When I pulled into the parking lot it was dark, and almost all the cars were gone. I double-checked my phone for the time. Mason had said it would be two hours and it was just under that. I pulled up and put the car in park. Floodlights now lit up the exterior of the building, the lights casting stark shadows on the vegetation and greenery planted around the building in a vain attempt to hide the cheap construction. I walked up to the wooden door, but came up short as I tugged on the handle, only to find it was locked.
I looked around, but saw no one. I knocked on the door several times, but no one answered. Real fear began to tighten in my gut. Where was Mason? I pulled out my phone and dialed Mason’s number. It went right to voicemail. I texted him and waited a minute but no answering text came.
I pounded on the door a few more times, but it there was no response. Maybe I could find another entrance…
Around the corner of the building some landscaping had been done that filled in around the uneven walls. There was a large empty field behind the structure but none of the lights were on inside.
All was quiet, but some sound or movement near the building caught my attention. I ran closer only to see two forms huddled in a corner beside one of the darkened windows. One was Mason, the other was… Tobi?
“Mason?” I asked, slowing as I approached, quickly spotting the way he was rocking back and forth on the cold gravel. “Mason, are you okay, baby?”
“…Lee?” he said, his voice thready and high. As I got closer, his face was in shadow and I saw him holding his phone clenched in his hand. The screen was dark and the light from the security lights of the building reflected off a spiderweb crack that now spread across the screen. There were bloody fingerprints smeared across the screen.
Tobi looked up at me, fear and anxiety clearly written on his face, but anger was there, too.
“Mason, baby…? What happened?” I asked moving closer to the two men, desperate to wrap my arms around Mason but unsure if that was the right thing to do.
Mason kept moving convulsively over his phone, and I looked down to see his hands gripping his phone tightly and I realized his fingers were cut and bleeding from swiping across the shattered screen.
Mason looked up at me and as soon as I walked into a pool of light, he launched himself at me. I barely had time to brace myself before he crashed into me. His arms wrapped around me and I could feel his heart pounding crazily in his chest. I held him tightly, my arms sliding up and down his body as I tried to calm him. My hands ran down his sides checking for injuries, but finding none.
“Baby, what happened?” I asked, my throat constricting as I tried to figure out what to do. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?” I asked, clutching him tightly, then looking over at Tobi for an answer.
Before Tobi could respond, Mason’s voice whispered, “No, no hospital. Can we just… go? Please?” he begged, his eyes glassy in the limited light. They were red-rimmed and shiny. “I just want to go home.” He said, his voice small and thin.
“Of course,” I said, helping him stand and move to the Jeep, Tobi supporting his other side. I led them back around the corner of the building to the car.
As worried as I was about him right now, a small part of my heart leapt when he said “home”.
“Tobi?” I asked, as I shut the door, securing Mason inside. “What the hell happened?” I demanded as I walked around the car.
Tobi shook his head. “I, uh, I don’t know,” he said. “I thought it was just a normal one of this new preacher’s ‘pray the gay away’ sessions. Then they brought Mason in.”
“I fought them, Lee, really I did. But he told me to run, to call you.” The kid’s shoulders were shaking and I reached my hand out to grip them reassuringly. After a moment, he continued.
“I got away from them, but my mom took my phone. I was trying to find a way back into the building to call you when I found him like this.”
“That was a smart thing to do,” I said, admiration at the kid’s cool thinking and ingenuity battling with the anger filling me at the planning that had gone into this.
I nodded, concerned about the way he was rubbing his arms, but also focused on Mason as he sat, unusually still in the car.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked Tobi, trying to peer at the kid and see if I saw any wounds.
He shook his head. “Usually they just do this stupid prayer circle where they walk around you and pray and yell Bible verses at you.” His face was pale in the blue-white light, his eyes unfocused. “I usually just stand there and let them get it out of their systems. I just couldn’t stand it when they brought Mason in and started. I wasn’t there for the whole thing.”
