A Collection of Stories

M. McKinley Profile Summary.

Full name: Michaela McKinley.

Immediate Family: Mother, alive (see Sarah’s profile). Father, deceased. Husband, Colin. Daughter, Caleigh, in Colin’s care.

Admitted: January 2015, after an attempt on her colleague’s life.

Sentence: Mentally unstable. Unfit for society.

The following notes were taken by Dr Rebecca Shawn while she visited McKinley. They have not been edited nor paraphrased, but have been reviewed by Dr Hank Crawford and expanded upon by him based on when McKinley was in his care.

Rebecca’s expression was unchanging as she reviewed her notes that had been saved to the clinic’s files. Her job was simple, to remove any evidence in her notes that might lead back to the Coven. Honestly, the hardest part of her whole task was to hack into the clinic’s database, and that took her merely 5 minutes to crack.

Mar. 13. 2015.

McKinley often refers to voices in her head. She says that they do not speak with her, only at her. I suspect there are multiple voices although she claims there is only one. I will have to spend more time with her before I can clarify my hypothesis.

The singular voice she claims to hear is a woman.

It is not someone she knows. The voice is hostile. Perhaps dangerous. Although, if this voice does not control McKinley, merely bothers her, then it is not something the staff here need to be worried about. I don’t know what else causes McKinley to have unstable fits, but I assume I’ll know more with each visit.

McKinley is wary of me. She acts like a child in the sense that she refuses to speak with or even look at a stranger. She does not trust me enough yet to tell me more. I am going to attempt to avoid the topic of the voices she hears until she’s willing to open up.

Until then, I have made small talk with her. McKinley only responds to me the third or fourth time I’ve asked her a question. I’ll avoid complicated questions for now.

There weren’t multiple voices, that was Rebecca’s first lie. It was important to make the clinic doubt McKinley’s ability to distinguish between one and many. Imagine if the clinic were to discover that the single voice speaking to McKinley had a name, and that name corresponded with a person, and that person had died long before McKinley was born. Then imagine if the staff were to begin questioning her based on the person’s life, and if McKinley could answer correctly, then what?

Why, if that didn’t provide enough evidence to prove that the supernatural exists, then what would it take? Not that evidence hadn’t appeared in mankind’s history before, it was just that witches had always been there to clean it up. That’s exactly what Rebecca’s real job was, to convince the world that McKinley was a mad woman who heard voices and that she wasn't possessed by a dead witch.

Mar. 20. 2015.

Medication doesn’t work.

Images come to McKinley in her sleep. Images of blood. A knife. A man. The man always looks the same. He has his hair neatly combed to the right and his eyes cut out. She’s willing to describe the man to me as I think she wishes for my help.

The woman. . . the voice tells her that the man murdered her love. Her loved ones, perhaps? This may be why McKinley hurt her loved ones before killing her boss. Her boss looked similar to the man in her dreams. The man the voice kept telling her to kill.

She says getting rid of the man didn’t send the voices away. It merely made them worse. Now they wish for her to target another man, one who is in this hospital.

This is why I deem McKinley not safe to be around others. It is not healthy for her to be on her own, but perhaps it is the best for her and the others around her.

It’s bizarre. She looks like she wants to tell me more but she keeps glancing to my right before falling silent. Is she hallucinating as well? Perhaps the medication she’s been receiving has only made her condition worse.

I think all medication and drugs should be cut off for now. She needs human interaction, other than the ones that occur within her own mind, and she needs to be monitored regularly to see if she sees or hears more things that don’t truly exist outside of her perception.

Rebecca scowled at this log. Did it belong to Dr Crawford?

Well, she simply could not allow him to mess with her work.

Rebecca wrote a new paragraph underneath the old one. She wrote, “McKinley describes her dreams to me. There’s blood, and she’s often holding a knife in her hand. She said that there’s a man in the hospital that looks just like the man in her dream. The man that she murders every night in her sleep. McKinley should not be left alone, but she also must remain away from other patients. I believe that she should be accompanied by staff at all times, and by other patients as little as possible. There should also be a wall, a door, or some form of protection between McKinley and the staff.”

She erased the original paragraph, only leaving the part about cutting off medication and drugs. With a satisfied smirk, Rebecca continued skimming through the rest of the logs.

Mar. 30. 2015.

McKinley refused to see me (Dr Shawn) for our last appointment. The voices told her not to. This is what I was afraid of, McKinley listening and interacting with her hallucinations.

This morning I got an emergency call saying that she had requested my presence.

I asked what changed. She said she missed me.

No one sits close enough to her so that she can hear them. Only me, she said.

I asked if she would try an experiment with me.

She started shouting and I had to leave.

Apr. 9. 2015.

Once again, McKinley requested to see me. She greeted me as though we were old friends. I asked her why she yelled at me last time. She said it wasn’t her, but the woman inside her.

I asked her if she was interested in trying something new.

Is it a drug? She asked.

I told her it was not.

An experiment? She asked, angry like the last time.

I told her it was something she hadn’t tried before. It was kind of like a game.

She seemed friendlier towards the term ‘game’.

I had her remain seated while I stood on the far side of the room. I asked her if she could hear me. She didn’t respond. I took a step forward. I asked her how about now? She still said nothing.

Another step.

Now?

Nothing.

Another step.

Can you hear me?

What? was her answer.

Another step.

Can you hear me?

Speak louder. You’re too quiet.

Another step.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, barely. You’re just as loud as her.

Another step. I was a little more than a meter away from her.

Can you hear me now?

She nodded and smiled. Her lips twitched as though it had been a while since they had spread.

She said she could hear me clearly.

