The Nine Story Puzzle Box
Even Purgatory Has Rules and a History
Valentine
Valentine stares directly at the camera, blind eyes shrouded in the finest silk, must be designer, wearing a stout grey top hat. He stands in front of the elevator doors, the back of his head is reflected in their shine, a man found here as statue grown from the hotel floor. Film is rolling. He can hear it, a purring cat with him framed in a mid shot.
“The Nine Story Hotel.” He has a French accent softened by time and secrets. “I’m just the elevator operator.” Smiles, teeth the color of bleached bone polished to a shine. Bullshit. “I take people where they need to go.” he swings his umbrella pointing to the ceiling “up” and let’s it pendulum swing back to the ground as he says “and down.”
“That’s not to say that I control the lift.” He pauses and sniffs. “I just tell it where the people say they’re going. The rest you know.” Late night or early morning, either way the lobby and halls are empty today. “You can’t control everything in your life. And you shouldn’t even want to. But no one understands that, you see? My friend.”
He taps the umbrella on the ground. No discernable pattern. Just, whenever he wants.
“Everywhere you go, you will find yourself bound and constrained by rules. Yes? My friend? There is only one difference between the hotel and the world outside.” Yeah, and what is it? The umbrella raps the floor. He adds a rhythm to it, like a drum. “There are the rules of society, mores, the lines the polite never cross, and there are signs. Signifiers. Rules are posted.” So? “Have you walked into a bank?” Yeah, and “And rules were posted.” Valentine has too much fun when something like this happens. Working as an elevator operator, you don’t get many interviews.
“And that is the question of correlation and causation. The rules of the hotel exist, and they are unspoken, but known. And they are both correlative and causative.”
Well, what are the rules? Valentine tapping his umbrella turns into a steady rhythm, entrancing, the sort of sound that would fade into the background if you could just blink it out of your head.
"There are only six.” Valentine’s grin vanishes and his face is the stone statue grown from the floor again. He isn’t scowling, isn’t frowning. This is serious, and his face takes on the poise of someone reciting scripture, but not a slick snake gel haired cheap suit megaphone megapreacher who snorts cocaine and fucks the whores in the hotel. He radiates the poise of a holy man standing on a pillar in the desert. He will not die no matter how little he drinks. Valentine doesn’t clear his throat, and takes one drawn out breath through his flaring nostrils as the rhythm of his umbrella thumping the floor turns into a paralytic.
He begins, “There are six rules at the hotel. Rule number one, everyone at the hotel gets what they need. Rule number two, some get what they want. Rule number three, some get what they deserve.”
He pauses and takes another flaring breath in through his nose. The timbre of his voice changes, so slight God misses it, and continues, “Rule number four, some leave in a box.” Valentine’s voice slides lower, softer, heading deeper than a mass grave, “Rule number five, some disappear down a drain in the boiler room,” full basement low bass, smoother than the silk wrapped around his blind eyes. “Rule number six,” into a whisper. He leans close, up to the camera lens.
“Some never leave at all.” No vibrations in the vocal chords, just his hot sweet air moving across space and the entrancing thump of his umbrella.
A clear plastic bag pulls over the camera man’s head from behind and thin steel rebar fingers and strong hands wrap black duct tape around the cameraman’s head five times at the neck, noose tight, airway, arteries, veins in the neck, windpipe strangled and blood choked.
“Oh for the love of god Enoch, Valentine, this week, whichever,” muted through the thick plastic bag. “Why do you do these things?”
The tapping of the umbrella was to alert and then hide Arthur Pinch’s speeding shined hard soled Oxford approach. Valentine shrugs and Pinch pulls the amateur filmmaker to the ground, and all the director and cameraman sees are shadows through plastic fogging with condensate from final breaths as he grips at his neck and paddles, kicking his feet on the floor and gulping for air. He only gets recycled carbon dioxide from his own last breaths. Valentine, he thinks, bends and chuckles, says “I have to amuse myself Arthur.” The other one, thin, tall, coiled steel ropes, who he didn’t see, haunches down and picks up his camera, starts to pull the film out.
“Well, he’d just checked in, didn’t expect he’d be a fucking film student,” the film wheels in curls and arcs out of the camera. “Call Malick for me, we can at least steal his identity, drain his accounts,” the man has a thin stern voice, annoyed all the time. What was it, Arthur?
“I’m quite aware of the procedures Pinch, I’ll call Malick,” Arthur interrupts him and says, but after you take me to the sixth floor. “After, I take you to the sixth floor.”
