“More like the bad guy’s standing behind me—” A blinding pain shot through my head, and I staggered forward into a huge pile of presents. As the empty cardboard boxes collapsed under me, all I could think was “shit.”
I woke up tied to a chair staring across a big room with a vaulted ceiling. At the far end of the room, must have been fifty or sixty feet away, was a skinny little dude in a tuxedo. And for me to call somebody skinny, he was downright emaciated. He was standing on a little box behind a podium waving one of those little sticks a conductor uses. He had an old-style boom box on the floor next to him, and there were a bunch of glowing forms floating in front of him.
He noticed I was awake almost instantly, probably because I groaned and started cussing as soon as I woke up. “Ah, Mr. Skeeter, I presume? Or at least I assume that’s a name because it’s what the rather profane man on the other end of this device was yelling after I rendered you unconscious.” My captor held up the shattered pieces of my Bluetooth headset. Good thing he didn’t know about the video link built into my glasses. Unlike Bubba’s, my glasses are prescription and I’m blind as a bat without them. If he’d smashed my glasses, I wouldn’t have had any chance to ever get out of here.
Not that I had a whole lot of chance as it was. I was tied tight to the chair with zip ties, those plastic ties that you get at Home Depot for bundling wires together behind your computer desk. Well, I was trussed up with those things like a Christmas turkey, and I didn’t get the feeling that this guy was breaking out the cranberry sauce anytime soon.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Bubba always seemed to have good luck when he got the bad guy to do the whole evil exposition thing, so I decided to try it.
It worked. Maybe Bubba’s right and every bad guy has a “monologue” button that’s just waiting to be flipped. “I am Alexander Gregory Morehouse IV, but you may call me The Maestro.” He paused there for dramatic effect, but when no organ chords hit, he went on.
“I am building the finest choir in the world, and I have need of many voices.” He gestured out over the glowing shapes in front of him, and they broke out in song. Not like “America, the Beautiful” song, but more like a low keening, kind of an aaaaahhhh-ah-ahhhh-aaaaaaah kind of song. It was creepy. A.G. waved his hand again, and the choir stopped.
“I have harnessed the power of the Afterlife to bring these loveliest of voices together, and tonight we will bring back to me the greatest soprano I have ever heard, the truest, purest, more beautiful voice I have ever listened to—”
“Edith Piaf?” I asked.
“No, you idiot. I shall resurrect a truly spectacular voice, the kind of voice that generations will weep to, the one, the only—”
“Billie Holiday?”
“No! Shut up, you fool! I am bringing back to the stage my dearest, sweetest songbird, my—”
“Barbra Streisand?” I guessed again.
“She’s not even dead, moron.”
“I know, but I’m a gay man. You say female singer, my DNA screams ‘Babs!’ I can’t help it, I was born this way. Ask GaGa.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The very confused little bad guy had completely lost his train of thought now.
“Which part, the gay thing or the Babs thing? I would think a choir director of all clichés might understand about being gay.”
“I’m not gay!”
“Don’t lie to me, I saw your Christmas tree. No straight man owns that much vintage lace garland.” I watched his face turn about eighteen shades of purple and knew I’d hit a nerve. It was tough growing up skinny, short, and gay in the south. But it would have been just as hard growing up skinny, short, a music nerd, and straight. Because at least when everybody assumed I was gay, they were right. This poor bastard had to put up with all the teasing and got none of the inherent fashion sense. I knew he was really straight the second I laid eyes on him. It’s all in the shoes. His were 100% off-the-shelf Wal-Mart. Total straight boy. But he was getting wound up, which either meant he was going to kill me, in which case this had been a terrible idea, or he was going to do something stupid and give me a chance to break free, in which case I was a genius.
He pulled a pistol from his pocket, sliding the meter pretty solidly toward the “terrible idea” end of the spectrum, and pressed it to my forehead. “You are a fool!”
