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

  “Nah, Grampa, there ain’t no problem. You can go back to drinking your Ensure. Me and my new friend here are just having a discussion.” He grinned down at the girl, who was at least half a foot shorter than him. “Ain’t that right, sweetheart?”

  “No, it’s not, asshole, and if you call me sweetheart again, I’m going to kick you right in the balls.” She turned and took a step back toward the rest of the bar, but the kid reached out and grabbed her arm.

  That turned out to be a bad idea. The girl swung around and laid a slap across that boy’s face that sounded like a .22 pistol shot and left five distinct finger marks across his face. He let go of her arm in shock, and the girl stepped up to his face.

  “Don’t you ever lay hands on me, you son of a bitch!” she shouted.

  “You bitch!” the boy shouted, raising his own hand.

  Dave stepped in then, putting one big hand on the boy’s chest and walking him backwards to the nearest wall. “You are about to make a very big mistake, son. Now you can walk out the front door with a hurt cheek and your pride beat to shit. But if you push this, you’re going to end up thrown out the front door on your ass, with a whole lot more beat than your pride. Do you understand me?”

  The boy spit in Dave’s face. “Screw you, old man! That bitch deserved it, walking around here dressed like some whore. So you stay the hell out of it or I’ll whoop your ass, too.” He shoved Dave back and then came at the older man, his right hand coming around in a huge haymaker.

  Dave threw an arm up to block the boy’s punch, then stepped to one side, grabbed the back of the boy’s head, and slammed him face-first into a nearby pool table. The kid’s nose broke with a loud crunch, and a fountain of blood joined the multitude of stains on the table’s felt. The kid slid to the floor, out cold, and Dave turned to the girl.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice now tender.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “He’s a dick. I probably shouldn’t have—”

  Dave cut her off. “Held back? Yeah, probably not. He deserved worse than you gave him, so don’t feel bad about that for a second. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Good. But you were right to slap him. You don’t have to take that kind of shit off anybody. There ain’t nothing wrong with the way you’re dressed. Screw that dude.”

  She smiled up at him, the gentle giant. “Nah, I wouldn’t screw him. He probably has a tiny dick.” They both laughed, and she went back to her friend who was waiting at the bar.

  Dave turned and looked at Douchebro’s buddy, who was kneeling next to his unconscious friend. “Get him out of here. And the next time you or your pal decides to put your hands on somebody without their consent, remember the beating he just got.”

  Dave walked back to the front of the bar and looked around. The place was empty. Even the devoted drunks bailed once the confrontation in the back turned violent. Dave picked up the pickle jar labeled “TIPS” in blue magic marker and shook it in the general vicinity of the bartender.

  “Four dollars and some change,” he announced. “And one kid who hates me forever because I embarrassed him.”

  “But one that thinks you’re the white knight to end all white knights,” the bartender replied.

  “Yeah,” Dave said. “Guess I ain’t quitting the day job this week, though.” He picked up his guitar and started packing it away.

  I turned to Prince, who stood in front of another glowing purple portal. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to take away from that, man. Can you give me a hint?”

  “Maybe it’s like a song,” Prince said. “It means something different to everyone who hears it because everyone hears with different ears.”

  “That don’t make any more damn sense than anything else,” I said.

  “Then there’s only one thing to do,” said the suddenly verbose ghostly guitar god. “Keep moving forward.”

  So I stepped through the portal and did just that.

  9

  We stepped out of the air into a chilly night outside what looked like an old movie theatre. A line of people snaked around the building, all bundled up like it was twenty degrees out instead of sixty. I was a little chilly, but part of that was only wearing a pair of jeans and an Allan Brothers t-shirt, and part of it was the fact that I’d had goosebumps ever since meeting the ghost of Hank friggin’ Williams, and walking through thin air with Prince as my escort wasn’t helping matters none.

