David Wiltse - Into The Fire

He had wanted her to plead, to react to his menace; he had not expected calm. For a moment he was startled, as if instead of stepping away in fear she had slapped his face.

"Can I show you something?" he said, and Aural realized that things had changed again. He wasn't fully adult yet, but he wasn't addressing his mother anymore, either.

He sounded like an adolescent about to reveal a great truth to a newly discovered friend.

Aural nodded her consent, but he wasn't waiting for permission, he had already sat on the stone and was eagerly stripping off his shoes and socks and then tugging at his pants.

You're not going to show me anything I haven't seen too many times before, she thought, but to her surprise he made no motion to remove his underwear. He thrust a bare leg at her, proudly.

'What?" Aural asked.:,Look." He gestured to his leg, using the knife as a pointer.

It took Aural a moment to realize what she was seeing.

Swann looked as if he were wearing the skin of a smaller man, and his entire leg, from foot to thigh, was being shrunken and drawn together as the flesh shriveled and puckered in what Aural finally knew to be the accumulated scar tissue of hundreds of dime-sized burns. His limbs gleamed in the candlelight with the particular sheen of contracted flesh.

He was watching her reaction eagerly, and when she looked at him again with the first glimmer of sympathy he lifted his foot and waggled it to get her attention.

"Look, look," he said, excited by what he had to show her. He placed the point of the knife between his toes where, in the exquisitely sensitive space between the digits, were positioned more scars the size of the tip of her little finger, the flesh still recoiling as if in perpetual horror at the insult of the burning ember placed there years ago and pulling his toes together so that he could barely separate them on his own.

Aural gasped at the unforgiving nature of the traumatized skin. I'll look like that, she realized, and tears of sorrow welled up in her eyes.

But there was no self-pity in Swann's face as he pushed forth the other foot to be examined and admired. He looked proud, even smug.

"Your mother?" Aural asked.

"Mother was a Christian," Swann said approvingly. As if she had given her son her own version of the stigmata to prove it.

"I can make it better," she said.

"Can you?"

"I can make it all better," she said. She extended her fingers towards his legs, and then up, towards his head, to indicate his heart, his mind, his past, his memories. "I can heal your very soul."

"God be praised," he said.

"Help me up," she said. He looked at her dully. "On my feet," she said.

"I can't do it sitting down."

Swann extended a hand and helped her stand, then delicately traced his finger down her chest to a point just below the sternum, probing gently to find the point where the bone gave way to the soft tissue and muscle of the abdomen. He placed the point of the knife on the precise spot.:'You won't hurt me again, will you?" he asked.

'I'm going to heal you," Aural said. "I am a healer; but you got to trust me.":'I trust you," he said, not moving the knife.

'You got to have faith," she said.:'I do." 'Faith in me, not just Jesus, but faith in me."

"I do," Swann said sincerely. "I surely do." Then his face slowly crinkled into a grin. "But I ain't stupid, neither."

Aural raised her manacled hands. "Let us pray," she said, and her voice took on the reverentially inspiring tone of the show tent. "Sweet Jesus, dear sweet, sweet Jesus, this man is a terrible sinner, this man has the blood of his fellow human beings on his hands, this man has tortured and killed defenseless people, and he will do it again, dear Lord, he will do it again and again because there is no true repentance in his soul.

His soul is as black as this hole in the ground, his soul is twisted and warped and unholy, Lord, he is the worst of your children, he is the lost and forsaken and most despised of all your children here on earth.

Men have given up on him, men hate and revile him… but you love him, Lord.":'Hallelujah," said Swann.

'You love all your children, even the worst of them, even those that crawl and slither like the reptiles are beloved in your sight, Lord, and that's a miracle in itself, that's a blessing that passes all understanding. But you know what we have forgot, sweet Jesus, you remember that even the slimiest of your children has an immortal soul, and that soul can be washed clean, that soul can be washed as clean as if it never was drenched in the blood and the fear and the agony of other human beings' painful dying. You can wash that soul clean, Lord, wash it in the blood of the Lamb until it comes out as sparkling white as snow. Praise be!"

"Praise him!"

"If you can wash this soul clean, sweet, compassionate, Jesus, you can do anything. And we know you can, we know you can. Take his pain, Lord, take away the hurt from his-eye and the blisters from his legs and wash away the filth from his spirit and make him like a newborn babe.

He loves you, Jesus, he believes in you, and that's all you care about.

He believes you are the son of god and you promised us that whosoever believeth in you will be born again in purity and joy forever."

Aural paused to breathe deeply, preparing herself for the moment for which everything else was but a prelude.

She could fake belief and feign the fervor, but the courage had to be real.

She edged closer to him, lifting her hands to place them on his head. He winced at the movement, then settled, allowing her to do what he had seen her do before at the healing meeting. She put her hands high on his forehead, avoiding his stricken eye. She didn't want him to make any involuntary movements and stab her in reaction. The knife snuggled up against her abdomen as she moved to him.

"Take the pain away," she said, her voice rising in intensity towards the incantatory peak. His breath smelled of charred rubber.

"Take it away, sweet Jesus, and HEAL!" She pushed hard against his forehead, at the same time sliding her foot behind his heel. Swann tilted backwards, tried to shift his feet, but was caught by Aural's foot and he fell, instinctively swinging his arms out for balance. The point of the blade sliced across Aural's stomach, barely pinking the skin as it dropped away and clattered on the stone. In three hobbled steps Aural was atop the candle. She hurled it into the cavern and its light blinked out, casting them into darkness.

She had heard his head land on the stone but knew she could not count on his being seriously injured. She was depending on confusion and the darkness. She hobbled and hopped towards the side of the cavern where the vertical wave formations offered her a hiding place. There was no time for anything else, no chance of getting as far as the tunnel. If he was injured in the fall, it was a bonus, but all she really hoped for was a chance to get to hiding before he figured out what to do. She staggered forward as quickly as she could, her hands held in front of her, aching to touch the wall. She knew the way, she had rehearsed it in her mind over and over when she could see, and she knew how long it should take her. If only she had enough time-she had to have enough time. She fell suddenly, crashing forward as her foot hit an outcropping.

The burns on her legs raged furiously at the contact with the stone but she scrambled up again, hopping and hobbling and reaching blindly in front of her for salvation.

She heard him moaning, heard him scrabbling around on the stone, wasting his time by feeling for the knife first. She heard the metal scrape against the rock as her own fingers found the edge of the wave shape.

She reached around it and her hand groped into empty air.