Part One. The Echo of a Party-Era Monolith
The apartment did not smell of dust. It smelled of time that had stopped moving.
It was a dense, peculiar scent: old parquet floors, oak wall panels, and the heavy woolen fabric that had once covered desks in powerful offices. Yulia ran her palm over the massive brass door handle, cast back in the days of the personality cult. To her, a folklorist accustomed to crooked wooden huts in the Arkhangelsk region and the damp moss of Karelia’s forests, this place felt like some strange shrine.
There were no house spirits here. In the thick walls of this Stalin-era high-rise lived different ghosts — the ghosts of the old Soviet elite.
Her husband Denis saw everything differently.
To him, a professional demolition worker, the apartment was an engineering masterpiece.
“The load-bearing walls are a meter twenty thick,” he said with admiration, tapping his knuckles against the corridor wall. “Yulka, you could set off a bomb in here and it would still stand. They built things to last back then. Your grandfather must have been a serious man.”
The inheritance had fallen into Yulia’s life without warning.
Her grandfather, with whom she had barely spoken while he was alive because of old family grievances, had left her everything: antique furniture, a library that made rare-book dealers tremble with excitement, and these one hundred and twenty square meters in the heart of the city.
“We’re going to live!” Denis cried, lifting Yulia into his arms and spinning her around. “No more rented dumps with cockroaches.”
They were an odd couple, but somehow perfectly matched.
Yulia was slender, quiet, always stained with ink and archive dust, piecing together dying fairy tales and ancient funeral laments. Denis was solid, strong, grounded — a man who knew how to destroy the old properly and, more importantly, safely, so something new could be built in its place. His work was almost surgical. One wrong swing of the sledgehammer, and a structure could collapse into a heap of rubble.
But trouble did not come from the haunted apartment.
It came from Denis’s native village.
His parents, Viktor Petrovich and Galina Ivanovna, had spent their whole lives being seen as “people of the soil.” Hardworking, thrifty, with hands hardened by labor. When Denis called to tell them about Yulia’s inheritance, a long, ominous silence hung on the line.
“In the city center, you say?” his father finally asked. “And old furniture too? Well, well.”
A week after the move, his parents arrived with “gifts”: a sack of potatoes and a jar of pickles. But their eyes wandered restlessly. Galina Ivanovna touched the heavy velvet curtains as if weighing them in her hands, while Viktor Petrovich walked gloomily from room to room, making the old floorboards creak under his feet.
They had brought Svetka with them too — Denis’s younger sister, a twenty-five-year-old woman who was always chewing gum and complaining about the unfairness of the universe.
“Well, son,” his father began over dinner after knocking back a shot of vodka. “So now you’re bourgeois, are you? Meanwhile your father humiliates himself in a rotten old Zhiguli. Shameful in front of the neighbors. My son lives in the city, in a palace, while his old man has to stop his car with his feet.”
Denis frowned. He loved his parents and respected how hard they had worked, but his father’s tone grated on him.
“Dad, we just moved in. The apartment needs repairs. The utilities alone are insane.”
“Your wife has an inheritance!” Galina Ivanovna cut in, clinking her fork against her plate. “Or does she not respect her husband?”
Yulia, who until then had been silently serving salad, looked up.
She felt sorry for her father-in-law. She had seen the way he stared at the ceiling moldings — with envy and some childish sense of grievance.
“Denis,” she said softly. “We still have some money left from the wedding. And I can take on extra translation work. Let’s help. We’ll make the down payment, arrange the loan. They need a car in the village. You can’t get by there without one.”
Denis looked at his wife with gratitude.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll get a crossover. But, Dad, we pay half each. I’ll take the loan in my name so the interest rate is lower, but you cover half of every monthly payment.”
“Agreed!” Viktor Petrovich’s face spread into a smile that looked more like a snarl. “You’ve got yourself a golden wife, Denis.”
At that moment, they did not yet know they had not signed a loan agreement.
They had signed away their peace.
The shiny new crossover drove off to the village, while inside the apartment there remained a faint smell of rot — one that no draft seemed able to clear.
Part Two. The Geometry of Insolence
A month passed.