I saw him swallow nervously.
“Tobi, how often does this happen?” I asked, though I guessed it was a common occurrence.
“Ever since the new preacher came to town about six months ago, it’s been happening all the time. A couple of times a month,” he said.
“What else happened?” I questioned.
“I don’t know,” he said, tears brimming in his eyes. “I saw a bunch of people leave and I thought that everything was over.” He shrugged and sighed. “I was just coming out of hiding when I saw the door fly open, and Mason ran out. He ran into the field, and then I heard a bunch of them come out after him, yelling for him. I stayed hidden until they’d taken off, then came back up to the building. I found him just like that,” he said, nodding toward where Mason sat in the car.
“Fucking bastards,” I growled as my hand flew out and slammed into the side of the SUV. Guilt ran through me as I saw Mason jump inside the car. “How long?” I asked. “How long was he out there?” I demanded.
“I don’t know. Thirty or forty-five minutes, I’d guess?” Not long enough for any serious damage. The teen in front of me shuddered and I realized the chill night air wasn’t doing him any good, either.
“Get in the car. I’ll get the heat going and you can call your parents,” I started.
“No!” He yelled sharply, catching me by surprise as I was pulling my phone out of my pocket, then he continued. “No. They go to that church. They… they were with the people in that ‘prayer circle’,” he explained, the shame and anger filling his face. “And you need to know, it… it was my fault,” he continued, his eyes avoiding mine.
“What do you mean, ‘your fault’?” I asked, feeling my eyes narrowing despite my best efforts. All my instincts were telling me to get in the car and start comforting Mason, but another part needed to know what I was dealing with.
“You can’t control what those people do, Tobi, even your parents,” I began. “You’re not responsible.”
“I am,” he said loudly, stopping me as I reached to open the back door of the Jeep. “It was my fault that Mason was there,” he said, his voice quiet. “Dad found my phone and found a picture of Mason, Jeri and I from the other day at the comic store,” he continued. “I should have deleted it or saved it to the cloud somewhere he didn’t know about. He saw the poster behind him on the wall and did an internet search on him and found out who he was. He and Mom searched my room after that and found the graphic novel Mason gave me,” he finished.
The tears that had been threatening in his eyes spilled over.
“Dad told me I’d burn in hell if I didn’t change my ‘sinful ways’,” he said with a snort.
“Kiddo,” I sighed at the young boy. He looked so lost and alone. The only answer I could give him was to reach out and wrap my arms around him in a hug.
“You are absolutely not to blame.” I said. “Your parents and the rest are responsible for their own actions.”
He stayed stiff in my arms for a minute, then I felt him relax. The sobs started a moment later and I just held him until he quieted.
“It’s just so hard, you know? Always being beat down for who and what you are,” he said, swiping at his tears with the back of his hand. “My parents didn’t use to be this bad. They were religious, sure, but it was whe
n they joined this church that they changed.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, looking around the empty parking lot. “You can tell me more in the car.” The last thing we needed was for one of these zealots to show up and cause even more problems.
We got into the Jeep and I started the car to get it warm. I saw Mason huddled against the far corner of the front seat. My hand moved out to stroke a piece of hair that had fallen in front of his closed eyes. I saw the tracks of tears on his face, but his eyes remained squeezed shut.
“You’re safe now, Mason. I’ve got you, baby,” I whispered, laying my hand on his head for a moment. I would kill the sons of bitches that did this to him.
The back door closed softly. and I saw Tobi seated in the back.
“Seat belt,” I said tersely as I put the car into gear. His face took on the automatic defiance most teenage kids learned at some point, but he put his seat belt on anyway.
“Tobi,” I spoke quietly, trying not to disturb Mason. I hoped he’d fall asleep on the ride home. “Is there a family member you can stay with tonight?”
“Yeah, I have an aunt, Aunt Charlotte. She’s pretty awesome,” he said. “Not your typical aunt, I guess. She and Mom don’t really get along, but I can stay there for a few days.”
