Chapter One

Into the shadows

It was unusually warm for November, especially that night. The night that Jackson Chains entered the Shadows. Jackson himself was walking through the streets of downtown Lake Valley. He was unusual-looking in the daytime, but in the dark his features were convoluted into twisted shapes and shadows.

He pulled a rumpled piece of paper from the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. It was an ad from last week’s Sunday paper, The Valley Herald. It read: Subjects needed for government testing. Chemical injections. $500 payment. Must be over eighteen! The paper stressed this point. Jackson just rolled his eyes.

Because Jackson Chains wasn’t eighteen. He was a junior at Valley High School. Unlike his classmates, he was not thirteen or fourteen. He was one of the younger kids in his class, being born in May. But he was mature for his age, and knew he could pass as a legal adult. Especially with his brother’s driver’s license, which he had stolen from Ryan’s wallet the day before. Ryan had been visiting for Thanksgiving, which was a nightmare for Jackson. He definitely could’ve gone without his brother’s endless stories about the college life and his mother’s specialty: Chinese takeout.

Jackson pressed the WALK SIGNAL button with his thumb and stuck his hands in his pocket as he waited for the signal to light up. Jackson knew that Lake Road was the busiest road in town, and he didn’t need some lazy old couple on cell phones impaling him with their front bumper.

The adjacent light turned yellow, and Jackson watched as the cars began to slow down. Finally, the signal lit up. Muttering under his breath, Jackson crossed the busy intersection with his head to the ground. As he reached the other side of the street, he heard running water. After looking up, he realized it was the Falls, a small waterfall on the river that emptied into Lake Valley. The Boardwalk, a popular shopping district, sat content above the rushing water. And then he was on the Labs’ doorstep.

Norsson Labs was the biggest building in town, aside from the apartment building on Free Street. It was as if God had picked up a perfect cube of gray steel and placed in bustling downtown Lake Valley. Something about the imposing structure didn’t feel right, but Jackson was used to that. After all, he worked at the Labs after school every day, as an intern. Hopefully no one would recognize him in the dark clothes and black hairspray he had donned in order to look like his brother.

He was greeted in the main lobby by a tired looking teenage girl at the receptionist desk, who he recognized as another intern. He signed in on the clipboard with his brother’s name as she stared at him with a look of repulsion. What a strange boy. A black hooded sweatshirt, jet black hair, black cargo pants, black combat boots, and even black makeup. She shuddered. Even she didn’t wear that much eyeliner. Jackson could finally breathe. If this girl didn’t recognize him, neither would anyone else. He hoped.

Jackson took a seat on an uncomfortable gray bench and shuffled through the magazines. TIME, News Weekly, and a National Geographic. From 1989. How typical. He sighed loudly leaned back, closing his eyes and placing a small Ipod ear bud in each ear. Soon, Nirvana’s “Lithium” was blasting so loud that even the girl could hear it.

Before he knew it, someone was tapping on his shoulder. Jackson opened his eyes and took out the earbuds. Standing above him was a man, probably in his twenties, with a lab coat on and big smile stretched across his face. “I was calling you before, but your music was so loud that you couldn’t hear me,” the man said. “I’m Harry.”

Harry was very enthusiastic. In Jackson’s mind, he was plain creepy. As they walked down the hall, Harry began to hum a theme song from a show, but Jackson couldn’t place it. Jackson didn’t watch television. It was sucking the brains out of everyone in America.

They stopped at a door marked Testing Lab 6. Harry smiled even bigger. “This is our stop!” he said, smiling of course.

“Do you get many test subjects?” Jackson asked as Harry looked through his pockets for the key. Harry’s smile never faltered.

“No,” he said, rummaging through one last pocket. “You’re the first. Oh, here it is.”

Jackson expected beakers and test tubes and microscopes, but all he saw when he entered the room was a gray folding chair and a row of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. There was a line of windows at near the ceiling, and when Jackson looked out these windows, he saw plants growing. He realized they must be underground. There was also another door, marked STAFF ONLY. Now, an older man came out of this room. He was wearing a gray turtleneck and a lab coat, just like Harry.

