Night at the Museum - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella

by John G. Hartness

  “No,” Becca replied with a lopsided smile. “The exhibit does culminate with a display of occult and Satanic paraphernalia, but we very carefully neither endorse nor condemn any belief system in the exhibit. We talk about the origin of the Devil myth, from Biblical stories, to the Jersey Devil, to the stories of old blues men selling their soul at the Crossroads, to the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s, and the backlash against things like Dungeons & Dragons and Judas Priest.”

  “I can understand hating Judas Priest. I was always more a Motorhead guy myself, but when they started messing with D&D, they went too far. Where’s this devil worship exhibit?” I asked with a grin.

  “Right through here.” Becca stepped past me and led us through the rest of the Contemporary American Horror section, including a Wall of Fame featuring life-size photos of horror luminaries like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Joe Hill, Tom Savini, Robert Kirkman, and Lady Gaga.

  I tapped the pic of Gaga on the chin as I walked by. “Now that’s something I don’t want to face in a dark alley.”

  “I love Lady Gaga,” Joe protested.

  “I know,” I said. “But you have the iPod of a fourteen-year-old girl. Or a forty-year-old hairdresser. I can’t decide which.”

  We walked down a short hallway lined with arcane symbols and snippets of spells. “Skeeter, any of this gibberish on the walls mean anything?” I asked over the comm.

  “No, it’s Latin translation of Chinese takeout menus and the text for two spells—one supposedly summons a giant pug/poodle mix, and the other removes dandruff. Both spells are missing some key parts to make them work, not that I think the dandruff one would work anyway. I’m pretty sure the Latin word for dandruff isn’t ‘flakos’.”

  I caught Becca’s shoulders shaking ahead of me and said, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “There’s always that one jerkoff who back checks everything about an exhibit just so he can point out all the pieces you screwed up. So this time we wanted to really give him something to focus on. Since much of this whole thing is a trip through the darkest parts of our subconscious and unconscious, we wanted a few Easter eggs in there to make us smile. Especially leading into this, the darkest hole in our little house of horrors.”

  With that, she pulled open the door and we stepped into Hell.

  Chapter 6

  Of course we didn’t really go to Hell. First of all, we weren’t dead. Second, I was pretty sure that Joe had about as much chance of going to Hell as I had of going to a Skrillex concert. And lastly, I’m pretty sure Hell isn’t still under construction. Unless maybe you’re a carpenter. That might be Hell for you—a job site that never ends. And it wasn’t really even a room made up to look like Hell, just a gateway to the big Down There. When you walked into the room, you could go right or left. Go right, and you walk through some of the most disturbing occult-themed crime scenes in history, from Nazi Germany to the Son of Sam. Go left, and you’re treated to a walk through the “Satanic Panic” of the 20th century—when everything was supposed to lead kids and adults straight into the arms of the devil. There was a group of nerds dressed all in black playing Dungeons & Dragons. There was a display of a group of misfit nerds throwing the goat at a Black Sabbath concert. There was a couple of nerdy kids playing horror-themed video games.

  As we walked through the exhibit, I cleared my throat. “Uh, Becca?”

  “Yes, Bubba?”

  “I’ve got this whole Satanic Panic thing figured out.”

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look around at all these displays. What’s the same in all of them?”

  “There are young people in all the displays. That was one of the main tenets of Satanic Panic, that evil forces were trying to infect the minds of our youth.”

  “Yeah, that’s just the thing,” I said. “The youth are the problem! It’s not evil forces trying to get into the minds of teenage boys, it’s that fact that teenage boys are evil forces that should never be unleashed on the world! I solved it!” I stood there looking smug for a second before I realized that she wasn’t picking up what I was laying down.

  “You get it?” I asked. “Because it’s all about teenage boys? ‘Cause teenage boys are the devil?” She just gave me a blank look. “Never mind, let’s just find something for me to shoot.”

  “Like yourself?” Joe asked, abandoning the Guy Code completely and leaving me twisting at the end of a terrible joke. Damn ministers make shitty wingmen.

