The Snow Maiden

By J.J. Beer

Snegurochka is a small, frozen, hostile planet light years from Earth. The research/mining facility on the planet’s surface has been plagued by strange occurrences and mysterious deaths. The prevailing rumour is that it’s haunted. For most of the staff, it’s just a rumour — until now.

All contact with the facility is lost.

Corporal Matt Sloane and his elite special ops unit is sent to investigate. Complicating matters, they’re saddled with a group of scientists. Among them is brilliant astrobiologist Dr. Kate Fairchild, Matt’s ex-girlfriend.

Once in the facility, Matt, Kate, and the others find it deserted, the staff butchered. But soon they are confronted by the same enemy that killed the facility’s staff — an enemy unlike anything they’ve ever faced, capable of bringing their greatest fears and nightmares to life. Matt must do battle with this threat, face his inner demons, the traumatic memories of a past mission gone wrong, and get his people out alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.J. Beer
• Release date: Nov 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9780995448919

Book preview

Chapter One

Thank you, God! Dr Allison Marsden’s lips curled into a gleeful smile. After five years of living on this miserable slush ball, I’m finally going home. Earth is no paradise, but it beats the hell out of Snegurochka.

She pushed back from her desk and rubbed her eyes beneath the pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose. A wave of exhaustion hit her and she leant back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head, subsequently freeing two books from the shelf behind her and triggering an avalanche of literature.

‘Son of a…’

Allison looked around her office, which had basically been her home away from home for the past five years. She turned in her chair, picked up the books, and carefully wedged them back beside the string of other academic titles in the bookshelf, making sure that they were all sitting in a neat, uniform row. She then turned back around to face her computer’s holographic display screen and her chair struck the corner of the filing cabinet beside her desk, sending a pile of loose papers crashing to the floor.

‘Damn it!’ She scooped up the papers and dumped them on top of the cabinet, arranging them in semi-organised piles. ‘I’m not going to miss this place,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I can’t wait to finally kiss it goodbye.’ She took a deep breath, and then adjusted her glasses as she peered into the holo-screen. ‘Okay. It’s time to concentrate.’ She straightened up in her chair. ‘I have to hurry and finish this report, and then I’m done for good; no more work, no more craziness, and no more Snegurochka.’

The QWERTY light-board—a small keyboard of holographic light—beamed brightly to life when she waved her hands over the sensor, and she immediately picked up where she left off. She narrowed her eyes on the text as she read the last paragraph and then began typing, and after a while started to mutter under her breath as her fingers worked the keys: ‘The methane density in recent ice core samples…’

The words rolled off her tongue as though her brain was on auto-pilot. She cupped her mouth as she yawned, but continued typing. After almost thirty minutes of methane density, beryllium-10 absorption and cosmic ray strength, and results from paleo-atmospheric samples, the report eventually came to an end.

‘Finished… and it only took three hours of overtime.’ She opened the printer beside her computer, loaded it with a polymer block, and repeatedly hit the button on its broad face. ‘Come on, print already.’ It thrummed to life and began to disgorge pages of synthesised paper. ‘Hurry up.’ A couple minutes later it stopped with a loud beep, and in the tray sat her final 160-page quarterly geology report.

Allison smiled. Time to hand this in, and then pack for tomorrow.

She stood from her chair, a tall, slender wisp of thirty-four. She fastened her coffee-coloured hair with a hair band, and then took a moment to straighten her black T-shirt and brush down her jeans as she tugged on her lab coat. Then as she turned for the door she grabbed the stack of papers from the printer and slipped them into a burgundy-coloured folder, which she then tucked under her right arm.

She froze, keeping her hand hovering over the door’s electronic latch. She felt her throat tighten and a cold sweat on her neck. There’s nothing out there. It’s just a corridor… a long, dark, creepy corridor.

‘For the love of…’ she groaned. ‘I’m not afraid of the bogeyman.’ She let out a heavy sigh as she pressed her thumb to the latch, and the door opened with an electric pzzt. She stepped out of her office and into the five-metre-cubed corridor. The door closed behind her. Everything was still and silent.

Oh, shit…

She peered down the lengthy expanse of steel and concrete with childlike concern. To help take her mind off her unease, she started to count the fluorescent bulbs dotting the ceiling at regular five-metre intervals. This place is like a crypt. Her shoes clanged on the steel grating as she walked, ever so slightly echoing down the corridor behind her. The British Interstellar Company spared no expense—

Clunk-clunk-clunk!

