The House of Rumour

by Jake Arnott

  I felt an edge to that last comment, a new sharpness in his tone. Whatever problems Larry had with reality, he was certainly more knowing than he had been before the war. I missed that awkward innocence of his. He had grown up the hard way, adjusting to the obvious horrors of war and then to the more subtle terrors of peacetime. But despite any mental anguish he might have been suffering, he seemed more confident physically and emotionally. I gently ribbed him about the many girlfriends he must have had as a glamorous airman, expecting him to go all coy on me. Instead he spoke softly of a dispatch rider called Joyce who he had dated when he was stationed in England and I found myself nursing a pang of jealousy that I had no right to bear. We went to the movies one night and he casually snaked an arm around my shoulder during the second feature. I snuggled up to him, unsure of what this careless intimacy might mean but happy enough for the comfort of it. He drove me back to number 1003 that evening and we dallied on the porch in a moment of charm and uncertainty. I went to kiss him but he drew back and fixed me with a pair of steel-blue eyes.

  ‘You’re still in love with Jack, aren’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Larry—’

  ‘Mary-Lou, look, I don’t want to give you a hard time. I care about you. But if you really do love him—’ he shrugged.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t just hang around hoping it’s all going to work out somehow. You’ve got to do something about it.’

  Larry was right. I knew that things couldn’t carry on as they were. The Lodge, indeed the whole Order, had encouraged the rejection of possessiveness in relationships but the house at number 1003 had become an exhausted burlesque of anxiety and confusion. Individuals were dogged by expectation and disappointment; partnerships were strained by instability and suspicion. Jealousy became all the more potent an enemy because we were supposed to have become immune to its poison. And I was the worst of the lot. I wanted Jack Parsons all to myself.

  And I knew I had long felt that this was meant to be. I had become bonded to him: emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and sexually. A casual relationship was not enough. The problem was that Jack had more or less settled down with Betty, his own sister-in-law (his wife Helen had gone off with Wilfred Smith, the former High Priest of the Lodge). Adultery with a hint of incest gave the thrill of trespass to what was essentially a domestic arrangement. Petite and blonde, Betty played this little-girl act that I found nauseating, though it sure as hell worked on most of the male occupants of number 1003. Jack was fixated on her and she knew just how to manipulate him. She was supposed to be taking writing classes at UCLA, but she always seemed to find a reason to skip them. Instead she liked to run the household, collecting rent money and food stamps. But she was so busy ruling the roost she didn’t notice how unhappy Jack had become.

  The world had caught up with him. The war had taken all his idealistic dreams of rocketry and burnt them up in its grim purpose. Ballistics became respectable and developed an orthodoxy. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory that he had helped set up had become a fully funded military enterprise more concerned with missiles and weaponry than the exploration of space. There was no room now for the eccentric pioneer whose ideas bordered on the subversive. He became sidelined: never fully accepted at CalTech (he was not a conventionally trained scientist; he didn’t even have a degree) and persuaded to sell his shares in Aerojet, the aeronautical company he had co-founded.

  ‘Besides, they’ve got a whole bunch of captured Nazi scientists out in New Mexico,’ he explained to me. ‘They’ve got all that German rocket technology. They sure as hell don’t need me any more.’

  With time on his hands, Jack became morose and indolent. He started drinking quite heavily, his drug use now habitual as much as ritual. He retained a taste for reckless experimentation: denied outer space, he was determined to journey inward to test himself with the dangers of his own psyche. He looked for the extremes in magic. The Order had always warned against this; indeed, Crowley himself had written to Jack, urging caution against rituals that risked invoking evil or causing harm. But Jack liked high odds and he loved the forbidden. And I encouraged him. I felt a connection with his darker energies. It was what had attracted me to him in the first place.

