Oh Bubba, Where Art Thou? (Bubba the Monster Hunter Book 26)

by John G. Hartness

  I did as I was told. My default position on about everything might be “contrary,” but she was the one driving the bus, so I had to hope she knew where we were going. I walked up the stone steps and passed through those hallowed doors one more time. It seemed fitting, I thought as I passed through the wood. After all, I was walking back from the Ryman Christmas Concert when I started bitching about all this.

  The ushers were passing out programs that read “2020 Country Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony,” and my blood ran cold. I didn’t think I wanted to see who was on the list, but I had to. I knew it was going to be brutal, but it got nothing but worse when Jeff Foxworthy came out to emcee.

  After ten minutes of him trotting out his tired “you might be a redneck” schtick, I was about ready to puke in the aisles, but then he dropped the real bombshell on me.

  “Please join me tonight in honoring the latest round of inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame,” Foxworthy said from the stage. The crowd applauded politely.

  “Luke Bryan!” The crowd clapped like mindless drones.

  “Florida Georgia Line!” One asshole actually screamed like he cared, and the drones clapped even more.

  “Jake Owen!” Even more applause, and I think I saw one woman fan herself a little.

  “And last, but certainly not least, here to kick things off, our first inductee of the night, joined on stage by Ludacris—Jason Aldean!” The crowd sprang to its feet, screaming and jumping up and down.

  “The fact that there is a group in which Jason Aldean is considered not ‘the least’ is damn depressing,” I said to the ghost.

  “You don’t like mixing rap and country?” she asked.

  “I like hip-hop. I like old-school Nas, I like old Biggie, and I like a lot of Jay-Z. But no, I don’t like hicking up rap with country licks, and I don’t like rapping up country with hip-hop choruses. It’s like dropping a Charlie Parker solo in the middle of “Night on Bald Mountain.” I just can’t hang.” I was walking down the aisle to the stage, looking around for anything I could do to stop the shitshow that was about to hit the stage. My incorporeal hands wouldn’t unplug the amps, no matter how much I tried. I even tried to trip Aldean as he walked to the stage, but he just passed right through me.

  Then I saw him. I caught sight of the same sonofabitch I saw in the Paragon Records office. “I shoulda known,” I muttered. “This shit stinks to high Heaven of demon.” He was standing off to one side of the stage, grinning to beat the band at the Hell he had wrought. He saw me from across the way and smiled, giving me a little bow and a wave, then gesturing to the stage as if to say, “Look what I did.”

  I couldn’t hold back anymore. All the anger I’d felt this whole time about old Buford dying alone and penniless, about the festival site shutting down, about my damn haircut. All those things all bubbled up inside me, and with a demon grinning at me from across the stage, I screamed, and the world turned white around me.

  12

  I sat bolt upright, flipping over the cot I was laying on and smacking my nose on the floor. I pushed myself up to my feet and ran out the front of the studio, not even bothering to make sure I had on shoes. I was all the way to my truck before I noticed I was still fully dressed. I hadn’t undressed when I laid down, thinking something weird might happen in the middle of the night. In my wildest damn dreams, I never expected to end up as the star in a remake of Scrooged, only set in Muscle Shoals.

  I yanked open the back door of my truck, wracking my brain for what kind of weapon I could use on a record executive who’s in cahoots with a demon. Or just wondering if I had enough quicklime to keep the body from stinking when I threw it down the nearest abandoned well. That’s the great thing about the rural South—there’s almost always a burned-out farmhouse within a couple miles where you can find an abandoned well to toss the bodies in if you know how to look for it.

  I stuck my head into the crew cab of the truck and staggered back like I’d been hit in the face with a damn frying pan. To tell you the truth, that’s about what I felt like, only without the bloody nose. I blinked, wiped the last of the sleep out of my eyes, and looked back in the truck. Then I closed the door, wiped my eyes again, and opened the door. It was still there.

