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

by David John Griffin

  3

  Clement had turned to look back to the dilapidated tenement. In the distance was the south side of the block, with its rows of anonymous, paint-peeling windows. And behind one of those – every detail seen there with a sharp clarity – stood a man with a strange moustache, pinched cheeks and drooping eyelids. Overlaid was a beach and a ruffled sea, with a female running. If only her name could be remembered she would be safe, he knew, but it refused to come to mind.

  Even while pondering, Clement viewed the massive creature lumbering away, and as the swooning young woman dangled like a rag doll from its mouth, the whale moved into the churning water and sank beneath the waves.

  Clement shrugged and walked along the pavement’s gutter, oblivious to his surroundings, locked within himself once more.

  Lucid? I’m always lucid. What do you take me for, a sleepwalker? Quite aware of the supposed road I travel along within this blurred day. And I can open another mindroom, if you really insist. Such happy memory filmics in this particular vault. And they can be relived, dwelled within as I like. Far superior to your unreal realness, doctor. You tell me I’ve a photographic memory like a video camera and tape recorder inside? Correction for you here. I have a multi-dimensional holographic reality within, there ever since childhood.

  Here I am, tottering on spindly legs. Heat drunk with the stifling, airless oven the summer patio has become. Standing on tiptoe at grandmother’s outhouse window. Lawnmower inside, grass-stained and flaking paint; tins of varnish, cartons of premier elastic bands, cobwebs. There’s the mangle mounted on the washing tub. I used to like watching her pull sopping articles from the tub, the clothes somehow reproducing within that primordial broth of scummy water.

  I’ve taken a few grapes and now rolling them through the cylinders of rubber. Surely a clever youngster, changing the mangle to a wine press.

  A toy figure in my pocket. When I’m ready I’ll feed it into those rollers. This can be symbolic as well. It’s not Aaron’s physical body, understand, it’s his will to exist being crushed.

  The dividing wall between the gardens is white and blinding in radiant sunshine. Baskets of petunias hang from it. There, the blooms dusky pink spots. See them? You can’t, not yet, I know.

  Let me demonstrate my mental power. I’ll create the flowers out of paper. Watch as I refashion this mindroom. Try to understand, doctor. If I looked outside on my grandmother’s patio today, the hanging baskets would be overflowing with origami flowers. You realise how wonderful this is? By amending mindrooms I can eventually amend the weaker outer reality.

  Here’s one of my earliest filmics at that young age when chair legs can be a forest or tables an encampment. Nestling my chin onto folded arms to watch mother perform another miracle of creation.

  She is taping a table tennis ball to a cardboard tube, covering them with cotton wool, applying beads down its length. The representation has become more than its constituent parts. Mother is bringing into being a living snowman, tiny but real. For all I knew then, it was being created in a similar way to how she had created me. I’m unable to look away from her active digits as buttons became a nose and innocent organs of sight. The finale produces a yearning for him: a simple piece of string becomes a friendship grin. I hold the snowman close for protection. I whisper to him a secret before he stands above the fireplace, content in the knowledge that the snowman will live forever in the safety and warmth of the house.

  Are all tragedies sudden, so horribly abrupt? Can’t think of much worse. I’ll explain what’s happening next: lifting articles from the mantlepiece, mother is polishing the ceramic tiles with a cloth held in the other hand. For a fraction of a second she holds him. But still she’s unfeeling to the small being, his expression unchanged yet different. With a casual flick of the wrist, mother throws her child onto the fire.

  How to describe feelings which grip me as the form sizzles and becomes one with the flames? I’m mewling as though the world has collapsed, running to the fireplace, and would jump into the fire if it could help. But already the skin of cotton wool is consumed from the cardboard. Button eyes are crying tears of molten plastic. The rubber bands of vitality, for its intestines, sputter and squirm.

  This should mortify my senses, shrivel hope. Though we have a reserve of resilience to start afresh. Don’t we? Doctor, have I been answering your devious interrogations? I’m able to amend this mindroom but never bother. Perhaps enough to have the name Aaron burn in the fire. I’ll lock this room again and put a mud barrier there.

