“How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked.
Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.”
Evie hadn’t given religion much thought before. Her parents were Catholics turned Episcopalian. They attended services on Sunday, but it was all pretty rote, like brushing your teeth and bathing. Just something you did because it was expected. Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.
“We haven’t answered the most basic question of all: Why? What purpose is served by these murders?” Jericho asked, jolting Evie from her thoughts.
“He’s a monster,” Evie said. “Isn’t he?”
Will reached into a bowl of bridge mix. He juggled the candies in his hand without eating them. “Indeed. But that’s a what, not a why. Nothing is done without purpose, however twisted that purpose may be.”
“Why did he take her eyes?” Evie asked.
“He might be keeping them as souvenirs.”
Evie made a face. “A pinwheel from Coney Island is a souvenir, Unc.”
“To us, yes. To a madman? Perhaps not. But he might need them in some way for the ritual. Some cultures believe that ingesting the flesh of your victims makes you immortal. The Aghori of India eat the flesh of the dead in the belief that it confers supernatural powers, whereas members of the Algonquin tribe believe that anyone who eats human flesh will become a demonic spirit called the Wendigo.”
Evie’s stomach turned. “Well, there’s nothing in the Bible about holy cannibalism.”
“Transubstantiation?” Jericho said. “ ‘Eat of my body, drink of my blood’?”
“Right,” Evie conceded. “I’ll certainly never feel the same way about Communion again.”