  Laying on the back seat of my truck, still covered in the dust from the corner of my room, was a beat to shit old guitar case. There was a cracked red vinyl sticker of the Rolling Stones lips, another one of a tie-dyed Allman Brother mushroom, and a blue-and-white rectangle that just said “My Name Is” with “Robbie” scribbled under it in red Sharpie.

  I looked around, but there weren’t any ghosts to be seen. Except for all the ones hanging out in that damn guitar case, I reckon. I even got down on my hands and knees and looked under the truck, but there wasn’t anything there. Just my truck, right where I parked it the afternoon before, still locked up ’til I clicked the little button thingy on my keys, but in the back seat was a guitar case I hadn’t touched since the day my mama walked out the door.

  The last time I played that guitar was at a school talent show. I didn’t win, but I didn’t embarrass myself, either, and that was the sticker still hanging on by two decades’ worth of dry-rotted adhesive and dust bunnies, right there on the neck of that case. I started to reach for the case, then pulled my hand back.

  I looked around. “How the hell did y’all do that?” I called out.

  Nobody answered.

  “I’m talking to you, Hank!” I hollered louder this time.

  Nothing.

  “Goddammit, you little purple ghost, how did you even find this damn thing?” I shouted.

  Nobody said a word. Nothing from Prince, nothing from Hank, nothing from the strange little blonde girl, and nothing at all from the Spirit of Music.

  “Well, that the hell am I supposed to do with this?” I asked the world.

  The world didn’t answer. The world is an asshole sometimes.

  I leaned into the truck and looked the case over. I still didn’t touch it, but I got so damn close to it I think we were married in three states. It was my guitar case, all right. No damn question about that. I finally stretched out one finger, the pinky finger on my left hand, just in case it got bit off, or disintegrated, or something. I figured I could live without my pinky, or my ring finger, but I need my trigger finger and my communication finger was too much. My pinky was pretty much only good for picking stubborn boogers and hitting the “delete” key when I screwed up typing something. But I didn’t need the left one for that, either, so I figured I was good.

  I tapped the case with my pinky, and nothing happened. Well, I felt the fake leather surface, and it sounded like somebody tapping on a wood guitar case. I knocked on it harder, still using my left hand in case there was some kind of weird ghost hand-rotting disease. I needed to keep my right hand. I never got good at shooting lefty, and Bertha is an unforgiving mistress.

  Nothing happened. I picked it up, and it felt just like it did when I was a kid. Lighter because I was bigger, but it was just my old guitar case. I pulled it out of the truck and walked around to the back. I dropped the tailgate and laid the case crosswise along my newly created redneck table. I flipped the latches on the case and raised the lid.

  My guitar wasn’t there. There was a guitar there, but it wasn’t the battered old Sears & Roebuck guitar that I learned on. What was nestled in my old battered case was a brilliant blue Gibson acoustic with mother of pearl inlays on the fretboard and a black leather neck strap laid across it in the case. I’d never seen that guitar before, except in my dreams. This was the guitar I always wanted when I was a kid and used to play, and now it was right in front of me, laying in my old case.

  There was a piece of paper folded up and tucked behind the strings. I pulled it out and unfolded it, seeing my mama’s handwriting for the first time in a couple decades. I took a deep breath, pushed down all the anger, and guilt, and feelings of betrayal that came every time I thought about my mama, and started to read.
<
br />   “Robbie,” she wrote. “I know you won’t understand what is happening, but my leaving has nothing to do with you. It doesn’t even have anything to do with your daddy, although his refusal to abandon the life of a Hunter has set things in motion that he doesn’t know, and I can’t tell him. Just please know that I love you and Jason more than life itself, and I hope that someday I’ll be able to come home and be with my most precious boys again. Until that day, please play this guitar and think of me. I had some money tucked away for a rainy day. Well, it’s pouring now, but I wanted to leave this for my darling boy to remember me by before I had to go. Please try to think of me fondly, when you think of me. Love, Mom.”

