What did he think?
He didn't know. His mind was a caldron of doubt, boiling, spouting streamers of steam downwards into his body.
He went to the apartment Salsbury had rented in the upstairs of Marjorie Dill's house. It was a place of slanted ceilings and dark paneled walls. Mrs. Dill, a spry thread of a woman with hair the color and texture of steel wool, followed him everywhere, alternately shocked, frightened, apologetic, and scornful. Yes, she had sold his things. Yes, maybe she had moved a bit quickly. However, there was the back rent. And he was supposed to be dead. She was so sorry. But that was rude of him, leaving without word, making no arrangements about the rent.
He found three cartons of papers she had not thrown out, Mrs. Dill said they had a great many drawings which she thought she might have framed and sold. After all, he had no relatives. Parents dead. There had not been anyone to contact to claim the corpse. Of course she was sorry she had acted so swiftly. He didn't think she was being mercenary, did he?
He loaded the drawings in the car and cautioned Intrepid not to bother them. He had to move the dog in the front seat on the passengers side and pack the boxes in the luggage area. He drove off with Mrs. Dill looking after him, somewhat depressed that all those saleable drawings had slipped through her fingers, but happy that he had not thought to ask for the excess money she had obtained through the sale of his furniture and drafting equipment.
He had lunch in a cluttered, noisy restaurant that, despite its lack of decor and atmosphere, served an appetizing meal. Later, confronted with Intrepid's sad, drooping face, he bought a can of chicken meat dog food and fed him too.
At ten minutes of five, he called the advertising agency he-or the real Salsbury-had worked for, and talked to Mel Heimer, his boss. He listened to the ranting and raving about his ten-day disappearance, then informed them he did not want the job back. He listened to Heimer's face fall three inches, then hung up.
He felt no pleasure, particularly. It saddened him a little to know that telling Heimer off was probably the one thing the real Salsbury wanted to do more than anything else in the world.
There was one more errand he wished to make, and that required him to drive across the city to an art store his phony memory assured him he had visited many times before. As he drove, he listened to Intrepid appraise the passing cars. The little ones were usually worth a stare that turned him around in his seat. The good models drew an easy, low snuffle. When a Cadillac or Corvette went by, the hound bounced in his seat and whuffed at them. He was actually a pretty fair judge of quality; except that he saved his best reactions for beaten up pick-ups and little noisy motorbikes.
At the art store, Victor walked up and down the aisles for more than two hours, choosing things. Pastels, illustration board, oils, brushes, canvas, solvent, pencils. His fingers touched shelves, came away with what they wanted. He knew, subconsciously, exactly what was needed to start a studio from scratch. Each item gave him a sharp bitter-sweet feeling of déjŕ vu. He also bought a huge drafting table, attachable light, sketch filing cabinet, enlarger, portable photocopier, light tracer. He paid five hundred in cash, wrote a check for the rest. The clerk had looked so nervous (possibly wondering if this was a sadist who piled up a purchase to be delivered and then paid with a phony check, all for fun) Salsbury could not bear paying him by check only.
At a quarter until nine, he stopped and ate at a hamburger stand, two for him and two for Intrepid. He could not find a water fountain, so he bought the dog a Coke as large as his own. The mutt was so excited about the taste of it that he forgot his table manners and slopped the stuff all over the seat and himself. Salsbury took it away, wiped the spilled portion up, and explained the importance of reservation. When he let the dog drink again, he was much more careful.
By nine thirty, he was starting the hour drive back to Oak Grove.
He didn't know what kind of a night it was going to be.
It was going to be very bad.
* * *
A shower, tooth brushing, and flat tire saved his life. The combination of the three served to keep him up and awake much later than he intended.
The flat tire was first. When he settled the car along the curb, he took off his jacket and set about changing the tire, only to discover, when he brought the jack down after all his work, that the spare was also flat.
