The Crown of Fingers is three severed fingers — an index, a middle and a ring finger — sewn to the forehead of Kendall, pointing downward, in a rite in the caverns beneath Gary; it began his zombification.
| Type | Ritual object |
| Maker | SSK |
| Bearer | Kendall |
| Chronicle | GARY_TNW |
| Spanish entry | La corona de dedos (Mundo Nuevo) |
The rite
Each of the three bound companions, held by the Gladiators, lost one different finger. SSK sucked each wound, saying everything she did was for their good and everyone’s, and then — she has embroidered since childhood — sewed the three fingers to Kendall’s forehead, lifting part of his scalp “the old Indian way”. Kendall was left badly wounded and unconscious; the other two lost a finger for good, and with that, she said, “now they are part of her”. Meanwhile Doña Ilva officiated the greater rite. Finger-cutting belongs to the repertoire of Aunt Nancy’s arachnid network.
Aftermath
The crowned, unconscious man was hung from a suspended bed and swung like a pendulum under a voodoo chant. He woke changed: silent, too calm, a chicken foot hanging from his neck under his shirt. “A yuyu zombie,” the Haitian detective ruled: “your will is not your own.” At the hideout the fingers were removed from his forehead. SSK shrugged: “they won’t help you: you don’t know how to handle those energies.”