The Winter of the Dead

Snow in Montreal never looked white to Sebastián. That January morning, as he stepped down the stairs of his building in Côte-des-Neiges, the first thing he noticed was the dirty ice piled up along the edges of the sidewalk, mixed with half-buried trash bags, cigarette butts, and salt crystals that crunched under his boots like sugar on glass. The cold bit into his face and ears, a constant buzz on his skin that eased only when he buried his nose inside his scarf.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs to test the first slippery patch of sidewalk with his sole. The street was already awake: delivery trucks humming, two students with oversized backpacks arguing in French, and a Filipino woman dragging a stroller across the packed snow. At that hour, Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges smelled of fresh bread and stale fryer oil; the little window of a boulangerie released a burst of sweet steam each time the door opened and closed.

Sebastián pulled his wool hat tighter and fished in his pockets for his bus pass. Three months in Canada and he still wasn’t used to checking three times for everything: OPUS card, gloves, hat, lunch. His frozen fingertips brushed the plastic rectangle and he let out a short sigh. While waiting for the 165 to take him downtown, he mentally rehearsed the day at the construction site: mix, brace, lift, keep quiet. Show up, work, don’t complain. The recipe. Only when he glanced up at the leaden sky, the question snuck back in: had they really done the right thing coming here?

The bus appeared shrouded in vapor; when its doors opened, it exhaled a warm breath that smelled of heated plastic, sweat, and disinfectant. Sebastián climbed in and stood by the fold-up seats. Inside, everything was fogged with human breath: opaque windows, damp scarves, gloved hands gripping the metal pole. A baby wailed somewhere in the back, smothered in layers of clothing. Two old men argued in French about the black snow that gathered along the streets; he only understood half, but the tone of complaint was universal.

Through the misted glass he recognized the gray façade of the Jewish General Hospital, just a few blocks away. Ambulances with flashing lights lined the curb, and a paramedic pushed a man in a wheelchair who coughed in sharp, violent bursts, as if trying to expel his throat. A nurse in a mask spoke rapidly into her phone, walking against the wind. At that hour, four sirens already screamed from that single corner.

Sebastián looked away. Lately, there had been too many emergency sounds; they slipped into the day like drafts under a door. He gripped the pole tighter and thought of Daniela and the kids: Rodrigo, who hated French with the exact passion he loved his video games, and Avi, who was an antenna; she picked up everything adults tried to hide. He closed his eyes for a second, let the rumble of the bus rock him, and counted the stops from memory.

The 165 plodded along with its resigned rhythm. Passing a Jean Coutu, he saw a group of people at the entrance with worn-out masks, hoarding sanitizer. A woman argued that the disinfectant wipes were gone. A man dropped a pack of toilet paper and didn’t even bend to pick it up; he just stared at it on the floor as if he had forgotten what the object was.

Don’t think nonsense, he told himself. Work, come back. That’s it.

Upstairs, in the apartment, Daniela was wrestling with the morning. The kitchen smelled of toast and hot chocolate. The windowpanes, fogged from inside, gave a blurry view of the cars flowing down Côte-des-Neiges. Rodrigo, thirteen, dressed in his winter uniform (blue hoodie, shirt underneath, cap ready), wrestled with the zipper of his coat while tossing half-sentences at his mother.

—That teacher doesn’t explain anything, Mom, —he muttered, headphones hanging from his neck. —It’s just “faites vos devoirs” and that’s it. What the hell?

Avi had conquered half the table with colored pencils, scissors, and her thick notebook. She was ten, her hands always smudged with graphite as if ink lived beneath her nails.

—Don’t touch my drawing, —she said to Rodrigo without looking up. —I’m making a monster.

—Again with your weird stuff? —Rodrigo rolled his eyes. —There are no monsters, Avi. Just ogre teachers.

Daniela set two mugs in front of them, forcing her voice to sound cheerful.

—Avi, you finish that drawing after school. Rodrigo, you take the pocket dictionary, the one with phrases, okay? It’ll help.

—It doesn’t help, —Rodrigo grumbled. —They talk too fast and laugh if you sound weird.

