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

by David John Griffin

  I’m energized. I have repaired. A religious revelation could never compare. Cast up onto the beach of sublime lethargy while I’m left simply holding you, both of us silent.

  We belong to each other, the crucial and elemental parts having become inseparable, moulded into a single entity. My treasure, you I worship, be with me forever.

  Already the wax blocks are melting to reveal a key and a lock, one opening the other for the benefit of the rhapsody.

  The true now. I have been flaming – able to steer destiny to avoid any obstacle, any tragedy – yes, here on the bed with my wife stretched out beside me, the summer held in an early evening. I only imagine sitting on a train, going somewhere alone and cold, an emptiness inside. And the repetitious clatter of wheels on the tracks, distracting buzz of voices. How quickly my Bernadette fades. As I open my eyes, I find that they’re already open but somehow had been blinded. And there are those other eyes burrowing into me like jabbing rods.

  ‘Are you listening?’

  Clement focused. The woman before him had her legs crossed and arms severely folded. She had wrapped her cape back over her. Two young men and an older man dressed in a heavy overcoat had turned their attention to him. One of the men was smirking, the other curling his lip, the third appearing worried or serious.

  ‘I said, are you listening to me?’ the woman repeated.

  ‘Pardon?’ Clement was feeling disoriented as though he had been aroused from sleep. ‘Apologies,’ he replied above the train’s rhythm, ‘I wasn’t aware you were talking.’

  ‘Why do you keep on looking at me? Are you a pervert, dressed up like a clown gone wrong? Staring at me in that … way.’ Saliva had caught in her throat and the last word had been spoken unnaturally.

  ‘Come out of your coma, have you?’ snapped one of the young men from the other side of the compartment. He turned to the woman. ‘If you need any help, give me a shout. And as for you,’ he continued, waving a finger at Clement, ‘you definitely need expert help. You’d better get out at the next station or I’ll call a guard. Then you’ll be in a lot of trouble, believe me.’

  ‘No really, don’t worry about it,’ the woman replied, clutching at her cape.

  Clement began to explain to the distressed woman. ‘This fine lady is right. I was reconstructing inside, you see.’ She looked quickly away. ‘If viewpoint is turned inward I can live in all sorts of wonderful rooms. I may have been looking but not seeing anything of your being.’ Clement had been gesticulating with twirls of his arm to emphasise his sentences. The woman seemed not to be listening. She held her attention to the carriage window, her lips pressed firmly together. ‘Excuse me?’ Clement added to attract her attention.

  ‘Listen,’ barked the older man, ‘leave her alone, I’m warning you.’

  Clement began to laugh, cracks appearing in the foundation make-up on his slim face. The situation had become amusing. Before him sat a person who had pretended to be Bernadette, who had somehow stolen her face for a while until he had seen through it for the mask it was. Who had demanded he listen to her; who, when he had attempted to reply in a civil manner, had ignored him. And there over in the corner (which had darkened as the train passed through another cutting,) was a man threatening him for no apparent reason. A man with a ridiculous hat perched upon a squashed melon of a head. And that melon, wrinkled and yellow with plastic features pinned to it – a goatee beard here, bulging eyes there, with a grape of a nose and a mouth expression which defied description.

  12

  Clement had moved to another compartment of the carriage and stood rocking with the movements of it. The constant rhythms of train wheels on the tracks were making his weariness worse. Monotonous hammering set up monotonous couplets. He began to put words to these metres which he found difficult to shift: ‘Where are we going, the land of the Minerva; where are we going, the land of the Ra…’

  No sooner had he managed to exterminate one quatrain, another would be born with the same insistent stubbornness: ‘Shouldn’t do that, it’ll cost you a lot, shouldn’t do that, it’s all that I’ve got…’

  He licked the end of a finger and touched both eyelids with it. A concerted mental effort was needed to stay awake.

  He began to clear his throat but then the owner of a brown coat who leant by the train doors let out a gruff cough.

