Oops.

"All right, I think Zoe and maybe Carrie should go to the bank and look at the safe deposit box? Me, Mordred, and Lacie could all go to UCLA to find George Ayers now, or I could ask around about the cult, Mordred can do print research stuff, and Lacie can talk to her friends, and then we can all meet back here in the afternoon and either go to UCLA together or discuss who should follow up on which additional leads we've found?"

"How worried are we about any of us going places alone?"

"I think I'm willing to chance it to cover more ground, but more willing to chance it when we're doing sort of distant research stuff an less willing to risk it when we're interacting with things directly involved with the case, like the safety deposit box or Mr. Aarons's former associates."

"All right." 

Carrie and Zoe depart for the bank. 

"I think I'm kind of in favor of researching all morning and then regrouping before we decide how to approach UCLA? It's early enough that the bank people should be able to get back before things close down there, unless something weird happens."

"Sounds good to me."

Anemone has a lot of contacts in the entertainment industry because she lived with the circus for so long, and obsessively collects acquaintanceships with people who can tell her about weird stuff.

She goes off to find her old friend who makes props for horror movies. Anemone engages them in a little bit of conversation about the super cool work she was doing before she started doing this case, and then ask them if they know anything about a guy named Ecchavarria who was in film about ten years ago and may have Had A Cult Following If You Know What I Mean.

"Echavarria?" she says. "I think I've heard of an Echavarria. Long time ago."

"Yeah, it would have been. I'm looking into some pretty odd stuff that happened around a decade ago? I hear he had a big collection of occult stuff and some followers who were really into it. Died in 1924, I think, though. If you know anything about them, or can point me to anyone who might know more, it'd be a big favor."

"I don't know much about him," she says. "I remember this guy I was working on Phantom with used to work for him. He was weird. His name was Ramon Echavarria. Producer. You'd never guess how weird he was from the stuff he put out."

She takes out her journal and makes a note of the name. "Sounds like the right guy. Weird how, exactly?"

"I don't know," she says. "That was the thing about him. You could never point to anything he did that was wrong, he was just... off, somehow."

She nods sagely. "This guy you knew who worked for him, do you know his name? Where to find him?"

"Oh, sure," and she gives Anemone a name.

She'll write that down, then. "You remember anything else about him? Anyone else who might have been connected to him?"

"No one knows why he died, you know," she says. "They hushed it all up."

She grins broadly. "Yeah, so I hear. It's all very mysterious."

"They hush a lot of things up in this town, but normally you'd hear gossip at least? About who does drugs and who's a homosexual and who's cheating on their wife with every starlet who comes to the casting couch."

Nodnod. "But not with this?"

"Nothing. Maybe because there's nothing to gossip about, but..."

"I see. I guess I have my work cut out for me, then. Thanks a lot."

Anemone tracks down the other guy who knows Echavarria, but it's a bust. This guy regales her with stories of Echavarria's adventures in the movie biz, but doesn't have anything on the cult.

Meanwhile--

Mordred starts digging into the archives of the LA Times to look for anything about the cult ten years ago or Echavarria. Mostly what he discovers about Echavarria is that there are a lot of Hispanic people in Los Angeles with the surname 'Echavarria.'

However, when he looks up the August 1924 attack, he hits pay dirt. 

Movie Star Buys The Farm

We’re sure to remember movie star Richard Spend from monster movies like The Vampire Mystery and Black as Night. Well, he’s scared his last kiddie because he was stabbed to death at a crazy masquerade party last night! Don’t read any further unless you’ve got a cast-iron stomach! 

Reliable sources tell your humble reporter that his body was found on a farm out in the north country. Apparently, it was a real bloodbath where more than a dozen people bought the farm! No other victims have been named and the police don’t have clue number one about who could have gone on this depraved rampage. Half the corpses were dressed up in robes and masks - it could have been anybody!

Spend’s been seen at crazy parties before, most recently in the company of his lithe and lissome costar Olivia Claredon. Did he get involved with the wrong married woman? Stumble into some kind of drug war? Who was Richard Spend, anyway?

August 14, 1924

Well, that was not very helpful.

Mordred looks for more about Richard Spend and about George Ayers, does not succeed, and winds up getting kicked out of the LA Times newspaper morgue because the librarian felt that he was putting his articles back in the wrong order and it would be hard to clean up. 

Meanwhile--

Unless anything else suddenly occurs to her Lacie's obvious contact here is her adoptive dad! Yay. It is very silly that she's nervous about this.

One of her adoptive father's large, burly Mexican guards informs her that her father is busy working in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, but that she is welcome to make an appointment to see him.

"Of course, silly me. I'm meeting up with some friends this afternoon, maybe we could do lunch? I just wanted to see him while I was in town."

"He already has plans for lunch," the guard says, not unkindly. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow works just fine. Can I come in? It'd be nice to see everything again, and certainly it's not going to take up his time for me to visit my old bedroom and so on."

"Of course," the guard says.

The first floor, Lacie remember, has the grand entry, the cellar entry, the ballroom, the sunroom, the formal dining room, the conservatory, Trammel's library, and Trammel's study.

The second floor has the small dining room, the bedrooms for her and the servants, and the guest room.

The cellars she was never allowed to enter.

Lacie visits every room. She is feeling nostalgic in addition to investigative. She wants to scour the library but it's a little nervewracking and might attract Trammel's attention and she's maybe putting it off a bit; anyway, the library is always locked, and she's not allowed in. The conservatory has some new African plants, but otherwise it is basically as she left it. 

She peers in through the window of the library to see what she can see. Lacie makes out the book titles "The Broken Ouroboros of Ahtu" and "Children of the Night and Nahua Legends."

She notes these down, whether they're important to the case or not, because if she has the titles she can look them up and maybe read them whether she's allowed to or not.

Meanwhile--

On the way to Long Beach, Zoe and Anemone see more open fields interspersed with oil derricks. As they get closer to Long Beach, they see more half-destroyed buildings: damaged in the 1933 earthquake and no one had the money to repair them.

"Wow, this place is a mess."

When they arrive at the First Bank of Long Beach, they see a damaged brick edifice. Scaffolding stands outside the building, abandoned for more than a year. The broad stone steps, badly cracked, are occupied by a foul-smelling assortment of vagrants, squatters, and drunks. “First Bank of Long Beach” is still inscribed in the granite above the boarded-up front doors. A single tattered sheet of filthy newsprint skitters across the street — it sounds vaguely like it’s hissing at them and then lodges itself in a sewer grate where a bunch of other scraps of garbage have accumulated.

Probably Carrie Should rescue it and throw it out but she is not going to touch it. 

"Well. I can't say this is what I was expecting."

As she look at the squatters, you think of something... there weren't any squatters in LA, were there?

Awfully weird in the Great Depression.

"Huh. Well... I don't have high hopes that the safety deposit box is intact, but at least these folks don't look more dangerous than... any other assortment of drunks and vagrants. I don't suppose we can really wait for them to leave, given that they don't have anywhere else to be. Should we just... go in?"

"We might as well? I don't think anything will improve with waiting?"

"We could try walking around and looking for other entrances, but yeah, I don't think waiting is going to help. I've got a prybar, if it's all boarded up."

They try this, but there aren't any other open entrances. 

One of the bums says, "you girls looking for a good time?"

"S'cuse me, fellas." And she tries to pry the door open.

"What are you looking for in there?" says a bum with a prominent boil on his face.

"Good question. I'll know when I see it."

She tries to push open the door with the prybar and it doesn't budge. 

"Carrie, little help here?"

"You little ladies need someone to help?"

"We'll see, give us a second."

