Jake Arnott - The House of Rumour

The man in the grey suit made a vague sweeping gesture with his left hand.

‘And all this. Danny, I mean, really. These rumours we’ve been hearing. But we understand, we really do. I’ve been looking through your audit records. It’s all there. We know all about you. And you were making such good progress. You were operating level. Now you want to blow that? Disconnect yourself? Become a suppressive person again?’

‘Uhn…’

‘You’ve not been sleeping, have you? I think I know what’s really keeping you awake. It’s not just the drugs. You came on too quickly, you weren’t ready. You can’t deal with the secret knowledge of the Church. You’ve been trying to work things out on your own. Wanting to find out all about UFOs and extraterrestrials, hiring that investigator.’

‘Uhn?’

‘Oh, we know all about that, Danny. You paid that guy twenty thousand dollars to gather information on UFO sightings and government cover-ups about contact with aliens. What did you get for that? We’ve got what you need. You need to let us take care of you.’

‘Uhn.’

‘You need to rid your body of those space-alien parasites.’

‘I don’t want…’

‘You’ll go insane unless you let us help you. I can clear you, Danny. I can clear you today. Come to the Celebrity Center, we can book a VIP room.’

‘No…’

‘Remember, Danny, it isn’t just this life you’re messing up. You’re risking all your future lives! Your spiritual immortality is at stake.’

Danny looked up at the blue sky and thought of the fish thrashing about in the fishpond. His eyes began to water. He turned to look at the man sitting next to him but he had vanished. He looked around the park but the man in the grey suit was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he had imagined him. Maybe he wasn’t from the Church at all. Maybe he was one of them.

Danny stood up and started to walk. Grey suit, grey alien, he thought. It could have been them all along. But what could it mean? Perhaps they were after the manuscript that Jenny had given him. He let out a sob. He was tired of all his secret knowledge. And frightened. When he got into the car Arthur noticed that he was shaking.

‘Are you all right, boss?’

‘Uhn… yeah. Home.’

Back at his house in Laurel Canyon, Danny Osiris went to his bedroom and collapsed onto his bed. He tried to sleep but when he shut his eyes his visual cortex was flooded with vivid Technicolor images. It seemed less bright when he opened his eyes. He got up and watched his favourite porn video. It was a man fucking another man who was wearing a black rubber hood with a gag in it. He imagined himself as the man doing the fucking, then as the one being fucked, yin-yang, yang-yin, an alternating current in his consciousness as he masturbated. He got hard but he couldn’t come.

He went downstairs and got Juanita to make him an egg-white omelette. He ate it on wholemeal toast with a glass of orange juice. He went to see Lorraine in the office.

‘When uhn… Mr Zagorski…’

‘The writer guy?’

‘Yeah… show him…’

Danny pointed at the vast open space of his house.

‘Where do you want me to show him?’

‘Library… uhn… I’ll be there.’

Danny’s bookshelves were filled with books about the occult, the paranormal and UFOs. He had a considerable selection of counter-factual and alternate histories, and a whole section devoted to works that speculated on the nature of ancient civilisations. He found the box file that contained most of the papers he had acquired from the professional investigator the grey-suited man had mentioned. He removed a dossier and put it on the table in the middle of the room next to a pile of notes.

Larry Zagorski arrived just before four. He wore an aloha shirt, cargo pants, black Birkenstocks. Cropped grey hair. Lorraine introduced them. As they shook hands Danny felt a surge of power pulse into his limp palm.

‘Wow, this is quite some library,’ Larry said, looking around at the shelves.

Danny gestured at his science fiction section.

‘Do you want me in this meeting?’ Lorraine asked.

‘Uhn… no.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s fine.’

Lorraine shrugged and walked away. Danny saw that Larry was stooping over a bookshelf.

‘Can I… uhn… help?’

‘You’ll have to forgive me. I always start at Z. Writers, you know, can’t help checking if we’re on the shelf. Good God. They’re all here!’

‘I’m a fan.’

‘I’ll say. Even I haven’t got some of these. You want me to sign them?’

‘Please.’

Larry stood up holding a battered paperback of Lords of the Black Sun , a garish illustration of a spaceship with swastika markings on its cover. He opened it.

‘This one already has a dedication. “To the gorgeous Danny, my favourite space cadet, love, Vita.” A girlfriend?’

‘Uhn… no.’

Danny made a sign for them to sit down at the table.

‘You know,’ Larry said, ‘all the big West Coast SF writers used to meet up around here. At Heinlein’s house. Just up the road, Lookout Mountain Avenue.’

‘Heinlein? Robert Heinlein?’

‘Yeah. He had this salon. The Mañana Literary Society, he called it. I met them all there. Jack Williamson, Leigh Brackett, L. Ron Hubbard…’

‘Uhn… Hubbard?’

‘Yeah. Jack Parsons, too. You know, the rocket scientist.’

‘Uhn…’

‘So, Lorraine tells me that you’re up for a part in this remake of Fugitive Alien .’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you know, I’m not involved in it. They’ve offered me this one-off payment, but I don’t think I even own any residual rights. I should really ask Mary-Lou about it.’

‘Uhn?’

‘She was the director and, well, we were friends.’ Larry sighed. ‘You know, the older I get the more I think of her. Back then. Sorry, what were we saying?’

‘I… uhn… just want to…’

Larry looked at Danny with sudden concern in his face. For a moment he seemed about to have a seizure or something.

‘Uhn… talk.’

Larry smiled, relieved.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Uhn… I find it hard to talk… but…’

‘It’s okay. Take your time.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So, you want to talk about the film?’

‘Yeah, and… uhn, ideas… you see things…’

‘See things?’

‘Visions… imagination…’

‘Well.’ Larry shrugged. ‘Not so much any more.’

‘Uhn… here…’

Danny picked up the dossier on the table and handed it to Larry who opened the folder and looked at the first page.

‘Read… uhn… please.’

‘“Dated 19 September 1947. Memorandum for the military assessment of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Subject: examination of unidentified disc-like aircraft near military installations in the state of New Mexico: a preliminary report. 1. Pursuant to the recent world events and domestic problems within the Atomic Energy Commission, the intelligence reports of so-called flying saucers and the intrusion of unidentified aircraft over the most secret defence installations, a classified intelligence project is warranted…” Wow, is this supposed to be the Magenta Memorandum?’

‘Uhn… yeah.’

‘Well, I’ve heard all the rumours about it, of course.’

‘In the film…’

‘In the film it’s just a bit of dialogue. I don’t think it was even in the original script. Just something Dexter added.’

Danny jabbed a finger at the dossier.

‘What do you… uhn… think?’

Larry shuffled through the file.

‘About this? Well, it’s a great plot idea.’

‘It’s an… uhn… fake?’

‘Who knows any more? Look, you know there’s all this stuff about the government covering up UFOs and things like that? The TV’s full of it at the moment.’