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  See No Evil

  Back Cover

  Saying that Preity Roshan's life has been hell would be the understatement of the year. When she was young she lost her dad and then soon afterwards she lost her mom. She moves to a small town just on the outskirts of Edison City and finally her life is taking off...that is until she witnesses something that threatens to destroy her.

  Luke Sinclair has been having a bad feeling, and whenever the Edison City cop gets this feeling something bad happens. Then a hysterical woman seeks him out to help find her best friend who has gone missing. Now Luke is shoved into the path of a serial killer who has his eyes set on Preity and if he gets the chance, will take Luke as collateral damage.

  See No Evil © 2011 by Kendra Mei Chailyn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, events, is coincidental and not intended by the author

  A MuseItHOT Publication

  MuseItUp Publishing

  14878 James, Pierrefonds, Quebec, Canada, H9H 1P5

  http://www.museituppublishing.com

  Cover Art © 2010 by Delilah K. Stephens

  Edited by Carrie RO

  Copyedited by Lea Schizas

  Layout and Book Production by Lea Schizas

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-926931-36-4

  First eBook Edition * February 2011

  Production by MuseItUp Publishing

  See No Evil

  Kendra Mei Chailyn

  MuseitHOT, division of

  MuseItUp Publishing

  www.museituppublishing.com

  ADULT CONTENT: Some scenes contain violence, mild sexual content, adult language

  Dedication

  For you, my Grandma

  Darkness shall fall throughout the land and a mad man will reign. He will destroy everything! When he thinks no one knows; he is wrong. Something is watching…

  …The Eye.

  -Kadian Tracey-

  Prologue

  Night had fallen over the ghettos. But then again, it was always night in the ghettos. No matter if the sun was out, the place still seemed as though it had a black cloud over it – completely blocking out the sun. The people living there didn’t live there because they wanted. They were stuck there; stuck in the same mentality as their parents. It was the mindset that nothing was good and that the world was out to get them – nothing mattered more than survival. No one mattered to them. The thick silence over the neighborhood was often times broken by the screaming of sirens going by. It was either squad cars, ambulances, fire trucks or all three. With disastrous frequency, gunshots broke through the air and sent everyone ducking for cover. When the smoke cleared, someone was either badly hurt or worse—someone was dead. Many times it was someone who was too young but people didn’t care. One less person to them equals one less mouth to feed, one less thug; one less potential murderer.

  Those were the worse nights.

  When someone got shot, no one got any sleep. When someone got shot there were lights, engines, yells, more gunshots—it became a dark swirl of confusion, a kind of atmosphere no one in their right minds would want to be a part of.

  But these people, for the most part, weren’t in their right minds.

  A raw stench crept through the air. It was the smell of fear, hate, depression and brutality all mixed into one. It was a smell that no one there recognized but most of them hated inhaling. A few of the residents allowed this scent in and those were the ones to live and die by the gun. They were the ones who let the streets eat them whole. They allowed the eeriness of the place to crawl through them like a plague.

  It was hell here.

  But the deepest, darkest part of hell seemed to be in one house.

  Before all hell broke loose, the whole place went silent. The silence was enough to make a person go insane. It wasn’t the kind of silence that happened after some people stopped speaking, but the kind that came when everyone stopped moving, speaking and breathing all at the same time as if in anticipation of something about to happen. It was the deafening kind of silence that made one want to run to the nearest dark corner, curl their body into the fetal position and hide there in fear.

  It was dark outside and the boy knew what was coming. Not that he was psychic or anything like that; it was much worse. He knew what was coming from raw, horrible experience.

  What was coming was the same thing that came every time it got dark. The shouting, the beatings, things breaking; it was a given that every time night came at his house, evil descended in the form of his father through the front door like an unwelcome apparition that would continue to haunt him forever. It was the kind of haunt that clung on and would not leave until it was exorcised. Even then, sometime it stuck around, taunting outside a window while he cowered in fear.

  The stench of alcohol already spelled doom in the boy’s little mind and each time he smelled it, whether he was at home or not, he would try hiding. If the smell snuck up on him he would whimper then fall to his knees with both hands up protecting his head.

  At his age, he should be worried about the newest toy car on the market, what Santa was going to leave him for Christmas or what mud puddle to jump in the next time it rained; but not this little boy. He wasn’t as lucky as the other little boys on his block, in this tainted neighborhood, where everyone hears you cry; yet, no one heard. This little boy had far bigger things to think about because to his father, this boy was a man, an adult. The kicks to the ribs, punches to the face, caused him to grow up faster than was recommended. With each broken bone, sprain or open wound, his skin got thicker and thicker.

  He tried to figure out what was happening around and to him. It was the way things had always been and always would be. He didn’t know anything else and chances were he would just carry on the vicious circle.

  The cycle continues…

  Round and round it goes, like a wheel or the hand of time.

