The 11th Floor

by Charles Culver

  The 11th Floor

  By Charles Culver

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2012 by Charles Culver

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, business establishments, events, locales, are entirely coincidental.

  Cover Image: Copyright Kutlayev Dmitry, 2012

  Used under license from Shutterstock.com

  Need to contact the author? You may contact the author by one of the following ways.

  Email: info@chuckculver.com

  Website: http://www.chuckculver.com

  Introduction

  For many years now, I have had some fairly disturbing nightmares. This book will probably be the first of many where I turn those nightmares into stories. I hope everyone reading this will enjoy the work that my subconscious mind cranks out while I am asleep.

  I also would like to thank everyone who supported and encouraged me during the writing of my first book. First, my mother, Susan, deserves a lot of credit. Every time I completed a few chapters, I would send them to her for a review and opinion. Second, my wife Tamsen, who never even read one sentence of this until I was done. She reviewed the whole thing and pointed out every mistake I made.

  I would also like to give some kudos to James Baldini. He is a good friend of mine who also recently just wrote and published his first book. Whether he knows it or not, he was my inspiration for actually getting this book done. His success provided some of my motivation. When you are done reading this story, check out his book. “The Book of Virtues, Volume 1.”

  Enjoy.

  Chapter 1

  He woke up screaming, heart racing. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he quickly looked around the room.

  “Great. Where am I now?” he asked.

  Fumbling through his pockets, he retrieved his cell phone and opened the flashlight app. The bright LED light illuminated the room. As the exhausted man looked around the barren room, he thought he was alone. Peering over the edge of the bed, he screamed again at the sight displayed before him. Lying in the corner of the room in a pool of blood was a headless male corpse.

  Beginning around the age of nineteen, Luke had been experiencing occasional nighttime blackouts. A few years later, on the advice of his girlfriend at the time, he saw several doctors and had numerous tests performed. Not a single medical expert was able to find a cause for his condition. The best treatment anyone could suggest was to refrain from eating a few hours before bed, not to imbibe alcohol or drugs, and avoid stressful daily activities. More than one doctor suggested that exercise and a little bit of weight loss might have been wise. Their suggestions did help ease the occurrences, but did not cure his ailment.

  Over the years, he kept himself in terrific health and was pretty much the ideal weight for his height— 185 pounds and six feet tall. He ran a few miles a couple times a week, and lifted weights occasionally. He never drank or used drugs. In fact, he was rarely ever sick. None of that, however, seemed to matter.

  He was thirty-three years old but the night blackouts continued. He could only ever remember going to sleep and the subsequent nightmares that followed. The nightmares typically featured demons, spirits, ghosts, murderers, and other subjects of the macabre. When he would awaken, he would always find himself somewhere other than his own bed. Since he lived by himself in a studio apartment, he had no one to ask about what might have happened. He once tried to videotape himself while sleeping, but it proved to be a waste of effort. Upon review of the tape, it only showed him getting out of bed and turning the camera off. An action which he could not remember doing.

  On a list of places he had found himself upon waking, next to a dead body was the most terrifying. In the past he had awakened under a tree in the woods, in a closet, the back seat of a car, and even once on the bathroom floor of a highway rest stop. The bathroom floor was easily the most repulsive place Luke had ever found himself. This time was different. Not once in fourteen years had he ever woken up next to another person, living or dead.

  Luke stared at the body with his cell phone light and became overwhelmed with fear. His hands shook. With shaking hands, he switched off the light so he didn’t have to see the dead person anymore. Realizing that it would be impossible to find a way out of the room with no light, he quickly switched it back on and searched for a door. He found only a window with blackened panels.

  The room itself was small, with old brick walls. Some graffiti could be seen, but was too faded to read. It looked like there had once been an unsuccessful attempt to remove, or wash it off. There was a twin mattress on the floor in the corner, a small, round coffee table, and a metal folding chair covered in blood. On the table were bits of hair, a few droplets of blood, and a blood-covered bread knife. On the wall next to the table, carved into the brick, was written, “Lord, save me. They are coming for me. I don’t want to die.” It looked fresh and recent. The brick shavings and dust were still present.

  He headed towards the window. He needed to get out of this room as fast as possible, and the window was apparently the only exit.

  Chapter 2

  Tina lived at home with her parents. Upon graduating college, she was unable to find a job. Numerous applications and interviews yielded no work. Those were tough times indeed. With so many people out of work, every time a position opened up, companies were flooded with applicants. Plus, in attempts to save the company money, more and more programming jobs were outsourced. Luckily, she had an “in” for a new opening. A large tech company was based in a nearby city, and her uncle Richie knew the owner.

