Arthur Pinch is sharpening his nails to points with a bastard file. Thus far he has checked in just one guest, a thin lost child sweating through flannel with a huge gym bag on his back. Nervous fellow looked like you could blow him over with the exhale from a cigarette. Otherwise the grand decaying lobby of the Hotel 9 was feeling a dull rainy night. Tendrils of water running down the walls and Pinch notes with some relief; he can’t hear the rain. He stands his entire shift, every shift. He is the concierge, the extractor. The first face you see at the Hotel 9, his job is a serious one and he takes it as such.

The front desk is up a short staircase like on a gameshow at the end of a dying runner rug with four round banquette benches on the way, complete with dead flowers in cracked pots—a walled archipelago jutting into the lobby. A round lip of luxury teak hardwood polished to a shine but covered in a half inch of dust on the underside and a layer on top leaves streaks and prints from everything that touches it. His sanctum. Pinch stands tall behind glass and brass bars. The only way to interact with him is through the sliding glass window he alone controls. When he speaks, it is not only muted by the glass, but amplified and static laden by the fact that there is a speaker at the top of the window. The hierarchy of staff versus guest is established by the floor he stands on, seven inches taller than the floor on the other side.

Thin angular face, pointed chin, black hole eyes, slick black hair beneath a tweed newsboy hat, tall gaunt frame, ascot, striped vest, pocket square, tailcoat, pinstriped trousers, polished oxfords, colors all matched to a dull purple and gold. Pinch enjoys his vantage. He likes to look down on people.

The only access point into the underbelly, back, and viscera of the hotel is a tarnished golden metal painted door all the way behind him. Behind his desk, the key wall, filing cabinets, his lunch in the fridge, the radio on that round shit table and the imitation Louis the IV chairs without any damn casters.

When the air starts to sing him a wafting smell of not quite mold but fresh trickling water damage beneath the scratched, peeling, now bubbling in places on the north side of the lobby’s wallpaper, Arthur reaches for the phone. But who shall he phone. Malick, perhaps. The mechanic would likely hang up on him. Black mold: beneath his purview. Or Moira, that useless trollop housekeep. She’s not any sort of handyperson. Arthur puts down the bastard file, picks up the red phone on his side of the glass, and holds it, dial tone to ear, well deep in consideration, scanning the lobby all the while.

Edith the odd bookworm sits on one of the four overstuffed rondels—the banquette benches, Arthur hasn’t a fucking clue when they became “rondels”, but the parlance is set, to his chagrin—between the door and the steps to his sanctum. Bored, flipping pages, the book as thick as masonry. In the dining room under the arch at right alone at a table in the dark with his feet up on the damn white tablecloth sits Balthazar, the prospector, smoking a cheroot he no doubt rolled himself, the cherry glowing caution orange in the shadows. Rufus Balthazar is never not in the shadows. Pinch has tried more than once to capture the wily bastard on the hotel security feed but the man is a ghost. Natural talent or a former spook, unknown.

Now his girl friday the lady Grim walks past the window from right to left, which means she’s walked down one side of the grand staircase and is walking up the other side to the south and southwest wing of the hotel 9. No one who lasts a week with a shred of sense uses the elevator if it can be avoided. Pinch sniffs and reckons he’d rather have Grim peel his skin back with a potato peeler than get trapped in the vile box, if only because Valentine would force a conversation he’d rather not have. The ceilings of the lobby are so high no noise from the floors above pierce the plaster in all its chipping art deco radiance. He flashes to a night years back when Balthazar muttered idly out of blue and unasked, I declare Pinch, if you could marry this old beast of a flop I believe you would.

Despite himself Arthur has allowed the line to drop from dial tone to the rapid dinging noise of total disconnect. He slips the red receiver back into its cradle and takes out a pad of Hotel stationary to write a note for the Proprietor. Never sure how best to address the big bad upstairs, he scratches dear sir or madame or to whom it may concern in the expressive staccato cursive inherited from his father just as the somber rainy night explodes in a violent and cacophonous entrance. Both northern and southern doors, meant to be opened either one at a time or pulled apart from each side to reveal the interior of the lobby elegantly and with dignity, are flung open so violently they hit the flower vase sconces to their sides, cracking one and shaking the other in its moors. Arthur’s left eye twitches.