  I tried to muster my own occult forces. I had got to know a new arrival at number 1003, Astrid Nagengast, who had just come over from Germany. She was a formidable woman, a senior member of the OTO. A friend of Aleister Crowley, she had even known Theodor Reuss, the founder of the Order. She worked as a fortune-teller and as some sort of voice coach. I studied the Tarot with her and we talked about other forms of clairvoyance and ways of channelling the unseen. She insisted that the most important thing was the power of the will: the principle of Thelema, a central tenet of the Order. Astrid had been through hard times: she had been part of a resistance movement during the war. She was convinced that supernatural powers had helped her survive under the Nazis. Though I wasn’t sure how much I believed this, there was something very inspiring about Astrid and I realised, as Larry had so bluntly pointed out, that I had to do something about my feelings for Jack.

  One night we met at the pergola in the grounds of number 1003 that was sometimes used for ceremonies and the Gnostic Mass. Betty had gone to bed; the sky was heavy with stars. We talked of the new Tarot pack that Crowley had been creating with a woman artist in London. The Strength card was now designated as Lust. The image of a female form wrestling with a lion.

  ‘The Scarlet Woman,’ said Jack, ‘who rides the Beast.’

  I pulled his face towards mine by his thick mane of hair.

  ‘Strength is vigour,’ I whispered. ‘The rapture of vigour.’

  He kissed me, his breath scented with smoke and liquor. Sweet tokay and reefer. His locks slipped through my fingers, chrismed with brilliantine.

  ‘Knowledge and delight,’ he murmured. ‘And bright glory. Wine and strange drugs, divine drunkenness and ecstasy.’

  Soon we were naked. He bade me kneel and then crouched behind, his hot mouth against my neck, murmuring obscene incantations. As he covered me I bowed down on the tiled floor in supplication. I arched my back as he pushed against me. There was pain, my whole body rising up against his onslaught. Then the siege was broken and a sudden rush of pleasure overwhelmed me. We rutted with a bestial frenzy, consummating the love of Baphomet, the eleventh degree of sex magic that Betty had denied him. I felt a sense of sinful transcendence, convinced that this manner of ritual sacrifice would give me power over him.

  Afterwards we lay on our backs, looking down on the heavens.

  ‘I remember being a star,’ he whispered to the night air. ‘A moving, burning ember going deathward to the womb.’

  ‘Let’s go away, Jack,’ I said. ‘Just me and you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Up into space.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So am I, Mary-Lou. Or I once was. I once thought I would live to see the time when we make it up there.’

  He pointed up at the cosmos.

  ‘Maybe you will.’

  ‘No,’ he declared flatly. ‘I won’t live long enough.’

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘And in the meantime I’m supposed to be a normal honest citizen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Betty—’

  ‘What about Betty?’

  ‘She wants a baby,’ he told me.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ he muttered. ‘I want to conjure a demon or create a homunculus. I don’t want a real child. Maybe a moonchild.’

  ‘A moonchild?’

  Jack started to explain about how one could create a magical child, born on an astral plane, mightier than all the kings of the earth. He began to mutter oaths and curses. I knew that I should try to understand what he meant. That this might be a clue to possessing him. But it all seemed so absurd and as he rambled on I fell asleep.

  The next morning there was still a furtive charge between us but I felt it wane
as the hours passed. Whatever charm of the night I held, Jack was still in thrall to Betty by day. She seemed a little bored, though, and there was some spark of an idea in my head that I might use that somehow, that maybe I should not simply concentrate on getting Jack away from Betty. Perhaps I should find a way of drawing Betty away from him.

  I started to practise with the Tarot deck. I learnt the Major Arcana. I asked Astrid about the Justice card, hoping it could mean redress, particularly for what I saw as the unfairness in my situation with Jack.

  ‘The most misunderstood card in the whole pack. Justice does not belong to us. When I think of who was spared and who was lost,’ she said, referring to her time under the Nazis. ‘And these trials. So many will still get away with it. No, this card does not mean a human notion of justice. Oh no, this is the natural kind. Nature is a harsh judge but precise when she finds her balance. Exact, you might say. So you be careful when you go looking for justice.’

