by C. L. Bevill
The movie set of The Curse of the Boogity-Boo did not look like that. No, it was like a ghost town, no pun intended.
Aside from the sign, there wasn’t anything to indicate something was happening in the area. A makeshift parking lot that appeared to be a dirt road turnabout was the grand entrance. The trail up to the Hovious place was a dusty track that was overgrown with poison ivy and Virginia creeper. The sun-faded cedar shingles of the huge house could be seen through the trees and fully half were missing or about to fall away. In addition, the obvious broken windows reflected the sun’s light through a multitude of cracks and glinted through the oaks and pines.
Apart from Bubba and Precious, the only living thing about was a squirrel that ran across the road in front of his truck. It chittered angrily in their direction when Precious barked sharply at it and disappeared upward into an oak tree.
Bubba parked Ol’ Green next to a battered Range Rover and a dusty Mercedes Benz and looked around. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been on Foggy Mountain. Certainly, there had been challenges in high school to reach Old Man Hovious’s front door and play a rousing game of Ding Dong Ditch, but Bubba had usually been the getaway driver in those cases as he had been one of the few high school students with an operational vehicle. (Ol’ Green had sometimes required a push down a slope to get it started but it had been technically “operational.”) As a matter of fact, he seemed to recollect Tee Gearheart, the genial warden of the Pegram County Jail and one of Bubba’s close friends, had been the one to ring the bell and flee down the dirt road horse laughing like a mad goon on meth. Tee had immediately tripped over a root in the road spraining his ankle while he fell on his face and broke a tooth. He’d limped to the truck while covering his bloody mouth with one hand, all the while yelling, “START THE TRUCK! The Boogity-Boo’s a-coming!” The three others had hung onto the sides of the bed of the truck and yanked Tee in while shrieking at Bubba to hurry up and drive away. Bubba had been startled enough to take the narrow rutted track at a speed that caused one of the riders in the bed to careen into the air and come down hard on his buttock, which had broken his coccyx in two spots. (The emergency room hadn’t been impressed by their hastily concocted cover-up story that they’d saved three nuns and a priest from muggers in the most desolate part of the county. Additionally, Tee had been grounded for a full month, and no one had actually seen the Boogity-Boo, much less Old Man Hovious. Bubba had broken a spring on the truck and spent the following two weeks repairing it with old parts he’d horse-traded for.)
It occurred to Bubba that even before the Hoviouses had died in a freak accident, there had been legends about the Foggy Mountain property.
Miz Nadine Clack, the town’s librarian and avid historian, had once given a lecture about properties in the area. The Snoddy Estate had been mentioned, as had the Red Door Inn, which had once been a bordello and was now a bed and breakfast. Quite naturally Bubba had attended, not because of the Snoddy references or even the Red Door Inn ones, but because he’d always been interested in history. (The fact that he had a degree in that very subject seemed to be a closely guarded secret.) In any event, there’d been a good ten minutes devoted to Foggy Mountain and its speckled past.
Bubba’s face creased as he recalled the pertinent details while weeding out the gossipy parts, which was difficult to do considering how Pegram County worked in that respect. Foggy Mountain had been the property of a distant Snoddy relation who’d sold it all and moved to Bolivia or Patagonia or somewhere like that. A developer whose name had been lost in the annals of time had purchased it intent on making cash hand over fist because of the U.S. Army’s interest in the vicinity, which didn’t work out, of course. The developer had sold some of it to a wealthy industrialist from Dallas, who built a hunting lodge on Foggy Mountain. The developer had eventually lost all his money on a mink ranch, and the rest had been sold to a medical corporation for pennies on the dollar. The hospital they’d built mere miles away as the crow flew had eventually become the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being.
Bubba made himself cerebrally return to the subject of the Hovious place before his brain wandered off again. Historically it was boring because the industrialist had built his lodge and pretty much never visited the locale again, leaving it to rot and open to the explorations of kids and transients. Then the lodge and the land were sold several times including to a group of naturalists in the 60s who made it into a commune. (It was said that Joan Baez and Jane Fonda had spent time on Foggy Mountain in the 60s.) Apparently, full-time nekkedity ran its course because then the Hovious family purchased the mountain. Old Man Hovious had been a product of his upbringing and fervently believed that the “red” threat was imminent and that all good Americans should have a bomb shelter. (Or two or three or a ton of tunnels into the mountain as the case might have been.) Finally, the Hoviouses had their accident, and not the satanically related gorefest that someone like Lloyd Goshorn would relate to strangers in the local taverns in exchange for cheap booze.
Miz Clack’s interest in the history of Foggy Mountain seemed fixated on the naturalist and hippie parts for some reason before she eventually moved on to other properties with histories that were equally lurid, and that was about all Bubba knew for certain on the history of the area.
In the reality of things, Foggy Mountain and its expanded lodge cum hippie commune cum democratic sanctuary became empty once the Hovious family died. The spider webs, dust bunnies, and stories had begun in earnest.
