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I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?”
“No, Mason. Not yet. I want to know.”
“Know what?”
“Why he’s doing this to me. Why he hired you to guard the door when he knows full well he’s already made it impossible for me to escape. Now that I have you on my side and I know I can trust you, I can take this... I can take his torture for a little while longer.”
“Maya, don’t do this. Let’s just get out of here.”
“I need to know, or what’s happened to me means nothing at all. I’ve suffered so much... I need it to mean something. Please.”
I let out a deep sigh. I turned away and paced the room, rubbing my bald head with my hands, feeling so frustrated that I could crush my own skull.
“Mason, please,” she whispered.
“If this is what you want...”
“It is.”
I nodded. “All right. But I won’t let him touch you again. Do you hear me, Maya? He touches you, he loses both hands.”
Chapter Eight
Maya
Mason was a golem. When I saw him, I knew it immediately, which was great news. It meant my memories weren’t lost forever. Little by little, they would come back to me. I’d seen golems before, around the city, though I’d never interacted with them. And that was how another piece of information returned to me – I lived in a neighborhood where only humans lived. And my job... my job was in the same neighborhood! I didn’t have to go to the city center too often, which meant I rarely saw and talked to monsters.
When he’d touched me, I’d felt this soothing heat seep into my bones. He made me feel safe. More than that, he made me feel brave. Had it not been for him, for his imposing presence, I wouldn’t have had the courage to stay when I could’ve escaped. As I asked him to help me find out why Lockwood was doing this to me, I couldn’t believe it myself. I’d never been or felt so brave in my life. I was sure it was because of Mason.
I wondered what he was going to do. He hadn’t tied me back up, and I was free to walk around the room and stretch properly for the first time in days. Oh, how I wished I could wash myself! How I wished I could brush my teeth, wash my hair, change my clothes! Mason was truly a good person if he saw me in the state I was in and didn’t judge me.
What about me? Was I a good person?
My captor had told him I’d done something to his mother. Mason didn’t believe it, and I didn’t believe it either, but seeing how I couldn’t remember a damn thing, I couldn’t be sure. And I wanted to be sure, because the accusation was terrible, and if I’d done something wrong and hurt someone, I wanted to know about it, understand the extent of the harm I’d caused.
Was I being gaslit? That could be a possibility, too. Lockwood was strange. He had this uncanny aura about him, where I couldn’t tell if he felt emotions or not. He saw himself as being kind and generous just because he fed me three times a day, and when he tied me up and gagged me, he seemed convinced that I was forcing him to do it with my bad behavior. He’d told me the concussion was my fault because I’d fought him.
That did sound like gaslighting.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder about his mother. Like Mason, I wanted to know if she was alive. And well. I hoped she was well. No matter who her son was and what he did, no mother deserved to suffer.
With my arms above my head, I rose on my tiptoes and stretched as high as I could. My back popped in a few places, and I focused on my breath. As tired as I was, and as much as I wanted to just lie down and stare at the ceiling, I knew that my body needed to move. I considered doing some push-ups, working out a bit. Like I’d seen people do in movies when they were trapped somewhere with no way to escape.
Mason Stonewarden.
I’d meant it when I told him I liked his name. Monsters had such interesting names. Humans, not so much.
He didn’t think I deserved this. Even if I had done something bad that I couldn’t remember, I felt like Mason would still not think I deserved to be treated this way, and that made me feel confident and secure. Not knowing who I was, what I’d done or didn’t do, how I lived my life... all these gaps in my memory made me feel like I could be anyone, that I could be any kind of person, a bad one included.
Was Mason right to trust me? I hoped he was. He’d just met me, though, and he didn’t know anything about me. And I couldn’t tell him, either.
Okay, now I was having doubts again. My pacing became frantic, and I felt like the room wasn’t big enough. It was like a cage, and I couldn’t breathe. I had to stop thinking about things that put me in a dark mood.
Mason was good. It was good that he’d found me, that he’d untied me and wanted to help me. I would not doubt any of that, no matter how confused I was.
The wait was killing me. Beyond the door, everything seemed to be silent. After Mason had left, I’d heard him pace for a while, but then he’d stopped, leaving me to wonder what he was doing and what he was thinking about. I didn’t want to talk to him through the door in case Lockwood came down and heard us.
Dr. Vincent Lockwood. The name still didn’t ring a bell. And what was he doing with my blood? Lab tests, for sure, but of what sort? I needed to know. Because it was my blood and my life. It was easy to escape now that a golem – a man who was massive and literally made of stone – was on my side, but I refused to leave this place until I got some answers.