Allison snapped her gaze up and peered at the turn in the corridor directly ahead where the noise had come from.

‘Careful, Till.’ The man’s voice echoed around the corner. ‘There’s still a current in this thing—’

Crack!

‘Verdammt!’

‘I told you to be careful!’

Allison rounded the corner and saw a couple of maintenance technicians working on a busted heating unit. One of them stood idly while his partner was wedged beneath the grating with only his legs visible. Tools and parts were splayed out across the corridor, surrounded by a boundary of yellow caution tape.

A chill began to creep up her spine, making her skin bristle with gooseflesh. Snegurochka’s average surface temperatures were in the neighbourhood of 70 Kelvin, or about -200 degrees Celsius, and with this heater off-line the cold was seeping through the facility’s thick walls of steel-reinforced concrete.

‘Hi, guys.’ She offered a pleasant smile.

‘Good evening, Doc.’ The maintenance tech looked up from his partner and watched her approach.

‘Got some trouble, Steve?’ Allison asked.

‘It’s nothing too dramatic, just a busted heater.’ Steve wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand.

‘A bit late to be on the job, isn’t it?’

‘It’s gotta be done, Doc. It’s our last day, remember?’

‘Oh, I remember.’ Allison smirked at the thought. ‘I’m counting the seconds.’

‘Speaking of which, you should probably call it a night, Doc; you don’t wanna sleep in and miss the bus tomorrow morning.’ Steve grinned. ‘The trip home is probably just a little bit far to walk, ya know.’

The BICS Umbria was scheduled to arrive sometime early tomorrow morning and was bringing in a replacement crew for the staff it was taking back to Earth. The trip would take roughly five years, though they’d be in stasis, in a state of dream-filled hibernation, and would be woken when the ship eventually entered the Sol System. Allison had never been more excited about anything in her whole life.

‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,’ she assured him. ‘Hell will have frozen over before I miss that ship.’

‘It’s already frozen, Doc,’ he replied. ‘We’re standing on it.’

Crack!

A bright white electrical spark erupted from the heater, and Allison held up a hand to shield her eyes.

‘Arschloch!’ The maintenance tech beneath the grating wriggled.

‘I wish the company would just get it over with and terraform this ball of ice.’ Steve looked down at his partner for a moment. ‘That way a broken heater would just be a nuisance and not life-threatening.’

‘Would you visit this place if it was terraformed?’ Allison asked.

‘Hell no,’ Steve retorted. ‘You couldn’t pay me to come here… again.’

‘Crank up the temperature a few hundred degrees and toss in a cocktail of breathable gasses mixed in the proper proportions and this place might be bearable for a few minutes a day.’ Allison grinned.

‘I should buy the lease from the company and terraform the planet myself.’ Steve laughed. ‘I could build a few ski resorts and villas and then just sit back, relax, and make a mint off all the rich holidaymakers.’

‘Now there’s an idea.’

‘You think a bank will approve me for a trillion-credit loan?’

‘Probably not.’ Allison wrinkled her nose.

‘Yeah, I didn’t think so,’ Steve said with a giggle. ‘There’s no point in spending a fortune on terraforming a planet if you can’t earn back your investment and then some. You know how it’s done, Doc.’

Allison nodded. Snegurochka had nothing to offer but a single resource; terraforming it would be a waste of time and money. It was impossible anyway; the dwarf planet lacked the essentials for human life.

The other maintenance tech backed out from beneath the grating. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s give it a try.’ He grabbed a wrench from the clutter of tools and then slammed it into the side of the heater in rapid succession, eliciting a sharp clunk-clunk-clunk! The heater whirred to life a moment later.

‘Till, you are a scholar and a gentleman,’ Steve hooted.

‘That’s because I do all of the work, dummkopf.’

‘Well, good night, guys.’ Allison stepped around the caution tape. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

‘Good night, Doc.’

Allison tightened her grip on the folder. She quickly continued down the long corridor until she came to a door comprised of a single sheet of ash-grey steel embedded in the wall. She looked up and read the name printed above the door: Douglas Harding, PhD: Chief of Scientific Research Operations.

She paused as she reached for the latch.

‘Hello?’ She peered down the corridor the way she had come.

There was no one there.

It was deserted.

I could’ve sworn I heard…

Allison shook her head as though she was attempting to shake the thoughts loose. She pressed her thumb to the latch, and the door zipped open with an electric pzzt, revealing a cramped office on the other side.

