WIP Wednesday - On the Edge of Nowhere: Basement of Death
Gina wakes from unconsciousness to find she and Mattie have fallen in Hungry House's basement...and another horrific world.
* * * *
“Gina! Wake up!”
She jolted to her feet, her eyes wide. She stared at her
tormentors. It wasn’t two hideous monsters sitting on the ground. It wasn’t
even one monster.
Mattie glared up at her. She rubbed her stomach. “Nice
punch, champ. I suggest you save it for something that deserves it.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry. I was having the worst nightmare, and—are
you okay?” Gina crouched beside her friend.
“Depends on your definition of ‘okay.’ Will I die from your
fists of fury? No. But I’m not optimistic of long life and good health, given
our surroundings.”
Their surroundings? Gina had a look around. The horror she’d
left in the dream returned a thousandfold.
They were outdoors. The baleful moon overhead told her that
much. Besides Mattie, it was the only familiar thing.
The ground was cracked in jagged fissures. The parched earth
stretched into the darkness beyond, a wasteland of death.
Literal death. Surrounding Gina and Mattie were heaps of
skeletal bodies. They dotted the landscape, waist-high hills of human remains.
The nearest was a few feet from where Gina stood. The figure at the top was
clad in the rags of jeans and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Warriors tee-shirt. A
small body. Its skull, to which a few wisps of hair clung, grinned at her.
She clapped both hands to her mouth. Unlike in her
nightmare, she was able to scream.
The tears came next, and Mattie was there to hold her close
and sob with her. Gina had no idea how long they stood there, clutching each
other. She kept her face buried against her friend’s shoulder in a refusal to
look. Yet the image of those little bones, the wide, empty sockets staring
above that grin missing the two front baby teeth—lying atop other miniature
skeletons—clung to her mind’s eye.
Where were they? How had they gotten there?
“We were in Hungry House. Looking for Carrie and Braden.”
“We fell. I must have led you into the front room, where the
floor had fallen through.” Mattie’s breath was hot against her collarbone. She
had taken refuge against her friend’s shoulder, just as Gina had.
“We’re outside. How is this possible? We fell through the
floor to the basement. Didn’t we?”
Mattie considered the blind eye of the moon gazing down on
them. “This makes no sense. We should be inside. But we’re not. And this…”
She waved at the bizarre landscape around them, bare but for
the bone mounds.
We’re not in Nowhere anymore, Auntie Em.
Or maybe they were in the real Nowhere. Not a town but a
no-place.
As if Gina had spoken out loud, Mattie said, “I get the
feeling GPS wouldn’t recognize this place.”
“Did we die? Is this hell?” The question was ludicrous, but
what she saw was beyond belief.
Mattie’s eyes widened, and she pointed to something
half-hidden beyond the bone pile. “Does hell have water pipes?”
Gina gaped. There was indeed a cluster of pipes, the moon’s
illumination allowing her to note how they flaked with red-brown rust. They
hovered in the air, with no visible support.
“Tell me I’m hallucinating.”
“Can we both be seeing the same mirage?” Mattie licked her
lips. “Gina, I think—okay, this is going to sound nuts, but I believe—”
“We’re in the basement of Hungry House.” Gina said it first.
Which was ludicrous. Insane. But the pipes made Gina think
of those in her own mid-century cottage home. The aging laundry room had a
similar configuration, though those pipes were the modern plastic ones. The way
these were sliced at the rear, as if they weren’t cut off but vanishing into a
wall…
“Is this where everyone disappears to? Mattie, are these the
children who went into the house?”
Instead of answering, Mattie stepped back. “We need to get
out of here. Whether it’s hell or Hungry House or some delusion caused by head
injury, we have to go.”
* * * *
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.
Print on sale now: print
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