  No wonder this peculiar man barked – he has the features of a bloodhound; loose skin about his lazy face, dozy eyes sunken in their orbits. Over on the other side, a snuffling badger with a plastered thumb, opening his jaws. And sitting beside him with the clever watch, a lizard, scratching with scaled boney fingers.

  Clement wondered what sort of creations they were, these everyday commuters posing as a menagerie of animals with their skin no doubt made of a clever plastic. Covering an ingenious flexible alloy, able to be transformed at the will of the bodies’ inhabitants; a metamorphosis into any animal they wished to be.

  Insignificant elements caught his attention. A passenger possessed the nose of a hog, overlarge with a bulbous, reddish end and grimy pores covering its length. This fleshy protuberance seemed farcical, jutting out rudely from its unshaven face.

  A youth in one of the carriage corners had a sharp beak of a nose. The lanky bird-youth rummaged in a plastic bag and extracted a sandwich as delicately as if handling fine porcelain. The triangles of bread were moving unhurriedly from lap to mouth as he returned an empty stare.

  A woman leant into the aisle from the next compartment showing her rotund face, bearing a resemblance to a grinning cat.

  But not cats. Out of the way! Get out of my rooms. Don’t, no. Did it experience its own beatific madness? Mustn’t think on. Who’s controlling these room filmics anyway? Look at noses again, at beaks, at muzzles and snouts; count the vibrating stripes, just yellow ones. How dare it present such an ugly performance from its pitiful torment.

  Look out of the autumn-smudged window, that’s the answer; see slabs of concrete and dead trees … the flash of contents in this sealed mindroom again.

  And yet, I must try to face up to these as you insist, doctor. But only a few. I’ll choose a different route; the car ahead should do the same. Purple car between street lamps; the next pool of light will change you to magenta and I’ll be framing the cameo horror with my car headlamps.

  The cat darting from the safety of a garden. Run faster, run – you are hesitating, body flinching but not into motion. Almond eyes reflecting the lights as flame … flash, fast … not fast enough: paw with the weight of the car ahead upon it. Claws splintering, leg bone snapping, wrenching muscle and twisting flesh. Cease this ugly blasphemy. No animal should be allowed to act so absurdly as it spits and leaps in spasms, painting the tarmac with black blood. Why should it grin like a crazy bloodied toy as it rolls in ecstatic frenzy? Watch the contortions, the cat snapping at pain in the mangled leg, trauma jerking its body. Mindless in agony, it’s performing the writhing ballet of the senseless, squirming and flexing like a snake.

  Get out of the car to calm it.

  Whites of its eyes. Hissing from its twitching form. I must get to a vet before it’s too late. Soothe it with comforting words, explain painkillers and splints, antibiotics and recuperation. But how can it understand? To be in torment with something which you have no way of comprehending is a thousand-fold magnified.

  The cat-woman’s sibilance: her words formed tangles of ectoplasmic string which writhed above the passengers. They became entangled in a luggage rack then snagged on a crossword-puzzler’s poised pen before seeping surreptitiously through the seam between the carriage doors.

  Clement was proud of this new skill. A dog-man replied to the cat-woman with a stutter of a laugh, each separate emission plump and gong-like. Whispers, Clement evaluated at once, were umber strips covered in fur; bloodied glass-like shards would be manifestations of a scream, sinuous aromatic honey, the ultimate moans of orgasm.

  He guessed what Dr Leibkov was thinking. Such a doubting man,
unwilling to stretch limits of his professional knowledge with a reticence to explore unfamiliar territory. That individual was trapped as surely as a beetle in a matchbox. If only Clement could somehow show the doctor that four dimensions are ephemeral and as easy to remove as the three dimensions of old wallpaper. Then he could unveil the more valid world hidden beneath. Even point the way for him to capture an essence of abstruse spaces between thoughts.

  His attention was taken again by the bird-youth who had eaten a sandwich. He fiddled with controls of a music player. Tinny notes were heard from the earphones, interrupted by whistling oscillations. A couple sitting opposite the young man were becoming over-generous with their glances. They seemed agitated and uncomfortable and they slowly turned to each other. This duo of slothful movers with their lingering looks could be connected together somehow, Clement thought, maybe by invisible cables.

