Episode Three: Code Enoch

The Hollow Names

Episode Three: Code Enoch
By Candle Light Chaos

Previously on The Hollow Names (Episode 2)

Joel, Lena, Nico, and Amber returned to Elmhurst Institute searching for answers after a terrifying first encounter with its rotting halls and haunted archives. Joel, driven by dark dreams and cryptic whispers, discovered a vial labeled “Threshold Dose.” Against his friends’ protests, he opened it, allowing something ancient and patient to slip inside him.

They fled through rooms of twisted surgical art and patient files that hinted Joel might be carrying someone else’s identity. But Joel stayed behind, smiling strangely as he approached a monstrous figure in a surgeon’s mask named Dr. Halbrook. In the truck outside, the friends watched Joel stand in the doorway of Elmhurst, holding a doll, while Halbrook watched from behind him. And blinked.

1. RECOVERY

They didn’t speak as they left Elmhurst behind.

Not until they were halfway back to their cheap roadside motel, wind howling through the cracked window seals, when Amber’s dash cam glitched.

Just for a heartbeat, the screen replaced Nico’s face with Joel’s. Hollow-eyed. Smiling too wide.

Then it was gone.

Lena was the first to break the silence, voice hoarse. “We left him.”

Nico didn’t look at her. His hands tightened on his knees. “He left himself.”

No one spoke again the rest of the way. The road stretched endlessly ahead, slick with moonlight. Every mile felt stolen.

2. THE LETTER

They checked into Room 7 under fake names. Lena barely slept. She paced the stained carpet until sunrise, checked the door’s deadbolt a dozen times.

When she finally dropped onto the lumpy bed and closed her eyes, she felt something scratch her neck. Under her pillow was a slip of paper, folded tight, still damp as though pulled from a mouth.

She unfolded it with trembling fingers.

Naming rebinds identity. Some must forget to let others become.

The name you know was not your own. Enoch was the beginning. Code him.

Below the scrawl was a crude map of Elmhurst, detailing back hallways they hadn’t explored.

Taped to the paper was a key. Old, iron, rust flaking off in orange curls.

Etched along the shaft:

043-ENK

Lena sat on the bed for a long time. Listening to the cheap clock on the wall count down the moments until everything would change again.

3. THE RETURN

They didn’t mean to go back.

Amber had sworn it off completely. Nico blamed them both, raging that they should have dragged Joel out by force.

But Lena couldn’t let it rest. The map burned into her dreams, Joel’s voice whispering from under her bed, inside her walls.

“You have to finish it. Or I stay here forever.”

So on the third night, under bruised clouds, they found themselves parked outside Elmhurst again. Three instead of four.

The wrought-iron gate that had once stood shut now hung wide open. It groaned softly in the wind, as if sighing them inside.

They didn’t need to speak. They simply shouldered their bags, clicked on their flashlights, and walked through.

4. THE FILE ROOM

Elmhurst had changed.

Graffiti on the walls no longer looked random, it pulsed faintly, lines like veins. The floors were damp, leaving dark prints behind them. Doors seemed to stand slightly ajar, waiting.

They wound through the labyrinth of patient halls to reach the records vault. Each step made the overhead fixtures buzz angrily. Whenever they spoke, the lights dimmed, then surged.

In the center of the vault stood a line of rusted filing cabinets. Amber fit the old key into one marked 043-ENK.

The lock gave with a protesting shriek.

Inside: a brittle stack of files. A small warped Bible that smelled like swamp water. A photograph so old the edges curled inward.

The photo showed a boy, seven, maybe eight, wearing a paper hospital crown. Across the crown was scrawled:

PATIENT ENOCH – TREATED

Nico took one look and flinched. “That’s Joel.”

Lena shook her head, voice thin. “No. That’s his brother.”

On the back of the photo in blotchy ink:

Stage III: Transference incomplete.

5. THE VIDEO

Amber rooted through the bottom of the drawer and pulled out a battered canister. “16mm,” she whispered. “Jesus.”

They found an old projector abandoned in a nurse’s lounge. It smelled of scorched wires, but when Amber fed in the reel and twisted the dial, the bulb coughed to life.

The film jumped and clicked.

Onscreen: a much younger Dr. Halbrook, hair dark and slick, stood before a blackboard covered in spiraling diagrams. Beside him sat the boy, Enoch, head shaved, wearing a thin hospital gown.

