by C. L. Bevill
“Bubba! Bubba!” someone yelled at him. “Are you all right?”
Bubba wheezed again just as Precious stuck her nose over the side of the hole and whined at him. He finally stood up straight, and his head just crested the edge of the hole. His gaze went to where he’d last seen the dark, growling figure. Down the foggy trail was nothing at all except swirls that revealed no one or thing had lingered. Behind him was a quartet staring down at him. Tandy pulled a cigarette out of a pack of Lucky Strikes and was lighting it with her handy weapon-like Zippo as she looked at him. Her hands were trembling, and it took her three tries. Marquita reached toward him with a manicured hand while a look that was both concerned and anxious crossed her face. Precious snuffled enthusiastically into his face trying to block his view of anything else. The fourth one was the cameraman who looked strangely familiar as he stared down at Bubba.
“Wheeeee,” Bubba said because he literally couldn’t breathe.
“Bubba, one blink for yes and two blinks for no,” the cameraman said. “Are you injured?”
Bubba blinked three times before wheezing out breath again. He thought he might be turning blue and reconsidered his stance on whether getting the breath knocked out of him was better than getting knocked unconscious. At long last his diaphragm relaxed, and he slumped one arm over the side of the hole in abject relief. “Why in the name of jumping jolly jellyfish is there a hole right smack dab in the middle of the path?” he demanded.
“That was a lot more than one or two blinks,” said the cameraman who was still pointing the camera at him. Under the unyielding eye of the camera lens, Bubba could see that the man was wearing a blue flight suit complete with black wrist cuffs and black zippered pockets on the breast. There were even patches on it, but Bubba didn’t want to focus on those at the moment.
“Did you see where it went?” Bubba asked, instead. “Did you get it on camera?”
“No and yes,” the cameraman said. “As soon as you went go go, it went bye bye. I think it was all bark and no bite.”
“It almost killed me,” Tandy snarled. “I would have been movie-star tartare. No Emmy for that guest spot on a nighttime television drama. No Oscar nod for best supporting actress in that understated indie film that came out of nowhere. No Tony award for killing ‘em on Broadway in Les Miz. No Grammy for best song for that album I always planned to release. My mother will be so pissed.”
“It just growled and snarled,” Marquita said. “Say, Bubba, you want to come out of that hole?”
“I don’t know ifin I should,” Bubba said frankly. “Is that the problem you talked about, Marquita?”
She nodded nervously.
“And it’s bin around since you started shooting your film?”
“Since last week,” she confirmed. “It popped up at that dusk shot, right, Tandy?”
“It threw rocks at us,” Tandy said. “We thought it was Armand playing a joke until he walked up from the bottom of the hill drinking a coke and completely out of makeup. He said his car wouldn’t start, and he’d had to hitch a ride with an old lady in a Lincoln Continental who kept dropping her dentures.”
“That’s Stella Lackey,” the cameraman said helpfully. “She shouldn’t be driving anymore because she’s got dementia.”
Bubba stared at the cameraman who didn’t move the camera away from his face. “Marquita, are you saying the Boogity-Boo is messin’ with y’all here?”
Marquita grimaced. “There’s been other sightings, too. On the nearby road and once in our trailer camp, and that one scared away half the cast. Can you see why I can’t go to the police?” she asked.
Bubba looked at Marquita and then at Tandy and then back at the cameraman. He abruptly realized that he hadn’t thought about Willodean for over five minutes. What would she think about all of this? He needed to call her pretty darned quick, too, just to ensure she was okay.
“You’re on a shoestring budget,” Bubba said slowly trying to make sense of it all.
“For some reason The Curse of the Boogity-Boo isn’t catching on,” Marquita said. “I got five million to start but money goes quickly. As soon as the real Boo started up, half my crew up and left me high and dry. I had to hire locals, and no offense, but the locals are not exactly good substitutes for the real thing.”
The cameraman shrugged.
“Are you still filming?” Marquita asked. “We need to cut that part out.”