  When Tina awoke that morning, she was both excited and nervous. She longed to move into an apartment of her own. She had been rehearsing answers to possible interview questions. When anyone had been through as many interviews as she had, they noticed common topics and questions. She didn’t want to stutter or hesitate on an answer. Maybe they wouldn’t place as much emphasis on the interview since her uncle knew the owner.

  “Keep it together, Tina. You don’t want to seem like a complete idiot in front of your new boss,” she said to herself. “Well, potential new boss.” She chuckled nervously.

  She checked herself out in the mirror while putting on her makeup— stunning as usual, almost statuesque. She had long blonde hair, blue eyes, crazy curves, and beautiful long legs. She practically didn’t even need to wear pantyhose.

  As she was getting dressed, there was a knock on the wall of her room. Her mother usually knocked on the wall of the stairwell so she didn’t have to go all the way upstairs to knock on her door. Her mother wasn’t lazy; she just had knee and hip problems. The stairs were too much for her so she tried to stay downstairs as much as possible to avoid using them.

  “Tina!” her mother shouted. “Hurry up and come down for breakfast. You don’t want to be late today.”

  “I’m coming! Be down shortly, Mommy,” replied Tina.

  Even though Tina was a grown woman of twenty-five, she still called her mother “Mommy.” She felt childish sometimes, but it was a name that stuck. Not saying Mommy now felt wrong. Her mother didn’t mind. In fact, she rather enjoyed it. Her father thought it was cute, as she called him “Daddy” too.

  Her father called upstairs to her, “Yeah, hurry up, kiddo. The train is leaving in fifteen
minutes.”

  Her father was giving her a ride to the interview today since her car was in the shop. He drove an old Cadillac, which he jokingly referred to as “the train” because it was so large and used massive amounts of fuel. Tina really wanted to buy a new car, but the banks didn’t seem to give loans out to people with no income. This was at the top of her list of things to do once she got a job, along with the apartment. She decided it would be a bad idea to move out on her own without a reliable means of transportation.

  She quickly finished getting dressed and ran down the stairs for breakfast. She hoped it wasn’t anything heavy, as she didn’t have much of an appetite this morning. Luckily, her mother had prepared an assortment of fresh fruit and some dry wheat toast for her. Not many people would like that for breakfast, but she found it delightful.

  Chapter 3

  With his ear pressed up against the pane of glass, Luke heard nothing. He was unsure of where he was and his prior experiences told him not to barge into an unknown area without first checking for dangers. Besides, there was already a dead person in the room. Who knew what else might have been nearby? Not anxious to find out who or what killed the man, and not overly excited about possibly becoming dead himself if the suspect was still close, he listened a little longer.

  Many years before, during one of his blackouts, he had awakened in what appeared to be a walk-in pantry fully stocked with cans and boxes of food. Back then he wasn’t as cautious, and carelessly threw open the door. Waiting on the other side was a dog, which had no doubt smelled him through the gap. He narrowly escaped being mauled that day by quickly jumping onto the countertop and going out the window.

  Having listened for nearly ten minutes, without hearing anything from the other side of the window, he cautiously pulled up on the handle and slid the window open about an inch. He peered through hoping not to see anyone, or anything, that might want to do him harm. There appeared to be no one around. In fact, it looked like the window backed up to a dead-end alley in a city.

  Fortunately for Luke, there was a fire escape alongside the window. He lifted himself up and sat on the windowsill, swung his legs around to the other side and dropped down onto the fire escape. He wanted to make as little noise as possible while he made his descent so as to not draw any unwanted attention. Silence proved a difficult task as this fire escape was old and rusty. He did make it safely to the ground, however noisy it may have been, and took off running down the alley as fast as he could.

  While he was running, many questions came to mind. Why was there a room only accessible via a fire escape? What was this room used for? How did he end up there alone with a dead man? For that matter, who was that dead, headless man and who killed him? Where was his head? Even with all these questions, he tried to focus on his primary goal at this point— get home and get there quickly.

  As he approached the intersecting street he slowed, caught his breath, and walked out of the alley. Once on the street he glanced around, looking for some kind of landmark or sign that might indicate where he was. Every direction he looked appeared the same. Nothing but tall buildings and empty cars were to be found. There were no people anywhere. In fact, there was no movement at all: no animals, birds, or sounds.

  Luke said to himself, “Better get going in case someone, or something, heard that and comes looking for me.”

  Luke turned right and began walking down the empty street. That’s when he noticed it out of the corner of his eye. There to his right, in a reflection of himself in the window of the storefront he was passing, was a hooded figure standing behind him. Startled, he staggered back away from the window. Not immediately obvious to him was the very nature of how a reflection works. Moving back away from it would mean that he was actually moving closer to the object behind him. Once he realized this, he spun around and found nothing was there.

