Part Sixteen
PEACE ON EARTH

The Mexican Entities had vanished. Barbara asked the South Americans where they were.
Jesus the Redeemer looked down at her. “It was the festival of Dia de los Muertos. It’s a Mexican thing. You should have been down here to supervise.” Barbara cursed herself for forgetting the Day of the Dead, one of the most important holidays in the Mexican calendar.
Redeemer Jesus said it was her fault.
“Why?” she asked. Jesus rolled his eyes and turned to Viracocha and Inti.
“For bringing in all those weirdos,” Viracocha replied.
“And it wouldn’t hurt you to come down and check every year or so,” said Inti, who was beginning to rival Saint Jude for sarcasm.
Barbara didn’t like being condescended to and was about to say she couldn’t be everywhere but remembered the Entities thought of her as a god, and therefore she could be.
“Evil brings more evil,” said Viracocha sententiously. “Makes you shudder.”
“What does?”
“Human sacrifice. The Aztecs,” explained Jesus. “All over Mexico. Even if it’s been changed to the Day of the Dead, it’s still not approved by the Church. Though the sugar skulls and picnics in cemeteries are fun,” he added a little wistfully.
“But that doesn’t explain why the Mexicans have disappeared,” persisted Barbara.
“It does. A Calavera carried them away.”
“Calavera? Those candy skulls being sold now in the streets?”
Jesus nodded, and his smile held more than a hint of Contempt-for-Gringos as he looked down at Barbara. “The Calavera is pre-Columbian. Not pre-Me, though, for I am the Way, the Truth, and the —”
Barbara interrupted to ask, “Where are my Mexicans?”
But Jesus was quoting Scripture again. “’Then it goes and takes along other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there.’ Luke 11:26. Bet you didn’t know that.” His Contempt-for-Gringos look deepened. “Look around you and see what you’ve put here. Fetish dolls, shrunken heads, rain sticks — what do you expect? Peace on Earth?”
“ . . . piss on earth,” giggled the Bacoo, an imp with an annoying habit of distorting the words of the last speaker into mildly suggestive puns. Barbara knew the Bacoo could be bribed with sweets and gave him a candy, wondering if Redeemer Jesus could be too.
“Where are my Mexicans?” she asked again.
“Oh, Medallion Clementine,” smirked the Bacoo. Thinking it was another pun, she was about to grab her candy back but saw him pointing upwards. Across the ceiling, where she’d hung rows of medallions, she saw the Mexicans in the arms of a Calavera.