Out of Character (OOC):
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Story: The Asylum
Chapter 3 – Scene 6 "The Vacant Stare"
Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
North Dakota State Hospital
Patient Case Study #5 The Quiet Man
The following is an excerpt is from an active play-by-post Story Plot starring Chimera (Hannah Nyland), Jack Bismuth (Alex Van Belkum), & Jerad Sayler as the Storyteller. The Story is called The Asylum and involves the supernatural badness of the Jamestown State Hospital in Jamestown, North Dakota. This patient was a Guardian of the Veil orchestrated transfer from the Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts provided by Zero-Zero at the behest of Dr. Leta Hush of the Blackwing Institute. Chimera's clout and actions at the NDSH have been noticed by her fellow Famulus and many Guardians also rely on her spirit cultivating experience for use as spies. She has effectively taken over Jamestown spiritually with the pacts of her spirit courts and recently managed to correct a major piece of God-Machine Infrastructure that was responsible for the majority of the Resonance issues.
Worcester State Hospital Patient File
Patient: Heron, John W
Attending Physician: Dr. Tucker R. Jenkins
Case Number: WSH-1354
Description and History
John Heron. 48 years old. Six foot even, 164 pounds. Mild asthma, wears glasses to correct short-sightedness. No other health problems. Mr. Heron was admitted to the hospital on March 11th this year, after having been released by the court on charges of Vehicular Manslaughter. The accident claimed the life of his wife and eight-year-old son. The patient suffered concussion and several broken ribs; the airbag saved his life, it seems. Mrs. Heron and her son didn't survive the accident.
The patient claims that he had recognized an individual who had been pursuing him for over a year, and attempted to run the man down. The only thing Heron hit was a concrete wall, head-on. According to the patient, the individual, who may or may not be called James Carver, has been a constant presence in Heron’s life since their first meeting, when the patient believes that he killed Carver. The patient is manifestly not a violent man, although he is, I think, an angry one.
The patient is suffering from clinical and severe depression (and I suspect, has done for some years, judging by statements made in interviews). He has himself wondered himself whether or not the figure, this “James Carver,” who has been causing him so much trouble is actually a delusion. I don’t know yet if this self-reflection is an encouraging sign or not.
Treatment and Results
Mr. Heron’s first few interviews have been rambling, and hugely detailed. He’s still grieving for his wife and child, and the guilt he feels seems to affect most everything he does. It seems that on February 14th two years ago, the patient had agreed to meet his wife, Madeline, at the home of Simon May, a friend. He’d had a bad day. In his own words: “I could have died at my desk and no one would have noticed.”
He decided to walk, since his office was less than a dozen blocks from the office, and the weather was clement. He said that he needed to think. When asked if he could remember what he was thinking about, the patient said that he had no idea.
The patient was passing the Holy Trinity Episcopalian Church, which he attends, or at any rate used to attend, when, he heard somebody say something. Apparently, without even thinking, the patient acknowledged the person. A man had passed Mr. Heron on his right, which was the edge of the sidewalk nearest to the road. The man stopped and turned around. The patient describes him as being at some age between 22 and 25, about the same height as himself, fairly slim and dressed in a fashion the patient describes as “preppy.”
The patient suddenly conceived the idea that this individual was dangerous, and tried to apologize and walk on. The man barred his way and tried to start a fight. The patient describes himself as a physical coward.
Dr. Tucker Jenkins, tapes, Case 1354, Heron, John W; March 19th, transcription (Extract):
JWH: The man asked me what I’d said, a second time. So I said, nothing.
JWH: I’d just put myself in a weak spot. He knew that. He came up close and whipped out his left hand. And I grabbed his wrist, with both hands. Like this. Which was a bad thing to do.
JWH: Then he said. “I’m drunk.” Which was unnecessary. I could smell his breath. He said, he wanted cash for a cab. He asked how much money I had. Still holding tight on to my neck.TRJ: Then what?
JWH: I said I didn’t have anything, and my voice was all high-pitched and I was obviously lying, so he slapped me hard and knocked my glasses off. He let me go, and I fell over.
JWH: And he’s standing over me, and saying get up, get up, and I can’t get up and then something in me snaps and I get on my knees and then I don’t get up, I barge into his shins with my shoulders and he stumbles, and I grab his ankle and pull and over he goes and then I don’t know how, but I’m on top of him, beating his face in. Over and over again. Just punching and punching and punching and screaming, bastard, you bastard at the top of my lungs. And then I noticed he wasn’t moving, so I got up and I kicked him again and again, five or six times until he just went kind of crack and coughed up blood, once, and then just went limp.
