Bubba and the Curse of the Boogity

by C. L. Bevill

  “Virtna is outside yelling at Fudge,” Willodean said. “You want I should tell her?”

  “Brownie’s goin’ to text her.”

  “Looks like he just did because Virtna just started looking at the screen of her cellphone,” Willodean said. “She’s texting back. Wow, I didn’t know you could hit the screen that hard with your fingernails. It’s like she’s stabbing it. Did Brownie ask permission?”

  “He was on the rocketship in the back ten acres,” Bubba defended himself, “and the professor was threatening some stuff that I would have to look up, so I had to bring him with me. He was ON the rocketship. Not in it. On it. Also, we’re talking about Brownie.”

  “Actually, that makes me feel better knowing that he’s with you,” Willodean admitted. “That kid will kick butt and take names, and he doesn’t even have to try hard.”

  Brownie abruptly made a sound that was like “Epp!” which sounded like he was being strangled by Homer Simpson. Bubba turned slightly to see Brownie anxiously staring at his phone. Then Brownie announced loudly, “The cell tower just went down, right everyone?” He turned off his phone with great fanfare. Then he did something else to the phone, and it was clear that the power had been cut off.

  “Heee works iiin mysterious waaays,” Jesus said.

  Thelda shrugged. “Thee art a noodlehead.”

  Dan chuckled.

  “You’re shore I shouldn’t come now?” Bubba asked Willodean.

  “I’m shore,” Willodean said dryly. “Sure, too. Take pictures or it didn’t happen.”

  Bubba didn’t know if that would happen, but Brownie would probably take care of the photographic part.

  “Love you,” he said. “Swear you’ll call me if somethin’ happens.”

  “I swear,” she vowed. “Love you, too. Ooo, ice cream.” The last was said with an abrupt disconnection.

  The line went dead, and Bubba pulled it back to look at the screen. He should call the non-emergency line at the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department; however, he wasn’t certain that he needed to do it any longer.

  Best to be for sure. Bubba glanced at the others who were watching Brownie bury his iPhone in the dirt. Brownie wasn’t Bubba’s child, although he might be paying for that later. “That ain’t good for the phone,” Bubba said.

  “Ma has reach,” Brownie said. He forked the sign of the devil at the mound. “We have to be shore. Does anyone have a voodoo doll?”

  Bubba found the number and punched buttons laboriously.

  “Pegram County Sheriff’s Department,” came the answer.

  Bubba almost winced. It wasn’t Mary Lou Treadwell but Arlette Formica, another operator for the department, and who gave Mary Lou a run for her money in the gossiping department.

  “Arlette,” Bubba said, “it’s Bubba Snoddy.”

  “Do you have another dead body, Bubba?” Arlette asked in all seriousness. “Sheriff John is patrolling tonight. He kin be at the Snoddy Estate in ten minutes.”

  “No, ain’t a dead body there, ain’t a dead body here, ain’t a dead body anywhere,” Bubba said and then added, “that I know about.”

  “Oh,” Arlette said dejectedly. “Well, did you know that my cousin, Billybob, got a job in Dallas with that bachelor’s degree. He’s going to be working for the city of Dallas. Imagine all the bennies that come with that.”

  “I thought he was a clerk for the city of Pegramville,” Bubba said.

  “He’s moving up,” Arlette said proudly. “Did you also know that there’s people going out to the Hovious place to see ifin they want to invest in that there movie?”

  “I heard about that,” Bubba said. “Around 8:00, right?”

  “8:00,” Arlette confirmed. “And one of them is supposed to be one of those Coppolas. But I also heard Ron Howard might be there, too. You know he played Opie on The Andy Griffith Show.”

  “Also a director,” Bubba muttered. Like all good stories in Pegram County, the creation of visiting dignitaries had a penchant for growing like a radioactive monster born in a cemetery under a haunted house in a B-grade movie. In another hour it might be the New York City Rockettes who were coming, and they might very well be bringing Oprah Winfrey and Justin Bieber.

  “What did you need, Bubba?”