  With a gust throwing a handful of rain to the windscreen, Bernadette laughs at the story of the snowman. She’s failing to appreciate the delicacy of juvenile emotions involved. I might have left seeds of doubt as to the weight of my mentality. And those seeds could grow into strangling weeds, to obscure understanding and respect. I’ll not open those filmics in that particular mindroom anymore, not to anyone.

  Bernadette is repeating her question in this happier mindroom, doctor, listen: ‘I said, deaf ears, what else did you do when you were young?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. Jelly and ice cream birthdays, tonsillitis every February.’ Then a clutter of false memories which should never be recalled. I’ll turn on the wipers. ‘Why does it always decide to rain at the weekend?’

  The road has started a steep decline, winding its way down to the seafront where the line of hotels and souvenir shops are witness to slow-moving waves in a pearl and pale sea. I’ll change gear.

  A track halfway down the hill has caught my attention. With a twist of the steering wheel the car is crunching gravel. Flattened grass; we’ve stopped in front of a wide gate.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ She has twisted in the car seat.

  ‘Intuition and impulse.’

  ‘We were going further along the coast. Won’t catch the sea in the middle of boring trees. It’s just the dingy woods.’ She’s inspecting my face without blinking, waiting for an answer.

  I lift her chin and peck her on the nose. ‘I’ll have you know, these woods are owned by King Smythe.’

  ‘What’s that about, a weird secret you don’t tell anyone?’

  ‘Lord of the woodlands. A king with an enormous crimson head full of understanding.’ Sure I never said that.

  ‘It’s raining. We can’t have a picnic here. I’ll get soggy sandwiches and a wet behind. And I can bet King whatever won’t come running out with a brolly.’

  ‘Check out the branches.’ If only you’d see there, doctor, the track leading from gate to the woods. Trees ahead arch their limbs to make a leafy tunnel. ‘A natural umbrella.’

  She’s leaning forward, squinting through the watery car window. ‘The sign: trespassers will be prosecuted.’ I’d seen it earlier but kept quiet. ‘That’s it. Let’s go, Donald, the rain might stop by the time we’ve found another spot.’

  Already I’m out of the car and opened the rear door, fighting with the hamper. Bernadette is sulking, I’m certain. ‘Cheer up, Binny. Out you get, the water’s lovely.’

  And it is lovely. Cool raindrops; distant sea calling out its endless story, punctuated by the cries of seagulls. Pattering of the shower on leaves; melodies of birds secreted in the greenness. We are the new Adam and Eve, ideal mates, bound together in our new world. It’s as though, with road and car out of vision, nature has overtaken. Could happen.

  Cracks would appear on the motorways with thistle and mallow pushing their way through tarmac. Creepers and ivy might begin to shroud bridges and walkways. Wooden fences along the verges will come to life and begin sprouting. On the fields would be saplings of cedar, beech and oak. Floorboards could germinate, eventually pushing fingers of green through carpets; wooden furniture growing branches. Wallpaper peeling away in sodden strips to leave walls to be covered with lichens.

  I can visualise this clearly, prepare the three-dimensional mindroom to become outer reality. We’ll be protected by a glass bubble made from a special transparent foil. No bad waves or webs will ever pen
etrate. Happiness always – an everyday ecstacy – and protected inside our wondrous domain. This gift of mine will be the heavenly place for both of us to exist in the dream real, my wonderful Bernadette.

  Outside, herds of unattended cattle might roam the streets. The police would exchange truncheons for machetes to clear paths for pedestrians. Macaws and red-plumed parrots will screech and squawk from gigantic trees. There’ll be alligators scuttling from sewers, clamping their serrated jaws tightly about the guilty passerby, dragging him screaming beneath the overgrown city. The man with guilt is Aaron. Bernadette will never meet him, his name already burnt away. This is called sculpting reality, Dr Leibkov. I’ll teach you one day.

