A small plot of freshly turned earth lay off to the right side of the house. Bubba’s eyes widened as he counted seven small crosses set into the ground in a neat row. “Tavvy, how many young’uns did you say was missing?”
“I think there were six or seven. Why?”
Bubba pointed to the crosses. “If one of them is for Missus Gilbreath, and one for Faith, then who’s the other folk buried there?”
“I don’t know, Bubba, but I think we’ll find our answers in that shed over yonder.” Octavia pointed off to the side of the house.
Old man Gilbreath had added a large shed to the property, an outbuilding almost as big as the house. It resembled a barn, but everybody knew he owned no cattle or horses, so a barn was useless to a man like Gilbreath. Something was happening inside the shed, though, since that was the source of the lightning Octavia had seen the night before. As the would-be rescuers crept through the inky night to Gilbreath’s yard, they could see blue lights flickering behind the windows. Octavia reached the window first, with Bubba close behind. They peeked over the sill and then froze in horror at what they saw inside the shed.
The old man had his daughter’s body strapped to a small bed in the center of the room. Six months dead, little Faith had decayed almost past recognition. Her once lush blonde hair was now dirty and matted. Her pink skin was a shade of graveyard grey that looked like nothing that had ever lived. Her burial gown was splattered with mud and other vile fluids that had escaped as her body began to decompose.
As horrible as the sight of the dead girl in the room was, it paled beside the vision of horror across the room. An identical bed sat ten feet away, and strapped to this one was the struggling form of a little six-year-old brown-haired girl. Bubba recognized her as Cindy Hall, the daughter of one of the mine foremen. Cindy was bound hand and foot to the bedframe, with a metal band strapped around her head and wires leading from her chest and face over to the other bed. A similar band was strapped around the forehead of Faith’s corpse, and wires led from her still form up to the roof of the shed and out to a long spike that stretched toward the sky like a giant finger.
“What the holy hell is going on in there?” Bubba asked, covering his mouth against the urge to vomit. “I’m gone need to drink for a week to get that outta my head.”
“It seems that Mr. Gilbreath has taken issue with God’s fate for his daughter.” Preacher Mason replied.
“Well I can understand bein’ a mite upset with God if he killed your wife and daughter, but what does he think he’s doing with all them wires and crap? Tavvy, you know about that shit, what is he doing?”
“Bubba, I told you not to swear around me, but I’ll forgive it this time due to the extreme emotional circumstances we find ourselves in. As to what he’s doing, I can only guess. But my guesses are very, very disturbing.”
“You want to share your guessin’ with me and the Preacher here? ‘Cause if I gotta go in there and shoot somebody, I want to know why.”
“I think Mr. Gilbreath is trying to use electricity to steal the life force from that boy and reanimate his daughter. I have heard of a doctor in Switzerland who has met with some unfortunate success in this arena.”
“This abomination must be stopped immediately! We cannot allow this affront to God’s plan to continue.” Preacher Mason stood and began to stride manfully toward the entrance to the shed, but Bubba whipped out a hand and grabbed his ankle. The young preacher fell flat on his face with a whoof and rolled over to face his companions.
“What was that for?” He asked, face flushed with equal parts righteous fury and embarrassment.
“Why don’t we wait ’til we see if he’s got a gun, Preacher? I’m sure God loves you, but I don’t think he wants you showing up on his doorstep tonight.” Bubba said in a low voice. Three heads slowly rose above the level of the window sill to observe Gilbreath and his horrific experiment.
The man seemed to have no concept of the outside world, or of hygiene. His clothes hung loose on his scarecrow frame and his hair sprayed out from his head in a wild halo of grey and black. His face was covered in salt-and-pepper stubble and his scrawny arms waved wildly in the air as he went from bed to bed checking wires and tightening the bonds on the living child. The girl struggled against his bonds, but he couldn’t get enough slack in the ropes to work herself free.
“I don’t see a gun.” Mason whispered.
“Nope. Don’t see nothing but a whole passel of crazy. Let’s go get that little boy home to his momma, get that little girl back in the ground where she belongs, and then we can figure out what to do about Gilbreath.” Bubba said in a low voice.
