The Strange Case of Madison Baker

December 5, 2016

The city was alive with the morning commute. From the train window, twenty year old Madison Baker watched as the bold and spirited traffic below plowed through slush covered streets. Everyone jockeying for position in a sea of flickering brake lights. 

The sun had slept in this morning. Buried beneath the blanket of a cotton-polluted sky, it would keep its warmth and riches to itself today. Madison looked around the crowded subway cab. She noted that the weather in here wasn’t much different––every face was glued to an electronic device. Madison didn’t particularly care for small talk, either. In fact she, too, had her smart phone in hand. She was merely spectating is all. A regular hobby of hers.

Madison turned back to the powdered world beyond her window. 

Winter was her favorite season. She adored the city’s historic brick and stone architecture all dressed up in festive decorations and comforting lights. The enchanting ambience helped soften the holiday sting from growing up as a foster kid. Sure, she hated the holidays; but her love for snow was more than enough to overcome that disdain. And on some magical winter days, just watching the falling flurries was enough to make life bearable. 

But today was not one of those days.

Her anxiety had almost left her bedridden today. If not for this desperately thrown-together appointment and the grave circumstances that spawned it, she wouldn’t have crawled out from underneath her sheltering blanket this morning. 

However all of that was over an hour ago. For now, Madison was okay. The monster that lives inside of her has its own consciousness, but it was currently resting. 

The train was swallowed by the dark mouth of a tunnel, and the pale lights overhead now became obvious. 

Her stop was coming up. Soon, she would have to maneuver through this crowd to get off . . . but what if there was a swarm of people waiting to get on at the stop. What if she gets caught up in the chaos and misses her exit. She would miss the appointment! Then she will have to pay the no-show fee––and what if Dr. Turner is annoyed with her and refers her to someone else and–– 

Madison felt a dull, steel-on-steel screeching beneath her feet. The train was slowing.

The beast that dwells within her opened its eyes. And her knees began to tremor. 

Dr. Turner’s building was a bricked three-story artifact. It sat on the corner of North Cotner Avenue and West Kearney Road. His offices were on the first floor, but it was elevated a few feet above the ground. 

As Madison climbed the front steps, she couldn’t recall how she had gotten here. There was a dreamy emptiness clouding her memory; like muddling fog. 

Her nose had minor leaks. Her hands were stuffed inside of her coat pockets, and the cold denim rubbed against her goosefleshed legs––clearly she had been walking in this cold weather, but she couldn’t secure any details. The section of time was missing.

Her investigation was cut short at the top step because the solid wood door was opening towards her. 

Karl held the door open with a massive paw.

“Doc is ready for ya,” he said. Karl was a hefty man. His dark hair was always neatly combed, yet the thick mustache perched above his lips was surrounded by stubble that sprouted in fields over his plump cheeks. Since Madison had been coming to see Dr. Turner, his assistant, Karl, had greeted her at the front door for every visit, wearing the same buttoned-up white shirt, tucked into the same white trousers, that sagged on top of the same white sneakers.  

“Thanks, Karl,” Madison said. 

She passed by and gave the entrance mat a stomp with her boots. Dr. Turner’s waiting room also served as a lobby for the building. The floor directly above was home to a mom-and-pop cookie shop. Whenever she entered the building, the scent of freshly baked sweets welcomed her.

Dr. Turner’s office was around the far corner. Karl ushered her across the lobby/waiting room per his usual routine. But as they walked, Madison felt something was . . . off. 

She looked at her boots. They weren’t squeaking. Carpet? Wasn’t this floor tiled last time. . . wasn’t it tiled . . . just a moment ago.

She lifted her eyes and looked around. Her stomach simmered with hot dread. 

There was something horribly different about the room. 

The ceiling was lower. It was ten––maybe fifteen-feet lower. It looked like she could jump and touch it now. She hadn’t recognized it at first because . . . because . . . how did she miss it? Unless, it had shrunk while she had been looking down at her boots. 

The room was longer now, too. Much longer. As if the square shape it had been, was taken and stretched out into this now long rectangle. 

Her heart was racing and only outpaced by her thoughts. There had certainly been windows in here . . . hadn’t there? 

Madison heard voices. She followed the noise to a flat screen tv mounted on the wall directly to her right. It had to be new. The hair-covered backsides of four heads were seated in tub chairs that formed a semi-circle around it. Suddenly––one of the heads twitched, as if zapped to life. It began to turn, twisting sluggishly back towards her. The long and frizzy hair slid off the cheeks like ragged stage curtains. The bangs hung over the eyes. The lips were––

“Everything all right?” 

Madison whipped around to see Karl a few paces ahead of her. She had stopped walking. His eyes studied her.

“Yeah––I’m. Yeah.” She gently shook her head and hurried to catch up with him. “Karl, has the building gone through any . . . renovations, lately?” She tried not to look as if her sanity depended on his answer.

His eyes narrowed further. 