TRJ: Wasn’t there anyone around?
JWH: Not a soul.
TRJ: Didn’t that strike you as odd?
JWH: I was beating someone to death.
TRJ: Have you ever done anything like that before?
JWH: No. Why would you ask that? No! Of course no.
TRJ: So why him?
JWH: He took away my dignity. He made me cower. On my knees. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
TRJ: Again?
JWH: It happened to me all the time as a teenager. I wasn’t a popular kid. When I went to college — I wanted to forget being a teenager ever happened to me.
TRJ: But you couldn’t?
JWH: It never went away. Sure, for the first couple of years after I left, I thought I’d escaped. But I hadn’t. I used to have nightmares, and it would be like everything was exactly the same as it was at school and I wasn’t ever going to get away and I’d wake up screaming and with the sweats and stuff.
TRJ: What was so bad? What happened?
JWH: Hardly anything you’d think important. Name-calling. A shove in the hall. My stuff getting stolen. Having no social circle apart from the other outcasts, who you’d only hang out with because there was no one else, and you’d loathe them for it.
JWH: You were in a team at high school, weren’t you, Doctor?
TRJ: Yes, I was, actually. Swim team.
JWH: And a frat at college?
TRJ: I never got round to it.
JWH: It doesn’t matter. You can’t know what it’s like. Every single day, year upon year. And knowing that it’s never going to go away. You can’t understand.
TRJ: This makes you angry, doesn’t it?
JWH: It doesn’t go away. I was at the mercy of so many other people then, and I’m still at their mercy. Sometimes I fantasize about what I would do to some of the boys I knew in high school if I met them again. I close my eyes and imagine meeting one of them, grabbing him by his hair and punching him over and over in his face until it caved in, until his nose was no more than a flattened concave smear. I’d imagine the blood going all slippery and sticky on my knuckles.
JWH: It stays with me every day of my life. Every little failure. Every acceptance that I’m at the mercy of the rest of the world. It just builds up, and it never comes out.
TRJ: Except it did —
JWH: And I beat a man to death.
TRJ: So what did you do?
JWH: I ran. I had his blood on my jeans. I can still see it. It was bright red. Like stage blood.
JWH: By the time I’d run a couple of streets, my legs were shaking so much that I had to stop. I sat on the sidewalk. On the curb. I had this knot in my chest, and it was so tight that I could no longer think or see straight or breathe. I nearly cried.
JWH: I sat there for a while, I don’t know how long, few minutes maybe. Got my breath back. And then I realized I couldn’t see. So I ran back to go looking for my glasses.
TRJ: To the scene of — the altercation?
JWH: I was panicking. I wasn’t thinking.
JWH: So I got back to the church, and I realized that I was actually wearing my glasses. I put my hand up, and I was still wearing them.
JWH: And outside the door of the church — there was no one there. No body. Not even a pool of blood. No blood on my jeans. No dirt. Nothing. He was gone. It was like it never happened.
JWH: Except I could still feel his fingers around my throat.
Dr. Jenkins’ report:
Although, unsurprisingly, shaken by this experience, the patient continued to the party, where he met with his wife. Here, it seems that he developed the conviction that the assailant had followed him. Talking with his wife, he explained what he had experienced. He remembers his wife’s reaction as being negative, which is likely to be significant. However, the patient and his wife continued to put on a face for the sake of the gathering. The host, Simon May, approached them, introducing them to one James Carver, who, apparently, was new to the area. The patient became convinced that this Carver, although not showing a mark and not showing any signs of recognition up to this point, was the man he had believed he had killed.
The patient and his wife made conversation with the man for a few minutes, who continued to behave as if he had never met the patient before and to make friendly conversation. The patient, concealing his reaction, became increasingly uncomfortable and eventually made an excuse for he and his wife to leave. On parting — Heron’s wife had gone to retrieve their coats — Carver, so the patient says, gripped him by the hand and whispered to him the words, “Just you wait.” The patient, unable fully to explain his discomfort to his wife, went home with her. They argued. The persecution appears to have begun the following day.
Apparently, the patient woke up, thanks to some intuition, and ran to his son’s room. He saw Carver standing by the baby’s crib, holding the boy in his arms. Mr. Heron snatched the boy back; Carver offered no resistance. The man smiled, and walked out past the patient. The baby began to cry, waking up Mrs. Heron. The patient, checking all available exists, found every door and window in the house locked. This precipitated another argument.
Dr. Tucker Jenkins, tapes, Case 1354, Heron, John W; March 19th, transcription (Extract):
JWH: It was constant after that. It never stopped.