I had Tobi call his aunt, then he gave me directions to her house.
“You mentioned a new preacher?” I prompted as we drove to her house.
“Yeah, he’s new. Dowling. John Dowling,” Tobi said. The name was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place from where. I filed the information away, determined to investigate him later.
I dropped Tobi off at his aunt’s house. She seemed to be a pretty sweet young lady. Tobi was right, she didn’t really look like what you’d expect someone’s aunt to look like, but the way she hugged Tobi close to her, I could tell she cared for him.
“He can stay here with you tonight?” I asked. I was worried about the boy, but was torn with my need to take care of Mason.
“Thank you for bringing him home,” she said to me as Tobi went inside. Charlotte came outside, and pulled the front door mostly closed behind her.
“This is the last straw,” she said. “I’m calling Child Protective Services and going to see if I can get custody of Tobi,” she said, anger glittering in her eyes.
“Tobi’s what, sixteen?” I asked.
She nodded at me. “He just turned sixteen in March.”
“You’ve got a good chance then, because he gets to have a say in who he lives with,” I told her. We’d gone through a lot of custody stuff with both Bishop and Kaine. “If… if you need anything, testimony or whatever, please let me know. You might want to check his arms—I think someone hurt him,” I said softly.
Her eyes, which had glittered angrily before, positively glowed with rage as she stood in the evening air.
“That boy deserves to be loved for who he is, not who they want him to be,” she said. “I’m going to make sure that happens.”
I nodded and said my goodbyes, feeling better about Tobi’s situation than I had for a while.
I got back in the Jeep, then pulled out of her driveway. Mason remained frozen in his seat, not moving or saying anything. It was only when we were about fifteen minutes into the drive home that I dared to try talking to him again.
“Mason, baby,” I said, glancing at him then back to the road. “What happened?”
He didn’t reply at first and I wasn’t going to press him for answers while I was driving, but after a few minutes he sighed, part sob, part hiccup. Then a minute later he began to speak, his voice thready and weak.
“I really don’t want to talk about it tonight, Lee. It… wasn’t a rally. At least…” he sighed, “…no rally I’d ever want to go to.” He half-laughed, half-sobbed as he sniffed and struggled to pull himself together.
“It was some church thing or something,” he said, refusing to look at me. My throat tightened and I swallowed as he struggled to talk.
“It was supposed to be a community forum. At least, that’s what Lizzie was told,” he said. “She would never have sent me there if she’d known. I just… Lee, I can’t talk about it…” He said, shaking his head as his voice trailed off. The remainder of the drive was in silence.
We made it back to my house in record time. I was just glad there were no cops on Route 8. Apparently, there wasn’t that big of a need for police on a Wednesday night. Who knew?
We pulled into the driveway of my house. I put the Jeep in park, and reached for the door, but Mason started talking again, his face was white as a ghost under the garage light.
“Please, Lee,” he said, his voice breaking. “No more questions tonight. I just… I need to make some phone calls. I need a shower, and some sleep,” he said. “I’m… I’m exhausted.”
He looked it. He had dark circles under his eyes. The laughing, joyous Mason of just a few hours ago was gone, replaced by a ghost.
“Phone calls?” I asked.
“Yeah, I just…I need…need to make sure everyone’s…okay.” He said, ducking his eyes away from mine.
I thought back to Kaine’s need to make sure everyone was still there each night after a nightmare, and I figured it might be a similar need.
“Can I help?” I asked.
He paused, then nodded.
“Can you… can you call your family? Make sure they’re all okay? Tell them…please tell them to be careful tonight. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them.”
“How about I text them all?” I asked. “We’ve got the family chat. We’ll get you inside, you get cleaned up and I’ll check in with them.”
I helped Mason out of the Jeep and took him inside. His movements were slow and stiff, and a horrible thought occurred to me.
“Mason… Did… did they… Did they hurt you? Touch you?” I asked, fury percolating in my brain at the idea. The mere thought of it made me so angry, I could barely see straight.
