Infinite Rooms: a gripping psychological thriller that follows one man's descent into madness (19 page)

38

P
assing in front of me, pressed to Aaron, she is there – and if only I had another five seconds before they were swamped by other couples, I might have been certain she was kissing his neck.

No Lucy, do release me. You’re as many-limbed as an octopus. I have to speak to her. There’s an urgency. Not too long before this last wall’s ready. I still might be able to alter the outcome.

See the trail of seaweed where they’ve been. And when I come upon them I understand why. Aaron has a decaying stench about him with barnacles covering his hands and face. The texture of any skin not covered has desiccated and become striated like bark. The eyes have gone, leaving bleak holes as impenetrably black as moonless night. He speaks and from between those puce, swollen lips gushes spurts of tiny fishes. ‘Agreed then. I’ll put you up for the night.’ My wife is giggling rudely.

I’m not sure what he means or really what’s happening.
Surely this foul man should be dead. I can see the stump of the narwhal bone covered in slime, protruding from his chest.

‘Bernadette, let’s go. I’ve had enough. I’m desperate for sleep but not yet. The last wall isn’t quite finished. Anyhow it’s time we went home, time we started from square one.’

Lucy remarking: ‘Time you were tucked up with your hot water bottle.’

‘Aaron is offering to put us up. He’s got a spare bed. No need to be unreasonable, Donald. You’ve had a few drinks. And it’s unfair to ask Aaron to drive us home. He only lives a few roads away.’

This is a conspiracy made behind my back. ‘I want to sleep in my own bed.’

Bernadette’s soul thief smirk. ‘Fair enough. See you tomorrow.’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘A joke, Donald. Just look at yourself. As usual you’re being perfectly unreasonable. There’s no alternative. It’s not friendly to refuse an invitation.’

‘You’ve both worked this out. No alternative you say. Haven’t you heard of taxis? And surely, Aaron, you can’t be upset just because we want to get home.’

His laugh is really ugly. A gurgling from the back of his throat. His breath is fetid. Making me want to retch. I’ve become as weak as a kitten. How clever they’ve become. The tables have turned again as swiftly as in a chess tournament. It’s quite knocked me off balance. I’m unable to control
destiny. My power must have left me with the release of the bone from the narwhal. Confusion muddling my reasoning; a measured panic has me again. My heartbeats are tripping over. I don’t know where I am. Is this the bar of The Neptune Hotel? It should be, I was here a few minutes ago. But it’s changed. There’s only the four of us. The bar staff have vanished. Something very peculiar is happening; it’s unreal. Without my noticing, the maritime items have been taken from the ceiling and it’s empty, except for that large circular lamp stuck there. More peculiar are the walls. Panelling and the pictures have gone and the plaster removed. My three companions don’t seem worried by this. Perhaps I should calm down. There’s a vague memory for I’ve a dusted-white hammer and a chisel in my hands. But why would I want to take plaster from the walls of The Neptune Hotel? Illogical. It should not be.

On with the show: these tools must go.

The instant they were thrown to the floor: the walls are better covered in wallpaper, and the settee and the carpet are an improvement on the cold marble tables and wrought iron chairs. The double doors have been covered with patterned curtains. My wife is filling my glass again with red wine. I’m painfully dry mouthed, doctor. I can barely keep away sleep. The glass must go back to a coffee table before the liquid is spilt. This task is more than I’m capable of. Thankfully I can feel it taken from my burning hand.

A moment of true silence.

Every ounce of me will be still until the tranquillity is broken.

‘Time we were off to bed.’ Have I dribbled this? If given a choice I would have remained silent.

‘You know what that means don’t you?’ A crude laugh.

My breathing is sounding shallow. This terrible veil between me and all else. A unique experience, this final debilitation.

I’m still yearning for you, Bernadette. I need to hold you close, let your perfume overpower the filth, have your bewitching form become a blockade against the ugliness and dirtiness I feel. I know you’re there, though I’ve no means of contact. I’m aware of being crushed.

Definitely someone else’s voice. At least, it’s coming from outside.