The excitement of moving into the apartment gave way to routine. Yulia spent hours in her grandfather’s study deciphering recordings of funeral laments from the Vologda region. Denis came home exhausted, smelling of concrete dust.
The first warning bell rang when the car loan payment came due.
Denis called his father.
“Dad, the payment goes through tomorrow. Transfer your part to my card.”
There was wheezing on the line, then a cough. Finally, his father’s voice turned pitiful.
“Oh, son, you see, something happened… The roof on the shed started leaking. Roofing slate is expensive these days. All the money went there. Cover it yourself this time, eh? You’re rich now. That Yulka of yours probably sleeps on gold.”
Denis tightened his grip on the phone.
He did not like that “that Yulka of yours,” but he kept quiet.
“Fine, Dad. But next month, no excuses.”
“Of course, son! No question!”
Yulia overheard the conversation and only sighed.
She knew this kind of person from her field trips. In villages, she had met all sorts: some would give you the shirt off their backs, while others would not pour you a glass of water until they were sure they could profit from it. Her in-laws, it seemed, belonged to the second group — though they disguised themselves as the first.
A week later, Svetka called.
“Yul, hi,” her voice said, syrupy as cheap soda. “Listen, I’m coming to the city for the weekend. Can I crash at your place? Hotels are expensive, and you have so much space you could ride a bicycle around in there.”
“Come,” Yulia replied without much enthusiasm.
Svetka arrived not alone, but with three enormous bags.
She behaved as if the apartment already belonged to her. She flopped onto the antique sofa with her shoes on and turned the television up to full volume.
“God, your place is so boring,” she announced, looking around at the oak panels. “Like a museum. I’d tear all this down and do something high-tech. By the way, Yul, I need a new phone. Mine keeps glitching. Mom said you’re kind and would help.”
Yulia froze with the kettle in her hand.
“Svetka, I’m not a charity fund.”
“Oh, come on!” her sister-in-law snorted. “You got this place for free, and now you’re being stingy? We’re family!”
That evening, when Denis came home, Svetka was already ruling the kitchen and eating the delicacies Yulia had bought for a special dinner.
“Oh, brother!” she greeted him with her mouth full. “Tell your wife not to be greedy. I need an iPhone.”
Denis rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly.
He saw how Yulia pressed her lips together, becoming as tense as a stretched wire. Anger began to boil inside him, slowly, like tar heating in a cauldron.
“Svetka, have you ever tried working?”
“I’m finding myself!” she snapped. “You two just got lucky.”
That word — lucky — became the trigger.
Denis remembered how Yulia had spent years traveling on research expeditions, sleeping in sleeping bags, writing her dissertation. He remembered how he himself had breathed cement dust twelve hours a day.
“I barely finished your cheese,” Svetka muttered. “It’s bitter. And anyway, you could have ordered delivery. Sushi, pizza, something. You’ve got MONEY.”
“No, Svetka,” Denis said firmly. “We don’t have money. Dad’s car loan eats up everything we have left. So find your own iPhone.”
Svetka threw her fork onto the table.
The sound of silver striking porcelain rang out like a gunshot.
“Misers! I’m calling Mom. I’ll tell her everything!”
Part Three. The Feast of Vultures
The second month of the car loan arrived sooner than expected.
This time, Viktor Petrovich did not even wait for his son to call. He called first.
“Denis, listen, here’s the thing… Your mother and I have decided we’re not paying for the car.”
“What do you mean?” Denis nearly dropped his hammer drill. He was standing at a construction site, noise roaring all around him, but his father’s voice cut through with perfect, brazen clarity.
“Well, you helped us, didn’t you? Help is supposed to be free. Otherwise it’s not help. It’s usury. And anyway, your Yulka is rich. That apartment dropped into her lap for nothing. Let her pay. We raised you. You owe us.”
That same evening, the entire delegation appeared at the apartment: his father, his mother, and Svetka.
They looked like people storming a fortress.
They did not take off their shoes. They walked straight into the living room, leaving dirty footprints on nineteenth-century parquet.
Yulia was sitting at the table, sorting through archive notes.
“Hello,” Viktor Petrovich muttered. “We need to talk.”
Galina Ivanovna dropped into an armchair and theatrically fanned herself with a handkerchief.