The rain comes in a torrent washing over the front of the entryway, and with it a tall woman with short cropped silver hair wearing a cheap sopping wet tiger print fake fur coat the texture of shag carpet comes dancing into the Nine. To be clear she is not walking, not strutting, not gracefully malingering but dancing into his lobby. Black wayfarers at night, a metal ball bearing mala whipping around her neck, a crop top that was Gucci before she mauled it, some sort of techno, technic, futureproof capri cargo pants with orange piping and clashing colored details from a bad science fiction movie and garish yellow and pink Onitsuka Tiger running shoes. Arthur sighs. He shoots a glance at Balthazar, who nods as if to say well now she’s a proper feral fairy ain’t she. The unwanted guest twirls and dances and commences to sing. Or rather she screams. “How you like me now?” The accompanying music booms from a portable bluetooth dangling from her wrist. This creature is vulgarity run amok even by the lowest standards of wayward guests blown into the Nine past hours at which real people sleep. She shimmies or more accurately she writhes lewdly up to the front desk to face Arthur behind his glass wall. She chants relentlessly how you like how you like me how you like me now. How you like me.

How you.

Fucking.

Like me. Now.

Pinch exhales and reaches below the desk to touch the black button on brass box, disables all airborne cellular, wifi, and bluetooth traffic within a fifty yard vicinity. The music stops. Momentary peace descends. He scans the lobby once more. Edith is ever unphased. She flips a page in her book but does peer over her shoulder for a beat. Balthazar’s face might as well be carved driftwood. He puffs his cheroot and regards the madwoman with the same interest he might give a cockroach scuttling across the lobby floor.

Behind her a veritable golem crosses the threshold. Nearly as wide as the doorway and half a head taller than. Pinch blinks. His mind is an ever whirring abacus of data but he cannot for the life of him summon the name of who might be the tallest guest in the Nine. He shrugs this shortfall away and sniffs the air. The golem and his minion both stink of predator. Wearing a down baffle coat that goes to just below his knees the color of war crimes in Yugoslavia, a black thick loaded backpack hanging from his shoulders, hood up. A pointy black and gray beard pokes from the shadow of his hood. The man crosses the threshold with a swivel on, full survey, noting the position of exits and all potential antagonists. His gaze passes shadowquick over the bookworm but stops for a half beat on the visage of the prospector, Pinch notices. The feral fairy meanwhile continues dancing and muttering how you like me how you like me along to music now thankfully playing only in her head.

The golem tips pulls twice at his hood in lieu of a hat at Balthazar and addresses him in a mutually respectful yet too familiar tone that startles Pinch. Which in turn is odd as so very little startles Arthur Pinch.

“Prospector,” the golem says with a nod.

“Vlad,” says Rufus. “I may have lost track but did you not lose your privileges at the Nine a decade or so back.”

Vladimir shrugs. “Indeed. Plus three.”

“Shame,” says Balthazar. “I’d look sharp, I was you.”

“Not to worry,” says the golem. “When the owner of the Nine Stories Hotel himself calls you to parlay for your services, who are you to turn him down but a fool, and then a dead one at that.”

Rufus nods in tacit agreement.

Arthur scans his internal hard drive and comes up blank. How is it Balthazar knows this man’s name and history but he does not. Before he can form another thought the silver haired dervish slashes across Arthur’s window, dead center. One brown eye, one blue, black lipstick, striking, aquiline nose, one brow arched. And the bitch has the nerve to smile at him. Before he can put her in her proper place the golem Balthazar addressed as Vlad looms into place beside her.

“This is Xenia Popova, my wife. And I am Vladimir Leonidov Krovopuskovic. Reservations under Mr. and Mrs. Doe. If I am correct it will be my usual suite, the 303.”

Arthur takes a sharp breath and cracks the red leather guest ledger with the gold inlaid “9” on the cover. Flips to the current page, and sees it there, “RM303, res. X and Z Doe. Comp.”

Scrawled in black marker on a sticker. A white sticker from a label maker in the ledger. Who the fuck would. Arthur gathers himself and scans the line for the length of stay. Finds another loathsome sticker “TBD AS NECESSARY” more spaces, more white stickers with black sans serif lettering, “COMP” “COMP” “COMP” “COMP” Every service the hotel offers is on the house to these Gopnik bog people.

