There’s a hand stuck to the access pad, so Oliver presses the code through its fingers.
“OK, control: town’s empty, it’s fucking freezing, I’m entering a haunted castle, and I think there’s an eyeball under my foot.”
“Not a haunted castle, Oli. A haunted alien relic. We’re scientists.”
Inside, the darkness makes his air filters scramble. Movement warnings flare on his helmet and something skitters away from the glow.
“What was that?”
Oliver turns off all suit-lights. Then looks up.
“Oliver?”
“…so what’s the alien equivalent of a ghost, then?”
Above, the darkness is smiling down through a thousand mouths.
Adriana C. Grigore is a writer from the windswept plains of Romania. You can find their fiction in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and others. You can find them online at www.adrianacgrigore.com or on Twitter as @aicigri.
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