Darkfall — Stephen Laws

As a brutal storm unleashes its fury on the city, detective Jack Cardiff and his squad investigate the mysterious disappearance of employees from a high-rise building where only a grisly clue is left, plunging them into a nightmarish world of unimaginable horror and evil.

On Christmas Eve, dozens of office parties are taking place throughout an enormous high-rise. The ominous storm on the horizon does nothing to diminish the revelers' spirits-until a deafening thunderclap sounds and all the residents in the building vanish. All, that is, except the slightly intoxicated superintendent manning the boiler room. Laws's enthralling story, first published in the U.K. in 1992, moves at lightning speed in the first act, but once the story is established, it turns into a fascinating Clive Barker-esque nightmare where the walls, doors and floors come to life and absorb human tissue, creating a whole new life form. Like the best metaphysical horror stories, the book offers its own sweeping cosmology, explaining everything from haunted houses to the Bermuda Triangle. The themes-what it means to be human, our relationship with the world around us and even a fairly pedestrian idea like our overreliance on electricity-never break free of the Hollywood-ish story structure, but this is escapism after all, and fine escapism at that. Whether intentional or not, this absorbing tale is also a spot-on allegory for the quiet horrors of cubicle life: in a sprawling, byzantine office building, the walls themselves are the enemy.