Arthur had opened the ledger ten times since he took his post for the night, those stickers, the line of bright fresh hot labels, hadn’t been there. A small oversight. A sharp exhale from his nostrils and he looks up. “It appears that you do indeed have room 303, Mr Vladimir and Mrs Popova. Just a moment.” He reaches and finds two sets of keys already hanging from the 303 peg. What the bloody hell. Never more than one key unless the guest is VIP. Another oversight, surely. Pinch slides open the window to push the keys across to the mystery couple with friends in high places. Just as the tip of his right finger crosses the threshold snap, his hand is yanked through the hole. Faster than a hummingbird can flap a wing the dervish Xenia has his hand gripped in hers.

“Mr Arthur Pinch,” she says. He doesn’t wear a nametag and has not given his name to these two. “Desk man, concierge,” she says. Calm, slow, Arthur makes an uncomfortable note; the bitch isn’t whatever she plays at. Her grip is gentle in its firmness. Not to hurt, nor to threaten, she is asserting power. She turns his hand over so she can see his palm. “Extractor,” she hisses. They lock eyes. She’s unsettling. She’s vile. The sort of stranger who knows too much already. “Your services for us during our stay, I have been informed already, shall be provided gratis.” She leans down and sniffs his palm, one long inhale. “You smell like many secrets.” She glances down at the lines crisscrossing his paw. “Blessing or curse your life line is very long.” She studies the outside of his hand below his pinky finger. “I see your intuition is weaker than you think. You have reached a level of success that you are comfortable with and…” she squints at the lines on his palm, little trenches. “You will never marry. As for love, well. You may have of it what you will.” She drops his hand and for one second it looks to Arthur like a dead bird, a numbed object he doesn’t own. “You’re handsome enough and well spoken, I imagine the women throw pussy at you. The skinny guys like you all have big dicks.” She drops from the ledge she was standing on and turns, shoulders past Vladimir, and walks away. Arthur pulls his hand back inside and closes the window in the space of a short blink. “Your services will not be gratis Mr. Pinch. We will make sure you are well paid,” she says loud, booming back over her shoulder as she walks up the curve of the north side of the great stairs. “I like staying on the north side of the building North, the direction of death in so many cosmologies.” Now she claps her hands and shouts, “Vodka.”

Vladimir shrugs and shakes his head. “Mr Pinch, for the theatrics of my wife I apologize. Eh.” He pretends to struggle for words while rolling his hands in front of his chest, fingers opening and closing “eh, eh, she is dramatic. Again, I apologize. It is very nice to meet you.” Vladimir’s pleasant normal person poker face is immaculate until it isn’t, when his voice drops two octaves and rolls out like black clouds before a storm front. “Do forgive her as we will be working together in a professional capacity in the very near future.” The storm passes that fast. “But for now my friend, Mr. Pinch, I’ve been on a long travel. Very tired, we will take to bed for the night.” He wheels to follow his wife. “Be sure there are no disturbances to room 303 and I bid you dobray noche.”

Vladimir makes no sound when he moves. Pinch stares at his exposed palm for a full ten count then fingers the button for the PA and sighs into it. His breathing reverberates around the room like a swarm of insects. He takes a moment to compose himself, squares his shoulders and declares: “Ladies and gentlemen the lobby will remain open. As the concierge, I have immediate business that must be addressed away from my post. I am locking the front doors coming inside from the exterior. There will be no new guests while I am out. I will return shortly. If you leave the hotel, please do not hold the door for anyone trying to gain admittance as this comes at the threat of security being alerted to your doings. Remember to smile, you are on camera.” What few bodies passing through the lobby barely look up. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Pinch has to go Pinch someone.

Arthur hangs a sign from a hook at the top of his window, in black embossed cursive it reads “I shall return shortly. Apologies for the inconvenience.” He rounds away from the window and snatches up his coat and leather bag, unlocks the door and disappears behind the curtains into the underbelly of the Nine.

Welcome to the Nine Story Hotel

Edited by from an original introduction written by Emil Ottoman, and then edited again.

