Seven-feet-tall. Four hundred pounds. A blood-crusted, rusty steel plate screwed into his skull. But perhaps the most terrifying thing about reclusive psychopath Jacob Goodnight are the razor-sharp nails on his forefingers, the ones that circle around his victims' eyes just before he takes them.

Holed up within the long-abandoned Blackwell Hotel, nine floors of hidden passageways and two-way mirrors that once acted as a playground for the rich and privileged, Jacob's disturbing gaze is now fixed on Kira, Christine, Michael, Tye, Zoe, Melissa, Richie, and Russell -- eight delinquents hoping to shave time off their county jail sentences by performing community service and restoring the building -- and detention officer Frank Williams, the former cop who put a bullet in Jacob's head four years prior. Goodnight sees the sins in their eyes -- he always does -- and he's going to pluck them out, one by one...

See No Evil, a violent, bloody account of madness and revenge, is a novelization of the terrifying new thriller from WWE Films and Lionsgate, starring WWE Raw Superstar Kane.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"We are all born mad. Some remain so."

-- Samuel Beckett

Dusk. The time when day seeps into night. the changing of the guard. Not quite afternoon, not yet night. A time when the weary head home and the troubles of the day are locked outside.

The orange sun was drowning behind a landscape of abandoned factory smokestacks and old rusty machinery, remnants of a once industrious and prosperous time, now empty reminders of recession and foreclosures. Long, darkening shadows stretched across the city, past the old industrial parks and toward the road that led up to the hill where no one had ventured for some time.

Down a deserted cul-de-sac, the patrol car cruised in front of houses in long need of repair, abandoned and empty. The street sat on top of a hill where the view of the city was that of small pale lights flickering on and off in indiscriminate rhythms in the distance, like lonely stars that can't find their way. The whole neighborhood had slowly eroded away. First one family moved, then another family, then another. Gone. Vanished. What had been planned in the fifties to be a suburban prototype of tranquil community living had turned into a fiscally unsound settlement. In the seventies, when toxic waste from a dump on the other side of the hill had spread its tendrils deep into the area's water supply, dream homes had turned into nightmares as sickness and lawsuits claimed the community. Apathy had settled in these streets, and everyone who could do so had taken to the open highways. The neighborhood had silently died out.

Quiet permeated the hillside. Occasional gusts of wind blew up from the gullies below. The frightened yips of hungry coyotes were the only sounds that crept upon these dormant dwellings when the sun was up. At night it was a different story. At night the sounds came. Different sounds. Fearful. Unrighteous. Sometimes voices followed, often screams. Desperate pleas. Unanswered prayers. Salvation was never an option. Mercy was never granted. The sounds of machines, mechanical and cold, reverberated throughout the deserted streets. The shrill combination of machine sounds and man sounds flowed down the hillside and into the gullies and ravines, where they dissipated, then disappeared among the rusted wreckage of an impromptu auto graveyard that littered the underbrush and that had deftly been hidden away from curious eyes for years.

The patrol car stopped at the last house, a dilapidated building that sat quietly, ominously at the end of the street. It was a house where a child's laughter or a parent's call never echoed within its walls. Instead, fearful sounds, rich with the timbre of human suffering, emanated from the house under the protective cloak of night.

In the distance, the sun's final rays slipped behind the dark velvet curtain of night that had slowly descended upon the valley and was making its way up the hillside, creeping ever so steadily toward the large house on the hill. The long shadows stretched hungrily, ready to consume any remaining vestiges of day.

Officer Frank Williams stepped out of the patrol car, the tired look of a cynic etched upon his hard face, the same look that he had acquired his first day on the job eighteen years earlier. It was a look that had been handed down from his father and grandfather before him. Francis Xavier Williams had inherited his father's features and his family's calling. He was the third generation to wear the dress blues and would be the last in his lineage to wear the fierce gaze that went with the uniform.

Some of his fellow officers would have called him unsympathetic, but never to his face. He had a strength of will that had been etched harder and deeper with every call he received -- every domestic disturbance, every liquor store homicide, every missing child. With every scene of depravity and brutality he stood tall and silent, never batting an eye, never flinching. He just sucked it in and held it deep inside. The years that Williams had been on the job had been long and harsh. Each one of them had melted a bit of his compassion. Every day -- every hour -- he served his city had chipped away at his goodwill as if it were an engraver's plate submerged in an acid bath. Yet every day he stood ready, but tired, to once again answer duty's call.