Daniela didn’t answer. She swallowed the urge to tell him that officials laughed at her too when she mispronounced words, that she also knew the icy shame of being clumsy in another language. Instead, she focused on the radio; the local station chattered rapidly in French. She caught “urgence,” “hôpital,” “agressif,” and then something about the weather and an air front dropping the temperature.

—What are they saying? —Avi asked, always curious.

—That it’s going to be colder, —Daniela lied with practiced ease. —Put your gloves on tight.

She tied her scarf in front of the living room mirror. Behind her, the TV—rarely used—played a news report showing an overcrowded emergency room; the caption mentioned “fever cases” and “aggressive behavior.” She changed the channel. Cartoons. Better.

The walk to school was a choreography learned the hard way in December. Daniela took the kids by the hand and steered them around ice patches as if they were landmines. At the building’s entrance, Mr. 3B—a Moroccan with a perfectly trimmed beard—beat his rug with short strokes. Mrs. Singh’s daughter ran down with her backpack open, and Daniela stopped her with a smile, zipping it shut so nothing spilled.

The air outside was a clean knife. Crossing Jean-Talon southward, the mix of smells shifted: espresso from a machine, soy sauce from a Chinese restaurant door, sweet bread from a Portuguese bakery. The whole city seemed ready for the day—everyone except Daniela’s body, which still felt exiled from itself.

At Côte-des-Neiges and Jean-Talon, traffic knotted. An ambulance blocked a lane, a paramedic argued with a driver who refused to back up, and two policemen gestured at a man clinging to a lamppost. Something clenched in Daniela’s stomach: the man’s arm was bare—odd in this cold—and his forearm mottled with yellowish stains.

—Another ambulance? —Rodrigo finally lifted his eyes from his phone.

—Lots of flu going around, —Daniela said. —Don’t look. Let’s keep walking.

She dropped Rodrigo off at the secondary school with a quick hug he endured without returning—still embarrassed by affection in public—and walked Avi a few blocks further to her elementary. They hugged tight to ward off the cold. Avi whispered in her ear, eyes closed as if she wanted to stay glued there.

—Mom... my monster’s eyes look like that man’s.

Daniela didn’t understand until she turned back toward the lamppost: the man arguing with the police had raised his face, and his eyes were clouded, covered by a yellowish film that drained all light. Dirty glasses, she told herself. Strange light. She gripped her daughter’s hand harder than necessary and smiled.

—You’ll show me later, okay? It’s beautiful.

Darkness came rushing in with that January haste that makes four o’clock feel like midnight. Sebastián returned from the site with a stiff neck and numb hands inside his gloves. He had spent the day carrying loads, listening to two Québécois argue about the Canadiens, and to a Honduran laugh bitterly about his cousin waiting two days for a hospital bed. “Weird fever, he gets aggressive, they tied him up. They say it’s a virus.”

Opening the apartment door, he was met by the smell of stewed beans, old comal, and home. For a moment, just a moment, he felt they could handle anything.

—I saw three ambulances at the corner today, —Daniela said from the kitchen, no preamble. —Three, Sebastián.

He hung his coat, brushed off imaginary snow, and leaned over the pot.

—The hospital was full this morning. Outside, a man was coughing like he was tearing himself apart, —he said quietly.

Rodrigo sprawled on the couch with headphones on, controller in hand, eyes glued to the screen. Daniela shot him a look that meant turn it off or I will; he sighed theatrically and hit pause. Avi kept to her refuge: the chair by the window, notebook as shield.

Sebastián leaned over her shoulder. The drawing showed a hunched figure, mouth open, two green blotches spreading from its neck and forearm. One detail unsettled him: the monster’s hands were stiff, like dry bones.

—What’s this, sweetheart? —he tried to sound playful.

—I saw him on the street, —Avi said, not looking up. —He walked weird. Like he didn’t know how to use his legs.

Sebastián and Daniela exchanged a glance. They didn’t speak. What could they say—that nothing was wrong, that the girl imagined it? That the world wasn’t slipping off its axis?

