Prologue
The screw's sharp metal threads bit at Mark's fingertips, scoring deeply into the pads. Blood smeared the screw head and dripped onto the rusty, gray metal vent cover Mark was laboring to remove from the wall.
Mark had already freed two of the vent's screws. He'd tried to bend the cover back away from the wall, but the metal was too strong. He had to get a third screw out so he could swing the cover out of the way. The vent was large, big enough, Mark thought, for him to get through. It had to be. If it wasn't…he didn't even want to think about what would happen to him.
"C'mon, c'mon," he muttered quietly. The words came out in staccato gasps because Mark's heart was pounding so violently it felt like it was viciously beating the air out of his lungs.
A heavy bang sounded behind Mark…a loud bang that vibrated the table Mark was crouched under. Involuntarily, Mark raised his head, whacking it on the table as he turned to look over his shoulder. The throbbing that erupted in his skull added syncopation to his rapid-fire breathing. Mark stared at the barrier he'd built up in front of the office's metal door. Was it going to hold?
Another bang. This one reverberated through the office, Mark felt the vibration course through all the bones in his body. The vibration turned into a panicked convulsion as one of the filing cabinets he'd piled on top of the desk teetered. The desk was wedged against the door, but if the cabinets began to fall, the desk wouldn't be able to stay in place.
The wobbling filing cabinet bumped into the desk chair that topped the pile of office furniture Mark had cobbled into a blockade. The chair toppled over and crashed onto the office's linoleum floor. The desk twitched, but thankfully, had remained firmly in its place.
Ignoring the prickles between his shoulder blades as he rotated away from the door, Mark returned his concentration to the blood-slicked screw, which stubbornly refused to turn for a couple more seconds.
Mark gritted his teeth and put all his focus on the screw head. And finally, the screw came loose. He dropped it as the vent cover swiveled on its remaining screw and swung away from the opening in the wall.
Mark peered into the black shaft extending in front of him. Stuffy air wafted from the opening. Dust billowed upward. He suppressed a sneeze. Behind Mark, the fingernails-on-a-blackboard screech preceded a deafening clang. Mark's head swiveled. The filing cabinet was no longer on top of the desk. It lay on the floor. And behind it, the desk began to move away from the doorknob.
Mark sucked in his breath and looked around wildly for his flashlight. He'd set down the large, club-style light when he'd begun working on the screws. Where did he put it this time?
Finally, Mark spotted the flashlight a few feet to his right. He lunged for it as another deafening metallic thud came from the office door. The overhead speakers hissed, and then they emitted a tinny shriek.
Time to go. Mark thought.
Flipping on his flashlight, Mark crawled into the narrow darkness. More thuds and thumps chased him away from the office. He scrambled as fast as he could. In his thirties, Mark had come to terms with his nerdish looks and receding hairline, but he'd never been thrilled with his slight body. For once, though, he was grateful for his narrow shoulders. And even so, he still had to squirm and wriggle his way through the tightened enclosure of the vent shaft.
In spite of the close quarters, he made quick progress. The continued caterwaul coming from the speakers and the echoing bangs and thumps that sounded like they were pursuing Mark through the inkiness impelled him through the shaft at what must have been a lightning speed.
In what felt like both seconds and centuries, Mark reached the end of the vent shaft that led away from the office. The passage split. Mark aimed his flashlight beam left, then right. The light revealed the same thing in both directions: darkness and more darkness. Sweat stung Mark's eyes and dripped off his nose. The stench of his perspiration was fetid in the confined space.
Mark set down his flashlight so he could wipe his face. Another scourging howl came from the building's speakers. Mark snatched up his flashlight. Without thinking anymore, he headed down the left passageway.
Losing himself again in frantic crawling that defied his ability to quantify seconds or minutes, Mark clambered forward until he found himself looking at a vent cover like the one that he'd removed in the office. Mark groaned. Was he trapped? If this vent cover was screwed on as securely as the one in the office…
The cacophony coming from the speakers crescendoed. The vent shaft shook as the entire building quaked.