Bubba stood up, all six and a half feet of him, and marched to the door. He put one of his gigantic boots through the door and kicked the whole thing flat, frame and all. “Jacob Gilbreath, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you ain’t gonna be doing in no more.” Bubba said, brandishing the barrels of the Dervish in the man’s direction. Gilbreath took one look at Bubba and howled as if in anguish. He snatched up a bottle from a nearby table and hurled it at Bubba’s enormous form, then darted to a switch on the far wall. The bottle caught Bubba right in the face, and the big man dropped to one knee, blood streaming from his nose.
Preacher Mason yelled into the room “Jacob, this is insanity! This is an affront to God and all that is holy! You must not do this thing!”
Gilbreath shouted back “Get on out of here Preacher. I done figured it all out now. I’m bringing my baby back to me and ain’t nothing you or that nosy bitch can do to stop me!” He hurled another flask at the door, but this one shattered harmlessly on the wall.
Octavia and Mason crowded into the room around Bubba’s kneeling form. Octavia went straight after Gilbreath, her shotgun leveled at the man. Mason ran to the bed where little Cindy Hall was thrashing against her ropes. Octavia fired a warning shot, but Gilbreath reached the switch just in time and gave it a yank. Blue lightning arced down from the roof of the shed into the wires stretched across little Cindy, the electricity flowing into Preacher Mason and blowing him halfway across the room. Cindy let out a scream and Bubba watched in horror as the energy flowed through the girl and down the wires connecting her to Faith’s rotting body.
The stench of burning flesh was overpowering as the power surged into the corpse on the bed. Gilbreath shouted something, but his words were lost in the din of the equipment. Mason lay stunned in the center of the floor, Bubba still knelt at the door with blood dripping from his nose, and only Octavia remained to deal with the crazed father. She drew a bead on him with her shotgun, only to have her gaze drawn to the bed, where the still form of Faith began to twitch. At first it seemed to be nothing more than the random movement of the electrical current, but in a few seconds it was apparent that the body was trying to break free of its bonds.
Octavia’s mouth hung open as she watched the corpse move, then she snapped her jaw shut and swung her gun back over to Gilbreath. Only he wasn’t there anymore. The madman was right in front of her, swinging a length of copper tubing at her skull. Octavia ducked, then parried the next stroke with her gun. The shotgun went off, stunning both combatants for a second. Gilbreath recovered first and drove the copper pipe into Octavia’s stomach. Her eyes went comically wide as all the air went out of her, then they fluttered shut as Gilbreath knocked her out cold with a hard punch to the temple. She sprawled across the dirty cabin floor, lifeless.
Bubba bellowed in rage and stood, flinging blood and snot all around him as he shouted his pain and anger. He reached over his head and flipped the ignitor on the Dervish, feeling the shudder that told him the machine was quickly building a head of steam and was almost ready to fire. When the indicator at his wrist flashed green he swung the barrels over toward Gilbreath and pulled the trigger. The noise in the small cabin was deafening, the sheer pressure of the repeated twelve-gauge explosions enough to shatter every window. Gilbreath dove for cover, but Bubba kept a steady stream of buckshot flying thro
ugh the room. He sprayed every wall of the cabin with lead pellets as he swiveled back and forth, destroying every piece of machinery lining the walls and strewn across the tabletops.
“Noooooooo!” Gilbreath screamed from his hiding place under a workbench as the blue light flickered one last time and went out, the electrical currents cut off by Bubba’s rain of hellfire and lead. Bubba’s Dervish finally clicked empty and he took his finger off the trigger. Preacher Mason dragged himself to his feet and felt the Hall child’s neck for a pulse. After a few frantic seconds he heaved a sigh of release and nodded. Bubba looked to where Octavia had been laid out on the floor and saw Gilbreath hauling her to her feet. Octavia looked woozy, but as yet unharmed.
