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.
A case of pomodoro turned pollo (and Italian to Spanish, with tomato being tomate in Spanish).
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.
Dagon and friends
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).
