Death Mask Read Free

on top of his briefcase. "Any volunteers to run upstairs and check out what's wrong?"
    Jimmy pressed his hand against his chest and wheezed. "Sorry, dude. It's my asthma. Fifteen floors, that'd kill me. Newton, how about you, man? I'll hold your cheeseburger for you."
    Three more office workers arrived, all of them carrying takeout lunches.
    "Goddamned elevator's jammed again," explained the shirtsleeved accountant, as if it weren't obvious.
    There were three elevators in the Giley Building in downtown Cincinnati, but most of the time only one of them was working, and even when it did, its doors shuddered so violently whenever they were closing that Jimmy was always worried that they would refuse to open again, and he would be trapped inside.
    The Giley Building had been built in less than eleven months, during the Depression, by hundreds of hands eager for the work. It had been scheduled for demolition more than three years ago, but local conservationists had fought to preserve its brown-brick Italianate facade, as well as its gloomy brown marble lobby, with murals of Cincinnati's history, like the arrival of the first riverboat, and the building of the first suspension bridge over the Ohio River, and the opening of the Procter Gamble soap factory.
    Today, the building was less than two-thirds occupied, and many of the floors were deserted, with echoing corridors and tipped-over chairs and notice boards that were still covered with yellowing sales charts.
    Newton said, "Oh, man," but handed Jimmy his White Castle burger box all the same. He crossed over to the staircase, and he had already opened the door when there was a bing! and the elevator's indicator light went from fifteen to fourteen, and then to twelve.
    "Hallelujah," said the shirtsleeved accountant, and the rest of the office workers gave a cynical cheer.
    Newton came back and reclaimed his cheeseburger. "I'm going to change my job, man. I'm going to work in a building with elevators that actually go up and down, and the fricking air-conditioning actually conditions the fricking air, and half of the offices ain't populated by ghosts."
    Newton thought that he had heard people walking around the empty floors late in the evening, and echoing voices, and telephones ringing that nobody answered.
    "You're crazy, dude," Jimmy told him. "You know there's no such thing as ghosts."
    "Oh, yeah? And where do you think that dead people go when they die?"
    "They don't go nowhere. When you die it's like someone switches the lights off, that's all, and doesn't never switch them back on again. And even if dead people did go somewhere, they sure as hell wouldn't go to the office."
    "I know I darn well wouldn't," put in the shirtsleeved accountant. "When I die, I'm going to Vegas."
    The elevator's indicator continued to bing! its way from twelve to eleven and ten and nine, and eventually it reached the lobby. The office workers crowded around it, waiting for the doors to shudder open.
    At last, they did-chug-chug-chug-and everybody took a step forward. But as they did so, a figure inside the elevator toppled to the floor, and they immediately took a step back.
    "Jesus," said Jimmy.
    "Oh my good God," said a woman right behind him.
    A young woman was crouched facedown in the middle of the elevator floor, where she had just fallen, and underneath her a middle-aged man was lying on his side with his back to them. The young woman was dressed in a cream-colored pantsuit, and the middle-aged man was wearing a pale blue sport coat, but both of them were covered in blood. The elevator was plastered in blood, too, all the way up to the ceiling. There were sprays and runs and dozens of bloody handprints all over the mirrors.
    Most horrific of all, a large kitchen knife was still sticking out of the young woman's right shoulder.
    Without any hesitation, the shirtsleeved accountant tossed his cups of soup and his pizzas and his briefcase onto the lobby floor.
    "Call nine-one-one!" he shouted. He