And with Carrie and Zoe both pushing on the prybar they manage to open the door.

You pry the door and find what was once a glamorous bank. Rats scuttle across the floor.

"Hey LADY!" boils bum says. "You're not going to find anything worth stealing in there."

"Thanks Carrie. Looks like we got it, mister. If we don't find anything, we don't find anything."

Zoe is quietly regretting not bringing any muscle with them. Not that they really HAVE muscle but people might at least think twice if Magnificence were here.

Carrie and Zoe search the building, but the only thing they find is sufficient information for a very interesting set of papers on the ecology of the urban rat. The building has fallen apart very badly, and someone has stripped it of all the valuables, down to the record books.

"Looks like the bum was right. Damn. Time to go hit the books, I guess? Maybe we can ask at city hall where the First Bank of Long Beach relocated."

On the way back to the car Zoe tell boils bum he was right and throws him a buck.

Zoe and Carrie go look at City Hall for records.

The bank failed in ’33 in the wake of the Long Beach earthquake. The newly established FDIC is now the administrator of all its debts (many), assets (few), property, and records. The offices of the FDIC are in the Los Angeles Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles 

>.<

"Wish the lobby person or the driver would have... mentioned about Long Beach... before we came all this way. Oh well. Back to LA?"

Why didn't the driver tell them the bank was closed before he drove them here? He has no idea how to behave.

Zoe arrives back at the hotel, slightly less sheveled than she left and not in the best spirits.

As does Lacie, not dishevelled but not particularly happy either.

"Well, I didn't find much of anything. A couple people who remembered him and said he was super weird, but most of his close associates seem to be dead, and apparently there is no gossip floating around about how he died."

"Did you know, Long Beach was leveled in an earthquake last year?"

"Oh, wow. That's much worse luck than I had."

"I learned that there are a lot of people with the surname Echavarria, and also I found a tabloid article, apparently a dozen people died and the only one they could identify was a movie star named Richard Spend. Also the archive keeper didn't like how I put the papers back and I have been kicked out of the morgue, so that's helpful."

"Oh! I did get a first name. Ramon. We're looking into Ramon Echavarria."

"The First Bank of Long Beach was an abandoned ruin. Apparently the bank failed after the quake, and FDIC took over all their stuff. So fingers crossed the safety deposit box made its way to their offices, which are, mercifully, in downtown LA. I tipped the bum who warned me I was wasting my time at the bank. I did NOT tip the driver who we spent FOUR HOURS in a car with and no mention that our destination was a pile of rat-infested rubble. --I'm going to the FDIC tomorrow."

"Nobody happens to think Nahua legends or 'the broken ourobouros of Ahtu' are relevant, right?"

"Unless one of them's a nyarlathotep, they're probably not relevant."

"Never heard of them. I think banks close before colleges are vacant, right, so we could probably still hit the FDIC offices and then do UCLA? Or split up and do them simultaneously?"

"Oh, if the bank is still open I'll gladly head over there after I freshen up a little. I'd like to get something useful done today."

"All right. You two can do the FDIC offices and me and Mordred and Lacie can do UCLA, I guess?"

"How long do you think you'll stay at the University? If we finish up quick, we can come meet you there after."

"Not sure. Really depends on if we can find a George Avery or Ayers or anyone connected to him."

"How about, if we're done before 5, we'll come to the university, and otherwise we'll meet up at the hotel again?"

Zoe and Carrie take a few minutes to wash up and put their hair back in order before they leave. They don't want to show up at the bank smelling or looking like a rat.

It’s a beautiful day in Los Angeles. The clear blue sky is interrupted only by stunning rows of green palm trees. The Los Angeles Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles is a recent art deco edifice housing a wide variety of federal bureaucracies and departments. The offices of the FDIC are listed in the building directory in the lobby.

"Carrie, do you remember if Mr. Henslowe gave us any way to corroborate that we're permitted to access the box, other than the key? Or is the key all we need? If the key's all we need it doesn't seem like all that safety of a deposit, but I've never actually had one myself, just seen them in the back."

"Well, we've also got the letter from him to Mr. Winston authorizing him to use it?"

They go to the FDIC offices. The secretary directs them to a Mr. Burlington.

He's taking a call and gestures for them to sit. "Yes, I realize there's a risk of a bank run... yes I understand this is important... I promise, the FDIC is doing everything we can..."

He hangs up the phone. "Hello, what can I help you with?"

"We're here on behalf of Mrs. Winston-Rogers, settling the estate of her late father. We found among his possessions this letter." She hands it to him. "We have the key, but it seems that the First Bank of Long Beach is no longer in operation. Do you think you could help us locate the safety deposit box?"

"Oh, yes," he says. "It went bust in the big earthquake of '33. We collected everything that wasn't nailed down and put it in the FDIC warehouse."

"Thank you for that. Would it be possible for us to access it?"

"Mm," he says. "We'd have to be assured that this is in fact your safe deposit box..."

"My understanding is that it belonged to Mr. Douglas Henslowe, who entrusted its contents to Mr. Winston. If it would help, we could put you in contact with Mr. Henslowe, or with Mrs. Winston-Rogers."

"We do have the key, and are accessing it with Mr. Henslowe's permission and on behalf of the Winston estate?"

Mr. Burlington is very busy and the First Bank of Long Beach is #252 on a very very very long to-do list. He could help them, which is fast, or he could throw them out, which is even faster.

"Mm," he says noncommittally. 

>.< 

"If you could tell us what documentation we need, we can return later with it."

"Some form of proof of ownership," he says.

No one in LA ever does their job!

"Isn't the point of the key that it only works if it's the right one? Shouldn't the key and letter constitute such proof as is?"

"We do have the key with us." She proffers the key. "I can provide documentation of our employment by the Winston estate, and that letter you saw documents that Mr. Henslowe provided the key to Mr. Winston for him to access the box. If you need more proof of ownership, we could get it, but it might take a while." She smiles at him with her best winning smile. "It would really be a tremendous help if you could let us just try the key. We've had a very hard time tracking this down, and if you could be kind enough to give us a chance, we'd really appreciate it. We want nothing but to get what we came here and get out of your hair."

"All right," he says. "I'll arrange to have the safe deposit box sent to the offices tomorrow, to save you the trip. It's very far away."

"Thank you so very much! What time tomorrow should we return?"

"9am. Let's get it taken care of. I'm sure you girls are glad you don't have to go all the way to Long Beach."

Nervous laughter. "Yes, going all that way sure would be a trouble."

Meanwhile-- 

UCLA has a beautiful campus full of neoclassical buildings. Everywhere they turn it seems like there’s another beautiful person, tall and tan and well dressed.

Anemone heads to the front desk and ask where she'd go to talk to the anthropology department faculty. The secretary hands her the university directory. A George Ayers, professor of anthropology, has offices at 213 Dodd Hall.
 
 
 
 

Oh good.

When they knock on the door, a man with dark brown hair opens the door and says crossly, "Office hours are Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm working on my book."

"I'm not a student. I'm investigating the death of a Ramon Echavarria, some ten years ago."

"Well, I don't know anything about that. Never met a Ramon Echavarria."

"Have you met a Lev Aarons?"

"Uh, no? I'm sorry to be so unhelpful with your murder investigations but I am an anthropologist."

Hm. He's about a decade too young to be Lev's dissertation advisor.

"Lev Aarons was an anthropology graduate student here a little over ten years ago. He reported that a George Avery was his thesis advisor. Is there someone else here who was around then who might remember who he was and what happened?"

"Ayers."

"Right, Ayers. Couldn't remember exactly."