“Hello, Ryan,” the older man said. “I’m Dr. Silverman, and I’d like to thank you for volunteering to be a test subject here at the Norsson Labs. Now, first we’d like to see some ID.”

Jackson dug in his pocket and pulled out Ryan’s license, although he doubted these people would care if he was ten, considering how desperate they were for test subjects. Dr. Silverman took a quick glance at the license and handed it back to Jackson. ‘Suckers,’ he thought as he pocketed the card.

“Now we’d like to take a seat on that folding chair and roll up your sleeve. We’ll be out with the first injection and some paperwork in a moment,” Silverman instructed, and walked through the other door, Harry following.

Jackson breathed deeply as he removed his sweatshirt, revealing a short-sleeved black T-Shirt. Sure enough, in a few moments, the scientists were back with a stack of papers and a syringe full of black liquid. It was a painstaking job, pretending to read the contracts and sign them, but within fifteen minutes Jackson handed the papers back to Silverman, who traded them to Harry for the syringe.

“OK, now we’ll need you to relax your left arm. There will be a mild sting, but that’s all. After that, we will bring out more injections, and when we’re all done you’ll get your money and you’ll be free to go. If you notice anything unusual in the next few days, call us up and let us know.” The older scientist paused. “But if anything bad happens, if anything goes wrong, come on back to the Labs and we’ll give you another shot to make it stop.”

Jackson nodded and help up his left arm. Harry left through the door to file the paperwork, no doubt. And then Jackson felt the needle pierce his skin. He winced, and gritted his teeth. In another second, it had penetrated one of his veins. At first there was a stinging, as the doctor had said. And then there was nothing. The room around him melted away; the doctor was gone. Jackson closed his eyes and counted to ten.

When he opened his eyes, he was in another room. It was not gray, but pitch black with purple light bulbs instead of the usual variety. As Jackson looked wildly around the room, it dawned on him that there were no windows or doors. Small, slender figures were standing in the shadows. He drew away from them, but found more behind him.

“Enter the Shadows,” one of the figures whispered. “Join us.”
All the figures joined in the chant. “Join us. Join us. Join us. Join us.” As they joined hands, they made their circle smaller, and Jackson realized they weren’t standing in the shadows. They were the shadows. He closed his eyes again, praying to escape the room with the shadow people. He heard a distant voice, calling, “Ryan! Ryan!”

Back in Testing Lab 6, Dr. Silverman was shaking the boy, calling his name. “Ryan!”

When the boy’s eyes finally opened, the scientist saw that the irises were as black as the night sky. Gasping, the older man released Jackson’s arm and stepped back. But it was too late. Jackson had begun to rise off the chair, and the shadows from the corners were creeping towards him. When he opened his mouth, shadows crept out of it.

The windows burst, and shadows from the outside flew in. They were coming faster now. The doctor tried to leave the room, but the shadows were blocking the door. “What’s going on?” Harry said cheerfully, but his smile finally fell when he saw the whirlwind of darkness accumulated in the small room.

“You made me like this,” Jackson said in an echoic voice. The shadows were wrapping around the two scientists now, suffocating them. Jackson exhaled, and the shadows spun faster. He could control them. He had that power now.

When Jackson woke up, he was slumped over in the folding chair. There was broken class all over the floor. The mangled, lifeless bodies of Harry and Dr. Silverman lay on the tile in distorted positions. Jackson gasped, and grabbed his sweatshirt from the corner.

In the lobby, the teenage receptionist typed vicariously on the keyboard. She was really instant messaging her boyfriend, but she had to look like she was working. She stopped as she heard someone running down the hallways.

“What is it?” she asked. There was a change in him. His hair was brushed out of his face, and some of his eyeliner was smeared. He held his sweatshirt in his hands, and there was broken glass in his hair.

“Call 911,” he said breathlessly. The girl gasped, and picked up the phone. There had never been so much excitement at the Labs. She looked up to ask him what the emergency was.

But by then he was gone, out the door and into the night.