The Building

A Story by Brian Reaves

What if the building you worked in wanted you dead?

Simon Barton knew it wanted him dead.

He stood on the sidewalk outside the towering office building where he worked and followed its shape from the ground floor to its pinnacle somewhere forty stories above him. The glass windows reflected the buildings around it like some gigantic mirror. At certain times of the day, it almost seemed a wall of light as the sunlight bounced off the panes of glass. At night, it was actually quite beautiful.

Which made it such a shame that the building was trying to kill him.

It had never made a particular threat or spoken words of warning to him, but Simon knew that it hated him. The horrible thing was that he had no idea why.

It had started on his first day at work. He had arrived late and was racing to catch the elevator. The door slid shut mere seconds before he could reach it, and he slapped the call button repeatedly in an attempt to hurry it along. Finally, he cursed his luck and punched the door. The sound of his blow resounded throughout the building as it traveled up the elevator shaft and back again. It was a completely unexpected sound, and he turned around to see if anyone else had noticed it.

They had.

Every face in the lobby was now turned to the tall, thin man with glasses who was abusing their facilities. He smiled sheepishly and turned to face the elevator while waiting. He could still feel their eyes on his back and saw them stare at him from their reflection in the elevator door.

Finally, the door opened and he stepped inside. He pressed the button for the twentieth floor and sighed as the door silently closed behind him.

The ride was smooth and the music pleasant enough for the trip. Simon glanced impatiently at his watch and wished he was riding an express elevator. When it passed the ninth floor, he got his wish.

The elevator stopped suddenly with a shudder and the lights inside it flickered and died. He sat in total darkness listening to the instrumental version of an old “Beatles” tune coming from the speaker in the ceiling. It would have been a humorous sight if not for the fact that elevator kept shaking.

Without warning, it dropped.

A scream flew from Simon’s throat as he felt himself falling. The darkness made his drop even more terrifying, and yet the cursed music still played on. A few seconds later, the elevator stopped again suddenly and Simon slammed to the floor. The music became a shrill grating of static and he covered his ears in a futile attempt to silence it. The tiny metal box felt like a blast furnace as heat abruptly poured from its vents.

He felt his way to the door and began to pound on it while crying for help. The heat was making him dizzy, and the blaring of the static from the speaker was maddening.

Then he felt the elevator begin to move again.

This time it shot up like a rocket, and Simon was glad he was on the floor. As they passed the tenth floor, the music started again. When they passed the fifteenth floor, he felt a cool blast of air from the vents that started bringing the temperature back down again. As he shot past the nineteenth floor, the lights flickered and the tiny room became illuminated again. When the doors opened on the twentieth, he was still sitting on the floor, drenched in sweat and gripping the side rails of the elevator with such intensity that his knuckles were white.

The people who had been patiently waiting for the elevator to come were stunned silent by the sight of the panicked man on the floor. Not wanting to take any chances, Simon scurried through the door on his hands and knees and collapsed in the hallway. The others continued to stare for a moment before finally stepping inside it and pushing the button for their desired floor.

Before Simon could call out a warning, the doors shut. He listened intently for sounds of their screaming, but there was nothing. Looking above the door, he watched as the digital numbers counted down the floors until reaching the first. A few seconds later, they started back up again and he heard it pass and continue its ascent.

It was the last time Simon ever rode the elevator.

Since starting work five months ago, he had managed to lose almost ten pounds from his daily trek up and down twenty flights of stairs. He had also learned quickly to bring his lunch so he didn’t have to do it any more than necessary.

From that day on, the building constantly tried to kill him. Not every day, of course, because then he’d be expecting it and would have his guard up constantly. Instead, it would go a week without trying something, then surprise him. When its assassination attempt would come, Simon would have to act quickly.

One day he found himself trapped in the revolving door in the lobby. People had entered and left in a smooth flow until he got there. The door stopped and locked down the minute he walked in. He was trapped for almost an hour while the building’s maintenance man shook his head in confusion. Finally they were able to push the door off its tracks just wide enough for Simon to squeeze out.

A week later, Simon had been entering through the automatic door near the revolving one (since he no longer trusted it). It opened for every other worker without a problem. When Simon came, it failed to open and he slammed into the glass door. It was quite embarrassing and almost caused him to break his glasses.

