Careful little eyes: An addictive, horrifying serial killer thriller (7th Street Crew Book 4)
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About the Author
The Queen of Scream, Willow Rose, is an international best-selling author. She writes Mystery/Suspense/Horror, Paranormal Romance and Fantasy. She is inspired by authors like James Patterson, Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Isabel Allende. She lives on Florida's Space Coast with her husband and two daughters. When she is not writing or reading, you'll find her surfing and watching the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. She has sold more than a million books.
Connect with Willow online:
@madamwillowrose
willowredrose
willow-rose.net
madamewillowrose@gmail.com
To Hell in a Handbasket
Excerpt
Get a special sneak peak of Willow Rose's Bestselling Horror Novel To Hell in a Handbasket on the next pages.
Chapter One
For Tim Robertson, the old lady living across the street had always been there. He couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t live there or when someone else lived in that house. Growing up in Fellsmere, a city known all over Indian River County mostly for its yearly Frog Leg Festival, he never gave her much thought.
Not until when he was about ten years old—two months after his birthday, actually—when he and his best buddy, Damien, walked from door to door to sell chocolate chip cookies to raise money for a field trip to St. Augustine later in the year.
It was one of those really hot days in Florida. Tim was sweating heavily as they walked the streets in their neighborhood, knocking on doors and ringing doorbells. Most people were nice and bought some. Mrs. Thomson, Suzy Thomson’s mother, even bought three cookies and ate one right in front of the boys, making exaggerated mmm-sounds while telling them they did a great job baking these.
But not all people were as kind and welcoming to the boys. Added to that, it was Saturday and most people had taken their cars and driven to the beach or gone to the community pool, the only two places you could cool down if you weren’t lucky enough to have a pool of your own, which Tim wasn’t. His parents couldn’t afford it. Just like they couldn’t afford to pay for his trip to St. Augustine with the class. Neither could Damien’s mom, who was alone with him and his three brothers.
It was Tim’s mom’s idea to bake the cookies and have them sell them, but they’d have to sell a lot of cookies to make the sixty dollars the trip would cost for the both of them. And even after two hours of walking the neighborhood, the boys still hadn’t earned more than a few scraps.
“We haven’t tried your street yet,” Damien said. “Let’s do that next. Then call it a day.”
Tim wiped sweat from his forehead and nodded, tired. “Yeah. Let’s.”
The cookies on the plate between his hands were slowly melting and the chocolate pieces were smeared onto the wrapping. It was a mess and Tim wondered if they would sell any more. He felt his pocket with the money. So far they had only made fifteen dollars. They’d have to try again next weekend. Tim hated the thought.
“Let’s try this house,” Damien said and walked up to number two-thirty-five, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson.
Tim knew from years of trick-or-treating that Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were very generous people. They had a son of their own, but he was grown and had moved out years ago. Seeing Tim always made them so happy. Because he reminded them of their son, Tim’s mother had explained.
Mrs. Henderson opened the door. She clapped her hands and shrieked.
“If it isn’t little Tim!” She bent down towards him, then turned her head and yelled back through the door. “Ron! It’s little Timmy from up the street!”
“Little Timmy, my boy!” Ron yelled from behind her, and soon he appeared in the doorway. “How are you, my boy? How’s the arm?”
The Henderson’s son had played baseball and gotten a scholarship to college. Somehow they believed that Tim was good at baseball too. But he never was. He had tried to explain it to them before, but it never changed anything, so now he played along instead.
“It’s doing really great, Mr. Henderson.”
“They make you a pitcher yet? Otherwise I’ll come after Coach Ronald. I know how to deal with him, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Tim said with a smile.
“They’re selling cookies,” Mrs. Henderson said to her husband. “Let me go grab my wallet.”
Mrs. Henderson went inside for just a second, then returned with a bill in her hand. “Here you go, boys. Here’s a dollar.” Mrs. Henderson handed him the bill, then helped herself to one cookie, which she ate in front of them.
“Yum,” she said and pretended to rub her stomach.
“Now you boys better head on home now,” Mr. Henderson said and looked up at the sky. “There’s a thunderstorm coming. Looks like a big one.”
Cha
pter Two
“One stinkin’ dollar!”
