Looking back, I remember how all my family's summer barbecues went the same way.

They'd be the initial bustle of uncles and aunts arriving with kids,

clinking paper bags full of liquor and lopsided, foiled trays of macaroni and lasagna.

First drinks report, meat was thrown on the grill and cackles followed light gossip in the crowded kitchen.

We ate parents drank and as the afternoon progressed all of the cousins overcame their shyness

and darted around the open backyard.

The older crowd took up residents in plastic woven chairs with cups in hand as they ventured

deeper down into their drinks, so too did the light chatter from earlier in the afternoon,

descending into more serious subjects. It wasn't until I had reached 11 or 12 years old that it began to recognize the reoccurrence of the name

Carrie May uttered from the semi circle of elders across the lawn. I asked my mom

about who she was while driving home from a barbecue one afternoon.

She said, I'll tell you and you're older. I'm 15 now in the grown-ups still fall into whispers when I pass by their drinking circle

of Carrie May is the topic of conversation. Little do they know that I have done quite a bit of sloothing

on my own, through equal parts hearsay, courtesy of older cousins, and eavesdropping.

I've since managed to piece together a general account of what happened to my distant cousin,

Carrie May, and her family. After the fact I can understand why my mother and all the other grown-ups chose

to keep her story away from us kids.

It's to this day the scariest thing I have ever or never heard. It happened in a little town in the north shore of Massachusetts

called Middleton, where Carrie May and her parents, my aunt and uncle lived.

Middleton was still pretty undeveloped in the mid-80s.

Young couples looking to start a family often opted for the paved and well-lit streets of

neighboring Danvers or Salem over the

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