David Wiltse - Into The Fire

Straight up the devil's ass.

Becker crawled behind her, his hand touching her ankle or the sole of her boot when she braced, falling away as she pulled herself forward and then contacting her again as he followed her movements. Pegeen took comfort in knowing he was there and wondered what this exercise was costing him. It was bad enough for her-she felt like screaming at times as the tunnel seemed to stretch forever without end-what damnation must he be suffering? She thought, too, of Swann, following this same course, dragging the girl behind him. He had to drag her, there was no other way. How compelling a need must it be to make a man do that?

Becker knew; in some way Becker understood; but Pegeen did not. Nor did she want to.

Swann had advantages, though, she realized. He had been here before. He knew there was an end to the tunnel, and some sort of reward, however sick and twisted, when he got there. And he had light. Pegeen would have given anything for any illumination, even as faint as a spark.

Crawling like this was like living without hope.

Her fingers touched a beveled edge and explored it on all sides. The tunnel had reached a cincture, as if a belt had suddenly been tightened.

Her hands told her that the walls spread out again on the other side, but at this point the stone narrowed in even farther than before. Her head cleared easily but the gap was too narrow to pass her shoulders straightaway. She twisted her body to one side, squeezing her shoulders towards each other, but then her hips were caught and she hung, helplessly, with gravity pulling her head lower than her waist and her fingers scrabbling for purchase on the ivory-smooth rock.

Oh Christ, oh shit, oh Christ, oh shit, she thought, repeating the mindless mantra to herself as she wriggled and squirmed. She was caught by the gun and flashlight tucked in her belt and they were on the other side of the opening; she could not reach back to free them; she didn't have enough of a grip on the stone with her hands to push herself up and backwards so she could retreat. She dangled half in, half out, writhing, her fingers scrabbling for a hold.

As she fought her sense of panic it occurred to her that this might be the wrong tunnel, it might be a dead end that narrowed and shrank and came to nothing and she would be trapped within it. They had taken it on faith that this was where Swann had gone, where he had to have gone, and they had trusted Browne's chart, but who knew how thoroughly Browne had searched? Perhaps he had found a different tunnel and had not bothered to mark this cul-de-sac on the map at all.

She felt Becker's hands on her and knew that big fingers were assessing the situation of stone and flesh. He pulled back on her hips and Pegeen rose, her hands now in touch with nothing. As she flailed to make contact with the walls, she felt Becker yank the gun and flashlight from her belt. He put his hand on her ass and shoved. She wanted to tell him to stop, to pull her all the way back, they were heading into nowhere, but she suddenly popped free and had a fleeting image of herself slipping through a birth canal.

Her feet slithered down the three-foot drop-off and her knees thudded against the stone. It took her a moment to realize that she was free and to gather herself before advancing again. Whatever lay ahead, she knew it could not be worse than where she had just been.

The tunnel began to widen and she could get her knees under her and she moved ahead with eagerness, so relieved to be moving at last, until she realized that Becker was no longer with her.

Swann stood over her, pointing the knife at her, not threatening, just reminding her that he had it, keeping it there for when she looked at him. Aural finished the hymn, keeping her eyes closed until the last sweet note faded and fell to silence. She could see his feet and legs up to his knees through her lashes, but she was careful to keep her face from pointing directly at him. She didn't want to be forced to look at him, she didn't want to deal with him, until she had to. First she had to summon her concentration onto herself, to focus on creating herself as saint and healer.

She let the silence sink in on him for a few seconds, making him realize what a wonder had been taken from him. She opened her eyes slowly as if recovering from a trance, as if she had not been aware of him at all, standing there with a knife. She took a deep breath and released it with an audible sigh, and then slowly canted her head upwards with a look of mild astonishment as if she could not imagine how she came to be in such a place with such company. Some of her fans had told her she looked reborn when she came out of a song. They thought she must surely have been with the angels while she sang, letting their voices ring through her, which was why she was always disoriented when she finished. They were grateful to her for having come back to them, it showed how much she cared for them. Rae said she looked washed clean with the waters of Jordan when she, completed a hymn, cleansed and a little shaken by the experience. The Reverend Tommy R. Walker confessed that it was about the neatest trick he'd ever seen.

Aural looked up and fastened her gaze on Swann and realized that he, too, had been fooled. He was gaping at her, not quite sure who, or what, he saw.

"I know why you did it," he said. His voice had changed, — grown younger.

Aural recognized the childish petulance in it, but there was something else there, something she couldn't identify.

She didn't know what he meant. "Do you?" she asked.

" You hurt me because… " He sniffed suddenly, wiping at his nose with the back of his knife hand. Aural realized that he had been weeping. "Because you love me," he finished.

Aural recognized the other quality in his voice now. It was forgiveness.

He was absolving her for stabbing him with the fork.

She nodded slowly, not trusting herself to say the right thing, but realizing she didn't need to speak at all, that he had something he wanted to say.

"You only do that because you love me, I know that," he continued.

Aural nodded again, arching her eyebrows slightly, trying to look loving but stern.

"For your own good," she said, suddenly inspired.

Swann's face wrinkled and he whimpered in his throat.

He looked at that moment about five years old.

"I know it," he said, crying openly now. "I know I'm bad."

"Sometimes you're bad," Aural said carefully. She was still not quite certain of her role. Was she his mother now? Or was she still the woman he planned to torture to death? He had not put the knife down nor even wavered with it. It continued to point at her as if it were a gun.

"But I do love Jesus, I truly do," he said.

"Do you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"But you're bad anyway." She thought she had gone far. Swann stiffened and his lip trembled with defiance.

"Sometimes," he said, agreeing but not giving in.

Aural continued to look at him, not backing down but not knowing what else to do. He had regressed so quickly that she knew there must be something about her that made him think of his mother; something about her; something about pain. For a moment the knife seemed to quiver and she wondered if he was going to stab her. She wondered if he had stabbed his mother.

He stood there for a moment, towering over her as she sat on the floor, waving the blade in front of her face now, closer and closer, looking for all the world like a child with his first taste of power. Aural didn't know what to do, but she knew that she couldn't let him win. If she were to beat him, she had to do it now, when he was five years old and not an adult, when he was not certain he was in control and not happily convinced he was evil.

"Jesus loves you anyway," she said at last.