“The wallpaper here is newer,” I said, running my fingers over the wall behind the bulky bookshelf. Dust had settled deep into my skin.
Oleg waved wearily without turning around.
“Anya, what does it matter? Let’s just sort through her books and go home. I feel like this house has absorbed the smell of medicine and death.”
He was right. The scent of valerian and dried herbs seemed to have seeped into the very walls, into the yellowed lace doilies, into the heavy velvet drapes. But I sensed something else.
A barely perceptible hint of lavender—the one Ekaterina Pavlovna loved so much—and something else… sweet, dusty, like the air in an old theater.
“Help me move the bookshelf.”
“Why?” Oleg finally turned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s a brick wall behind it. We’d just be wasting time we don’t have.”
“Please,” I said, my voice firmer than I expected. “She always said there were secrets in this house. Remember how she’d laugh so strangely? As if only she knew some private joke.”
He looked at me with a long, heavy gaze, full of all the shared pain of recent years. Pain his mother had skillfully highlighted with each visit, each casually asked question about my health. He sighed, and silently, with resignation, grabbed the carved edge of the shelf.
The old wood gave with a deafening creak, scratching the floor. Behind it was indeed wallpaper—faded floral, but a shade brighter. No baseboards. Just a clean cut along the floor.
I pressed my hand against the wall. My palm sank into a pliable void. It wasn’t a wall. It was a door.
Oleg froze, his face drawn tight.
“What the hell…”
The door opened silently, releasing that same cloying smell from the darkness. We stepped inside and froze.
Before me was our living room.
Not a replica—ours. The same sofa with the ugly yellow upholstery we had inherited from his grandmother.
The same coffee table with the chipped corner I’d been meaning to lacquer.
Even the crack in the ceiling curved just like at our house. It was impossible.
But the room was filled with children.
Or rather, dolls. They sat on the sofa in a row. Stood along the walls. Lay in tiny, handmade cribs placed in the corners. Dozens of cloth, porcelain, and knitted bodies.
A whole silent daycare.
Their glass eyes stared into nothing.
Oleg made a suppressed sound, almost a groan, and stepped back. I, like in a dream, approached one of the dolls.
It sat in a small rocking chair, dressed in a blue knitted romper.
The exact same one I had knitted for my nephew three years ago and proudly showed to my mother-in-law.
Ekaterina Pavlovna had smiled her quiet, understanding smile and said, “You have golden hands, Anya. Such a shame they go to waste.”
“Close the door,” Oleg’s voice was hoarse, alien. “Immediately close it and shove the shelf back. We won’t tell anyone about this. Understand? No one.”
He didn’t look at me. His gaze was fixed on the doll in the blue romper. He understood too.
“Tell them what?” I gestured around the horrifying doll theater. “That your mother spent years building this shrine to our childless marriage?”
“Don’t say that!” He turned sharply toward me. “She was sick. Lonely. It’s… it’s just her peculiarity. Harmless. She dealt with it that way.”
“Harmless?” I stepped further into the room, and something cracked under my foot. I picked up a tiny, exquisitely molded clay rattle. Hand-painted.
“She knew we’d been at the reproductive doctor last Tuesday. I didn’t tell her. Did you?”
Oleg stayed silent. His face had gone ashen.
I approached the table, an exact copy of ours. On it lay an album—not ours, but a new one in a fine leather cover. I opened it.
On the first page was a glued-in photograph: our wedding photo. Around it, in clumsy, childish handwriting, were names: “Mishenka,” “Petenka,” “Seryozhenka.”
The names we once playfully went through, dreaming of a son—in our bedroom, in whispers.
“Where…?” I whispered, flipping the page. The rest of the pages were blank, but each had a designated spot for a photo and a name already written: “Katenka,” “Nadenka,” “Lenochka.”
“She came to clean when we were at work,” Oleg muttered. “Remember, she offered to help? Said it was hard for you, that you get tired. She just wanted what was best.”
I remembered. Her quiet care, her insistent offers to cook dinner, to mop the floors.
And I remembered how after she left, I could never find my things, how I felt like a stranger in my own house. How Oleg told me I’d become nervous and was exaggerating everything.
I slammed the album shut. Dust rose in a beam of light streaming from the doorway.
“This isn’t care, Oleg. This is obsession. She didn’t just want grandchildren. She created them here, in this… set. She lived our life while we weren’t watching.”
“Enough!” He grabbed my hand. His fingers were icy. “We’ll burn all this. Right now. We’ll find a gas canister and burn it. And forget. These are just the sick things of a sick person.”
“No,” I pulled my hand free. “I can’t forget this. Because these aren’t just objects. They’re an answer. An answer to why all these years I felt like I was losing my mind. Why I felt someone’s gaze on me even in an empty apartment.”
I looked into the dolls’ glass eyes. They no longer seemed empty. Expectation was frozen in them.
“I said we’ll burn it all!” Oleg tried to push me from the room, but I braced myself against the doorframe. Fear in me shifted to something else—cold and sharp, like a shard of glass.
“You’re afraid,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. “Not of what’s here, but what it means. It’s easier for you to see her as a saintly martyr than to admit she was a monster. And you indulged her.”
I pushed him away and stepped back into the room. My gaze no longer wandered; it searched. I knew there had to be more. Something to explain not only her madness but my years of despair.
Under one of the doll cribs was a small wooden box with a lock. A hairpin could open it.
“Anya, don’t, I beg you,” Oleg stood in the doorway, unable to enter. He looked as if he were about to faint. “What difference does it make now? She’s gone. Let her secrets remain hers.”
I didn’t answer. The lock clicked.
Inside, on velvet lining, weren’t jewelry. They were my things. The lost earring I’d been searching for six months.
The keychain from my first keys to our apartment.
A small photo of my mother, the one I carried in my wallet. Things I’d assumed I’d misplaced due to my own forgetfulness, and Oleg—my “hysteria.”
And beneath them—a diary.
I opened it to the last entry. Date—one week before her death.
“Anya cried again. The doctor said there’s almost no chance. She doesn’t understand it’s for her own good. Their child would be unhappy, sick, like her. But mine—they will be perfect. I almost finished the new doll. I’ll name her Nastenka. She’ll look like me as a child.”
I flipped back a few pages.
“Poured her another herbal decoction. She complains of fatigue and brain fog, but that’s good. It means the herbs are working. Oleg notices nothing. He’s a good son. He believes I give her vitamins. He’ll understand when the time comes. He’ll accept my children.”
Decoction. I remembered her herbal teas she brought me in a thermos. “For your health, dear. Drink.” I drank. I believed her. And my husband watched and nodded.
Enough.
Something inside me, stretched to the limit for years, snapped with a deafening crack. I slowly closed the diary.
“No gasoline will be needed,” my voice was calm, almost indifferent. I looked at my husband. Horror reflected in his eyes. He understood from my face.
“Anya…”
“I’m calling the police.”
“What? Why? Are you crazy?” He lunged at me. “What will you tell them? That your dead mother collected dolls? They’ll lock us up!”
“I’ll tell them I found a suicide note,” I lifted the diary. “A note where your mother confesses she poisoned me for years. And this”—I gestured around the room—“is the physical proof of her insanity.”
“You won’t dare! You’ll destroy her memory!”
“She destroyed my life,” I said sharply. “And you just watched. And now you want me to burn the only proof I’m not crazy. To bury the truth with her.”
I took out my phone.
“That won’t happen, Oleg. Her story is over.