‘No, no, please. Go ahead and let yourself in. Don’t let the fact that my office door is closed discourage you at all.’ Doug threw his hands up in frustration. ‘You know I run this facility? I can fire people if I want to.’ The forty-five-year-old let out an explosive snort and ran a hand over his balding head as he continued to stare down at the messy pile of papers scattered across the desk in front of him.

‘Save it.’ Allison rolled her eyes. ‘We all know that you’re not going to fire anyone, not when you can’t replace us.’ She made her way into the office, gingerly running her fingers over the wilted pink flowers of the attention-starved begonia beside the door, and then came to a stop in front of his desk.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Doug grumbled without looking up from his work. ‘I think I can guess why you’re here.’

‘You can?’

‘It’s one of either two things; you’ve gone and fallen hopelessly in love with me, or you’re here to complain.’

Allison gave a mirthless snigger. ‘Neither.’

‘Well, I’m not a mind-reader,’ Doug said, sighing heavily. ‘I assume that you’re going to tell me what you want?’ He looked up, and saw that she was staring at the photos lining the shelf beside him.

Allison’s gaze was focused on one in particular.

‘That’s my niece,’ Doug said. ‘She’d be the same age as Lizzy…’ He stopped himself. ‘I didn’t mean—’

Allison waved her hand, dismissing his comment. She didn’t like to think about her daughter, let alone talk about her. It was still too painful a memory. ‘Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.’

He gave a nod. ‘Sure.’

Changing the subject, she said proudly, ‘My last day of work is now over, so I thought I’d personally hand in the quarterly geology report.’ She dropped the burgundy folder on his desk and folded her arms across her chest. ‘We’ve made some interesting discoveries that I think you might find intriguing.’

Doug groaned and took a moment to rub his eyes. ‘The composition of this ball of ice is the least of my concerns at the moment.’ He resumed sorting the disorderly mess of papers on his desk into separate piles. Most of them went straight back into their bulging magenta folder, but the rest he stacked beside it.

‘Problems?’

‘You could say that.’

Allison looked down at the magenta folder on his desk, and realised that it was the quarterly psychological report. She then saw that the papers he was stacking were each adorned with a red tag stencilled with the word ‘urgent’. She started to count the tags, but there were simply too many of them.

‘That’s a lot of red tags.’

‘This goddamn planet is making us all go stark raving mad.’

‘It’s Snegurochka,’ Allison said. ‘What’d you expect?’

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting a full-blown epidemic,’ Doug replied.

‘Cuthbert Syndrome?’

‘What else?’

Jesus… Allison swallowed a lump in her throat. There’s an epidemic. Her stomach churned at the thought.

‘Speaking of which…’ Doug looked up at her sharply. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ Allison said. ‘I’m still a little tense, but fine.’

‘How’s your treatment going?’

‘I’m off the meds.’ He frowned, and she added, ‘I’ve been swimming every morning to help my nerves.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘So how bad is this epidemic?’ Allison asked.

‘It’s not good,’ Doug replied. ‘More than a third of our staff have been affected. Some cases have even evolved into total psychosis; they’ve been hearing voices, hallucinating, having delusions, the whole nine yards. There have even been a few deaths, which we’ve been told to call industrial accidents.’

‘Why hasn’t anything been done about it?’

‘It’s not quite that simple.’

‘Why?’

‘What’re we supposed to do?’ Doug sighed. ‘The disease can only be diagnosed if people talk about how they’re feeling, but if they don’t talk about it then it goes unnoticed until it’s too late. Some people are just embarrassed about it, others don’t believe, or don’t want to believe, that it can happen to them.’

‘What’re the shrinks saying about all this?’ Allison asked.

Doug shook his head. ‘They seem to think that everyone’s fine; they believe that they’re just stressed out!’ He scoffed. ‘They should tell that to the four stupid bastards that have gone and killed themselves.’

‘I suppose the shrinks are just doing their job.’

‘Cuthbert Syndrome is easy to treat; all it takes is rest and relaxation. Even if that fails, we’ve got enough anti-psychotic drugs to dope up an entire asylum.’ Doug tapped his knuckles on the pile of red-tagged papers in front of him. ‘But that’s why I don’t understand how this bunch of morons let it get that far.’

‘They’re sick,’ Allison said. ‘They didn’t know any better.’

‘Emerson was sick a few months ago and was shouting about how he could see through time or some crap, and since then the rumour mill has been going berserk.’ Doug sneered. ‘Have you heard the latest?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You know, the rumour about the facility being haunted.’

