Infinite Rooms: a gripping psychological thriller that follows one man's descent into madness (3 page)

‘As you know,’ the landlady began again but then interrupted herself by grabbing one of the chocolate bars. She twirled the wrapper from it. The bar was savaged, her pebble eyes finding animation as she ripped a chunk from its hard brown end. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask, but its Arthur, you see.’ She paused to swallow the mouthful of confectionery. ‘He will keep on. It’s about your rent again. I’ve told him, give him … give her a chance. I said you might be two months overdue and we’re no charity, but she needs time—’ another enthusiastic bite of the chocolate bar, ‘—would he listen?’ She sucked her top denture with a slurp, exposing the livery underside of her tongue. ‘Not my Arthur.’

Clement had missed the words spoken. He had been standing at the edge of the cliff, peering down to the girl breaking open oysters and collecting pearls. And there, far
away, a string of water intersected the horizon.

Then the water fountain was coming from a closer patch of sea. The gulls, with their bird intuition, had collected ranks and were flying in formation, screeching, to the cliff edge. This new audience watched the young woman beachcombing; saw a giant curve of black break the sea’s surface; were silenced as another jet leaped up from it like a geyser.

The girl paused in her task. She said, ‘I’ve the distinct impression, deary, you’re not listening to me.’

Clement, who had been standing in front of Mrs Froby with his fingers linked behind his back, sat on the arm of the duplicate chair and replied, ‘I have, every syllable. Beginning a new employment opportunity this morning. The agency is benign. Seems real.’

Mrs Froby was too busy with a stick of chocolate-covered nougat to reply. Clement waited, quietly and respectfully, despite becoming impatient to leave.

Whenever he spoke with the landlady he held an odd mixture of admiration and repulsion. He admired her determination, the clinging to her ideals, her obsession to duplicate household items. This showed strength of character. Surely she was one of the few. Made of bone and flesh even. Yet she would never hold full membership for she was obviously mentally disturbed.

Arthur is gone. Missed his dream return, no doubt trapped in a strict regime of boiling lakes and scarlet caverns. He’s
abandoned you, left you with your unreal apartments, rat-infested courtyard. Arthur is finally deceased, Mrs Froby; buried, decomposed, dissolved…

Clement was bellowing his thoughts so loudly in his mind that when the landlady fixed him with a stare, he wondered whether she had heard.

‘New employment,’ she was saying, ‘what a wonderful pair of words. But you must understand, Arthur tells me you’ve said them before. Well, not wanting to take sides—’ She let her sentence be unfinished with a preference to finishing the nougat.

Slices of light sat in between slats of the venetian blinds covering the window. Some of these slices were projected over the patterned wall and were fanned over the duplicated ornaments on the mantlepiece. More light runs sat over the landlady’s lap, striping her ample bosom, thick lips and double chin. And with each movement of her highlighted jaw there was a double clock chime to accompany it.

‘Half past seven,’ said Clement. ‘I’m going to be late. Got to go.’ He was trotting to the door, continuing, ‘Tonight Mrs Froby, it’ll be sorted. Successful explanations to the doctor, I can assure you.’

Mrs Froby called after him as he rushed through the doorway to the front entrance. ‘It will never do, Arthur will say. Our daughter wouldn’t act irresponsibly, if we had one. Arthur will be very angry. Suitcases in the hall tonight, deary.
Arthur will pack them.’

Donald Clement was in the street. He needed an advance on his salary to solve the immediate problem. Perhaps he would see the agency the coming evening. He was certain they weren’t a false dream. Then surely the landlady would pacify her imaginary husband.

Still fresh in the town, not yet polluted by car exhausts. Another half an hour before the main commuter onslaught, before fumes linked traffic-jammed cars bumper to bonnet like elephants at an old circus holding trunks to tails.

The concave mass was growing larger. The girl sang, unaware of danger, until a shadow fell and turned the beach to carbon. The whale rose from the sea and advanced upon her: it had grown four legs. Each huge foot crushed the sand, impacting the grains to hard slabs. An urgent trilling emitted from its blowhole. Terrified, the girl flung pearls and shells at the beast. Where the fin should have been was an extended tail. This splashed the water to high waves and ploughed the sand into banks and furrows. Rigid with fright, she gazed fearfully up to its gaping, cavernous mouth.

3

C
lement 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 penetrate. 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?’