Infinite Rooms: a gripping psychological thriller that follows one man's descent into madness

by David John Griffin

  INFINITE ROOMS

  Also by David John Griffin

  The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb (2015)

  INFINITE

  ROOMS

  DAVID JOHN GRIFFIN

  urbanepublications.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Urbane Publications Ltd

  Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleamingwood Drive,

  Chatham, Kent ME5 8RZ

  Copyright @ David John Griffin, 2016

  The moral right of David John Griffin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-910692-60-8

  EPUB 978-1-910692-61-5

  MOBI 978-1-910692-62-2

  Cover design, text design & typeset by David John Griffin

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  urbanepublications.com

  The publisher supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®), the leading international forest-certification organisation.

  This book is made from acid-free paper from an FSC®-certified provider. FSC® is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace.

  To Matthew Smith, for believing.

  “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.”

  Saint Jerome

  “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  1

  Crouching naked inside this cocoon. I clutch my knees like an ancient astronaut and although wrapped in darkness, live in mindrooms of detail and clarity. You, Dr Leibkov, continue to exist at the periphery of the solid mental landscape.

  Look, over there, fishermen hosing down wooden slats, the moon’s brightness making them glow. Don’t know if you’re still unable to see. Let me describe it for you anyway. Over by a bench, under one of the lights, a knife sharpener touches an oilstone. He’s engraining oil in whorls on his thumb. Huddled spectators blink at the wind. I guess even pretenders get cold.

  Here she is, my bewitching Bernadette, glowing more than anything. Drawn to her always. I’m part of her, hypnotized by her beauty. There might be a proper introduction another time.

  ‘Let’s hold your hand,’ she says. Watch her gaze at me with love from those mystical eyes of hers, if you can.

  When will it start?

  A wailing horn emanating from a ship, ebony rectangle cut from the mist, avoiding floodlights from the quay. Growling from a generator. Chains, powdered with rust, becoming taut in the gloom.

  ‘Hear that?’ Bernadette says. ‘Not long.’ And this difficult watery birth begins.

  Flukes emerge first, as tall as I stand, the body rising from the waves. Those chains keep on dragging, glistening tons of flesh heaved onto the slats. A harpoon protrudes from the beast, gouging the planks. Butchers sharpen their knives – hear the hissing steel.

  Time stolen to display the slaughtered one with clamour and commotion; rattling and creaking until the wind quietens and the generator stops. This whale is streaked with barnacles, longer than a train carriage, an impressive bank of blue-grey flesh.

  I’m drawn to visit the mammal. It shouldn’t be here under these stars. Its place is the empire of the deep, surging within a sapphire ocean. And here I am, standing by the wall of it. I’ll pluck one of the filtering bones lining the jaws. So pliable I almost expect a harp-like tone. Stroke inside the furred mouth; run my hand over its smooth leathery skin. Step back to the side.

  A coarse-faced fisherman climbs a stepladder and raises his knife. Plump moon flashes phosphorous in the blade. It’s a signal. There are more knife-wielders appearing from out of the shadows into the yellow and silver. They lacerate the creature around the head with their oilskins squeaking. They make the deepest of cuts.

  Bernadette is breathy, chilled. I’ll stand behind and bring her to me. She pulls the sides of my overcoat around her. Overwhelmed with her warmth. A pulsing bliss. She belongs to me. I smell shampoo mixed with those stronger alien odours fouling the atmosphere.

  Surely I only imagine the whale breathing, traumatized and seeing.

  More chains slithering like tentacles. Hooks at their ends embedded about that slit. The ocean is sending fingers of foam racing up the slats, rushing and whooshing, never reaching. Shuttered moments of silence and inactivity. Sounds from the drumming waves are sounds of my breathing. I might become the ocean for a while. Can you at least try to view that wardrobe standing in the surf as if watching, doctor?

  The generator groans into life again. Chains jerk. Thick skin ripping away from the slitted head, exposing blubber. The underside of the skin looks like pith of an orange. Clouds of reeking steam rise into the fogged night. No pause for mourning or remorse as cleavers hack and knives plunge into the sides of this peeled animal. Nothing can stop them. They’re cutting sizeable chunks of red meat, laying them on a platform as though building blocks for some gruesome, nightmare igloo.

  This place in my vision skips like missing video frames: already onlookers are haggling. Wives crowd about the scales clutching wicker baskets to their sides, eager to buy the meat. Seagulls have ventured into the night. They spin in the dark. Hot rivulets of blood from the carcass, streaming to the ocean.

  Bloody sinew, bloody muscle, bloody bone.

  What more do they want? You’ve made me bleed.

  Make Aaron bleed? No, couldn’t bear the sight. Dismantle him but without the wrenching, without blood. Rotting vegetable matter, that’ll do. I buried him in the deepest of mindrooms behind a furnace barrier. He did something terrible, dreadful. Perhaps he was responsible for harpooning the whale.

