Transmission 020 // “In Name Only”

Amelia stood before the Grand Central Library, but it was nothing like the place she’d left.

The steel and glass facade still rose into the sky, but its surface was fractured and scarred. Deep cracks spiderwebbed across the grand arches, climbing the columns that had once inspired awe. Now they looked crumbling and weathered, their gray surfaces dull beneath the oppressive clouds above.

The windows, warped and jagged, wept shadows. Dark threads curled at the edges of the glass, stretching outward like smoke before dissolving into the air. They moved with a kind of intent she couldn’t name. Shifting. Writhing. Reaching.

Behind her, the plaza stood still. No tourists. No birds. Not even the whisper of a breeze. It was as though the world behind her had exhaled and forgotten to breathe again. A close approximation of life, yet something essential had been removed.

Ahead, it was different. There, she could sense movement.

But she wasn’t sure whether it could be called life.

She stood exactly where she’d stood the day before. The tall, arched double doors loomed over her, their black wood now etched with shifting symbols of light—unrecognizable patterns that seemed to twist and change the moment her gaze drifted.

Then, without a touch, the doors groaned open. A low, mournful wail escaped the hinges—a sound like something injured, but too old to heal.

When she gasped, no sound emerged.

She looked beyond the open doors.

Only darkness.

Thick. Stagnant. Patient.

The longer she stared, the more certain she became: something was watching.

Something waiting.

Looking back.

The thought crawled over her skin like a thousand insects.

The pull seized her before she understood it. Not a tug, not curiosity—inevitability. As if gravity had twisted sideways. A force so overwhelming it felt like falling.

Not downward. Inward.

She wanted to run. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t a call. It was a command. And she was powerless to resist.

Her feet moved against her will. Slow. Reluctant. She felt as though she were watching someone else step into the dark.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, the building responded.

The doors groaned shut behind her. The sound was deep and final, ringing through the silence. Not just closed. Sealed. Only slivers of light remained.

Inside, the air was sharp, laced with a biting chill that misted her breath.

The space defied all sense of reason. Shelves stretched endlessly in every direction—labyrinthine, shifting—their towering forms casting jagged shadows in flickering, sourceless light. The building seemed alive, its geometry folding and expanding with the slow, deliberate rhythm of something breathing in the dark.

Books lined every surface, but they were blackened and empty.

No titles. No authors. The stories erased.

A slow realization dawned on her.

This was a library in name only.

Her hand rose instinctively, fingers trembling as they reached forward. The moment she grazed one of the spines, the book crumbled into a fine, black ash. The particles swirled in the air, before vanishing entirely, as though they had never existed. Amelia stared  at the residue that clung to her fingertips. She tried to rub it off, but it wouldn’t budge. 

Just beyond her hand, at the base of the wall, she saw a small, round gap. Her breath caught. She knew what it was immediately

A mouse hole.

She held still, expecting to see whiskers appear. Followed by a tiny blur of fur and certainty, darting from shadow to shadow to show her which way to go.

But nothing moved. The hole remained still.

There was no mouse here.

She was on her own.

The weight of the place pressed in, thick and suffocating. The shadows between the shelves deepened, humming with purpose.

Waiting.

She didn’t know for what.

Then—a sound.

A steady, rhythmic clicking, drifting through the library’s endless corridors.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

It wasn’t just in the air. It was inside her. It rattled against her bones, behind her eyes. It curled into her chest and coiled there, pressing tight, like it was trying to replace her heartbeat.

Still, she moved forward.

It wasn’t a choice.

An unseen thread had hooked into her, pulling her deeper, step by step. The sound growing sharper. Closer.

She turned a corner—

And froze.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

A single desk lamp glowed with a sickly green hue, casting warped halos of light around a dead room. An ornate metronome sat on the desk, its pendulum swinging in perfect, unnatural precision. A figure hunched over it, cloaked in shadow so dense it swallowed the glow. Its face was obscured, featureless. It bent the very air around it, the darkness shifting at the edges, as if feeding on the room itself.

And still, it pulled her forward.

Her heart thundered.

But her feet kept moving.

Tick. Tick.

The figure’s gravity was irresistible—a black hole in human form—and she was beyond the event horizon. It was terrifying in its contradiction: a force so dark and ominous it made her want to run, yet so compelling she couldn’t resist stepping closer. 