Mark hefted his flashlight and used the end of it to pound on the vent cover. To his shock and relief, the vent cover came loose. It flipped away from the shaft and slapped the wall with a crash that made Mark cringe. Even above the din that filled the building, the sound carried, giving away Mark's location. Mark quickly pulled himself out of the vent shaft. Every nerve ending his body on alert, Mark stood and whirled in a circle, shining his light around him.
When the flashlight beam revealed stacks of boxes, restaurant supplies, and a closed, frosted-glass door, Mark let out a pent-up breath. He was in one of the storage rooms. And he was alone. For the moment.
Mark took a step toward the door. Reaching for the knob, he hesitated.
What was on the other side of the door?
Although Mark could see no looming shadows beyond the murky glass, his heart rate ratcheted up a couple more notches. His chest felt contracted, like metal bands were constricting around him. Mark didn't want to open that door that stood between his safety and what was roaming loose beyond the door. But he couldn't stay in the storage room forever. Locking himself in the office hadn't worked. Hiding in there wouldn't either. He had to get out of the building.
Mark turned the knob and threw open the door. Willing himself not to think, Mark stepped out of the storage room. Checking left and right, seeing nothing but the dimly lit hallway, Mark took off in a sprint.
His rubber-solid athletic shoes slapping at the black-and-white-checkered floor, Mark reached the hallway corner in seconds. He rounded it, and his gaze locked on the glowing red EXIT sign above the door just thirty feet away. Pumped up by hope, Mark shot toward the door.
Mark hit the door's metal crash bar at top speed. Fully expecting to catapult through the door into the sweet freedom of the night outside, Mark was shocked when his body bounced backward off the bar.
He windmilled his arms and kept his balance. Then he threw himself at the door. Even though Mark had no bulk, he wasn't a small guy. At five foot eleven, he had a little heft. Surely, he could bash the door open.
But no. The door remained closed, like it was nailed shut.
Mark tried again. And again.
Finally, panting heavily, he leaned against the door. And that's when he heard it.
"Da-da dum-dum-dum, da-dum diddly doom…"
The singsong voice echoed through the building as it came toward Mark. Its playful tone seemed to crawl up Mark's spine.
Goosebumps erupting on his bare arms, Mark turned and looked down the long hallway behind him. As soon as he did, the corridor's lights went out. What little illumination there had turned to utter blackness.
"Da-da-da-dum. Da-da baba-ba-dum…"
The mocking tones came closer.
Mark lost it. Turning, he pounded on the exit door. "HELP! SOMEONE! HELP ME!" Mark screamed so loudly that the words abraded his throat like a metal file scouring at his vocal cords.
In spite of his cries, though, Mark could still hear the pounding footsteps that rushed up behind him. Going rigid, his whole body immobilized by his brain's inability to accept what was happening, Mark waited for the inevitable attack that would-
Clinging to a tenuous thread of awareness, Mark's brain attempted to process all the stimuli that were bombarding his senses. His eyes registered fluorescent lights, at one scathingly bright and then terrifyingly dark. His feet relayed burning pressure, vice-like clamping across the arches. His spine communicated jarring and bumping, cracking into a seemingly endless rock-hard expanse. His forehead felt warm with thick moisture; it ran into his ears. Mark blinked as his brain worked to make sense of all these bodily reports. He attempted to move.
As soon as Mark tried to get his body to follow his command, his brain reached a conclusion about his situation. Mark lifted his head and looked down the length of his prone body. He was being dragged down the hallway by his feet.
Looking into the on-and-off shadows, Mark couldn't see what had held him. But he didn't need to see it. He knew what it was.
Corkscrewing his spine in an attempt to get away, Mark's head slammed against the floor beneath him. He felt his hip knock against something sharp and realized he was being dragged around a corner. Stiffening, his stomach flip-flopped with the realization of where he was.
