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“Yes.”
“What do think, could one man have done this over a long weekend?”
“Why do you say ‘man’? Everyone keeps saying man like it’s a fact.”
“You think Saint Nick is a woman?”
He shrugs.
“You think Saint Nick isn’t?”
We stop by a pile of naked torsos. Arms, legs, and heads cut off. Ribs spread where someone pulled out the organs. It’s like some kind of old Aztec sacrifice. I’m starting to wish I had a surgical mask, but I’m not about to ask Wells for one.
“What I’m saying is that moving this many bodies, and hauling more in from somewhere else fast enough to get all this done over a long weekend, is hard physical labor.”
“Not if she had help. Or if she used magic to move them and perform the surgery.”
“She would have to be a pretty powerful witch.”
“Yes.”
“So, you think Saint Nick is a woman.”
We walk back to the altar. The wet ceiling of the meat chapel extends from the back wall over to where we’re standing, turning the light pink.
“I doubt it,” he says. “I just object to assumptions.”
I look back to the door. Wells has taken a few tentative steps into the room.
The Shonin is probably right about one thing. If Saint Nick didn’t have help, he or she would be a world-class magician. I suppose an ordinary person could have gutted the bodies over a long weekend or could have made the meat church. But not both. That means using a crew or hoodoo. I hope to hell that Saint Nick had a crew. Worst-case scenario is someone with powerful hoodoo but with a crew too. That would put a Hulk Hogan–powerful magician right in the middle of an Angra sect. Why can’t nutcase killers get their orders from talking dogs anymore? Life was so much simpler when crazy meant crazy.
The Shonin says, “Why does Saint Nick cut up the bodies?”
“Because he’s an asshole with a Jack the Ripper complex.”
“Don’t talk like that. You know better.”
“I don’t know. He’s making offerings maybe. Killing people isn’t enough, so he cuts them up and puts pieces together ’cause the Angra prefer turducken to steak.”
The Shonin walks back to Wells, who’s come into the room. He’s walking from pile to gory pile, as stunned as Aldridge was.
“All you all right?” says the Shonin.
“Are you?” Wells says.
“This is a bad place. There’s an aura of malevolence. You and your people shouldn’t remain here long.”
Wells nods.
“I’ll pull them out after they sweep the building.”
The Shonin looks at me.
“These aren’t sacrifices,” he says. He points at the naves with the thirteen inverted bodies. “Those are sacrifices. The rest of these bodies, they are machines. Parts of machines. Do you see?”
“Not even a little.”
“Saint Nick is creating empty vessels. Inhabiting an intact human body would be difficult for a God. But by using specific parts of different bodies, someone could make something more suitable.”
