Bubba and the Curse of the Boogity

by C. L. Bevill

  “Thou art,” Thelda said affirmatively.

  “I’ll try to do better,” Bubba swore. “I’m goin’ to look for Marquita right now. Also for answers. Do y’all know anything about the Boo?”

  Jesus shrugged. “Heee was creeeated by our saviooor.”

  “Buddha would say something about just gettin’ along with him,” Dan advised.

  “Do you know anyone who would want to pretend to be the Boo?” Bubba persisted.

  “Is Brownie around?” David asked.

  “No, his folks dint want him upsetting Willodean in the last few weeks of her pregnancy,” Bubba said. “Besides school’s about to start for him, and he has to clean up the last mess he made. I think he might have made a sinkhole, and a building and two cars might have disappeared into it, but that’s pure speculation. There wasn’t any security footage.”

  “Then no,” David said, “I don’t know anyone else who would pretend to be the Boo.”

  Bubba eyed the professor who was still looking at the rocketship. “That fella a real professor?”

  “Of course,” David said. “He’s got the sheepskins to prove it. And he’s been published. His article on interspatial anomalies in sub-Earth orbital parameters was the bomb. ”

  “And your ship, that really goin’ to fly?”

  “We will soon take to the skies and prove that mortal man was meant to overcome diversity!” David declared. The others gleefully Hear! Hear!ed him.

  “Theee name iiis the S.S. Stormspike,” Jesus told Bubba cheerfully.

  “Thee should have been the S.S. Burninator,” Thelda said bitterly.

  “There was some disagreement about the name,” David said, “and I was inclined for the S.S. Jellyfish or possibly the S.S. Cataclysm.”

  “The S.S. Raving,” Dan said and chortled.

  “You’re goin’ to let everyone know before you launch it, right?” Bubba persisted.

  “Absolutely,” David said. “We have to alert the Federal Aviation Administration and also the Boy Scouts. I thought about alerting the town council, but I figured it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Bubba looked at the S.S. Stormspike and thought it might be a problem. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’m off to look for Marquita. Mebe y’all will come over sooner. I’m shore we kin use the he’p.” And if the astronuts were helping look for Marquita, then they wouldn’t be launching a possibly dangerous homemade rocketship. That was a win-win situation.

  Chapter 14

  Bubba and an Imminent Conclusion

  The first thing Bubba did when he returned to Foggy Mountain was to look for Simone Sheats because he had some very specific questions for her. Fortunately, she wasn’t difficult to find. She was tucked away in her portable home away from home and talking quietly with Risley Risto as they sat at a neat little dinette that was built into the wall of the travel trailer. Bubba knocked on the already open door and said, “Hey.”

  “Bubba,” Risley said quickly and agitatedly, “is there any word?”

  Bubba had passed a group of searchers as they fanned out around the mountain, but there was a general air of remonstrance. Marquita Thaddeus was an adult, after all, and if she wanted to disappear, then she could. Never mind all of this nonsense about leaving behind her wallet, cellphone, Range Rover, and her supply of blood pressure medication. Sheriff John was skeptical at best when Bubba had spoken briefly with him. “Ain’t heard nothing,” he said. “Folks be around the mountain again and some goin’ into the tunnels.”

  Bubba had had a problem even getting on the mountain because the news media was quickly getting wise. There were two vans parked at the bottom of the road and Bubba had only gotten past because he’d name-dropped Sherriff John’s title as well as Risley’s and Marquita’s. Also, the state trooper at the bottom of the hill had gone to the police academy with Willodean in Dallas before he’d switched over to state law enforcement and had been invited to their wedding, so he kind of knew Bubba. Finally and most persuasively, Bubba had promised to get Tandy North’s autograph for him.

  Bubba stood awkwardly in the doorway of the RV and looked at the two people sitting at the small table. Simone held a can of Diet Pepsi and nervously sipped at it. Risley had a bottle of water that was unopened. Both appeared worried. Too worried for Bubba’s taste.

  The silence drifted away as they waited for Bubba to continue and then everything became really uncomfortable.