Before he could move, it slowly opened to allow him entrance. He shrugged his shoulders and began to step inside.

Suddenly, the door began to slam shut. Simon threw himself forward as it banged closed behind him. As soon as the next employee came up, it opened and closed as usual.

It didn’t take long for Simon to develop a reputation for being accident-prone. When he mentioned his theories about the building’s malicious intent, his coworkers laughed. He could see their suspicious glances as he would come in to work and knew they were calling him paranoid or crazy—or both.

But Simon knew he wasn’t crazy or imagining things. The building wanted him dead, but it was their little secret. So every day became an intimate cat-and-mouse game of survival. Just when Simon thought he knew all its tricks, the building would come up with another. He could never relax or he knew it would win…and he would never allow that to happen.

He walked into the building and nodded at the receptionist. He had long ago given up any hope of impressing her. Seeing a man panic in a revolving door isn’t overtly attractive.

Simon opened the door to the stairwell and walked inside. As he took the first few steps, he heard the door clang shut behind him like the lid of a coffin. With a glance between the staircases he looked upward to the seemingly endless ascension of stairs above him. With a sigh, he began to climb.

When he reached the eleventh floor, he found himself walking into darkness. The lights in the stairwell were out for at least the next ten floors as far as he could see up. He wasn’t surprised, but he was amused.

“Recycling old tricks, eh? I must be winning.” Simon’s voice echoed through the empty stairwell.

He reached into his shirt pocket for a small pen light that he had begun carrying since the last time this happened to him a month ago. The walk up had been terrifying, but he’d managed to make it. Now the darkness before him was sliced away by the thin beam of light.

As he rounded the corner and began up the fourteenth flight, he found what he had been searching for. Lying on its side about halfway up the stairs was an empty beer bottle.

He chuckled and reached to pick it up. He knew that if he left it standing by a door or anywhere else, it would mysteriously find its way back to another step later that day.

“Quite the tripping hazard you’ve got there. Strike two, by the way.”

He calmly continued on his way upward. When he reached the sixteenth floor, he began to notice an incredible chill in the air. It became worse with each step he took. His penlight continued to cut its feeble beam through the darkness, but his steps had slowed slightly.

Between the seventeenth and eighteenth floors, he realized he could see his breath. His teeth were chattering now and he could feel a breeze biting through his thin pants and shirt. This was something new, and for the first time that day he could feel real terror boiling up inside him. He thought he’d seen everything this cursed building could throw at him; now he wasn’t so sure.

When he rounded the eighteenth floor and turned to go up to the nineteenth, his light caught the slight reflection of something on the stairs.

It was ice. And the stairs were covered with it.

To the side, he could see where two air vents were blowing cold air directly onto the steps before them. This was where the bitter cold was coming from. The cold caused the condensation in the air to freeze, then it would melt a little while still leaving water on the steps. Repeat the act enough times and eventually you’d create a sheet of ice. It would take the course of the night, but the building never slept.

Simon knew that when he reported it to the building’s maintenance supervisor, the man would simply scratch his head again and wonder how that section’s thermostat could have gotten stuck like it did. He would apologize and try to fix it, never understanding what had really happened.

But Simon knew. He knew too well.

The entire stairway to the nineteenth floor was covered with the slick frozen liquid. Now he had two choices. First, he could exit here and take the elevator up the remaining two flights. He laughed at this thought and discarded it immediately. That left the other option of carefully trying to make his way up the stairs without breaking his neck.

He looked down between the rails and realized that if he slipped over those rails he would probably fall to the ground floor without stopping. The penlight’s pale beam shone over the stairway and could find no safe place for his steps. But he would not be beaten.

Simon put the penlight in his mouth so he could still see ahead of him, and then gingerly reached for the handrail. He drew back the second his fingertips touched the metal rail. It was freezing cold to the touch and actually burned!

He briefly considered the elevator. If he could find someone to ride up with him, then everything would be all right. The building never acted when there were witnesses. But the odds of finding someone on the eighteenth floor who needed to go just two flights up were minimal. And the thoughts of asking someone to “take a little trip in the elevator” made him cringe. His reputation was scarred enough as it was.

This building would not beat him! He would never allow it!

