The Kitten Under the Snow

I never believed in animal spirits until the winter we moved to the old farmhouse in northern Minnesota. The place had been empty for years, its walls holding the cold like a grudge. My father had taken a job managing a remote logging camp, and we were alone on forty acres of frozen earth, three miles from the nearest neighbor. My brother, Toby, was just a baby, and I was sixteen, tasked with watching him while Dad worked long shifts.

Our cat, Ash, had given birth to a litter of five kittens in a box in the barn. But by the time the first blizzard hit, only one survived—a sickly grey thing with milky eyes. Ash was a good mother, but the cold was merciless, and one by one, the others had simply stopped breathing. We buried them under the pine tree behind the house, tiny mounds in the snow, and I tried not to look at them from my window.

One night, at 5:30 in the morning, Toby woke me with his cries. I dragged myself to Dad’s room, where the baby slept in a crib beside the bed, and I collapsed onto the mattress, too tired to crawl under the covers. The wind howled, rattling the windowpanes, and the snow piled against the glass. I was just slipping into that grey space between wakefulness and sleep when I heard a soft mewling from under the bed.

I thought it was the kitten—Ash had brought it inside earlier, and it was probably nesting in the dust bunnies. But when I looked down, I saw a figure standing in the doorway. A woman, blonde, wearing a blue canvas jacket, the kind you wore for ice fishing. She was too pale, and her eyes were the color of frozen ponds. I blinked, thinking it was my sister, Sarah, who had come to visit, but Sarah was three states away. The woman smiled, and her lips moved, but the words came to me as if through water: ‘How is the kitten?’

I muttered something about the grey one, shaking my head, assuming she meant the litter under the bed. But she tilted her head, and I saw a thin trickle of water run down her cheek, like she was melting. ‘No, the one under the snow.’ She pointed to the window, and I followed her gaze. There, in the moonlight, I saw the pine tree, and the small mounds. But there was a sixth mound, one I hadn’t dug. A shape that moved slightly, as if breathing.

I sat up, fully awake, and the woman was gone. Toby was sleeping, his breath a soft rhythm. I went to the window, and the mound was still there—a tiny grey shape, half-buried in the drift. I pulled on my boots and a coat, and I ran out into the storm, the wind screaming in my ears. I knelt by the mound, and I brushed away the snow. It was the grey kitten, Ash’s only surviving one, but it was dead—its body stiff, its eyes glazed. I had buried it this morning, I knew that. I had wrapped it in a rag and placed it in the ground myself.

I looked back at the house, and in the window of Dad’s room, I saw the blonde woman again. She was holding something in her arms, cradling it. And I realized with a chill that ran deeper than the cold: she was holding a kitten, but it had no face. Just a smooth, featureless grey surface, like a peeling onion. The woman smiled again, and she vanished.

When I went back inside, the kitten under the bed was gone too. Ash was sitting in the corner, grooming her paw, but she kept looking at me, her eyes glowing in the dark. I never told my father. I never told anyone. But every time it snows, I hear a tiny mewl outside my window, and I see a small gray shape moving under the drifts. And I know it’s waiting for me, asking the same question, in that same watery voice: ‘How is the kitten?’