The 9 Story Hotel, March 24, 2011

The Lies

The 9 Story Hotel is a Horrornoir setting originally created by Will Christopher Baer that exists in the real world sometimes, and in a real location sometimes. Looking at it from outside the place looks like a hotel with two doors, grand windows above and set to either side of them, and a shitty little sign in three languages stolen off some rundown hostel in Bangkok. Baroque, Rococo, Mid Century, Motel 6, Holiday Inn, a boutique hard to find Hilton owned purgatory. Walk inside and the rules outside don’t always apply.

The First Lie.

It has thirteen floors, or eleven, or no one can tell, and calls itself the 9 Story Hotel. The Second Lie. Once you cross the threshold The Lies will only get harder to count.

The Lobby

You come in through the lobby, the center of the hotel, through two solid doors wide and tall enough to make you think you’re Catholic. Deco bones decaying. Beaux Arts rot. Brass oxidized black and brown. Water in the walls. Dust. Decay playing dress up as grandeur. Old Money and the lingering smell of coagulating platelets under everything, patched over a thousand times like every shit apartment you’ve ever rented. The light refuses to behave no matter the time of day.

The main floor. North and south curved staircases rise from the lobby into the Hotel’s two wings. Between those staircases, Between those staircases, down a worn row of rondels—circular banquettes with a single round back and bench seating all the way around—and up a short run of steps is the front office.

Arthur Pinch’s Office (The Sanctum)

Arthur Pinch, the Head Concierge lives there, works there, waits there, or isn’t there, a sign hung in the window saying he’ll be back shortly. The distinction is not useful. He stands behind curved teak at the check in desk, boxed behind brass bars and glass, black ledger open. In front of him a key board, cabinets, a PA system. A brass wall of mailboxes behind him over left shoulder, a gold serving plate with the hotel rules carved into it mounted on the other, and right below the desktop where he stands a switch that kills cell phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, and whatever other little string of dental floss you thought still tied you to the real world.

At the back of the office, which anyone in the know calls his sanctum, is a battered gold or green door. From the public front of the Hotel, behind bulletproof glass, metal bars, a hidden side door you don’t have the key to, the green or yellow or golden door at the back of the office is the only way into the bowels of the hotel: the real first floor, and the labyrinth beneath.

The door goes down.

Most things in the Hotel go the same direction.

The Bar and the Lounge

The north side of the lobby has the bar and dining room. White tablecloths, but dirty glasses. Meat if you ordered meat. No promises if you didn’t. Behind the bar is Bishop, the hotel Bartender. A dwarf with a cockney accent who’d stab you over misquoting Milton or De Sade; the best bartender in town. The south side is the lounge: couches, chairs, sofas, side tables, all mismatched. Mood lighting, crimson, velvet, dust mites, a grand fireplace. Dirty business is conducted under the kind of quiet means everyone knows someone’s listening.

The Rooms

The rooms on each wing run north and south, 1N through 99N and 1S through 99S. Every floor. Every floor admits to being a floor anyway. Nine stories, two wings, 98 rooms a side. 392 rooms a floor. If it’s really a Nine Floor Hotel, that’s 3,528 rooms, give or take. The math is fucked though. Point is there’s more rooms than there should be in any goddamn hotel outside a thought experiment.

The Elevator

Up the grand stairs the elevator waits at the front of the long hall of rooms. It opens on both sides, north and south wings of the hotel, an antique cargo or freight elevator obedient only to the Hotel and the elevator man, Valentine. Black, French accent, and blind, always beautiful silk wrapped around his milk white eyes. He knows more than he tells, like how he doesn’t really control the elevator. He just takes guests where they need to go, rarely where they want. He is proud of this and he will tell you, but you won’t understand. He always carries an umbrella, but the umbrella has a sword in it. He will lie to you about it.

The Floors

The Eighth floor is strictly off limits unless you want to die, and even then it’s impossible to get to but by permission from the owner or the Devil, if they’re not the same thing.

Because of course it is.

The seventh is where long-term and permanent residents tend to themselves and their business mostly. Mind you, tend to. The fifth floor is where the staff stays. Don’t ask. The Hotel has a loose relationship with keeping, staying, leaving, entering, and the human dignity of maps.