  Where it’ll stop, nobody knows-

  It’s taunting you.

  The dining room was the last place the fights reached and there he would be safe until his mother tried to run. When the beatings began she would try and run for the stairs or out the front door but he would always catch up to her. It seemed as though he could move at the speed of light.

  He is the Boogey Man.

  The house wasn’t large enough to escape a man’s wrath for long and this was tattooed to the little one’s brain. There was no where to hide. Closet doors were ripped off the hinges; they were used as previous hiding spots. Bedroom doors had gaping holes in them from his fists. Windows were boarded up because he had thrown a beer bottle through each window on different occasions. Everything in that house was broken with scars and patchwork.

  A broken down chair sat in the far corner of the room that had always been there for as long as he could remember. When he slid past it, the little mind wondered what it would be like to be a broken down chair. To just sit there, in a corner, for so long that people didn’t even know you were there anymore. What would it be like, to be covered in dust and cobwebs and just be ignored? Would it make all the happenings around him less terrifying? From somewhere inside his body a small voice gave him an answer that didn’t make the little boy any happier; it would be just like being a human.

  Humans broke.

  The chair broke. It had long since used up its usefulness but like a punishment, they left it where it was, propped up without pride. No one threw it out and the little boy knew he couldn’t
touch it. He knew that the moment he picked that chair up and set it on the curb for someone else to take away—because garbage trucks rarely visited—his father would miss it. His father would demand to know where it is, and the little boy would suffer a fate worse than death.

  What a wonderful thing it would be to be invisible.

  What would it be like to not be able to feel anything anymore; just like that old chair that everyone walked pass day in and day out but didn’t even see. Still it didn’t cry. It didn’t beg for someone—anyone to pay attention to it. It just sat there, in the corner.

  The old table cloth that hung over the shaky table used to be white. Now it was a terrible brownish color, with spill stains all over it. Some of the stains were food. Others were sweat stains, dirt and even blood. Others, the little boy didn’t even recognize.

  On his knees, he crawled until he sat down and looked up. All he could see was the dirty table cloth. He sat there, arms wrapped around his knees and waited.

  and waited…

  It would come. The big blow; the screaming, heart pounding, things shattering – it would come. He straightened his legs to work the sudden cramps that raged through his poor feet. The calves throbbed, warning of a Charlie horse.

  Swing low sweet chariot….

  Where was that coming from?

  The little boy sat underneath the table with his hands covering his ears. Ignoring the throbbing in his legs, he pulled in his knees tucking his face into them humming the old slavery song Swing Low Sweet Chariot he had heard the teacher sing. She had explained that slaves would sing it when they got scared. She said it calmed them but he wasn’t a slave, far from it. He wasn’t even black. The song wouldn’t work so he stopped humming and rocked back and forth.

  He was tired of hearing his parents yelling and most of all he couldn’t take his father beating his mother around. On a few occasions he had tried jumping on his father’s back to get the man to leave her alone but only succeeded with getting tossed across the room into a wall. On those occasions, he always ended up in the hospital. “I fell off my bike,” was the explanation for the three broken ribs he had sustained the first time.

  “I was hit by a baseball,” he explained the black and blue circles beneath his left eye.

  “I fell out of my tree-house.” This one for the broken arm.

  I don’t have a tree-house.

  I don’t have a bike.

  I hate baseball with a rabid, unexplainable passion.

  The boy was shocked that the authorities had bought the tree house explanation since there were barely any trees in the ghettos. The only trees he could remember were the ones in the park. Those had little fences around them to protect them from the drug head that went around cutting them down one summer.

  Fences around trees? What a joke!

  From somewhere outside, in the black of night, a dog barked and then for some strange reason, it began howling. Quickly the howling turned to pain filled cries. The dog smelled the doom that was coming. There were no other explanations.

  The little boy darted from beneath the table. He was taking a chance in giving up his hiding spot just so he could rush up the stairs. His father screamed after him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. He simply kept on running as fast as his little six year old legs could carry him. In the safety of his bedroom he slammed the door and stuck a chair behind it like he had seen in the movies. He crawled into the closet and pressed into the farthest, darkest corner he could find.

  There, morning caught the little boy sleeping soundly with his head tucked against a pair of shoes. He found out later that his father had tripped down the stairs knocking himself out. That was the only reason why the boy didn’t get a beating that night – divine intervention.

  Hallelujah!

  * * * *

  Seven years later, at thirteen, the boy walked into the house but was grabbed in a choke hold and yanked backward. He flailed his arms. Like any human being, the boy panicked because death flashed before his eyes. His short life turned into a movie inside his head. Every good thing, bad thing or stupid thing he’d ever done came forward and played in slow motion; all the girls that laughed in his face due to his awkwardness around them, nights of beatings – everything.

  He yelped in pain and tried harder to pry the hand from his throat as he coughed and sputtered. Air was being cut off from his brain. A strangled voice began screaming that he needed to breathe.