  ‘Wha
t do you think?’ Bernadette calling, her bright face looking out from the wardrobe. Don’t know why she’s there but at least safe in the cocoon. Please come out next to me then I promise I’ll tell. And protect you more, you know I will.

  What do I think on this occasion? Saddened because of the slaughter marring our honeymoon. This is what spoilt it. I think many things, frightening or tedious things, sometimes those with no picture, without substance. The most worrying are memories that are somehow not part of me, as though created by a type of enemy.

  Listening aren’t you, Dr Leibkov. I understand you’re still blinded to the mindrooms. At the moment you’re no more than a cerebral embryo. Hear this: when created to my satisfaction, selected and tailored mindrooms will replace the outside. That’ll happen, trust me.

  More details of the honeymoon? Definitely not. Some aspects must be private. I’m entering another mindroom anyway. Through the entrance, the iron arch of Penshart Press, into the forecourt. Herbert the gatekeeper marches out of his cabin wearing his official expression. This cabin looks more like a beach hut today with strings of pennants along its sides.

  ‘Ah, it’s you, Donald,’ he says with a stylized salute. ‘Back to the grind, I see.’

  Must hurry. Those dull premises are calling.

  ‘Good morning,’ Sarah says in reception. ‘Nice time? Mr Morris phoned yesterday—’

  Before she can finish, Stones has thundered through the door from the printshop, muttering, ‘See me straightaway.’

  Strict and humourless business is already smudging the fading truths of my romantic vacation.

  Stones’ office. He’s staring at the brochure which lays like an exhibit on the otherwise empty desk. A lamp spots it; the blinds are shut. His lips tight and turned white, eyes have moistened; temper saved for this moment. If only I had the courage to confess I couldn’t care less. My new bride is all that’s important.

  Nobody else, nothing else matters.

  I’ll inspect the brochure with a hard stare, give a fair impression of concentrated scrutiny. But I shouldn’t be here. I need to be at home with my Bernadette.

  ‘Waiting, Clement.’

  Did you speak, doctor? Just a disembodied voice, possibly originating from over by the water cooler.

  Sudden comprehension has jolted. There, at the bottom of the brochure, a word of the slogan is misspelt. How, when I pride myself on impeccable proofreading?

  ‘I’m sure I instructed Wally to read that before I went away.’

  A weak excuse, I realize. I’ll amend it this very second. There: perfect spelling.

  ‘Donald, you ol’ rascal. Seems like months you’ve been abroad.’ Freddie talking, muffled by the clamour of printing machines, those intricate mechanisms as big as whales. ‘Good time, know what I mean?’ He’s nudged me with an elbow. ‘Changed the sheets every day, did they?’ His cackle is lost below the sea of sound.

  I’ll smile to let coiled tension evaporate, have it drawn out by the honest clanking roar of the presses. They seem to be printing on paving slabs. The wardrobe appears to be hovering.

  ‘I’d better get on.’

  Freddie nodding but I don’t think he caught it. I’ll have to raise my voice.

  Bernadette patting me on the chest. ‘Why are you shouting? Don’t get worked up, silly.’

  ‘Yes, sorry; turmoil of the day.’ I can still hear a distant rumble of machinery. This mindroom is quieter though. I’ll merge with this dream woman, us as one entity; touch her again, encompass her. I sense her colours. I’m compelled to kiss while I slide one of my hands to the middle of her back then further still.

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’ She’s pulling my exploring fingers away. ‘I’m busy with the dinner.’

  There she is wandering into the kitchen like a delicious fantasy.

  ‘Elephant grass growing in the garden.’ A pertinent remark as I peer through these French windows. ‘I’ll get the mower out.’ Grasses and rushes – even foil-covered panels – obscure anything else, like a gate or tree, or an outside existence. I’m not completely certain this is home.

  Bernadette pushing open the doors of the serving hatch, her face still glowing with magical auras, moonstruck. ‘Dinner’s ready.’ She’s extending a arm then playfully pulling me to her. I’ll pretend to climb through the hatch into the kitchen which is warm and aromatic from the cooking. She’s planted a kiss on my forehead. An enraptured shudder has engulfed me. Doctor, how I adore her, how my fresh lady needs me! I have an urge to trill like a canary.

  ‘Leave the garden,’ she says. ‘We’ll do it after we’ve eaten.’

  ‘You are saucy, I meant the grass.’

  ‘So did I.’ There’s her mock pout.

  ‘You do know by the time dinner’s finished I might not feel like doing it.’ My sly grin, continuing the game.

  Bernadette is laughing. One of those light, vibrant laughs which tinkles about us. Listening still, doctor? She’s next to me, speaking quietly as though others were in the room, ‘Afterwards then.’ A sparkle in those hazel eyes. We embrace and I feel her close, actually touching. I can, I really can.