“Get out of here or I’ll kill her!” Gilbreath screamed, wide-eyed. He glanced over at the bed where the corpse of his daughter lay and said “I’ll be there in a second, sweetheart. Daddy’s here, you don’t have to worry anymore.”
Bubba followed the insane man’s gaze to the bed and his own eyes went wide. Even with the current disconnected, the girl’s body continued to move. Worse, her eyes were now open and glowing with the same blue light. As Bubba watched, the corpse strained hard against the restraints and the ropes snapped. Free, the thing that had once been a little girl started toward her father.
Gilbreath shoved Octavia aside and knelt down, holding his arms wide for his little girl. The dead girl staggered toward him, unsteady on legs that had seen no use for six months. Little Faith grew stronger and smoother of gait with every step, and by the time she got close to her father, she even managed to run the last few steps. Octavia scrambled away on hands and knees, finally fetching up against a wall. Preacher Mason had the Hall child clutched tight to his chest, shielding the girl’s eyes from the horror that walked among them.
Faith reached her father, and threw her arms around his neck. Gilbreath hugged her under the arms and lifted the child-thing into the air, spinning her around like a giddy top. Suddenly he gasped and let go of the body, reaching around behind his head to try and dislodge her arms from his neck. Gilbreath gasped for air, his eyes bulging and face turning red, then purple, then finally pale as the thing he brought back from the dead choked the life from his body. He wobbled on his feet, the fell to his knees, then collapsed onto his back. Faith followed him all the way down, squeezing the last bits of life from him. When her father was dead, the thing released her grip on him and stood back as if to survey her handiwork.
Faith stood looking over her father’s body for long seconds, then reached down with one shaking hand and closed his eyes. The girl-thing then turned to look at Bubba and opened her mouth. Bubba saw her lips move, but heard nothing.
“I’m sorry, little dead girl, you’re gone have to speak up. I can’t hear you.” Bubba said, keeping the Dervish trained on the creature.
Faith opened her mouth again, and a hiss of sound came out, but Bubba still couldn’t understand her. He was hesitant to ask her to repeat herself again, not wanting to upset the strangely powerful dead child, but Octavia held up a hand to him.
“Send me back.” Octavia said. The girl’s head whipped around to her, then she nodded at the woman.
“What?” Bubba asked.
“She’s saying ‘send me back.’” Octavia said, realization writ large upon her face.
“Send her back where, Tavvy? What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t think hell figures into this equation at all, Bubba. I baptized this child myself, and a baptized child of that age would never be allowed into Satan’s realm.” Preacher Mason said from where he sat holding the living child.
“She wants to go home, Bubba. You have to send her there.” Octavia said, her voice cracking as a tear rolled down one cheek.
“I know I’m the dumb one Tavvy, but she’s dead. Where’s she talking about home…oh.” The big man’s normally booming voice was suddenly very small as he realized what the little dead girl was asking.
“Are you sure, honey? I mean, I don’t know what you’d do if you stayed here, after killing your pa and being dead for so long, but I don’t know if this is right, either.” Bubba said, addressing Faith for the first time.
The resurrected girl pointed at the bed where Preacher Mason held Cindy Hall, then pointed at her father’s body. “Make this right. Send me home.” She rasped.
Mason leaned forward. “I understand! Part of this child’s soul is trapped in there with Faith’s soul. Cindy will not recover until her soul is freed to return to its body, and Faith’s soul is released to return to the side of our Lord.”
Bubba looked over at Octavia and nodded to the preacher. “Y’all better get, then. I reckon I know what I gotta do, and y’all can’t be in here when I do it.”
“You remember what I told you about the emergency release?” Octavia asked.
“I remember. Now help the Preacher get that little girl outta here.” He watched as they carried the Hall child out the door and across the small clearing in front of the cabin.
Bubba walked over to Faith, knelt down and opened his arms. “Don’t choke me now.” He said with a lopsided grin. The reanimated child stumped over to him and put her arms gently around his neck. Bubba folded her into his giant arms and hugged the girl.
She hugged him back with grave-cold arms, and as he felt the trickle of a tear roll down into his beard she whispered “Thank you.” She let go of Bubba and stepped back to stand over her father’s dead body.