  “I—can’t—breathe,” he managed, flailing in the air like a dying fish and as his hands clawed at the hand holding him in a death grip. The harder he tried to draw air into his dying lungs the dizzier he got. His body began slowly losing its fight as he looked up with his last ounce of strength to see his mother standing at the door of the living room with a smile on her face. Her hands were folded over her chest as she just stood there.

  It was as though she was happy that her man was killing him. She didn’t try to help him.

  It was then that he knew that she had made a deal with the devil; him for her. Somewhere deep inside his dying brain he knew that mothers were supposed to do things the other way around. They were supposed to protect their off-springs with their lives; but his mother wasn’t typical. He wasn’t sure she was even a mother. She did things that completely went against what mothers are.

  He stopped fighting.

  As the last bit of oxygen continued leaking from his body, the boy used his last thoughts, strength and consciousness to vow revenge. His stepfather made one fatal error that day—he should have killed the boy.

  * * * *

  Getting his first pay check, the seventeen year old smiled. “What’re you going to do with your first check, boy?” the severely overweight man dressed in the dirty chef’s uniform asked as he picked his nose before reaching back to pick a wedgie.

  The teenager smiled. “I’m going to get me a birthday present. Something I’ve wanted ever since I was six.”

  “I see.” The man hauled up phlegm from the back of his throat and spit it. The horrible, black looking blub sailed through the air and landed on a bicycle stand across from them. “That’s good. Don’t blow it all in one place now.”

  Disgusted, the tall lanky kid hurried on his way while whistling, Happy Days are Here Again, jovially. Nothing was going to spoil his day.

  He had plans. Those plans were hatching in his head ever since he was six, and finally, he could do something about them. His first stop was at the bank. He handed over his card proudly to the woman at the desk who eyed him suspiciously. It was the first time he would put money into his account since he had created it two weeks before. Since he was still young they assumed he was in school so the account didn’t have any bank fees charged to it. When she asked for his check, he gave it to her.

  “I’d like to deposite half and would like the other half in cash please,” he explained.

  She nodded and was soon placing cash in his hands. Task one on his list was complete. He mentally checked it off an imaginary list.

  He exited the bank and almost skipped a little way down the street to the hunting store. He entered with purpose – head held high. His steps were those of a man who had accomplished something – he had money in his pocket. He browsed slowly until he came to what he wanted. Carefully checking each item in the large glass case, he finally made a decision and nodded his head as though in confirmation. With a skinny finger, he jabbed against the case pointing to the hunting knife when the storekeeper finally looked up from his tattered newspaper.

  The older man with the old cigarette butt hanging from his lips didn’t ask any questions. He simple accepted the money, wrapped the knife and its case into a piece of newspaper before shoving them into a bag and handed it over. Without even saying Have a nice day or Thank you come again, he sat back in the corner and pulled out his newspaper.

  The boy didn’t let the unfriendly storekeeper wreck his good mood. He simply smiled at the man’s newspaper and exited the store causing the bells above the d
oor to jingle. He did a silly impression of Fred Astair by jumping and clicking his heels together, spinning around a telephone pole before hurrying down the small stretch.

  Still whistling the teenager stopped by a local beauty store and bought a stick of Vixen, a red lip stick. Upon his exit, he stopped for a brief moment to smirk, flip himself the bird in his reflection on the beauty store’s window then headed for home.

  He didn’t go the short route to his small house in the ghetto. He took the scenic route to clear his head. The scenic route was nothing spectacular; with giant graffiti on store walls that spelled out any number of swear words along with names and things like “Hyde wuz ere.”

  “Wuz ere? How?” he asked then arched a brow.

  He then got the joke. “Ha! Clever!” He laughed.

  And what in the world was a fuck-tard?

  He stopped briefly to whiz against a tree, and then ducked across the train tracks that were no longer in use. Passing beneath some tress he jumped up to grab an apple from a low hanging branch and without even wiping it in his shirt he sunk his teeth into it. Sweet nectar ran down the sides of his mouth as he finally crossed a small bridge over polluted water and headed down the alley behind Mister Cesaer’s Bakery. He stopped and pushed through the front door of the bakery and bought himself a donut. The sweet pastry was still slightly warm causing the teenager to moan in utter satisfaction. The down side was, four bites later, the snack was gone.

  Emerging in front of Tony’s Pizza, which everyone had to know was a front for some kind of illegal activity, he stopped, cupped his hands against his face and peered in through the window. A group of gang-bangers sat, hunched over a table in deep conversation. One turned to flip him off. The teen shrugged and continued on his way across town while thinking of the kind of weirdos that lived in that neighborhood. Whoever said that the freaks came out at nights, definitely didn’t know what they were talking about. Either that or they have never been to his neighborhood. Down here freaks roamed all day, every day.