“Yulia, we talked it over and made a decision. Svetka shouldn’t be living in the village. She needs an apartment. You have plenty of space here. Too much, really. Sell this place, buy something smaller, and give the difference to Svetka for a studio. And we’ve decided the car should be fully transferred to us too, without any debt. Pay off the loan early. Why feed the banks interest?”
Yulia slowly removed her glasses.
In her normally calm eyes, something frightening lit up.
It was not the gaze of a modern city woman. It was the gaze of those northern witches whose incantations she studied.
“You want me to sell my family home?” she asked quietly, which made her voice even more terrifying. “So I can buy a studio for a lazy parasite? And pay for your car, which you don’t even use for work, but only drive around showing off to the neighbors?”
“How dare you speak to your mother-in-law that way, you rude girl!” Galina Ivanovna shrieked. “Filthy little intellectual! Everything handed to you on a platter! We worked all our lives! We broke our backs!”
“I broke my back!” Denis roared as he entered the room.
He had heard everything from the hallway.
“I did! And Yulia works like a condemned woman. What about you?”
“You’re henpecked!” his father spat. “Your wife wrapped you around her finger and turned you against your own blood. Disgusting!”
Svetka jumped up, her face twisted with rage.
“And who are you anyway? A freeloader! If not for my brother, you’d be nobody! Hand over the money, or we’ll stay here and live with you. We have the right. We’re your husband’s family!”
“NO. THERE WILL BE NO MONEY.”
Yulia rose to her feet.
She no longer looked fragile.
“You are confusing kindness with weakness.”
“Oh, you painted little bitch!” Galina Ivanovna shouted, raising her handbag. “We’ll find a way to deal with you! We’ll tell all the neighbors what kind of trash you are! Robbing your own father- and mother-in-law!”
Part Four. A Lament of Fury
Denis was about to step forward and shield his wife, but Yulia moved faster.
What happened next stunned him.
He had expected tears, explanations, maybe an attempt to flee into another room. But Yulia chose to attack.
She did not try to save face.
She unleashed hysteria — not the pitiful hysteria of a victim, but a furious, annihilating storm.
“ROBBING YOU?” she screamed so loudly the crystal in the cabinet gave a miserable clink. “Me? You leeches latched onto us and decided the whole world owed you something?”
Her face flushed red, her hair fell loose and wild. She grabbed a heavy folder of documents from the table and slammed it down onto the surface.
BAM.
The sound was like cannon fire.
“You! Greedy! Miserable! Little! People!” she spat each word into their faces. “I gave you a car? I gave you help? And you give me mud on my parquet?”
Yulia advanced toward her mother-in-law.
Galina Ivanovna, who had never seen her daughter-in-law like this before, shrank into the armchair.
“What… what are you screaming for, you lunatic?” she stammered.
“I’M THE LUNATIC?” Yulia burst into laughter, and that laugh was more frightening than the shouting. “Yes, I’m the lunatic! I’m a witch, do you want to know that? I’ll curse you so badly that not only the car — your hands will wither before you can steal from anyone again! I know the words! I know how to call the dead!”
She was talking nonsense, mixing professional jargon with threats, but she did it with such primal force that the superstitious village relatives turned pale.
“OUT!” she shrieked, almost beyond human pitch. “Get out of here before I bring this whole house down on your heads!”
Denis stared at his wife with a mixture of admiration and horror.
She was not crying into a pillow.
She had become a fury.
She had broken their script.
They had expected resistance from an intellectual woman — polite, restrained, soft enough to crush with rudeness. Instead, they got a tsunami of pure, distilled rage.
Svetka began backing toward the door.
Viktor Petrovich opened his mouth to argue, but Yulia grabbed an antique vase — empty, thankfully, and not the most valuable one — and raised it above her head with a wild cry.
“I’ll smash everything! I’ll destroy it all, but you won’t get a single kopeck!” she screamed. “Choke on your envy!”
Viktor Petrovich was not afraid of the vase.
He was afraid of her eyes.
There was not a drop of submission in them. His daughter-in-law was ready to burn down the entire apartment with them inside it rather than let them climb onto her neck.
This was not weakness.
This was a force they did not know how to fight.
Denis understood that the moment had reached its peak.