“Like, the ceiling and floor. Was something––?” But she stopped herself when his brow cocked. She realized the absurdity of her question and how crazy she must sound. The words hung between them for an awkward second.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s wild what lack of sleep can do to the brain. Don’t mind me––ha.”

Karl gave a merciful smile. “Mondays kick my ass, too,” he said. “C’mon.” 

They started walking again. After a few steps, Madison peeked back at the tv area. 

She saw only the backs of heads. 

The rest of the walk her eyes never left her shoelaces.

Dr. Turner was at his desk when they entered the room. “Madison, it’s good to see you,” he said. “Please, have a seat.” He signaled to the sofa as he walked around his desk.

Madison sat down in the middle of the sofa. While she was busy unloading her coat and purse––Karl whispered something in Dr. Turner’s ear that made his eyes flash wide, but only for a second. When she finally looked up, Karl was leaving the room and the doctor had thanked him.

“Thanks for seeing me today,” Madison said. 

He lowered into the chair across from her, wearing a puzzled look under his black framed glasses. He crossed one leg over the other, and as if remembering something, his face softened. “Of course,” he said, with a warm smile.

His presence was calming. The wrinkles branching out from the corners of his eyes said that he had smiled a lot in his forty-three years. His healthy eyebrows sat low, giving the eyes a shaded and mystical look. He always wore his long sleeved button-ups rolled up to the elbows, as if by doing so his message was ‘I’m ready to get my hands dirty. Let’s dig into the shit.’

“How’s everything going?” He asked while snatching the pen and pad off the coffee table between them.

“Not great,” she said.

“How’re classes going?”

Madison grunted and rolled her eyes. “I hate them.”

“Okaaay, what do you hate about them?” 

His smirk was encouraging. Her walls used to be colossal and it took most of the session for them to budge. Now the walls were still large, just easier to move.

“Well,” she said. “I think I wanna change my major again. But y’know, I’m so friggin’ indecisive. I’ll probably wanna change it again next semester.”

Dr. Turner scribbled on his pad. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Ummm.”

Madison’s heel started to tap. Her eyes wandered past Dr. Turner until he became blurry and her vision was focused on the blackboard behind him––a blackboard?

“Madison?”

Her eyes shot back to him. She shifted in her seat. “Yeah––sorry. What’d you ask?”

“Your major,” he said, peeking over his glasses. “I was asking what you wanted to switch it to.”

“Oh. Right. I don’t really wanna talk about that anymore.” He scribbled some more. Her heel tapped faster.

“All right. What would you like to talk about?”

She blinked rapidly. Her hands added to the tapping, playing both knees. She came here to tell him something, but what was it?

“Anyone new in your life?’

She shook her head. His voice sounded as if the two of them were separated by a waterfall.

“Have you been practicing our––“

“Yes I’ve been doing the stupid fucking goals but they don’t work!” Every drop of her venom was released with the sentence. Her body started to calm. The beast within her had won another battle.

“I’m sorry––I shouldn’t have snapped.” She fell into the couch and took a few deep breaths. Suddenly, the purpose of this appointment came back. She bolted up. “Dr. Turner,” she said. “There’s . . . someone else inside of me.” 

His pen froze on the pad. He looked up, slowly. He chose his next words carefully. “Well, Madison. You do have severe anxiety, and sometimes that can feel––“

“I’m not talking about that––I know what that monster feels like. This is different. This feels like an actual person, with a personality and everything.”

The doctor turned white. The pen and pad fell to the floor. He stood up fast, realized his excitement, calmed himself, and then began pacing back and forth behind the chair. “Dr. Turner you’re freaking me out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said distantly, now rubbing his chin. “I didn’t mean to frighten––there’s nothing to worry about.” Then he said something under his breath that she didn’t catch. But she thought the end of it was something like, only get one shot at this.

“Dr. Turner . . .” Her anxiety loomed overhead like ominous storm clouds.

He stopped pacing. He turned towards her and asked: “This person you feel, what can you tell me about them?”

She exhaled. The doctor’s calm temperament was back and she had never been so thankful in her life. “Not much,” she said. “I’m not sure but I think it’s a woman. She’s probably older––much older. I say that because of the music. It sounds old, like Depression Era stuff, maybe. I hear it sometimes, mostly when I’m alone. Like there’s a radio playing in the other room, but I can never find it. I know she––or whoever. I know that they enjoy the music. They don’t talk to me. I just know things.” 

He nodded in acceptance, but his eyes were wide and didn’t blink. He walked towards the back wall and faced the blackboard.

“I have to try,” he said softly.

“Uh, are you talkin’ to the blackboard, Dr.?”

There was a long pause. Dr. Turner didn’t move.

“This isn’t a blackboard.”

Her heart started to trot. “Ummm.”

Dr. Turner turned and stepped aside. He was calm but there was excitement in his face. “Look at it,” he said, motioning to the blackboard. “Really look at it.”