Damien groaned when they walked out of the Henderson’s driveway. Tim felt the despair as well. It didn’t look good for them. They both knew if they couldn’t pay for the trip, then they would have to go be with a fifth grade class for the entire day while the rest of their grade was in St. Augustine. It had happened to Chad, Damien’s brother, last year and he had ended up having to help their teacher, Mrs. Barlow all day, following her around and holding her books and papers while she squeezed his cheeks and leaned in over him so he could look down her cleavage at her long wrinkled breasts, telling him he was going to be such a handsome man one day, just like his father.
Tim looked up at the sky behind their house. The black cloud had grown into a giant mushroom, looking like it was going to squash his home.
“We should go home,” Tim said.
At this time of year, the thunderstorms grew and moved rapidly. You had to be very aware of, what they on the radio called, pop-up storms.
“It’s still far away. We have a little time before it hits us,” Damien said. “We can make it to one more house. How about that one? It looks like there’s someone home; look at the old car in the driveway.”
Tim looked at the house, then at the light blue four-door sedan, a 1955 Cadillac that he had looked at all of his childhood, but never seen leave the driveway. He swallowed hard. “I…maybe we should try another one.”
“No, this one is the only one with a car parked in the driveway besides yours. There is definitely someone home here. Come on.”
Tim hesitated. He had always been terrified of the old lady living across the street from him. He had never seen her, but he knew she lived there. And he had a feeling she kept an eye on everything that went on in the small neighborhood, as he would always see her curtain move when people were in the street, and often he would spot an old long crooked finger holding it, and sometimes, only sometimes, he would spot her very yellow eyes peeking out, but he wasn’t sure if it was her or maybe her cat. Tim didn’t really know what it was about this woman that scared him so, but somehow he had always kept far away from her house. When riding his bike around the cul-de-sac, he would always go on the other side of the road and never go close to her house. There was just something about it that gave him the chills. Maybe it was the fact that he had never seen the woman outside her house and he kept picturing her as this old witch who would drag you inside her house and cook you for dinner. Like in that old story of Hansel and Gretel. She would keep him in a cage and feed him till he was about to burst, then cook him in the oven.
That was what he was afraid of. Old fairytales.
It’s just nonsense. Nothing but old stories made to scare kids from talking to strangers. You’re too old for that now, Tim.
Still, he couldn’t shake his fear when gazing upon the house. His stepdad, Sam, kept telling him to face his fears, to grow up and be a man. He was sick of how his mother always treated him like a baby.
“He’ll never be able to take care of himself if you keep doing everything for him,” he would say.
Tim liked it when his mother babied him, but he also knew that Sam was right. At some point, he needed to be a man. Tim looked up to Sam a lot, even though he often yelled at his mother. Sam was a real man. He could fix cars, like any car, no matter what was wrong with it. That was such a cool thing to be able to do, Tim often thought. He wanted to learn, but he never dared to ask his stepdad if he would teach him. At least not yet.
“You comin’?” Damien asked and walked up the driveway where the light blue 1955 Cadillac was parked halfway up on the grass. It amazed him how new it looked, even though it was more than forty years old. Not a sign of rust anywhere.
Tim looked at the house once again while hearing the rumbling from the storm behind him. He took in a deep breath and nodded.
It was time to grow up.
Chapter Three
“Who lives here anyway?” Damien asked, as he approached the front door.
Tim shrugged, the anxiety nagging in his stomach. “Some old lady.”
Damien shrieked happily. “Why didn’t you say that? All old ladies love cookies!” Damien opened the screen door and knocked. Tim stayed a few steps behind, the plate of cookies in his hands, droplets of sweat dripping on the wrapping. Tim drew in a deep breath as Damien knocked again.
“Maybe there’s no one home,” Tim said hopefully.
The storm had grown closer and it was getting dark now. Tim worried that they wouldn’t be able to make it back to his house. Growing up in Florida, he knew to respect the thunderstorms. They were no joke. Every year some tourist died because he or she didn’t get to shelter in time. Last year it was three people who had all been in the water up in New Smyrna when lightning got all three of them. People had watched it happen from their condos. Their dead bodies had been washed ashore, the skin on their bodies severely burned. Lichtenberg scarring, they called the patterns it left on the skin. It was the result of bursting blood vessels, the reporter said on the news. Tim had mostly thought it looked like flowers, kind of like the tattoo on his mother’s ankle.
