Aural was astounded to realize that she had slept. She awoke with a start, not from a nightmare, but to it as the realization of what had happened, was happening, flooded back to her consciousness. She heard a noise beside her and realized that he had awakened her with a shout. She could sense him in the dark, twisting about in his sleeping bag, groaning.
"Sweet Jesus," he cried, his voice filled with pain.
"Oh, Christ, Jesus."
"What the fuck are you doing?" she asked.
He continued to groan, and although she couldn't see him, Aural could imagine him clasping his head with his hand as he had earlier when he seemed to faint.
"Jesus," he muttered again, then, "Goddamn it."
"I'm trying to sleep over here," she said.
He stopped shouting then, but she could hear him whimpering and rocking back and forth. The noises came rhythmically after a time, as if he were receiving the pain in pulses. She hoped it came like machine gun fire; she hoped it ripped his head off.
"What's the matter?" she asked after several minutes, trying to sound sympathetic.
He did not respond.
"Do you need anything?"
He was silent and she realized that he had stopped rocking. If he continued to whimper, it was so quietly that she couldn't hear it over her own breathing.
Because of the rope tied around the sack, she could not roll over and her back was aching fiercely. Amazingly, the cramped muscles hurt more than the burns, which, at the time they were administered, seared so painfully that she thought they might kill her. She knew now that they wouldn't kill her-at least the pain wouldn't kill her.
What effect it would have if he kept at it, if he burned all of her… she tried not to think about it.
She had been freed once from the contorted fetal position. She had told him she had to go to the bathroom, and to her amazement he had unhooked her hands from her ankles and allowed her to stand. He tied the rope to her handcuffs and secured her wrists in front of her body.
He had been strangely courtly throughout the proceedings.
"You will want privacy," he said. He gave her a lighted candle and pointed the direction she should go.
"Keep on until the rope is taut," he said. "You'll find the appropriate spot there." He even handed her a roll of toilet tissue and made a display of turning his back although she felt his eyes on her every step of the way.
Aural hoped to get closer to the wave formations on the wall; she thought there might be potential hiding places there if she could ever get to them; but as she veered in that direction, he called out sharply.
"Not that way," he said. "Straight ahead."
"Well, how'm I supposed to know where I'm going?" she demanded.
"Oh, you'll know it when you get there," he said, his voice suddenly amused. "It's well marked."
He was full of these little jokes to himself, giggling at things only he thought were funny. Aural not only — hated the bastard in a general, all-encompassing way, but she couldn't find much to like about him, either. He'd be a creep even if his hobby was collecting stamps instead of torturing women.
She walked forward into the wavering candlelight, then stopped and gasped.
He giggled, "Find it?"
A human skeleton lay a few feet from her. The flesh was gone, but long dark hair still curled in a mat under the bony skull. The hands had been crossed over the chest in a mockery of subterranean burial, and the lower torso was covered in patches of cloth that had once been a skirt.
The victim's shoes were placed neatly at her feet and her ankles had been crossed, but the bones of the feet had dropped away from each other and lay where they had fallen on the rocky floor.
Aural could not guess how long the girl had been dead, but the shoes looked like new.
She turned away from the skeleton and stepped in the opposite direction.
The rope pulled snugly at her waist.
"Anywhere in there will do," Swann called to her. His voice beat back on itself, overlapping the giggle that followed.
Aural moved several steps to the side and squatted. The bones of another skeleton shone dully in the flickering light. This one had been "buried" like the first, her arms crossed over her chest. The ligaments of the hands had disintegrated and the finger bones had fallen in among the ribs.
When she was in control of herself, Aural called, "You been busy, ain't you? You been a real little beaver."
"Oh, you haven't seen them all, " he said proudly.
"These are very early works. I did them years ago."
"Well, they say that idle hands are the devil's tool," Aural said, walking back towards him. If there were other bones, she did not want to see them. "It's good to know you've been active so you can't get up to any mischief"
As she approached him she realized she could have grabbed one of the bones, a leg bone, a thighbone, and used it to club him to death. If she had had the presence of mind. If she could have brought herself to pick up the bone in the first place. She cursed herself for another opportunity missed. How many more would she have before she joined the boneyard? Girl, you've got to get in control of yourself, she thought.
You've got to take your chance when you get it.
Now, as she lay wide awake, she could hear his steady breathing. The bastard was beginning to snore. He was resting while she was consuming her precious energy in useless rage and anxiety. Damn it, girl, she thought, don't let him sleep. Keep him as bad off as you can, keep him sleepless, get him punchy and careless, force him into making a mistake.
"Hey, shitstick!" she called. "Wake up. Time to be up and doing, we got some business to take care of."
He came awake noisily, spluttering, alarmed.
"What? What is it?"
"Come on, stick, get your ass up. You got things to do. And in the meantime, how about some breakfast? You wasn't planning to starve me to death, too, was you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"It's morning. Get your ugly ass up. Feed me, then we'll think of something fun to do."
"It's morning?" he asked, puzzled. "How do you know?"
"Let's get at it, slick. Start opening some of them cans.
What have we got for breakfast, beans or peaches?"
She heard him fumbling about, then his lighter flared into flame. Aural saw him looking at his wristwatch, trying to figure out what was going on. Baffled by what his timepiece told him, Swann turned to look at her, holding the lighter in front of him like a lantern.
"What are you up to?" he asked.
Swann studied her for a moment in the insufficient glow of the cigarette lighter. He cocked his head to one side, trying to interpret what he saw. Aural's head peeked out from the golf sack, and she was grinning at him.
"Up and at 'em, chief," she said. "Time's awasting."
Swann clicked the lighter shut and the cavern returned to darkness.