Careful little eyes: An addictive, horrifying serial killer thriller (7th Street Crew Book 4)

by Willow Rose

  Another loud rumble rolled in above him and Tim gasped. He turned to look at the massive cloud that was soon going to be directly above him, huge drops of rain already falling from it.

  Tim waited and waited in the rain, his clothes and shoes soaked, but Damien didn’t come out. Fifteen minutes passed before Tim decided to knock on the door. Nothing happened. The thunderstorm was directly above him now and lightning struck a tree not far away. Tim knocked again.

  “Damien! Hurry up!”

  No one answered, and Tim noticed that there was no longer light coming from the window beside the door. Hadn’t there been a light shining from behind the closed curtain, when they came up to the house? Maybe he remembered wrong.

  “Damien?” Tim yelled, while thunder rumbled above him. He knocked on the window. “Damien, I’m leaving now! You hear me?”

  Tim walked a few steps backwards, his eyes still fixated on the door, hoping, praying it would open and Damien’s face would peek out, but it didn’t.

  Screw the money. Screw St. Augustine and screw Damien! Tim thought, then he turned around and ran into the street towards his childhood home.

  He didn’t make it to the other side before the cloud above him opened up and let out a huge bolt of fire, sending it straight towards Tim. He stopped and looked up, spotting a lightning bolt shooting down towards him, just before a flash hit him right in the face.

  As he fell to the ground, all he could think of was whether he was going to get those pattern burns on his body like the people in New Smyrna, the ones that looked like his mother’s tattoo.

  Later, he would tell people it felt like being punched in the face, but how would he know anything about what it felt like to be punched? Tim had never been punched, but he had been hit by lightning for the first time in his life.

  It wasn’t the last.

  Chapter Five

  There wasn’t any pain when he woke up. Only the shock. And then there was the buzzing. It felt mostly like he had a really bad cold. Lightheaded, was the word the doctor used, when telling him he would feel like this for some days afterwards. After three days in the hospital bed, it still hadn’t gone away.

  “How are you feeling?” His mother would ask him every time he opened his eyes. Then she grabbed his hand in hers and held it to her chest, looking at him with the worried eyes he knew so well from his childhood. Finally, on the third day, he managed to speak for the first time.

  “Damien?” he asked.

  That was when his mother’s expression changed drastically. She shook her head. “They haven’t found him yet. We found you in the street. I heard the boom from inside the house and looked out to see you surrounded in a sea of light. I screamed and ran out to you, thinking you were dead. I was so sure you had died, Timmy. But you were still breathing. I held your hand till the ambulance came. Damien, we never found. They’ve looked for him everywhere. The police and the dogs and everyone that volunteered to be a part of the search party, but still no sign of him. It’s very odd. Why wasn’t he with you?”

  “He…he…there was an old lady…no two, there were two,” Tim stuttered, thinking back on it all.

  “What old lady? What are you talking about?”

  Tim stared at his mother. He didn’t understand. Did she say that they hadn’t found Damien? How? Why?

  He spoke, trying to remember. “The two old ladies who live across the street from us. He went in there just before…before I was struck by lightning.”

  Tim’s mother shook her head and looked up at his stepdad, Sam, behind her. “I don’t know of any old ladies, do you?”

  Sam shook his head, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “No. The house right across the street from us? I believe that house has been empty for years.”

  Tim’s mom stroked his hair gently. “Poor baby. You’ve been through so much. You’re getting it all mixed up.”

  Tim sat up. The buzzing in his head accelerated and almost drowned out everything else. He closed his eyes for just a second, then remembered the importance of what he had to say. “There were two ladies in that house. They asked Damien to come inside to get money for the cookies, and…and…and then he didn’t come back out…and then…there was a loud noise, and then…”

  “Calm down, Tim,” his mother said. “You’re getting yourself all worked up. You’ve got to rest, baby. The doctor says…”

  “No!” Tim looked his mother in the eyes. She needed to understand this was urgent. “He’s in that house. Damien is in that house. I am telling you the truth! You’ve got to believe me.”

  His mother hesitated, and then pulled away. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t remember any old ladies living on our street. There’s Mrs. Henderson, but she’s not that old. But maybe…I mean someone could have lived in that house without us knowing it, right?”

  She looked to Sam for help. He shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t just say that to make him feel better. It’s not helping him.”

  Tim’s mom sighed. “You’re right.”

  “But the Cadillac. You must have seen the light blue Cadillac?” Tim asked, feeling the sense of panic spread. “It was in the driveway.”

  His mom shook her head again. “I don’t remember any car. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there…it’s just…well, I don’t remember seeing it. Do you, Sam?”

  Sam shook his head. “Nope.”

  “But it was there. And Damien went in that house. I’m telling you the truth,” Tim said. He was getting tired of the constant buzzing in his head and had to lie back down on the pillow.

  “I…I don’t know what to say…or do,” his mother said.

  “Tell the sheriff,” Sam said. “It’s all we can do. He’ll look into it.”

  “But…but what if it’s something the boy dreamt? Who will believe it? He was out for a long time; he could have had all sorts of hallucinations. I mean, he was struck by lightning for God’s sake. Look at his face.”