‘Oh, that.’ Allison grinned, but it faded when she remembered the chilling feeling she had just before she stepped into his office. ‘I heard about a pair of maintenance techs that tried to free a kid who got stuck in a duct, but it was empty when they opened it. The kicker is there have never been kids on Snegurochka.’

Doug’s face scrunched into a scowl. ‘Pure horseshit,’ he hissed. ‘It’s just some idiot fanning the flames of paranoia with lies. There’s no proof to support it, just second-hand gossip like that idiotic story.’

‘So what’re you going to do?’ Allison asked, and pointed at the pile of papers marked with red tags.

‘Nothing, because it won’t be a problem this time tomorrow,’ Doug replied. ‘I’ll make a note of it for the med techs, and make sure the worst cases are given a nice dose of stims before they’re tucked into stasis for the ride home.’ He added, ‘With any luck they’ll get better when they’re back on Earth. Then again, depending on the severity of their condition, they may not. We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘What about you? How are you coping?’ she asked. ‘Have you seen or heard anything unusual?’

‘Of course not.’ He quickly looked away from her, nervously adjusting his glasses. ‘That’s just stupid.’

‘Just wondering. I wasn’t trying to—’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason in particular, I was only curious.’ Allison shrugged. ‘I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.’ She straightened her lab coat and turned for the door, reaching for the electronic latch.

‘Allie, wait a second.’ Doug looked up at her. ‘What time were you planning on finishing up for the night?’

‘I was planning to finish three hours ago,’ Allison said with a lopsided grin as she looked back at him.

Doug sank back into his chair. ‘Oh, never mind.’ He resumed sorting through his papers, putting most back into the magenta folder, and the rest, those marked with a red tag, onto the growing pile.

‘But I was going to get something to eat before I pack it in.’ Allison tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘With all of the processing and cataloguing and writing that report, I haven’t had time all day.’

Doug smiled. ‘Well, I’m just about finished up… care for some company?’ He sat forward in his chair and tapped a hand on the burgundy folder she had put on his desk. ‘We can discuss your report. Lord knows I won’t get a chance before we muster out, especially with this place going down the tubes.’

Allison smiled and gave a nod before opening the door. ‘I’ll meet you over in the cafeteria in fifteen.’

‘I’ll see you there,’ Doug said.

Allison stepped out of the office and the door zipped shut behind her. She took a moment to look around; the corridor was cold, silent, and deserted, as usual. I’m definitely not going to miss this place. She took a deep breath and then headed off, listening to the rhythmic rattling of her shoes on the grating.

*

Sitting at the table near the easternmost exit, Allison glanced around the cafeteria. It was an enormous concrete chamber lined with three dozen rows of identical plastic tables and chairs, all of which were currently empty.

Looks like I’m the only one here. She looked down at her watch; the time was now just going 10 p.m.

‘I see you’ve started without me—’

‘Jesus!’ Allison jumped.

‘Did I startle you?’ Doug dropped a tray of food on the table as he pulled out a chair and sat opposite her.

‘Yeah, just a bit.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Forget about it.’

Doug pointed at her tray. ‘It looks like you’ve got a meal fit for royalty.’

Allison peered at the gray glop that had been splattered into her tray. ‘Synthesised food,’ she said with a grimace. ‘Here’s yet another thing I’m not going to miss about this place when we muster out tomorrow.’

‘I like the food,’ he replied. ‘It’s grown on me.’

‘Seriously?’ She sneered. ‘It’s put together on a molecular scale by a machine with imaginary tastebuds.’

‘Yes, but it has all of the nutritional and dietary elements that we need,’ he said. ‘What more could you want?’

‘Flavour would be nice.’ She rubbed her eyes.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Just tired is all.’

‘Well, we’re going to get plenty of rest tomorrow.’ Doug dunked his spoon into the gray slop in his tray. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said as he heaved a spoonful into his mouth, ‘but I’ve been packed for weeks.’

‘Same.’ Allison feigned a smile.

‘The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is play a round of golf. How about you? Do you have plans?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ she said as vaguely as she possibly could. ‘I’ll probably go and see my family and friends.’ Although she wouldn’t admit it, her plans really only went as far as eating a tub of peppermint ice cream in front of the TV; after all, she’d have fifteen years of soap operas to catch up on.

He nodded at that, and in between chewing a mouthful of food, he said, ‘So tell me about your report.’