  Risley’s mouth opened, but Bubba beat him to whatever words he was about to say. “This was a trick, right?” Bubba asked baldly. There wasn’t rancor in his tone because he didn’t really feel acrimonious, but he did want answers.

  Risley and Simone looked at each other, looked at their drinks, and then looked back at Bubba. That was a lot of looking. (Bubba just kept looking at them because he knew that would make them uncomfortable and likely to make a mistake.)

  “I figure that the movie was tanking before it was even finished, mebe even before it started filming,” Bubba said, “and this was a way of getting some publicity. Free publicity, too. Monster haunts movie set. A real monster that became the stuff of legends. Folks be wondering what really happened. Pretty soon there’s a buzz about it. Doesn’t even have to be a good movie, am I right? Folks be trippin’ over themselves to see it because of all the gossip.”

  Simone bit her lower lip. “That was the idea,” she said.

  “Simone,” Risley whispered harshly and more tellingly, warningly.

  “What?” she asked. “We’re going to have to tell someone sometime, am I right? I mean, what if things…go…south?”

  “Things have gone south,” Risley snapped.

  “So, them things I found in the tunnels were stilts,” Bubba said. “Looked like the kind folks use to put up drywall and when they don’t want to climb up and down ladders.”

  “I got them at a tool discount store,” Simone said. “They’re not hard to use.”

  “And you were the Boo I saw yesterday during filming,” Bubba stated. “Eight feet of costume and drywall stilts.”

  Simone shook her head. “That was Risley.”

  “But Marquita played the Boo another time,” Risley said, “and when I did it another time, I wandered around in costume on the edge of the property near the highway until people drove past and I showed myself briefly. Then I disappeared if they stopped or worse, stopped and pulled out their shotguns. Did you know a lot of people around here carry shotguns?”

  “Texas,” Bubba answered succinctly. “It’s practically a law for Texans to own a firearm.”

  Simone slumped in the seat. “I’m sorry Bubba. Marquita really wanted to have an impartial witness, and you happened along at just the right time. Once your name got out there, people would start paying attention on account of all the things that have happened to you. If your name was involved, then it made for twice as much publicity. We were going for a movie within a movie, you know? No, you don’t know. It’s like found footage but with the mystique of the main characters actually being haunted by a ‘real’ Boo. Wes Craven did it once with one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. That’s why we lied to you.”

  Bubba ground his teeth and looked outside. Nearby, Precious was cheerfully chewing on a stick and not too far away, three men dressed in camouflage were examining a stand of pine trees as if Marquita was simply crouched there waiting for someone to find her. “Okay, I kin git that. Who was the Boo in the tunnels yesterday? When I got lost?”

  Simone and Risley stared at Bubba. Simone’s expression was more telling. It was confusion and then something tinged with fear. “Um,” she said, “the costume was locked up here after I took it off. It’s still here.” She motioned at a cabinet to Bubba’s left. “See. The lock is still on the door.”

  There was a combination lock attached to a hasp on the cabinet. Although the cabinet door was cheap pressed wood, it plainly hadn’t been damaged in any manner.

  “No one was supposed to be playing the Boo until Marquita did something around
dusk,” Risley explained. “We figured that since the costume is mostly dark, then it’s better to use it at night so that we can disappear easily. Hop in some bushes, take the mask off, rip the torso off, and wow, we’re a witness, too.” His voice went higher as if he imitated what he might say if he was a witness to a Boo sighting. “Did you see that? It was the Texas Bigfoot, wasn’t it? Oh my gosh!”

  “And if we couldn’t do in the dark, then we used the fog machine liberally, like yesterday,” Simone input. “Foggy Mountain equals extreme fog. It’s hard to take a good photo when there’s a buttload of fog.” Risley nodded agreeably.

  Bubba’s head suddenly ached. I could be home right now, rubbing the small of Willodean’s back and discussing what was strange in the 1980s and why that girl on the show had a tattoo on her arm. I could be eting ice cream and gittin’ sick of Häagen-Dazs, but who really gits sick of ice cream? Not this fella. Bubba gestured at the cabinet. “Open it,” he ordered.

