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river where it made a big horseshoe bend. He’d gone deep into the woods that day, wandering and hunting, and he was weary. The late afternoon sun was behind him as he sat looking across the water, and it lit up a high cliff face in a bright yellow-white glow. It was a beautiful sight, the shining limestone almost dazzling in its warm brilliance. Sitting there, mesmerized by the luster of the rock cliff, he saw a shape. It was large and regular, but Ed took it to be a trick of the light and shade and weathering. The more he looked, the more the shape came into focus. He realized, suddenly, that the shape was a representation of a giant standing creature; more man-like, than bear. But it never occurred to Ed that the shape on the cliff might be manmade.
    Then something else caught his eye. To the right of the shape, near what would’ve been the tip of the creature’s outstretched hand, was a dot. In the direct sunlight, Ed could see it was the irregular outline of a hole, rendered pitch black by the sharp contrast between light and dark. From his vantage point the black spot was about half a thumb-width wide, its entirety obscured by large boulders balanced on a ledge in front of it. Were it not for that particular day and time, he wouldn’t have seen the hole at all. It must be a cave entrance, he decided. Looking to the left of the hole, his eyes traced the shadow of a narrow ledge that led precariously upward to the top of the cliff. That gave him an idea, and he stood to go investigate further.
     

Chapter 4
    Sunny Meets Punch
    June 2004
    Sunny Griggs called herself a Wiccan, although she wasn’t a card-carrying member. She’d never actually joined a coven. Even after she came back to Tsalagee that would’ve been difficult to do, as no Wicca were known to exist there; however, most in town would agree that Maxine Applegate could’ve been a founding mother of such a cult, had she wanted the job. For fifty-three years, Maxine had witched, bitched, and terrified all the customers who came into Applegate’s Drug Store. Bud, her subdued and ancient husband, stayed in the sanctuary of the pharmacy dispensing prescriptions. Some said Maxine had an evil eye, and could, would, and did cast spells.
    But Sunny wasn’t sure she wanted to go to the trouble of joining a coven. Everything she knew about the Wicca, she’d gathered from the internet. Before that she was a pseudo-Baptist, having attended, against her own free will, the Free Will Baptist Church of Tsalagee. She did that from age eleven through her teen years at the insistence of her foster parents, Lorene and Avery “Buck” Buchanan. Once she reached the age of consent, she consented as how she would never darken the door of that, or any church, as long as she lived.
    From age eighteen to thirty-four, while living in Oklahoma City, Sunny worshipped at the alter of secular humanism. She partied hard and often and made no spiritual commitment to anything other than her own hedonism. Somewhere in her thirty-fifth year, the laws of nature started to catch up to her, particularly the one that states, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” So she started looking to fill her lack of substance with something more substantial than night-lights and short-term lovers.
    Then one night, while surfing the Net for a good buy on some wicker furniture, she stumbled onto a site describing the Wicca religion. The more she read, the more fascinated she became. When she got to the Wicca Rede, or statement of advice, which read: “As it harm none, do as you will. As it cause harm, do as you must,” she decided, after all of two hours of Internet reading, she was a convert. Because she didn’t want the inconvenience of joining any group, she decided to call herself a Neo- or Solitary or Eclectic Wiccan as her readings suggested. It didn’t cause anyone any harm, so she could do as she willed. Perfect. It was about as subjective a religion as you could get.
    Sunny’s newfound religion