  Sam looked at Tim and made a grimace.

  “What?” Tim asked, terrified. “What’s wrong with my face?”

  Tim’s mom looked at Sam, and then shook her head. “We didn’t want to…”

  “I want to see,” Tim said.

  Tim’s mom leaned over him and shook her head with compassion. “Baby, you don’t have to…”

  “I want to. I want to see my face.”

  Sam shrugged. “If the boy wants to see his face, then show him his face.”

  Tim’s mom sighed. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small mirror. “All right, then.”

  She lifted it up and Tim got a glimpse of his new look. He gasped and touched his cheeks. Long red marks, looking like trees, were branching up from his neck into every area of his face.

  “They call it Lichtenberg…” his mother said, but had to stop, overwhelmed with sobs.

  “Lichtenberg figures,” Sam took over. “Or scars. They come from…”

  “Bursting blood vessels,” Tim said, and ran a finger across one of them and followed it across his cheek to his forehead, where it ended. He couldn’t stop staring at the patterns in his face.

  “Makes you look kind of bad-ass,” Sam said. “We should give you a new nickname like Scar-face or something.” He accompanied his last sentence with goofy laughter before he received a look from Tim’s mom that made him stop.

  “Don’t laugh at the poor boy. He’s been through enough as it is.”

  Tim didn’t care what his mother said; he thought he looked kind of badass too. He only wished his best friend could be there to see it.

  20 years later

  Chapter Six

  Steven Chambers was in a hurry. This morning had been close to a nightmare. They had called from the office and told him that two of his properties had problems with flooding after last night’s heavy rainfall. It was always the same. When summer hit Florida, the rain came, and then the flooding. The properties were old and needed updating, but Steven didn’t want to spend too much money on them, since h
e wanted to eventually sell them and hopefully make a lot of money. For now, he was just renting them out, and his office took care of the details. He had people hired to take care of everything, so he wouldn’t have to.

  But the flooding was bad, especially at one of the properties, and they needed to hire a company to take care of it. It was going to be expensive.

  “Don’t forget; you’re driving Billy to camp this morning,” his wife Melissa said, as Steven was about to rush out the door, coffee still in his hand, and his briefcase in the other.

  “He’s doing the spy camp at Satellite Beach rec-center,” she continued. “And I have my yoga class on Fridays, as you might remember.” Which she knew he didn’t; of course he didn’t. How could he with all he had going on? How could she expect him to keep track of her schedule as well?

  Spy camp, what the hell was that even? Instead, the boy should go to the camp at NASA and learn something valuable, rather than this. Steven had suggested it, but apparently the boy didn’t like science. Then Steven had suggested baseball camp instead, but that wasn’t Billy’s thing either.

  As if we had a choice when I was a kid. All we had was Bible camp and there was no discussion.

  “All right, Billy, are you ready?” he yelled.

  Billy came down the stairs, wearing his infrared spyglasses that he got for his birthday. His mother handed him his lunchbox and kissed his forehead.

  Damn kid looks like a geek with those glasses. The other kids are going to laugh at him.

  “Let’s go,” Steven said and looked at his Applewatch. “We’re running late.”

  In the car, Steven called the office and told Amanda at the front desk that he was going to be a little late.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied with a lazy attitude, and he hung up. He was sick of Amanda’s attitude and wanted her gone by next week. He was going to talk to Kate, his secretary, about it later today so she could make it happen.

  “So, Billy, what are they teaching you at that camp?” he said, and looked at him in the rearview mirror.

  The boy’s face lit up. “How to spy, Dad. How to sneak around and not be seen and the secret codes and all. Next Friday we have to pass an obstacle course to see if we become double-0-agents or not.”

  And we’re paying money for that?

  Steven sighed deeply and drove onto A1A, accelerating the soundless engine of his Tesla Model S. The gate to their beach house closed slowly behind him after he hurried onto the street.

  As they passed the gas station, he sped up to forty-five and entered South Cocoa Beach. Billy looked out the window, while Steven worried about the day and how much money he was going to have to spend on that flooding. Didn’t they fix it last year? He remembered sending his guys out to make the drain, but apparently they didn’t do a very good job. Maybe he should get some other guys.

  Steven grumbled, annoyed, when he passed a bus stop on his right side and spotted an old lady standing next to it looking confused, squinting her eyes like the light was too bright, or like she had forgotten her glasses and was trying to see without them. The woman reminded him of his grandmother, who had died only a year ago. Steven missed her terribly, since they had been very close. She was the one who had helped him through the difficult time of his parents’ divorce. He had lived with her after his parents separated because they couldn’t agree on who was going to take him, so she had told them she could make it very easy on them and take in the boy. He had grown up with her and she had been his closest parent. Now she was gone.

  Steven felt emotional thinking about her, as he drove into the parking lot in front of the rec center. He dropped Billy off and got back in the car. As he drove back the same way up A1A, he kept thinking about the old lady, and as he neared the bus stop once again, he realized she was still standing there, looking like she wasn’t sure she was in the right place.

