Of Silk and Death.

Chapter 1

I smiled as I looked at the poor redheaded woman. She was screaming for her life as she was carried away by a pair of monstrous green men from the deepest realms of the earth.

A chilling depiction, unequal to anything I had seen before. The cover was new, almost fresh from the press. The round, white letters contrasted against the red background. It was indeed a unique magazine, and reading it was the best way to spend the summer.

I kept looking at the magazine cover as I waited patiently, along with dozens of other people, to cross the busy street. Just a few years ago, New York City had seen a large inflow of cars, and crossing guards were posted at the center of streets to avoid traffic accidents.

I looked at the young guard in the middle of the street as he indicated the cars to go through. I then put the magazine under my arm and stared at the elephantine hotel building a few blocks away. It was around one in the afternoon, and I was running late for my parents' lunch break. Every day for the past month, I would arrive at the hotel, wait in Father's office, and then have lunch with Mother and Father in the main dining room.

Mother would have preferred us to have lunch in one of the many private dining rooms of the hotel, away from the guests. Still, Father chose to be seen as a way to show that management was always paying attention.

Finally, our time to cross arrived, and the smell of fuel that filled the city streets hit my nose, making it itch as I moved closer to the place that had become my second home since 1924.

The Arlington Hotel, the jewel of New York. It was the first hotel built after the arrival of prohibition. Because of that, new ideas on how to attract guests were engineered. What ended up being constructed was a hedonistic and self-sufficient giant, twenty-two stories high, with a thousand rooms, including some of the largest suites ever seen in the country. It had its own fitness center, indoor pool, restaurant, coffee shop, library, child care service, pet care, barbershop, beauty salon, a large shopping section filled with the most exclusive brands, and even a clinic with in-house doctors. Sometimes, it felt like entering a small vertical town inside the city.

Walking towards the entrance, I noticed a white ambulance in front of the hotel. Something must have happened, more significant than any of the hotel's doctors could handle. I then saw the two hotel's doormen looking at the ambulance while gossiping with Reginald, a young Negro man who worked as a bellhop.

As he noticed me, I waved at him in greeting. Reginald was a sweet young man who had become my companion when reading my pulp stories. The other staff members were too busy or had become too horrified by them. Still, we had to do it secretly, as Mother did not favor exposing poor Reginald to such content.

"Sarah, hey!" He greeted me, smiling. "So, when is our next reading hour? I'm pretty bored here."

"Probably after lunch," I said, still staring at the ambulance. "What's this? Why is the ambulance here?"

"Oh, you have no idea. It's a whole mess inside," Reginald said, gesturing inside while the two doormen nodded.

"What happened?" I asked, curious.

"About twenty minutes ago, Lizzie, one of the girls on floor five, found this white man lying on the floor outside an empty room. When she got close, she realized the poor chump had bitten the big one."

"Dead?" I gasped, appalled.

Reginald nodded.

"Heart attack, the doctor said," one of the doormen said. He was new, an older, bald fella. "Now Mister Dullard's inside, all worked up, having to call all kinds of people."

"Christ almighty," I whispered, worried. "Father has never been like that."

Although death wasn't unknown to Father, who had worked all his life in the hospitality industry, if the men were saying he was all worked up, that meant it was a dire situation.