‘Well, first of all, we’ve discovered that this planet is a lot older than we thought; it’s around ten billion years old,’ she replied. ‘Second, it’s an extra-solar capture and used to be a lot larger. We think that it may have been struck by a meteor or comet, or even a planetoid, roughly 150-million years ago.’

‘Ten billion years?’ Doug seemed to think about that for a moment, and then asked, ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘We’re sure,’ Allison replied. ‘The evidence is in the ice and rock.’

‘If you’re right, Snegurochka would be one of the oldest planets in our neighbourhood,’ he said as he sprinkled salt into his food, and then mixed it in with his spoon. ‘You mentioned interesting discoveries?’

‘Yes. The evidence itself is the most startling find of all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We found large quantities of rock and metals, such as iron, nickel, and iron-nickel alloys like kamacite and taenite scattered throughout the iceshelf. They were fairly rare at one kilometre, but increased exponentially at three,’ Allison replied, now picking at her food. ‘We also found iridium in that rock.’

‘Right,’ Doug said, shooting her a glance before turning his eyes back on his food. ‘That was in your last report.’

‘Yes, but this time we concentrated our efforts on deep-core drilling and found something very interesting.’

‘Yeah?’

‘We found trace amounts of insolensium.’

‘That’s not exactly jaw-dropping news,’ Doug replied. ‘Snegurochka holds the largest deposit ever found.’

‘Sure.’ Allison nodded. ‘Insolensium has been the primary incentive for terraforming planets for the last two centuries. Snegurochka isn’t suited for terraformation, so I’m guessing it’s probably the only reason the company built this facility.’ She scoffed. ‘We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the insolensium.’

‘This facility produces 60 percent of all insolensium,’ Doug replied, nodding as he ate. ‘It’s amazing stuff. After it has been refined, it’s roughly 100-times stronger than titanium, and it becomes stronger and lighter under increasing pressures. It forms anti-protons when subjected to high-energy particle bombardment, which is the cheapest and easiest way to produce large quantities of anti-matter.’

Allison nodded with annoyance. ‘Believe it or not, I do know a few things about it.’ She frowned as she tapped her spoon on the edge of her tray. ‘That’s why our latest samples are so puzzling.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We found an unidentified chemical element in our latest ice core samples.’

‘What do you mean by unidentified?’

‘Our most recent samples contained a chemical element that we were unable to positively identify with our equipment,’ she said. ‘It appears to be similar to insolensium, and we think it may be an isotope.’

‘Are you certain?’ he asked, staring at her. ‘I mean, are you just guessing or have you verified the results?’

‘We don’t have the resources.’ Allison shook her head. ‘The BIC doesn’t exactly rate geology as a priority among the research that it carries out on Snegurochka. I’ve been telling you for more than a year now that my department is badly understaffed, and we’ve been using obsolete equipment to boot.’

‘Yes.’ Doug rolled his eyes. ‘I remember.’

‘But I can’t blame the company; this planet is basically one big ball of methane and nitrogen speckled with trace amounts of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Core samples collected near the surface are corrupted by it, and trying to sift through it makes our most advanced machines curl into the foetal position.’

‘So what’re going to do?’

‘All we can do is report our find and take the samples back for analysis on Earth. They may have been contaminated, or our data may have been corrupted, or it may have been an analytical error on the software side,’ Allison said. ‘We’re not going to jump to conclusions, but we’re pretty sure it’s all genuine.’

‘You realise that if you verify your findings you will have discovered the first naturally-occurring stable isotope of insolensium.’ Doug broke into a smirk. ‘That’s big. As a matter of fact, that’s Nobel big.’

‘I told you that you’d find my report intriguing,’ Allison said with a grin.

‘How many isotopes of insolensium are there now? Three? Four?’ Doug said. ‘There was only one when I was in college.’ He snorted. ‘It makes me feel like a dinosaur when I say it out loud like that.’

‘There are four of them,’ Allison replied. ‘That Russian team announced they had created a new one shortly before we left for Snegurochka, remember?’ She laughed. ‘There are probably more by now.’

‘Well, they’re all synthetic and they decay through proton emission in…’ He scratched the side of his head. ‘What’s the longest half-life of the lot? I’m pretty sure it’s something like a couple yoctoseconds.’

‘That sounds about right.’

‘None of them have practical uses, except study,’ Doug said. ‘But if we could get our hands on a stable isotope…’

‘Here’s hoping our results are verified.’ Allison plucked the cup from the corner of her tray and held it up. ‘It’d be good to give undergrads something to study that doesn’t vanish the moment it’s created.’

‘Here here,’ Doug said.