  I looked around, trying to figure out what the Ghost wanted me to see here while still trying to figure out what he wanted me to take away from our last stop, and my eyes lit on a brown-haired boy with a trim beard and ponytail walking down the line with a pretty blonde girl next to him. I’d seen them before—it was the boy and girl I’d watched meet and get married when Hank was taking me through the Past. He was walking, holding up two fingers in the universal symbol for somebody either looking to buy tickets or looking to sell them. I wasn’t sure which, but whenever I saw him stop and talk to somebody, they’d speak for a couple seconds, then one of them would shake his head, and the kid would move on.

  They got right in front of me and stopped, staring up at the marquee. “JOHN HIATT & JASON ISBELL—ONE NIGHT ONLY—SOLD OUT” was one the battered triangle jutting out from the front of the building in mismatched red plastic letter.

  “Sorry, babe,” the kid said. “I should have gotten the tickets earlier. I knew it was gonna sell out.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the girl replied. “They were way too expensive. Let’s just go get something to eat and go home.”

  “Okay, but I really wanted to see the two of them together. And it’s been forever since we’ve been to a concert.”

  “I know, babe,” the girl said, reaching out and twining her fingers in the guy’s. “But it’s fine. We’ll see them at Merlefest, or somewhere we don’t have pay TicketBastard an arm and a leg.” They turned and walked across the street, and I stared at Prince.

  “Well, that was subtle as a damn hand grenade, Eddie Vedder,” I said. “I get it, ticket prices are stupid high, and it ain’t like the money goes to the artists. It’s all going to some asshole in a suit thanks to a shitload of surcharges and stupid fees.”

  Prince didn’t say nothing, just turned around and wiggled his fingers in the air. Another purple portal opened up, and we stepped through.

  And stepped into a swanky-ass office with about two dozen platinum records lining the walls. The carpet was so white I was scared to take a step, even though my ghost feet couldn’t possibly track in any mud. The office was as long as a damn basketball court is wide, and at the far end, there was a massive metal and wood abomination of a desk with a sawed-off little bald-headed man who looked more like an insurance adjuster than a record exec. The words “PARAGON RECORDS” hung in huge letters on the wall behind the desk, and I figured this joker was probably some kind of corporate suit because he didn’t look like any musician I’d ever seen. Even symphony oboe players were cooler than this schmuck.

  He wore a brown suit, a brown tie, a white shirt (No stripes. Not for this dude), and thick plastic-rimmed glasses that reminded me of Tommy Cornest in sixth grade when he tried to pants me in P.E. I was already training with Pop by eleven, so I didn’t know if whatever had a hold of my britches was friend or foe, so I spun around and caught Tommy right above the nose with a huge right hand. His plastic glasses split right down the middle. So did Tommy’s nose. I got a couple days detention, but so did Tommy for trying to pull my pants down.

  But as fascinating as the nebbishy-looking turdmuncher behind the desk was, he had nothing on the nasty bastard next to him. Every muscle in my body tensed up when my eyes lit on the demon by the desk. He was your average, run-of-the-mill, just about what you’d expect demon, standing there with red skin, yellow eyes, cloven hooves, a spiky tail, and black horns curling up off his head like a cross between a person and an evil antelope.

  I charged him. I couldn’t he
lp it, and part of me figured that I wouldn’t do anything but run right through him, so I put my head down and went after him like I was back in college chasing quarterbacks all over Augusta on a Saturday afternoon. I barreled toward that skinny fucker, all three-hundred-and-fifty pounds of redneck fury hell-bent on turning him into nothing more than a smear of demon guts on the wall so I could go back to sleep and forget about all this ghost bullshit.

  And then he looked up at me, grinned, and I knew I was about to be screwed, glued, and tattooed. Apparently demons can touch things in the spirit world, which makes sense now that I think about it. I mean, after all, if you can’t lay hands on a spirit, how can you torture the souls of the damned?

  Well, I learned the hard way that demons can indeed lay hands on people in the spirit world, and they’re strong as hell besides. This fella didn’t look like a whole lot, about six feet tall and skinny as a rail—maybe a buck-fifty, buck-sixty, tops. But he grabbed me by the throat and the belt and hoisted me straight up over his head like I was a damn toddler looking for an airplane ride from his favorite uncle.

