David Wiltse - Into The Fire

As the beam moved closer she could hear the man himself. He was panting and moaning. He would advance a short ways-she could hear his boots on the stone now, the tumble of something muted against a hard surface then the scraping sound of his progress would stop and she would hear his breath, hard and labored. Just before he'd start again he would groan, as if the effort cost him in pain.

Finally the light, wavering, slumping downwards as he rested, wavering again as he crawled forward, reached the opening of the tunnel, and he came into the chamber, moving on his belly with infinite slowness but determination, like a giant garden snail. Trailing behind him, his own sluglike path of mucus, was the leather golf sack, connected by a rope tied around his waist.

When he and the sack were completely clear of the tunnel, he collapsed, his face falling onto the rock.

"Well, numbnuts," Aural said, "you took your own sweet time about it.

You think I got nothing better to do than hang around waiting for you?"

He didn't stir. His body was stretched to its full length on the rock, the light on his helmet pointing down at an angle onto the floor. In the diffused beam that shone off the floor, Aural took her first, oriented look at her surroundings. As she had already determined, she was in a cave, a huge chamber hollowed from the rock by the water flow of millennia. The ceiling was so high above her that she could barely make it out in the gloom. The wall from which the man had just crawled was at least thirty yards away from her and appeared to be solid except for the hole which he had just cleared before collapsing. She had thought she was leaning against a wall herself, but now she saw that it was only an outcropping of rock little more than waist high, and the true wall was at least another thirty yards beyond it. To her left, still farther away than the other walls, a narrow trench split the floor and then vanished completely as it hit the rock face behind her. It was probably the source of the running water she had heard, she thought. Whatever underwater river had formed the lake that had once filled this chamber had continued to flow until it worked its way still deeper into the rock and then through the wall, draining the lake with it on its way still farther underground.

To her right Aural could see a series of darker shapes along the wall that looked like waves at their crest, just bending over before crashing back upon themselves, the kind of waves under which photographers loved to capture surfers, surging just below the crest as the top of the wave curled over them-but these waves were rock, and they ran vertically from the floor, some all the way to the ceiling, frozen in time and space when the lake vanished beneath them. The rock appeared to have bent back on itself, as if shaped when molten, and formed scalloped edges reminiscent of the niche where she had stored the knife, only greatly larger, extending towards the roof.

Interspersed oddly along walls were those pointed mounds that Aural knew were stalagtites or stalagmites, she was never certain which was which.

As she studied the huge room that encased her, the light began to move, bouncing crazily off the walls. She looked and saw the man stirring on the floor, trying to lift his head, then falling back to the rock again as if his neck could not support the weight. Again he was still and Aural could hear his hoarse breath gasping from his throat as if even the effort of lifting his head were a great labor.

He rolled over onto his back and the light and shadows went crazy again, leaping about until they settled in a new configuration. The beam now pointed straight up and Aural could see the ceiling of her cage, a huge dome of rock at least three stories above her. If the space stretched that far up and still didn't break through the earth over their heads, how far underground must they be? She was not only buried, she thought with renewed alarm, she was entombed, tucked away as neatly and as far from the living as a pharaoh in his pyramid vault.

"Come here," the man said, and the light wobbled when he spoke, drawing forth new shadows on the ceiling and walls.

Aural watched him without moving, trying to judge the degree of his weariness. She could take the knife with her now, use it on him as he lay there-assuming he obliged her by staying exactly where he was. But if he turned to look at her, there was no way she could hide the knife with her hands cuffed together, Thirty yards was a long distance to cover with the baby steps her leg irons required, and she could betray the existence of her only weapon every step of the way.

"Come here," he repeated. His voice was hoarse and weak. "I need you," he said. And then, bizarrely, he added, "Please."

Aural walked to him slowly, trying to learn as much as she could about the cave as she did so. It was hard to make out anything in detail because each slight move of his head sent shadows winging and lurching about, swallowing each other up as new ones were born to replace them.

Nothing ever looked exactly the same way twice because each breath he took caused the cave itself to move in and out of the light as if it had a pulse to match his own.

As she got close to him she realized that she could have brought the knife after all. He had not turned to look at her yet, and she was now within lunging distance, and now closer, now she stood next to him, looking down.

She could have cut his throat while he lay there, his eyes closed. For a moment she wondered if he was asleep. She was close to the hole now but the light was pointing up and away from it and she could make out nothing beyond a greater darkness in the rock.

She had seen no other exit. If she were to get out, she would have to go into that hole of blackness. Had she not seen him emerge from it, she wouldn't have thought there was room enough for her shoulders to fit in.

The very idea of crawling into such a place filled her with dread.

She would sooner have forced herself into a hole in the ground, knowing there was a snake at the other end, but she also knew she had no choice.

She would do what she had to, when she had to do it. And if that included slicing his throat open, she would do it. She thought. She hoped.

Gazing down at him now as he lay still, breathing shallowly like a dreamer in a troubled sleep, it was hard to hate him enough to kill him.

And then she realized the condition of his face. He looked as if someone had been kicking his head around with cowboy boots. Aural had seen more than one of her boyfriends return from a night in the bar looking that way.

One eye was swollen nearly shut; his nose and both cheekbones were puffed and as dark with broken blood vessels as if he had been painting his face with charcoal.

Traces of dried blood still clung to his nose and upper lip, and overall he had the look of a man tenuously clinging to health.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her and she realized he had not been asleep, but quietly waiting. Conserving his strength and perhaps waiting to see what she would do.

"Hey, slick, you're looking good," Aural said.

"Where are your boots?"

"I took them off. You go partying with friends?"

"I met a friend of yours," Swann said.

"You should have brought him home."

"Get the lantern," he said. His voice was little more than a whisper, even in the resonating chamber of the cave. Moaning slightly, he rolled to his side, resting his head on his arm so that the light on his hat shone in the direction of the golf sack. Every movement seemed to cost him a great effort. Aural was amazed that he had managed to crawl back through the tunnel. When men administered a beating like the one he had taken, they didn't limit them selves to the face. Not the men she knew.

She did not know how long a trip it was, but she knew that it had taken a long time for her to be brought to the cave once she was forced into the sack in the first place. He must have wanted to get back to me very badly, Aural thought, and the thought frightened her.