Bad Parts
Page 1
Praise for Brandon McNulty
“Bad Parts asks the intriguing question, ‘What would you give up to make your body whole again? Can you put a price on your dreams?’ A page-turning tale of Faustian bargains, bad choices, and hard lessons.”
—Alma Katsu, author of The Deep and The Hunger
“Bad Parts is a non-stop thrill ride! It starts out breakneck fast and keeps accelerating—the twists keep coming tighter and darker as the novel races toward its grisly, unexpected, and thoroughly satisfying finish. This is exactly the kind of horror novel I love—I could not put this one down and read it all in a single day!”
—John Everson, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant and The Devil’s Equinox
"McNulty has crafted one of the most original horror novels in recent years. It reads like Needful Things if it had been written by Richard Laymon."
—Tom Deady, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Haven
“Bad Parts gives body horror the heart replacement it needs, and this heavy metal love song about a deal with a unique kind of devil hits all the right notes as it flies by. And it does fly. McNulty delivers a tight, high-octane small town horror story that will literally grip you from beginning to end. His writing blazes at a fast clip, his words getting deep traction in your skull, revving up the tension until the author peels out toward the finish line without mercy. You won’t want him to hit the brakes when its over. It’s everything you want: an awesome book featuring unforgettable characters and plot twists by a must-read new author. Bad Parts is damned good!”
—Michael Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Grave Markings
“From the opening paragraph, I was hooked—Brandon McNulty is a master of his craft. It’s been a long time since a book has drawn me in so quickly and completely. With vivid scenes and never a wasted word, McNulty introduces us to a town where something is terribly wrong...and a main character we can’t help but follow into the mesmerizing darkness that is Hollow Hills. Open Bad Parts at your peril: you won’t be putting it down until the final page is turned.”
—Frederic S. Durbin, author of A Green and Ancient Light and Dragonfly
Bad Parts
DARK PARTS BOOK ONE
Brandon McNulty
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
BAD PARTS
Copyright © 2020 by Brandon McNulty
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published in the United States by Midnight Point Press.
Cover Design by Damonza.com
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-952703-00-3
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-952703-01-0
eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-952703-02-7
For Mom and Dad
1
Mac’s eyes snapped open, his mind racing to locate the source of the pain. He found it in his lower back. Millions of buzzing needles pierced his kidneys, delivering stab after stab with the unnatural force he’d been avoiding for decades. Bad as his kidneys felt, they were cozy compared to the splitting itch inside his head, an itch that intensified by the second. If he could’ve reached inside his skull, he’d have scratched himself braindead by now.
Then it dawned on him.
My traded parts are buzzing. That means I’m outside Hollow Hills.
Sure enough, he became aware of a humming motor. He lifted his sweaty head off the backseat and noticed the shadowy outline of a driver. Someone was driving him out of town. In his own Toyota, no less.
His mouth turned chalky. Sweat dripped from his forehead. Shifting to wipe the moisture away, he found he couldn’t move his hands, which, he realized with dismay, were tied behind his back. He tried to sit up, struggling against the fastened seatbelt that pinned him to the backseat.
What’s happening to me?
The last thing he remembered was taking out the trash at the banquet hall. Then he’d called his daughter Jenn to ask if she’d be visiting for Thanksgiving. She hadn’t been in town for five years, not since his seventieth birthday, but he could always hope. Now he simply hoped he’d survive this situation, whatever it turned out to be.
He struggled to loosen the seatbelt with his bound hands.
“Stop that,” the driver said, his tone worried.
The car glided along the highway. Streetlights flickered through the windows as snow melted down the glass. The air inside became muggy, hard to breathe.
“Please don’t do this!” Mac shouted.
He felt the car slow. The driver seemed nervous. Hesitant.
“Please! I’m just an old man!” Mac watched an exit sign for Dickson City flash beyond the windshield. That meant they were approaching the edge of the ten-mile zone. “I have a wife, a daughter, grandki—agghh!”
