Page 27 of The Knucklebone Brothers

I turned the pages. There was a photo of a woman, her face stern and unsmiling, her eyes bright and intense. The headline read: "HESTER KNUCKLEBONE, RINGLEADER OF OUTRAGEOUS ABANDONED CARNIVAL, SAYS SHOW IS GOING OUT OF BUSINESS." I looked closely at the photo, my eyes tracing the lines of her face. She was unique, her eyes looked like they'd seen every world to exist. There was something eerie about her, a sense of power that radiated from the photo. In the picture, she was holding two young boys on her hips, one on each side. They were barefoot, standing in a dirt yard, their faces smudged with dirt. It was Maverick and Blythe.

"That must be momma," I whispered, my voice barely audible. "She's... something else."

I stared at the photo for a long time, my mind racing. Hester Knucklebone. The name sounded like a joke, but there was nothing funny about the woman in the photo. She was a force of nature. And she was their momma. Suddenly, everything made a little more sense. The boys weren't just crazy. They were raised by a master. And I was just the latest addition to their menagerie.

I closed the scrapbook of clippings, my mind reeling. Hester Knucklebone. A baby Maverick covered in his mother's blood. It was a lot to take in, a dark, twisted family tree that I'd been forcibly grafted onto. I went to slide the book back onto the shelf, but my fingers brushed against something else tucked away in the back, almost like it had been deliberately hidden.

Curiosity, that damn cat, got the better of me. I wiggled it out. It wasn't leather-bound like the others. It was a plain, black, three-ring binder, the title on the spine printed in neat, block letters: "Momma's & Family Recipes ." It looked innocent enough. I almost laughed. Momma's recipes. I pictured Hester in an apron, baking cookies for her two little monster boys.

I carried it to the table and flipped open the cover. The first few pages were exactly what you'd expect. Recipes for cornbread, fried chicken, and blackberry cobbler, all written in a neat, spidery hand. There were even little notes in the margins, like "Add a pinch of cayenne for a kick," or "Blythe likes extra sugar in this." It was so normal it was fucking creepy.

Then I turned to the next section. The title at the top of the page read, "For the Long Winter." Below it was a drawing. It wasn't a cow or a pig. It was a person, a crude but detailed sketch of a human body, all laid out like a butcher's diagram. Different parts were labeled with neat, little arrows: "Rump," "Flank," "Brisket." I felt a familiar knot tighten in my gut, the one I got right before a fight. I pushed it down.

I turned the page again, my hands steady. There was a recipe for "Long Pig Stew." The ingredients were listed in the same neat, spidery hand: "2 lbs. Long Pig, cubed," "1 onion, chopped," "3 carrots, peeled," "Potatoes, as needed," and then, at the bottom, a little note: "Best if the meat is aged for a few days. Tenderizes the flavor." There was even a drawing of a stew pot, with little hands and feet sticking out of the top.

The next page was even worse. It was titled "Mountain Jerky." The recipe was simple: "Slice Long Pig thin," "Marinate in soy sauce, brown sugar, and liquid smoke," "Dry on a low heat for several days." There was a drawing of a person hanging from a meat hook, strips of flesh hanging down like clothes on a line.

I slammed the binder shut, the sound echoing in the quiet trailer. I just sat there, staring at the black cover. All the old stories, the whispers from town, the warnings to stay away from the Knucklebones and their carnie show... they were all true. Every last one of them. And I ate their stew yesterday. I thought back to the rich, savory taste, the strange, earthy flavor I couldn't place. I'd eaten it. And I liked it.

A cold, hard question settled in my gut, pushing everything else aside. What are they doing with me then? If this was their secret, their family business, why was I still here? Why go through all the trouble of the exams and the bath and the... other stuff? Why wasn't I already in that stew pot, or hanging from a meat hook? It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. I felt a flicker of something other than anger. It was a cold, hard knot of confusion, and it was a hell of a lot scarier than fear.

Then I heard it. The heavy crunch of boots on gravel outside, getting closer. My heart kicked into overdrive. Well, fuck, I thought, my mind racing. What do I do now that I know all this? Pretend I don't? Put the books back? Confront them maybe or demand more answers? I didn't even know. My body felt frozen, glued to the chair.

The door creaked open, and they slowly walked in, not saying a word. They were in their boots and ripped-up shirts, but that wasn't what made my blood run cold. They were covered in blood. It was splattered across their chests, smeared on their arms, and matting their hair. They stopped just inside the doorway, their eyes slowly moving from my face to the binder on the table and then back to me.

"Who's blood is that?" I asked, my voice cracking. "What the fuck?" Panic started to bubble up in my chest, hot and sharp. "Who did you guys just kill?" My mind was flashing with images from that cookbook, of diagrams and recipes. I was looking at them, but all I could see was a butcher and his assistant.

They looked at each other, and then they started to laugh. Not a small chuckle, but a deep, belly-shaking laugh that filled the small trailer and made my skin crawl. It was the kind of laugh that said I was the punchline.

"Calm down, princess," Maverick said, wiping a smear of blood from his cheek with his thumb. "We were hunting. It's deer blood."

They walked over to the sink, their boots leaving bloody prints on the floor. They turned on the water, the sound of it splashing against the metal basin. I watched them, my heart still pounding, my mind trying to catch up. Deer blood. It was just deer blood. But as I watched them wash the red away, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just fooling myself. They were monsters. And they were just better at hiding the evidence.

As I watched them scrub the blood from their hands and arms I stood up, the chair scraping against the floor. "So," I said, my voice low and steady, belying the frantic beating of my heart. "All the stories. All the lore on your family. It's all true, ain't it?"

They both stopped washing, turning to look at me. Blythe's face was a blank slate, but Maverick had a smirk playing on his lips.

"I found the books," I continued, my eyes locked on theirs. "The scrapbooks with the missin' persons clippings. The one about your mom, Maverick. And the... the recipe book." I gestured to the black binder on the table. "The 'family secrets'." I said the words like a curse. "So if all that's true, what about the other stories? The ones about the necrophilia?"

Maverick's smirk vanished, replaced by a look of genuine, gut-wrenching disgust. Blythe's jaw tightened, a muscle twitching in his cheek. They looked at each other, a silent, uncomfortable conversation passing between them.

"Jesus Christ, Aurora," Maverick snapped, his voice sharp. "Where in the hell did you hear that?"

"It's just talk," Blythe grunted, turning back to the sink and scrubbing harder at his arms. "Townsfolk got nothin' better to do than make up filth."

"So it ain't true?" I pushed, my voice rising. "It's just another lie?"

They were quiet for a long moment, the only sound the splashing of water and the hum of the fan. Finally, Blythe sighed, turning off the faucet and leaning against the counter.

"We were young," he said, his voice low and rough. "And curious."

"We were secluded," Maverick added, his voice dropping to a mumble. "As you can see," he said, gesturing vaguely between the two of them, "the inbred tales are a lie. But that don't mean we didn't get... bored."

"Bored?" I repeated, my voice dripping with disbelief. "You fucked dead bodies 'cause you were bored?"

"It wasn't like that," Blythe said, his voice defensive. "It was... a mistake."

"It was with the Alligator Man's girl," Maverick said, his voice flat, devoid of its usual playful menace. He wouldn't look at me, just stared at a spot on the wall. "He'd... well, he got mad. Killed her. We found her behind his tent. We were... sixteen? Seventeen? And we'd never seen a dead girl like that."