  But I was impatient. I began to find ways of palming the deck to turn up the cards that I wanted. One evening I did a reading for Jack and I fixed the spread so I could offer him a provocative interpretation. It was a three-card divination (though in this case more of a three-card trick). The Two of Swords was the centre card between Strength and the Ten of Cups. The Two of Swords shows a blindfolded woman holding crossed swords, like Justice without her scales, indicating a difficult choice to be decided on instinct rather than logic. Strength, of course, referred to our lustful night, the Beast and his Scarlet Woman. The Ten of Cups depicts a couple embracing as their children dance — family life and faithfulness, that bliss of domesticity that I knew he dreaded.

  This was a sort of spell aimed at Jack. I wondered what I might use against Betty. I had tried curses and blessings and all kinds of charms, but nothing had seemed to make any particular sense or had any effect. I decided to concentrate on willing a kind of animus that might work in my favour, a spirit that might tempt Betty away from Jack. One night I asked for a sign or a portent. The next day L. Ron Hubbard turned up.

  He had just got out of the navy and he was looking for somewhere to stay. Hubbard was a veteran pulp writer, well known in the fantasy and science fiction world. That’s how he got to hear about our little commune in Pasadena. I never much liked him. We had met at Robert Heinlein’s house before the war, the very same night I first saw Jack Parsons. Hubbard’s presence was such a contrast to Jack’s subtle charisma. I remembered then a domineering manner, an incessant craving for attention. A sly wariness in his eyes, a cunning twist about his mouth; he seemed alert to any opportunity. It was his gloating nature I found repulsive; there was something almost reptilian about him. With men he was merely arrogant, with women he was predatory.

  His prose style was as brash and arrogant as he was but it was hard not to respect his sheer output and his power of invention. Ron was a verbal illusionist, a writer who had become convinced by his own fantasies and now seemed ready to try to fool others. He would constantly push the credulity of his audience as if searching for those who might believe in him unconditionally.

  And it was clear that he was looking for something beyond the merely fictional for his powers of speculation. He boasted that he had written a manuscript that he could no longer submit to publishers as it had sent mad all those who had read it. In one of his better stories, a man finds himself a fictional character in a pirate romance and learns to anticipate action or danger when he hears the clatter of typewriter keys in the sky above him. Even back then the audacious storyteller dreamt of a higher calling.

  For some of the household he provided much needed entertainment. He was a skilled raconteur, holding court around the big table in the kitchen at suppertime, telling tall tales that many fell for. He had learnt his trade on all types of pulp magazine and could rattle off stories of any genre, claiming them as his own experience. And he was full of bluster about his wartime exploits, though one could tell that duty had taken its toll in some way. There was a weariness in his pale eyes. They would gaze off in mid-sentence as if hunting for another racket.

  I noticed them light up when they fell on Betty. It was easy to see he found her attractive and she clearly enjoyed the attention of this mysterious new member of the commune. They flirted openly. It was a performance, a game, but one that could easily turn serious. All at once it struck me that my prayer might have been answered.

  I found Ron in the library one afternoon. He looked up furtively as I entered. He had been studying The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley.

  ‘Looking for ideas, Ron?’

  ‘It’s brilliant stuff,’ he replied. ‘A whole new religion. Needs to be more, well, scientific.’

  He was fascinated by Jack’s persona and curious about his ideas. Ron was a professional, always on the lookout for any material he could use.

  ‘What do you think of Betty?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, but his eyes flickered mischievously.

  ‘She likes you,’ I went on.

  ‘She’s Jack’s girl.’

  ‘The Order’s in favour of free love, you know that. Betty wants you. And Jack wants what Betty wants.’

  His lips pursed in a cruel smirk.

  ‘She’ll make her feelings known soon,’ I told him. ‘Make sure you act quickly before her passion cools.’

  I was about to contrive a moment to talk to Betty on her own but it was she who instigated it. She actually confided in me.

  ‘What do you think of Ron?’ she asked me and I measured my response carefully.

