Imaginative Tales, Vol. 1, No. 3

"Black Magic Holiday" by Robert Bloch This humorous fantasy tale begins when Bill Dawson, a twenty-six-year-old orphan from Iowa, arrives in New York for a two-week vacation and checks into the Hotel Flopmoor. In his room at midnight, he discovers two drunken men already in his bed: the thin, sardonic Marmaduke Hicks and the portly Tubby Telbertson, who have been freeloading in the hotel for two years. When Manager Bipple arrives to evict them, the three men persuade him into a dice game over the accumulated four-thousand-dollar debt. Through a combination of luck and manipulation, Bill wins the entire hotel on a single roll. Upon waking, Bipple insists the bet stands. Bill inherits the hotel but learns an ominous magician's convention begins the next day—something that terrified the previous manager so deeply he fled, cryptically warning Bill to "beware of Dritch." Hicks and Tubby offer to help manage the establishment.