by David Wiltse
'Amen.
"He works through me." She lifted her hands, already forced into a prayerful attitude by the cuffs, and held them in the air, fingertips touching. "He has given me the hands to do his work."
"I hurt so much," he said.
"Jesus never gives us more than we can bear," she said.
She smiled at him, summoning up the smile of beatitude, the smile that stiffed hearts and eased consciences and made miracles seem not only possible but within the order of things. She smiled at Swann her own sweet promise of love and forgiveness, of redemption and deliverance. It was the reason he had chosen her in the first place-the sign of virginal divinity that he always looked for and then somehow forgot in the vileness of his actions when the beast that dwelled in his chest stiffed and took him within its tentacles. But that was not the true Swann, it was the beast. The true Swann loved God and his holy son and yearned for goodness and yearned now most of all for release from his pain.
"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.
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 s
tabbed 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.
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.