DEAD KIDS ARE THE COOLEST!

Try reading a novel or short story set in Victorian England - any time there's more than one child in the story, take it to the bank that one is going to die, and will be buried/forgotten by lunch. - XMASTIME

Yeesh - I thought Elizabeth Gaskell couldn't make it through a story without a kid dying; now I see this article about The Melancholy Deaths of Edward Gorey's Children:

Legendary author-illustrator Edward Gorey — most famous for animating the timeless intro to PBS’ Mystery! drew plenty of them. Delving into his complete works for a project recently, it dawned on me how my impression of this prolific writer had been cemented by my familiarity with just one or two of his books — like The Gashleycrumb Tinies, a deliciously morbid, alphabetical catalog of 26 children’s deaths. As it turns out, this is fairly representative of the fates of children throughout Gorey’s work — they nearly always meet a tragic end. 

And this kid with an axe one is the LEAST dark one in the article.  Whack.