Ready for a Halloween Scare? On the Edge of Nowhere is Now on Sale!

 

Cover Image: Erin Dameron-Hill Graphics

Thanks to those of you who have ordered On the Edge of Nowhere. I'm truly grateful. 

For everyone else, 'tis the season for scares! Be sure to pick up a copy. Here's an excerpt to draw you in to the house that'll welcome you and never let you go:

* * * *

Gina paused. She gripped the cold, white rail and watched them. What would the witch of Hungry House do when she arrived? Would she bother to listen to Gina’s pleas? Or would she destroy her on sight, as she’d tried to do in her dream?

“Are you coming too?” Gina’s voice croaked as she glanced at Dorothy.

“There are more than enough assisting Marjory. More than…more than…”

The older woman’s face pinched with tension. She stared at Gina, and the mild expression fled. Her lip curled.

“More than enough of you have climbed the stairs. You’re going nowhere.” Her thin fingers hooked into claws. She shoved Gina from the risers.

Dorothy wasn’t terribly strong, but she surprised Gina, who stumbled away several steps and nearly fell. She caught herself on the altar with the small figure and set it toppling toward the floor. Gina grabbed it in reflex, saving it from smashing to the tiles. She set it on the altar again, only realizing its face had looked like Mattie’s as she turned to gape at Dorothy.

She forgot the surprise almost at once, though her grip still curled around the small statuette, to see those women not aiding Marjory up the stairs had gathered in a circle at the foot of the stairs. A circle around the Mistress’ mosaic image. To a woman, they glowered at Gina.

“What the—?”

“Did you really think I’d let you do this?” Dozens of voices came at her, dozens of mouths moved, but Gina knew only one spoke.

Before she could reply, the mosaic tiles rippled. They began to rise, not individually, but in a single piece…and only those tiles portraying the Mistress.

Her portrait was lifting from the floor, a person made of small bits of pottery. The dress she wore rippled like fabric, her elbows and knees bent as she pushed up to stand, her features shifted as she scowled at Gina.

Go. Now.

Gina wasn’t sure if the words came from one of the women or her own head. She didn’t pause to figure out who’d spoken. Recognizing the imperative and its desperation, she launched herself at the stairs.

The Mistress snatched at her as Gina vaulted over her half-risen figure. Her tiled fingers clicked together when she missed, a small but terrible sound in Gina’s ears.

“Stop her!”

Those between Gina and the spiral flight moved, but she was already upon them, crashing between two. One was Dorothy, who uttered a startled yelp as she fell. The other woman fell too, and Gina’s foot landed on the first riser.

She climbed as fast as she could.

She’d barely rounded the second spiral when she heard a loud thumping below her. A glance over the rail she clung to showed her the Mistress, still a bizarre nightmare of moving tiles, coming after her. The horror’s teeth bared, tiny and sharp ceramic shards.

“You won’t make it.”

Gina kept racing upward. The tightly twisting stairs allowed for less speed than she wished, and the angle of racing to the left was wearing to her leg muscles. She wasn’t even halfway to the trudging Marjory and her assistants, who seemed strangely unaware of the drama, when her legs began to cramp.

“I’ll finish you as I should have long ago. I’ll see to it you never wish to return.”

The Mistress’ threats rang over Gina’s gasps. The clack of porcelain fingers on the iron rail grew louder as she began to catch up.

A quarter of the way to Marjory and the rest. It suddenly occurred to Gina the age of the women she was catching up to. Perhaps they’d turn on her when she reached them, as Dorothy and the others had. Or perhaps she was bringing their doom by racing to them. Maybe the Mistress would attack them as well.

What did it matter when the disciples were climbing toward the Mistress anyway? Wasn’t Marjory determined to rendezvous and die at the hands of the flesh-and-blood horror, which animated the mosaic monstrosity on Gina’s heels?

And…why was the Mistress determined to confront Gina on the stairs, rather than in the cupola?

She had no time to consider the questions waking in her head. A cold, jagged manacle closed around her ankle. It gripped deep, cutting into her flesh.

“Got you.”

Gina screamed and twisted around as the Mistress, her clutch tightening, yanked her. Gina lost her balance and fell, her hip slamming on the riser. She thudded onto the step on her rear, taking a hard seat. Pain shot down her leg, joining the clamor of agony as the tiled grip sliced the flesh of her ankle.

She was face to face with the Mistress, the segmented face grinning around those terrible jagged teeth. The fiend’s grin gaped wide. She was going to bite.

* * * *

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.

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