  We followed the hall through to the back of the exhibit, where Becca’s coup de grace stood. She had a full-sized demon summoning altar built at the back of the museum, and there was a robotic demon climbing up from behind it. At least I hoped it was robotic. I might have slid my hand around my back to rest on the butt of my pistol just in case.

  The altar was about six feet long and about four feet wide, the perfect size to lay a body on and cut it into little pieces. The altar was streaked with fake blood, some old, some new, all in varying shades of brown and red. There was a skinny dude with a black robe on standing at the head of the altar, hands held high above his head with a shiny ceremonial kris catching the minimal light in the room. His robe had slid down his arms to the elbows, revealing frighteningly accurate tattoos of mystical glyphs and runes. I recognized a couple of letters of Enochian, but most of it looked like Led Zeppelin or old Dio album art. Lying on the altar was a writhing blonde woman, apparently representing a virgin, but built like a stripper. The robots writhed and twitched, then the knife plunged down into the female robot’s chest and a gout of blood spurted out across the wall.

  Behind the priest, an eight-foot demon clawed its way out of a hole in the wall painted to look like a gap between dimensions. The demon had a skull face, bat wings, and backward-hinged knees like an insect. Its skin was bright red with streaks of black and purple, and its face narrowed into a snout filled with hundreds of small, needle-like teeth. It had four arms that we could see, and a bunch of its body was still bursting through the wall, but all four arms were a good five feet long and tipped with razor-sharp, lobster-like claws. It looked like a cross between an H.R. Giger painting and a nightmare SpongeBob supporting character.

  “That’s nasty,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Becca replied. “I designed it myself to incorporate many of the stereotypical elements of the demon summoning mythology. I think I got it pretty close without putting too much information out for the public. It’s not my place to break down their delusions of safety, just to entertain. Let them think these creatures only exist in TV and movies. They don’t need to know the monster under their bed is real.”

  “When did you first realize these creatures exist?” Joe asked, his voice soft. I looked up, and his gaze was locked on Becca, concern written all over his brow. He’d heard something in her voice, something I missed entirely. That’s why he was the salvation guy, and I was the “Punch Things Until They Explode” guy.

  She looked at Joe for a long time, then looked at me. I nodded, in what I hoped was an encouraging manner. It’s hard to know how my gestures will be taken by normal-sized people sometimes, so I hope I was being encouraging and not terrifying. Becca took a deep breath, then went to sit on the foot of the altar, the sacrificial robot’s feet twisting behind her making a bizarre backdrop to our conversation. Then again, conversations with bizarre backdrops are kinda my life. At least there were no naked Sasquatch or voodoo priests in the museum.

  “It was grad school, a couple of years after we…after you…”

  “Vanished? Ran out like a coward in the middle of the night?” I offered.

  Becca let out a little laugh and Joe shot me a dirty look, but the tension was broken, and that was all I was interested in. She went on with her story. “I was going to say ‘heard the call,’ but you can use whatever words you like. We weren’t together any more, and I wasn’t dating anyone. I threw myself into my work and concentrated on completing my master’
s degree in two years, then my doctorate in another two. It meant cramming a lot of classes into a short time, and that meant a lot of late nights studying and researching at the library, which was all the way across campus from my dorm, if you remember.” She glanced up at Joe, who nodded.

  “I was coming back from one of those late-night study sessions when a man stepped out of the shadows in front of me. He materialized more than anything, I guess, and he scared the crap out of me. I let out a little scream, and he grinned at my fear. When he smiled, I saw that his canines were longer than normal, and his eyes didn’t look quite right. I thought he was a theatre kid or something out playing hide and seek, or dressed up for something, so after my initial fright, I just pushed him aside and kept on walking.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Becca and Joe both turned to me, and I said, “Sorry, I was just thinking about that poor vampire, all ready for his meal to faint or flee, and she just blows him off. Probably the first time that had ever happened!”