Bubba pushed Precious out of his way and hoisted himself out of the hole with a grunt. For a few moments he sat on the side and rubbed the middle part of his chest where he’d slammed into the hole wall. “That’s goin’ to leave a bruise, and Willodean is goin’ to want to know where it came from,” he muttered. “Hold on.”
The three humans and one hound watched as Bubba pulled a cellphone out of his jean pocket. He laboriously turned it on and found the contacts list. Willodean’s number was on top. He hit it and put the phone to his ear. She answered after two rings.
“Bubba, darling,” she said, “it’s only been an hour. I’m fine. The baby’s fine. The house isn’t on fire. No one’s dropped off any dead bodies that I know about. There hasn’t even been an explosion.”
“Good, good,” Bubba said. “You need anything?”
“No. Miz Adelia said she’d bring me over a snack later. I think she made a cheese strata with veggies. Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
Depends on what veggies Miz Adelia put in it, Bubba thought. Miz A was a fine cook but she’d been on a pro-veggie bent of late. One night they’d been forced to eat Brussels sprouts, bean sprouts, and some other kind of sprouts all mixed up in one dish. There had also been roasted chicken, but that was neither here nor there.
“You know,” Willodean went on blithely, “I just had the weirdest feeling about you just now. Something didn’t happen to you by any chance, did it?”
Bubba was loathe to lie to Willodean not only because he loved her, but that not lying was generally the right thing to do, but as her blood pressure had caused her to be bedridden for the remainder of her pregnancy, he didn’t want to be the cause of it going up. “I’m out at the Hovious place,” he said. “This is where they’re filming that movie. You remember those people from The Deadly Dead.”
“Right,” Willodean said. “Another horror movie. No zombies interrupting your marriage proposal now?”
“No, there ain’t zombies,” Bubba said with a pointed glance at Marquita.
“Okay,” Willodean said happily. “I’ll let you go. I’m on the second episode of Stranger Things and it’s getting very strange. Love you, babycakes.”
Bubba said, “Love you,” as Willodean disconnected. He put the phone back in his pocket and rubbed his solar plexus again. Finally, he looked at Marquita. “I reckon we need to talk.”
* * *
The first floor of the Hovious place had been transformed into a set complete with a makeshift kitchen on one side. Marquita poured coffee into Styrofoam cups and passed them out. Then she beckoned to Bubba, and they went to sit on the porch. Two battered Adirondack chairs waited for them.
“I expect you have questions,” Marquita said.
“Are you faking this?” Bubba asked immediately after parking himself in the chair. The wood creaked ominously as he adjusted his large body in it. Precious made herself comfortable between his legs and plonked her head down on her front paws.
“I had considered taking advantage of the publicity,” Marquita said, “but then it sounds like my productions are getting cursed. First Kristoph dies on the set of The Deadly Dead and then McGeorge goes nuts trying to get revenge. Now this.” McGeorge was one of the crew who’d been in love with Kristoph while Marquita and her brother, Risley Risto, had both been having affairs with another crew member. The Peyton Place atmosphere had caused multitudinous problems of escalating silliness. Of course, it had only gotten truly convoluted from there.
“Okay,” Bubba said. “Ifin that was the Boo, then where’s Armand? Also, who’s Arm
and?”
“Armand’s the big guy we hired to play the Boo,” Marquita said. “I checked my texts, and he had another problem with his car. Four flat tires,” she added bitterly. “I don’t think I’m cursed. I think someone is messing with me.”
“Sounds like they’re messing with Armand.” Bubba studied his Styrofoam cup. It didn’t have enough coffee in it to deal with this. He could be at his house watching Stranger Things with his wife while rubbing her feet. That sounded nice, but then he’d be worrying about her at the same time. All that strangeness could be riling up her blood pressure, and then— “Them tunnels still open?”
“Yes,” Marquita said. “I had to pay some contractors to shore up some of the interiors to be safe, but that was cheaper than building a set for it.”
“Your brother have to do any time?” Bubba referred to Risley, who had tried to pin Kristoph’s death on him not realizing that the man had had a heart attack and hadn’t been murdered at all.
