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Bendy: The Lost Ones Excerpt
Bendy: The Lost Ones Excerpt
os
O n es
T
BY ADRIENNE KRESS
SCHOLASTIC INC.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this
book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the
publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment
for this “stripped book.”
© 2021 Joey Drew Studios Inc. Bendy, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Bendy
and the Dark Revival, the Bendy characters, images and logos are trade
marks of Joey Drew Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsi
bility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978‑1‑338-57221‑6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 22 23 24 25
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
I’d do a little dance with the mop. Mop dances are fun. I ain’t no
Fred Astaire, but then again, he ain’t no Wally Franks.
Now that’s not to say that there weren’t strange things
about working late, but if ol’ Wally knows one thing, he knows
that folks like having their little secrets. Makes ’em feel spe
cial. Never understood that myself. What you see is what you
get with me.
There were secrets here in Joey Drew Studios. I ain’t no
fool. But I also ain’t no detective.
So I just keep on my own business. Even when the new ren
ovation started, when they’d bought up the theater next door.
Even when the pipes had begun making strange noises all hours.
Sometimes almost like some creature moaning away somewhere.
It was all never mind for me. Made life interesting, new halls to
keep up all swell like, new offices, and, sure, new sounds too.
Took more time to clean though, and my muscles did ache
more and more these days. The missus always said we should
retire down to Florida already, but I wasn’t ready yet. Not yet.
“Let me explain this one last time to you thick-headed
lunks. I don’t want to see one darn scratch on this thing when
we get there. Got it?”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir.”
I overheard conversations all the time in this job. Not just
by being around a corner, or in the other room. No, folks some
times seemed to forget I could hear in the first place; they’d
just talk or argue with me standing right there doing my job.
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ADRIENNE KRESS
Ol’ Wally didn’t mind. Folks did what they did. Just like I did
what I did.
So normally I wouldn’t have thought too much of any of
it, but this time was a bit different. This was, well, I could
have sworn that I was listening to the booming frustration of
one Thomas Connor. And I could have sworn the fellow had
been recently fired. Maybe I was wrong though. Wouldn’t be
the first time, as the missus always points out.
“Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me. Just do your job!”
And sure enough, it was him, or at least his chest, as I
crashed right into him turning the corner.
“What the . . .” Thomas backed off, sputtering.
“Sorry about that, Thomas,” I said, casually brushing
myself off. Bumping into folks happened sometimes.
“Wally, you’re here late,” replied Thomas, glancing over
his shoulder and not really making eye contact. I rarely got eye
contact from folks. I didn’t mind it. I didn’t want to get in the
way. My job was to make the way easier, not harder after all.
“Not really,” I replied. Didn’t much think he’d want conver
sation but he didn’t walk away so I did my best. Come up with
a question, then, Wally. That ain’t a hard thing to do. “You’re
back on the payroll then?”
“What?” asked Thomas. The man seemed distracted.
“Your job, got your job back? Mister Drew hired you again?”
“Well, he had no choice,” replied Thomas, still think
ing about something else. He laughed then. “We both had no
choice.”
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
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ADRIENNE KRESS
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
moment and then back into the dark. Saving money on elec
tricity, I guessed. Saving money was a priority these days at
Joey Drew Studios. I’d been told to keep my rags until they fell
apart in my hands. I was good at taking orders, I appreciated
them. I’d seen artists reach into their own garbage bins and
pull out tossed pieces of paper to draw on the reverse side. I’d
seen lunches brought from home. I’d seen pay stubs with lower
and lower amounts and empty desks.
I’d seen it all.
I’d seen everything.
Oh yes, ol’ Wally sees everything. Including the machine.
Including what made the ink on the floors. What dragged it far
down the hallways and along the walls.
You didn’t think ol’ Wally had seen it?
Ol’ Wally sees it all.
I went into a small tidy office and picked up the half-full
bin. I tossed the garbage into the bag, and paused at the little
light on the desk. I leaned over and clicked it off. Saving elec
tricity and all that. Then I went back out into the hallway. And
kept going about my business.