Tim was about to turn around and walk home, when the sound of the creaking door stopped him.
Out peeked not one, but two faces. As expected, they were old and wrinkled and had eyes glowing with yellow light. Tim gasped when he saw them. They looked exactly the same. Had to be twins, he thought. But their faces weren’t scary, as he had thought they would be. They didn’t have long crooked noses and tight wrinkled lips that were brown from drinking too much coffee. They had no pointy chins. They didn’t seem angry or even look remotely like witches. No, instead, they had round faces and wrinkled cheeks that were glowing rose, like had they just been baking or maybe they were wearing some sort of make-up. Their hair was short and curly, like the Henderson’s poodles. They reminded Tim more of that woman on his mother’s cooking show than of the witch from The Wizard of Oz that he remembered watching as a child.
They both squinted their eyes as if the light outside was a little too bright or maybe they had trouble seeing because they didn’t have their glasses. Just like Tim’s grandmother always did.
“Yeeesss?” one of them said. She had sunscreen on the tip of her nose.
Tim thought she sounded so old, much older than he had expected. He wondered how he could ever have been afraid of her and laughed at himself. They were nothing but a cute couple of old ladies. Sweet old ladies. How silly he had been. And childish.
“We’re selling cookies,” Damien said.
Tim could tell he was excited, but at the same time trying to sound serious. He spoke loud to make sure they could hear him properly. “To raise money for our field trip next month. We’re going to St. Augustine with our school.”
The old women both leaned closer while he spoke, probably to better hear. As soon as they heard the word cookie, they both smiled from ear to ear.
“Cookies?” the one on the right, the one with the sunscreen, shrieked. She looked at her sister, who was also smiling. Their eyes met in the doorway. Then as if it was planned, they yelled in unison:
“NOW, HOW ABOUT THAT!”
Chapter Four
“How many do you want?”
Damien turned to Tim, who was still holding the plate of cookies. He grabbed the plate from his hands. “We have a lot.”
The two old ladies looked at each other then back at Damien. “Why, all of them, of course. We love cookies!”
Damien was about to explode in excitement. He glanced at Tim, who couldn’t believe his ears either.
“All of them, but…well certainly,” he said, grabbed the plate, and handed it to the old ladies.
That’s at least a hundred cookies. That could be a hundred dollars!
“Here you go,” Damien said. His hands were shaking in excitement.
But the old ladies didn’t grab the plate. Instead, they looked at Damien and Tim and said, “Our wallet is inside; why don’t you
come on in while we find it?”
“Sure,” Damien said and looked back at Tim.
The two old ladies stepped aside and let Damien walk in. Tim didn’t move. The musty and stuffy smell coming from the open door made him nauseous. It reminded him of the long weekend visits to his grandparents when his granddad was sick, before he died.
“Are you coming?” the one old lady with sunscreen on the tip of her nose asked. She reached out her hand as if to show him the way.
Tim couldn’t move. He was frozen. He shook his head. “I…I think…I better stay out here.”
“We have hot chocolate and now we have lots and lots of cookies as well,” she continued. “We certainly can’t eat all those by ourselves, now can we? Why don’t you come and help us? Hmm?”
Tim wanted to, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t get himself to take the five steps to go inside their house. Behind him, the thunder rumbled loudly and a few heavy drops of rain hit his face.
“Why, there’s a storm comin’,” the old lady said. “Come inside for shelter.”
Tim stared at the woman. The old stories from his childhood lingered in his mind and made it impossible for him to move out of fear. He could have sworn he felt like there was a pull, like a strong wind coming from inside the house. It was like it wanted to suck him in.
“I’ll…I’ll just wait here.”
The old lady gritted her teeth. She seemed to be angry and he wondered if he had offended her.
“As you wish.”
She turned and walked back inside, where she closed the door in front of Tim. The screen door slammed shut behind her.
Why did you do that? Why? Damien is in there right now drinking hot chocolate and eating your mother’s cookies. That could have been you, you idiot. Instead, you’re left out here in the rain!