“No argument there.” I might have squeaked a little when I said it, but I maintained control of my bladder, which is a good thing. It’s hard to intimidate bad guys when you smell like pee. I looked past the scrawny dork pressing a gun to my head and took a good look at the shapes that were milling about. One of them looked familiar, and when it turned to face me, I knew why—it was the old fart from the caroling group. Yeah, the one I hadn’t managed to save.
“Say that again.” A.G. relaxed the pressure of the gun barrel against my head a little.
“Say what?” I squeaked again. I couldn’t help it. My voice has always gone up when I get scared, and I’ve spent a lot of my life scared.
“That! Do that again! Hit the high C!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, jerkoff!” I said, but really I squeaked about half of it.
“That’s perfect!” the nutbar shouted, and whirled to the choir. “He’s got the note! Now all I have to do is capture it, and she’ll be returned to me!” He was really excited about something all of a sudden. I didn’t know or care until he whirled back to me with a grin on his face and a weird contraption in his hand. It looked kinda like a crystal ball, only covered in facets, like a D20, but more like a D100,000. There was a light glowing from within the crystal, a flickering, dancing light. I watched it flutter, and jump, and felt my eyes starting to close—
And then the asshole had to start talking and snap me out of it. “She’ll come back to me. All I need is the perfect soprano—”
“What are you talking about, fool? I might be a little light in my loafers, but I ain’t no soprano. Not the Tony kind or the singin’ kind,” I said, turning my eyes firmly away from the crystal. I could almost hear it murmuring to me, and I didn’t want it pulling any Frodo and the Ring crap on me, so I refused to look at the thing again.
“My Nicole will come back to me once I get the perfect choir assembled. All I need is a soprano, but all those old bitches caroling were altos and mezzos. But your little falsetto is perfect, so all I have to do is harvest it and—”
“Harvest?” I squeaked, then cringed at the pleased look on his face. I was going to have to get a more manly voice.
“Your soul, of course. I need to harvest your soul to add your voice to the choir.” He gestured over his shoulder, and I followed his movement with my eyes. Unfortunately, he also brought the damn crystal up and snared me again. How does Bubba always get out of this crap? Oh yeah, he shoots everything. Well that wasn’t going to work since I was tied to the chair, and I couldn’t talk my way out of the mess for a couple of reasons. One, my captor was batshit crazy, and two, my captor was batshit crazy. I felt myself slipping again, losing hold on myself, tried to close my eyes but it didn’t help, and then the world started to go dark, my vision tunneled in until there was nothing but the dancing light, the flickering, ghostly light, and then—
BAM!
A.G. screamed, the crystal exploded, and I flipped over backward in my chair. The cheap kitchen chair shattered beneath me and I wriggled free. Okay, really I just rolled over and said “ow” a lot until my vision cleared, then looked around for the source of the noise. Agent Amy stood in the doorway, her pistol drawn and aimed at A.G.
“I’d really rather not shoot you, Mr. Morehouse, so please put your hands up,” she said calmly.
“You already shot me, you meddling bitch!” That marked the first time I’d ever heard anyone use the word “meddling” outside a Scooby-Doo episode.
“Yeah, but that was the wrist. This one will go in your head. Now put your hands up,” Amy replied.
A.G. didn’t raise his han
ds. Instead, he turned around to the ghost choir and screamed “GET THEM!” Pointing at me and Amy, of course.
The choir didn’t move.
A.G. repeated the command, flourish and all.
Nothing.
“Um, hate to be the one to break it to you, A.G., but they don’t seem to be wanting to do too much getting of us,” I pointed out, getting to my feet and trying to get the last pieces of chair off my wrists. Those zip ties were on there good.
A.G. let out a scream and ran at me. I raised a chair-tethered arm and conked him on the forehead with the piece of wood I couldn’t quite rid myself of, and he went down like a sack of uncooked spaghetti. Trust me, the image works. He looked nothing like a sack of potatoes and a lot more like a handful of raw spaghetti. He sprawled on the floor, then curled up in a little ball, weeping.