It didn’t acknowledge her. But she had no doubt that it knew she was there.

Around her, the bookshelves groaned. A low, guttural sound that deepened into a tremor. One by one, they began to shudder, as if straining under impossible weight.

Tick.

She held her breath, waiting.

Then, the bookshelves collapsed.

Each one snapped with a hollow crack, the spines of books splitting into jagged fragments before crumbling to black ash. The air filled with it—spirals of dust caught in unseen currents, twisting, dispersing—vanishing as if they had never been.

There was nothing left.

The space was empty.

Just her and the figure, wrapped in the dark.

It moved toward her, though she couldn’t see any legs to carry it. The air around it pulsed in response, rippling outward like the surface of disturbed water.

It tilted what should have been its head—the space where a face should be. The movement was slow. Intentional. Studying her.

Amused by her.

Her throat tightened. When she finally spoke, her voice barely carried. 

“Who are you?”

The silence that followed was unbearable—a weight squeezing her ribs from all sides.

Then, a hand—if it could be called that—extended upward toward her. Shadowed tendrils unfurled, writhing in the air, both hypnotic and grotesque. They stretched—reaching out—closing the gap.

The moment it touched her, it latched on, sinking deep. Lightning ignited under her skin, freezing and burning in the same breath. It burrowed deeper, threading into her veins, crawling. Searching. 

It was inside her now. Somewhere it shouldn’t be. 

Something locked was pried open. 

It had found what it was looking for.

Then—

A flood.

Memories surged, crashing through her. Rushing. Cracking. Splintering. Her mother’s laughter twisting into a scream. Her father’s reassuring gaze dissolving into fear. Their faces slipping further and further out of reach. A cacophony of voices rose, disjointed and raw: shouts, pleas at the edge of panic. The sound clawed at her mind, dragging her deeper.

Hands. So many hands. 

Reaching. Rummaging. Grasping.

This wasn’t just an attack. It was an invasion.

The figure remained silent, as relaxed as a thing such as this could be. The tendrils coiled tighter, curling like barbed wire, locking her in place. It wasn’t just feeding on her. It was pulling her apart, piece by piece.

“Stop!” she choked, the word scraping against her throat, fragile and feeble.

The figure didn’t react. It didn’t acknowledge her at all.

Then, their work done, the tendrils released her.

She collapsed, knees striking the floor—the impact rattling through her bones. She swayed, emptied. Her breath came in shuddering gasps, each one shallower than the last. She could still feel the darkness threading through her.

Dizzy now, she pitched forward—

But the floor wasn’t there. The world beneath her had unravelled into nothing.

She fell—spiraling downward like a twig caught in a storm.

The air rushed past her in a soundless howl. She reached for something—anything—but there was nothing to hold on to. Nothing to stop the descent.

The darkness rose to meet her.

And then, once again,  it swallowed her whole.

* * * 

Amelia woke with a violent gasp, her body wrenching free from sleep like breaking the surface of a deep, black ocean. Her fingers clawed at the sheets, knuckles white, breath coming in jagged, uneven bursts. Cold sweat clung to her skin like oil. The pressure hadn’t left—it still held her in its phantom grip, tight as a vice. Her ribs felt like matchsticks. One more squeeze, and she’d snap.

She pressed a hand to her chest, fingers splayed over her hammering heart. The rhythm was wild. Her body still hadn’t realized she was safe.

The room was silent. But her ears rang with echoes—pleading, screaming, lost. Distant voices, once buried, now running loose through the hollows of her mind.

She swallowed hard, throat raw, forcing each breath slower.

In. Out.

In. Out.

Outside, the world was dim and blurred. Gray dawn filtered through her bedroom window, casting pale, shifting shadows across the floor.

It was only a dream.

But, in this dream, something had changed. This time, the void had reached out to her. It had made contact. And, in doing so, it had revealed its true shape.

No longer just an empty shadow—now, it had a form.

An identity.

A name.

She knew it. She felt it, branded into her mind like a scar.

Alexander Bennett.

SEASON_01: COMPLETE

NEXT>> SEASON_02

TRM-S02-021 || “The Apple Tree”

Coming Soon