Williams never let what was burning inside of him show. He couldn't. If he did, even once, he was lost. And he knew it. "Neutrality -- a word despised by patriots but held dear by the enlightened" was his motto. His creed. Williams knew if he took on the burden of one case or victim personally, it was over for him. His effectiveness was in the efficient and direct manner in which he could gather and assimilate data. He couldn't let it matter that the store owner who was lying dead had four children and that now the family found themselves days from being homeless. He couldn't allow himself to care for the six-year-old girl who stared glassy-eyed at him, trying unsuccessfully to cover the dried blood on the inside of her bruised thigh with her torn dress. He needed a description of the man, the car, the weapon. He needed the facts, not the tears that came with them. Not the misery. Not the pain. Because if for one moment, one second, he did let himself get involved, if he let his stoic guard down and let human emotion slip past the hardened shell he had carefully created, it was over. If Williams let one of these things in, he knew he'd take his service revolver, his shotgun, and every round of ammunition he could carry on his back and kill every motherfucker in the city.

Williams looked over the hood of the patrol car to see himself of eighteen years ago. The eager face of rookie partner Neal Blaine caught the last shimmer of sunlight. His boyish features shined in the fading rays. He still had an air of innocence that had not yet been touched by the harsh elements of human turmoil. He still wore the mask of sincerity tightly screwed into place. Give him a few years of this shit. A few seasons of murder, molestation, and mayhem. A few winters of human depravity will knock some of the luster off his face. It'll sullen the optimism in his eyes. A few years until his personality inside and out will match his uniform -- dark blue. Just wait, Neal, you poor bastard, just wait, Williams sadly thought.

Blaine, anxious and ready to serve and protect, walked briskly behind the veteran officer.

Toward the dilapidated house both men went, up the long, crooked walkway that wound through a thick underbrush of weeds. Past a lawn barren of grass but plentiful in dirt and up the old stairs that sank deep under the strain of gravity.

The house was a large three-story Gothic structure. Once nobly erect, its pointed gables now sagged and bent painfully under the weight of age and weather. Grayed and stained, the house gave off an ominous air of foreboding. The architectural design of the house was foreign to the other houses on the street. It was unique in its concept and strategic in its placement. From the attic, one could see both the entire city laid bare below it and the street leading up to the front door. This house wasn't built but created, its every timber and shingle, every brick and stone, set down with a purpose not meant for living but for something else, something not right. As the two police officers reached the front door, the senior man felt all of this. The unworldly sensations that poured out of the house made the hairs on his muscular forearms tingle.

From behind the door, from deep inside the house somewhere, the sound of music unnervingly rang out.

Williams knocked on the rotted door. The hum of music continued.

"Well, somebody's home," Blaine commented al-most apathetically.

Williams checked the address of the house in his black notebook. "This is the place." He scanned the lonely, darkening street for any signs of life other than themselves. There weren't any.

"Someone reported a disturbance from this location."

"Yeah. What type of disturbance did they say it was?" the older man asked.

"Screams."

"That would constitute a disturbance," Williams replied dryly, looking around the empty front porch. "Who reported it?"

"Some worker from the gas company was out here today looking around. Said he heard screams," Blaine answered, trying to gauge his partner's reaction.

Poker-faced, Officer Williams knocked again. The door creaked open. The music grew louder once they stepped inside the dust-covered foyer. Williams tried to place the tune. It was a sickly sweet children's rendition of something he knew. Something he couldn't put his nervous finger on. Loud banging sounds crashed along in accompaniment to the music, as if someone were keeping time by smashing pots and pans together.

"Do you hear that?" Williams whispered over his shoulder to Blaine.

"Yeah."

"You know what that sound is?"

"Very bad church music?" Blaine replied sarcastically.

"No, that's the sound of probable cause."

The melody was sweet and the lyrics comforting, but the sounds that echoed off the old walls of the house felt wrong. There was something hidden beneath the chorus of children's voices that filled the darkness of the house. Something sinister.

A suspicious look passed between the men -- the un-spoken dialogue understood by all police officers on the beat. They pulled out their guns.

"Call for backup!" ordered Williams.

Blaine complied without hesitation. Knowing reinforcements were on the way, he began to feel a sense of relief. Briefly, he wondered why he was even afraid. This wasn't the first time he had been out on a call, nor the first time that he faced potential danger. In fact, as far as Blaine knew, the reported screams meant nothing more than that the fellow inside had gotten careless and may have injured himself. The poor schmuck probably hurt himself ...