Page 19 of The Shape of my Scar
“Let me go, fucker… You fucking cunt…let me…”
“Get off me! You fuckin’ knobhead, I’ll kill you—”
“Calm it down, lad!” the copper holding him down snapped.
Thane grabbed the arm of a woman officer with kind eyes who looked a little like his mum.
“There’s a girl. Dorothy. We left her. We couldn’t open the door—”
Zel—the calmest of them all—stood beside him, nodding. Dried blood coloured the side of his face, and his left eye was swollen shut.
“We were kept somewhere for months. There’s a girl still in there.”
“There was this house…” Thane tried again, eyes wide, breath catching. “We were inside it for ages, like, months, and—”
“We don’t know where exactly,” Zel added quickly, voice hoarse but firm. “It was on an estate. There was a cherry blossom tree.”
“And Dory—her real name’s Dorothy—she’s still in there!” Thane cried. “We tried to get her, we really did, but the door was locked with some kind of number pad, and we couldn’t…couldn’t open it—”
“It jammed. There was no keyhole,” Zel cut in. He kept a hand on Thane’s shoulder. “They reinforced it. She was trapped.”
“We tried everything.” Thane’s voice was like the rattle on an ancient car. “We kicked it and pushed and screamed for her, and she was screaming, too. We had to run because they were coming back, and we didn’t wanna leave her—”
“But we had no choice,” Zel interjected. “They would have killed us. The men had guns and tasers. One was dead. We couldn’t fight them all.”
Thane turned back to the officer, tears streaking through the dirt on his face. “Please, she’s little…she’s nine. She’s got blonde hair and blue eyes, and she reads books out loud, and she was so scared. Please—”
The lady officer with kind eyes walked them to the ambulance and said, “Now calm down. We need this nice gentleman to check if you are hurt. Tell me again…You were saying you all were locked up in a house?”
“Yes, there is this house—we were inside it for a long time, like months, I think—and there’s a girl still in there. Her name’s Dorothy, but I call her Dory, and she’s still in the room. We couldn’t get her out, the door wouldn’t open, and we tried everything, but it was stuck, and we had to run, but we’re gonna go bac… We have to go back—”
A lady officer crouched near them, keeping her voice low and soft. “Alright, love. It’s okay. Take a breath. Let’s get you sat down, yeah? You’ve done brilliant, all of you. We will find her.”
Thane sat in the back of a patrol car, still trembling, still babbling. Zel stuck close to him.
Sirens blared in the distance. Cars passed by. An ambulance on the road. The beep of the police radio.
The boys described what they could.
Cherry blossom tree. The church spires in the distance. White fences. The rusted gate with a pattern of leaves on top. The red brick houses.
A man nearby scratched his head and nodded slowly. “Sounds like Firth Street. There’s an estate up there.”
They were loaded into the squad cars.
Thane and Zel in one; Maro and Lirian in the other.
They turned into a large estate.
Firth Street was massive, with dozens of identical homes. They all looked the same.
None of them knew the number of the house.Why didn’t they check the number?
Thane’s breath went in and out in bursts as he scanned the houses for something…anything familiar. He kept muttering…please please…under his breath.
Then, a woman walking her dog nodded.
“Big cherry tree? That’ll be two, three streets down. Near the corner.”
