I. The Call

It began with a phone call that didn’t sound like the world I was living in.

The office was buzzing with the same pale rhythm — fluorescent lights, the distant whir of a copier, the faint clacking of keyboards. My monitor glowed with spreadsheets that looked like unending prison bars.

And then my phone rang.
The vibration cut through the static hum of routine like a blade through cloth.

“Danila,” Aunt Klavdia’s voice cracked through the line, thin and trembling. “You need to come. Grandma Melanya’s bad. She won’t survive the night.”

The words didn’t sink in right away.
I looked up at the plastic palm in the corner of the office, the one that shuddered under the air conditioner’s sigh. Its glossy, fake leaves reminded me of her house — stagnant, preserved, lifeless but refusing to die.

I could have said no. I almost did.
We hadn’t spoken in years. After my parents’ car crash, I’d left that village behind like a snake shedding its skin.

But Klavdia whispered, as if she were afraid someone — or something — might hear her:
“She’s calling for you. Keeps saying your name. Danylushka… Danylushka…”

It wasn’t guilt that made me go.
It was curiosity — dark, trembling, almost perverse.
I wanted to see her helpless.
To see those obsidian eyes that once froze me in place finally lose their shine.

II. The House at the Edge

The train rattled through empty fields the color of rust. I sat by the window, knee bouncing, watching power lines cut the sky into nervous, uneven lines. Somewhere between the towns, the air grew heavy — as if memory itself thickened it.

I hadn’t been back since my mother’s funeral. I remembered her last whisper in the hospital:
“She’s not like the rest of us, Danya. Don’t listen when she talks about strength. It’s not strength she wants. It’s control.”

The bus from the station was nearly empty — just a sleeping soldier and an old woman clutching a jar of pickles. The landscape outside grew older with each mile. Roofs sagged. Trees bent. Windows stared, blind and dark.

Then I saw it — the old black house on the hill, leaning toward the ravine like it wanted to fall but never could.
The wood was split and gray. The roof looked like a spine trying to rise again. Even from the road, I could smell wax, dust, and something else — the sweetness of things long dead.

Aunt Klavdia met me on the porch. Her eyes darted between me and the house, as if the building itself were listening.

“She’s waiting,” she said. “She’s been waiting for you.”

Inside, the air was thick — damp, moldy, faintly metallic. The smell of rain and sickness.
Every floorboard creaked underfoot like a living thing.

Grandma Melanya lay in bed, her body swallowed by blankets.
Her face had the texture of paper left too long in the sun. But her eyes — still black, still bottomless — held the same cruel steadiness.

“You came,” she rasped.
Not joy. Not gratitude.
Just certainty.
As if I’d merely arrived on cue in a play she’d written decades ago.

III. The Album

By the second evening, the house began to whisper.

I thought it was the pipes, or the wind slipping through cracks. But sometimes, it sounded like breathing — slow, patient, deliberate.
To distract myself, I asked to clean the attic. Klavdia hesitated, then waved a trembling hand. “Just don’t open the chest,” she muttered.

The attic was a graveyard of objects. Dust so thick it turned the air solid.
Bundles of herbs hung from the rafters, shriveled and gray. A headless doll sat in a corner, its porcelain arms lifted like it was begging for something.

In one corner stood a trunk.
I opened it.

Inside, a photo album.
The first picture was of a woman with hollowed-out eyes — literally. Someone had cut them from the photograph. Underneath, a scrawled note:
“She laughed at my pain. Now she’s silent.”

The next — a man, mouth sewn shut in ink.
“He betrayed the vow.”

Page after page — mutilated faces. Words of spite carved into the paper.

And then, my mother.
Her picture was there — young, beautiful, smiling.
Her eyes cut out.
Beneath it: “Daughter. Weak. Left me.”

Something inside me cracked open. The air around the book felt electric.
The attic window rattled. A cold draft hissed through the cracks.

I ran outside, clutching the album, lungs burning. The fields behind the house swayed, whispering. The air shimmered as if it were alive.

That night, I dreamed of a field — not of wheat, but bones.
Figures rose from the ground, their faces blurred, their hands outstretched.
On their palms: one word — ACCEPT.

IV. The Inheritance

The nights grew longer.
The clocks stopped at three every morning.
Once, I woke to the sound of chanting. Grandma’s voice — hoarse, rhythmic, ancient. Words I didn’t understand. The air in the room rippled, thickened, and then the whispers stopped.

Klavdia wouldn’t look at me anymore.
“She’s choosing,” she murmured once. “You’re her blood. You can’t run from what’s in you.”

The night before it happened, the shadows began to move.
They stretched along the walls, bending toward me like reaching arms. I saw shapes — faces from the album — flickering in the dark. The air tasted of iron.

Then, the door creaked open.
A tall man stepped in. His suit was black, his face blank, his eyes—none. A hollow where a person should be.

“It’s time,” he said, though no mouth moved. “The heir must accept the gift.”

They led me — the shadows, the faceless man — to her room.
Grandma was sitting up, her frail body glowing faintly, like coals beneath ash.
“Danylushka,” she hissed. “You’re mine. Take it. My power. My pain. My victory. All yours.”

Her hand, skeletal, trembled in the air.
Behind her, the shadows writhed like smoke trapped under glass.

The voices came again — soft, coaxing, familiar:
“They hurt you. She will make you strong.”
“Say yes.”

And then —
A memory. My mother’s voice, quiet, warm. The smell of chamomile tea.
“You are light, Danya. Don’t let her take it.”

Something broke inside me.
I whispered, “No.”

She screamed.
The house screamed with her. Windows shattered. The air itself tore. The faceless man burned like paper. The walls bled darkness, and the photographs — every mutilated face — burst into flame.

When I opened my eyes, the bed was empty. Only ashes. And a porcelain cup with a golden rim sitting on the nightstand, untouched by fire.

V. The Ashes

At dawn, I stumbled down the road until a truck stopped beside me.
The driver — an old man with weathered hands — looked at the smoke behind me and asked:
“House burnin’?”
I nodded.
He sighed. “Good. Some houses keep breathin’ even when they shouldn’t.”

I never went back.

VI. Ten Years Later

I live in the city now.
I work at a kindergarten. My days are full of laughter, clay suns, sticky fingers, and small hands tugging at my sleeves.
Sometimes, when I play the piano for them, I feel the air grow light again — like sunlight filtering through childhood.

But at night, when the world falls silent, I still feel him.
The faceless man stands in the corner of my apartment.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just… waits.

Once, I asked my therapist, “What do you do when fear becomes part of you?”

She smiled gently.
“Then you live beside it. You hold its hand and keep walking forward.”

So now, when the shadow comes, I don’t hide.
I turn on the light. I sit at the piano and play the lullaby my mother used to hum — the one about stars and rain and safe dreams.

Sometimes, I think I hear another voice humming along in the dark.
Soft. Familiar. Tender.

Maybe it’s the wind.
Maybe it’s her.
Maybe it’s both.

Epilogue

The fire consumed everything — the house, the walls, the years of silence. But in the ashes, they found one object unbroken:
A porcelain cup with a golden rim.

They brought it to me.
Now it sits on my windowsill.
Every morning, I fill it with fresh chamomile.

When sunlight hits it just right, for a brief moment — only a second — I swear I see a reflection not of my face, but of hers.
Smiling.
Free.