The Hundredth Floor

Book excerpt: Kyle Toombs, seventeen, is about to walk the race of his life. Suffering from the mental and physical aftereffects of a terrible accident that almost took his life, bullied at school, he enters a contest in order to show that he’s capable of doing the impossible. The contest is at a local hotel, and the rules are simple—walk up to the fifty-ninth floor and then down again. Rule number two is that he must have a partner, and his partner comes in the form of Marina Ohanian, another student who has secrets and scars of her own. Along the way, things go from the mundane to the unsettling to the truly horrifying, as a demon named Ankrus makes an appearance, toying with their minds as well as the reality they are in. Various scenarios, some that are amusing in a grotesque way, and some that are simply grotesque, beset the duo, and they offer challenges to the mind and spirit. It’s up to Kyle and Marina to concentrate on the task at hand—finishing the race—before Ankrus can accomplish his own task, one that is too terrifying to contemplate.