Agent Amy came over to stand next to me. “Nice shot, Skeeter. You laid him out. And made him cry.”
“I don’t think that’s me. I think that’s something else,” I said.
“She’s gone. Forever,” A.G. wailed. I knelt down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah, she’s gone, A.G. It’s awful, and it was too soon, but she’s gone. And even if you’d managed to build your choir, she wouldn’t have been back. Not like you knew her.”
“I just wanted to hear her voice again. One more time. Christmas was her favorite holiday.” He curled up and started to cry again.
I got up and walked over to the boom box. The ghostly choir was still there, just floating. “What are y’all still doing here?” I asked.
They said what ghosts usually say, which is nothing.
I looked at the boom box, and the CD in the top was homemade. Written on it in Sharpie was “Atlanta, SCT, 2009.” I pushed the play button, and a beautiful melody of strings came forth. The choir turned to the CD player, and a host of ethereal voices picked up on “Silent Night.” A.G. stopped wailing long enough to listen, and it was a good thing because they really did have lovely voices, if a little breathy.
Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright.
Round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
When the ghosts started to sing the second verse, a soft white light filled the room and a new voice joined in. It was a woman’s voice, the most beautiful soprano I’d ever heard, and in her voice I heard all the happiness of Christmas growing up. I heard the laughter of me and Bubba when he got his first shotgun. I heard the laughing arguments about religion and eating fish on Friday between my dad and Uncle Father Joe. And I heard my mom, singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” as she basted a turkey, a voice I hadn’t heard in years that still brought tears to my eyes. I looked over at Agent Amy and saw tears streaming down her face and knew that she heard it too. A.G. stood up, and with a dignity far beyond the insanity he showed just minutes before, stepped up to the podium and picked up his baton.
Silent night holy night
Shepherds quake at the sight,
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heavenly hosts sing alleluia;
Christ the Savior, is born
Christ the Savior, is born.
Silent night holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy holy face,
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.
When the last notes died away, a glowing shape separated itself from the choir and drifted over to A.G. It wrapped the crazy little conductor in its light for a long moment, then flared so bright we had to look away. When the spots cleared from my vision, A.G. was lying at the base of his podium, eyes closed, with a peaceful smile on his face.
I walked over to his body, felt for a pulse, and found exactly the nothing I expected to find. “Well, he got to hear her one last time.”
“Don’t know if he’s going where she is, after everything he did,” Amy replied.
“That’s not our department. Uncle Joe’s in the afterlife business. We just deal with ‘em while they’re here. And he’s pretty dealt with,” I said.
“I agree. Time to get the hell out of here and get some eggnog.” Amy turned and headed for the door.
“Right behind you. But, uh . . . Amy?” I asked.
She stopped and turned around. “Yeah, Skeeter?”
“Could you cut me loose from these chair pieces? It’s awful hard to walk dragging half a kitchen chair behind me.”
She laughed, and we headed out into the winter night.
Dead Man’s Hand
A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
“I’m fine,” I said into the Bluetooth earpiece. I swear sometimes I think Skeeter shoulda just implanted the damn thing in my head while I was in the hospital. I make it a point never to suggest that where he can hear me, though. Little bastard’s liable to try.
“You are not fine, Bubba,” Skeeter’s nasal twang echoed through my head. “You ain’t been out of the hospital but a couple weeks, and you almost died two or three times while you was in there. You need to rest.”
“I almost died because there was a succubus in the hospital trying to kill me. Last I checked, there weren’t no succubusses in Greenville, South Carolina. But there is a helluva titty bar right off the interstate, so if we can wrap this up quick, I can get a couple lap dances in before last call.”
“Succubi.”
“Nah, I don’t pay for the VIP room, Skeeter. You know that.”
“The plural of succubus is succubi, you overfed moron. And we don’t know what we’re hunting in Greenville yet, so don’t make no plans for any kind of adult entertainment before we know what we’re up against.”