The buzz in his back sharpened to a burn.
“Listen,” he said, panting. “My kidneys, the
y—”
“I know about your kidneys. Now shut it.”
The driver knew. Dear God. Chances were the driver wanted Mac’s kidneys for himself. The creek demon back in Hollow Hills worked like a librarian—it could lend out only one of each body part. Mac had already “borrowed” both kidneys and the hippocampus, his brain’s short-term memory bank. He would keep the organs until one of two things happened—either he died or left the zone.
The latter looked more inevitable by the second.
He had to stop this. Call 911.
His shoulder protesting, he angled his bound hands toward his front pocket and pinched his flip-phone with two fingers. He grasped it. Although he couldn’t see the numbers, he knew that pressing the call button would redial his last call—would redial Jenn.
He thumbed the button twice. Heard a faint dial tone.
C’mon, c’mon…
A pothole rattled the car and shook the phone from his fingers. No! It fell behind him. As he jerked against his restraints, his kidneys flared like hot steel in his lower back. He growled through his teeth.
Static hissed behind him as his ringtone thrummed to life, playing “Break on Through” by The Doors. The classic bass line kicked in, and before long Jim Morrison was howling about day and night and breaking on through. It seemed Jenn had gotten his call. Now he just needed to answer hers.
“Don’t move,” the driver said. “Don’t answer that phone.”
Mac strained, reaching for Morrison’s voice. His finger grazed the plastic phone. He almost had a grip when the car swerved. The phone slid across the backseat, clattered against the door, and thudded onto the floor mat.
Out of reach.
No. Please, no.
Mac thought about the past twenty years and what little he’d done with them. He’d traded his kidneys so he could quit dialysis and enjoy life. Instead, he became hostage to the town while his family had left him behind. More recently, when Alzheimer’s had set in, he’d traded his hippocampus to keep from forgetting them.
Heat rolled through his brain now, as though flaming coals had been dumped down his ear canal. Already the memories were vanishing. He tried to recall his seventieth birthday, but it left him like smoke through an open window.
Desperately, he clawed after visions of his birthday. He remembered the picnic table where they’d served his red velvet birthday cake. Remembered his wife, his daughter, and the plastic forks they teasingly poked into his sides. Remembered the laughter in his ears. The smell of their herbal shampoos. The smiles on their faces.
He had them.
Then he began to lose them.
Their faces blurred. Then faded.
But he still had Jenn. He remembered hugging her before she left. Remembered—
Jenn!
Her smile returned. Teeth and dimples and the face around them. He held on tight, trying to picture the rest of her. Her hair reappeared, a dark brown ponytail. It smelled of…nothing.
The ponytail blurred. Then her eyes. Then her smile.
Lost. No more Jenn.
The motor roared, speeding him toward the zone’s edge. Heat engulfed his kidneys, then his brain. Flames torched his mind like a scrapbook in a bonfire, incinerating the memories, the moments, the meaning.
He lost it all as he broke on through to the other side.
2
Ash hurried inside with her guitar and some bad news.
Tonight the Dark Diamond Pub throbbed with noise—pounding drums, wailing guitar solos, screeching static. Under normal circumstances, she’d have been amped for this. Few things in life got her going like a Battle of the Bands, especially one with prize money at stake. But tonight was different. Tonight she needed to find her bandmates. And warn them.
The greenroom was packed. Dozens of rocker-dudes had stunk up the place with their unwashed armpits and cheap weed. Through the smoky haze she saw nothing but silhouettes. Dark hair, dark clothes, dark instruments. Smartphones flashed, lighting some scruffy, sweaty faces. Most were hacks and has-beens, guys who shouted and laughed, boozed and snorted.
Toward the middle of the pack she spotted a spark of orange hair: Cheeto, her lead singer.
Hugging her guitar to her chest, she shoved through the crowd, shouting his name. No answer. Her heart thumped like a double bass. Sweat greased her forehead. The room was too hot, and Ash unzipped her faux-leather jacket as she barreled ahead toward the stage door.
