They stopped at the gate of their modest wooden house. Six months of working up North had made this moment—finally stepping through the door, throwing their suitcases in the hallway, and collapsing on the couch—feel like a long-awaited dream.
But something wasn’t right. There were boards scattered on the ground that weren’t there before. The curtains had been changed.
Oleg pushed open the gate, but it creaked loudly—a strange, unfamiliar noise. The hinges had always been silent before.
“Mom?” he called out, still unable to believe what was happening. “Are you here?”
A familiar figure appeared in the second-floor window. Svetlana Petrovna, a sixty-two-year-old woman with a hairstyle as if molded from wax, furrowed her brow as she looked down at them.
“Get out!” she suddenly shouted, her voice unusually high-pitched. “This is my house! Mine! No one invited you!”
Natalia dropped her purse. Oleg stood frozen, his mouth slightly open.
“Mom… What?…” He took a few steps toward the house. “What’s going on?”
“You weren’t here, so you’re gone for good!” She slammed her palm on the windowsill. “I live here now. Svetlana Viktorovna! Remember the name!”
Oleg stared at her, stunned. The woman at the window—his mother—looked both familiar and completely foreign. There was something unsettlingly unfamiliar about her gaze.
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Natalia tried inserting the key into the lock, but it wouldn’t fit.
“Oleg… they changed the locks,” she whispered, her voice filled with genuine fear.
“Gali-na!” Oleg called out to the neighbor, who had been watching from her garden. “Do you know what’s going on here?”
The elderly woman in a faded bathrobe approached the fence, lowering her voice.
“I didn’t want to get involved… But your mother’s acting strange. She arrived about a month after you left. With some people. There was a loud bang when they kicked in the door. Then they changed the locks.”
“What?” Oleg paled. “Why didn’t you call us? Why didn’t you call the police?”
Gali-na shrugged.
“She’s still your mother. She said you asked her to look after the house. I thought it was a family matter. I don’t meddle in other people’s affairs.”
“Get out!” Svetlana Petrovna screamed again from the window. “I’ve repainted everything! It’s all different now! Black and white! Understand? The right way!”
Oleg slowly sank onto the porch steps, running his fingers through his hair.
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“Natalia,” he whispered, “call an ambulance. Something’s wrong with Mom.”
Natalia reached for her phone when she heard the creaking of floorboards on the porch.
Svetlana Petrovna appeared at the door, like a ghost from the past, in a faded blue dress with a small print.
The dress hung off her frame, emphasizing her sharp collarbones and a disturbing fragility.
“Mom…” Oleg stepped closer, pressing his hand against the glass. “It’s me. Oleg. Don’t you recognize me? We just went on a work rotation, like we said.”
Her eyes reflected nothing but coldness. Her gaze slid over him like a display window—lingering, but not engaging, not allowing anything inside. The corners of her lips trembled into a semblance of a smile.
“I see who you are,” she said with unnerving clarity. “But you’re wrong about me.”
Svetlana Petrovna was no longer who she used to be. She had become Svetlana Viktorovna. She was the one now in control. The one who made the decisions. The one who brought order.
Natalia embraced her husband’s shoulders, gazing fearfully at his mother. Svetlana Petrovna suddenly smiled—a strange, doll-like smile that only made everything more terrifying.
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“Do you want to come in?” she asked in a completely different tone. “I can let you in. If you’re guests. If you’re not claiming my house.”
Svetlana Petrovna unlocked the door with an almost feverish enthusiasm. The keys clinked in her trembling hands, and Natalia couldn’t help but think that she was opening not a door, but a vault.
“I did everything right,” she muttered as the lock clicked. “I protected everything. I saved it all.”
Oleg looked at his wife, his eyes silent with a question. Natalia nodded faintly. She had already called the ambulance, stepping aside to speak quietly to the dispatcher. The crew would arrive soon.
“We’ll come in as guests, Mom,” Oleg said carefully. “We just want to see how you… settled in.”
The door creaked open with a prolonged sound, and the smell hit them—paint, candle wax, and something sour, unpleasant.
Svetlana Petrovna stepped inside first, gesturing for them to follow her.
“Welcome to the abode of truth!” she announced dramatically.
Natalia stepped over the threshold, frozen, unable to trust her own eyes. The hallway, once covered in light floral wallpaper, was now drenched in darkness.
Everything around them—the walls, ceiling, even the smallest baseboards—was coated in black paint. Even their antique mirror with a carved wooden frame had vanished under an impenetrable layer of dark covering.
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“Mom…” Oleg managed to whisper, freezing behind Natalia. “What have you done?”
“This is a space of purification,” Svetlana Petrovna explained in a businesslike tone, as though giving a tour. “Here, all past connections are washed away. The dark corridor leads to the light.”
She quickly passed through the hallway, almost running, and flung open the door to the living room. The contrast was overwhelming.
While the hallway drowned in blackness, the living room blazed white. White walls, white ceiling, even their old brown couch had been roughly painted white, with peeling spots exposing its original color.
“This is Svetlana Viktorovna’s domain,” she proudly declared. “Cleanliness. Order. Clarity.”
Strange inscriptions were visible on the walls of the living room, neatly written in her handwriting: “Point of support. Power of light. Right choice.” On the central wall, a large inscription stood out: “HOUSE OF SVETLANA VIKTOROVNA.”
“My God, what happened to our things?” Natalia whispered, looking around the room.
It resembled a shipwreck—only the heavy furniture had survived, too heavy even for Svetlana Petrovna’s relentless determination.
“Everything’s sorted by categories,” she motioned towards the kitchen, proud like the curator of an exhibition. “Trash is separated from gold. Shells from essence.”
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Oleg moved forward like a somnambulist, pulling Natalia into the epicenter of destruction.