  Except I’m nowhere near a toddler, and this asshole wasn’t my favorite anything. He flung me into the air, and right about the time I expected him to let me go and send me through the ceiling, he hung on and pitched me at the wall like I was a damn lawn dart.

  I went sailing right through the wall, of course, and found myself outside the record company’s office. In mid-air. Fifteen damn floors up. But I thought about as I flew across the sky, my momentum increased by the demon’s toss, and decided that since ghosts usually floated, if I was a ghost, I could float, too. So I just floated myself around, pointed my head back in the direction of the wall I’d just flown through, and drifted back there. I was almost to the building when Prince stepped through the plate glass window.

  He held up a hand, and I floated to a stop in front of him. “That probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” His Purpleness said.

  “I don’t reckon I give a single damn if it’s a good idea or not, Prince, there’s a damn demon in there, and he’s screwing with that dude!”

  “Is he?”

  “Is he what? A demon? I don’t reckon it’s Halloween, so unless there’s some monster I ain’t never heard of that likes to run around in red long johns and stick antlers on its head, that bastard in there is a demon.”

  “Oh, there’s no question that’s a demon, my overwrought, overlarge friend. The question is whether or not he’s ‘screwing with that dude.”

  I almost fell out of the sky, I was so flabbergasted by what Prince was saying. I’m not sure what would have happened if I would have eventually stopped falling, if I would’ve fallen and hit the ground, or just fallen through the earth, but I didn’t want to find out, so I decided not to fall and floated back eye-to-eye with him. Which meant that my toes were like a foot lower than his, but whatever.

  “What do you mean, he might not be screwing with that guy?”

  “How do we know that the human isn’t a willing participant to the partnership?”

  “Yeah, dude, plenty of people think they know what kind of deal they’re making until it comes time to pay the bill.”

  “And plenty of people know exactly what kind of deal they’re making and don’t care, valuing short-term fame and fortune over eternal life and love,” the dead rocker replied.

  “I guess you would know, having seen it a lot closer than me,” I said.

  “You don’t even want to know some of the conversations I’ve had at parties, my friend.”

  “Well, I reckon we oughta figure it out,” I said, drifting back toward the building and passing through the wall.

  The demon looked over at me and grinned. “Back for more, hillbilly?”

  I held up both hands like I was surrendering. I was also putting my hands up in case I needed to block a punch or three. “No,” I said. “These ghosts been dragging me around all night, wanting to show me shit. I reckon there’s something they want me to see here, so go on about your business. I won’t interfere.”

  “That’s a good idea, meatsack. You stay out of my way, and I won’t make you eat your gallbladder. Nobody likes the taste of raw gallbladder.”

  He turned back to the record company man and pointed to the papers on the desk. “Now this contract with TicketsRUs will add a four-dollar facility maintenance fee to every ticket purchased.”

  “But we don’t do any real maintenance on the facilities,” the nebbish said, surprising me by showing a shred of soul.

  “I don’t care,” the demon said. “It’s a split between you and the vendor every time they purchase something. Most of these simpletons only go to one or two concerts a year, and they don’t go back to the same venues, so they have no idea if the facility is being maintained or not.” The demon and the record exec shared a good laugh, and the demon gave me a wide grin, baring his fangs.

  “You know,” the demon said, “the boss is very pleased with your progress. We’re just a few steps away from controlling every step in the chain, from studio production, to distribution, to performance. A few more deals like this, and we’ll get rid of live concerts altogether. Then all music will be consumed digitally, and we can control the music, and then we control whatever message we want to bury under the Auto-Tuned backbeats!”

  “So…” the bald man said with a nervous grin, “the boss downstairs has noticed all the hard work I’ve been doing up here?”

