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Back The Bone Factory Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. The Bad Man
  3. Epigraph
  4. PROLOGUEBLOOD
  5. PART ONE
  6. CHAPTER TWO
  7. CHAPTER THREE
  8. CHAPTER FOUR
  9. CHAPTER FIVE
  10. CHAPTER SIX
  11. CHAPTER SEVEN
  12. CHAPTER EIGHT
  13. CHAPTER NINE
  14. CHAPTER TEN
  15. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  22. PART TWO
  23. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. PART THREE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  44. CHAPTER FORTY
  45. EPILOGUE
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. High Praise for Nate Kenyon’s
  48. Other Leisure Books by Nate Kenyon:

At the steps, she stumbled and came down hard on her shins, feeling an odd sort of pressure below the knee. She went up the rest of the steps on all fours, her cracked fingernails digging into the wood. Something down near her feet didn’t work right, but she didn’t know what it was. Her legs wouldn’t support her weight anymore, and the steps were cold, so cold. She couldn’t move any more, not now, not ever again. It’s over, she thought numbly, and the thought came easily. She would welcome the darkness when it came.

Helen.

She forced her head up and saw the man again, floating before the door, his brown slacks twisting around his legs as the wind blew. He held out one muscled arm and long finger, and pointed at the door handle. So close, honey, he said, and in that one moment, Helen realized with a shock that the man was her father, young and healthy and so different from the man who had been broken and hunchbacked at fifty-three, but her father, nonetheless.

Oh God, Daddy, she thought, I can’t.

Yes, you can, her father said, smiling gently. I didn’t raise a quitter, and neither did your mother. So go on.

The door handle was above her head, and she had to strain to reach it. The metal was slippery and almost impossible to hold onto with her hand feeling so numb and clumsy. This is my nightmare, she thought with a sudden burst of clarity. Don’t let it win.

The knob turned, and she fell through the door into the living room. Somehow she managed to push the door shut against the howling wind, but the flies still buzzed. It was impossible to shut them out.

I made it, Daddy, she thought. I didn’t quit. She managed to pull the edge of the little rug they kept by the door over her ice-cold body. It helped a little, and she didn’t try to fight the flies any longer.

What about Jessica?

And then there was nothing but blackness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

They sped along the shoulder of the road at breakneck speed, the tiny headlight of the snowmobile cutting a faltering swath of light through the thick snowfall. The wind was a howling demon at his neck, and he had to squint to see anything at all. What he saw was the back of Hank’s head, covered with the dark blue of his ski mask, and the headlight glowing in front of them. That was all. It seemed to be getting darker by the second.