David Wiltse - Into The Fire

"Would you do that for me?" he said.

"Only I can do it for you. Jesus has not answered your prayers, but he will answer mine on your behalf."

"But I've been-bad-to you," he said.

"It is not for humans to judge," Aural said. She extended her hands toward him, palms up. "Jesus forgave his persecutors, we must do the same."

She had him, she thought, he believed her, he wanted desperately to believe her, and that was always the necessary prerequisite. Their pain, their illness, their unhappiness had to drive them to you, then you had to make them welcome and pull them in the rest of the way. She smiled again, that radiant smile, trying her best to light the cavern with her own illumination. The effort took a lot out of her; she did not know how much longer she could keep it up; she wanted nothing more than to lie back and rest; she needed rest so badly, if only her pain would allow it.

He had risen slowly to his knees, but still he hesitated, cowering back in the shadows so far away.

I've reached them from farther away than this, Aural told herself, I've brought them from the back of the tent when they didn't want to come and didn't even know they needed me; I've summoned up the love of God, the trust of my healing power in souls dark and dead and shut off, those who had come to gape and those who had come to scoff and I've pulled them to me and I can pull this asshole to me, too.

She began to sing, her voice rising with lyric sweetness in the hypnotic melody of "Amazing Grace." She sang it straight to him, straight to his heart, pouring into her voice every ounce of fraud and deceit and practiced cunning that she possessed, transforming it by her art into the irresistible musical locution of the angels.

As her voice filled the cavern with haunting reverberations of the timeless hymn, it was as if she were joined by a heavenly chorus.

Holding one hand to his eye, gripping the knife with the other, Swann rose to his feet and crossed the chamber towards her outstretched arms as she sang to him with her face aglow in serenity and her eyes closed with the intensity of her love.

As she heard his faltering step on the stone and saw the glint of the approaching knife blade under her squinted eyelids, Aural thought, Try this one, Tommy R. Walker.

You couldn't pull this one off if your life depended on it.

And she — remembered that hers did and she sang all the sweeter.

The bat chamber was so configured that the guano gave out well before the enclosing wall was reached, and the trail that Becker and Pegeen had followed vanished on the hard stone. They searched for the tunnel indicated on Browne's chart for several minutes, playing their flashlights on the surface where the floor met the vertical wall.

When she found it, Pegeen was not certain it was the right trail, the hole seemed so small.

"Could this be it?" she whispered. She knelt in front of the opening, resisting the urge to shine her light directly into the tunnel. She would have to crawl into it on her knees and elbows-there was no other way to fit her body through.

"Must be," said Becker in a voice that made her look at him sharply. She lifted her light so that it spilled from the wall onto his face. Becker wore an expression she had never seen on his features. If she didn't know better, she would say he was frightened.

"It's so small," she said. He nodded with a look on his face that suggested he did not trust himself to speak.

Pegeen noticed beads of moisture on his forehead. Sweating in the coolness of the cave seemed so unlikely that she thought he was ill.

She asked if he was sick and Becker shook his head, forcing a very unconvincing grin.

"What's wrong?" she persisted, reaching to touch his forehead. He jerked away angrily.

"You keep asking why I wanted you on this case," Becker said.

She knew immediately that she would not like what he was going to say; she knew he wanted to hurt her because she had seen something that he didn't want her to see.

"Yes?"

Becker pointed towards the entrance hole of the tunnel.

"This is why," he said. "You're small enough to fit."

Pegeen struck back immediately. "You're afraid of it, aren't you?"

Becker avoided her eyes.

"You're claustrophobic?"

"I'm fine," he said. His whole face was now shiny with perspiration.

"I can see how fine you are."

"I'll manage," he said.

"You knew this was here all along," she said.

"You've been studying the chart on this cave since last night. Why didn't you do something, why didn't we call somebody? Are you so desperate to do this?"

"I'll make it."

"Why didn't you tell me, at least?"

"What good would that have done?"

"Maybe I could have helped you," she said.

"I can only help myself," Becker said, but at the moment he looked to Pegeen like someone who couldn't begin to help himself His whole physical being seemed to have changed, to have softened and weakened, as if the phobia had sapped his very bones.

"You don't have to be brave all the time," Pegeen said softly. "Not with me." She tentatively placed her fingertips on the back of his hand and he jerked as he always seemed to when touched unexpectedly, but when he relaxed he did not pull away and Pegeen gently slipped her hand across the top of his.

After a moment he rolled his hand over so that they were palm to palm and his fingers closed slowly over hers.

Pegeen remembered holding his hand in the car before he went into the prison to visit Swann. That was how this had all started for her, this obsession with this powerful, dangerous, complicated man who could be reduced to immobility by his own secret fears, who could rouse such passion in her, in himself, then cloak it again as if it never happened, who could be so vulnerable, then draw such strength from the touch of her hand. He had granted her a power over him on that first day, she realized, and whether he knew it or not, whether he held an equal power over her or not, he had needed her ever since.

"It's all right," she said at last. "I'll go, you can wait here.

He shook his head dully, resignedly, not looking at her, knowing what had to happen.

There would be no easy way out for Becker, Pegeen realized. He would never allow that.

"Shall I go first, then?" she asked.

Becker shivered violently, as if hit suddenly by a frigid wind, but he nodded again and shrugged off his backpack.

"I'll keep in touch with your foot," he said. "But if I don't…"

"You will, I know you will."

He was on his hands and knees in front of the hole, his head hanging like a beaten dog's. "If I stop, keep going."

"You'll make it," she said.

"Right."

Pegeen removed her pack and stretched out flat before the opening of the tunnel. She shifted her pistol so that it rode securely in her belt in the middle of her back, reachable but well out of the way.

"No lights, no firing," Becker said. She could hear his voice quavering.

Pegeen wanted to hug him but knew that what he wanted most was for her to be gone so that she couldn't see him in the grip of his fears. Pegeen tucked the flashlight into her belt on her back alongside her pistol.

She might not use either one, but she was sure as hell going to have them with her.

She took a deep breath as if she were going underwater and went headfirst into the tunnel. Behind her, Becker doused his light and the world became pitch. She moved forward slowly, feeling first with her hands across the surface of the stone that was as smooth as polished marble before pulling herself forward. Sometimes there was room enough on either side for her to slide a knee forward, sometimes the sides narrowed in so that she could propel herself only by pulling with her arms and elbows and the tips of her toes. There were sudden drops of several inches, sometimes a foot or more, as sheer as miniature waterfalls, but everywhere she touched the surface had the burnished feel of ice. It was like crawling into a giant intestine, she thought.