  A regimental-looking man began to tap the metal ferrule of his umbrella onto the carriage floor. It made a dry knocking, adding to the consistent pulse of the train wheels. The howlings, whistles and drumbeats increased as the owner of the digital device turned up the volume.

  Stop immediately – Clement wanted to warn him – before you scratch the hidden scheme further!

  You’ve already scored cuts, slashed at complex virtual structures. Defiled them with your black box as it sends out magnetic impulses laced with battalions of viciously serrated wheels. A barbaric invention, slashing at the mindrooms.

  But these mechanical companions, trapped as they are, couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  I have talents far superior to any of you. I can sense time as a living dimension, a malleable clay which I’ll soon be able to refashion. I can see the very substance of sounds. I can take my inner being out of this fleshy apparel of mine; I’m able to temporarily escape the confines of physical self.

  There, way beyond the solidified liquid of the window, through those quiet, leafless trees – woodsmoke. A flaring of yellow, crackling of branches eaten by the flames. I am that man dressed in a black overcoat and boots, poking the fire with a bark-stripped stick. I’ll watch the glowing inner sanctum within. I need to step back from the stinging batches of smoke.

  Another element: inhuman screams through the winter-defiled woodland, horrors on its heels, running for sanctuary to my ears. A badger is struggling to free itself, preparing to gnaw flesh away and bite through the bone of its own leg to escape metal teeth embedded there. But it’s useless to struggle. Each convulsive movement produces an excruciating pain. Someone has to help, to free me from this torture. You there, wizened woman, collecting wood for your hearth. Though I’ve turned down my hearing aid to stop illicit sound shapes from desecrating the transparent silk of the wind. A snake of a train is weaving past, up on the embankment. I wave to the imposters on their way to the city.

  I’ll wave back, though this train has already left the veteran housekeeper behind in her ravaged woods.

  Now featureless office buildings and anonymous blocks of flats. Why has the train stopped on this pretend bridge? I’m already late. My legs are aching.

  Car after car, interspersed with vans and thundering lorries, being swallowed up beneath us, all with roaring engines. The growling one, must have a hole in the exhaust box. Sounding like a helicopter.

  Or a motor boat. I spy both here. Whirring helicopters hovering like metal insects. The speedboats pulling waterskiers over by The Neptune Hotel.

  I’ll watch the merry-go-round spin with its twisted poles, each impaling a wild-maned horse, ridden by children sending out peals of laughter to mingle with pipe organ music emanating like copper stick insects. And adults with strained smiles upon their sunburned faces, stiffly posed upon their wooden mounts. Attempting to retain dignity, pretending they’re not enjoying the juvenile delight of their rotating journey to the end of nowhere. I can read, through the cafeteria windows, the ornate lettering around the top of the ride as it spins: Colonel Hiprod’s Thrilling Horses. Here, doctor, I can imagine the merry-go-round sheering from its greasy hub and gently spinning above the sea to the beach, casting a black plate of a shadow over the stunned tourists. A craftily disguised time machine, able to preserve those thrilling minutes, to set them within amber.

  Time can be deceiving and wicked though. A deception, I might add, whose pigeon-hole is next to your trickery, Dr Leibkov. You shamelessly promote an ugly form of salvation. Time promises eternity to the young. If she is mounted upon a horse, then the animal walks leisurely beside you in your infancy. She murmurs oaths and pledges of the most attractive kind. But taken over by the spell you’re not aware she’s shaken the reins. Her horse is trotting. You’re matching the pace to catch any precious jewels she gives. And as you marvel in this supposed immortal place, her piebald mare breaks into a canter. ‘Wait for me,’ is your plea and you start to run. She throws pouches of joy and trinkets of sensation, occasionally spiked metal balls of pain. But we run faster when she lets out showers of experience. The steed is galloping and you find the brute not so high – you’ve grown taller. You have been fooled by this robed siren. She has you in her firm grasp, holding you to the sweating horse’s side. You feel your muscles shrivelling and teeth dropping, bones becoming brittle. Skin drying like parchment, a network of wrinkles like baked mud. And you cry with an imploring shriek, ‘Not so fast!’ with fingers set like eagle’s claws, gripping the mane. You look back. There’s your life given in trinkets, pouches, on plinths, in glass, littering the road. She whips the rippling muscles and digs spurs into the bolting animal. ‘Slow down,’ you are pleading. ‘Give me time to repair and replay.’ But for guilty ones there’s only a shuddering, mournful wail. They are jerked out of this bad dream life and plunged into the unknown landscape beyond one of the ultimate barriers. And the deceiving one has no place in this timeless void. She goes back to lure others away from the repairing.

