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

finger onto a brass ship’s clock,shining but deceased. A shake of the head.
    I’ll take a step away from the boat wheel to survey the whole wall. On one of the shelves, a stuffed halibut in the safety of its case. Below, in another glass case, is presented the long twisted horn from a narwhal. A grubby stuffed fox – which might once have been a taxidermist’s masterpiece – glares as it sinks on its patchy haunches by the coat stand. The rest of the wall is covered with yellowing engravings, paintings and sepia photographs, and a fine layer of dust.
    I shall be your perception again, my psychiatric shaman. I’ll put my nose close to one of the engravings. There’s the studious workmanship of lines. Step back a little and the picture becomes alive with tonal variations though produced only with black ink on white parchment.
    Thrashing spikes of the sea pushing and dragging at a lifeboat. The helmsman clutching a rope to the rudder, a petrified girl huddling in the comfort of another. Roaring waves, shrieks of wind, sobs of a women quivering amidst twelve others. An oilskinned sailor struggling with the oars, trying to gain purchase with the blades in the violent waters, the side of the doomed ship looming beside them. A mother still on the ship’s deck, her child wrenched from her. Others fight like wounded animals, scratching and biting, tearing at each other’s clothing, the struggle for survival, primitive impulses driving them. Creaking of the sails, splintering snap as the bowsprit is broken, a despondent song from the rigging, impotent cries of those left behind to die. One strugglingvainly with the ship’s wheel, another holding his comrade upright, yet another clinging to the boom which had lowered the lifeboat, reaching out imploringly, his life about to be taken by those mountains of water, the mindlessly animated vastness of ocean…
    ‘No, not that one. Next to it.’
    A small photo, showing portside of a fishing smack snuggled to the side of a jetty, the sea behind placid and sunlit. A younger version of the spitting man in the corner sits mending nets. He’s surrounded by lobster pots and yards of mesh. Smoke from the briar clamped between his teeth.
    I must call over to Bernadette. ‘Come and have a look.’ She’s pretending not to hear as she reaches for her drink.
    The fisherman made an uneasy truce with the sea to reap a harvest of fish and lobsters. He deserves his prominence and distinction: a crown of amethyst shells, sea flowers and coral armour. He will become semi-transparent – like a jellyfish – to blend with his mighty ocean and all it contains.
    Under that beam spanning the bar, holding lanterns and a bell, the impressive figurehead stands painted in its bold colours. The heavy chunks of timber glued and carved into a winged messenger, its shoulders hunched forward: it’s the fisherman’s sea-soaked shoulders. Across the brown ceiling, covered with shrivelled starfish and compasses, there are paddles and clumps of rope; glance back over to the engraving – there he is again as the captain of the doomed vessel, superior resignation upon him, standing as still as a boulderwhile others are madness about.
    And there you were in the corner by the ornate fireplace hung with brass, gone to your Atlantis to be with your willing sirens and mermaids, until tomorrow morning when you’ll return for your pint of brown ale.
    ‘You here again? Twice in one day?’
    A group of tourists are arranged in the wise fisherman’s province. They sway drunkenly from side to side singing a bawdy ballad, the throb of a train’s wheels acting as metronome.
    ‘My wife went off to do shopping and a wander round the antiques.’ An explosion of laughter from another quarter. ‘Can’t be bothered with that stuff.’
    ‘Three, four, five pounds; thanks.’ The hand receiving the change retracts into the forest of customers lining the bar.
    ‘What’s the time? Quarter to seven; I’ll down another