TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) by Phil Truman Read Free Book Online Page A

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