They ate dinner early. Beans, rice, tortillas warmed on the flame. Rodrigo complained about French homework, pronunciation, classmates who laughed at everything; Avi told a joke about her teacher and laughed alone; Daniela asked about the site; Sebastián answered in monosyllables, exhausted. Routine was a balm they rubbed on themselves like ointment on a wound that wouldn’t heal.

When Sebastián rose for a beer, he heard something outside: a dull thud, a body against a wall, then hurried footsteps—several pairs—echoing down the long hallway. Instinctively he peered through the peephole: it returned a warped sliver of corridor, yellow light flickering.

Daniela, by habit, pulled aside the curtain of the balcony that faced the street. Below, two patrol cars and an ambulance fought for space amid wailing sirens. A paramedic leapt out with a bag, slipped slightly, and kept running. A man in a mask shouted something in French Daniela couldn’t catch. Neighbors in the building opposite poked their heads out like winter blossoms: one instant, then gone.

—Again, —she whispered, as if the building could hear.

The pounding at the door made them all jump. Three quick knocks, desperate, like coins bouncing on a table:tac-tac-tac.

—S’il vous plaît! Help!—a female voice, panting, broken.

Sebastián approached cautiously, heart climbing his throat like a small beast. Daniela grabbed his arm reflexively.

—It’s Mireille, —she said softly. —The neighbor from 2C. It’s her.

Mireille was a Haitian woman with a wide smile and kind hands who had translated their mail and taught them to saymerci, bonne journéecorrectly. She gave them sweets at Christmas and always asked Avi about her drawings. The image of that voice begging for help sent cold water through Daniela’s stomach.

—Rodrigo, take your sister to your room, —she ordered without turning.

—What? No! —Rodrigo froze where he stood, clutching the controller like a useless weapon.

—Avi, with your brother. Now, —Sebastián said, his tone brooking no argument.

He opened the door.

The image seared itself into his eyes like a flash. Mireille stood swaying, collapsing inward. Her coat was torn at the shoulder, her blouse soaked in blood from collarbone to waist. Under the yellow hallway light, that blood looked wrong—too dark, almost brown, as if it had clung there too long.

—Il est fou... mon frère...—she stammered, voice shattered. —He’s not... not normal...

At the end of the corridor, a silhouette lurched forward, dragging one foot. The flickering light flashed its face on and off like a fickle torch: sunken cheeks, cracked lips, eyes clouded with a milky gleam. Its mouth hung open, releasing a growl—deep, wet, as if it expelled mud instead of air.

The stench arrived seconds later: sour sweat, iron, something rancid, a malignant sweet note like rotting fruit. Avi clung to her mother’s waist. Rodrigo had stepped forward, pale, knuckles white around the controller. Daniela’s body reacted on its own: she yanked her daughter back and searched for anything—a barrier, a weapon, a prayer.

—Mireille... —Sebastián stretched out a hand. —Come inside.

—No, no...non...—she shook her head, eyes wide, trembling. —Il mord... he bites.

The silhouette quickened. Not running—throwing itself forward in three jerky, arrhythmic strides, as if the body tried to remember how to move. Mireille’s shoulder slammed against the doorframe. Sebastián reacted too late: he reached to pull her in just as the figure loosed another growl, deeper, cavernous.

Sebastián slammed the door shut.

The lock clicked loud, deafening in the silence that followed. Behind the wood, the hallway breathed with the electric hum of old buildings; then came the scrape of something dragging, rough against the wall—skin, maybe nails. And at intervals, a breath that wasn’t breath but a torn sack inhaling and exhaling.

Daniela clutched Avi so tight the girl protested. Rodrigo pressed the controller against his stomach and swallowed audibly. Sebastián braced both hands on the door as if his forearms could hold back the world.

No one spoke. In the distance, the street sirens swelled then faded. The cartoons still played silently on TV. Chocolate in the mugs steamed faintly, forming a thin skin on top. On the table, Avi’s drawing lay face up: the green-stained monster stretching its arms toward the door.

Sebastián knew, with a certainty that carved into his chest, that tonight would be the last normal night in Montreal. And that from the knock on the door onward, everything else would try to break in.