Only Shadows

Chapter 1

Izzy

"What's up my midnight explorers? It's your boy, Stark Raven James, with another exciting adventure! As promised, we are here at the spookiest, most haunted, most abandonedest building we've ever dared to explore, and all this is coming at you live. Now who's ready to dive into the unknown with me?"

"Dive into the unknown? Really?" Isabella asked. "And abandonedest is not a word."

James sighed and lowered the phone, stopping the recording. "Well, it should be."

"Plus, I thought you weren't using the building in the shots."

"Don't worry, Izzy. It wasn't visible. Besides, we're not live yet," he said, pulling his gloves on. "So dive into the unknown is a no? What about delve?"

Izzy tossed her reddish black hair over her shoulder and bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet. They stood at the edge of a dark forest behind a large, rectangular building. The faded white and green paint had been covered by graffiti over the years, but the place still screamed abandoned mental hospital. While a chipped concrete wall surrounded the property, it was little obstacle to getting inside. Maybe because it had been built to keep people in.

The wind kicked up, and Izzy zipped up her black hoodie. She should have worn sweatpants instead of leggings, but it's all she had in black. She tightened the straps of her small black backpack. "Feels like Austin's been gone for ages. What's keeping him?"

"Boo!"

Izzy jumped. "Hilarious. Can we head in now?" She pulled her black hood up.

Austin held up a large red flashlight and flicked it on. "Check it out. It's like the Bat signal."

"Woah, that's bright. Now turn it off. We haven't finished the security measures yet," James said, pulling up his own hood. His brown eyes sparkled with mischief as he sent a text. "Wait for it..."

There was a loud clicking sound as the security lights around the hospital went dark.

"Sick," said Austin. "It's like Mission Impossible"

"Yeah, except we're a bunch of teenagers instead of a highly trained group of secret agents. But otherwise, pretty much the same," Izzy laughed.

"Okay, let's go! We only have a couple of minutes before they come back on," James said.

They sprinted to the fence at the back of the property. Austin braced himself against it, cupping his hands to give Izzy a boost. She stepped up and hauled herself over the wall, dropping down to the courtyard below. James and Austin landed beside her a moment later.

James glanced at the phone. "One minute left. I hope the cracked window I spotted earlier isn't jammed." They hurried over and James shoved his fingers under the narrow opening, straining to open it. It stuck for a moment before giving way. "Quickly," he said, holding it open. "Over to that corner. The security cameras shouldn't be recording, but better safe than sorry."

They huddled in the dark as James lowered the window and joined them. Suddenly they heard a loud click. Izzy inhaled sharply, but it was only the exterior lights coming back on. "Now what?" she asked. "How do we know if those cameras are recording?"

"We're good. Look." He pointed at the camera overhead. "The red light is off. Anyway, there's only two cameras, this one and the one in the courtyard."

Izzy pushed her hood off. "So how long do we have?"

"We should be good for a couple of hours, but we need to be out before 2 AM." James clapped his hands together. "Okay, it's showtime!" he said, yanking off his black sweatshirt to reveal a blood-red shirt that read "Escaped Mental Patient."