  ‘Oh, he’s fascinating.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Betty. ‘I think he’s cute.’

  I winced. Only Betty could think of L. Ron Hubbard as cute. But at least there was a kind of poetic justice in it. They deserved each other.

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Oh, you must act on your feelings,’ I told her. ‘Anything else would be dishonest. You must let him know how you feel.’

  ‘What, tell him?’

  ‘Oh no. Some sort of gesture would be better.’

  Two days later in the garden Jack and Ron were fencing at sunset. The vigorous exchange of thrust and parry charged the air. There was a new intensity between the two men. I didn’t realise it at the time but Jack was becoming just as obsessed with Ron as Ron was with Jack. But looking back now, I think Betty already knew it and was jealous of them both. The light was failing and as they were not wearing masks each new lunge became wilder and more provocative. Betty became agitated as she watched until she could bear it no longer. She grabbed the foil from Jack and launched a fierce attack on Hubbard, swiping at his unprotected face, forcing him to retreat. Stepping back, he regained his posture and with a sharp riposte knocked her sword to the ground. The sky had turned blood red. Betty and Ron glared at each other. It had begun.

  We were all used to the wild affairs that would flare up at number 1003; they had become our sport. But this was different and the tension in the house became palpable. Ron and Betty made no attempt to conceal their lovemaking. It was a gruesome spectacle. But now everyone was watching Jack to see how he would respond to this direct challenge.

  I felt sure that he would crack. He had been so devoted to Betty and now she had betrayed him openly. Hubbard had obscenely abused his hospitality. I thought that it was only a matter of time before he would throw them both out. But I underestimated his resilience.

  ‘It is a test,’ he insisted to me one night when we were alone together. ‘I must suffer this ordeal of love and jealousy. I will find a way.’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered urgently. ‘Come to me.’

  ‘I have to find my own way first. I have to find the darkness.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of myself. This is a sign, Mary-Lou. I must attend to magical ceremony. I have to go deeper within.’

  So I left him to it, hoping that he merely needed time to get over Betty. But soon he became absorbed in new experiments of the spirit. He had b
een investigating Enochian rituals that had been used by Doctor John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court magician, who had used arcane language to communicate with the unseen. Jack now sought divine wisdom through angelic conversation.

  Astrid knew all about Doctor Dee.

  ‘He was the most brilliant man of his generation. A Renaissance magician with deep knowledge of astrology and mathematics. I suppose if he lived in these days he would have been a scientist. But he wanted to know too much. Like Faust he went too far. He fell under the influence of a charlatan named Kelley. Well, they practised magic together but in the end Kelley conned Dee out of everything — his wife, his fortune, even his knowledge.’

  This should have been a warning for Jack but he embraced its dread premonition. He started to enact magic rituals with Hubbard. Ron had made many explorations into the unseen in his writing. He had known H.P. Lovecraft when they had both sold stories to Weird Tales magazine and had learnt that faked occult wisdom was far more plausible than any actual arcane knowledge that might exist. With a demon of an imagination, he was now ready to use his fictional prowess to influence reality. He had enchanted Jack and there was nothing I could do to break the spell. And Hubbard seemed all the more convincing now that he had so forcefully demonstrated his dominance over Jack by seducing Betty. They formed the passionate connection some men can achieve only when they have a woman in common to safely mediate it. Jack needed desperately to break through what he saw as his human weaknesses. And Hubbard preyed on him, willing to steal everything from the other man.

  Jack had looked for the darkness and found it in L. Ron Hubbard, a man possessed with all the cunning and ruthlessness that he yearned for. They began to enact absurd rites, meaningless liturgies that seemed merely to solemnise Jack’s degradation. The house became possessed with a grim and sickly atmosphere. Strange noises by day, hellish screams that pierced the night, the stench of incense and sulphur. They constantly played a record of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto at full volume as prelude to their ceremony. Ritualism became contagious, as members of the Order would themselves enact banishing ceremonies to ward off ugly spirits.