  Becca gave me a little smile, and said, “Probably so. Anyway, I kept walking, and suddenly he was in front of me again. Now I was concerned, because I was walking pretty fast, and I hadn’t heard him running to pass me. But it was still possible for him to catch and pass me, I guess, so I pulled out my pepper spray and let him have it.”

  “You pepper sprayed a vampire?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Becca replied. “I gave him a solid shot right in the face, and he cut loose a scream like nothing I’d ever heard on Earth. He dropped to his knees, and I bolted past him, leaving my library books lying in the grass. Not a good idea, as I learned later. But at the moment, I just wanted to get away from the crazy stalker-rapist guy and get to my room where I was safe.”

  “Except…” I said.

  “Except it doesn’t work that way,” Becca said. “Apparently dormitories change residents so often that many of them, like me, never really consider it home. Without a sense of home, and all the little feelings that go into that, the threshold of a place isn’t protected from intrusion by those with ill intent.”

  “Like vampires,” Joe said.

  “Like vampires,” Becca confirmed. “He picked up my books, followed my scent to the dorm, talked his way into the front door, and knocked on my door.”

  “Which you didn’t open,” Joe said.

  “Which I didn’t open,” Becca agreed. “Which I stood on the other side of and dialed campus police, and then dialed the girls on either side of me and told them to stay in their rooms, then dialed the front desk and called for help, then…”

  “Then?”’ I asked.

  “Then I started screaming because he ripped the door off its hinges, deadbolt be damned, and walked into my room. I threw a chair at his head, but he caught it and smashed it to kindling. I threw my laptop at him, but he just knocked it out of the air. And the whole time, he was smiling at me, this cocky, cold smile that said he could do anything he wanted to me and there was nothing I could do about it. He got closer and closer, then…” Becca paused and closed her eyes for a second. It was obvious that reliving this had a cost for her, but we needed to know her background with the things that go bump in the night.

  “Then?” Joe prompted, his voice soft and low.

  “Then I heard a motorcycle roar up outside my window, which explodes inward, and suddenly I’m not trapped between my window and a batshit crazy Lestat wannabe. I’m trapped between a—”

  “Batshit crazy Lestat wannabe and a nun dressed like a fetish party and packing a twelve-gauge.”

  Becca’s eyes went wide, but I motioned for her to go on. “Exactly. The motorcyclist was some crazy woman who called herself Sister Evangeline. She’d followed the vampire all over campus since he was turned, just waiting for the right place and time to take him out. And when he came after me, she realized the time was right now.”

  “I didn’t know you went to Tulane,” I said.

  “I never said I…” She just stopped and looked at me.

  “I know Sister Evangeline. She’s the Hunter for that part of the country. So she took out your fine fanged friend?” I asked.

  “With prejudice and a hell of a lot of noise. But with no interference or interest from campus security, my RA, or anyone on my hall. I never quite understood how she managed that.”

  “We work for the Vatican,” Joe said. “There are a lot of people out there who just do it when the Church asks for a favor. That and Evangeline is well-connected with the local authorities.”

  “So after that night, I didn’t just become a believer, I became obsessed. After I got over being terrified, that is. I tracked Evangeline down and got her to tell me all about the monsters and magicians in New Orleans, and I changed my doctorate to Paranormal Studies.”

  “So how did you end up here?” Joe asked.

  “Well, there’s not a whole lot of money in paranormal investigation,” she said.

  “Then you’re doing it wrong,” I said. “You see, you got to either find yourself a religious group with deep pockets, or a super-secret government agency with an off-the-books budget. Or both. Preferably both. Then you work freelance for both of them, and you pretty much get to double-bill anything you kill, and they reimburse for ammunition, too!” I grinned as I dropped this little bit of knowledge on her. But my grin disappeared like Skeeter at a musical theatre festival when she spoke her next words.

  “Oh, Bubba, I didn’t want to hurt the creatures. I wanted to understand them.” I didn’t groan. I’m at least 75% sure I didn’t groan. I might have groaned a little bit. But I, at least, tried not to groan, and that counts for something.

