee, seemingly oblivious to the war brewing not three feet to his left.

“Now, no!” Punch said with mounting frustration, a little louder than he wanted. Heads in the other booths and tables turned to look. Glancing toward the others, then back at Jo Lynn, he spoke in a lower voice, “See, you don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about. At the time, she didn’t have on a skirt.”

Several of the curious sitting nearer to Punch’s booth broke out laughing. Jo Lynn looked at him with disgust and shook her head. As she wheeled to walk away she muttered, “You’re so stupid.” But loud enough for Punch to hear.

“No wait, Jo Lynn, that ain’t what I meant,” Punch called after her with a plaintive whine. He looked to the laughers, but they’d all turned back to their own groups to carry on their low laughing and head shaking. Punch turned crimson from the base of his neck to the top of his bushy-haired head.