  “He has,” the demon agreed. “He has indeed. He told me just last week that he’s grooming you for a spot in his personal retinue when you come to work for us directly. But don’t worry,” the demon said quickly, holding up both hands, palms out, “you’ve got plenty more work here on Earth. We’ve got a couple of other people in your business to bring around to our way of thinking, and then we can start looking forward to internal advancement opportunities.”

  I looked at Prince. “Hell is full of middle managers?”

  “Did you ever have a doubt, Bubba-baby?”

  “I reckon not. I mean, I ain’t never had what you might call a ‘real job,’ but I always figured that all that corporate double-speak was just modern-day Enochian.”

  “You got it, my supersize friend,” Prince said. “Are you finally starting to pick up what I been laying down?”

  “Yeah, I get it, but why did you suddenly start speaking in jive?”

  “I watched Luke Cage while you were scrapping with the demon. I’m feeling all New Harlem Renaissance up in this mofo.”

  “You watched a whole season of a TV show during that fight?” Yeah, that was the part of my night I had trouble believing.

  “Time moves differently in the spirit world, baby. Shall we go?” He waved his hand again, and I stepped through another glowing circle. Demons cutting deals with record executives—how much stranger could my night get?”

  10

  I didn’t have to wait long for that answer. No sooner had Prince deposited me back in the studio, opened a brand new hole in the air, and stepped through with a little bow “goodbye” and a host of, I shit you not, white doves flying around him, but my next visitor arrived.

  And what a friggin’ entrance. Where my last two ghosts had stepped through a glowing portal in the sky, this one popped onto the scene in a flash of light, a thunder of pyro, and an Auto-Tuned shriek of pure, perfectly pitched adrenalized audio. I tried to look at the spectacle, but the light was so bright and so abrupt that all I got was a hint of a person standing backlit by a cacophony of colors before I had to close my eyes against the sensory overload. It helped a little, but I still had the afterimage of a human in a hoodie standing in silhouette against a wall of fireworks.

  The noise died down a little, and I blinked my eyes to clear the stars from my vision. “What the ever-loving hell was that?” I asked.

  “I am the Ghost of Music Yet to Come,” came a lifeless, robotic voice. “I am music perfected. In my world, there are no missed notes. There are no skipped choruses. There are
no lags in pitch. There are no off-key vocals. I am the Ghost of Music Polished.”

  “Sounds like you are the Ghost of a Pile of Shit,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. The room was slowly dimming down from a big ball of overlit glow, and I could see the ghost standing there, head bowed and hands folded in front of his crotch like a boy band just about to break out in the beginning of a shitty concert. He was a little dude, barely five-and-a-half feet tall, and that was counting the patent leather platform boots. He wore skinny leather pants, a belt with a rhinestone-studded Captain America shield, and a sparkly sweatshirt with the hood up, concealing his face.

  “You are obviously not a Belieber,” the ghost said, raising his face to show me a featureless white mask.

  “I don’t even know what that is, unless you’ve got a cold. If your nose is stopped up, then I get it. But I didn’t think ghosts got allergies.”

  “A Belieber is one of the legion of Justin Bieber fans throughout the world. True Beliebers have embraced the musical revolution that is coming. True Beliebers have already prepared themselves for the coming musicopalypse.”

  “True Beliebers sound like a bag full of dumbass, and you ain’t a whole lot different. Now what do you have to show me, Ghost of Music Yet to Suck?”

  The ghost’s voice went even more robotic, if that was possible, shifting to something between Robbie the Robot and Peter Frampton. “Resistance is futile, music fan. Your kind will be—”

  “I swear on Johnny Cash’s grave, if you say ‘assimilated,’ I will whoop your ass all the way back to the great beyond and figure this shit out for myself.”

  The ghost cocked its head to one side, kinda like a surprised pug, then said one word. “Assimilated.”

  I was honor-bound to do it. The Guy Code clearly states that if you say you’re going to whoop somebody’s ass if they do something, then they look you right in the eye and do that very thing, you are obliged to whoop their ass until your whole damn arm gets tired.