Valentine turns and opens the elevator with a press, it dings in the distance, and they disappear along with.
Fade
“Where are you going Arthur?” Valentine asks once the doors close on the corpse still doing a little jig on the floor with its hands to its neck and a thick bag sucked over its face.
“I said the sixth.” Arthur hates to repeat himself, and the elevator never takes him anywhere but where he is going, when he uses it. Valentine nods and hits the button for the sixth.
“Arthur, has anyone ever told you that you’re an ass?” Valentine says.
“Quite often I’m sure.”
“You’re an ass Mr. Pinch.” Valentine says and grins, clicks his teeth, nods to them both.
“I told you, quite often,” Pinch says from where he stands at the back of the elevator, watching the numbers, arms crossed.
6. It dings, and before Valentine can open the door Pinch is already standing with his nose almost touching them. “Have you ever not been in a hurry Arthur?”
“Twice Valentine.” The doors open, and Pinch disappears headed left down the hall.
Check on that little Japanese girl in 650. Arthur is harried. She woke up fifteen minutes ago after sleeping for two days. She had soaked a wet spot of sweat through what he knew as he watched it form for 48 hours was the entire depth of the bed. It would require being burnt once she left. And fuck, he forgot his gas mask. He fondles a vintage scalpel in his pocket though. It will do.
Luxe called down to tell him that 1. the girl in room 650 had blacked every camera in the room and 2. She may have a tape deck, something analog at least, because Luxe said she was listening to some “absolute fucking bangers, classic tracks." Luxe’s enthusiasm for the music nearly eclipsed his worry that she’d found and blacked out all of the cameras and put on something loud to disguise whatever she was doing, all within fifteen minutes of waking up and pulling no doubt ripping herself off of dark sweat spot that she’d been marinating in for two days.
Oh, and she’s some little Yakuza bitch. Her room, 650. Nothing out of place about the door. He looks it over. No detail changed. Photographic memories, gift or curse? Pinch decides to consider it later, for now.
He knocks at the door and slithers into the snakeskin of his concierge voice, an overly polite, incredibly proper viper who would be happy to recommend you a nice restaurant that pays him a kickback if you mention the hotel. Arthur stands in the same spot in front of every door every time he does this routine. Eight inches away from the frame.
His hand reaches out and raps, shave and a haircut, two bits. “Concierge service. We met when you checked in,” he speaks loud enough she has to hear over whatever that electronic noise is. “It has been two days and I just wanted to check,” gripping the metal handle of the scalpel in his pocket.
The sound masks her footsteps the same way Valentine’s rapping with his umbrella masked Arthur’s approach. Rumiko opens the door to room 650 with one hand. Pinch moves to pull the scalpel but her other palm is already held in front of her mouth, a mountain of white crystalline powder cupped. He has the blade almost all the way out of his pocket when Matayushi Rumiko’s cheeks puffer fish and she blows a quarter ounce of raw LSD into the hallway, but near half lands on Arthur’s face, in his mouth, nose, on his skin, his clothes, in his hair, his eyes. Raw LSD is a very fine colorless odorless crystalline powder, and it aerosolizes so easy. She could have just whistled, breathed heavy, and Arthur would have gotten higher than an MKUltra victim.
The one time you forget the fucking mask. His vision pinwheels in colors nonexistent and he’s blind. Rumiko grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him into the room, shutting the door behind them.
- Continued tomorrow, in the second installment of The White Rabbit.
This week at the Hotel
Monday
writes the White Rabbit pt. 2 where Pinch has a very bad dayTuesday
brings the penultimate chapter of Full of Grit with Griffin PinchWednesday
has a young Althea still getting to know new kidsThursday
finds Lost and Found pt. 6 with Nerisse in a big bad bind after pt. 5Friday
will have a standalone surpriseand Saturday
moves Moira into the Hotel to live.
Thanks to Will Christopher Baer, the man who created Phineas Poe, and Jack Fell, the hotel project concept and our creative lead. We have a stable of current writers but are always looking for anyone interested in participating in the 9 Story Hotel Publication project as either guest contributors or regular collaborators. for inquiries, questions, sample submissions, and gossip with Arthur Pinch, email:
9storyhotel@gmail.com for now.
We’re dedicated to bringing you new and unknown voices in horror and noir along with work from cult favorites in an established sandbox setting where you can choose your own adventure.