Hell's Gate

or look like an idiot in the banker's eyes. “Mr. Hallowell asked me to give you this and ask you what it's all about,” she said, presenting him with the clipping as they descended from the attic into the living room.
        Victor looked at the headline and felt alarms banging in his head.
        
        BODY IDENTIFIED AS THAT OF LOCAL ARTIST
        
        He licked his lips, knowing what was coming next.
        
        The Harrisburg City Police today conclusively identified a body discovered by River Rescue Monday evening along the Front Street fishing shelf. Analysis of garments and dental records show the deceased to be Victor L. Salsbury, a local commercial artist employed by…
        
        “There's some mistake,” he said, though he did not believe there had been the slightest mistake at all. “I'm Victor L. Salsbury.”
        “They say it was suicide,” Lynda said. “He was feeling dejected for weeks because of his inability to sell his creative work.”
        “But I broke that barrier,” Salsbury said lamely. “I sold my creative work.”
        “Mr. Hallowell is very upset. It appears, to him, that he just made a twenty-two thousand dollar loan to a man who is not who he claims to be.”
        “Nonsense,” he said. “There's been a mistake here. I'll go into the city tomorrow and straighten it out. You can tell him that.”
        She looked at him for a long moment. “You seemed to take that with less shock than I thought you would. I mean, when you read about yourself being dead, it should shake you up considerably. Victor… are you really who you say you are?”
        “Of course,” he said, and laughed to prove it. Though he saw the laugh did not sound right to her. “I'm Victor Salsbury. Of course I am.”
        He didn't sleep well that night. He spent the night thinking about a body dredged out of a river and tagged with his name. Was he really Victor Salsbury, or was Victor Salsbury a decaying corpse? Did the real Victor Salsbury (if that was, in fact, who the dead man was) really kill himself, or did another black-suited man come in the night and do the job for him?
        None of these were sleep-inducing thoughts.
        At one-thirty in the morning, the vibrations echoed up from the cellar again. He slipped out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans he had purchased in town (since the computer had only furnished him with a single change of clothes). He stepped into his loafers, went into the hall, and down the stairs to the darkened living room. Intrepid followed, making god awful noises, half falling down the steps, then prancing excitedly to the cellar door.
        In the cellar, with the lights out, they stood side-by-side, man and dog, equally scared. The circle was a lighter shade of blue, but that was not what frightened them. Beyond the circle, dim and indistinct, were gray, moving shadows. There were no features to be seen, nothing he could readily identify. There seemed to be a conglomeration of wires, struts, and tubes upon which one of the moving forms was perched. The other shadow stood beside this, legs quite skinny, feet abnormally broad, perhaps a foot wide. That and the shape of its head (narrow, half again as large as a human skull, with a high forehead) told Salsbury that the things beyond the blue glow were not men.
        Intrepid sensed it too. He bounced around, snarling, the first ugly mood Salsbury had seen him in. He threw himself against the blue spot, bounced off the wall a few times. When he was sure there was no way to reach the gray forms, he contented himself with crouching against Victor's leg, teeth bared and eyes gleaming, spitting insults at the intruders.
        Abruptly, the blue glow grew lighter, the shadows more distinct. There was a click, a sharp snapping sound like a dry twig breaking underfoot. The ringing ceased and was replaced by ghostly silence. The blue light disappeared altogether, leaving the circle which gave as clear a view as any window.
        But the window was not looking out on Earth. Not on any Earth Victor had ever known.
        The machine on the other side-apparently the one that had been establishing contact with this world, the one projecting the blue light-was an intricate jumble of condensers, sensors, wires, transistors. There was a chair atop it where the alien sat. The second demon stood beside the machine, looking through the window.
        They were both looking directly at