"Oh, George Ayers," he says. "That explains why you're bothering me. This is his office. I'm Dr. Roman."

"Where is George Ayers."

"Oh, he's been on sabbatical for ages. As long as I've been teaching here."

"On sabbatical where?"

He shakes his head. "I don't keep track of where people I've never met are. Probably he's off studying the cannibals of Papua New Guinea and leaving his grad students to do all the teaching."

"Is there anyone else around here who might keep track? Someone who was teaching here when he was?"

"The anthropology department secretary is Samantha Burnish," Dr. Roman says. "She should know." His voice has a tone of deep skepticism that Samantha Burnish knows anything.

They locate the front desk. "Hello, we're looking for a George Ayers? Are you the person to ask about that?"

"Yes," she says. "And you won't be able to find him, he's on sabbatical."

"We have a plane. Do you know where the sabbatical is taking place."

"I think... probably in Africa?" she says. "I'm sorry, it was ten years ago."

"He's been on sabbatical for ten years?"

"Yes," she says. "I have no idea why he never returned."

"Do you know where in Africa? There's a lot of Africa."

"I don't remember, I'm sorry, I arrange a lot of sabbaticals. Dr. McDunn is the head of the History Department, perhaps if you talked to him."

"We were told he maybe had grad students teaching here? Can you point us towards any of them?"

"It's been ten years, all of his actual grad students have graduated by now. We just assign some grad students to him because that horrible woman over at the registrar's office refuses to update the university directory."

"I guess we should go talk to Dr. McDunn."

"As the department secretary, I am the one that schedules appointments for Dr. McDunn," the secretary says. She looks at them suspiciously. "...why are you interested in Dr. Ayers again?"

"We're looking into a former student of his. -- I'm a journalist, they're my colleagues."

"All right." She checks the calendar. "He actually just got out of a meeting right now, shall I take you to him?"

"That would be lovely."

A few minutes later--

"Hello," says Dr. McDunn. "I'm Dr. McDunn, head of the Anthropology Department. And you are?"

"Mordred Orkney, journalist. We were hoping you could tell us where we might find George Ayers, we're looking into a former student of his."

"George Ayers... George Ayers..." He shakes his head. "I am not sure I recall the name. Refresh my memory?"

"He's apparently been on sabbatical in Africa."

"Oh! George Ayers. Right," Dr. McDunn says. "Well, I gave him leave to go to Ethiopia for a year. Must have been... ten years ago?"

"Do you have any records indicating where in Ethiopia he went?" Pretty sure there's also kind of a lot of Ethiopia.

"Oh, yes, he was doing a dig at an ancient site... Dallol, I think? Must be Dallol. He sent perfunctory reports for a while." Dr. McDunn gestures. "I had them filed away.... I didn't read them."

"Can we? We'd like to know whether it's possible to reach him, and where precisely we'd go if we wanted to track him down now."

"What story did you say you were doing?" Dr. McDunn says.

"We're investigating some events that happened ten years ago involving a former student."

"...And you are willing to go to Ethiopia about it?"

"I'm willing to read his reports about it, at least."

Dr. MacDunn super thinks that Dr. Ayers is dead, and in the absence of anyone confirming it plans to keep him on the payroll indefinitely. Graduate students can cover teaching Dr. Ayers's classes, and he can allocate the money that's supposed to go to Dr. Ayers's salary to covering other budget shortfalls.

"I suppose," Dr. MacDunn says. "I'll try to see if I can find them somewhere in here and send them your direction."

Of course he thinks he's dead. She thinks he's dead. "We are mostly concerned about the events involving his student, Lev Aarons. George Ayers is currently our best lead. Do you have any ways short of tracking him down that we could get information on that?"

"I suppose you could look at his records at the school," Dr. MacDunn says.

"I assume those aren't in the university library; can you tell us where we'd find them?"

"You go to the registrar's office," Dr. MacDunn says.

"Thank you so much."

Mordred is having flashbacks to every time he ever had to make a schedule change.

"Should we come back for the reports at a later time, or do you want somewhere to send them?"

"Give me your address and I'll send them."

(He will not send them.)

"Thank you. It'd be miserable for this not to pan out and us have to go all the way to Dallol."

"We'd really appreciate it if you could send them here. This is the address of Mrs. Winston-Rogers, who is interested in learning more about what occurred to Mr. Aarons. Please understand, he was recently released from a decade-long term of treatment in an asylum, and though he's made great progress, I think it would be very helpful to him to have anything that might provide some closure to his association with Mr. Ayers, or lead us in the direction of something that might. Even Mr. Ayers himself is unreachable, I think there's a chance the reports could be a game-changer for his personal recovery."

Anemone doesn't think this will be helpful to Lev at all but she is prepared to go to Ethiopia to find something that will be. And to track down weird bullshit. Mostly to track down weird bullshit.

Dr. MacDunn looks hesitant. "I guess... I can have Samantha look at it for you?"

Dr. MacDunn brings them to the secretary, who brings them the reports.

The reports are more-or-less "still in Ethiopia! doing an archeological dig! probably going to discover something soon." They stop entirely in 1926. Dr. MacDunn remembered correctly that the dig was in Dallol; the papers are extremely light on information about what he was trying to dig up.

Well At Least They Have Narrowed It Down To A Single Settlement.

Meanwhile--

Zoe and Carrie do not see their friends anywhere obvious on campus. They SO, however, snag a university directory that tells them that Dr. Ayers is in 213 Dodd Hall.

Dr. Roman says, "Office hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" in a tone of obvious annoyance.

"I'm sorry. - We're looking for Dr. Ayers?"

"Or our friends, who were also looking for him."

"That lazy Anthropology department secretary really needs to update the registry."

Dr. Roman directs them to Burnish, who tells them that their friends are in a meeting with Dr. MacDunn.

"Wait, we can't go in there!"

"We can't?"

"They're in a meeting, and we shouldn't interrupt. Could we - ask the secretary to let them know that we're waiting in the library for them when they're done?"

"Okay, let's go to the library."

Zoe looks up Ayers and finds that Ayers was widely published in journals from the beginning of his career at UCLA in 1911 until 1921; his publications then became sporadic and stopped entirely in 1924. The articles between 1921 and 1924 are all about cults. 

She copies down a list of his publications and which journals they were in, starting with the most recent and working back. She has no idea what constitutes useful research but maybe someone else in the group will find the list useful.

Carrie looks up and spots her friends, who are getting the reports from Dr. MacDunn.

"Hey guys. Dr. Ayers published a BUNCH of stuff on cults. Wanna look?"

"I couldn't find anything on the specific being Mr. Aarons's cult was focused on, but I thought it was worth checking in the library here."

"Let's read through them, then."

Mordred observes that Ayers's last few papers were controversial. Following a hunch, he finds that the UCLA Library also his unpublished papers from 1921- 1924 on file, revealing an increasing obsession with mixing mysticism with his historical research (and thus prompting the rejection of those papers by mainstream journals).

Gosh.

He is totally in a cave in Ethiopia with mad screeds painted on the walls and Anemone is going to find him.

Carrie remembers that the library probably has his research notes somewhere and asks about them, but the librarian says they're only available for grad students and professors to look at.

Mordred wishes he knew more academics. He wishes he knew any grad students. Possibly tomorrow he will lie and claim to be a grad student.

Once they're back at the hotel, Zoe is getting room service for dinner and calling it an early night.

The next morning, Lacie goes to make contact with her occult contact.

"Hey Mordred, is there a way that people prove that they're grad students of places, or will people just believe them if they claim it?"

"Sometimes they ask for student ID? It didn't look like the librarian was going to, though, we can go back and claim to be grad students."