Halbrook leaned down, inserted a long needle into the side of Enoch’s skull. The boy didn’t flinch. Just blinked.

“Let’s try Code: Enoch one more time,” Halbrook said. His voice was too warm, too pleased.

The film jumped. The final frame stuck, burned itself onto the screen:

“If naming defines us, what happens when a name is given twice?”

Then the bulb popped. Smoke rose from the machine.

They were left in darkness, listening to the dying tick of cooling metal.

6. THE NAMELESS WARD

Driven by the map, and something else they couldn’t name, they descended beyond the basement morgue. The stairs grew narrower, almost organic, as if squeezed by muscle.

At the bottom, a corroded metal sign flickered under a single light.

WARD NULL – TRANSFERENCE HOLDING

The air felt thick. Heavy enough to press on their skulls. They walked past doors that bore no patient names, only ID codes scrawled in wax. Walls were covered in rough childlike drawings of masks and hands. In one room, they found tiny wax casts of children’s hands stacked like offerings.

Then Lena stopped.

A section of the wall was covered in graphite. A face, mouth open in an endless scream, eyes hollowed by frantic erasures. It was Joel. Or close enough.

She reached out, touched the cheek. Her fingertip came away wet.

7. THE CRYING

Somewhere deeper still, a sound began. A thin weeping, raw, broken. It scraped along their nerves. Not a voice. Not human.

They followed. The halls twisted unnaturally, turned in on themselves. Light fixtures buzzed overhead, droplets of moisture falling from pipes onto their necks.

They reached a heavy door, locked with chains. Before they could try it, the lock fell open by itself, chains clattering to the floor.

Inside: rows of dolls. Dozens of them. Limbs sewn on backward, mouths buttoned shut. They sat arranged on pews like a grotesque congregation, all facing an operating table carved with deep swirling sigils.

And on that slab sat Joel.

Or what used to be him.

8. THE OTHER

Joel’s hair hung in his face, wet with sweat or something darker. His eyes were stitched over crudely, black thread biting into swollen lids. But his mouth curled in a cheerful smile.

“It’s not me anymore,” he said lightly. “It’s Enoch. And he remembers everything.”

Amber swallowed hard. “What did Halbrook do to you?”

Joel-Enoch rose from the table with slow grace. His feet left little puddles where they stood.

“He gave me a name. I didn’t earn it. I just… wore it.”

Lena felt her vision swim. “Then take it off. Give it back.”

“I can’t. He’s still watching.”

“Who?”

Joel-Enoch’s stitched face tilted. He pointed behind them.

They turned.

Just beyond the room’s edge stood Dr. Halbrook. His coat was soaked with something that shimmered oddly in the light. His eyes glittered, too many reflections.

And he smiled.

9. CODE BREAK

Halbrook stepped forward, one gloved hand flexing rhythmically like a broken metronome.

“To erase guilt,” he said softly, almost kindly, “you must give the wound a new author. Enoch’s pain, Joel’s name. Balance the ledger.”

Lena’s hands balled into fists. “That’s not medicine. That’s butchery.”

Halbrook’s grin widened, splitting too far.

“Then call it baptism.”

Amber was already pulling Nico toward the door, but Lena stood her ground. She drew in a shaking breath.

“His name is Joel.”

Halbrook’s head jerked violently. The dolls lining the pews opened their mouths all at once, splitting their button seams. A chorus of screams rose, deafening.

The room twisted, walls folding inward, floor rippling. Lena felt herself dragged through liquid air.

10. THE ESCAPE

None of them remembered how they ran.

Only impressions: a flood of cold, the shriek of tearing metal, a burst of light that left afterimages of Halbrook’s smirking face burned into their retinas. The smell of antiseptic laced with rot.

A voice boomed through speakers hidden in the walls, reading snatches of Psalm 88, distorted, words falling over each other like bodies in the dark.

They broke through a door that didn’t exist moments before. Burst into blinding sunrise.

They found the truck exactly where they left it, dew glittering on the hood.

No one spoke until they were miles from Elmhurst. Lena finally dared a look in the rearview mirror. Nothing followed them.

But the passenger seat was damp with tears.

And on the dashboard sat a note. Neat. Tucked under the wiper blade.

“Enoch was made. Joel was stolen. One must remain.”

TO BE CONTINUED…