  Scene one. Woman moves on stage right, smooths tablecloth, serves steaming vegetables from dishes to already-seated man. Man leaps up, ‘Nearly forgot.’ Produces bottle of red wine and corkscrew; putt goes the cork. Close up, camera three, we want those strings of effervescence in the wine glasses. Pull back, wider screen, whole stage; zoom in once more to muted conversation. Discreet actions, private signs, the whole shrouded with vignette. No, not the cheap cotton wool love, none of those hazy shimmerings. Good, now we have it – firm yet refined love, soft enough to wallow in, able to repel invaders, be a womb, a refuge.

  Scene two. Every frame of excitement to be captured. On the stairs, another intimate movement of the hands. ‘Not even eight o’clock, naughty.’

  At the portal. Soundman, let’s hear rattling of the handle – give me a sensuous rattle – the squeaking hinges as a friend. That laughter, it must possess eternity and hold the spa of rapture, have joyous echoes and live on until we fade to black.

  You’re leaning back with a creak of seat leather, the notebook resting on your knee. I can see you quite clearly, Dr Leibkov. Your chair is next to the wardrobe, both being pummelled by the dark waves.

  Still you misunderstand. It’s perfectly obvious, now I’ve decided. My wife Bernadette doesn’t exist yet in the outside world. She never has. Simply a figment of my extraordinary imagination. I mean, if there’s no evidence of a human presence, how can we say they ever existed in the first place? I just dreamt of burning photographs.

  Can you read a person? I’ve the ability to strip away layers to discover true crux of character. You ought to have this faculty, being a shrink.

  We show only a small part of ourselves. The majority is hidden below the surface like an iceberg.

  I’ll tell you a secret: I possess urn-shaped thoughts on plinths. Others less used are under glass. A few required at rare times are kept in beds of sawdust, nailed up inside crates. That’s where Bernadette’s fictional persona is stored, the memory of her creation buried as a souvenir. Put in a cellar, an unlit mindroom, miles underwater, sealed with sediment, possibly for protection.

  So here – deep, deep in my mind – there’s the perfect rendition of Bernadette waiting to be formed. The imperfect version seemingly outside of me sometime in the past was activated in a peculiar way by sparking neurons in a mass of synapses.

  True fiction memory, moulded, repaired and perfected, can be future fact. And that with special time alignment can be past present. There, I’ve said it.

  You think I’m misguided. I have to be honest, I’m beginning to be annoyed by your attitude. You seem an impostor on occasions, a person more suited to treating horses or fixing cars, not clients with headaches. Though I have faith in you remaining, I really do. Eventually you’ll understand the time and reality shuffling I’ll accomplish.

  Bernadette hides in my special mindroom
s, waiting to be brought into being. Form and cherish her perfect existence to come. Do you see? Nurture her realness from within. I alone hold that key. We will become no less than a dual soul. I’m naked to be reborn. I have instigated a rebirth for us. I’ve prodigious abilities to do this. Your acceptance and guidance will accelerate the process.

  Though if I’m capable of imagining a wife then why not others? You, doctor, could be no more than a set of electrical potentials, a series of triggered electrons. But please, I need you to be real too; dare to say you must become a surrogate father. But how can you if you don’t exist? I’m lost. Just a drifting iceberg in an empty, ice-melted ocean.

  Row, row, row your boat…

  After madness of the night, illumination is bringing sanity. Twilight is turning, evolving with early morning strands of light dyeing the sand. Tide has receded to leave barnacle-encrusted rock formations. Gulls are unsettled by a piece of flotsam in the water. The bobbing object could be sea-battered timber or a bottle containing an obscure message.

  Haven’t I shown my feelings and specially locked mindrooms enough? You’ve trawled an interesting catch, you must admit. And with unexpected bonuses too – my theories I’m talking about – as sought after as the coelacanth, as rare to hear as the real dream, the becoming.

  How does the wardrobe manage to balance so precisely on top of the harpoon? I know you’re inside the cocoon. You must have tremendous skill to maintain that state of equilibrium. I’ll jump up onto the flagging tail fin and walk along the remains of the whale, stepping from bloodied bone to bone.

  I can reach out to open the wardrobe door. Now I see the interior is coagulated black, as if a black hole, swallowing you and everything else.

  Perhaps you are unreal and always have been.

  Wait though, Dr Leibkov, I need to ask something more before you leave.

  If I’m imagining you, then who is imagining me?

  2

  The question trembled on Donald Clement’s lips and dragged him to awareness with impatience. No vague dribbles of reality today. Eyelids flicked open, eyes focused – away from his reverie – onto the vertical slash of light at one edge of the wardrobe door. The light stood before him like a silver pole, as if a tangible object to be taken and wielded as a lance.