  Looking back over his shoulder yielded an entirely different image in the window than before. This was an image of a bustling street, filled with cars, people all going about their daily lives, all bathed in beautiful sunshine. It was like he was standing in the complete opposite of that picture. He closed his eyes tightly, then opened them. One more look in the window revealed the street he was currently standing in, alone. This time there was no hooded figure behind him.

  A chill came over Luke and goose bumps formed on his arms. He kept silent while walking cautiously down the street. The last thing he wanted was to be caught by surprise. Five minutes passed before the noise began. Sounding like it was coming from every direction, completely surrounding him, there was maniacal laughter.

  Chapter 4

  Tina’s father, Joseph, drove way too fast for her liking. She knew better than to say anything to him about it. Once before she commented on his driving and he responded with, “I’ve been driving longer than you have been alive.” She was aware that he had never received a ticket or been the cause of an accident. Therefore, she just sat quietly as a passenger and tried to enjoy the passing scenery.

  Fortunately for her, it was a quick ride to the city. While they lived only twenty miles away in a nice rural community, the ride into the city typically took them almost ninety minutes. The roads they needed to use to get to the highway were low-speed-limit roads. Once on the highway, they had to deal with congestion, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and lane closures on various bridges and tollbooths. The ride this day only took them thirty minutes. Traffic was nonexistent. Once in the city, Joseph parked the car in the first spot he found. While he was ecstatic that he managed to get a spot so easily, he was unnerved by what he saw.

  Sitting in the now parked car, they both looked at each other, then at the empty streets almost in unison.

  “Daddy,” said Tina. “Where is everyone?”

  “I don’t know, kiddo, I have never seen anything like this before,” said Joseph.

  Tina just stared out the window. There was not a single person to be seen anywhere. She reached over and pushed down the button to control the window.

  “I am not sure what to make of this,” her father said. “There was no one on the way here, there’s no one here now, and I’m betting that if we start driving around, we won’t see anyone around the area at all.”

  “I don’t like this, Daddy,” Tina said as she finished putting the window down. “I don’t hear any noise at all. It’s like we drove into a ghost town.”

  “Ghost world is more like what I would describe it as,” said Joseph. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen or heard from a single person since I woke up this morning, except for you and your mother.”

  “Oh my God, Mom,” replied Tina as she reached into her purse to retrieve her cell phone. “I have to call her and make sure she is alright.”

  Tina dialed the numbers, pressed send, and was immediately greeted with a beeping noise. The screen read, “Call Failed. No Service.” Cell service at her house was spotty and sometimes depended on the weather and season. If she had been at home, she might not have been surprised by the lack of signal; however, they were in the city. The city generally had pretty excellent signal strength and data speeds no matter where they were.

  “Daddy, I have no signal on my phone. Try yours.”

  “I just did, mine is dead too.”

  He switched on the radio, but there was nothing but crackling noise and static across the entire band. Both AM and FM were dead.

  “Do you think Mommy is okay?” she asked.

  “I’m sure she is, kiddo. Your mom is a trooper,” replied Joseph. When we get home later, she’ll probably be wondering why we didn’t call with the good news of your interview.”

  “Do you think I should even still try going to my interview, I mean, considering there is no one around? I’m a little creeped out.”

  “No, don’t you dare get out of this car,” said Joseph. “I don’t know what’s going on. An entire city of people doesn’t just disappear. I don’t know what happened to them, and I don’t want whatever it was to happen to us, too.”


  No sooner had the words left his lips than they heard demented laughter coming from outside the car.

  Chapter 5

  For the first time in five years, Jonathan woke up feeling completely rested. Living in the city was something you either loved or hated. He loved it, except for the constant noise. All day long he was surrounded by noise. All night long, there was more noise. Even in the middle of the night, you could hear it. Eventually it became part of your life and you began to tune it out and get used to it. Not Jonathan. He could deal with it during the day, but at night, he needed quiet.

  Working as the CEO of a corporation with its headquarters in the city, he felt the need to live close by. He was a very hands-on kind of person and couldn’t stand letting someone else make any decisions without his involvement. His position and wealth afforded him the ability to live in the city and not have to commute. His penchant for luxuries and his aversion to noise drove him to buy the top-floor penthouse in a building near where he worked. Even as high as his apartment was located, he could still hear the city noise at night; however, the distance from the traffic and his white noise machine usually allowed him to sleep soundly.

  He lived alone in his penthouse. He preferred solitude. It allowed him time to read books, think about life, and make business decisions. He did watch some television, but only business news channels. He never watched any of that reality show drivel that was so popular those days. His evening ritual was to read a few chapters of his current book of choice, then watch Bloomberg TV’s recap on the day’s events while enjoying a glass of scotch. His current favorite was The Macallan, 40-year. His father had taught him his appreciation of whiskey many years ago, before he passed away.