Chapter 1: Dead Hours and a Three-Word Message

The notification chime echoed through Liam's cramped apartment at 2:47 AM, cutting through the silence like a blade. He'd been hunched over his laptop for hours, meticulously editing their latest investigation footage from the abandoned Riverside Hospital. The glow of the screen painted harsh shadows across his gaunt face as he reached for his phone, expecting another fan comment or collaboration request.

Instead, he found something that made his blood quicken.

The email was stark, clinical in its brevity. No sender name, just a string of numbers as the address. No subject line. The message contained only GPS coordinates and three words that seemed to burn themselves into his retinas: "Angels Chapel. Kape."

Liam's fingers trembled slightly as he screenshot the message and immediately forwarded it to the group chat. Within minutes, his phone buzzed with responses.

Caleb - 2:52 AM: Dude, what is this? Some kind of riddle?

Rose - 2:53 AM: The coordinates point to the middle of nowhere. Like, REALLY nowhere. Montana wilderness.

Matthew - 2:54 AM: Angels Chapel sounds like a stripper name lol. But seriously, this is creepy even for us

Liam's heart hammered as he opened his laptop and began researching. Angels Chapel yielded almost nothing—just fragments of local folklore buried in obscure forums and historical society newsletters. But those fragments painted a picture that made his investigator's instincts sing with anticipation.

Built in 1847 by a fire-and-brimstone preacher named Ezekiel Kape. Abandoned after a series of unexplained deaths. Local Native American tribes had avoided the area for generations, calling it "the place where souls go to weep."

This was it. This was the story that would cement Dead Hours' reputation forever.

By dawn, the four friends had gathered in Caleb's garage, their excitement palpable despite the early hour. The space smelled of motor oil and coffee, cluttered with camera equipment and the tools Caleb used to keep his restored 1995 Honda Odyssey running.

"Guys, I've been digging all night," Rose said, her laptop balanced on a stack of tire rims. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, but they sparkled with the same hunger that drove them all. "There's barely anything online about this place. A few mentions in local papers from the 1800s, some vague references to 'incidents,' but it's like someone scrubbed most of the records."

"That makes it even better," Liam said, pacing with nervous energy. "Authentic mystery. No YouTube tourists have picked this clean yet."

Matthew looked up from testing their audio equipment, his nervous laugh echoing in the garage. "So let me get this straight. We're driving eight hours into the Montana wilderness based on a three-word email from someone who won't even tell us their name?"

"That's exactly what we're doing," Caleb said, sliding out from under the van's hood. Grease streaked his forearms, and his practical smile was infectious. "Come on, Matt. When has our gut ever steered us wrong?"

It was true. In three years of investigating allegedly haunted locations, their instincts had built Dead Hours from a college dorm room project into a channel with over two million subscribers. Their success came from their authenticity—no fake jump scares, no manufactured drama. Just four friends walking into dark places with cameras rolling, capturing whatever waited in the shadows.

But as they loaded equipment into the van, Liam noticed Rose staring at her phone with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"What is it?" he asked.

She turned the screen toward him. The Dead Hours subreddit was already buzzing with activity. Someone had posted about Angels Chapel, and the responses made Liam's stomach clench.

DO NOT GO THERE. I'm begging you. My uncle went missing near that place in '98. They never found him.

Angels Chapel isn't haunted. It's cursed. There's a difference.

That place doesn't just take your life. It takes your soul and makes you part of whatever lives there.

The last group that went to investigate... their van was found empty a week later. Doors locked from the inside. No signs of struggle. They just... vanished.

"Jesus," Matthew whispered, reading over Liam's shoulder. "Maybe we should think about this."

But Liam felt the familiar fire in his chest, the same compulsion that had driven him to seek out dark corners since childhood. When his parents fought behind closed doors and his house felt suffocating with unspoken tension, he'd found solace in horror stories—tales of places where the thin veneer of normalcy fell away to reveal something raw and honest underneath.

"Look," he said, addressing his three best friends. "We've built our reputation on going where others won't. These warnings? They're exactly why we need to go. If there's something real there—something truly supernatural—we'll be the ones to document it."

Rose closed her laptop with a decisive snap. "The production value alone would be incredible. A chapel in the middle of nowhere, all that atmosphere..."

"And if it's just local legend and creepy architecture," Caleb added, "we still get great content and an adventure."

Matthew sighed, but he was already packing his drone equipment. "Fine. But if I end up as a ghost story on some other YouTuber's channel, I'm haunting all of you first."

They hit the road by noon, Caleb behind the wheel as always, Rose riding shotgun with her camera capturing B-roll of their departure. Matthew sat in the back surrounded by equipment cases, live-streaming their preparation to their eager audience. Liam occupied the rear seat, his leather-bound journal open as he compiled every scrap of information he'd gathered about their destination.

The drive started familiar—interstate highways and truck stops, the landscape gradually shifting from suburban sprawl to rolling farmland. But as afternoon faded toward evening and they turned onto increasingly remote roads, something began to change.

The trees grew denser, their branches forming a canopy that blocked out more and more sky. The underbrush became wild and untamed, pressing close to the road as if trying to reclaim the asphalt. They passed no other vehicles. No houses. No signs of human presence except the cracked pavement beneath their tires.

"GPS says we're close," Rose murmured, her usual chatter replaced by an odd quiet that seemed to infect them all.

The temperature outside was dropping faster than it should have, and shadows were gathering in ways that defied the position of the sun. Even the van's engine seemed muffled, its familiar rumble dampened by the oppressive atmosphere.

Then Caleb hit the brakes.

"There," he said simply.

Through a gap in the treeline, they caught their first glimpse of Angels Chapel. The structure sat in a small clearing like a wound in the forest, its wooden walls weathered to the color of old bone. The architecture was wrong somehow—angles that hurt to look at directly, a steeple that seemed to twist as it rose toward the darkening sky. A rusted iron cross sat crooked at its peak, and the windows were boarded over with planks that looked newer than the building itself.

But it was the silence that truly unnerved them. No bird songs. No insect buzz. No wind through the trees. Just a heavy, waiting quiet that seemed to press against their eardrums.

"Well," Matthew said, his voice artificially bright, "this isn't ominous at all."

Liam felt something cold settle in his stomach as he stared at the chapel. Every instinct screamed at him to tell Caleb to turn around, to drive back to civilization and forget they'd ever received that cryptic email.

Instead, he opened his journal and began to write.

Day 1 - Angels Chapel Investigation The structure exceeds our expectations. Clear evidence of supernatural activity even from a distance. The atmosphere is unlike anything we've experienced. Whatever lives here has been waiting a very long time.

As he wrote, Liam didn't notice the way the chapel's shadow seemed to stretch toward their van, or how the iron cross atop the steeple had somehow straightened itself while they watched.

He only noticed that the silence was so complete, he could hear his own heartbeat.

And somewhere in that silence, something was listening back.