They return to the library! There's a librarian at the front desk.

Mordred is probably more plausibly grad-student-y than Anemone.

"Hello! I'm working on my thesis and I was hoping I could look at Professor Ayers' research notes from before his sabbatical?"

"Do you have your student ID number?" the librarian asks.

"I... don't, I'm sorry, I left my card and I can never remember it. I'll make sure and bring it with me tomorrow."

"Are you sure you can't go home and get it now? We're working on a deadline, here."

-- presumably she has some sort of plan, since Mordred does not in fact have a student ID number and she knows it.

"I can do that, yeah." And then he leaves and Anemone can try whatever her plan is.
 
 
 

"Hopefully it doesn't take him too long. I'm not a student at this school, I'm at Miskatonic University? I heard there was some information here that might be really important for the anthropology research that I've been working on. Don't have my papers on me, though. - I guess I could go get them, if it'd help?"

"OK," she says, "right this way."

Score.

The librarian doesn't just bring her to Ayers's notes. It seems that UCLA has just been storing his things while he's gone. She sees his mail, his research notes, his address book, and a telegram taped upon several large boxes of books.

The librarian leaves to go work on other projects.

Haha nice.

The telegram reads:

MPA191 R295CC IF FT                              AUG 29 1924 1725P

MASSAUA, ERITREA

PROF. HAMISH MACDUNN

100 DODD HALL, 405 N HILGARD, LA CA

VOLUMES OF GREAT INTEREST IN ECHAVARRIA AUCTION. OBTAIN LOT 18. CULTS OF AKUSMITE, RIFT OF MOUTH PRIMARY IMPORTANCE.

AYERS

Cool. Anemone puts the address book in her bag because it's probably small, and then... looks through the boxes and sees if she can find anything titled Cults of Akumsite or Rift of Mouth.

She finds both. Cults of the Aksumite Empire is a PhD thesis about cults in Ethiopia in the fifth century BC and their survival to the present. Rift of the Mouth seem to be... poetry?

Huh.

Anemone puts the books into her backpack underneath some other stuff and then looks through the mail. She is going to read 100% of this mail unless there is a ridiculous amount. She finds a bunch of useless stuff, an autographed photo of noted film star Olivia Claredon ("George-- thanks for all your help!"), and Ayers's itinerary.

She take the itinerary and the photo and puts them carefully in a folder in her backpack so they don't get mushed, and then begins to look through the research notes. Ayers's research notes are cryptic and disorganized and she can tell it will take the rest of the morning to make head or tails of them.

Anemone cracks her knuckles. Let's do this.

Ayers’ research appears to be primarily concerned with Gol-Goroth (aka the Fisher from Outside) and the Liar from Beyond. The earliest notes seem to indicate that these are one and the same, but later notes seem to evolve an understanding of duality in their nature-- possibly indicating that Gol-Goroth is in some way the “herald” or the “harbringer” of the Liar. 

Hoo boy our boys ten years ago had the prologue and we got ourselves a main event on the way.

Anemone looks at the collection of books for books referenced in Ayers's notes. It has:

-Fishing the River of Stars, a history of tenth and eleventh century China
-Unaussprechlichen Kulten, a book about secret societies and cults
-Ziggurats of the Pre-Helladic Period, which is about exactly what it sounds like

Let's take a look at that second one.

Written by the German eccentric von Junzt, the original edition of Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults) is also known as the Black Book. That edition was published in Dusseldorf in 1839; this copy is the cheap and faulty translation pirated by Bridewell in London in 1845. It is nevertheless markedly superior to the better known, but thoroughly expurgated, version published by Golden Goblin Press of New York in 1909. And even more so because the margins of this copy appear to have been heavily annotated by someone consulting the original German text.

Von Junzt (1795-1840) spent his entire life delving into forbidden subjects; he traveled in all parts of the world, gained entrance into innumerable secret societies, and read countless little-known and esoteric manuscripts in the original. In the chapters of Nameless Cults, which range from startling clarity to murky ambiguity, there are statements and hints to freeze the blood of the thinking man. Reading what von Junzt dared put into print arouses uneasy speculations as to what it was that he dared not tell.

In addition to the annotations mentioned above, there are additional annotations in a different hand calling particular attention to specific passages regarding the Black Stone. These annotations appear to cross-reference and copy text selected from some unknown secondary source (perhaps a travelogue of some sort). These notes identify the Black Stone – that curious, sinister monolith that broods among the mountains of Hungary – as the “spikes of his world” and the “ladders of faith” (intimating, perhaps, that other such monoliths might exist). It is described as octagonal in shape, some sixteen feet in height and about a foot and a half thick. Its surface had evidently once been highly polished, but it was now (according to von Junzt) thickly dented as if savage efforts had been made to demolish it (although to little effect). The travelogue draws parallels between the surviving symbols upon the Black Stone and “crude scratches on a gigantic and strangely symmetrical rock in a lost valley of the Yucatan”. A note of commentary remarks, “The God of the Black Stone cannot be summoned without the link of His stone or the Fire of his Jewel.”

........Anemone is going to keep this one too.

She puts the other books back and the mail back like she found it and.... eh she shouldn't definitely keep the address book if it might be missed. She looks through it and sees how many names there are. There are hundreds of names; of note are the address of Ramon Echavarria's house and an Italian address for Bartolo Acuna, the person Ayers was apparently going to meet.

There could be other related people that they don't know the names of yet, so Anemone writes those addresses down on a separate sheet of paper but then also keeps the whole book.

She thinks. She guesses if the histories were in boxes that no one has opened in a very long time and not with the rest of the library then it's probably safe to steal them.

Argh. She'll take all the interesting stuff, the photo and the itinerary and the address book and the five books, and close the boxes with the rest of the books all up nice and neat like she found them, and tell the librarian that getting to look through everything was super helpful and she's so glad she came, and then head out to meet up with the others.

Meanwhile--

Mr. Burlington uses Zoe's key and the bank's master key to open the safety deposit box.

Zoe peers inside.

She sees a set of photos and some notebooks.

Thanking Mr. Burlington once more, she retrieves the photos and notebooks, fills out the appropriate paperwork, and goes back to the hotel.

Photographs

-Half of the photos are of cheerful people at some sort of party or soiree. They smile, laugh, and gossip. 
-Half of the photos show grotesque acts of torture and murder.
-The victims generally appear to be bums, but one picture involves a child, and another an elderly person.
-Clearly taken from concealment. 
-Slightly more than half of the photos were taken indoors in one or more residences of opulent yet tasteful decoration and costly furnishings. 
-A few photos were taken outside, apparently in private gardens.
-Two photos were taken in the same non-opulent working-class apartment or servant’s room.
-Those in the photos are well-dressed and well-coiffed, with some wearing elaborate jewelry.
-One man, apparently of Latin American descent, recurs in all of the photos. In the party scenes, people turn towards him and are often laughing at his jokes; he seems to be well-liked. In the torture scenes, he is the main perpetrator. 
-Lev Aarons appears in two photos, both in the main interior set, neither of which are torture photos. 

Books of Account

-These books are actual working books, instead of copies.
-The books appear to be written in some sort of code.
-There is a buck sheet tucked into the back cover of the book. 

"Wow. These photos... sure are something. I suppose that's Echavarria?"

Carrie can tell that all of the photos, save perhaps the last two, share the same location, a single mansion and its grounds. She can’t rule out the possibility that the last two may have been taken on the same grounds. They could easily be downstairs servants’ quarters, a carriage-house room, or similar.

She tells this to Zoe.

"Do you recognize the building in the print?"