“Community service,” Marquita said. She sat in the other chair and neatly crossed her legs. Her booted foot tapped the air. “Just like McGeorge. They both had very good lawyers.” She scowled and looked intently at her coffee. “You should know they’re both around somewhere.”
Bubba sighed. That figured. Did he need to file for a restraining order against McGeorge? That depended on her.
“McGeorge is great at what she does,” Marquita said, “and Risley is, too. He’s looking for a way back into Hollywood. We have a wonderful B-movie script here, just the kind that develops a cult following, and all it needs is some TLC. Also some money. It does not need a monster wandering around ruining takes.”
“What exactly do you want me to do?” Bubba asked carefully. “I don’t reckon I kin arrest a fella for pretending to be the Boo. I could chase him off, unlessin’ he’s got a legal reason to be on the property.”
“I rented the whole mountain from a Hovious cousin who owns it. I have an ironclad contract checked over by two lawyers. The cousin inherited the entire kit and caboodle when the couple died. He’s been trying to unload it for years, but no one wants to buy it.” Marquita indicated the house. “It’s practically a wreck, and it’s got more ghost stories about it than the Winchester Mystery House in California. Throw in some stuff about a creature that is a whole lot like a bigfoot combined with a golem and some satanic nonsense for good measure, and you’ve got a big black hole piece of property. The cousin was giggling at the end of my first phone call. He put an extra zero on the amount. Seriously, it’s a money pit of desolation.”
“Kind of like the Snoddy Mansion,” Bubba muttered. He finished his coffee and thought about calling his wife again. Another thought occurred to him. “You pour some money into the locals, too?”
“There were certain promises made,” Marquita allowed.
“To the mayor and the town council?”
“Possibly a few others,” she finished, tapping her fingernails on the chair’s armrest.
“So ifin something was to happen to upset the apple cart, then folks wouldn’t get a chunk of all this good, new revenue from the land of fruits and nuts,” Bubba surmised.
“That’s a likelihood,” Marquita said.
“Therefore, when you mentioned a ‘problem’ on the set in front of Herbert Longboom and how things might get shut down and all, he took it to heart.”
“Did he?”
“I’m speculating here, and that’s because I had a particularly good night of sleep last night. I dint wake up once, and that was at least eight solid hours.” Bubba tapped his cup. “Therefore, I kin speculate just fine without going off on a sidetrack that will make a fella’s head spin.”
“Am I supposed to say something to that?” Marquita answered.
“No,” Bubba said. “I’m still speculating. I reckon that if Herbert thought ifin I he’ped out, then the problem might go away. However, I had my own problem such as the lack of Häagen-Dazs and couldn’t commit to the problem solving.” He shook his head. “Ain’t really a problem now, though.”
“I had my assistant go to Dallas and bring back a cooler full of Häagen-Dazs,” Marquita said. “She even got the two correct flavors. It turned out that she had to go to Tom Thumb, Kroger, and three different Walmarts. It was serendipitous, since I needed some special stuff to eat that I can’t get around here. You people don’t care for the vegetarian lifestyle at all. Keeps a woman trim.” She patted her svelte abdomen.
“Yeti cooler?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get that back to you.” Bubba sighed again. “So Herbert thought ifin my problem was solved, I could he’p with your problem. Apparently, he spread the word. Naturally, that explains why everyone was giving us ice cream last night and this morning.”
“You got a lot?”
“Yep.”
Marquita hummed.
“Let’s speculate some more, shall we?” Bubba asked.
“Okay.”
“Ifin the Boo is real, I cain’t just run him off. Hell, he’s prolly protected by some weird Pegram County law. Folks would come out in droves to protect him. There was this one time someone found an endangered fish near a factory, and ain’t no one had ever heard of this fish before. They had to close the factory because there might be some cross contamination or such. It turned out that the fish wasn’t endangered at all.” Bubba made a little noise. “The pygmy spotted snogglefish. Lives in a spring that feeds into Sturgis Creek. I was using it for bait.”
Marquita shook her head. “Um, can we get back to the problem at hand, Bubba?”
