Fear Her Wrath II: Crucible of Glass

Chapter 51

The Hotel Argosy was sandwiched between its immediate neighbors like it didn't quite belong there. It had been built back in 1870, when Second Empire architecture was en vogue and putting a luxury hotel in the middle of the Fen was ever so slightly more plausible. The city changed a lot over the next century and a half, but the Argosy seemed not to notice. Its foundations slouched and its paint peeled and its bricks began to crack, but—despite having supposedly closed down for good back when Eisenhower was president—nobody thought to tear it down. So it was still there—its upper windows casting an inviting glow on the otherwise deserted street as Gabriel and I, back in our civilian clothes, pulled open the front door and stepped inside.

The old lobby was just as dingy and rundown as the outside. The carpet beneath our feet was theadbare and full of holes, and the wallpaper seemed to cling for dear life to the walls, which were leaning slightly like the set in a German Expressionist film. I knew from the lighted windows that somebody still lived in this place, but I'd figured that—apart from Gabriel—it was probably squatters or tramps—the kind of people you'd usually find living in an abandoned building in Marbrose City. But to my astonishment, the Argosy showed all the signs of being a functioning hotel—if a pretty strange one. An old gramophone in the corner was playing "That's My Weakness Now" by Helen Kane—one of the biggest hits of 1928—providing what I guess was supposed to be "ambience" of some kind. More to the point, there was an actual concierge behind the front desk, and the wall behind her was covered in pigeonholes that held the letters and room keys of the various guests. She looked to be about the same age as I was, and wore an old-fashioned doorman's outfit with her hat cocked to one side over her short black dreads. She was adjusting her septum piercing in a hand mirror when we first came in, and almost sprang to attention when she saw that guests had arrived.

"Good evening, Mr. Langston," she said, with a cheeriness that was almost off-putting. "Ah, I see you have a guest. A late dinner for two, then?"

"Make it something special, Dorian," said Gabriel, as the concierge handed him his room key. "We had a good night."

"Yes, sir," she said, bouncing on her toes like a toddler who'd just been assigned to fetch a jar of cookies. "It'll be right up."

I followed Gabriel into the elevator, whose operator (also in an incongruous doorman's outfit) looked a bit like the man with the pitchfork in American Gothic, except somehow even more sallow-faced and dour. As he closed the gate behind us, I noticed that the concierge, like me, was wearing Doc Martens. I hadn't been in that many hotels in my life, but I'd seen enough in movies to know that none of this was normal.

"So... what is this place?" I whispered to Gabriel as we began our slow, rickety ascent.

"The Argosy is a hotel for misfits who prefer to go unnoticed," said Gabriel, without lowering his voice. "The rooms are cheap, but the service is as good as you're willing to pay for. Nice if you've got a taste for luxury, but are a bit of a loner."

"This is luxury?" I said, glancing at the elevator operator.

"Like I said, the service is very good."

I guess it had to be, because the floors we passed on the way up looked just as shabby and derelict as the lobby, and I thought I saw at least one cockroach scurrying across the carpet. The lightbulb overhead was flickering, and the motor that was pulling us ever higher sounded dejected and weary—like it was about to burst into "Ol' Man River" at any moment. I was glad I knew enough about elevators to know that we wouldn't actually plummet to our death in the (not unprobable) event that it gave out.

We eventually arrived—or, more accurately, came to a jolting halt—on the seventh floor. Gabriel tipped the silent elevator operator a $20 bill and hopped down into the hallway—we were about a foot and a half above our intended destination—and I followed after him. Gas lamps—electrified some time before the hotel closed—lined the walls, which I recognized as the orange glow that I'd seen from the outside. The floor, like just about everything else in the Argosy, slanted a little. As we walked, we passed two or three open doors and got a look at the other "misfits," as Gabriel styled them. One man—a 7-foot-tall giant in shirt sleeves and suspenders with dark hair and lean features—stared at us as we passed by, but said nothing. Another—a black man with gray hair sitting cross-legged in the hallway outside his door—was humming to himself like a monk deep in meditation and took no notice of us.