Family Tradition

seen ’em earlier comin’ onto the island. Didn’t matter none—till you lost the skinny girl and the kid in the canoe. If the rich bitches see ’em, they could talk. So you know what that means.”

Esau looked up dumbfounded. “You mean we gotta kill ’em?”

“Damn straight, and it’s yer fault, A-hole. Can you ’magin’ what’d happen if they saw that kid from the canoe’n then went and tolt their boyfriends? They’d have the cops out here. Then we’d be ruined and Grandpa Ab’d die. The family tradition would end.”

Esau’s throat went dry. Even he realized the totality of the implication. “If, uh, if we gotta kill the girls, then don’t that mean we also gotta kill—”

“That’s right. The two rich brothers, too.”

“Enoch!” Esau wailed. “We cain’t kill Ashton Morrone! He’s a master chef! He’s a tv star! He’s my hero!”

“Fuck him. He’s dead’n gutted. All of ’em are. We cain’t risk any of ’em seein’ what got out here tonight.”

“Ah, dog-gone!” Esau complained.

Enoch gave him another smack to the head. “And don’t’cha forget what I tolt ya. It all your fault. Yer in charge of the kitchen, but I’se in charge of ever-thing else.” Enoch glared his disapproval. “So’s now we split up, that’ll double our chances. You take south, I’ll take north. If we don’t have this whole fucked up mess fixed up by mornin’, you ain’t gonna be worth more than dead dog’s snot.” Lastly, for effect, he kicked Esau hard in the ass.

The stupid boy ran off into the trees.

“Dang boy’s got gopher shit fer a brain,” Enoch muttered. He emptied his nostrils onto the ground, then stalked off for the hunt.

««—»»

“See?” Carol said. There was a small white marker light by the pier, which Carol used to show what she’d found. Newspaper clippings. “Look how old they are.”

LOCH NESS OF THE NORTHWEST? one headline read from the National Enquirer. The article went on to read:

“It was big,” says long-time fisherman Barnabas Marsh, “like a giant jellyfish or a whale with tentacles.” Last week Marsh was fishing at an obscure lake near Port Angeles, Washington, when he spotted the giant “shape” in the water. “It looked like a giant shadow running under my boat. It must’ve been a hundred feet long.” A “Loch Ness Monster” in America? “Whatever it was,” Marsh says, “I’ll never go fishing there again!”

Sheree rolled her eyes. “It’s a tabloid article, Carol,” she complained. “What’s the big deal?”

“Look at the date. It’s from 1961. “nd you know they’re talking about this lake.”

“It doesn’t name the lake,” Sheree countered.

“Well then why would that redneck kid have the article? Here, check this one out.”

DISAPPEARANCES BAFFLE LOCAL POLICE read another headline, this one from The Port Angeles Examiner. The article went on to relate that some twenty people, mostly hunters and fishermen, had disappeared over a five-year period in vicinity to…Sutherland Lake. The date of the article was 1946.

“I still don’t see what the big deal is,” Sheree attested.

“Okay, but what did that redneck kid say his name was?”

“Isaiah? No, Esau. Something like that.”

“Right, and he’s gotta be—what?—in his mid-twenties at the most?”

“I guess.”

“So he couldn’t possibly have been alive when either of those articles were written, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, so read the third one now.” Carol began to walk toward the woods. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have to—you know.”

“What?”

“I have to poop!” Carol whispered back.

Carol traipsed away behind some trees; Sheree turned back to the marker light and unfolded the piece of paper that Carol had secreted from Esau’s foul shack, this one (thinner and more yellowed than the others) was from something called The Juan de Fuca Reporter. But it wasn’t an article, it was an advertisement.

NEW FISHING SPOT!

Come to Sutherland Lake for fine fishing!

Bait Shop open now at southeast tip of

Harstene Island! Live bait and riggings

and hooks! Ask for Enoch or Esau,

your friendly proprietors!

Sheree’s eyes narrowed in suspicion but then they shot wide when she checked the top of page for the date, which was May 25, 1857.

««—»»

Though Carol appeared to be a woman, it was a man-sized shit she took in the woods. Holy Moly, she thought with a light, girly chuckle. She’d hiked up her tight denim skirt and squatted, unloosing from her bowels a two-foot-long piece of stool fat as Polish sausage. Her dick, nearly as wide, swung limp between her pretty legs, the snout-like foreskin brushing the forest ground. She frowned at a series of gassy farts—very unfeminine!—and could actually feel the warmth of the great defecation rise up to her bottom.

Her penis did a little jig, and her big balls swayed, when her sphincter squeezed off the last of the loaf. “Damn,” she whispered next, still squatting. “What am I gonna wipe myself with?”

She scolded herself for not thinking of this first but, after all, this was the first time she’d ever crapped in the Great Outdoors. She looked around for a leaf or something…

—when the large, malodorous hand clamped over her mouth.

Carol fainted at once.

“I gots somethin’ you can wipe with, honey,” Esau’s foul breath gusted into her ear. His free hand slid up her ass-crack, taking with it some of her fecal remains, which he then smeared over her face. The rest he sucked off his already dirty fingers.

Mmm, he thought. Steak’n taters last night..

He threw her over his shoulder and carried her off.

««—»»

Sheree didn’t know what to think about the 140-year-old advertisement. But before she could ponder all of the possibilities, a bright light roved across her face.

A boat motoring toward the dock.

“Sheree?” Bob’s voice called out. “Is that you?”

‘Yes!” She jumped up, waving. “Hurry!”

As Bob pulled the SeaRay up, Sheree turned toward the woods. Where was Carol?