The image shown is taken from "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" by Edward Gorey. The accompanying caption is reminiscent of that book's style.

The flavortext for the puzzle "The Eldritch, Gambrel Scavenger Hunt" includes the following references to tragedies that befell specific children from the book:

• "[...] his dog choked on some fruit that fell off one of my trees. Well, actually, it happened twice. [...]" → E is for Ernest who choked on a peach
• "[...] I'll smash that fool's head with an axe!" → K is for Kate who was struck with an axe

Since the first event (E) happened twice, the answer is EEK.