  “Oh, I just wondered if Sheriff John was goin’ to be available later,” Bubba said weakly because he hadn’t thought of a reason that he just happened to call the Sheriff’s Department. “I’ll just call him tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Arlette said promptly. “See you later tonight, then.”

  The phone was dead, and Bubba was staring at the screen again. What had Arlette meant by that? He did not know, and he didn’t have the time nor the energy to think about that.

  “Now we all need to get under cover so that no one knows we’re here,” Bubba said. “Anyone who isn’t of a mind kin just leave now. Take my truck ifin you want.”

  No one answered, so Bubba took that to mean they were on board.

  Brownie grinned like a mad goon, and Bubba couldn’t prevent an involuntary shudder.

  Chapter 25

  Bubba and the Boogity-Boo

  and the Curse of That

  It was a dark and stormy night and the author always wanted to start something like that, so she thought, It’s Chapter Twenty-five, and people who are reading this book won’t stop because I get a little silly, will they? so she did, but then she wondered if she had ever done it before because she’s written over thirty-five books, and her memory isn’t as good as it used to be so she thought, Even if I did, I’m doing it again anyway because it’s funny. (Run on sentence, booyah.)

  It was not a dark and stormy night. From a good vantage point Bubba and his motley crew could see miles away. Although the sun hadn’t quite set, it was hidden behind Foggy Mountain, and everything had a distinctly dark and stormy look. The clouds had rolled over the crescent moon and covered up the stars. Bubba had a view that looked out into the distance. A black bank of cumulonimbus clouds blocked out the stars against the eastern horizon and a lightning strike could be seen every so often, although it was so far away that the accompanying thunder wasn’t reaching them. (That was the direction of Nardle, Texas, so it could be said that in Nardle it was a dark and stormy night, and the people in Nardle might have even been happy about that, but no one could really say.)

  Regardless of the weather, Brownie had evaluated the neighborhood like a professional thief. He’d even previously drawn a map in the dirt pointing out where the best spots for a good vantage were located. “If I were a Boo, I would go here and here and mebe here,” he said jabbing his index finger accordingly. “So ifin we were here, here, and here,” he added, “then we could see him, and he couldn’t see us. I could use my iPhone and record everything, too.” He glanced at the big pile of dirt where his phone was buried. “Mebe I kin use it, ifin it still works.”

  Dan crossed his arms over his chest. “Mebe I should go git dressed in my Boo outfit and draw them out, kinda like a duck decoy on a big pond.”

  “You think that ifin you’re out wanderin’ around like a big Boo lookin’ for someone to et or terrorize that all the other Boos will say, ‘Hey, he’s out there, so we kin be, too’?” Bubba tried to picture that but white canvas of his mind remained stubbornly blank.

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic about it,” Dan said. “After all, you never know what’s in the minds of Boogity-Boos. That Boo could be lonely and just looking for a cuddle. I don’t remember what Buddha said about cuddlin’, but there’s got to be something about it somewhere. ‘The cuddle is everything. What you cuddle you become.’ That’s not an exact quote. I be paraphrasing. Buddha understands.”

  Brownie supplied some camouflage paint and painstakingly applied it to everyone’s face. (Simone Sheats was going to be livid when she saw what Brownie had done to her makeup tent.) Jesus had to be convinced to change his white sheet for a brown length of cloth that Brownie had located somewhere. Eventually, everyone was
properly camouflaged and ready to blend into the shadows of the trees.

  Bubba checked his watch and nodded. It was time to settle down and be quiet. He got everyone to agree, even while he thought it wasn’t really going to happen. This was like a kitchen with too many cooks. One was going to start yelling at another one, and it would start a tidal wave about whether white wine or chardonnay went better with herb chicken or ranch-dredged chicken. Then a meteor would hit and purple would smell like Limburger cheese.

  Bubba decided he’d been watching the Cooking Channel too much. He also hadn’t eaten as much of the pizza as he should have because his stomach was in knots.

  They were hidden in a copse with a good view of several spots where the VIP group would pass and where someone else might take an opportunity for a Patterson-Gimlin moment.

  Brownie low crawled up to Bubba while only disturbing pine needles marginally. “Hey,” he whispered, “do you really think we’ll see one?”