  We’ll have guardians – bullfrogs, the size of cannonballs. They’ll sit with bulging throats and razor-sharp teeth, awaiting any other guilty ones who investigate those green-warted creatures. Other citizens will survive by trapping wild animals hiding in the street-jungles. When houses and concrete tower blocks finally crumble, habitations will need to be built within the relative safety of the tree branches, accommodating a lofty community of pelt-clad savages swinging from vines. Clans will fight for possessions and superiority with bare hands and lumps of timber. They’ll lose civilisation little by little until language is lost, communicating with roars, grunts and howls, grimaces and grins. Regressing, growing hair on their bodies; craniums shrinking as frontal lobes do the same, chins becoming weaker, the original man revealed, naked…

  ‘Is there something wrong with you?’

  4

  Clement stood in a daze in front of the ticket office window at a train station. ‘Pardon?’ he replied at last.

  ‘Hurry up or clear off.’ The clerk was sullen and put his ear closer to the grille.

  ‘I see.’ Clement turned to view the faulty ticket machines then to the vertical boarding of the hall blemished by graffiti scrawls. A digital clock changed its numbers to the next hour. His attention was held there until an urgent barking cough distracted him. A queue had formed behind.

  It seemed to him that the members of the queue were complicated clockwork machines full of cogs and gears, stuffed with levers and rods, each run down at the same moment. He had the urge to ruffle through their hair like a twitching marmoset would and was sure he would find coin slots underneath, or check their backs for large keys projecting from shoulder blades like cast-iron wings.

  ‘Get a move on,’ said the man who had coughed. He let out a shuddering groan of frustration. ‘I’ve got a train to catch, haven’t you?’

  The others twittered together, exchanging glances and ill-tempered stares, annoyance promoting them to curses and threats.

  A businessman left his place in the queue. ‘You ought to be put down,’ he bawled, accenting his words with a thumb prodding Clement’s sternum. ‘I’ve got an extremely important meeting.’ He held up a leather briefcase as if in proof. ‘Now get out of my way.’ His pronouncement seemed to activate the others. They wriggled and nodded in agreement or shuffled on the spot. Clement was certain the ticket hall was sharper with grinding and whirring sounds.

  Clement had ignored the businessman’s tirade. More concerned with the jabs to his person, a sudden lucidity came over him:

  How dare you poke me. I’m not a helpless animal in the animal zoo. I’m human animal unlike you with that stupid toupee, starched collar, arrogant briefcase. Lighten up, construction; accept the truth. Let it cross your electronic grey matter – you build on a sieve. Your months and years become as anonymous as flickering stars, finally snuffed out as easily as a candle. Yet I’m able to manipulate time, slow it down, get it right, repair. Then I’ll replay. My required dream becomes real. Are you getting this?

  A train announcement had ended and the clockwork queue had run down, each member standing glassy-eyed and furrow-browed. The clerk in the ticket office was tapping the dividing window glass with a coin: ‘…otherwise I’ll get the stationmaster to sort you out.’

  Clement quickly stated his destination and after paying for a ticket he went through the barrier, heading for the platform.

  ‘About time,’ someone said.

  He wandered between the awaiting passengers. A woman stood up from one of the benches. Clement sat on the vacated seat, squeezing in between a man with large sideburns and a schoolboy who fiddled with the clips on his homework bag. As the boy took out an electronic device, Clement became concerned. He stood and walked further along the platform.

  The majority of those waiting were silent, gloved hands, creating breath clouds from their rigid mouths. The start to another week on a cold, unfriendly morning.

  Three teenagers broke the quietness. And as they swaggered along the platform clutching mobile phones they threw aside mocking glances. They nudged at each other while passing Clement, staring at his tights moulded to his skinny calves. Their laughter became high-pitched giggles, more at home in young girls’ throats than their own. To Clement the hilarity came from two starlings skillfully chasing each other through the chill air. After spiralling and diving, the birds flew over the tracks, then under the walkway bridging the platforms. The laughter went with them. The town’s traffic hummed.