Rebecca scanned this entry more closely. She decided to add, “McKinley’s condition could be getting worse. Perhaps it’s spread to her perception of what she sees? If that’s the case, then it’s plausible that she sees many people in the room other than me and she can only ‘hear’ me once I’m closer than the ‘other people in the room’. It’s a logical human impulse, wanting to be closer to the person you’re speaking with. I no longer doubt that she thinks the voices and her hallucinations are real. This does not conclude whether she can distinguish between reality and her hallucinations, however, merely that they get in her way. More tests are required.”

Apr. 16. 2015.

Now that she could hear me, it was much easier to ask questions.

She was still hesitant to answer some, but with repetition and patience, I could get an answer. It seemed that, as long as I was nearer than where she thought the other voices were coming from, I could make her focus on me instead.

It was time for the hard question. I asked her why she attacked her colleague at work, the place she used to go to before she was locked away in here.

She looked away from me. It wasn’t defiance. It was guilt.

I tried a different question. I asked her why she thought it was necessary to attack her colleague. She told me that the people in her head hated a man. She then told me the voices hated all men who look like her colleague. The man she wishes to harm within the clinic also fits the profile of the man she hurt at work.

Apr. 23. 2015.

She’s open to tell me more about the voice. It’s only one. A woman. The woman has a name. Ann.

McKinley believes the woman is a trapped spirit that has come to her for help.

Revenge is the word McKinley used.

I said that’s a very aggressive term.

McKinley says no. It’s exactly the word she means.

According to McKinley, Ann has been cursed by the man’s wife.

The man?

The man that Ann killed. Justice.

Justice? That’s another strong word, I said.

It’s a good word. It means the man got what he deserved.

But, I said, the wife lost her happiness. Do you think that’s what she deserved?

Ann says no.

Rebecca scowled and once again deleted the entire log. She quickly fixed the entry to talk about many voices, each with varying names. Ann was one, Kyle another, then Tyler, and so on. Some of them were nice and others were quite rude. Some days all the voices except for two vanished. “Ann was one that remained, and Mary was the other. The two were criminals, is what they told McKinley, and they wanted McKinley to join their crew. McKinley said it sounded like fun, and all she had to do to get them to let her join was kill the man. They sent her instructions in her dreams.”

Apr. 30. 2015.

I believe McKinley allows Ann’s personality to override her own. Many answers that McKinley gives me are in the form, Ann says this. . . Ann says that.

But what I want to know, is what does McKinley think?

Do you truly believe that Ann is a spirit asking you for help?

That’s what Ann says.

But what do you say?

I dunno.

Rebecca replaced the log with, “It is getting harder for McKinley to tell herself apart from the voices she hears. One day she is obsessed with exercise and getting fit, responding to questions with ‘Tyler says this and Tyler says that. . .’ A whole other day she’ll be quiet, suspicious of me and the other members of the staff, and she’ll say ‘Ann says this. . . and Ann says that. . .’ Those days I deem her unsafe for visitation. Ann is a dangerous personality that resides within McKinley. It is manipulating and prompts Ann to lie. It is difficult to trust which words are McKinley’s and which belong to another personality she has created.’

June 21. 2015.

I don’t understand.

I thought we had a breakthrough last week, but her condition has only worsened.

She sent another patient to the emergency room last night. Somehow, she forced the door to her room open and tracked down another patient. The official reports say she stole a knife from the kitchen and broke into the patient’s room. The man could have died if not for the janitor who walked in on her committing the act. He contacted security immediately.

(Please note, the Doctor’s words here are not part of McKinley’s official therapy sessions. It is merely a statement, nothing more. Official records of what happened are in the hands of the police and copies are within McKinley’s files. No electronic records are permitted to be in the possession of Dr Rebecca Shawn, Dr Hank Crawford, or any other type of facility they are associated with.)

I am no longer allowed to be in the same room as McKinley. Glass separates us. This is for my safety, I am aware, but it has set me back weeks with this patient.

She says she cannot fully see me, as such, she is uncomfortable with fully trusting me. She also claims that my voice is muffled. Undoubtedly this is due to me being further away, as I’ve mentioned before, she perceives the voice in her head to be about two meters away. Anyone farther than that distance will appear quieter than the voices.

July 3. 2015.

Any attempts to speak with McKinley had so far failed. I receive replies from her other personalities, such as ‘Alex says this’ or ‘Hannah says this’, but I cannot get a reply from McKinley herself. She is a danger to others but has so far shown me no signs that she is a danger to herself. Still, I would not recommend lifting her ban on interacting with staff or other patients anytime soon.

I am going to start decreasing my sessions with her to once every two months. Dr Crawford may call me in if there is an emergency, and otherwise he may continue to monitor the patient to see if there are any changes.

Rebecca saved each file and replaced the date on her new files to the original ones. Perks of working for a wealthy Coven: they have many resources.

She carefully backed her way out of the facility’s files, making certain to leave no trace of her altering any files. Then Rebecca opened her email. The message that had started this whole file alteration sat at the top of her inbox, nicely titled, “DO YOUR DAMN WORK.”

Rebecca sighed and "hit reply to sender". She typed, “All files have been fixed, Sydney. You needn’t worry about McKinley anymore.”

Only a minute later came the reply, “Excellent. And what about this ‘incident’ you reported?”

“Taken care of. McKinley’s cell has been warded against negative spirits. It’s unlikely that Ann’s spirit will ever possess her like that again.”

“Good,” Sydney responded. “You will continue to monitor her for another six months to a year. I want none of our secrets divulged, and not another incident. Are we clear?”

Rebecca felt her heart clench. If she failed, Sydney was not forgiving. “Yes.”