  Poor thing might be lost, he thought, as he approached her, maybe she has somewhere to be but has no idea how to get there. A nice old lady like her shouldn’t ride the bus. No one knows what kind of scum she might meet there. Mostly drunks and people who’ve had their licenses revoked ride the bus around here.

  On that thought, he hit the brakes. He stopped right in front of her and rolled down the window.

  “Can I offer you a ride somewhere?”

  The old lady squinted again and looked at Steven before she exclaimed, “A true gentleman. Now, how about that!”

  Chapter Seven

  “It’s awfully nice of you to give an old lady a lift,” the woman said and got into the passenger seat, her purse in her lap. She was wearing a very colorful floral shirt, mint green Capri pants, and one of those sun visors that provided shade, but didn’t ruin the hair. The tip of her nose was green with a thick layer of sunscreen.

  “No problem. I was going this way anyway. Now, where to?”

  Steven returned to the road, felling awfully good about himself. It was almost like he was paying back for all that his grandmother had done for him, taking him in and taking care of him and all. Okay, he might have to do more than just give one old lady one lift, but still. It felt good. In fact, it felt so good he completely forgot he was in a hurry.

  “This car is awfully quiet,” the lady said.

  “It’s an electric car,” he said, smiling. “Good for the environment.”

  “I see. What will they come up with next?”

  “So, where am I taking you?” he asked.

  “The bank,” she said and opened her purse.

  “The bank, sure thing. What bank?”

  “Just any bank.”

  “There’s a Wells Fargo up the road I can drop you off at. Are you making a withdrawal or a deposit? There’s an ATM outside.”

  “I’m not making anything. You are,” she said, and fumbled with something in her purse.

  “Excuse me?” Steven said, and turned to look at her.

  The old lady pulled out a gun and pointed it at him. Then she smiled. “You’re making a withdrawal.”

  “What the he…”

  “Now, watch your language, young man. No need to get vulgar,” she said.

  What is this? Some kind of joke?

  “There it is,” she said. “Take a left right here.”

  “But…but…”

  “No buts here, mister,” she said and lifted the gun. “I’m in charge. Or we are. Mr. Smith & Wesson and me. You do as I tell you and no one gets hurt.”

  Steven stared at the gun. He had never been held at gunpoint before. The gun was old, looked almost like a revolver, like the ones Dirty Harry would use asking you if you feel lucky.

  “What…what do you want?” he asked and parked the car.

  “I believe I just told you. I want you to make a withdrawal. A big one. Ten thousand dollars.”

  “Listen, I don’t mind helping you out, if you’re in some sort of trouble. I mean, we can set up a loan, maybe, but I can’t…”

  The old lady placed the gun close to his temple. “You can’t what?”

  Steven gasped, feeling the gun so close to his head. “All right. I’ll give you what you want. Just remove that thing, will you?”

  She lowered the gun, but not without keeping it pointed at him. They got out of the car and he walked up to the entrance of the bank, the old lady right behind him, the gun hidden by a long golden scarf. Steven walked inside, the old lady right behind him.

  “Well, hello Mr. Chambers,” the lady at the teller window said. “What can we do for you today?”

  “I’m making a withdrawal,” he said, winking to the woman, trying to get her attention, but she only reacted by being flattered and blushed.

  The woman slid him the paper and he wrote a number. The woman looked at it. “All right, Mr. Chambers, we’ll have the money ready for you right away.”

  Steven tried to shape the word help with his lips and nod in the direction of the old lady. But the woman didn’t seem to understand.

  “Is this your mother?” she asked.


  “Oh, no,” the old lady giggled. “I am just an acquaintance.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise, young lady. What a beautiful broach.”

  The teller blushed and touched her chest, her fingers lingering on the broach. “Thank you. It used to belong to my grandmother.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The woman disappeared for a second, and then returned with the money in an envelope. “Here you go, Mr. Chambers. Pleasure doing business with you again.”

  Steven sighed. He felt the gun being pressed against his side, the woman rubbing hips with him. He didn’t dare to say anything. Instead, he realized his defeat, turned around and walked outside, the old woman walking so close to him he could feel the muzzle of the gun in his side.

  In the car, he handed her the money. She giggled and started to count it. “Now, you got what you came for, right? Now, please leave.”

  The old lady pointed the gun at Steven again. “Not yet. I want you to take me somewhere first.”

  The old lady didn’t say where she wanted to go, only told him when to turn and when not to. When they were at the top of the bridge leading to Merritt Island, she suddenly asked him to stop the car.

  “But…you’re not allowed to stop on the bridge.”

  “STOP the car!”

  He did as she told him. They both got out. Still squinting and while grinning, she placed the gun to his forehead, then pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Eight

  “Honey, did you pick up my dress at the dry-cleaners?”

  Ava’s voice came from downstairs. Tim was standing in the bedroom overlooking the canal and the neighborhood of Snug Harbor in Cocoa Beach. It was a quiet neighborhood; just the way Tim preferred it, and the house was the house of their dreams. On his small salary as a police officer with the Cocoa Beach Police Department, it had taken them years to be able to afford it, but with a little help from Ava’s job at the eye-clinic, they had finally been able to buy it three years ago.