“Right. Boo. If it’s real, well, you’re in a pickle. I don’t reckon it is, so it’s some person pretending to be the Boo, which means someone’s holding a grudge. Or it could be something paranormal, and it’s the ghost of the Boo.” Bubba threw the last one out there just because he could.
“The Ghost of the Boogity-Boo,” Marquita breathed. “Omigod, a great name for a sequel!”
“Shouldn’t that be The Ghost of the Curse of the Boogity-Boo?” Bubba suggested.
“Too wordy,” she said. “I need to write that down.”
“Never mind that,” Bubba said. “What is it that you want?”
“Find out who’s doing this and why before it sinks our battleship,” Marquita said quickly. “They’re using the tunnels to disappear. I’m afraid someone’s going to get hurt, really hurt—” she motioned at his chest as she added the last part on— “and sue the pants off the production. I’ve got insurance but only just barely. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve spent pretty much all of the budget. Kickbacks, setting, special equipment, Tandy’s paycheck so we can have a name above the title. Your mayor is a nasty little extortionist.”
“Well, I dint vote for him.” Bubba tilted his head. “Why not go somewhere else?”
“The honorable Leroy waited until we were committed before he jumped on my back,” Marquita said. “I had to ask your mother where I could hire people who would work for minimum wage, and don’t ask how I’m finagling the job description so the SAG doesn’t lose their minds about it.”
“You asked my mother who to hire,” Bubba muttered. The cameraman with the blue flight suit popped into his head. It looked just like the flight suits the folks from Houston and Cape Canaveral might be wearing when they were… He groaned as his mind went far ahead of what he was thinking.
“They were really cheap. They work for peanuts,” Marquita said defensively. “Any kind of idiot can operate one of those digital cameras, and we are going for a found-footage, shaky-camera look so not hiring a pro wasn’t a loss.”
“Seriously, are you paying them with peanuts?”
“Boiled, salted, and some with wasabi.” Marquita had the good grace to look somewhat ashamed. “It’s in their contract. It’s kind of a work share program. Your mother said it worked when they did it with the city of Pegramville.”
“Ifin your movie makes any money, will they make any?” Bubba asked.
“Of cou
rse, I’m not a scam artist,” Marquita said, “I’m just broke and desperate. Besides, the Dogley Institute is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.”
Bubba stared at the weathered planks of the porch. She might be broke and desperate but she’d just bought a bunch of ice cream for Willodean that she shouldn’t have, likely to persuade him to solve her problem. “Okay, so you want me to figure this deal out, and then what?”
“Just keep it on the level until we finish the flick,” Marquita said quickly. “I figure that if they, and I mean the bad guys, know that you’re on the job, you’re like a dog with a bone who won’t let go.”
Precious whined at that.
“Milk-Bones later,” Bubba whispered to her.
“Is there anything else I should know, you reckon?” Bubba asked.
The cameraman exploded onto the porch sans the camera. He placed himself squarely in front of the door with his legs wide apart and his hands on his hips. Then he slowly and methodically walked toward Bubba and Marquita.
“It’s that one scene from The Right Stuff,” the cameraman explained, “but slo-mo isn’t my thing.” He stopped next to Bubba and looked down at him. “Bubba, there’s something I need to discuss with you since you have the biggest property around except for the farmers and the ranchers, and they won’t talk to me, especially since I’ve become…an astronaut.” He lifted his chin imperiously.
Sure enough, there was a NASA patch prominently displayed on one side of his breast. The other side was a nametag with a stylized eagle on it. On his left sleeve was an American flag.
“David Beathard,” Bubba said with a sinking feeling. The other man certainly had a new look all with the flight suit and the buzz cut that was a tad shy of a Marine high-and-tight. “I ain’t seen you since we were at Bazooka Bob’s.” David was a sometime resident of the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being and presumably one of Marquita’s cheap hires. Ironically, he was also one of Bubba’s close friends who came and went from Bubba’s life like the wind. The last Bubba had seen of him he had been doing a burlesque show at Bazooka Bob’s that had involved oversized feather fans covering and uncovering strategic parts of his body. “You know I wondered how you got out of that charge of kidnapping your social worker at my wedding.”