Into the light for one moment, then into the dark.
Never much understood why folks were scared of it.
Ain’t nothing in the shadows that isn’t there in the light.
Except, of course, when there is.
And when there is, I’m outta here!
7
1: Bill
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
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ADRIENNE KRESS
here for the warmth, not the bitter cold wind off the Atlantic
in m
id-October. So everyone had to pretend it was summer.
We’d already done some shots on the beach and Boardwalk last
week when it hadn’t been nearly as cold. But today, well, today
he was most excited about. If anything drew a crowd, it was
horse diving at the Steel Pier. Also paying people to attend did
that too.
I examined the platform. I was always shocked by its
appearance. It hardly seemed safe from an engineering stand
point. A skeletal
wood-
and-
metal frame, bolstered by steel
wires attached to the ground. I have to admit that my inter
ests were more mechanical than structural usually (I still
really wished someone would let me play with that camera),
but all of it still fascinated me. How things were made, how
they worked, how pieces of a puzzle came together. I’d walk
along the Boardwalk staring at the hotels built at the turn of
the c entury—how did they do that with the o ld-fashioned tools
of their day? The piers jutting out into the water fascinated me
as well. They’d stood there against the beating current and the
salt for decades.
“That’s not normal,” I said just then. My eyes had followed
the length of steel wire down from the top of the platform
to the ground. The bolted metal square that held it in place
looked almost as if it had been pried up. A fear welled up from
deep inside me.
“Is that normal?” I asked louder, but no one was listening
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
to me. Everyone had their own tasks to manage. The fear was
growing, a panic too. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
No, we had no time for panic. This was time for action. I
swallowed the feeling and looked for my father, but he was stand
ing with the director, engaged in one of their regular heated
debates. Father liked to fancy himself a creative type who was
just too pragmatic to pursue the arts. I glanced over at the editor
of the Atlantic City Press standing just a little ways off, watching
the whole thing go down. Father didn’t need any more bad press,
but I also had more important things to take care of right now.
I made my way over to a skinny young fellow with red hair
and freckles leaning against the stairs up the platform. “Hey,
uh, does that look normal to you?” I asked him.
He stared at me, wide-eyed. This happened to me a lot. I
didn’t feel like anyone of note but I couldn’t deny reality. Being
the son of Emmett Chambers meant I was my own kind of
celebrity. I hadn’t done anything. I had just been born to a rich
man who owned half of Atlantic City.
“That bolt there, the wire, does that seem safe?” I pointed,
and the man turned and looked, thank goodness.
“Uh . . .” he said, and moved toward it. I followed him. We
looked down at it, then up at each other. “No, that’s not good.”
As I thought. The fear churned inside me but I held it
at bay.
“Okay, so we should tell someone about it, shouldn’t we . . .”
“Steve.”
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ADRIENNE KRESS
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
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ADRIENNE KRESS
I hunched down beside the large metal plate and stared up.
The platform shuddered dangerously then, and I looked over to
see that the horse was being brought onto the platform by the
very nervous newspaper fellow. This was complete insanity on
my father’s part; if we didn’t fix the wire, the whole platform
could topple to the ground. I looked down as splinters of wood
from the pier cracked beneath the weakening plate.
Get to work.
I began trying to wrench the bolt tight again and noticed
my hand was shaking just a bit. Breathe, I told myself. Just fix
it. But even my own considerable strength was not going to be
enough.
“Steve, get some men and go to the far side of the plat
form and push,” I said, making brief eye contact with the man
before returning to my work.
Once again Steve took me seriously. I could tell because
Father was raging: “Where are you going?” To give Steve
credit for understanding our dire situation, he ignored my for
midable father and soon he and a few other much larger men
were on the other side of the platform. I nodded at them from
my side, viewing them through the giant wooden beams, and
they pushed.
The difference the push made was a matter of inches, not
feet, not yards, but inches was all I needed. The metal plate lay
flush with the pier and I wrenched the bolt as tightly as I could
with my shaking hand, wrenching my own neck in the process.
It hurt, but I kept tightening.
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BENDY: THE LOST ONES
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