  Simone cast another look at Risley and got up. She fumbled with the lock for a moment and then opened it, pulling it from the hasp. Bubba pulled the cabinet open and looked inside. Sure enough, there was the basis for a Boogity-Boo costume. It hung on a padded hanger inside the narrow cabinet and waited for the enterprising moviemaker to come along and pretend to be a monster to drum up sales. He leaned closer and shifted the main costume to look at the headpiece that was mounted on a Styrofoam dummy head sitting on the bottom of the cabinet. The Boo-head creation was equally impressive. Given enough distance, anyone might be thinking they were seeing the real thing.

  “Who else knows about this?” Bubba asked.

  “Marquita, Simone, and myself,” Risley answered. “We wanted to keep it small. Hire locals who would spread the rumors. You know how they spread rumors around here.”

  “I know about that.” Bubba stared at the costume. So far no one had done anything illegal. Pretending to be the Boo wasn’t illegal. It might be immoral and tasteless, but it wasn’t illegal. As a matter of fact, some people were going to be impressed with the filmmakers’ combined ingenuity. Fifty years from now people might still be arguing about whether the Boo was real or not. All revenue in the filmmakers’ pockets. All three were probably getting a cut of the final product. Ka-ching.

  “And Tandy?” Bubba asked. Should I be mad that I gotten taken for a ride? I cain’t decide. “Does she know?”

  “No, Tandy wouldn’t have played ball,” Risley said. “She just wanted a moneymaker and hoo-boy, the things I had to promise to go there. But—” he said and trailed off, then restarted— “she knew about the one at the bridge.”

  “That’s why the bridge was fixed so quick,” Bubba said, “or rather that it wasn’t broken at all. Tandy was acting, right? She knew that Boo was fake, and she was acting until she figured out that it wasn’t the right Boo.”

  “She’s packing to leave,” Simone said miserably. “We would have let her in on the secret but…”

  Bubba’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach. There was always a but. It was the but of doom. It was the buttiest but that ever butted a but in the history of butisms.

  “Well, this thing with Marquita,” Risley continued for Simone and trailed off uncertainly.

  “Part of the plan,” Bubba concluded. “I git it. Publicity. Monsters, missing directors, and movie madness. I’m good. I’ll just head back to the house—”

  Risley shook his head sharply. “Not part of the plan. There’s an extra Boo running around scaring people and Marquita wasn’t supposed to disappear and she didn’t come back when she was supposed to and I’m frankly frightened for her.”

  * * *

  “John,” Bubba said to Sheriff John. The sheriff was positioned at a makeshift home base inside the Hovious place. Officers from three different law enforcement agencies hung out in the room drinking icy bottles of water and listening to the directions of a man who was clearly a caving expert. A map had been pinned to a wall, and Bubba realized it was a rough-and-ready diagram of the tunnels. His eyes found the main entrance to the tunnels where it cut in from the basement of the house. Then it got confusing because there were so many ways to go.

  “Bubba,” Sheriff John said. “Ain’t got time for nonsense. These folks are trying to git through searching the tunnels. Did you know about them?”

  “I got lost in them, remember?”

  “Oh yes, well, ain’t got time.” Sheriff John folded his arms over his massive chest. “Willodean all right?”

  “She’s fine,” Bubba said. “She was watching some show on Netflix when I left today. Listen, John, there’s something about Marquita you should know.”

  Sheriff John tilted his head as the caving expert said, “Take your time. Keep your batteries with you. Do not cross water and there is water in these tunnels, so leave that alone. We don’t need to lose any people if the waters suddenly rose. Given the situation it’s unlikely, but if there’s a sudden rainstorm I cannot give assurances, so use your common sense. Please remember there’s a twenty percent chance of thunderstorms today.”

  Sheriff John nodded and said out of the side of his mouth, “Fella came from New Mexico. He does research in the Lechuguilla Cave at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. That’s one of the longest caves in the United States. I saw something about it on the Discovery Channel.”

  “They pretended to be the Boo,” Bubba said.