"No, I don't recognize the building. And the name Buchwald doesn't ring a bell either. ...Probably these were taken by Katherine Clark?""

"Oh, that seems likely! She was the photographer, right? --Well, it looks like it's supposed to be some sort of local landmark. Maybe we can ask the person at the front desk."

Carrie looks at the photos more closely. "That's Richard Spend! He's a famous actor. He died in 1924."

"I guess he must have been involved in the cult."

Zoe and Carrie try to figure out whether anyone knows where the pictures were taken, but do not have much luck.

"Well I had a SUPER productive day, I dunno about you guys. Uh, sorry for leaving you, Mordred, but I got like five books that I could use some help looking through?"

"You don't need to apologize, your story worked."

"The box had accounting books and photos! Uh, fair warning, these are some really grisly photos, you might not wanna see them."

"We got the deposit box's contents, we've got photos of Echavarria's parties, and also of things that are probably cult-related, and some encoded accounting books, and this not."

"Ayers' stuff has been in the back of the library for a decade; I don't think anybody's been through it. I got a ten-year-old travel itinerary of where he went, an address book, an autographed photo from the actress Olivia Claremont, and five books from a larger lot of books that belonged to Echavarria. There might be other important stuff in some of the other books, but these ones were the ones noted as being especially important or referenced in Ayers' research notes. He seems to have thought that Gol-Goroth was some kind of herald, or Harbinger, of something called the Liar from Beyond."

"--Hey, has Lacie gotten back yet? We don't want to go through everything twice."

"I haven't seen her, no."

"Haven't seen her. She was visiting friends, I think? Might have just lost track of time. I think we might as well start working on the books while we wait for her?" And Anemone starts pulling things out of her backpack and arranging them so people can look.

"Yeah, maybe. I've got the addresses she was headed to if she's gone much longer."

Carrie gets out the photos but leaves the ones that aren't from the party face-down in a separate stack.

"We know Ayers took his sabbatical in Ethiopia, presumably that's related to the Akumsite Empire one?"

"Probably. --Oh, the address book has addresses for Echavarria and also for the guy that Ayers was going to meet in Ethiopia. Who lives in Italy, apparently. Or did, ten years ago. Also these books are pretty creepy, just so you know."

Anemone is not going to give a harsher warning than that. How creepy could these books be, they're books.

Mordred picks up Ziggurats of the Pre-Helladic Period, Zoe the Maw of the Mouth, Anemone the Akumsite Empire book, and Carrie Fishing the River of Stars.

A half hour later--

"Lacie's not back yet. We should send someone to go find her."

"We should probably all go together? She's probably fine, but we do know that people are targeting us - "

"Well, it's a trade-off, right-- but if she's just lost track of time we haven't lost much and if it's worse than that then it's more important than getting everything read tonight--"

"Yeah, I think the books can wait. I don't think we're going to find all the pieces of this in LA, and if we have to finish them on the plane back that's not a big deal, you know."

"We wanted to get things in LA done as efficiently as we could to try to be ready by the time we went to get Lev?"

"Yeah I agree but I don't know that the books are necessary for looking through all of our LA leads?"

Zoe calls the contact that Lacie was going to speak to. 

The contact says that the last time she saw Lacie she was going to have lunch with her foster father Samson Trammel.

Well, that's not good.

Lacie left her foster father's phone number; Zoe calls Mr. Trammel.

"Hello, this is the Trammel residence, I'm the maid Mrs. Magwood."

"Hello, we're looking for Lacie? She was supposed to have lunch with her father, Samson Trammel, and then meet us afterwards, and we haven't heard from her."

"Miss Ferrier left to go speak with some of her friends," the maid says. "I do hope there wasn't an accident."

"--Yes, we're the friends she's supposed to be speaking with. We haven't seen her. When did she leave?"

"About 1pm," the maid says.

It's 3:30 pm.

"Do you know how she left? Who was driving her, what route they took, anything like that?"

"No, I don't know, I'm sorry."

"Okay, thank you. And there's nobody who would know that information? Even what the car looked like? I'm sorry, we're just really worried."

The maid leaves for a moment and returns with, "She got in a taxi."

"Thank you for your help." To the others: "Lacie left her foster dad's house in a taxi over two hours ago."

"Maybe we should check with the front desk to see if she got here and then left again? She might've called for another taxi from here?"

The front desk hasn't seen her.

Fun! "Okay, if we get our own taxi and go the way she would've come, we might find her if she's been in an accident? That doesn't really help if something else happened, though."

"Do we suppose there's any chance that someone affiliated with the cult has kidnapped her? I know it's not likely, but it seems like the sort of thing we ought to consider?"

"I mean, if it's foul play that's the obvious thing, right. Kidnapped her or otherwise held her up."

"If so, it would have had to either be the taxi driver, someone who could stop the taxi driver, or someone between her getting out of the taxi and getting to the hotel?"

"Would anyone on staff have noticed?"

She can ask again. Has there been any kind of altercation outside the hotel today, they're concerned something's happened to their friend. (The flophouse didn't pay any attention to their altercation but this is a nicer place, yeah, they might.)

The receptionist hasn't seen anything! She is very concerned though.

Thanks for the concern, they're worried too. "Okay, do we have any ideas other than retracing her most likely route?"

"We could call her father again and ask if there are any other places she's likely to have gone? Whether she specified that she was actually going to meet some other set of friends, or something? I don't know. If it gets to be long enough we could contact the police, but I don't know that that's warranted after two hours."

Mordred is concerned about her foster father but he doesn't have very good reasons for that and he's going to try and come up with an actual basis for this worry before he voices it.

"Yeah. I spoke to a maid before but we should probably ask to talk to her father? He should be aware of this and would probably know more besides, that's who she was visiting." She does not go into why she didn't ask to talk to him in the first place. Mordred is not the only uneasy one.

She goes upstairs again and calls the Trammel residence.

"Hello," the maid says again. "This is the Trammel residence, I'm Mrs. Magwood."

"Hi, it's me again. Zoe Aletheia. Lacie definitely didn't show up back at the hotel, and we're trying to figure out what to do. Could we speak to Mr Trammel?"

"Mr. Trammel is busy but I will ask."

A few minutes later--

"Hello, this is Samson Trammel."

"Hi, I'm Zoe, I'm one of the friends Lacie was supposed to meet! Mrs Magwood said she left your house at 1pm, and it's been over two hours and nobody at the hotel has seen her and we were wondering if you knew anything? It's really worrying."

"That is very worrying!" He doesn't sound worried. "Where do you think she could have gotten off to?"

Could you at least pretend to care about your foster daughter, sir. "We don't know. She could've been in an accident, or kidnapped, or something, we don't know yet. Who did she leave with?"

"She left in a taxi," he says. "I think that's jumping to conclusions a bit hastily, isn't it? Perhaps she'd stopped off to do some shopping and lost track of time."

"We had a very tight itinerary, sir. We wanted to be in and out of LA as quickly as possible. What did the taxi look like? Did you see what direction it drove off?"

"It was an ordinary taxi? I don't keep track of these things. If she turns out to actually be missing then I would appreciate a notification, but I am a busy man and I do not have the time to soothe the foolish worries of a silly girl."

"Could you at least give us the number of the taxi you called so we can get out of your hair."

He carelessly gives the number of a taxi dispatcher.

She writes it down. "Thank you, sir. If your daughter does turn out to be missing we will be sure to let you know."

Zoe goes downstairs and calls the taxi company. The taxi dispatcher says they have not dispatched a taxi to Samson Trammel's address.

Shiiiiiiit. 

"Great!"

"Well, that fits with how utterly unconcerned he was that his daughter might be missing."

