On the Edge of Nowhere Excerpt

 

Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill Graphics

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The first thing Gina saw when she charged into the front room was Mattie kneeling on a scarred plank floor. She stared down into a vast hole in the middle of the space. Gina gaped at the impossible cavity, outlined by splintered boards that framed the abyss below in a mouthful of jagged fangs. None of the police reports nor reporters’ stories from years past had mentioned such damage.

“Carrie! Braden! Are you down there?” Mattie shouted into the void. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the edges of the boards.

There was no answer, and Gina closed in on the hole. “Can you see them?”

“Too dark to see anything. Get your phone out. We’ll use the flashlights.”

A moment later, the weak beams shone into the pit below. What must have been the basement’s dirt floor showed nothing but the pawprints of animals.

“Move that direction. I can’t see the other side of this stupid pit.” Mattie sounded angry. Concern had turned her tone abrupt.

They crept along the edge of the room. Their phones illuminated the basement below in small, spot-lit portions. Their beams shook. No doubt Mattie was as afraid as Gina that they’d spot broken bodies beneath, the Asher siblings crumpled, their limbs bent at impossible angles.

The wall they started from and the next, with a boarded-up picture window, were simple enough to navigate around. However, they were forced to creep along the third wall, since the hole yawned a foot from it.

“We’re crazy to do this.” Gina followed Mattie’s careful steps. The shattered board she trod on creaked alarmingly.

“We have to find them if they’re down there and call for help if they’re hurt.” Mattie’s jaw was tight, her words slurred between clenched teeth.

“We should have called the cops before we came in here.”

“If one of them is bleeding out, we don’t have time to wait. What’s that? Geez, just an old furnace. Look at that thing.”

“You look at it. The grate reminds me of teeth.” Like the hole they navigated the circumference of, Hungry House had too many fangs.

“Nasty. I’m gonna have nightmares about it chasing me. No lie.” Mattie heaved for breath. She inched toward the fourth wall, which had a large doorway opening to darkness. At least there was plenty of space where they could walk on that side.

When they reached it, they clasped sweating hands without looking at each other. Their gasps were loud but didn’t echo in the emptiness. Gina wondered if it was normal for sound to have such a dead weight to it.

They were able to finish their inspection of what they could view of the basement below in a few seconds.

“Good. Great. No broken bodies to haul up. Guess we’d better check the rest of the house.” Mattie turned to the door behind them, her phone held out to illuminate the remains of another bare room. No craters waited on its dusty wooden floor. She started forward. “Carrie! Braden? Where are you?”

“I don’t think they’re in here.” The echoless sounds of her friend’s yell, of their footsteps, of the creaking boards unnerved Gina. The air was stale, and everything around her was stripped of color. Even Mattie appeared to have a gray cast over her.

She marched toward the next area. “You read the old news stories. Didn’t the reporters describe the rooms? What did they say is in here?”

“A massive kitchen. It stretches to the rear of the house.”

They arrived in the kitchen, and it was as huge as the reports had claimed. The stove was long gone, but the metal pipe of an exhaust hung from the brick chimney. It glinted the light from their phones. Open shelves hung over the sink that took up a quarter of a long wall. The few doors left on rustic wooden cabinets hung askew, their bent hinges ready to let go and send them to their final rest on the dust-strewn ground.

“Nothing. No sign of tracks from rats or possums. Or Carrie and Braden. Shouldn’t there be spiderwebs?” As Gina put her finger on what bothered her the most about the house, the hairs on her arms rose. “It’s like a half-finished movie set of an abandoned building. A lot of details are missing.”

Mattie opened her mouth. Her expression stated she was ready to argue, but she stared at their surroundings. “You know what? You’re right. This is all wrong.”

“There’s something else. Look at the beams from our phones.”

“Yeah? What?”

“No dust floating. Even the cleanest places have dust particles flying everywhere, and this place isn’t clean by a mile.”

“Point taken.”

“Let’s go. We’ll check Carrie’s house, make certain she and Braden aren’t there, then we’ll call the cops.”

“Okay.” Mattie took a step toward her.

Both phone flashlights died. They plunged into darkness.

Gina wanted to scream, but her voice had disappeared with the light. She frantically tried to activate her phone. Though it was cool and solid in her hand, it didn’t respond.

“Mattie?” She managed her friend’s name in a strangled tone.

“Yeah. I’m here. My phone’s not working. Yours?” Her voice was higher-pitched than usual.

Gina trembled. She’d never heard Mattie sound scared before, not like this. Anger was her go-to when she was upset. “Nothing. How could both our phones die at the same moment?”

“I don’t know. Keep talking. I’ll come to you.”

“Be careful.” Gina held her hands out in the direction she’d last seen her friend. Though nothing had been between them but a couple yards of wooden floor, Gina wondered if Mattie would find her.

Hungry House was swallowing them, as it had so many others. The urge to scream was growing, and Gina would be able to unleash it this time. She was afraid if she did so, she wouldn’t stop.

She had to keep her head. She was with Mattie, and that was a plus.

She yelped anyhow when Mattie’s fingers brushed hers. She swore descriptively, embarrassed.

“You got that right.” Mattie sounded relieved when they clutched hands. “I’m starting to believe there’s something behind those stupid legends about this place.”

“What do we do?”

“I can find the front door.”

“Not around the hole in the floor!”

“We won’t go in that room. There’s a door to the hall leading straight to the foyer. It’s on your left.”

Gina had noticed it earlier, and the hall beyond, its walls peeling wallpaper so old the details had been lost. She realized something else.

“It shouldn’t be this dark. We had a little light to see by before we switched on our flashlights.”

“Don’t panic. We’re getting out of here. Slow and steady,” Mattie encouraged. “Hang onto me. Don’t walk into anything.”

Gina shoved her useless phone into the back pocket of her jeans. She waved her free hand before her and felt only motionless air ahead. She fumbled toward where she hoped the doorway waited. At her side, Mattie kept up with her.

Kids go into Hungry House. They don’t come out.

“How far do you think?” She struggled to keep her voice even.

“A dozen steps, maybe? We weren’t quite in the middle of the kitchen. Veer a little more to the left.”

“If you say so. It’s so dark, I haven’t got a clue where anything is.” Gina had lost her bearings and let Mattie guide her. “Shouldn’t we be able to see something? Have your eyes adjusted yet?”

“I’m the blind leading the blind.” Mattie’s giggle was a squeal. It verged on hysteria. Her palm sweated in Gina’s grip. “Two blind mice/Two blind mice/See how they run.”

“Stop.” Her friend’s high-pitched laughter and the lack of an echo freaked Gina out. “Shouldn’t we have found the door by now? Oh, wait. We’re here!”

Her waving fingers stubbed hard against the doorframe, but she barely noted the pain in her relief they’d found the hall. Gina halted and raised a little cheer. In the blackness of the house, she’d begun suspect they’d been pitched into an endless void, the belly of whatever loathsome beast Hungry House was. That they’d located evidence they were still in the building dizzied her with relief. Her knees threatened to give out.

Gina’s foot sought the floor before her. Instead, it plunged into space. She fell and flailed. Mattie screamed in her ear, a terrified blast that sent a bolt of agony through her head.

She had an instant to think Mattie got us turned around, we walked into the front room with the big hole—

Then pain crashed throughout her body. Agony fled, and she traded darkness for darkness, where fear didn’t follow.

For a little while, anyway.

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