He remembered that a gas station was somewhere ahead, though he could not think how far. He took the spare off the car and set out rolling both of them, then hefted them, one arm through each. Fifteen minutes later, he felt as if he would die; he was not much surprised to discover the prospect delighted him. His arms ached, and his shoulders were bent like plastic left too long in the sun. He rested for a time, hoping a car would come along to give him a lift. None did, and he went on. The third time he stopped, he sat on the tires to catch his breath and fell asleep. He woke ten minutes later when a truck roared by, oblivious of his roadside presence. At last, he came to a station that was just closing, managed to persuade the owner (via a five dollar bill above and beyond the charges) to fix both tires and drive him back to his MG.
At home a good deal later, he staggered through the living room and upstairs with only a night light for a guide. The upstairs hall clock said it was ten minutes of one in the morning. He could not escape the bathroom, for the call of nature was too strong. While there, he took a quick, warm shower because he felt greasy, and stopped on his way out to brush teeth that looked de-pressingly yellow.
Without these three routines-the flat tire, the shower, and the tooth brushing-he would have been asleep long ago and perhaps dead long before his time.
He flopped into bed, moaned as the mattress seemed to rise up and engulf him like some ameoboid creature. The only thing in his awareness sphere was a tremendous pitch cloud settling down, down, mercifully down.
Then Intrepid was barking, snarling, making thick muttering sounds deep in his throat. Victor had left the bedroom door open, and the dog had gone into the hallway. Salsbury turned over, determined not to let a stupid hound interrupt his precious sleep, lovely black sleep. But Intrepid kept it up. Finally, unable to pretend he did not hear it, he got out of bed and padded into the hall, thinking of all sorts of tortures that might be applicable to a dog.
Intrepid was standing at the head of the stairs, looking down and snarling bitterly. Salsbury politely asked him to be quiet. The hound looked at him with bared teeth, whined, turned to gaze back down the steps.
Victor went back into his room, closed the door, started toward the fluffy bed. When he finally got there, he lifted his cement legs onto the mattress, crawled forward on his steel knees, flopped onto his stomach, and slapped the pillow over his head, seeking silence. He brought it tight against his ears with both hands, sighed, and proceeded to summon that old, soft-hued dream land. But the barking was sharp enough to penetrate the chicken feathers. He tossed the pillow to the floor and sat up. Damn dog! Damn, damn mutt! What did he want from him? He had saved the mutt from falling off a cliff, hadn't he? What more could he want?
He shouted at Intrepid to shut up.
The dog merely barked louder.
Finally Salsbury decided, buddy or no buddy, the beast had to go outside for the night. He had proved himself such a gentle, quiet companion before. This outbreak was out of character but just as intolerable as if it had been common. Victor got up, went into the hall.
Intrepid was still at the head of the stairs, looking down, straining as if he would leap. Victor saw that the hairs on the back of his mutt's neck were standing up, but that did not register with him as it should, as it would have, had he not been so sleepy. He could think only of bed, soft and cool. He trudged up to the dog, bent to pick him up, and froze.
Even in his condition, half asleep and with every muscle longing for the touch of eiderdown, he could see what the dog was barking at. Indistinctly
In the shadows at the foot of the steps.
And it was coming up.
His mind was filled with visions of lizard-things with sucking mouths, eyes bright as hot coals. He was riveted to the spot, waiting for the long cold hands to touch him, for the sweet warm horror to envelope him.
Intrepid rubbed against his leg, seeking solace, wondering why his master seemed so unmasterful in this moment of crisis.
Then the thing below moved out of the shadows, shattering all of his preconceived notions of the nature of this nightmare. It was not a lizard-thing, but a man. Merely a man.
No. Not merely. There was something subtly wrong with this man. He was over six-feet tall, every bit as large as Victor. He was dressed in brown slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt, and loafers that seemed so corny Victor wondered if there were pennies in them. Yet he could not have passed for normal on the street, mingling with other people. His face was strangely like that of a manikin, smooth and waxy, flawless almost to a flaw. And his eyes They were blue, just as the cigarette and cologne ads said a hero's eyes had to be, but they were oddly flat and lusterless, as if they were not eyes at all but painted glass marbles that had been popped into his sockets. His face was handsome but expressionless. He did not smile, frown, or in any way betray what was going on inside his mind.
