As a Saturday morning broke, the LAPD was walking around the set, knocking on trailers and showing the sleepy occupants pictures of a young girl named Theresa Ruiz. She was allegedly kidnapped just outside the set yesterday morning. The intrepid investigators sensed some urgency in their attempts to find out where Pagano might be, and what he might be up to. Samuel Goldwyn was furious by now, simply livid. With his trusty assistant – Joe Pagano – gone and police swarming over the set, this was heading in a most unwanted publicity direction. The indomitable investigators split forces, with Lake and Baker heading to the Los Angeles Historical Society to examine, Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New England Canaan and to find any connection to Joe Pagano. Mackie, Jules and Henry decided to drive over to the quarantined so-called Mexican District, a neighborhood of thousands of people living in rundown wood-frame homes and dirt yards east of Downtown. Also referred to as the “Macy Street District” and “Little Mexico,” this neighborhood of makeshift lean-tos, aging catalog kit houses, crumbling brick structures, and adobes abutted the old Chinatown and the original Los Angeles Pueblo.
From the diary of Moira Baker:
The LA Historical Society is located in a rather rickety building just south of the Hollywood Hills. The door was opened by an older lady, Ms. Plunkett, and Henry Lake turned out to be quite the lush, expelling layers of schmaltz to sweep Ms. Plunkett off her feet. We were promptly given access to the Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New England Canaan, and it turned out to be not only a first edition, but the commentary in the margins were actually penned by the priest Ward Phillips himself back in 1788 or so!
As we delved into the book, I could not get rid of a gnawing knot of despair when I think of the little girl Theresa Ruiz and what Pagano might do to her. I can only conclude that she is heading towards a horrible soul-devouring fate unless we find her in time. I have read the hoary tomes and grimoires that describe the horrible fashion of sacrifice that supposedly placates these strange eldritch beings that seem to be found in the remote corners of our society. Something truly terrible might happen on Friday!
From the diary of Henry Chester:
(Illegible)
From the diary of Jules Pollack:
The Mexican District is an abominable insult to immigrant working-class families, and the police and reservists that had cordoned off the area were much more interested in keeping the immigrants out of society than actually helping fight the “Double Pneumonia” that is crippling this neighborhood. We were finally allowed to enter, but we were told to be on our guard against the local inhabitants, which were called by any number of slurs. The Mexican District was foul-smelling, and disturbingly empty. One could notice the furtive stares from inside decrepit buildings as we slowly drove down grimy Spring Street. We eventually found an old lady at a fruit stand, and Henry spoke to her in Spanish as we eyed the sad produce in front of her. The exchange was rapid, and we were finally gifted with information, fruit, and a hen. Seek out a bar, the school, Carlotta Romero, principal Jesus Toledo, and Savatore Brixi, in no particular order.
From the diary of Mackie Mackenzie:
I’ve been pollo:ed, and I am now the owner of a hen that likes to roost in a paper bag. I shall call her Karen, and she will be my watch-hen. Huzzah!
There are three churches in the Mexican District, the Church of Saint Franciscus, the Baptist Mission Church on Avila and Bauchet, and Church of Our Lady Mary, Star of the Sea. Saint Franciscus was surrounded by the bereft, as there were several funerals. Several of the immigrants outside the church looked quite ill, and one of then kept coughing up huge blobs of blood-steaked mucus. The Baptist mission is run by Ms. Bethany Dietrick, a devout and sturdy provider of much needed charity, and she was very concerned with this double pneumonia that is spreading uncontrolled through the Mexican District. Finally, the Star of the Sea church was closed and locked, and a dusty sign simply stated “services Sundays, open Mondays”. As dusk was approaching, we decided to head back to the film studio, and head back to the Mexican District together with Moira and Mr. Lake tomorrow morning, as in Sunday.
That Sunday, the illustrious investigators did drive back to the Mexican District. The first stop was the Church of Our Lady Mary, Star of the Sea. The sturdy padlock on the rear entrance did fare poorly against the lock picking equipment and deft hands of Lake and Chester, and it was only a matter of minutes before the party of five entered a dusty and cobwebbed church. Lake privately questioned both the judgement the and sanity of his comrades as Pollack expertly pointed out ominous occult patterns that had been painted in front of the altar, and this led to a most thorough search in and under the church – or was it even a church? Persistence eventually paid off, and Moira Baker found an extraordinarily well hidden compartment inside the writing desk in the refrectory. It contained a fairly sizeable notebook with the title “Proceedings of the Esoteric Order of Dagon”, and both Mackie and Moira realized that this may actually pertain to the lost cursed cult of Dagon, whose devilish worshippers were burned alive and their ashes strewn for the winds by Roman legionnaires back in antiquity, although it cost the mind of the legate Claudius Lucius Brocca.
