Thump Thump: Tales of Horror, #5

By Michelle Harlow, Geoff Quick and Stephanie Stafford

Graphic blood, gore, and violence. 17+

From the Tales of Horror series, we find little Tommy playing in the basement...

Excerpt:

Tommy wasn't like normal kids, the cellar didn't hide anything from him. To him it was a cozy, dark, cool space where he escaped his parents for a little while and had his own adventures zooming around, fighting space creatures, winning games of chance, and trying to figure out why all those storybook people cared so much about those yucky girls they always have with them. Sometimes when he played, he peeked out the basement window at one of his neighbors' daughter, Jenny, and he thinks he gets it, but then she looks at him and he realizes she's just another dirty, cootie covered girl.

His parents didn't like him playing too much in the basement; they stored all their old junk down there and told him he could get injured playing with the boxes. Tommy didn't listen to that too much though, since there were just so many nifty things down there waiting to play props for his adventures. So he always goes down when they're not looking, and even when they caught him and scolded him he can't help but think about the next time the old place was going to be his playground for another fun filled afternoon.

Thump thump
Thump thump

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michelle Harlow
• Release date: Apr 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781498995344

Michelle Harlow

Author. Beta tester. Music lover. Huge geek, love zombies, video games, doctor who, sci-fi, horror, steampunk, and fantasy.  I also run a geek stuff review site, an online 'all about zombies' type site, and a doctor who site. I am also known as Raradra on facebook and Ubergeekgirl1 on twitter.

Book preview

Thump Thump

Thump thump

Thump thump

Tommy wasn’t like normal kids, the cellar didn’t hide anything from him. To him it was a cozy, dark, cool space where he escaped his parents for a little while and had his own adventures zooming around, fighting space creatures, winning games of chance, and trying to figure out why all those storybook people cared so much about those yucky girls they always have with them. Sometimes when he played, he peeked out the basement window at one of his neighbors’ daughter, Jenny, and he thinks he gets it, but then she looks at him and he realizes she’s just another dirty, cootie covered girl.

His parents didn’t like him playing too much in the basement; they stored all their old junk down there and told him he could get injured playing with the boxes. Tommy didn’t listen to that too much though, since there were just so many nifty things down there waiting to play props for his adventures. So he always goes down when they’re not looking, and even when they caught him and scolded him he can’t help but think about the next time the old place was going to be his playground for another fun filled afternoon.

Thump thump

Thump thump

There was a little place where one part of the cellar wall cracked, just enough that Tommy imagined little gnomes trying to push through from the other side. They hated the concrete that prevented them from getting through to the treasures in the basement and they worked at that concrete wall so they could get in and steal them; at least in Tommy’s mind. He just knew that he could hear them as they scratched at the wall while he played, but he didn’t tell Mommy or Dad about them, because he knew that they would get angry for him going down to the basement again.

So, Tommy just listened to the scratching and played his games where sometimes he was a dragon guarding his hoard. Other times he defended the galaxy against a vicious, burrowing race of worm that was bound to burrow into every planet and eat it from the inside out. It helped his games that he could swear the crack was growing just a little bit every day. Every time it looked like the pile of concrete below the crack was just a bit bigger, the crack just a little bit wider at the middle. Maybe if the crack got a little wider he’d tell Dad, he promised himself every time he left the basement for dinner, or to meet his friends.

Thump thump

Thump thump

Tommy woke up from a deep sleep where he dreamed that someone was at the door of the house and knocked to come in. He yawned, and looked around a minute before he realized that the dream must not be over, he could still hear the knocking! It came from downstairs, and he thought it might even be from the basement! He didn’t know what adventure he was going to have, but he bet it was a good one as he raced down the hall to the basement door. Just when he got there, he heard it again;

Thump thump

Thump thump

That was no dream! Something was down in his basement! Tommy knew his parents always went upstairs at this time of night so they couldn’t be down there putting in more boxes. Tommy opened the door and peered down into the darkness down the stairway. It was too dark, so he couldn’t see much of anything, but the thumping kept going down at the base of the stairs. Tommy leaned waaaay in like he learned to do to get to the light from the doorframe, and clicked on the overhead light.

He was astonished when he saw, at the bottom of the stairs, a person! At least, it looked like a person at first. It was tall like a person, had arms and legs, but geez was it thin, it was scraggly, and it had matted brown hair. It was at the bottom of the stairs, where it tried to climb up, and it looked really clumsy. It would get up two or three steps, and hit the hole where the two bad steps Tommy always knew to avoid used to be, and it fell over and down the steps again. It must have broken them the first time, and now it just kept trying. Whenever it fell it turned over and tried again. The thumps came from its footsteps on the few good steps.

Tommy took a few steps down the stairs, and the thing seemed to notice him all at once. It looked up and Tommy noticed it had dull, white eyes. It must have seen him well enough because it brought its arms up and tried walking up the steps again, but somehow, faster. Tommy could see that where it used to have a neck, there was just a big, nasty looking hole, with dirt and junk all over it. The thumps came faster as it tried to get up the stairs, but it still hit the hole and ended up falling right back down to the bottom again.

Thump thump

Thump thump

Tommy was a smart boy, he saw many of the movies his parents said he shouldn’t, and like he wasn’t scared of the dark basement he also wasn’t scared of monster movies and horror stories. He caught on quickly enough; he had a zombie in his basement! With a little boyish giggle of delight he took a few steps down into the basement and looked around. Sure enough, there was dirt spilling out around a wide crack where the wall finally split open. This wasn’t gnomes or worms, this was something better, an actual zombie!

The zombie had turned over and was underneath the stairs now, with hands that reached up to Tommy through the hole. He looked down and stuck his tongue out at it while he said out loud, You can’t catch me!

Tommy knew that’s what zombies wanted, they wanted to catch things. What they did when they caught stuff Tommy wasn’t sure, but that’s how you got more