  “Don’t know,” Bubba whispered back. “Be quiet. Have some more pizza.”

  Certainly, they weren’t hunters extraordinaire. Anyone with a brain would have noticed the trail of pizza boxes leading to their location and seen the disparate group haphazardly hidden there.

  Thelda clutched her sweaters together although the temperature was still in the 80s and grunted awkwardly. She sat on a rock and occasionally said some Shakespearean insult directed at the rock for good measure. Dan crouched by a large bush and peered out over the clearing. Jesus sat behind a tree and adjusted his new frock and appeared uncomfortable. Brownie was lying flat on his stomach looking out. He’d found a small pair of binoculars somewhere and was using it. He’d also found Simone’s stash of cheap flashlights, and he’d passed them out with instructions not to use them until the Boo had appeared.

  “I miss David,” Dan said. “He’d say somethin’ astronautical and we’d laugh and then he’d talk about Mars and all.”

  “Thee were a better rump-faced zed as the Purple Singapore Sling,” Thelda whispered.

  Bubba had to agree with that one. David as the PSS had the power to ferret out people’s inner thoughts or at least the power to deduce that they were lying about something, and that could have come in helpful. David the astronut was interesting but only in an if-he-stays-on-the-opposite-side-of-Pegram-County manner. David the pirate had been fascinating, too. He’d been a combined pirate and graphologist, which didn’t really fit in the whole Spanish Main-booty-argh thing, but David had made it work. According to rumor David still got calls from female attendees of Pegramville’s First Annual Murder Mystery Festival.

  “Y’all reckon that rocket will launch?” Brownie whispered. “I don’t see how it could.”

  “That professor fella is right knowledgeable,” Dan said quietly.

  Bubba looked at his watch. It was almost 7:30. If someone had taken the bait they might be around. “Hush everyone,” he whispered. “You’re goin’ to spill the beans ifin you don’t stop talkin’.” He had to resist the urge to slap them on the backs of their heads like recalcitrant children, except for Brownie who he could slap in the back of the head.

  Everyone ceased their whispering, and all that was left was the sound of Thelda’s sweaters as she shifted around uncomfortably on her rock and the sound of the brown cloth scratching at Jesus’s skin.

  Time crept by like a snail crawling down a sidewalk. If it had gotten any slower, they would have gone backwards in time. Bubba heard a noise. It sounded like a low growl that echoed around their little copse. The muted rumbling sound gave him a shiver that caused goose bumps to erupt on his skin. Is it? Could it be? He surreptitiously moved his head so that he could see the areas that Brownie had pointed out.

  Brownie perked up as he too heard the noise and began to systematically scan with the binoculars. After about twenty seconds he put them down and jerked a thumb at Jesus. Jesus had leaned against a tree and fallen asleep. The noise was the soft snuffling snores he was producing. Thelda reached out a leg and kicked Jesus in the arm. Jesus jerked upright and nearly fell over. He quickly caught himself and stared at them while shrugging apologetically.

  Bubba checked his watch and saw that it was after 8:30 and grimaced. If nothing happened in the next ten minutes, he was going to have to undo everything that had been done and haul tushie for home so that he could see his wife. (That little niggling feeling deep inside of him told him that she was keeping something from him, and he couldn’t stand it.)

  Just then there was another noise. A car noise. Earlier there had been car noises, but they’d stopped or passed on their way to or fro, and Bubba wasn’t sure where they were going. People did live out this way, and one had to pass the road to the Hovious place to get to the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being, but it seemed like the most desolate part of Pegram County and for good reason. (Stories and legends aside, the Sturgis Creek had created a canyon through this area, and it was prone to flooding or to ruining farmland. Bubba only knew a handful of folks in this area and most of them raised livestock. The others lived in the country but worked in Tyler or Nacogdoches or one who drove a whopping hour to Shreveport one way.)

  This particular car noise stopped in the direct vicinity of the front part of Foggy Mountain and then the sound of car doors slamming could be heard. There was also the sound of loud voices as if someone didn’t have a care in the world. Bubba thought that one voice sounded distinctly familiar as if he had heard it all of his life.