‘Drunken slob, look at him. Hope he doesn’t spew on your settee. Do you think we put too much powder in his drink? Give me a hand will you, Aaron? Get him upstairs out of the way. You’re going as well aren’t you, Lucy.’

I sense these last words are a demanding statement more than a question although I’ll expect a reply.

Spin, spin, spin…

There’s a click, a suspiration, then a rustling, then a chink and a rattle, then another voice speaking. The words are undefined yet can still be understood when I’m pulled up from the settee, my head lolling uselessly. I’m not sure how many times these same words are spoken as an answer. Already I’ve listened to them innumerable times. So full of intent do these
three words possess, they’re able to replicate and multiply; so filled with insinuation and potential they can feed me a spoonful of energy for my eyelids to open as I’m helped with rough, uncaring hands upstairs; a banister rail spinning one way with Lucy holding on tight, her fists white as she spins the other way, uttering her triplet of words just once more.

‘I suppose so.’

39

A
s the final piece of plaster was cleaved from the base of the fourth wall, a distant police siren warbled into the night. Then, but for the monotonous ticking of the clock and its occasional whirring as if taking a breath, it could have been as though everyone but Clement had ceased to exist. A fine suspension of dust hung in a ghostly fashion within a glow produced from the foyer lamps, this light diluted and modified by the sheets of newspaper taped across the pane of the reception office. A pencil beam of brightness – as relatively bright as a laser – came from a horizontal slit which had escaped from being covered. For an instant, Clement believed he hadn’t left the interior of his wardrobe and that if he were to push firmly onto the top of the string of light, a door would swing outward and once more would he fall – this time defying gravity and falling upwards – out onto his rug. But of course, he told himself firmly, this would be preposterous. Wherever I am, it’s certainly not in my wardrobe cocoon.

He lay still, exhausted and dazed on piles of plaster, as limp
as any dead man. Dust plugged his nostrils and coated his parched throat, and he wheezed with every irregular breath. The wig had turned white. His vivacious makeup was smeared and had become pastel shades. Blood had dried brown and streaked his knuckles.

As the timer in the cupboard switched the lights off in the foyer, the yellow-painted door appeared phosphorescent in the twilight of the reception office. It stood starkly against the rough, ruby wine-coloured bricks. Clement’s sight rested upon the door and immediately it appeared to take a step back – even lean away – intimating it would never open again.

40

G
oing blind I’m almost certain. There’s a leaden dusk within this strange room. But how much of the obscurity is due to negative lighting or my eyeballs boiling I really don’t know. Other senses are deserting though I can’t blame them as I’ve renounced the outside world of pretence. It’s as though all has been cloaked, washed with black. No longer can I smell or taste. Mouth and nose must surely be stuffed with wadding. Help, I can’t breathe properly. Wheezing like an old buffalo. Unable to hear well. Hands are useless. Is it you who’s pushed needles under the skin and nails, Dr Leibkov? I’m losing control. If only the padding would come out – here, with my fingers down my throat – I’m gagging but all that’s ejected is bursts of noxious gas. I can’t sense and it’s a handicap as I fight against an insubstantial enemy, as though locked in massive combat, grappling a thick medium, heaving, sweating.

Who is this enemy? If it has a grip on me then it also has hold over somebody else. There’s weeping.

The outside has finally become one with my inside. No
visible or definable areas to say where one ends and the other begins.

Time to turn, and turn, and turn again.

I have absorbed everything.

Animal and vegetable life are mine sheltered within; this domain I’ve become teems with trillions of insects; microbes and viruses have found their haven here, and spaces between filled with every atom stocked with quarks and larks and farks and all else.

To encompass so much I must have taken in the planet and its orbit. It can’t be long before I harbour the known universe of galaxies until I am one.

After that I’ll have to wrap myself in cotton wool. I need to be protected with glass fibre or metals, be tough, impenetrable, opaque. Cocooned by red thoughts, become as isolated and untouched as a deserted island in a vast ocean.

Then I wouldn’t have to listen – I recognize the sounds of a woman’s tormented voice.