The grayscale of intermittent light was abruptly replaced by a swirling kaleidoscope of color. Red and yellow and purple and blue floodlights streamed swaths of radiance across Mark's field of vision. As his fingers flexed, in his attempt to grab at something - anything - to stop his progress toward wherever he was being dragged, Mark recognized the detritus of long-forgotten fun. His hand grazed over a party hat. His thigh rubbed up against a table leg.
Mark was tugged hard, and his body twisted wildly. As it did, Mark's gaze landed on a wall covered with children's drawings. The yellowed, curling paper covered in crayon-rendered stick figures ruffled in the air current as Mark was heaved past the drawing-covered wall.
Mark had looked at that wall long and hard just a few hours earlier. The wall had given him the creeps, serious creeps. One drawing in particular, one that was noticeably larger than the others, had captured his attention. This drawing, hung as if it was the central masterpiece of an exhibit, depicted a large green Sprigatito standing hand in hand with five happy children. In spite of the gaiety suggested by the cheerful scene, the image had troubled Mark.
As Mark caught a glimpse of the Sprigatito drawing now, he felt bile raise in the back of his throat. He tried to scissor his legs to free himself from his captor. The motion did nothing but amp up the pressure around his feet.
Mark was yanked hard. His head smacked against the wall as he went around another corner. For a few seconds, he thought he heard the undulating, distant sound of children laughing. Then the hint of cognizance that had surfaced to make him aware of his surroundings once again sank beneath a layer of dullness.
Mark, the coward that he felt he was, welcomed the muffled understanding. Unwilling to face the truth of what was happening, or what was about to happen, he slipped into a dreamlike state that eased the hard edges of his predicament. He let himself float in and out of reality until, suddenly, his body was whipped from the floor and thrown.
When Mark's back smacked into cold metal, his mind was jarred into full alertness. His gaze immediately scanned his surroundings as he took in the pinching, pressing steel wrapping itself all around him.
Mark cried out and attempted to leap from the metal chair he knew he was in. Before his muscles could lift him upward, a green luminosity shone from a button on the side of his chair, and metal restraints snapped tightly around his wrists. A thick leather strap snugged tightly around his chest. Mark writhed, but he knew he was just wasting his energy.
The Parts and Services room. Mark thought.
Of all the eerie rooms in the building that he'd seen, this was the room that had freaked him out the most when he'd first seen it. Its walls were lined with metal shelving that surrounded multiple stainless steel worktables topped with tools, wires, fasteners, and various disembodied robotic endoskeletons. Metal feet and arms and hands and legs and elbows and shoulders were tangled on the shelves and strewn across the worktables. When Mark had first seen the room, he'd felt like he was standing in a robotic torture chamber.
Once again, Mark thrashed around in the chair. Using all of the strength he could muster, he tried to free himself. The chair held on to him, and then it snapped backward, stretching him flat.
As soon as Mark was supine, a massive, furry creature mask loomed over his face. Mark screamed.
As Mark's pointless bawling filled the room, the mask opened up. The two halves of the mask peeled back, expanding outward. As the fur parted, spinning robotic mechanisms filled Mark's vision.
Razor-sharp and in constant motion, the inside of the mask was a blur of clicking, clanking knifelike protrusions and pincers. Every edge of exposed metal was a small lethal weapon that would easily pierce human skin. Mark whipped his head from side to side. He bucked his torso. He kicked his legs. At first, Mark felt like his efforts were futile, but then he felt one of the armrests begin to wiggle. Straining to crane his neck, Mark looked at his wrist. He couldn't see what was loosening, but something was. Maybe a bolt was coming free.
The despair had been clutching at Mark since he'd hit the metal chair and relaxed its grip, only a little. Mark let himself start to think he might be able to escape.
The mask's first cutting assault slashed into Mark's jaw.
Overcome by the stabs and slices that ripped at his forehead and cheeks and jabbed into his eyes and mouth, blood began to splatter all over the chair. The mask was now covered in viscera and brain matter, but the gears continued to shred through Mark's face and break into his skull.
He couldn't survive.
No one could.