  “What the hell is there to understand, Becca? They eat people. We don’t want to be eaten. So we kill them. End of discussion,” I said. “This exhibit doesn’t have anything to do with you trying to make contact with some damn Florida Gator-Man or some other swamp-dragged local legend critter I ain’t never heard of, does it?”

  “No, nothing like that! Nothing at all, I swear. The exhibit does serve two purposes—to let the local paranormal population see that the museum understands that they exist and wants to build a bridge between our communities,” she said, sounding like, well, like something you’d read in a museum guidebook.

  “Build a bridge? With something that looks at you like a hot fudge sundae? Damn, girl, you sounded smart ‘til you started talking like you’re in love with a damn werewolf or something.”

  “Well, at the time, my human relationships hadn’t been exactly brilliant, so who could blame me if I…” Her words trailed off and her cheeks flamed. Joe very studiously didn’t look at her.

  “Please tell me you didn’t, um…‘interview’ any vampires,” I said.

  “No! Nothing like that. Vampires still scare the crap out of me,” she protested.

  “Good,” Joe said. “I’ve never met one that didn’t deserve to be decapitated on the spot.”

  I kept my mouth shut, remembering a family of vampires I mistook for a chalupa, no, a chimichanga…no, a chupacabra one time. Turns out they were just on their way to Disneyland and stopped for a snack at the wrong farmer’s field, drained a couple of goats and cows, and got everybody all up in a tizzy. I gave them some gas money to get back on the road, and they were fine. But Joe was mostly right. Most of the vampires I’d ever seen needed to be staked and chopped into bits at the first sight of them.

  “But there are a lot of decent voodoo priests and witches in and around New Orleans, and a couple of very nice were-jaguars living on the outskirts of town. There is even one necromancer who taught me a lot about death magic and zombies. The magical kind, not the epidemic kind. But I didn’t become some kind of crazed fangirl. I approached all my interactions with the nonhuman populace from a very anthropological point of view, just as I would have a tribe of primitive people, or dangerous animals. I studied these beings for years, and finally when this museum opened up, I found someone willing to listen to my ideas about paranormal creatures, and how humans and the b
eings we’ve historically thought of as monsters—”

  “Because they have this nasty habit of trying to eat us,” I mumbled.

  Becca ignored me. She was getting the hang of being around me. If she wanted to get her point across, the only way to do it was to ignore me. She went on. “—are really complex social creatures, and often as intelligent as humans. She allowed me to put together this exhibit ostensibly to bring in new visitors and donors, but also to open ourselves up for deeper interaction with the local supernatural communities.”

  “So you want the vampires to come in here and feel understood or something?” I asked.

  “That was part of the initial goal, but we may have underestimated the animosity these creatures feel for our species,” she said.

  “You think?” I asked. I turned and started to walk away. “Joe, you stay here and get more of the backstory out of your ex here. I gotta go take walk and get away from the stink of stupid. Thinking you can safely co-exist with vampires. Somebody’s been reading too many teen novels. They don’t sparkle, they don’t fall in love with humans, they don’t play baseball, and they don’t live and let live.”

  I stomped off to calm down and collect myself before I said something real rude to Joe’s ex-girlfriend and got us thrown out of the museum once and for all.

  Chapter 7

  I left the Black Forest section of the exhibit and wandered into the Contemporary America section. I knew that’s where I was because everything looked familiar, tech-wise, and there was a big sign on the wall that said “Contemporary America” as I passed into the hall. I tapped the Bluetooth in my ear and spoke to thin air. “What do you make of this, Skeeter?”

  “It all looks and sounds like human assholery to me, Bubba. I haven’t seen anything that makes me think it’s more than somebody who really wants this exhibit to turn out like crap.”

  “Like maybe some of those other museum nerds who wanted to show off tin toys from ancient Egypt, or whatever the hell?” I asked.