Steeling himself against what he knew was ahead, he gripped the handrails again and took a tentative step forward. The pain in his hands started immediately, but he ignored it as best he could. The pen light in his mouth shot out a shaky shaft of light that bounced off the reflective surface of the ice. His feet continued to slip with each step and tried to slide from underneath him, but he held firm.

Halfway up the stairs, both feet slipped at once and his entire upper body went over the rail. He involuntarily screamed and watched in horror as the penlight dropped from his mouth and down the stairwell. He followed its tiny ray of light until it disappeared with a quiet clatter at the bottom.

Now he was surrounded by darkness.

Simon closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself that he could make it. He only had a few more steps to this flight and then it would be one more floor to his exit. He could do this, but it would take time.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled himself upright and continued his climb. Simon kept his eyes closed and chose to try and feel his way up the stairs. The darkness around him tried vainly to suffocate him, but he just kept his thoughts on the step ahead.

When he rounded the corner of the nineteenth floor, he noticed that it was getting warmer. Then his foot hit a stair and did not slide. With one hand still firmly locked onto the rail, he reached down and touched the step below him. There was no ice. He opened his eyes, but still could see nothing.

He continued to hold the rail and work his way up until he felt the door to the twentieth floor before him. He twisted the knob and was temporarily blinded by the sudden onslaught of light around him. The floor was well-lit and showed no signs of the technical difficulties being experienced just beyond the metal door to the stairs.

Simon smiled as his eyes adjusted to the light. As the door to the stairs closed behind him, he turned and whispered over his shoulder. “Strike three. Better luck next time.”

As a parting gesture, he kicked the door as it shut. Several heads turned his direction, but he no longer cared. He waved slightly to them as he continued toward his desk.

Before he could reach it, he saw his boss approaching him. Jack Brand was a nice man and very well-organized. He expected the best from his people, yet he never treated them as anything less than equals. Simon liked Mr. Brand a lot and gladly stopped to shake his hand.

“Simon, good to see you,” Jack’s voice was pleasant. “I have to get upstairs to a meeting with the big boys in just a minute and wanted you to go with me. You have all the current information on the Bradley account?”

“Why, yes, sir, I do. I’ll get it from my desk and be right back.”

Jack turned to go. “Meet me at the elevator. We’re in a hurry here and need to get there ASAP.”

Simon’s expression changed only slightly. He nodded at his employer and quickly moved to his desk. He would still be all right, because Jack had made it clear that they were riding together. He could take the stairs back down later if need be.

Gathering the papers, he smiled to himself as he moved toward the elevator door. This was only the second meeting he had been included in, and he took it as a good sign that he was invited. He saw Jack coming from his office with his arms loaded down with reports. Simon pushed the call button for the elevator and reached over to lighten the load his boss was carrying.

The doors opened and they stepped into the elevator together. As Simon pushed the button for their destination, he heard Jack snap his fingers and curse.

“I forgot the printout from last week’s sales figures.” Before Simon could move, Jack was out the door and heading toward his office. He looked back and spoke. “You go ahead. I’ll meet you there.”

Simon started to protest, but his armload of reports slowed him down. As he stepped toward the door, it quickly slid shut before him.

He immediately dropped everything in his arms and hit the button to open the doors. There was no response. He banged on the doors and began to scream.

Then the lights went out and the floor beneath him disappeared.

Earl Thomas, the maintenance man, came walking up to the elevator as Jack returned.

"Hey, Earl. How are you?" Jack tried to reach around him to punch the call button, but Earl shook his head.

"No need to do that, Mr. Brand. Stupid thing's on the fritz again. I just came up here to put an ‘out of order’ sign on it. Nobody needs to ride this thing until I can get somebody down here to look at it."

Before Jack could speak, Earl raised his hand. "Look, it's been a busy morning already. The air conditioning system froze up on the eighteenth floor and everyone there's complaining about icicles hanging everywhere, I had a breaker go out that's got half the stairwell in the dark, and now this. I'll get it all fixed as soon as I can though, OK?"

Jack glanced at his watch and shook his head. He was going to be late for the meeting. He hoped Simon was already there with the reports so they had something to keep their attention until he arrived.

He thanked Earl and turned toward the stairwell door.

Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.