He walked over to his parents. His anger was different — cold and heavy, like a slab of concrete.
“You heard her,” he said quietly. “You pushed her too far. You pushed me too far too.”
Part Five. Demolishing the Relationship
“Get up, get dressed, and get out!” Denis ordered his parents. His voice rumbled through the room, rising over Yulia’s fading, heavy breathing. “And you too,” he said, nodding at his sister. “Clear out.”
“Son, are you throwing your mother out? Because of this hysterical woman?” Galina Ivanovna tried to play on his guilt, but fear was already visible in her eyes.
“She is not a hysterical woman. She is my wife. And every word she said is true. You’re not parents. You’re consumers. I thought we were family. Turns out we’re just your feeding trough.”
“We’ll… we’ll sue you for support!” his father shrieked, trying to regain control. “You’re obligated to support your disabled parents!”
Denis smiled.
It was a frightening smile.
“Go ahead. Just remember, I’m not only a demolition expert at work. I can carry out a full-scale renovation in your lives too.”
He walked to the coat rack, yanked down his parents’ jackets, and threw them on the floor.
“Get dressed. Time’s running.”
They dressed in silence, hands trembling.
Their arrogance had peeled off them like husk, leaving behind only pathetic, petty greed. Svetka sniffled as she tried to get her foot into her sneaker.
When they were already standing in the doorway, Viktor Petrovich turned around, his eyes flashing with spite.
“Well, choke on your money then! I’ll still drive the car! It’s with me! I have the keys! And you can pay the loan, you little fool!”
Denis shook his head.
“You have the keys. I have the documents. And the spare set too.”
He took out his phone.
“While Yulia was explaining party policy to you, I sold the car.”
“What do you mean… sold it?” his father’s jaw dropped.
“I mean exactly that. To my coworker. He’d been looking for one like it. I sent him the photos and lowered the price for urgency by exactly the amount left on the loan. He’s already on his way to your village with a tow truck. He’ll pick it up straight from your yard. Legally, the car is mine. I can do whatever I want with it.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” his father roared. “My winter tires are in the trunk!”
“Take the tires if you manage to run back to the village in time. And now — GET OUT.”
He slammed the heavy oak door in their faces.
The massive lock clicked shut.
Yulia stood in the middle of the corridor, still breathing hard, disheveled but with her back straight.
Denis came up to her and carefully wrapped his arms around her.
“How are you, my witch?”
“I’m fine,” she exhaled, and the tremor in her voice was already fading. “I just… had nowhere else to put all that energy.”
“You destroyed them,” Denis said with a crooked smile. “Morally annihilated them. Father never expected that. He thought you’d cry in a corner while he strutted around like a lord.”
“I’m a folklorist, Denis,” Yulia said, burying her face against his shoulder. “I know evil has to be driven out with noise and shouting. Otherwise it settles in the house forever.”
The ending was devastating for Viktor Petrovich and Galina Ivanovna.
They returned to the village by bus, shaking for four hours in the stuffy cabin. By the time they reached their house, the tow truck was already carrying the shiny crossover out of the yard.
Denis’s coworker, a huge man with a stone face, showed them the ownership papers and the purchase agreement signed by Denis electronically an hour earlier.
“Take your personal things,” he grunted.
Viktor Petrovich pulled out an old blanket and a car stereo he had already managed to install, feeling the neighbors’ eyes on him.
Those same neighbors before whom he had spent the past month bragging about his “gift from his son.”
“So, Petrovich,” a neighbor called mockingly from over the fence. “They took your toy away? Too big for your boots, was it?”
Svetka, left without any hope of an apartment and without her “fresh start in the city,” threw a scandal at her parents, accusing them of pushing too hard.
Her father blamed everything on Yulia.
“Witch,” he muttered, staring at the empty tire tracks left behind by the car. “A real witch. She bewitched Denis too.”
But deep down, in that dark, sticky place inside himself where he was afraid to look, he understood the truth.
There had been no spell.
It was his own greed that had devoured not only the car, but his son as well.
And from the apartment in the center of the city, from that unbreakable fortress, no more calls came.
The number had been changed.
The door was closed.
The bridges were blown up.
Professionally.
Forever.