"Am I the only one who has a really bad feeling about -- I guess that's my answer, thank you Zoe --"

"Samson says they called, so that doesn't indicate hailing a false taxi waiting around, does it, it'd implicate Samson?"

"- Possibly it's worth checking with a few other taxi companies in the area, in case he misremembered? But that doesn't sound good, and if he gave you the number, presumably he expected you to call and check."

"Maybe we should go check up on him in person? I'm not sure what I'm expecting to find, but - "

"Lacie met him in person and immediately disappeared and he doesn't care, I do not think we should do that!"

"Well, Lacie was alone. But I suppose that's a point."

"Do any of the people who know her know if she was close to anyone else who might know things about what her foster father was like?"

"The number was the last thing he gave me, I told him I'd quit bothering him if he'd just give us the number. Might be a good idea to head over there but I'm not sure we want him knowing we're there. --Oh, I've got her New York number, she lives with her brother. Long distance, obviously."

"Might be worth calling him before we do anything, then. ...I guess I can do that? If you guys want to look at how we'd get to Samson's house if we went to scout it?"

She goes back to the hotel room to call Oswald. 

"Hello, Ferrier residence."

"Hello, this is Mary Silverstring, I'm working with Lacie on the investigation for Mrs. Winston-Rogers, I assume she told you about that?"

"...Yes, she did. Is everything alright?"

"It might be nothing. I'm sorry if this is very sudden, but was wondering what her relationship with your father was like? She visited him about four hours ago, was supposed to have left about three hours ago, and has not returned. He gave us the name of the taxi service he called up, and we called the taxi service and were told that they had not dispatched a taxi to that address. Should we be at all concerned?"

"Well, I'd appreciate it if you were concerned," he says, caught somewhat offguard. "The two of them were... close. They liked to play games with each other, she would spend hours trying to pick hidden meanings out of their conversations. They--" he pauses to gather himself. "I wouldn't... trust that any taxi was called. I thought you were in Savannah?"

"We were. Our investigation led us here. We were planning to return to Savannah after looking into some leads here, but now we're less certain what our next step is. Do you suspect that she may still be with your father?"

"There's a definite possibility. I also-- wouldn't go rushing into the situation headfirst, if he does. Mr Trammel has put a lot of money into security and he doesn't take kindly to anything that looks like trouble."

"Good to know, thank you. Do you know what he might want with her?"

".........I have some ideas. If she was causing trouble herself, acting out or refusing to listen to him or poking her nose in where she shouldn't be, he might've wanted to discipline her. Or--" he pauses and then drops the sentence. "You said you were investigating the death of Mr Winston 10 years back? Was she visiting the estate to get information?"

"I believe she thought he might have known something? Not directly, but might have been able to point her in the direction of someone who did?" Wow, Anemone should have ever, like, coordinated with Lacie on this. Such is the problem with trying to cover All the ground in one day. "I could be misremembering, we were trying to cover a lot of ground in one day."

"Lacie has always been... very curious. About the things Mr Trammel knows." He sounds a little sad about it. "If she's still there, and it looks like they're covering for it, then-- what, exactly, are the details here? What were you looking for in LA?"

"We're investigating a series of murders that occurred ten years ago. Something related to a cult."

"I'm really not sure how that would relate to anything. Not on the business side... Maybe on the occult side? They had a-- shared interest. I don't really know all that much, he kept a tight lid on it." He sighs. "Do your best to locate her. She promised me she'd stay safe."

"We will. Thank you for your help."

"Should I be heading to LA?" He sounds like he wants to be heading to LA, instead of sitting in New York worrying.

" - I wouldn't recommend that? We do still have obligations in Savannah, as well, and it's still possible that she'll turn up shortly. I'll be sure to call you either way tomorrow morning, and you can make a decision then, if you'd like?"

"Okay. Thank you."

Anemone goes back downstairs to report.

"Lacie's brother believes it's possible that Lacie is still with her father. Mentioned something about the possibility of punishing her for disrespect, or for looking into matters she shouldn't. He urged us to find her but not to rush into anything, and said that Mr. Trammel employs security. He's concerned enough that he's considering flying to LA. I told him I'd call him back with more information tomorrow. Do we think we ought to go to the police? I don't know that it's been long enough yet that they'd take that seriously. I'm still tempted to go down to the house myself, but I don't want us to get in over our heads."

"We said we'd call back tomorrow with more information, right? Do we have any other ways of getting that information?"

"It's probably worth at least getting it officially recorded somewhere?"

"I don't think the police will care if someone went missing for a few hours. If she's not back by tomorrow afternoon..."

"I'm sort of hesitant to go to the local police purely on the basis that Lacie's father almost certainly has more pull with them than we do."

"That is also possible, yeah. We could have someone scout without telling him we're coming over. I'm not sure whether that's more or less risky. Magnificence could try, but he's never done anything this important before. Have you, Magnificence."

🤔

"Do we know who he actually is? As in, what he does, who he's connected to, why he would be relevant to our investigation, why he'd sorta-kidnap Lacie in the first place?"

"We do not know much of anything about who he is. Oswald suggested that he might be holding her in order to punish her for something, but he wasn't sure. I... suppose we could check the newspaper morgue?"

"Tomorrow morning."

And now they are going to finish reading the books they were reading. 

Cults of the Akumsite Empire was written as a thesis paper by Brill Davidsen in 1897 and published in a purely limited edition in that year. This copy has been recovered in some sort of fishy hide.

Daviden’s thesis is a remarkable work of scholarship, delving deep into the cult history of the Kingdom of Axum along the Red Sea coast during the 5th century BC, the resurgence of these cults during the Zagwe Dynasty of the 12th century, and even hinting darkly of evidence that the cults were still present (or at least their folk beliefs) well into the 19th century as the interior of Africa was opened to European eyes. There are suggestions that Italian colonists may have carried some of the Aksumite beliefs back to their homeland, possibly infecting Masonic lodges in Venice and Rome with their barbaric rites.

Davidsen also references the Revelations of Dagon, suggesting strange parallels between those apocryphal book of prophecies and lurid blasphemies and the Axumite beliefs he charts over the course of a millennia. At times it is unclear if he is suggesting that both the English text and the Axumite beliefs spring from a common source; or if he believes that the Axumite beliefs may have somehow traveled to Europe much earlier than the 19th century (possibly via Roman legionnaires) and found fertile soil in Celtic Britain. The last three dozen pages of thesis are given over to a detailed symbological analysis of the “Prisoner of Dagon” and the “Wide-Open Mouth”, equating the two figures on a deep level through complicated Jungian metaphors despite the gross differences of their disparate mythologies.

Fishing The River of Stars is a strange and curious text reputedly among those in the blasphemous library of Auguste Chapdelaine. Recovered during the Second Opium War and brought back to London in 1858, the origins of this anonymous work were lost with Chapdelaine’s life. (Chapdelaine, along with other Chinese Catholics from his circle of followers, was arrested and executed in Yaoshan, helping to precipitate France’s involvement in the war. Reputedly Chapdelaine was condemned for his missionary work, but darker rumors suggest that it was dark rites emerging from his study of forbidden Chinese texts which ultimately brought down the wrath of the local mandarin.)

Fishing the River of Stars is reputedly a first-hand account of the rise of the Northern Song Dynasty during the 10th and 11th centuries in China. Much of its bulk is taken up with routine and unsurprising bureaucratic “revelations”, but the choice passages which have given the book its particular notoriety are those revolving around the legendary engineer Zhang Sixun, who served Emperor Taizu of Song.

