The first rays of the morning sun gently gilded the edge of the pillow on which little Bogdan slept. His breathing was even and serene, and his hand clutched the corner of a soft blanket. Arseny, his father, stood in the nursery doorway, his heart filling with quiet, profound happiness. He watched the boy’s eyelashes flutter, as if at the last echoes of some sweet dream. It seemed that this day, like all the ones before, would be filled with nothing but light and calm.
The first time it happened was an hour after he woke up. Bogdan, who had just been playing with bright blocks, suddenly froze. His gaze, usually clear and fixed on his father, turned vacant, focused on nothing. He slowly, almost ceremoniously, crawled to the farthest corner of the room, where the walls met at a right angle, and pressed his whole little body against them. His cheek lay against the cool wallpaper, and his eyes closed. Arseny saw this for the first time and smiled. “What a little explorer—he’s found a new way to study the world,” he thought warmly. He even took out his phone to capture this touching, slightly funny moment and sent the picture to his sister. “Our little thinker is deep in contemplation again,” he captioned the photo.
But when on the third day the scene repeated itself with frightening precision, the smile faded from his face on its own. This no longer looked like a harmless childish quirk. Every hour, as if following some unknown internal schedule, Bogdan would stop whatever he was doing, turn away from his father, from his toys, from the entire surrounding world, and slowly, inexorably head for that same corner. He didn’t cry, didn’t laugh, didn’t try to say anything. He simply stood there, pressing his face to the vertical surface, immersed in an absolute, ringing silence. Sometimes it lasted a minute, sometimes longer, until Arseny, his heart squeezed by a nameless anxiety, would go over and pull him away from this strange occupation.
The worry, light at first like morning mist, began to thicken into a heavy, oppressive lump. Arseny was raising his son alone. His wife, Veronika, had died on the day their boy was born. Since then his entire life, all his thoughts, had been devoted to this fragile being. He was an architect, a man of order and logic, used to calculating and controlling everything. But how could he control this? How could he logically explain a child’s pull toward a cold, lifeless wall?
He spent sleepless nights at the computer, typing desperate searches. “Toddler stands facing wall,” “Child turns away from people,” “Strange behavior in a one-year-old.” The answers the internet produced chilled his blood. “Possible early signs of autism spectrum disorder,” “Response to hidden psychological trauma,” “Disruption of emotional contact.” The local pediatrician, with whom Arseny made an appointment, listened attentively but in the end only spread his hands.
“You know, children—they’re like little aliens. Maybe he just likes the tactile sensation of the cool surface? Maybe he’s soothing his nervous system that way? Or perhaps it’s just a temporary developmental stage that will pass on its own.”
But Arseny felt—this was not a stage. In that silent, stubborn pull toward the corner there was something too deliberate, too personal, too hard-won. It wasn’t a game. It was a ritual.
One day, coming home earlier than usual, he found his son in that very pose. Bogdan stood in the corner, his small palms pressed tight against the wallpaper with its cheerful animal pattern, his forehead resting on the wall. There was such concentrated detachment in the boy’s posture that Arseny’s breath caught. He approached quietly and crouched beside him without touching him.
“Son,” he whispered, his voice trembling, “why do you do that? What do you see there?”
There was no answer, of course. But Arseny thought the child’s breathing faltered for a moment, as if he were trying to hold inside something far too huge and heavy for his tiny body.
A few days later Arseny noticed another detail with a jolt. Bogdan always chose the very same, specific corner. No other interested him. As if only that square meter of space were sacred. Arseny moved the dresser that partially blocked the wall and examined it thoroughly. He checked the wallpaper for stains, looked for cracks, signs of mold, gaps where a draft might come through. Nothing suspicious. Yet somehow the air in that corner felt thicker and colder than anywhere else in the room. From that moment on, peace deserted Arseny’s sleep for good.
He began spending his nights sitting in a chair opposite his son’s crib with a laptop on his knees, pretending to work but in truth never taking his eyes off Bogdan. And the most surprising thing—while sleeping, the boy never showed any restlessness. He slept peacefully; his dreams, to all appearances, were tranquil. He was drawn to the wall only in the daytime. Only in those moments when his father looked away for a second or stepped out of the room.
And then came the scream. It was deep night; on the digital clock glowed red numbers—2:14. The silence was torn not by a simple cry, but by a piercing, frantic shriek of terror that came through the baby monitor. Arseny leapt from bed, his heart hammering up in his throat. He rushed into the nursery and froze on the threshold. Bogdan was standing in his corner again, but this time his little body was taut as a bowstring, his fists clenching and unclenching convulsively, his whole being shaking with a soundless tremor. Arseny ran to him, scooped him up, and held him to his chest.
“It’s all right, sweetheart, Daddy’s here, Daddy’s with you, it’s all right…”
But Bogdan didn’t calm down. On the contrary, he arched away, his fingers clutching at his father’s pajamas not in search of comfort, but trying to push off, to break free, to return to the wall. His scream grew louder, more desperate. That night Arseny cried for the first time in many years. He sat on the floor clutching his son, who was thrashing in hysteria, and understood—this wasn’t a whim, not an illness in the usual sense. It was something else. Something very, very serious.
With the first light of dawn, he dialed a number he had found a week before but hadn’t managed to call. A child psychologist.
“I understand this may sound strange,” he said, his voice hoarse from sleeplessness, “but I’m sure my child is trying to tell me something. And what he’s trying to say, believe me, is terrifying to the core.”
The next day, Dr. Levina came to their apartment. She was calm, with a gentle, attentive gaze. She played with Bogdan unhurriedly, spoke to him in a soft, sing-song voice, watching his every reaction. And then the boy, as if waiting for his moment, stood up on his still-unsteady legs and with the same measured gait as always headed for his corner. He pressed himself to the wall, and his little shoulders went slack. Dr. Levina watched, and her face grew grave.