Salsbury was certain the stranger was coming to kiil him.
Stop right where you are, Victor said.
But he didn't stop, of course.
Instead, the intruder doubled his speed, came up the stairs fast, faster than Victor had been anticipating. Salsbury moved back to the hall. He was the stranger's physical equal, but there was something about the looks of the other man that told him his muscles would do him not the least bit of good. Besides, he was bone weary from lack of sleep and from ceaselessly working over the mysteries of his existence, trying to come up with clues about himself. Any extended physical match would only prove that the intruder had more endurance than he did. He was almost to the bathroom at the end of the hall when he heard Intrepid's screech of sheer, unadulterated venom. He whirled to face the steps just in time to see the mutt leap onto the man's throat and sink bared fangs in to the hilt.
The stranger stopped, looked perplexed, though his broad features moved as if they were nothing more than interconnecting slabs of plastic, moving on springs and hinges and hydraulic arms. Then he reached up, pulled the dog off, and threw him into the master bedroom, pulling that door shut. A second later, Intrepid was still game enough to slam against the door from the other side, all but frothing in his fury. But for all his heroic determination, he was effectively out of the fight.
One thing bothered Salsbury. He could see the holes where his dog's teeth had sunk through the waxy flesh, but he could not see a single droplet of blood.
The stranger advanced as if nothing important had happened. Any normal man should be groveling on the carpet, mortally wounded, kicking like a trapped rat.
Salsbury realized too late that he had passed the door to his bedroom in his rush to get away from the head of the stairs, and his pistol was now out of reach. The stranger was advancing too fast for him to be able to run back to his room without being caught.
Behind him, there was a popping, blistering sound. He looked, saw the wall to his left was pocked deeply, blackened and smoking slightly. There were chips of plaster scattered across the floor and a fine pall of dust in the air, slowly settling toward the floor like fine snow. He turned back to the intruder, found that the man was still emotionless, a cigar store statue that could not possibly possess human feelings behind that wooden face, that chiseled rock expression of blandness.
He pointed the second finger of his right hand at Salsbury. It was capped with something that looked like bright, polished brass, though it was most certainly nothing so simple. While Salsbury was staring, the stranger flicked the finger, discharging a smooth flow of golden light, almost invisible, like hundreds of fine sequins catching the overhead light and reflecting it, refracting it. The beam missed him by inches, smashed another hole in the wall.
Salsbury turned, leaped three steps into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door before he realized a lock was not going to be of much value against his enemy's firepower. In the next instant, the golden light struck the outer side of the door. The entire portal screeched, rattled on its hinges to produce a sound like a sack of dry bones being shaken. The thick oak bulged inwards as if it were not wood at all but some sort of woodlike plastic. Then it splintered, though it did not break clear through. It would require another shot, maybe two, to achieve that Then the portal would be in shards around Salsbury's feet; he would have nowhere to hide from the sharp blade of pretty yet deadly luminescence. He wondered, grotesquely, what the light weapon would do to human flesh. Would it pock it as it had the plaster? Leave smoking, discolored craters in his stomach and chest? Or would it splinter his flesh as it was now doing to the door, shatter him into thousands of separate slivers?
Either way, it would kill him.
He shook his head, angry at himself for his terror over such a simple thing as a vibrabeam. Then he stopped, astounded, at the realization that he knew what sort of weapon this futuristic thing was. For a moment, he almost lost all touch with reality, trying to cope with this new aspect of his mind. But he found that the thought had come from iron Victor, all but gone from his psyche now. Iron Victor knew that was a vibrabeam, and it scared him almost as much as it did soft Victor.
Salsbury looked around, deciding on a course of action. He stood on the toilet seat, unhooked the single window on the outside wall, and pushed on it. It stuck, made a protesting whine, then swung outward without any screen to block it. He looked down, craning his neck to assess the bad news. Instead, it was good news. Relatively He did not have to leap two floors to the ground, for the porch roof was only five feet away.