“Cheeto!” she yelled, twisting around. “Anybody seen him? The lead singer from Bad Parts?”
Nobody answered. Most kept on drinking. A drummer with blue nose rings smirked as he leaned back to check out her thirty-year-old ass. How flattering.
“Anybody seen Cheeto?” She tugged sleeves and pulled hair to get people’s attention. “Scrawny guy? Frizzy orange hair? Almost as many tattoos as me?”
“Ashesss!” Cheeto howled, right behind her.
Before she could brace herself, two tattooed arms swung around her torso and squeezed till her bones rumbled.
Cheeto’s okay. Thank fuck.
“Almost showtime!” he said, shaking her by the shoulders. “Ready to rip the roof off this place?”
“Where’s everybody else?”
“Backstage. Yo, you’ll love this!” He twisted her around. His green eyes smiled. “These two college kids stopped me at the bar earlier. Get this—they were wearing our t-shirts. The ones I designed with our logo across the chest. I was going nuts.”
“You still are.” She shrugged free. “Listen—”
“Those dudes want selfies with us. Let’s invite them to—”
Ash slapped her hand over his mouth. Cheeto could yap for hours about beer being wet if you let him.
“Flannigan can’t play tonight,” she said.
“That Irish drip.” Cheeto grinned. “He black out again?”
“For once, no.” She dragged him to a less crowded spot, away from the noise. “Someone beat his face in. Fractured the fuck out of his eye socket. I just got back from the ER.”
“What?” Beneath his orange hair Cheeto’s face faded as pale as paper. “Why didn’t you text me?”
“My phone’s dead.” She narrowed her eyes. “You know, because someone’s been hogging my portable charger.”
He groaned. “Flanny… Shit.” His scrawny fingers trembled as he reached into his camo vest for his smokes. He lit one and grimaced as he took a drag. “What happened?”
“No clue. I went to get my guitar from the van and found him passed out under the muffler.” She cringed at the memory of Flannigan’s wrecked face. “It looked brutal.”
“Who the hell did it?”
She shrugged. “Flanny said he got jumped.”
“Ah, man.” Cheeto slumped against the wall. “Remember those death threats we got last month? From those psychos?”
“That was in Maryland.” A chill ran through her, but she shook it off. “I mean, we’re in Pennsylvania now.”
“They could’ve followed us.”
“Cheets…”
“Or wait—we’re close to your hometown, right?”
“Yeah.” Only about fifteen minutes from the suburban shithole that was Hollow Hills. “Too close.”
“Any old grudges?”
“Tons. But none that would earn Flanny a beatdown.”
He frowned.
“Thing is,” she said, “we’re the favorites to win tonight and take the prize money. Chances are, someone KO’d Flanny to sabotage us.”
He took a drag. Exhaled. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” After a deep breath, she looked toward the stage door. “Anyway, you’re on rhythm tonight.”
“What?” Cheeto’s eyes popped. “You’re not cancelling?”
“We don’t cancel.” She strapped her guitar over her shoulder. “That’s not us.”
“But Flanny’s in the ER. We should be there.” He met her eyes. “Come on, Ash. Grow a heart.”
“Flanny insisted we do the show. You kno
w him, he’s no quitter. Plus, he needs the money.”
“No…” Cheeto’s fingers shook so hard he almost dropped his cig. “Fuck this.”
“What’s wrong? Afraid of double duty?”
His face burned red. “It’s not that.”
The hell it isn’t.
“Relax, you’ll kick ass on rhythm.” She cupped his face in her hands. Brushed her thumbs over his scruff. His trembling slowed. She smiled. “Focus on the chords. Your singing will handle itself. Trust me.”
Pulling back, Cheeto dragged on his cig till his cheeks hollowed. Behind him the stage door opened, and a bunch of talentless hacks in Viking helmets stumbled off stage.
“Bad Parts!” the stage manager yelled. “You’re up!”
He closed the door without waiting for them.