I am not a woman who frightens easily.
I raised four children in a drafty Vermont farmhouse, buried a husband, survived two cancer scares, and once chased a black bear off my back porch with a broom. I do not believe in ghosts. I believe in practical solutions and good strong coffee.
But I cannot explain what happened during the blizzard of this past January. I’ve tried. Lord knows I’ve tried.

My name is Delores Marsh. I’m 71 years old, and I live alone on a twelve-acre property outside of a small town in central Vermont. My nearest neighbor, a kind retired couple named the Hendersons, lives about a quarter mile down the road.
When the weather forecast started showing red across the whole state, I did what I always do. I drove into town, filled the truck, stocked the pantry, picked up Biscuit’s arthritis medication from Dr. Pelletier’s office, and came home to prepare.
Biscuit is my 14-year-old golden mix. He moves slowly these days and sleeps more than he’s awake, but his brown eyes are still sharp and his tail still wags every single morning when I come downstairs. He has been my constant companion since Harold died. Some mornings, he is the only reason I get out of bed.
By Tuesday evening, the snow was coming down hard. By Wednesday morning, I couldn’t see the tree line.
I wasn’t afraid. I had everything I needed. Firewood stacked high, a pot of beef vegetable soup on the stove, three library books on the nightstand. Biscuit was curled at my feet.
But Wednesday evening, something shifted.

Biscuit and I were watching the six o’clock news when he suddenly raised his head. His ears went flat against his skull — something I’d only seen him do once before, years ago, when a bobcat had gotten into the barn.
He was staring at the back hallway. The one that leads to the guest room we never use anymore.
“Biscuit,” I said softly. “What is it?”
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t wag. Just stared into that dark hallway with an intensity that made my chest go tight.
I told myself it was the storm. The old farmhouse groans and shifts in high winds, pops and settles like a living thing. Biscuit is old. His hearing plays tricks sometimes — he barks at the radiator, startles at shadows.
I got up, turned on the hallway light, checked the guest room. Nothing. Window was locked. Closet was empty. I even checked under the bed, feeling slightly ridiculous about it. Nothing but two old suitcases and a layer of dust.
“See?” I told Biscuit. “Nothing.”
He finally looked at me. His tail gave one slow wag. But he didn’t look convinced.

I kept the lights on longer than usual that night. Finally, around ten-thirty, I banked the fire and we went upstairs to bed.
Our bedtime ritual is something I’ve never told many people about because it sounds a little foolish when you say it out loud. It started when Biscuit was a puppy and got into the habit of crawling under the bed — I think it felt like a den to him. I’d reach my hand down along the side of the mattress, he’d lick my fingers, and then he’d crawl out and jump up to sleep at my feet. Fourteen years later, we still do it every single night. It’s our thing. Our little handshake before sleep.
I got into bed. An old episode of a program Harold used to love played quietly on the small TV. Biscuit sat in the doorway the way he always does, waiting.
I patted the mattress. “Come on, Biscuit. Come on.”
He padded in slowly, and I heard him settle underneath with a long sigh.
I reached my hand down.
Something licked it.
I almost pulled away. Something told me to, something animal and immediate in my gut. But I told myself I was being foolish. Of course it was Biscuit. Of course it was. Who else would it be?
Except it didn’t feel like Biscuit.
Biscuit licks with enthusiasm. He’s sloppy and warm and he goes after your whole hand like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. This was different. This was slow. Methodical. And cold — not room-temperature cold, but cold the way a stone is cold when it’s been in a dark place for a very long time.
I yanked my hand back and sat up.
Biscuit was standing in the bedroom doorway. He hadn’t moved from where he’d been sitting. He was watching me with his ears flat and his tail low, and he made a sound I had never heard from him in fourteen years — a long, thin whine, almost like a child crying.
He had never gone under the bed.
The TV flickered. The room felt very, very small.
From beneath the mattress, slowly, came a sound. A sound like breathing — but too slow, too deep, too deliberate to belong to anything living.
I did not move for what felt like a very long time.

I will tell you what I did next, and I will tell you I am not proud of it.
I grabbed Biscuit, tucked him under my arm, and we slept in the truck in the garage for the rest of the night with the doors locked. I ran the engine in fifteen-minute intervals to stay warm. It was the longest night of my life.
In the morning — pale, shaking, but steady — I came back into the house. I checked every room. Every closet. Under every bed.
There was nothing.
In the guest room, though — the room Biscuit had been staring at the night before — I found the window I had checked the evening before. It was unlocked. I was certain I had checked it. I was certain.
I called my daughter Renee and told her the whole story. She drove up from Burlington the next day with her husband and went through the whole house while I sat at the kitchen table with Biscuit in my lap.
They found nothing. No sign of entry. No footprints in the snow outside any of the windows.
“Mom,” Renee said gently. “You were alone for days in a storm. You were stressed. You might have just been half asleep and imagined —”
“I didn’t imagine it,” I told her.
She squeezed my hand. She didn’t argue.

I still live in the farmhouse. I’m not leaving — Harold built this house with his own hands and I intend to die in it. But I sleep with the lights on now, and Biscuit sleeps in the bed beside me, not at my feet.
And I have not reached my hand down along the side of the mattress since that night.
Whatever was there — whatever answered when I called — I don’t want to know if it’s still waiting.
Some things in this life, I’ve decided, are better left unanswered.