  I didn’t know I was crying until I saw a tear splash onto the body of the guitar. I picked it up, slid the strap over my head and one shoulder, and settled the body against my belly. I expected it to ride high on me since I was a lot skinnier when Mama left, but somehow the strap was adjusted just right for me. I looked down in the case and grabbed a pick, giving the strings a little strum to see how out of tune the thing was.

  It was beautiful. It sounded like it had just been set up by a damn master luthier, and the strings felt light under my fingers, not stiff and tight like I’d expect from a guitar sitting for twenty years played by hands that ain’t held an instrument in almost that long. I looked around the room, trying to see if this was another ghosty trick, but it looked to be around eight in the morning, and all I could see around me told me this was real, it was really my guitar that my mama had left for me when she left. And now it looked like she didn’t just leave because she was pissed off at me and my pop. I pushed all that aside for another time, most likely a time with a lot more liquor and self-recrimination.

  I put the guitar back in the case and cleared up my sleeping area. I needed a plan if I was going to take down a demon sticking his nose into the affairs of a small recording studio in Alabama.

  I had the beginnings of a plan starting to formulate when Billy walked into the studio about an hour later. He looked about like I felt, with bags under his eyes and the kind of look a man wears on his face when he’s about to lose his life’s work. But at least he brought coffee and doughnuts.

  I reached for a cup in the tray he was holding, and he turned it away, presenting a different cup to me. “Unless you like a little Irish coffee for your pick-me-up, you want to drink the other one.”

  “I don’t mind a little dram no more than the next fella,” I said, “but it might be for the best if I stay clear-headed today.”

  “Did you see any ghosts?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. Billy started, like he didn’t think I was going to find anything.

  “Yeah,” I continued. “This place is haunted as shit. I don’t know what you could possibly do to get this place clean of spirits, but whatever that is, it’s going to take a lot of time. If I was you, I’d take the place off the market until I could get some exorcists in here and send the spirits packing.”

  Billy sighed and sat down on the bench sitting in front of the upright piano a few feet away. “I wish that was an option, Bubba, I really do. I hate the thought of shutting down Celebrity Studios as much as you do, or worse, seeing it turn into some kind of computerized hit factory like every damn place else these days. But a man’s gotta eat, and I can’t keep pouring money into this place if nobody can record here because of the ghosts. So I’ve got a man from New York coming in today at noon to make me an offer on the place, ghosts and all. He says he ain’t superstitious. If it’s any kind of decent offer, I’ve got to take it, Bubba. I got kids, man, and they deserve to be able to go to college.”

  “I understand,” I said, understanding more than I really wanted to. “Well, at least let me try to get some things going around here to bring the spirits some kind of peace before you sell. If this old boy ain’t superstitious, he probably won’t do anything to lay anybody to rest, either.”

  “That seems fair,” Billy said. “I don’t want nobody to suffer because of me, even if they are dead. I’m gonna go to my office and get the books in order so I’ve got something to show this man when he gets here.” He turned and walked to the door.

  I called out to him just before his hand touched the doorknob. “Hey Billy?”

  “Yeah?” He turned around.

  “How’d you find this dude? I thought you said the offer you had on the property was contingent on getting rid of the ghosts.”

  “It was,” he said. “But this morning around six-thirty, some dude called me out of the blue and made an offer, and he didn’t seem like he gave a shit if there were ghosts or not. I even mentioned the fact that the place is haunted, but he didn’t care.”

  Yeah, I didn’t figure he did. Especially not if he was a skinny little bastard with expensive suits and horns growing out of his head. “Fair enough,” I said, and Billy continued on his way out of the room. I looked around the room and said, “Okay, ghosts, I might need just a little bit of help, but I think I’ve got a plan. Y’all gather your dead asses around here and let’s get to work.”

  I felt a chill in the air, and even though I couldn’t see them, I knew my posse had arrived.

  13

  Me and my ethereal roadies had everything set up by the time the record company asshole showed up with his pet lawyer in tow. I remembered them both from my trips through the world on the wings of a ghost, but even without that, it was easy to tell who was the demon. He was the one with thousand-dollar wingtips. Without my ghost guide to pull the scales from my eyes, all I could see was his human suit, but every inch of him screamed “dick.”