Mason just shook his head and some of the rage faded from me, but then he refused to look me in the eye. God, I hoped he wasn’t lying to me.
I intended to help him get cleaned up, but he grabbed his clean clothes and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him with finality before I could even offer my help. I could appreciate his need for some privacy after tonight, but the rejection still stung.
I made the bed as I waited for him to get out of the shower, then remembered my promise to check in with my family. We had a group chat set up for when we were trying to coordinate family events, so it didn’t take long.
ME: Hey guys, can I get a roll call?
MAM D: Kyra and I are here.
BISHOP: Here.
KAINE: What?
SONNY&HICKS: Twin and I are Ah-firmative.
WEAVER: Going on duty shortly, bro. What’s up?
ME: Not sure. Mason had a run in with some religious assholes tonight, and he’s worried about everyone and wanted me to check in to make sure you were all okay.
BISHOP: Assholes!
KAINE: Fuckers.
MAMA K: Language, Kaine!
KAINE: Sorry, Mom. Goddamned Motherfucking sonsofbitches.
MAMA D: lol
WEAVER: Ooooh! “Mason” huh? Is that the hottie?
ME: You haven’t even met him. How can you know he’s a hottie?
WEAVER: Um, A) He caught YOUR attention, and B) “Someone” might have sent me some pics…/whistles innocently
ME: “Someone” huh? Maybe I’ll have to dig out some naked pictures of “Someone” playing with your Barbie's in the bathtub.
WEAVER: Liar! No such pictures exist! I never played with my Barbie's in the bathtub!
ME: Who said they were photos of you? /eyes Kaine knowingly
KAINE: Hey, leave me out of this! Ken and I were just really good friends.
SONNY&HICKS: Hah! We’re closing up shop and heading home now. Had a great week, mostly thanks to Mason!
BISHOP: $$ching ching$$
KAINE: I’m fine. Leave me alone.
WEAVER: Wow. Short much, bro?
ME: I…think he has something he’s dealing with. Be nice.
WEAVER: Do I have to? /whines
MAM K: Is everything okay, mijo?
ME: I think so, yes. Everyone, just stay safe tonight, okay?
I left them to continue their usual family banter and headed back to the bedroom.
Mason was seated on the bed, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair slicked back and looking the straightest I’d ever seen it. He had his laptop on the bed, messaging with Lizzie and Zem. He was smiling slightly at the screen as he closed it, so it looked like they were fine.
My eyes narrowed, though, as my gaze came to rest on dark red marks on his upper arms where it looked like someone had sunk their fingers into him. His fingers were red and angry where they had dug into the glass of his smartphone.
“Shit, Mason, you said they didn’t hurt you,” I hissed, coming over to examine his arms. The marks were a dark, angry red and would probably be bruises by tomorrow.
“What? This? It’s nothing,” he said, pulling his arm gently from my grasp.
“It’s not nothing!” I exclaimed. “We need to call the police and file a report.” I said, reaching for my phone.
“No!” Mason yelled at me, his hand snapping out to grab my hand as I went to swipe my screen. “Lee, no. This is nothing, really.” He said, gesturing to his arms. “I just bruise easily. I’ve survived a lot worse.”
“So? You shouldn’t have to endure it now!” I said angrily. Just earlier today I’d vowed to make life easier on Mason, not harder. Then someone did this.
“Lee…” he sighed at me, looking thoroughly exhausted. “Just… just let it go. Nothing we do is going to change their minds. It’s who they are. Calling the cops will only give them a martyr complex. Besides, I can’t… I can’t testify against them. I don’t remember what anyone looked like…it was a crowd, you know? I don’t even know who they were.” He said. “It would be pointless. And I don’t think I could… could explain to the police… Not with my history…” His voice trailed off for a moment, then he shook himself. He looked up at me, his anxiety clear on his face. “Your family… is everyone okay?” He asked, fear stark on his face.
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