  Brownie gurgled. “This is it,” he whispered.

  “Shuuut up,” Jesus whispered back.

  Bubba could hear the group of people meandering up the main trail to the house talking amongst themselves, and then through the trees there was the glow of flashlights or lanterns. He nodded to himself. 8:30 pm was dusk in August, but this side of the mountain was already deep in shadows well before that. To further add to its mystique, a layer of fog began to roll down the side of the mountain like the aura of inevitability. Why, it was just like being on a movie set.

  Bubba would have groaned if he could have allowed himself to do so. It was like a soap opera. All they needed was someone to leap out and say that they knew who the murderer was and everyone had to sit still while they laid out the evidence and then pulled the mask off the killer. Fortunately, no one had been murdered that Bubba knew of, and he briefly thanked God for His divine intervention on that count.

  The group came closer and closer and the words became clearer.

  “Obviously, a minimum investment of a $1,000,000 would be preferable,” came a stern voice. Bubba wrinkled his face. “This film is an underappreciated work in progress and Marquita Thaddeus an unacknowledged genius in her field. Women in Hollywood have typically been unacknowledged. Such movies as this one are not appreciated because of their innate horror value, and let us not forget that understated horror movies can hold high cinematic value.”

  Wait, what? Bubba asked himself. Someone deserved an Oscar, and it wasn’t Marquita. The person who was speaking was using the kind of accent the evening news anchor used and spoke as if they were the expert’s expert on investing in Hollywood productions.

  “If we look at such low budget horror films such as Paranormal Activity, 28 Days Later, and The Blair Witch Project, we can see how ramped up social media exposure has powered these movies into being megahits,” the person said sounding very much like a competent professional. “For example, Paranormal Activity’s budget was only $15,000, and it made almost $200,000,000 in box office sales. We won’t discuss sequels and merchandizing and every other thing that goes along with such tremendous revenue since it goes without saying. It can easily be assumed that such expenditure is advisable and potentially profitable.”

  Bubba almost wanted to throw some money into the pot, too. He peered closer as the group rounded the last turn in the trail before they would pass them. There were six of them, and he couldn’t imagine who the other five were.

  “Creativity, originality, inventiveness!” t
he first one said authoritatively. “These are hallmarks of a great movie, but a horror movie needs to be twice that, no, ten times that, and use the Internet and the flow of people’s words in order to boost it into infinite notoriety. That is how it’s done, and Marquita Thaddeus and Risley Risto have what it takes to do just that. Look at the buzz already. Why, it’s possible that the movie is already a guaranteed hit. We have mystery, horror, urban legend, and inscrutability already brewing like a Starbucks barista on fire.”

  With something akin to wonder and dismay, Bubba nearly didn’t recognize the voice but he did. His mother was in top form. Furthermore, she was dressed in a silver evening gown that sparkled with a thousand sequins, and she wore a matching hat. Of course, it wasn’t just a hat. It was a cowboy hat with silver sequins and all-round the edge of it was a line of lit LED lights. She wasn’t carrying a flashlight because she didn’t need one.

  “But for every megahit there’s a dozen or a hundred failures,” a voice said imperiously. The voice sounded familiar. Bubba peered at a man in a black tuxedo. If one didn’t peer too closely he looked fancy and rich, but then once he was closer, he was recognizable as Lloyd Goshorn. The tall, lanky man had been shaved and stuffed into an expensive outfit. He lit a cigarette after his voice trailed off.

  “And that’s why such movies have insurance. Failure is never failure!” Miz Demetrice declared in her Broadcast English accent. At the moment his mother could have been a politician or a lawyer, either one.

  The next man said, “Hear! Hear!” and drank from a bottle tucked under his arm.

  “Newton Ebenezer Durley,” Miz Demetrice hissed at a low whisper, “stop that. You agreed not to do that. Do you even have a liver left?”

  Bubba tilted his head so that he could see Newt Durley a little better. That man had also been shaved and poured into a suit. If Bubba wasn’t mistaken, it was his very own wedding suit and the wrist and pant cuffs had all been rolled up to accommodate the shorter man’s lack of arm and leg length.