They tapped their cups in a mock toast and then drank. Allison cringed as the sweet neon-blue liquid hurt her teeth.

‘It’d be one a hell of a find,’ Doug added. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘I think a lot of the credit should go to Jason,’ Allison said. ‘He helped discover it before… the accident.’

‘Of course.’ Doug nodded solemnly.

‘I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about earlier…’

‘Which was?’

‘The facility being haunted.’

Doug groaned as he dropped his spoon into his tray. ‘Don’t tell me you believe it?’ he asked, glowering at her.

‘Honestly,’ Allison said, ‘I don’t know what to believe.’

‘Look,’ he shot back. ‘It’s understandable that everyone is on edge and depressed; that’s what happens when you spend so much time on another planet so dissimilar to Earth. Earth is hardwired into our DNA, and Cuthbert Syndrome is the result of our minds trying to cope with being separated from it. When all’s said, everything that has occurred around the facility is the result of psychological stress.’

‘But—’

‘If we start to feel anxious, all we have to do is take time off to relax,’ he said. ‘Spend time in the bio-room, read a book, or—like yourself—go swimming; just do something to take our minds off it all.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway; we’ll be getting off this rock tomorrow.’

‘People have died because of it.’

‘I know they have,’ he said. ‘That’s because those stupid sons of bitches let their anxiety go too far and wound up with a goddamn psychosis. We all knew the risks of being stationed in a place like this.’

‘Still…’ she replied. ‘I don’t think that’s all there is to it.’

‘Then what do you suggest it is?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What could possibly make you consider that the facility is haunted?’ Doug said. ‘You clearly have a reason.’

‘I don’t think the facility is haunted,’ Allison replied. ‘I’ve just seen and heard strange things around these corridors, and I think it would be foolish of us to prematurely dismiss the idea without investigating.’

‘What strange things have you seen and heard?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I’m dying to hear it.’

‘Fine.’ Allison sat up. ‘About a month ago I was taking several ice core samples over to the Astrogeology Department. I slipped over and hit my head, and when I got up I saw one of the samples was sitting in the mouth of an air duct. When I reached down to get it I heard something; I don’t know what it was, but…’

‘Yes?’

‘It sounded like Lizzy.’

‘Your Lizzy?’ Doug’s eyes glazed. ‘Allie, you know that’s not possible.’

‘That’s when the duct started to close, but the steel canister of the sample saved my life by shorting it out before it could crush me,’ Allison said. ‘What do you think? Does that qualify as strange?’

‘And you think that that was caused by… a ghost?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I just think it was very odd I heard my daughter’s voice right before I almost died.’

‘I don’t doubt that you think you heard it.’ Doug moved in his chair. ‘I just think that you’re under a hell of a lot of stress, and at the time you may have been influenced by a sudden bout of Cuthbert Syndrome.’

‘Sure.’ Allison laughed. ‘That was probably what happened.’ She scooped a spoonful of food into her mouth and swallowed as quickly as possible in an attempt to avoid the bland, plastic-like taste.

‘C’mon, Allie, you know this haunting stuff is horseshit. It’s a bunch of scared people trying to find a reason to justify their fears.’ He nodded, agreeing with himself. ‘There’s really nothing paranormal going on here—there is no poltergeist or bogeyman, you’ll see. Everything will pan out eventually.’

‘So you’re honestly saying you’ve never seen or heard anything around the facility that defies explanation?’

Doug scoffed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Allison stared at him.

It took a moment, but he eventually relented. ‘Fine, I admit that I’ve heard some pretty weird things echoing through the corridors, but I haven’t seen any ghosts or monsters, if that’s what you wanted to know.’

She smirked triumphantly, and then just took a sip of her drink. ‘Truthfully, I don’t buy into the whole haunting stuff either. But I must admit, after everything that’s happened, after hearing all the things people have seen and heard around the facility, I can’t help but check under my bed before I go to sleep.’

Doug paused, staring at her in silence for a few moments. ‘I am a scientist, and I believe in fact and logic, not superstition.’ He pointed his spoon at her. ‘There is a rational explanation for what is happening around this facility; it’s called Cuthbert Syndrome, and it has been studied at great length for many years. There is no evidence to support the existence of the paranormal, and as such I don’t believe in ghosts.’

Allison shuddered as an icy breeze washed over her. ‘Did it just get colder in here all of a sudden?’ She watched as her warm breath trailed out of her mouth and into the freezing air as she spoke.

Doug stood up and looked around. ‘That’s impossible. The