  See a man walking without vitality. Creeping along with leaden steps, bent over with an invisible load. His fingers look like white roots. He says, ‘Cold, so cold.’ He looms larger than most, wearing many coats. The edges overlap like the rings of a tree stump, forming a multi-toned stratum. He appears to be walking across the surface of an ocean made of coins.

  And there’s another in torment. The woman is holding palms out towards the furling waves. The waves rattle and chink onto pebbles. She’s unable to capture even one coin. Bitter tears blind her to a writhing figure. But he has no time for her outpourings of sorrow. Hear him gnashing hidden teeth as he tumbles above the clanking waters, his laughable member proud from between his thighs. He has no hands or feet. His twisted mouth has been sealed, all bodily orifices grown over with thick plugs of flesh. Agonized eyes screwed tightly shut with his tortuous frustrations.

  A choir of gulls have surrounded another. Their cries have become beautiful voices. The man throws down his notebook and presses palms of his hands onto his ears. He shouts a raucous, idiotic jumble in an attempt to drown the sweet sounds. He refuses to listen to this exquisite accomplishment, running about, slapping the birds, imploring them to stop. Ripping the wings from one, punching another in mid-flight. A crow has added a baritone. It flies in ever decreasing circles until it finally comes to rest on the light fitting hanging on chains from the ceiling.

  Harold is holding a white cup to his lips. I’ll let you hide still, doctor.

  ‘Extraordinary. Then what happened?’

  ‘Freddie suggests we get a ladder from the printshop. But then the frightened bird defecates again and the product showers onto the accounts office carpet like a white distemper. Sarah is coming through the other doorway, holding a bucket. I guess her idea is to place it on the floor in direct line with the tail feathers. Freddie is poking that shivering crow with the brush end of a broom. It flies off again with a cawing, dislodging dust from its illuminated perch. We’re at a loss what to do, bumping into each other or the desks, knocking over baskets.

  ‘We’re rendered immobile by the arrival of Stones.
The only sounds are from the beating wings of the trapped creature.

  ‘There are five birds, now ten. Twenty or thirty, maybe more; like black bats, like haunted umbrellas swooping and floating. I could have them attack Stones if I want.

  ‘He stares at the defiled carpet, to the dust and muck spattered over papers and keyboards.

  ‘Finch tells him about the proofreader’s window left open over the weekend. I’m in for it.

  ‘Here I am, back in his office, Stones reprimanding: ‘You’ve failed me, Penshart Press and yourself,’ banging a palm on the desk, ramping his anger. He insinuates my salary review next month won’t happen.’

  ‘It does seem he over-reacted. What did you say then?’

  What I could have said. Cover your ears, Harold; I don’t want you thinking less of me.

  You’re an overblown, hollow bag, Stones, squandering my talents, paying me a pittance. You destroy mindrooms, damage the barriers. I want to tell you where you can stuff your pathetic job—’

  ‘Have you told Bernadette?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, to be honest.’

  Harold always appears worried in this mindroom. He’s letting his sight fall into the cup of coffee before him then over to me, to gauge my expression. ‘Donald, if you need financial help, just say. Bernadette is used to a certain standard of living. There’s not much worse than money troubles. I should know. Before I was married…’