Pizzolatto isn’t saying that Christianity and whatever the heck the Tuttles are doing “down south… in the woods” are the same thing. Obviously we’re talking about two very, very different moral codes here, and I’m sure Pizzolatto would acknowledge that in the course of human history, faith has often been a force for good.

But he is saying, I think, that they’re both supernatural belief systems—and that supernatural belief systems all come from the same place. Pizzolatto didn’t just make the Tuttles a clan of psychopathic murderers. He made them a clan of psychopathic murderers who subscribe to a very specific theology: a theology that may stem from Voodoo and ancient Druidic Mardi Gras practices but that also alludes, crucially, to The King in Yellow—an external narrative that is supposed to create insanity, or as Pizzolatto “prefer[s]” to put it, “deranged enlightenment,” which sounds a lot like a skeptic’s view of religion as a whole. In other words, both Christianity and “Carcosa” are stories. Stories people tell themselves to escape reality. Stories that “violate every law of the universe.”

Some people will interpret this as a critique of Christianity. But it’s not. Not really. Instead, I see it as a warning about the power of storytelling itself. Take your “fairy tales” too far, Pizzolatto seems to be arguing, and you can wind up in some pretty sick places.