Bubba couldn’t remember exactly when the legend about the Boogity-Boo began. It hadn’t started with Foggy Mountain, for sure, but in the swamplands around Sturgis Creek, where the monster was said to hunt for blackberries in the early summer. He could remember one of his grannies telling him to go to sleep lest the Boogity-Boo peek in his window and catch him awake. (Misbehaving children disappeared into the swamp and graced the inside of the Boogity-Boo’s stomach, and Bubba suddenly recalled why he hadn’t overly liked that granny. She’d also had a propensity for dispensing castor oil, which was dreadful even to smell.) Since that had happened way before the Hovious family expired so wretchedly, the legend had already been well established.
Precious clambered out of the truck just after Bubba and sniffed around, casting a large brown eye upon the Mercedes and the Range Rover. Apparently, she felt the need to mark her territory because she used the tires of both vehicles as a convenient bathroom area. Then she snuffled and kicked up dirt to cover up the evidence as if no one would notice her creating small dust storms in her wake.
Bubba tilted his head and heard nothing but the wind. It was a moment where he might have said someone walked over his grave and the goose bumps appeared up and down his forearms.
He thought about it. It was, in fact, a weekday, although he couldn’t remember what day of the week it was and didn’t feel like pulling out his smartphone to check. (Thursday popped into his mind but it could easily have been Wednesday.) Movies often worked fast, and the cheaper ones had a quick turnaround on account of their limited budget. Bubba had learned that from the last one. Because of that rationale, he had a good idea that the crew would be working pretty much nonstop until the film wrapped.
And Marquita Thaddeus had said there was trouble. No, she’d said there was a problem on the set. Like they couldn’t get a permit to serve ice cream to the extras or there wasn’t enough makeup to cover the Boogity-Boo’s hairy buttocks.
Bubba shuddered briefly as he fought to get that image out of his head. No, it wasn’t a simple problem because she’d said they might have to shut down the production. She’d said something about him being discreet and investigatively wonderful. She’d said if she went to the police, the film would go down like a lead weight without fishing line, except she hadn’t used that specific metaphor.
Most importantly, Marquita hadn’t answered him about the presence of a corpse. A corpse was definitely a deal breaker. Bubba was all about helping out folks who needed a hand, but the
re was a line that he didn’t want to cross. Again. And again. And and again.
Bubba steeled his shoulders and glanced at his hound. “Precious,” he said, “are you ready?”
Precious woofed softly and led the way up the trail to the old Hovious place.
* * *
Bubba started to hear some noise as he rounded the western corner of the oversized, overbuilt monstrosity that was the Hovious place.
Precious stopped and her ears flopped. She was clearly dumbfounded. She whined and Bubba murmured, “Hush.”
They proceeded a little further and found the source of the noise. A scene was taking place. The lone cameraman was using a shoulder-held model. Marquita was directing from behind the cameraman. There was a distinctly disheveled actress standing on a bridge that gapped the spring-fed stream that rolled down the mountain.
Marquita said, “You’ve just heard a noise.”
“But there’s a babbling brook,” the actress protested loudly over the sound of the babbling brook. “It’s babbling its ass off. It’s the loudest damn babbling brook I’ve ever heard. We’re going to have to re-dub my voice later because of the babbling.”
“So you got a weird feeling,” Marquita said as if the actress hadn’t complained. She tossed her long brown hair over her shoulder and took a deep breath. “A babbling brook doesn’t preclude a weird feeling, does it, Tandy?”
Bubba looked at the actress again. He hadn’t recognized her because she was wearing a wig with red hair, which was odd because she had red hair to begin with. Tandy North had acted in The Deadly Dead and then he’d met her again when there had been a problem (a dead-body problem) at the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being because there couldn’t not be a problem there. (Bubba did have to admit that there were marked connections to the number and cause of dead bodies and the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being, but the connections didn’t have much to do with people being mentally unwell. It was just unhappy coincidence, and Pegram County was the mother and wellspring of ill-fated flukes.)
In any event, Tandy was a fine actress and not opposed to smoking a deadly number of cigarettes. Before her stint in Dogley to dry out from drug addiction, she wasn’t averse to smoking an equally deadly amount of marijuana. She was likely very good friends with Ralph Cedarbloom who had been known to supply Dogley with the doob when he wasn’t supplying it to his cancer-ridden aunt.
“Okay,” Tandy said loftily. “I get a weird feeling. I look around and bam, there he is.”
“Right,” Marquita said. “The Boogity-Boo.”
“No, there he is,” Tandy said, pointing at Bubba. “Bubba, buddy boy. You haven’t been playing with any more explosives lately, have you?”
“No, they don’t usually leave them lying about,” Bubba said.
Marquita glanced over her shoulder, grinned at Bubba, and then back at Tandy. “Let’s get this scene done, and then break for late brekky.”
“Who brought Dunkin’ Donuts?” Tandy asked, correctly gauged the cold look in Marquita’s face, and added, “I’m ready. Born ready.”
“Go,” Marquita said.
