Hell's Gate

lecture on the dangers of carrying so much money around on one's person.
        At his request, Lynda helped him buy a car, a slightly used MGB-GT, bright yellow with a black top. The programmed Victor Salsbury did not care what sort of vehicle he had; the other part of him liked the honeybee bug. He wrote out a check for the full amount, waited while the suspicious salesman checked it with the bank, came back all smiles and closed out the deal.
        After that, Lynda returned to her agency, and he went to buy groceries. A complete, standard list of purchases was programmed into his mind, and he chose the articles like an automaton, moving mechanically up and down the aisles. It was a quarter until six in the evening when he reached the Jacobi house, now the Salsbury residence. He put the groceries away, made a supper of eggs, ham and toast. He opened a cold beer automatically, as if this was the thing to do, part of the front he had to put up. The average man would sit down on his porch with a beer of a spring evening. To preserve the illusion of naturalness, so did he. The view from the stoop was a breath-taking panorama of green Pennsylvanian hills. Deep inside his mind, the soft Victor appreciated that scene and said, softly to himself, “Well, let's see what happens next.”

CHAPTER 4
        
        What happened next was that he acquired the quickest drunk in the history of beer drinking. As he watched the sun disappear and leave bloody streaks behind it in the sky, his eyes began to feel funny, as if they were coated with fuzz. His head was doing an apache dance with the rest of his body for a partner. Warily, he rose, staggered inside, up the steps, which were ridiculously difficult to negotiate. He started for the master bedroom, but the soft Victor had visions of a head whose two halves were out of kilter, and he meandered back towards the hall to a guest room. The bed had a cover, but no sheets. He found sheets in a linen closet, brought them back, but could not manage to get them on the mattress. The damn thing kept changing size and jumping around. Finally he gave it up and crawled under the spread. He remembered that he had his clothes on, then decided that would make up for having no sheets. In the back of his mind, he made a note to try to discover the reason for his high susceptibility to alcohol. Then he passed out.
        He had a nice dream that got bad. Very bad.
         He was standing in a field of clover. The sun was streaming through trees at the side of the field and throwing shadows and strips of brilliance across him. It was late afternoon, and already the cooler air of evening had drifted in. A darkly tanned blonde with thick, long hair was walking across the field toward him. Her eyes were clover green and transparent so that he seemed to be looking through them, miles and miles and miles into some other worldly landscape. She held out her arms to him. As he took her into his embrace, she grew suddenly stiff and began talking in an even voice, cool, dispassionate, the voice of iron Victor.
        He woke, smacking his lips and wondering what had died inside his mouth. He tried to spit the little animal out, found it was his tongue, decided to save it. His ears were ringing. He yawned, trying to pop them. But the ringing continued. The phone would not be hooked up until tomorrow, and he had set no alarm. Yet the longer he listened the more certain he was that the whining sound was real, not imagined. He pushed to the side of the bed and looked down at his feet, a little surprised that he had not even taken off his shoes, but not too concerned about it.
        He stood up and immediately wished he hadn't. He was apparently some creature God had designed for horizontal existence. As soon as he was vertical, his eyes bugged out a foot, his head swelled to four times its normal size, and his stomach turned inside out and died. He decided that the worst that could happen had already happened. With that in mind he went through the door into the hallway, leaned against the wall and listened to the noise.
        It was coming from the lower part of the house. He went down the steps, wondering why, if they were going to put an escalator in, they didn't make it a good one. The steps went back and forth as well as up and down, and it took one a long time to reach the living room floor. When he got there, he found the noise was coming from a lower point yet. He found the cellar