Her eyes left him and moved back to the blackboard. Only now it wasn’t a blackboard. It was a long strip of glass, tinted black. And through some external source of intuition, she knew that there were people on the other side of that glass. Watching.

The room started to spin. She felt her sanity circling the drain of existence.

“This has never happened,” Dr. Turner’s voice was dreamy and moving closer. “Please, stay with me.”

She felt the warm cover of hands on the backs of hers. Her sight started to stabilize. The doctor was kneeling beside her.

“I’m going to give you a lot of information and it will be hard to hear. This is my first time doing this, so the only advice I can give is to try and stay calm. If you understand, please nod.”

She did so, knocking loose a thin stream of tears.

“Okay, good,” Dr. Turner said. “Let’s start with . . . the date. Do you know the day and year, dear?”

She nodded again. She tried to speak but her mouth was too dry. She dampened it and tried again, “December 5th,” she said hoarsely, “2016.”

Dr. Turner pressed his lips tight. He looked like a sympathetic father watching his daughter struggle with her spelling homework. 

“That was six years ago,” he said. “It’s now the summer of 2022.”

The words floated around her head. She had heard them, yet they didn’t seem real. As if any second she would awake from a nightmare. 

“You drugged me,” she said. She yanked her hands away from his, now boiling with anger. “I’m calling the cops right now––you put something in the air vents or something. I’m gonna have this place shut down and your license revoked.”

She dug her phone out of her purse, dialed 911, put the phone to her ear and waited. Dr. Turner dropped his hands and frowned. She waited a few more seconds.

There was no ring. The phone was utterly silent. And it felt oddly light in her hand.

When she lowered the phone and brought it in front of her face, her heart lept from her chest. 

She held a bright-yellow sponge. New and dry.

A little scream escaped her and she flung the sponge as if it were on fire. She checked back on the sofa but her purse had disappeared. She turned to Dr. Turner with wet and confused eyes.

He took her hands again.

“Madison Baker killed herself six years ago, on December 5th, 2016,” he said. “She jumped in front of a moving subway train, while on her way to a morning appointment with me, her psychologist, Dr. Brad Turner. She left behind no suicide note or any other indication of a plan.” He paused for a second, gathering himself before continuing: “Your name is Elaine Collins. You are seventy-eight years old and you were the last person . . . Madison Baker ever talked to alive.” 

Tears rolled off her cheeks and dropped on their joined hands. She looked down. The doctor’s hands held the weathered and veiny bone-like fingers that could belong to no twenty-year old. The room began to spin again.

“Stay with me, Elaine, please–stay with me,” Dr. Turner said. “The security footage showed you and Madison talking on that platform for minutes before it happened. No one else was near you two, and at no point did either of you break conversation. Then, in what looked like mid-sentence, she turned and lept to her death. Only a few feet from where you stood.”

Elaine’s eyes went cloudy. She stared blankly ahead. He gripped her hands tighter, trying to will her to stay.

“I need to know what was said, please!” He said. “You were in town visiting your sister––you and Madison were complete strangers. Please, Elaine, how do you know all these personal details about her? How do you know things she only ever shared with me!?”

She went limp. When she started to fall back into the sofa, he caught her shoulders.

“Elaine! Elaine! Can you hear me!?” He shook her lightly. The emotions poured out of him: “Please!––You have to tell me so I can help you!––What happened to you after she jumped!?––Why do you believe that you are her!?––Let me help you!”

Just then, Karl and another orderly bursted through the door. They rushed to Elaine and administered a sedative into her arm before taking her from the room. Dr. Turner collapsed to the floor. He wept like a child.

After a personal leave (and zero progress made without him), Dr. Turner was reinstated as the lead psychologist on the Elaine Collins/Madison Baker case. He earned back his title by assuring the hospital’s board of directors––the ones that observe from behind the glass––that he was the only one who could solve the case. That there was still hope in bringing Elaine Collins back, and in doing so, the mysteries surrounding Madison Baker and her tragic death would be answered. The only treatment method the two parties could not agree on was Dr. Turner’s unwavering insistence on moving the record player from the outside hall. Every one of his requests to play Elaine’s 40s and 50s vinyl records inside of her room was denied on the basis of safety concerns.

Unfortunately, Dr. Turner was never able to reach the absent Elaine Collins again. Every day, the elderly woman woke up, and went to bed as Madison Baker. She walked, ate, drank, and slept like Madison Baker. She even spoke in a voice that was chilling in its accuracy. And every morning, she eased out of bed and promptly started acting out the movements of riding a train, as if she were headed to some imaginary appointment with Dr. Turner at his old private practice offices, on the corner of North Cotner Avenue and West Kearney Road. Then, she waited at her door for Karl. When he came, he escorted her to her actual appointment through the Green Grove Psychiatric Hospital’s recreation room that was highlighted by a flat screen tv. She did this every day. And on the days Karl didn’t come, she just stood by the door. Waiting for hours.