The second vibrabeam blast hit the door and blew the top of it to shreds, a howitzer striking a nightgown. Twenty feet beyond, the intruder stood in the corridor, his firing arm raised, brass-capped finger pointing at the bottom half of the door. His blue eyes reflected the chandelier light, but there was no depth to that reflection. Just two blue pennies.
Salsbury grabbed the shower rod with both hands, walked his feet up the wall, and went through the bathroom window feet first because he did not want to turn his back completely on his enemy. For a moment, he thought his hips were going to stick and deny him exit. He grunted, did a bump and grind, and was suddenly free. Next, his shoulders threatened more problems, though he worked them swiftly loose just as the bottom half of the bathroom door exploded in a shower of shavings and sticks which rattled like locusts against the tile.
The intruder with the magic finger was half a dozen feet beyond. He raised his weapon toward Salsbury's head. The brass gleamed. Then Victor was through the window, dropping onto the porch roof, slipping, falling, rolling painfully toward the edge.
He dug his fingers into the shingles, lost his hold when a fingernail ripped and sent wiry, burning pain stabbing through his hand. He had visions of falling fifteen feet to the ground, flat on his back on a raised stone in the flagstone walk, his spinal column snapping like a pretzel. He flailed wildly, tried to forget the aching fingernail, and managed to catch onto some of the ill-fitted shingles that offered support. He lay there a second, sucking in and blowing out the cool evening air, blessing the roofer who had not slipped shingle to shingle without a seam. A moment later, he came onto his knees, aware of the folly of staying within view of the bathroom window. He rose, crouched, and went back across the roof, against the wall of the house.
He listened, heard what was left of the door crash inward across the bathroom floor. Thankful that porches ran almost continually around all sides of this old place, he turned toward the rear of the house and ran lightly along the roof. He came to the end of the side porch, looked at the three-foot gap between this roof and the roof of the rear porch. He would not only have to leap, but leap around a corner. Hesitating, he looked back to the open bathroom window. The intruder's head was
stuck out, and he was trying to aim his brass fingertip.
Salsbury leaped, landed on the next roof and stumbled across it as if he were leaning into a strong wind, waving his arms and trying to keep from falling.
His balance regained, he walked to the spouting at the edge of the shingles and looked onto the back lawn. It was only fifteen feet, and doubtless iron Victor would have thought nothing of it, but it seemed a mile now. He bit his lip and jumped.
He hit the dewy grass, rolled onto his side like a skier taking a fall, and came quickly into a crouch. He listened for the sound of the intruder's feet on the roof above, but heard only a curious leaden silence that made him think, for a moment, that all that had just happened was a nightmare. Then, distantly, Intrepid began barking again, still shut in the master bedroom. Poor, noble dog, locked out of the fight. But teeth and claws seemed useless against the stranger with the flat blue eyes. A sense of reality returned to Salsbury. He was on his own.
Now what?
If he couldn't fight on a man-to-man basis, the only thing left was to run. He moved slowly around the house, staying with the hedges, trying to be as much like a shadow as possible, which was a bit difficult considering that his feet were bare and gleamed whitely. His pajamas, too, were a dazzling yellow, not exactly the thing for stealthy activities. At the corner, just before he moved around the front of the building, he thought he heard a tiny scraping sound, a shallow, echoless click. He stood very still and alert, trying to pick up something else.
The night was suddenly cold.
He thought, suddenly, if he was pretending to be a shadow, maybe the intruder was involved in the same game.
But none of the other shadows moved-as far as he could tell.
Five minutes passed without any further disruption of the ethereal silence. Salsbury was reminded of the GT parked on the graveled drive, the spare set of keys taped under the hood where he had put them at the suggestion of the used car salesman. What he would do when he got away from the house, where he would go, when he would return-all of these were questions he did not particularly care about. All he knew was that a tall, blank-faced killer was stalking him, a man not the sort who gives in after an initial failure.
Hell's Gate Page 5