Jake Arnott - The House of Rumour

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 been 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.

It became clear that most of the senior members of the OTO were appalled by Jack’s sinister workings with Hubbard. Crowley himself wrote a letter denouncing them both. Astrid was quietly furious.

‘When I think of how we have been persecuted down the ages,’ she said, ‘just so that these men can behave so foolishly.’ She told me that she herself had been a victim of a Gestapo clampdown on astrologers and occultists in 1941 and had spent two months in a concentration camp.

After two weeks of tension and near madness at number 1003, Jack announced that he and Ron were heading off to the Mojave Desert together.