  A crane’s boom, lofty from a building site next to the station, began to scrape through the sky. Hanging at the end were steel cables which, from Clement’s distance from them, could have been silk threads; the clank of metal.

  That noise, probably made by a dumper truck, altered in volume, the distance making it quieter, sounding like a product of a metallic muzzle. The mind can deceive itself, I have to be careful. Like spitting of bacon fat heard as rain or thunder as a growling leopard in a cave. Squeal of a car’s brake pads the call of a wood pigeon. Or was it a partridge? Difficult to tell. I’m not good at analyzing birdsong. I almost believe the woods do belong to King Smythe; it holds a magical quality.

  I must call out to Bernadette. ‘Catch up.’

  ‘Remember my legs aren’t as long as yours.’

  King Smythe must have sent an advance party to shine the leaves and spray them a fresh green. He ordered the rain away. No jangling resonances or renegade frequencies within this forest. The sun has to push its way through the canopy of top branches and spots the tracks with silvery puddles of light.

  Between bushes and trees, a tangle of ferns and sticks litter the ground. This track is spongy with layers of decaying leaves mulching into the earth.

  Bernadette has caught up.

  Turning my attention to the hamper. ‘Want a go carrying it?’

  ‘Charming, very chivalrous. Look, I wonder who had the nerve?’ A smallish crater with flints and tubers poking from its sides. Are you really trying to see, doctor? You seem unresponsive sometimes. Within the crater is a gnarled tree, blackened by fire and smoke. Branches are twisted into grotesque shapes, like knobbly arms reaching out with fingers rigid in palsy, as though the tree had writhed in agony when the flames were upon it. I’ll make it writhe again like a blackened exotic dancer.

  This track is beginning an incline. Roots exposed on the hill provide us with natural steps. A stream chattering over there. A dappled birch ahead of us marks the summit of the climb.

  No longer a definite track. We’ll hike on in silence, both of us with reverence to this cathedral of nature. Untidy angles of tree trunks about us. A constant cracking of twigs as we tread, and the whispering leaves. The breeze gentle in this secret, sacred place.

  Tang of earth, with a faint odour of cabbages – from fields to the east, I suspect. I’ve disturbed a gathering of toadstools by accidentally kicking off their caps. I’ll pull a fern from the ground to wave away a cloud of midges.

  A fallen tree in our path with its foliage dried and shrivelled. I’m going to sit upon the mossed trunk to rest. Bernadette is tramping past.

  ‘Where you going so fast? Hang on, wait.’

  I’ll have to adjust the strap of the hamper; when it’s balanced on my back again, I’ll be able to catch up.

  Hear her cal
ling back. ‘No time for resting. Shift yourself, lazy.’

  She is singing. You’re trying to listen, I know. The voice crystalline, though not possessing exact pitch or intonation, taking on a melancholic feel.

  This woman I make love to – the only one I adore and cherish – is lively and inquisitive, as vital as the rain we have left behind. She keeps appearing, spotted with flecks of light then hidden by tree pillars. The further away into the woods she walks the less she appears. I’m captivated: those hips gyrate as she steps over obstacles or bends to avoid low hanging tree limbs, the hem of her salmon pink dress swinging. The dress is resonating in a quite stunning way in comparison to the greens and browns. Could be neon.

  She’s phantom, ethereal, eternal. She has become painted over. I must break from this dreaminess, I have to pursue her. This is her game, for me to fight branches which slap or trip. Hack aside brambles and lakes of nettles, step over logs and horse droppings. She might have become a story or an invention though I’m certain that can’t happen here. It’s simply because she’s chosen a better course through the woods.

  Watching her go, she was the essence of femininity – graceful and precise – while my progress is slow and clumsy.

  ‘Bernadette, where’ve you got to?’ No use asking you, doctor.

  Have to stop. What a noisy banging and crashing I’ve been making. A hush descending with an ominous quality about it. Movements still play high up in the topmost branches.

  ‘Binny – hello…’ No answer. She should answer.