Bubba tilted his head and waited.
With a drop of her eyes Tandy suddenly transformed herself into a woman in distress. It was a truly creepy feeling to watch someone change themselves so dramatically without even varying their clothing or saying a word. In one moment, she was Tandy North the actress, and in the next, she was a woman who had clearly been through some stuff and was clearly about to go through some more stuff. (“Eek! Scream! Oh NOES!”)
Tandy stared at the babbling brook for a long moment and then she looked very carefully over one shoulder, clearly expecting to see something lurking in the heavy brush that covered almost every part of Foggy Mountain.
Bubba looked, too. He heard Precious growl very lowly and he frowned.
Tandy turned while her hands came up protectively in front of her body. Her head moved forward just a tad because there was something moving across the bridge in the woods. A low-crawling fog began to spill down the creek and enveloped the bridge leaving Tandy visible from the knees up.
Bubba felt a slew of goose bumps erupt on his forearms. Fog wasn’t common this time of year in Pegram County, but this was Foggy Mountain, and there was a reason it had been called that.
Tandy lifted a hand up so that she could better see the dark shape that was moving in the woods.
Bubba almost lifted his hand in time with hers. He couldn’t make out the actor, but the fella appeared to be much taller than Bubba and appropriately scary. He stood just in the deepest shadows of the tall oaks about him, and when the wind moved the branches the tiniest spots of sunlight showed that he was wearing something dark. It seemed like the shadows followed him in earnest, keeping everyone from seeing exactly what he was and what he wasn’t.
Tandy made a noise that was audible even over the babbling brook of doom. Bubba looked down because Precious was growling louder. Then he glanced back up and saw that Marquita had gone very still. The producer slash Hollywood bigwig slash widow of the famous director stared as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.
The dark figure swirled through the fog and Tandy said, “What the bleep?” except she didn’t say bleep. She took a step backwards and her foot caught on something. “Marquita! That isn’t Armand! What the bleeping bleepity bleep is going on?”
“Cut!” Marquita yelled. “Armand! Stop messing around and don’t…” she trailed off as Tandy struggled with whatever her foot was caught on.
Bubba caught the moment where the air was full of expectancy. Something was about to happen, and it wasn’t good. He glanced at Precious again and saw that she was snarling silently and had backed up all the way into his legs. His hound didn’t like what was across the bridge, and he found that he didn’t like that she didn’t like it.
“My foot’s trapped on the damn bridge,” Tandy said and franticness was creeping into her voice. She looked up at the figure closing on her and she said, “Come any nearer, dude, and I’m going to make you into a girl boogity-boo!” She suddenly held something up as if to ward off the person. “Stay back! I have…a cigarette lighter. I’ll mess you up! My last movie was about a female Army Ranger and those Army Ranger guys taught me ten different ways to kill a guy with a cigarette lighter!”
For a second Bubba thought it was still Precious growling, but it was a freakish howl that came slithering across the banked fog, and though he thought he’d had goose bumps before, they didn’t compare to the ones he suddenly developed. He stepped over his dog and rumbled, “Marquita, that ain’t your actor?”
A barking snarl resulted and Tandy shrieked. “Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Marquita! That’s a bleeping bigfoot! Get me the bleep out of here! My foot is bleeping stuck! Put that bleepity camera down and bleeping help me! Bubba, bleep! Bleep! BLEEP! ”
The figure stepped closer to Tandy and all words failed her as she ducked her head and held up the lighter menacingly.
Marquita looked back at Bubba and said, “I don’t who that is!” He could see by the look in her eye that she was very serious and very frightened all at the same time. She looked back at Tandy and said, “Back away, Tandy!”
“I can’t!” Tandy wailed. “My foot is stuck on a bleeping bleepy bleepness board!”
Bubba had had enough of all of this nonsense. He began his advance, moving past Marquita and the cameraman at a trot that increased into a full charge as he approached the bridge.
Tandy knelt to work on her foot nearly covered by the flowing fog, and there was another eerie howl from the other side of the creek.
Bubba didn’t stop. He went right over Tandy’s head and landed easily on his feet on the other side of the bridge. The thing or person there snarled viciously and abruptly vanished. Then Bubba fell into a hole and vanished himself.
Chapter 5
Bubba and Weird Stuff Of Course
When Bubba hit the side of the hole, he knocked the breath out of himself, which was much bette
r than being knocked unconscious. He’d had both done to him before, and while not being able to breathe for about a period of thirty seconds that stretched into eternity wasn’t a pleasant feeling, there would be no long-term effects that involved CT scans and MRIs and possible brain damage. He gasped, wheezed, and struggled as he righted himself in the conveniently Bubba-sized hole. (It wasn’t even his first time falling into a hole because treasure hunters with metal detectors and shovels moseyed with abandon over the Snoddy Estate looking for the Civil War booty that was purported to be buried there. They certainly hadn’t filled in the holes when they were done finding a bottle cap or a broken scythe blade, which had led to situations where people might have taken a step in the wrong direction.)