TRJ: How do you mean?
JWH: He was everywhere. He was everywhere. Like I’d walk down a street, and he’d be standing around the corner. He’d smile, and vanish into the crowd, or be standing behind me and he’d say something about my wife. I’d get into the elevator going into the office and he’d be coming out of it, and he’d smirk at me and the doors would close, and I’d get up to the office and my desk would be re-arranged.
TRJ: Was anything missing?
JWH: No. But it was all moved around. And no one could see anything. Whatever it was he was doing, he was invisible. One time — I was at church, and it was the Eucharist. I was at the communion rail and glanced to one side, and he was there kneeling beside me. He just glanced at me, and raised one eyebrow, and then he spat in the chalice as the celebrant handed it to him. And then the priest wiped the rim and handed it to me like there was nothing wrong. And I drank out of it, even though his spit was in it. He got to his feet and went through the curtain that goes to the corridor that leads you out to the back of the sanctuary. I got up just a little too quickly but — TRJ: — he was gone?
JWH: Yes.
JWH: When I got home that evening, he was there. Danny was asleep in bed and Madeline was there, sitting there with him, drinking coffee. She’d been out with Danny and she’d run into the guy in the street and they got talking and she asked him back. Somehow she thought I’d enjoy seeing him.
TRJ: What did you do?
JWH: I sat down and I had a cup of coffee and I talked with him.
TRJ: What about?
JWH: Work. He was in marketing or something. And we talked about the weather. And politics. He was a Democrat, too.
TRJ: That’s all?
JWH: Yes. No. There was a moment where Madeline heard Danny stirring. So she went upstairs to see if he was all right. And he looked at me. The man looked at me — It’s like he was laughing at me. And I stared and stared like I was paralyzed. And then he said thanks, he’d better be going and we saw him to the door when he got his coat and then he went home. And I went nuts at Madeline. And she never figured out what for. And the following day, I saw him coming out of the elevator at work. And then I saw him every day after that. Every. Single. Day.
Dr. Jenkins’ report:
It seems that after two years of this figure’s constant presence, the patient snapped. While driving his family on the freeway on January 3rd this year, apparently at the beginning of a trip to see Mrs. Heron’s parents, the patient saw Carver standing in the middle of the road. He swerved. He admitted that he was trying to hit him. He lost control of the car. The results you know. This was the last time John Heron saw this James Carver.
Treatment and Care
Heron’s depression and his repressed memories of childhood persecution appear to have formed this imaginary figure, as I’ve been prescribing antidepressants, obviously. The patient’s issues with his childhood are going to need a long course of therapy.
I had thought that after his wife and son’s deaths, the delusional figure had gone away, although I asked him to tell me if the persecutor came back. Last night, it appears he did. I’m prescribing antipsychotics. Therapy continues. I’m not holding up a lot of hope.
Dr. Tucker Jenkins, tapes, Case 1354, Heron, John W; March 24th, transcription (Extract):
JWH: I saw him again last night. He came to see me.
TRJ: When was this?
JWH: About three in the morning. I woke up about three in the morning. The clock said it was three in the morning, and there was something on my bed, so I leaned over and turned the light on and it was him. He was sitting on my bed.
TRJ: What did he do? Did he say anything?
JWH: Yeah.
TRJ: What did he say?
JWH: He said, “Maybe you should go see your wife and son.”
Dr. Jenkins Report - Update: 8th of June 2018
I don't believe it. Heron is to be transferred to the James River Correctional Center (JRCC) and out of my care effective 10 June. He will be also getting treatment at the North Dakota State Hospital and staying on their high risk suicide prevention ward but will be officially assigned to the JRCC. I guess they share a border so that is convenient. I wasn't aware they had new and experimental treatments for a patient with such similar symptoms and diagnoses, wasn't aware that they were a certified research institute in the first place. The paperwork is all done and it happened completely under my nose. Things are moving fast, I can only hope that their treatments work and Heron manages to salvage some aspect of his life back. I am to submit my notes, reports and transcripts immediately.
Notes from Zero-Zero:
Mr. Heron is being stalked and harassed but something we have since been unable to determine. His mind does not show signs of Psychosis (schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder) that would cause him to hallucinate this nemesis. He is now, however, he is suffering from PTSD from his experiences and his violent responses to this figure is also worrisome. We have found no signs or resonance that would indicate this is a spirit or ghost that is haunting him. We have never directly witnessed a visit from his enemy or observed any evidence that such a corporeal being exists on security footage or eye witness accounts. We did not have the resources available to Post-Cog the events to see what is actually happening when he is visited by Mr. Carver.
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