WIP Wednesday - On the Edge of Nowhere: Hungry House Beckons

 

Cover Image: Erin Dameron-Hill Graphics

Meet Gina and Mattie in our first excerpt. They've just received word their bestie Carrie and her little brother Braden might be in trouble. Lured by the forbidding manse on the edge of town, they're heading into danger. Can Gina and Mattie reach them before Hungry House feeds?

* * * *

Gina felt she was being chuted to the foreboding structure, with no ability to turn aside. Her obsession, and worry for her friends, spurred her on.

She glanced at Mattie. Her friend’s expression was determined, and she ran faster. If Gina stopped, Mattie would keep going.

“They wouldn’t have gone in. It’s locked tighter than a safe. The gate, the doors. The windows are boarded up.” Gina put on a burst of speed to keep up with her friend.

“Your stories about it excited them. They’ll be at the gate, scaring each other about ghosts and goblins.” Mattie gusted a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

Does she feel what I do…that we’re already too late?

Braden couldn’t have reached Hungry House before Carrie. Carrie wouldn’t go into the derelict after everything Gina had told her. Carrie was superstitious, the kind of person who read her horoscope in the newspaper every day. She wouldn’t dare go in, not with Braden.

When they arrived at the rusted front gate, an iron gothic wonder of horror movie perfection, Gina’s knees wobbled. The gate stood ajar, the chain draped over the bars. The padlock lay on the ground.

“You said it was locked up tight.” Mattie glared at Gina.

Gina had scouted the house no fewer than a dozen times since obsession had grabbed hold of her. Each and every visit had proven the security measures put in place by the owner and the town’s police meant real effort would have to be undertaken to get inside.

“It was locked. I checked last week.”

Mattie licked her lips. “Who’d open it? Maybe the owners are here?”

“Right. They’re taking Carrie and Braden on a tour of Hungry House and showing them the sights.”

“Damn her mother for drinking up the money that could have bought Carrie a cellphone. She has a landline, at least. I’m calling her house. I swear, if she and Braden went home and freaked us out for nothing, I’ll kiss her. Then I’ll kick her ass.”

Gina shifted from foot to foot. Mattie waited for someone to pick up at Carrie’s. Though Gina prayed their friend would answer the phone, her gut told her Carrie hadn’t gone home.

It shouldn’t have been possible for Braden to reach Hungry House ahead of her. They should have caught up to Carrie before she’d made it too.

Gina visualized Carrie running to the dilapidated mansion, sweaty and gasping for breath. Noting the wide-open gate. Gina’s warnings ringing in her head, she’d have run straight for the brooding structure to save Braden from joining the list of the missing. The front door would have refused to open, so she’d have run around to the rear of the house. Shoving against the backdoor, which had not been locked as she’d been sure, but swinging wide and casting her into a void of black. Carrie’s trailing scream cut off as the door shut behind her…

Notions of trapdoors and secret rooms that were impossible to leave once entered seemed too innocent an explanation for the years of disappearances. Something far blacker existed underneath. The padlock lying on the ground took on an evil aura of demonic proportions.

“‘The house has fed again.’” Gina quoted Sheriff McCaskill. He’d been in charge of investigating the disappearance of Buddy Clark a decade before. Her blood ran cold.

Mattie either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore the statement. She ended her call with a snarl that bared her teeth. “No one’s picking up. I bet Old Mother Drunkard is passed out. We’ll have to go in.”

Gina stared, her heart speeding up. “But—but—”

“But what? You’ve walked out here a gazillion times, hoping to find the gate and front door open so you could sneak in.”

Gina had never told Mattie about those clandestine forays to Hungry House, but she wasn’t surprised she knew. They were two halves of a whole, after all.

“It’s one thing to wish for it. Another to face it.”

“Buckle up, buttercup. We have to check if they went in there. Which I’m pretty certain they did, since the padlock is off. Idiots.” Mattie stuffed her phone in her back pocket.

“Why is the padlock off? Why, on the day Braden got it in his head to go inside, is the gate open?”

“Maybe it wasn’t locked before. Did you ever pull on it to make sure it was latched? Or did you believe your eyes?” Mattie crooked an eyebrow at her.

“It looked fastened.” When Mattie waited, frowning, Gina admitted, “Fine. I tried it. It was locked.”

“Obviously, today it wasn’t. Braden discovered he could get in and did so. Carrie followed.” Mattie pushed the gate, and it swung open a few inches with a protesting screech.

“Mattie, let’s call the police.” For once, Gina’s eager curiosity listened to her better sense.

“And get Carrie in trouble for trespassing? Our bestie has enough crap on her plate.”

“The disappearances over the years—”

“Are real, but the legend has made them into some sort of hocus pocus they’re not. Whatever has happened in this place has a rational explanation.” She gripped Gina’s shoulder. “We have to be certain Carrie and Braden haven’t been hurt tripping over loose boards or having the ceiling fall in on them. She should be hauling him out and ripping him a new one by now. Something’s wrong, and I know you can feel it.”

With that, Mattie pushed past the reluctant gate. She rushed up the crumbled walk overgrown by weeds.

“All the more reason to call for help!”

Mattie had already mounted the warped wooden steps that led to the porch’s expanse of buckling boards. She glanced at Gina, shrugged, and kept going.

It’s just a house with a legend attached. If it’s not, if Mattie disappears like those others, if she leaves me behind…

Mattie put her hand on the house’s doorknob. Gina ran forward. “Wait!”

Mattie paused and cast a grin over her shoulder. “I knew you wouldn’t let me go in alone.”

“Is it unlocked? I thought there was a padlock there too.” She arrived at the foot of the steps.

“Nope. Just this beat-to-death sign warning us we’re about to be prosecuted for setting foot on the property. I don’t see any cops to throw us in jail, so in we go.” Mattie turned the knob.

It clicked, and the door opened a few inches. It creaked rather than screeched as the gate had, an unimportant sound that any door might make. Nevertheless, the hairs on Gina’s arms rose.

“Yell to see if they’re inside.”

“They went in, all right. Notice the footprints?” Mattie pointed at the tracks besides theirs on the porch boards. Two sets, one pair small, the other close to Gina’s size.

“But…footprints have never been found before, even when people see others go in.”

“Carrie? Braden?” Mattie ignored her and shoved the door wide open. She inhaled sharply. The next instant, she plunged into the dim environs of what appeared to be a foyer.

“Mattie!” Gina lunged forward but remained planted on the porch. She braced her palms against the doorframe and leaned in.

A staircase rose before her. For an instant, Gina thought she heard children’s laughter drifting down from the second floor. Then it was gone, a figment of her imagination.

To her right, through another doorway off the foyer, she heard Mattie cry out. Fear flared into terror, demolishing caution. Gina raced into Hungry House. She barely heard the door click shut behind her.

* * * *

Those who step inside Hungry House never return. But when the abandoned house on the edge of town is ready to feed, it won’t be denied. 

Inquisitive Gina and her impulsive best friend Mattie know better than to enter the abandoned Victorian. The mansion on the edge of Nowhere, Georgia, has a reputation for ‘eating’ those who dare to step inside. Yet when another friend and her younger brother disappear after last being seen heading toward Hungry House, Gina and Mattie have no choice but to follow.

Inside, they find every door is a gateway to a new nightmare. Even death is no escape—it only sends the unlucky trespassers back to the start of Hungry House’s gauntlet. Their only hope is to survive long enough to confront the house’s mistress, an inhuman being whose lust for vengeance is as immortal as she.

Releasing October 25. Pre-order now: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords.

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