The Rooms Again

A room may have an original clawfoot tub and perfect hardwood under a dusted threadbare rug. Another may have linoleum, a dead appliance, pink mold in the shower, and furniture bought used, bulk, in the middle of a decade nobody wants to remember. One room is old luxury, the next is a motel suicide scene. One is a kitchen pretending it was always a bedroom. Another room you’d swear was not there yesterday.

The Hotel moves things.

Hallways. Doors. Floors. People.

You can be on the fifth floor and not the fifth floor. You can take the north wing and come back south of yourself. Open a door looking for ice and find the boiler room if you’re just a black hole for bad luck, or the roof, a storage closet, a woman you owe money, a plastic barrel full of thick industrial solvents eating what used to be a man down to liquid. Worse, a whole room stacked full of those plastic barrels under one bare flickering fluorescent bulb.

The Underbelly

That’s down the rabbit hole Lucy, behind Arthur’s golden/green/yellow? door. The lower levels, Hotel’s underbelly: boiler rooms, storage rooms, old service passages, rat tunnels, hidden rooms, abandoned renovations, cells, dental offices, torture chambers and video cameras, and none of that sounds as bad as it is.

That’s the underbelly, then there’s a roof with a pool.

There are fire stairs past the ninety-nines on each floor but unless you know how to, never take the stairs.

Service halls and fake walls for spying; rat tunnels between every room. Halls remember you before you arrive because you’ve always been in the hotel, you just don’t know it until you walk in.

What the Hotel Is

The 9 Story Hotel is not haunted because ghosts would be too simple for her. Not a trap because traps have designs. Not a game, because games have rules. The Hotel has pronouns long term residents and staff know, she/her, and she’s not alive in any way would make you feel better.

It is a place with rules.

But even rules scratched in gold have their exceptions.

She’s a place where guests, staff, killers, thieves, victims, ghosts, saints, collaborators, and the damned all come through the same doors and learn the same thing:

The Hotel gives you what you need. She can disorient, derange, confuse, punish, shelter, reroute, or keep you. She can give you what you want. And the Nine can give you what you deserve.

That’s not mercy, and not every guest survives what they need, want, deserve, because fuck logic, it’s always only ever now of forever now.

Welcome to the Nine Story Hotel

“Everyone gets what they need at the Nine. Some get what they want. Some get what they deserve. Some get got. Some leave in a box. Some disappear down a drain in the boiler room floor. Some never leave at all.

There are no other known outcomes.

Payment in cash or gold only.”

— , original cold open post to the Nine Story Hotel project

The 9 Story Hotel is a horrornoir setting originally created by Will Christopher Baer.

It exists in the real world sometimes, and in a real location sometimes, and from the outside it looks like a hotel: two doors, grand windows, old money, burnt wiring, bad history, bloody hands, rundown Baroque, Rococo in remission, Deco covered in dust, Mid-Century murder, Motel 6 whorehouse, Holiday Inn roadside slaughterhouse, a boutique hard to find Hilton owned purgatory shellacked in endless layers of patched over confusion.

Once someone walks inside, the rules outside don’t always apply the way they should.

That’s the first lie.

It has thirteen floors, or eleven, or nine, or no one can tell, and calls itself the 9 Story Hotel.

That’s the second lie.

Once you cross the threshold the lies only get harder to count.

What This Is

This newsletter serves as front desk for the Nine Story Hotel: stories, room reports, staff notices, dirty business, guest records, fragments, pitches, house rules, permanent residents, collaborators, ghosts, killers, thieves, victims, the desperate, the saints, and other liabilities.

Some posts will be fiction. Some will be project notes. Some will be orientation documents.

Some will be warnings.

Do not assume you know which is which.

The Hotel

You come in through the lobby.

Deco bones decaying. Beaux Arts rot. Brass oxidized black and brown. Water in the walls. Dust. Velvet. Old money. The lingering smell of coagulated platelets under everything, patched over a thousand times like every shit apartment you’ve ever rented.

The light refuses to behave no matter the time of day.

North and south curved staircases rise from the lobby and recede into the Hotel’s two wings, north and south. Between those staircases, down a worn row of rondels, past dying potted plants, and up a wide half moon sweep of steps a stride across each, like a long walk onto a low stage is the front office.