Zhang Sixun is said to have been served by a council of “thrice-mouthed advisors”, each of whom was said to “speak with three tongues” and to “balance the words of one hand against the other”. The strangely cryptic and disturbingly inhuman descriptions of these advisors are echoed eerily in a description of the inner (or secret) gardens of Emperor Taizu, where the author reputedly saw flocks of blue-green hummingbirds, their “feathers flecked with gold and with lipped mouths gaping upon their hovering backs”.

There are also suggestions that the ingenious armillary sphere of Zhang Sixun’s astronomical clock tower, which employed liquid mercury in its escapement mechanism, was only the “precursor” or “broken model” of the true clock tower which was “hidden by the Emperor”. This “true tower” was reputedly powered by “reddened mercury”.

In its final, black chapters Fishing the River of Stars reputedly supports the legends that claim Emperor Taizong killed his brother Taizu to inherit the throne. Here, however, it is intimated that the “Golden Shelf Promise” (the sealed document which validated Taizong’s claim to the throne) was filled with such horrid blasphemies that its “golden inks were placed in flame until they melted into screaming lead” and the scroll was replaced with a more palatable forgery.

The Rift of the Mouth, a thin, ebon-covered book, is a collection of thirteen meditative mantras. The character of these meditations, however, is severely disturbing to any civilized mind: They fixate upon imagery of depraved acts of violence, power, and control.

Each mantra is disparate (albeit varied) in its perverse obsession, but the common theme which joins the mantras together is that of the “Mouth” and the “Maw”. The Maw is the void from which both Truth and the turgid release of the flesh emanates. It is the gaping hole beyond the empty gulf which is the world of mortal perceptions.

The Mouth is characterized as being connected to the Maw. It is the path which cleaves its way through the barriers of the mind which lie between your voided gulf and that place beyond, releasing thereby the wisdom of the Maw. It is also the font from which such “honeyed knowledge” is spewed forth from the world.

Delving deeper into the imagery of the mantras, however, reveals another layer of truth: That there is a more direct path to the Maw. A rift. And that the “new-mooned Rift” will give “clear skies of truth” to those who find it.

The final mantra issues a chilling warning against the “name of the Maw”. 

For the name of the Maw is the Maw and the name of the Maw is its wisdom and the name of the Maw is its void and the name of the Maw is the gulf which swallows and the name of the Maw is that which destroys.

 The name (which is not given) is a shortcut by which the Maw of the Mouth can be regurgitated (or vomited) into this world; but such sudden and overwhelming truth would “sear one whose mind has not been glazed to the stars beyond one’s own”.

Ziggurats of the Pre-Helladic Period is a fascinatingly inchoate and bizarrely unorganized survey of its titular topic. Great and particular attention is given to Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavation of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, which was essentially contemporary to the composition of this text. Its dimensions (both real and hypothetically reconstructed) are given in painstaking detail and some sense of the structure of Alexander’s text begins to become apparent as one realizes that these dimensions are being equated through complex mathematical transformations to the dimensions of other ziggurats.

This, perhaps, also explains the sharp and sudden departures of the text from its topic: While drawing complex relationships between the ziggurats of Babylon, the ziqqurats of Akkadia, and the pre-zigguratical zaqaru of the Ubaidian period, Alexander will abruptly introduce discussions of monoliths and other structures from South and Central America and even from his native Hungary.

It then becomes clear that the dimensional diatribes – which at first seem a secondary characteristic of the text, wedged between lengthy narrative descriptions of each site – are actually of the primary and utmost important to the author: And in unwinding the strange cycles of his numbers, one realizes that he is making the bold claim that all of these disparate works of stone draw their ultimate inspiration from the preternatural dimensions of the “Black Stone” which the author ultimately claims “thrusts into the heart of every building constructed by man; thrusts into the very subconscious of our modern edifices of pride and hubris”.

Mordred gives a summary of the ziggurat book, including the fact that its writer is weirdly into black stone monoliths in places that have no relation to the ziggurats he claims to be writing about.

The Maw is connected to a separate thing called the Mouth, apparently! "It's 'the path which cleaves its way through the barriers of the mind which'-- okay, I'm not sure the descriptions are actually that helpful. There's definitely a lot of metaphor and mental stuff and horrible imagery."

Carrie is visibly panicked by Fishing the River of Stars, attempts to give a summary, is incoherent from anxiety, and gives up.

Wow, Anemone is reading that one next.

Poor Carrie.

In the morning, Carrie looks at the newspaper morgue and discovers that Samson Trammel was a cinematographer working with the producer Ramon Echavarria in the 1920s. He hasn’t worked since 1925 or thereabouts.

LOVELY.

She calls Oswald back

"Hello! It's Mary Silverstring again. We have discovered that your father worked with one of the primary people we're investigating, one of the men responsible for the series of murders that Lacie was investigating. She has not returned."

"Does this man have a name?"

"Ramon Echavarria. Movie producer, died in 1924."

"Before my time, then. Who did he kill."

"Lotta people, as I understand it. We're still looking into things, Mr. Echavarria's activities were not the original subject of our investigation. We were initially investigating the incident during which Mr. Echevarria himself and several of his associates were killed."

"And how does this connect to the Winston case." He has a few guesses but he'd rather not voice them immediately.

"We believe that Mr. Winston may have been affiliated with the group that carried out the hit on Mr. Echavarria. It's all tentative right now, you understand."

"What were Echavarria and his... associates... doing? Details, please."

"I'm sure you understand if I don't want to jump to explain the whole of an ongoing case over the telephone? I can tell you that I believe that Echavarria was involved in criminal activities including murder, and in some sort of religious cult. If you're still set on flying to LA, I'd be happy to tell you where I'm staying and fill you in more completely here, but the investigation is extensive, I am not certain that we are not being targeted for it, and if I must discuss the whole of the case I would prefer to do it in person."

"I think I'd better. Your current address, please?"

She can give him the address of the Roosevelt Hotel.

"I will be there in three days."

"We are going to visit Savannah tomorrow. Perhaps you can take the train there and we can pick you up?"

"That will be faster. Thank you, and thank you for keeping me informed. Please continue doing whatever you can to help her." And he hangs up.

The next morning, Anemone takes the account books to a friend she's bought sideshow attraction items from in the past. She has an interest in cryptography and she'd be happy to look at the books while Anemone is gone. 

Then at nine in the morning they get on the plane. 

Mordred pokes at his article about Douglas Henslowe with the intent of sending it to the Savannah newspaper. 

Anemone reads the book that freaked out Carrie.

She is pleased to know that it is an ordinary creepy book and cannot phase her.

Then, since it is a twelve hour flight, she reads the book about ziggurats. 

...and screams in the moment when she grasps the implications of what this author has communicated to her about how All of the ziggurats are Connected and how it Means Something and she don't know What but it has Shaken her as Nothing Else Has.

...Mordred has literally no idea how to respond to this.

'Are you okay' is a stupid question because obviously she's not.

Anemone is going to Attempt To Get Ahold Of Herself.

"Do you... need anything."

"Hey Mordred. Did You Read This Book Earlier?"

"Yes?"

"Did you understand it?"

"It did not make a lot of sense, no. Or, like, I learned an amount about ziggurats, but it kept going into digressions that didn't seem very related and I wasn't sure what was going on with that."

Anemone nods sagely.

That seems more like Anemone. She is a nodding-sagely kind of person and not really a screaming-about-books kind of person.

...then he realizes this thought is kind of stupid.

Anemone holds the book close and waits to land.

...Mordred goes back to working on his article, and then takes a nap.

"So... do we have any way of contacting Oswald, or do we have to ask at every hotel."