Bubba took a couple of steps back until he was in the dad center of the cabin, flipped a lever on the ammo hopper of the Dervish and heard a solid thunk as the gun switched over from looking for shells to a spray gun. The moonshine bypassed the ignitor reservoir and flowed down the steam tube to the barrels, connecting with a small sparker at the end of the gun. The corn liquor burst into flame as Bubba sprayed the inside of the cabin with fire. He turned almost a complete circle, dousing the whole interior with blazing alcohol. He made sure to douse Faith and her father’s corpses, then stood in the doorway watching everything around him go up in flames.
He stood there, eyes locked on the little girl’s face until the flames consumed her and blue spark faded to nothing, then turned to where Preacher Mason and Octavia stood, the little Hall girl hiding behind Octavia’s tattered skirts.
“Is it over?” Mason asked.
“I reckon. Jacob’s dead, and it was his own little girl what done it.” Bubba sat down on a stump and shrugged out of the Dervish. “Your contraption worked out real good, Tavvy. It burnt that place down like the wrath of God himself.”
“Thank you, Beauregard.”
“Can I go home now?” The little girl asked, looking up at the preacher.
“Yes, dear. I’ll take you home myself.” Mason replied. The preacher reached out and put a hand on Bubba’s shoulder. “You did God’s work tonight, Bubba. It’s not always easy, and it’s often not pretty…” His voice trailed off and he pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his eyes.
Bubba finished the thought for him. “But somebody’s got to do it. And I might as well be that somebody.”
“It’s a mighty big burden, hunting down the things that go bump in the night.” The preacher said.
“Good thing I got big shoulders, Preacher. Now let’s get this little girl home to her momma.” Bubba stood, threaded his arms through the straps on the Dervish, and started off down the mountain towards home.
White Lightnin’
A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
“Beauregard Ulysses Brabham, get down here!” The dulcet tones of Tavvy’s voice penetrated the fog that was Bubba’s mind and dragged him forcefully from a dream into the waking world. The waking world was bright, so Bubba rolled over to limit his exposure to daylight. Unfortunately for Bubba, he had once again slept outside in his hammock, so the act of rolling over involved a rather abrupt introduction of his face to the hard-packed red clay beneath him. Sonofabitch, that woman is more like
ly to get me killed than any monster I hunt. And where’d my damn pants go?
Bubba lumbered to his feet and relieved himself against a tree, then began the search for his pants. They were crumpled in a heap by the foot of the hammock, tangled around his work boots. Bubba shook his head and pulled on both pants and boots, swearing not for the first time to drink less in the future. It’s that damn preacher and his theological debatin’. He gets up here using all them big words and I figure the only way I can follow him is to be about half drunk when he starts theorizin’. But I never stop at half drunk, do I? Bubba shook his head at the two empty quart jars sitting on his porch, and started off down the hill toward his sister’s shrieks.
“What in the seven flaming hells do you want, Tavvy?” Bubba bellowed as his father’s, now his sister’s, cabin came into view. Tavvy had nursed the old man through the last few years of his life, and now she owned the cabin and all the land to boot. The downside was that she had spent her prime courtin’ years caring for a mean old bastard of a father, and now she seemed doomed to spend the rest of her life as an old maid. It was a shame, too, Bubba thought. Tavvy wasn’t bad-looking girl, even if she was his sister. She had a decent enough face, if maybe her jaw was a little too strong and her chin a little too square. She had a decent body, too, with an impressive bosom and a healthy appetite. At a couple of inches over six feet and close to three hundred pounds, Bubba was more comfortable around a woman who could eat than some of the town girls who looked like they lived on water and air.
“I require your assistance, Beauregard. You shall provide it as befits a gentleman of your stature.”
“I ain’t no stature, Tavvy. I’m a real, live man, not one carved out of something.” He passed gas loudly and tried to maneuver downwind of himself. “See, Tavvy? Statures don’t fart. Now what do you need?”
Moonshine & Magic: A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Collection Page 2