Arthur Pinch is there.

Or he isn’t.

The distinction is not useful.

The office is wider than a 29 foot box truck and almost as long, recessed into the first floor wall, set above the lobby floor like a witness stand. It’s the cashier’s cage and the confession booth, the window where they tell you the claim has been denied.

At the front is the check-in desk: curved teak, solid brass bars and thick glass with a sliding door that only opens from the inside, old hardware, old locks, and Arthur standing behind it casting silent judgment on the damned like a prison guard.

Behind him: ledgers, key boards, cabinets, a PA system, a brass wall of mailboxes, and a gold serving plate mounted on the wall with the Hotel rules carved into it, or clawed, but not in the way something should be.

Below the desktop is a switch that kills cell phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, and whatever other little string of dental floss you thought still tied you to the real world.

At the back of Arthur’s office is a battered gold or green door.

The door goes down.

Most things in the Hotel go the same direction.

The north side of the lobby; bar and fine dining room. White tablecloths. Dirty glasses. Meat if you ordered meat. Don’t get the cobb salad. Behind the bar is Bishop, the Hotel bartender: a dwarf who would stab you for quoting Milton wrong. Has a knife problem and a penchant for calling everything a cunt. Best bartender in town. Balthazar says he makes the best Rusty Nail he’s ever had.

The south side end, opposite. Lounge: couches, chairs, side tables, crimson velvet, mismatched furniture, low light, dust mites, and the grand fireplace. Dirty business conducted under the special kind of quiet that means you know someone’s listening so you speak in code day and night.

Up the grand stairs, the elevator waits at the front of the long hall of rooms. It opens on both sides, north and south, obedient only to the Hotel and the elevator man, Valentine. Blind, Black, French Colonial immigrant, and immaculate, Valentine keeps silk wrapped around his milk-white eyes and knows more than he tells.

He doesn’t control the elevator, he’s just the ferryman. If he had his druthers Valentine would take guests where they want to go. The Hotel takes them where they need to go. And yet he is proud of this.

You will not understand.

The Six Rules

1. Everyone at the Nine gets what they need.

2. Some get what they want.

3. Some get what they deserve.

4. Some leave in a box.

5. Some disappear down the grated drain in the boiler room.

6. Some never leave at all.

There are no other known outcomes to any story in the Hotel.

These are the rules of the place.

They are also, coincidentally, the base mechanics of story.

Do with that what you will.

Start Here

If you are new to the Nine, start with these:

The Six Rules of the Nine (coming soon)
A short explanation of the Hotel’s story engine: need, want, consequence, punishment, disappearance, incorporation, and whatever mercy is not.

Staff, Residents, and Other Liabilities (coming soon)
Arthur Pinch. Valentine. Malick. Moira. Bishop. Balthazar. Althea. Godfrey. Moxie. Evangeline. The Mademoiselle. The Horseman. The people you meet before something bad happens.

A Rough Map of the Hotel
The lobby. The bar. The lounge. The north wing. The south wing. The elevator. The eighth floor. The seventh floor. The roof. The boiler room. The service halls. The doors that were not there yesterday.

How to Pitch a Room (coming soon, inquiries welcome.)
For writers, collaborators, criminals, saints, and other interested parties. What kind of stories fit the Nine, what characters are restricted, how continuity works, and what to send before the Hotel sends for you.

The Standing Warning

The Hotel is not haunted because ghosts would be too simple for her.

She isn’t a trap; traps have designs.

She is not a game; games have rules.

The Hotel has rules.

But even rules carved in 18 karat gold have exceptions.

The Hotel can shelter, punish, confuse, derange, reroute, protect, disorient, or keep you. She can give you what you want. She can give you what you deserve. She will give you what you need.

That is not mercy.

Interested in the project?

Want to talk about it?

Have a pitch before the doors are officially open?

Join the TV Sky Discord

Email me.

All you need to know right now is this. At least Arthur Pinch and Valentine will be in EVERY story. If you want to pitch a story, pay attention to their voices first.

The entire point of the project is an anthology or ongoing serial.

This page will change as the Hotel changes.

It always does.