They do not have to ask at every hotel because there is a stressed-looking businessman anxiously watching their arrival. He heads towards them as they head out.

He has dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin. He's around 5'6 but feels taller than that. He is wearing the most boring suit imaginable. His expression is closed-off and appears to be permanently stuck in a frown and gives the general air of only being able to convey negative emotions. He seems capable of being very scary but mostly he's just sad, right now. He's handsome, sort of, but in a way where it feels like if you informed him of this you would immediately die under mysterious circumstances.

Oh Good. What A Sensible Person.

Shake the ziggurats off. No ziggurats here. "Hello?"

"Hello. You're the woman I spoke with on the phone?"

"You're Oswald Ferrier? Yeah. Mary Anemone Silverstring. Pleasure to meet you."

"Mordred Orkney, and likewise."

"I would like to claim the pleasure is all mine," he says, not looking any more pleased than two minutes ago. "You said you had someone to pick up while you were here. Let's talk on the way?"

"Probably tomorrow morning, it's what, midnight here now?"

"I guess we should go to a hotel, then? ...not the one we stayed at last time, though."

(Frank has collapsed asleep on his airplane.)

"Honestly that sounds like enough of a pain that I'm tempted to stay on the airplane with Frank."

(Frank is not conscious but if he were conscious he would say that they had BETTER stay on his airplane to guard it from AIRPLANE-STEALING THAI THUGS.)

"Would you like to get some sleep now, then?" Oswald asks, looking like he'd really prefer to grill them till morning.

"Eh, it's a bit earlier where we came from. We could probably catch up on the plane for a bit?"

"And I slept some on the flight."

"So now would be a convenient time to tell me whatever it was you were leaving out on the phone call."

"Well there's a lot of it! I don't even remember what parts I told you. We were hired by Mrs. Winston-Rogers to look into what her father was up to ten years ago, and what he was up to was investigating a cult, which turns out to have been the same cult that was run by a business associate of your father's around the same time. And I guess they did a lot of murders. And maybe also some more concerning stuff? But I just tell you you're gonna think it's crazy."

"I can decide that for myself, I think."

"They were trying to summon something; the one surviving cult member and one surviving investigator we've spoken to say they succeeded."

"Currently we think that Mr. Winston, his associate Mr. Henslowe, and Mr. Aarons, the person we came here to pick up, are all being haunted by - some sort of shadow of that being, I'd guess, some force that hangs around them and gets into places they've spent a lot of time. In the mental institution here it manifests as violent tendencies in the patients, and an obsessive fear of mouths. In Mr. Winston's old mansion, it causes very distinctively mouth-shaped water stains to appear all over the house. We've decided to remove Mr. Aarons from the facility to see what else he can tell us, but be advised, it might be contagious with enough exposure. Anyway, your sister went to ask your father what, if anything, he knew about this cult and what they were dealing with, and we haven't heard from her since."

"And this would be how the occult ties in," he mutters. "I don't expect Lacie knew about the connection between Echavarria and Mr. Trammel, because I didn't, so she would have gone to him asking about -- what, just mouths, was there a name for what they were summoning--"

"Gol-Goroth. We think."

"Or - I think it was the Fisher from the Outside? I could be mixing that up with the title of one of the books, though."

"I think Gol-Goroth is the Fisher from the Outside? And the Liar from Beyond is related but distinct, according to Ayers's notes. He thought that Gol-Goroth was the herald or the harbinger of the Liar from Beyond. So, you know. We have that to look forward to."

"Gol-Goroth," he says, sounding it out. "Much easier to look up. Much harder to dance around than questions about mouths. And then, simplest case, she starts asking him about this and accidentally stumbles too close to a whole mess of murders he doesn't want people asking questions about. So he doesn't let her leave."

"Could be. How do you suggest we get her out? Assuming she's still alive?"

He is very much not thinking about whether she's alive. "I... negotiate. It's a 10-year-old case. Everyone involved is now dead or insane. He has nothing to do with any of it and disavows any nonprofessional relationship with Echavarria. My sister was using the situation to get another shot at his private library and she was selfish and defiant and deeply misguided but she didn't uncover anything and if she did she was only confused into thinking she did and we will of course leave LA as soon as he'd like and this indiscretion makes it to neither the police nor the press." The nice thing about being worried and upset at literally all times is that it's much less obvious when you actually have a reason to be worried and upset. "Unless you have a better idea."

"...uh, well, we can say that, if you think it'll get her out?"

"I think it might have to be some degree of true. He's hard to bluff." Especially if he's the one who taught you how bluffing works.

"I mean, I will certainly not contradict you if you claim that this indiscretion will not make it to the press, but, um."

...Well, dammit. "If we want to stay in Mr. Trammel's good graces, and Lacie and I very much do, his connection to this case does not get published."

"I'm not particularly attached to printing anything or contacting the authorities, but if that cult did something and the mystical reverberations are being felt to this very day, then I think that bears more investigating. Also, uh, why exactly do you want to stay in this person's good graces?"

"If it helps I have no concrete plans to publish anything until I know much more than I do now."

"Because he is both my father and my employer? And my livelihood depends on him not deciding to destroy it?"

"Have you considered not being dependent on people who are demonstrably willing to kidnap your sister. We could put in a good word for you with Mrs. Winston-Rogers."

Gee what a thought it never occurred to him to not get hopelessly tangled up with Samson Trammel. "If you think that would help."

"Presumably he knows his options better than we do," Mordred says quietly.

"I'm sure he does. I'm not sure he understands what he may be weighing them against. We have reason to believe that members of this cult are still active, active enough to hire thugs to threaten us away from talking to Mr. Aarons, on the other side of the country from LA. And they're active enough for that, then they're active enough to continue to be up to the same sort of things that they were up to ten years ago."

"All the more reason to stop poking it until Lacie is definitely safe again," he says, a little more subdued. "And a good argument for not provoking Mr. Trammel until we have a sure case against him. If you need to track down some LA cult so be it but that man is dangerous and willing to do a whole lot to keep people off his trail and you don't seem to have any definite reason to believe he's still involved, rather than trying to cover decade-old tracks and taking out some frustration on my sister."

"Sure, I don't know that he's involved. Just don't go making plans that rely on us actually not caring whether there are any more ritual murders occurring these days."

"Maybe I'll have a better plan come morning."

Come morning Oswald does not have a better plan but he does have much more energy. He is going to use this energy to wait impatiently for the others to wake up and try to summon a taxi and worry more cogently than before.

They go to the hospital! Mordred is wildly unclear on whether it is at all a good idea for him to try and go inside.

"I think Carrie wanted us to ask Henslowe what cipher he used on his accounting books, if he was available for the asking."

"Seems like a terrible idea? If he could tell us anything more inside the asylum, he'd have told us. They were watching him the whole time, he doesn't wanna look any crazier than he does already. I guess we could try asking, but I worry it'll make it harder to get in to see him again, if we look like we're encouraging him."

He's staring up at the sanitarium. "Does one of you need to sign him out."

Shrug. "Don't think so? I think they're just releasing him. Just gotta be here so he isn't stuck on the street outside the asylum without a penny to his name. I can go in and ask, though. Wait here, Magnificence."

Oswald dubiously tries to pet Magnificence. 

The nurse is happy to give Lev to any person who claims to be the person whose job is collecting him.

"Uh. Hello."

"Hello! We'll be flying you out today, if that's all right. My associates are waiting outside." They go outside. "I'm Mary Anemone Silverstring, that's Mordred Orkney, that's Oswald Ferrier, and this is Magnificence. Don't worry about remembering the names, I'm sure you'll pick them up eventually."