Hank finds Donnie to have been participating in intense hallucinogenic rituals
venerating an entity called Ata-Atsu who is said to have overcome the finality of death.
TREATMENT
The Hangman’s Horde reaches the distant tribe’s camp, where their arrival has been anticipated with a feast. Hank tells the tribe’s leader he knows his brother came seeking the relic and wants to see him, but is told Donnie does not want visitors.
The mystic leader briefly leads the Horde into a conversation about ghosts and other unnatural things. Joan and one of the Hordsemen corroborate with stories they’ve heard - that the sight of them drives people mad, and that “they pull things into the world that can never die.” Hank cuts this short and now demands to see Donnie, but begins to hallucinate from a surreptitiously spiked drink. The mystic leader initiates a ritual in which he exalts a being called Ata-Atsu, who teaches escape from the finality of death through a rebirth of the true inner self. Hank envisions himself slitting his own throat, dying, being reborn, and the husk of his body falling aside as Six-Gun crawls out of his throat.