Doctor, doctor, this is all of your doing. You are banished. I’ll never see or hear of your complicated falsehoods again.

Life is but a dream.

There are gasps of pain interspersed with racking whines. What’s happening? I must stop this torture.

Again I’m disoriented. Struggling to release myself from sheets which have bound me within a sarcophagus of a bed.

Not enough light to see. I’ve kicked a wall — aah, the pain jolting up my leg. As I cried out though, my utterance drowned
by agonizing sobs coming from somewhere in this house. A noise of something tipped over.

I have to stop this. Difficult to locate the door handle. A long groan emitted, low in pitch.

The door’s open and I’m on a landing.

What manner of cruel instruments are being used on this woman? The tormentor shouting in guttural barks and her voice raised higher in coughing bursts. My shadow, made by an electric lamp from down there, has decided to trail to my side while I pad down these stairs. I wish I knew where I was. Can’t be my house because my staircase has no carpet.

The walls are of brick only, there’s no plaster on them. I’m going to float downwards. My legs have no feeling while I curl up in this manner. I’ve become as a migrating chrysalis. I must await renewal which surely will be mine once I’m ready. It’s growth, change, maturation to fruition until decay begins. For then debris of death incorporates the components of a new life to develop from.

I must admit suffering to reach my goal of rebirth.

First though, the matter in hand. I have to solve one last puzzle of the dream, the riddle of the sensibilities, before I can let go to my inevitable destiny. The woman’s cries of agony. I’ve no more idea of her identity than a meaning of life until, in wrought pulses, she’s panting, ‘Yes…’

No, it has come to me, this is my wife crying out; she’s crying, crying out — and I hurry down the stairs, like an encumbered wraith, like I was not really there, like my bound
body existed somewhere else.

And I float on the ceiling and stare down.

And what is and what should never be: the narwhal bone has hit me full between the eyebrows to split open my head. And with a ripping, my skull has parted into two, as wide as those woman’s legs straddled over the man on his back, belonging to yet another girl who’s stolen my wife’s face. And who is this laying beneath her, panting and grumbling obscenities, the lower torso pumping up and down in that manner, stinking of slippery seaweed and covered with barnacles, though I suspect it could be Dr. Leibkov.

And in their energetic motion they’re both vocalizing filth in ambition of climactic moment, unaware of my presence in some form or other.

And I must quickly become blind again as my soul is torn apart and bleeding, cover writhing nakedness with barricades and barriers, build a fortress over them.

And this beginning is the end, the end to be the beginning. Jagged gothic horizon.

Capturing visions of future, I know how I’ll be reborn: in a form as venerated as any king might deserve who rules his land, who’s majesty is in command; to be an honourable and graceful existence blessed with serenity and balance, and oneness of twoness, and perfect infinity and stillness.

Not a chrysalis — I’m a seed. Return to nought of the web of time.

I’m becoming a tree, newly risen. It makes sense if world is
within. It’s a turning inside out again. Bury roots into lush earth. And here I’ll stay, stable and unchanging, never moving or being moved – no visions of angels – unsullied by emotion or event. Able to do nothing except exist so that the passage of time will pass unchallenged and without interaction. And if one human sensibility is allowed, it should be patience in silence, in preparation for the other side of my soul; to wait for my real, beautiful Bernadette who’ll come to me with the happiest of laughs and pure love in her heart, and who will gladly throw her arms about me to set me free.

D
AVID
J
OHN
G
RIFFIN
is a writer, graphic designer and app designer, and lives in a small town by the Thames in Kent, UK with his wife Susan and two dogs called Bullseye and Jimbo. He is currently working on the first draft of a third novel as well as writing short stories for a forthcoming collection.

His first novel, The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb, was published by Urbane in November 2015. Urbane will also publish David’s magical realism/paranormal novella, Two Dogs At The One Dog Inn, in the spring of 2017. One of his short stories was shortlisted for The HG Wells Short Story competition 2012 and published in an anthology.

You can find out more about David at
www.davidjohngriffin.com