Jake Arnott - The House of Rumour

‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ the Hermit replied. ‘For they shall be called the children of God.’

They passed each other to the count of three twirls of the baton. This was the rhythm of the upright and principled, thought the Hermit. This was the tick-tock in the minds of humans when they thought of the word justice. But he bowed graciously to the policeman. He did not despise the cops as some of the other Higher Ones did. At least they understood the burden of power that they carried. Sirius gave out a little yelp. She had spotted something.

‘What is it, girl?’ the Hermit asked.

Sirius yelped once more and the Hermit then understood what she was saying. She was calling the name ‘Duke’. Sirius had the capacity to recognise his fellow Higher Ones — this was another canine virtue the Hermit had noted during his time on earth. He looked in the direction of his companion’s call and there he was. The Duke of Sunset was on the other side of the boulevard. In his top hat and crimson-lined cape, he was the most famous bootblack in Hollywood. He spotted them both and crossed the road, shouldering his shoeshine box.

‘Hey, Serious!’ he said, crouching to stroke the dog. ‘How’s my best gal?’

The Hermit smiled. He tried to remain impartial but he couldn’t help seeing the Duke as the favourite of all his fellow Higher Ones on the boulevard. The light poured out of him. His work was so diligent, his lesson to the humans so clear and simple.

‘Gave Clark Gable a shine yesterday!’ the Duke announced.

The Hermit frowned. By the look on the Duke’s face he deduced that this ‘Clark Gable’ was one of the benighted wretches imprisoned in those high-walled mansions he often passed. Those who had had their spirits sucked out of them by the light machines and were turned into ghosts while they still lived. He patted the Duke on the shoulder, glad that he could have given this man some solace.

‘You may have saved his soul,’ said the Hermit softly.

‘Aww,’ the Duke replied, looking down at the Hermit’s bare feet. ‘I wish I could give you a shine, Pete.’

‘One day I’ll wear shoes just for you, Duke.’

The Duke laughed and began to move on.

‘Yes, sir!’ he called out to the Hermit. ‘Patent leather!’

Cato sat up and put the magazine down. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. He lit it and puffed away for a while, thinking. He blew a smoke ring and watched the pale blue vortex hover and disintegrate in the space above the bed. A strange story, he thought, as the ghostly O began to stretch out and distort. About the everyday but with a twist, like those TV shows The Twilight Zone or The Scanner , where something ordinary is revealed as belonging to another dimension. Cato thought that he had guessed the trick of the tale. It was that this hobo guy was really an alien. Then he made another guess. Maybe he just thinks he’s an alien.

He thought about the black character in the story. At least there was a black character. It was just a shame that he had to be a shoeshine. Then Cato remembered a guy in LA just like that. A shoeshine who wore a cape and a top hat. Perhaps this Duke guy was an alien too. Maybe that was the point of the story. That all the street people were Higher Ones and had come from another planet.

Cato glanced at the blue-skinned man on the cover of Incredible Stories . He suddenly thought of a joke. Brother, he mused, nodding at the illustration, you aliens can come blue-skin or green-skin, just make sure you don’t come black-skinned when you land on this here planet. He laughed and coughed. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table.

Quit smoking, Jimmy had told him. Quit smoking and quit drinking. Quit eating pork. Lead a righteous life. Quit going with white women, Jimmy had said. Cato sighed. His mouth was dry and tasted bitter. Sharleen had just got more and more screwy. He didn’t even know whether to believe her when she said she was pregnant. Only that there was trouble ahead and it was time to go. She told him the FBI were listening in to their phone conversations. She believed that the Nazis were controlling the space programme. She saw UFOs all the time. She could give details of many species of extraterrestrial, their particular worldly influence and their secret ambitions. The one thing she didn’t understand, thought Cato as he cleared his throat, was that his people were the true aliens on this here earth.

He picked up the magazine once more and curled up on his side.

As he made his way through the day the Hermit met with some of the other Higher Ones of Hollywood. Doc Hegarty, who handed out pamphlets that warned against the eating of meat, fish and nuts, explaining that protein caused unnatural lusts; Preacher Bill, who could give clear advice on the coming apocalypse; and Madame Pompadour, an ancient ex-prostitute who walked the streets now out of habit and would often fetch coffee and doughnuts for the girls who still worked the boulevard. But mostly he tried to minister to the needs of the desperate souls who passed him by.

In all the time he had walked the earth, tramped its highways, hitched rides or jumped freight trains, he had never known such a forlorn place as Los Angeles. A city so ravaged by materialism and a people weighed down by so many possessions, deluded by ambition and the painful need for adulation. After his first report he was ordered to stay here. To continue to observe these extreme conditions. And maybe to help to bring some relief to this barbaric region.

It was not enough, his superiors had decided, simply to make contact with the most advanced and privileged classes of this strange planet. The Hermit had known the civilisation of the shanty towns, the refined society of mission halls and soup kitchens. And he had learnt much in the great university of Camarillo State Hospital, where white-gowned students came to learn wisdom from some of the greatest minds on the face of the globe. But he had to go beyond, to bear witness to the barren emptiness of this bright and gaudy wilderness.

There came a knock on the door. It was Jimmy.

‘You ready?’ he asked Cato.

‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘But listen—’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Jimmy broke in. ‘Just give it a try, that’s all I’m saying. Islam is the natural religion for black folks.’

They went together to a meeting hall that called itself a temple. Jimmy tried to hustle them both to the front but Cato shook his head and took a chair at the back. Jimmy shrugged and sat next to him. A light-skinned black man in a leopard-skin fez started talking. Cato had heard some of it before. That the African had been deceived by the slave-masters, cut off from their true knowledge and true religion. The Original Man was black and his was the root of all ancient civilisation. Cato yawned quietly. He felt all the weariness of his life flood through his body and pool onto the floor of the meeting hall. He was overcome by a blessed sense of calm. He closed his eyes. God is not a spook, came the voice of the preacher. God is a man. The devil is a man also.

Cato let go and felt himself falling. Then the physical weight of his body seemed to drop away and his spirit began to soar. The voice spoke of the civilisations that existed on other worlds, of how the moon and the earth were once one planet before they were split apart in a huge explosion. Then it was dark in his head. No sound, no light. No space, no time. A moment that lingered eternally. Then Cato’s head nodded sharply and he woke up with a start. He kept his eyes closed and listened.

The preacher was talking of a great wheel in the sky. Like the vision Ezekiel had seen. The white man is planning for battle in the sky. Today he has left the surface for the air, to try to destroy his enemies by dropping and exploding bombs. But we too are ready for the battle in the sky. The great wheel is the Mother Plane and it can exist in outer space. Ezekiel saw it long ago; it was built for the purpose of destroying the present earth. It carries fifteen hundred bombing planes. The small circular planes called flying saucers that are talked of these days are surely from the Mother Plane, the preacher declared.