  “I hate caves. Tunnels, too. I hate the underground. In fact, I want to be cremated because the thought of being buried six feet under gives me the willies,” Sheriff John went on as if Bubba hadn’t spoken. “I cain’t even go in the crawlspace under my house without sweating like a pig. What would happen ifin I got stuck, and I’m a big man to git stuck under the house. You know about that, so I hire the kid next door when something needs doing under the house.”

  “This might be a big bag of foolishness,” Bubba said quietly.

  “I kind of wish this here place would just get condemned because it attracts all kinds of fruits and nuts,” Sheriff John said. “I’m goin’ to talk to the county commissioner next week. I swear to God. We’ll bulldoze all this into the ground and pour cement over the openings, and…say what?”

  Bubba beckoned to Sheriff John to come closer so he could whisper, “Risley Risto and Simone Sheats told me they had a plan to pretend to be the Boo to garner publicity.”

  Sheriff John stared at Bubba while the caving expert kept speaking in the background.

  “Marquita was part of it,” Bubba said.

  “Great thundering twat droplets of fire!” Sheriff John exploded. Everyone in the room shut up. “Do you know how much money we spent yesterday?”

  “I dint do it,” Bubba said. “I dint know anything about it, but here’s the thing…”

  Sheriff John kept staring at Bubba, and Bubba couldn’t help getting mildly uncomfortable. It was an innate reaction to all law enforcement, even though he was married to one.

  “They said she wasn’t supposed to disappear,” Bubba finished, “so she might very well be lost in them tunnels.”

  “Can I finish?” the caving expert asked sarcastically.

  “By all means,” Sheriff John said generously. He glanced at Bubba. “Outside, sunshine. You need to tell me all the rest.”

  Bubba snagged a bottle of water from a nearby cooler and heard a state trooper saying, “I heard there was a shortage of ice cream. It even made the national news. Imagine Robin Meade talking about that.”

  Bubba tuned them out. He preferred Savannah Guthrie and Natalie Morales himself, but to each his own.

  Outside of the house, Sheriff John knelt to scratch Precious under her jowls. It was just the right spot, since the hound’s back leg was twitching in time with the scratching. “Who’s a good girl?” he asked. “Whose master kept a secret?”

  “I dint,” Bubba protested. “Marquita asked me to look into the whole Boo thing, and I reckon things got…carried away.”

  Sheriff John gave Precious a last scratch.
He eyed Bubba. “Is she missing or what?”

  “Missing.”

  “I don’t reckon it changes anything,” Sheriff John said. “I’ll talk to them other two and suss things out. She was pretending to be the real Boo?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Mebe she got lost down there. Them other folks are saying it’s a real mess of tunnels.”

  “Looks like the hippies dug some. And Old Man Hovious. Prolly someone from the early part of the 20th-century, too. Looks like there’s some mine tracks in there.” Bubba shook his head. “Plenty of places to hide. Plus, someone’s bin messin’ around with the openings. There’s a hidden door down by the bridge that goes across the stream. Who knows how many more there are?”

  Sheriff John appeared contemplative. “I’ll go and talk with them. Ain’t much else to be done.”

  * * *

  Bubba concurred. There wasn’t much else to be done. The law enforcement people didn’t want him to go into the tunnels because he wasn’t an “expert.” Most of the crew had skedaddled when it became official Marquita had vanished into the ether. Even Bert Mullahully had vamoosed. The moron triplets had likewise disappeared, likely because close proximity to the law caused them to break out in hives.

  Finally, Bubba borrowed a cellphone and called Willodean. All was well on that account, and she was quietly watching the second season of Stranger Things. “Still strange,” she chortled happily. “Could get stranger. I’m still mad about Barb.”

  As Bubba didn’t know who Barb was, he couldn’t agree or disagree. “Not shore when I’ll come home.”

  “Mmm. General Tso’s chicken,” Willodean said. “You can stop at Wok This Way and get some, right? They don’t deliver outside of town. And fried rice, too. I won’t be able to eat that way pretty soon.”

  “Shore. Egg roll?”

  “And that spicy mustard,” she said with just the right tone in her voice. Then she grunted.

  “What?” Bubba asked quickly.

  “That lower back pain again,” Willodean said. “Maybe a hot bath later. They say I can’t stay in too long but even a short soak should help out.”