I'm looking for a book that I read some years ago. It was a thriller with fantastic/sci-fi undertones, probably from an American author. I remember details which are not at the core of the story:

The main character is a journalist investigating in a small American town about people going missing near a mysterious factory, where some kind of monster/alien/ entity is hiding. The monster has the power to somehow "call" humans, so that they are drawn to the factory, stripping them of their willpower and twisting them into something "less human". The common denominator between the victims is that they all seek to flee from their responsibilities, because it is inherently human to flee responsibilities (as stated by the story).