Much had been written in the notebook over the course of half a century, but the final paragraphs were particularly chilling:
“We leave tomorrow, beckoning the summons of our Father Dagon. But we have prepared the land for his return, and we shall witness the glory of his rule, his omnipotence. The unfaithful will be vanquished by a lingering malaise, a few at first, but eventually all who do not bow down to father Dagon on the twenty-first of the second”
- Sister Carmilla, Prefect of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, on March 25, 1913, as witnessed by the faithful.
Mackie added the information below regarding Dagon:
Dagon (Phoenician romanized: Dāgūn; Hebrew: דָּגוֹן Dāgōn) or Dagan (Sumerian romanized: dda-gan[) is an ancient Mesopotamian and ancient Canaanite deity. He appears to have been worshipped as a fertility god in Ebla, Assyria, Ugarit, and among the Amorites. The Hebrew Bible mentions him as the national god of the Philistines with temples at Ashdod and elsewhere in Gaza.
A long-standing association with a Canaanite word for "fish" (as in Hebrew: דג, Tib. /dɔːg/), perhaps going back to the Iron Age, has led to an interpretation as a "fish-god", and the association of "merman" motifs in Assyrian art (such as the "Dagon" relief found by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s).
Marnas was the Hellenistic expression of Dagon. His temple, the Marneion—the last surviving great cult center of paganism—was burned by order of the Roman emperor during the Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire in 402. Treading upon the sanctuary's paving-stones had been forbidden. Christians later used these same to pave the public marketplace. Dagon is still mentioned as a figure of cultic worship in the First Book of Ethiopian Maccabees (12:12), which was composed sometime in the 4th century AD.
The "fish" etymology was accepted in 19th and early 20th century scholarship. This led to the association with the "merman" motif in Assyrian and Phoenician art (e.g. Julius Wellhausen, William Robertson Smith), and with the figure of the Babylonian Oannes (Ὡάννης) mentioned by Berossus (3rd century BC).
The first to cast doubt on the "fish" etymology was Schmökel (1928), who suggested that while Dagon was not in origin a "fish god", the association with dâg "fish" among the maritime Canaanites (Phoenicians) would have affected the god's iconography.[9] Fontenrose (1957:278) still suggests that Berossos's Odakon, part man and part fish, was possibly a garbled version of Dagon. Dagon was also equated with Oannes.
The association with dāg/dâg 'fish' is made by 11th-century Jewish Bible commentator Rashi. In the 13th century, David Kimhi interpreted the odd sentence in 1 Samuel 5.2–7 that "only Dagon was left to him" to mean "only the form of a fish was left", adding: "It is said that Dagon, from his navel down, had the form of a fish (whence his name, Dagon), and from his navel up, the form of a man, as it is said, his two hands were cut off." The Septuagint text of 1 Samuel 5.2–7 says that both the hands and the head of the image of Dagon were broken off.
—Roman imperial period An abundance of material and literary sources indicate that the cult of Marnas was associated with the ancient city of Gaza, located in the Eastern Mediterranean on what is today Palestine. According to Taco Terpstra, the literary texts represent Marnas as a "sky god who also performed oracles. Ancient authors equate him with Cretan Zeus, but the tradition seems to be Hellenistic in date."(Terpstra, p. 182). The depictions of Marnas in coin iconography is not consistent. At times he is shown naked, similar to a naked and bearded Zeus, either seated on a throne or standing while holding a lightning bolt. Other images show Marnas holding a bow, standing on a pedestal in front of a female deity. Regardless of the variety of depictions, the abundance of them on coins indicates that the inhabitants of Gaza held him in high esteem and associated this god with their city. (Terpstra, 182). Gazan overseas traders were still adhering to this cult well into the fifth century CE (Terpstra p.186).
–In Christian literature Marnas is mentioned in the works of the fourth century scholar and theologian Jerome, in several stories from his Life of St. Hilarion, written around 390 CE, in which he condemns his adherents as idolatrous and as "enemies of God." Violent sentiments against the cult of Marnas and the destruction of his temple in Gaza are described by Mark the Deacon, in his account of the life of the early fifth-century saint Porphyry of Thessalonica (Vita Porphyri). This request was eventually granted, and after all temples had been destroyed, Porphyry built a church over the ruins of Marnas's temple with financial and other assistance from empress Eudoxia Marnas's temple, Mark the deacon petitioned the emperor Arcadius through his wife Eudoxia to grant a request to have all pagan temples in Gaza destroyed(Terpstra, p. 184-5).