  He wore his long brown hair pulled back in a shiny ponytail, and he was perfectly groomed from head to toe. His suit fit like a glove, with charcoal pinstripes and pleats in his pants so sharp you could shave with them. A black dress shirt lay beneath his red silk tie, and his pocket square almost glowed on his chest. A narrow goatee protruded from his chin, taking after his boss’s signature look, and his dark eyes showed flecks of demonic yellow when he smiled. And he smiled a lot, showing off perfect teeth and perfectly angled cheekbones.

  He must have used up a lot of demonic juice crafting a human guise to absolute perfection, but I guess if he could bring about the downfall of the entire country music industry, the rewards would far outstrip the costs. His brilliant appearance made his partner look all the more bland, wearing the same boring brown suit I saw him in during my dream walking. The little guy stepped forward and shook Billy’s hand.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, and his nasally voice grated on me instantly. I could totally see how this guy probably got his ass beat every day in middle school. And not even by jocks like me. This was the guy that the other nerds beat up. “My name is Edwin Vaxred, and I am here on behalf of Paragon Records. As I said on the telephone this morning, we are looking to bring more of our production in-house so that we can more closely control the quality of the recordings we are putting into the market.”

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Vaxrel. I’m Billy Ricks, and I own Celebrity Recording Studios.”

  “Who’s your friend?” the demon asked, giving me a smile that made every hair on my arms stand up. I wasn’t sure this dude remembered me from the dreams, but he sure as shit knew there was more to me than he expected.

  “I’m Robert Brabham,” I said, stepping forward and shaking hands with Vaxrel and the demon. The demon’s hand was cold, like shaking hands with a block of ice, but I didn’t let on. I might have made sure to have a rosary that Uncle Father Joe gave me wrapped around my wrist with the crucifix buried in my palm when we shook, too.

  Burning demon flesh does not smell like pot roast. It smells more like rotted pot roast braised with sulfur and elephant shit. But the look on the demon’s face when that crucifix burned itself into his palm was worth a little stink. He didn’t pull away, there was no way he was going to give that much ground, but he looked me right in the eye, and I could read his intentions there as plain as if they we
re written on his forehead in Sharpie.

  “You know me, human?” he asked, and his voice was no longer the smooth human tone that he used when he walked into the room. This was the rasp of a demon that’s spent eons screaming at human souls, the voice of a torturer, the voice of a monster.

  “Yeah, I know you, horn-boy. And I’m here to tell you that you ain’t getting this studio. I’ve got a counteroffer on the table to buy this place, and you’re shit out of luck.”

  “I don’t think so, mortal. My verbal contract with Mr. Ricks is very, very, binding, and he can’t sell the studio to anyone else without giving me a chance to match the offer.”

  I turned to Billy. “What the hell did you agree to with this dude? All you did was talk to him once.”

  “I don’t remember, man. He woke me up when he called, and all I remember is he said he was from New York, and he wanted to buy the place. I told him to come on down here, and we’d see if we could work something out.”

  “And I mentioned an opportunity clause to match any offers you received in the meantime, did I not?” Vaxrel prodded.

  “Yeah, maybe…” Bully’s voice trailed off as he looked from me, to the lawyer, to the demon, and back again. “I don’t know, man. Like I said, I got kids, man.”

  “Shit, Billy…” I turned to the demon. “I want a shot at it.”

  “And I want a pony, human, but that’s my job—to keep you flesh-toting morons from getting what you want. You want to buy this place, you need to offer me something worthwhile to walk away.”

  I wracked my brain and couldn’t think of anything a demon would want more than chance at destroying country music and ripping out a good chunk of the heart of the South. I paced a little, trying to get a good idea to drop out of my noggin, but nothing was coming.

  “If you don’t have anything to sweeten the pot, mortal, then I think it’s time for Mr. Ricks here to sign some papers. After all, what could you even offer me that’s worth more than the soul of an entire region?”