“What did Uncle Joe tell you?” I pulled my truck off onto the bypass that headed into downtown. If I had to stay in South Carolina, not my favorite place by a long stretch, I was at least going to take advantage of the “Heavenly Bed” at the Westin Poinsett in downtown Greenville. A little high-tone for my usual tastes, but the place had the best beds anywhere along I-85, and one of the best bartenders, too.
Skeeter was technically supposed to be on this job, but I mighta jumped in the truck the second we got notification of the case and been five miles down the road before he plugged his computer back in. My stitches had been out for three weeks, and I’d gotten back to working out a week ago, so I figured I was fit enough to handle anything Skeeter could take care of. That was the sad state of my physical well being—I was comparing my strength to a hundred-fifty pound homosexual computer nerd. I needed to shoot something, now.
I heard Skeeter tapping on a keyboard. I pictured him sitting in his renovated nerd-cave, surrounded by high-speed internet whatchamacallits and flashing hooziwhatsis. In my head, he looked like a skinny black male Oracle before DC screwed everything up and took Barbara Gordon out of her wheelchair. In real life, he probably looked more like a skinny black dude with bad hair, a scraggly chin-beard, and a t-shirt that says, “It’s Okay to be Takei!”
After a couple minutes of tapping, Skeeter came back to me. “Uncle Father Joe thinks it might be a leprechaun.”
“A what?”
“A leprechaun. You know, little Irish dudes with pots of gold and bad horror movies with the guy from Willow in ‘em?”
“Yeah, I know what a leprechaun is, Skeeter. I just don’t know what one’s doing in Greenville, SC. And I don’t know why we care. Leprechauns ain’t usually any trouble to nobody.”
“Yeah, unless you get too close to its gold.”
“What happens then?” I cut off a two-seater Beamer in traffic and grinned a little as I heard the tinny beep behind me. Beep all you want, asshat. I’ve been shot, skewered, chewed on and almost screwed to death. And that was just since Thanksgiving.
“Didn’t you wat
ch the movies?”
“Nah, soon as I heard Jennifer Aniston didn’t get naked, I stopped caring.”
“Bubba, you’re incorrigible.”
“Can’t be true, Skeeter. I don’t even know what that means. So what does a leprechaun do when you get too close to its gold?”
“It kills you, and anyone around you. And it generally becomes really dangerous to be in the same zip code as the leprechaun.”
“Of course. That’s why I’m driving right into the same zip code as the leprechaun.”
“That’s why the Church keeps paying your ammo and liquor bills. I’ve sent the address of the hotel to your truck’s GPS. Take it easy tonight and we’ll get after this thing in the morning. No sense in overdoing it on your first day back on the job. And Bubba?”
“Yeah, Skeeter?”
“Be careful. I’m tired of buying you flowers and stuffed animals at hospital gift shops.” There was a little click in my ear and Skeeter disconnected. I drove into downtown and valeted the truck at the Westin, then walked down to a nearby Irish pub to start looking for a leprechaun. I figured if there was anyplace in Greenville to find one, that would be the place.
The pub was just like any chain Irish pub in a middle-sized American town. A bunch of Guinness mirrors, a few pool tables, a couple of dartboards, and a twenty-something bartender with enough cleavage to stop a man’s heart. I settled onto a dark wooden barstool and ordered a Harp.
“Where you in from, fella?” the wench asked with a bad enough fake brogue that I snorted beer through my mustache.
“Probably about as close to Ireland as you are, sweetheart. I just drove up from Georgia.”
“Oh, Atlanta, then?” Her accent didn’t get any better the second time around, but fortunately for me she stopped trying after that. “I’m Carline. Welcome to Connely’s.” She stuck out her hand.
I shook it and introduced myself. “Bubba. Pleased to meet ya. Say, maybe you can help me?” I gave her my best “unassuming harmless guy” face, but since I’m the size of an average door and look like an extra off Sons of Anarchy, I don’t really have an innocent look.
Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2 Page 5