“Arseny,” she said quietly, drawing him aside, “answer me with complete honesty, please. Since your wife passed, has anyone else been living here regularly? Nannies, relatives?”
“No, no one,” Arseny shook his head. “Only nannies I hired during the day. But none of them stayed longer than a few weeks. From the very first minute Bogdan would meet them with nonstop crying. In the end they themselves quit.”
The doctor nodded, thinking over his words, then asked to be left alone with Bogdan for fifteen minutes. Panic stabbed through Arseny. He had never left his son with a stranger. But in the psychologist’s eyes he saw not just professional interest, but a sincere desire to help. He agreed.
He went out into the hallway and pressed to the glass inset in the door. Bogdan didn’t cry. He simply sat on the floor, then went back to the wall. And then Arseny saw his son’s lips begin to move. At first there were only incoherent sounds, then syllables, and finally, through the glass, came something that made his blood run cold.
When Dr. Levina came out to him, her face was pale.
“He said… He very clearly said: ‘I don’t want her to come back.’”
“What?” Arseny felt the floor drop away beneath his feet. “But he… he only says separate words! ‘Mama,’ ‘Papa,’ ‘give’…”
“I’m one hundred percent sure. That’s exactly what he said.”
They returned to the room. Bogdan sat on the floor with his back to them, his posture expressing the deepest dejection. Arseny came over and knelt before him, trying to catch his gaze.
“My sunshine… Who don’t you want to see? Who mustn’t come back?”
The little boy turned his head slowly, very slowly. His huge blue eyes were full of tears. He looked straight at his father, and his lips, wet with tears, moved, forcing out three words that chilled the soul:
“The aunt in the wall.”
Arseny’s breath stopped. His child—who had barely begun to grasp human speech—had uttered something that should not have existed in his consciousness. Those words exuded a graveyard cold.
Dr. Levina squeezed his hand.
“This may be the echo of a powerful trauma. Possibly some real memory that his psyche can’t process. You mentioned the nannies changed often…”
“Yes,” Arseny said dully, an image already surfacing in his mind. “There was one… Her name was Marina. She worked only a week. It was that week that Bogdan almost stopped eating and sleeping; he cried constantly…”
They pulled up the archive from the home security camera, which was usually pointed at the play area. They found the right date. On the screen appeared a tall, thin woman in a dark sweater. Her movements were smooth—too smooth—and her face remained oddly impassive. Bogdan sat on the rug, absorbed in sorting his blocks. But as soon as she approached him, the child fell instantly silent, his body went rigid, and then he quickly, almost in panic, crawled to his corner and buried his face in the wall. The woman did not try to comfort him or call him back. She simply stood and watched his hunched little back. And on her lips played a thin, almost imperceptible smile.
Arseny watched the recording and felt physically ill. He covered his face with his hands, trying to swallow the lump rising in his throat. Subsequent calls to the staffing agency only confirmed his worst fears. Marina had worked under forged documents. The phone number she left was disconnected. Further searches ran into a void.
The next night, unable to overcome his mounting horror, Arseny moved his son’s crib into his own bedroom. For the first time in many weeks, Bogdan fell asleep quickly and peacefully; his breathing was even. But at three oh seven in the morning, Arseny woke to a strange sensation of emptiness and a faint, barely audible whisper. He propped himself up on an elbow—the crib was empty.
A cold dread stabbed through him like a knife blade. He jumped up and rushed into the hallway. Bogdan stood there in his pajamas, barefoot, facing the wall again.
“Bogdan!” Arseny shouted, running to him.
The boy turned. His face was twisted in a grimace of mute fear, and his lips trembled desperately.
“She… she came back…”
At that very moment, from the now-empty nursery came a dull, heavy blow, as if something huge and massive had been slammed with all its force. Clutching his trembling son, Arseny ran to the doorway. He switched on the light. On the wall, in that same accursed corner, gaped fresh, deep scratches, as if someone had dragged enormous iron claws across the wallpaper. The air in the room had turned icy, cold to the bone. Without another thought, Arseny grabbed a blanket, wrapped his son in it, and carried him out of the apartment. They spent that night in the car, parked in the most crowded place in the neighborhood.
The next day, after going through all the circles of hell, Arseny found and brought to the apartment a woman named Tatyana, who—according to acquaintances—dealt with things that defied ordinary explanation. She wasn’t a psychic or a witch; she called herself a “cleaner.” Tatyana walked through the apartment in silence and without hurry. In the nursery she stopped dead.
“There’s something here,” she said quietly. “Something old and very unpleasant. It doesn’t live here; it… watches.”
“Watches me?” Arseny asked hoarsely.
“No,” the woman shook her head, her gaze full of pity. “It was watching the child.”
She took from her bag a strange device that looked like a compass with many needles. When she brought it to the ill-fated corner, one of the needles began to spin madly, stopping and then jerking into motion again. Then Tatyana lit several wax candles, set them around the room’s perimeter, and began to chant something in a drawn-out cadence—old-fashioned, unfamiliar. Standing in the doorway with Bogdan in his arms, Arseny didn’t understand the words, but he felt the heavy, oppressive atmosphere in the room begin to dissipate slowly, bit by bit.
That night, for the first time in many weeks, Bogdan did not approach the wall. He played with his toy cars, crawled across the floor, and even laughed when his father tossed him into the air. Days passed, then weeks. The corner in the nursery stayed empty. The sunlight seemed brighter; the air in the apartment—lighter and fresher. The weight that had pressed on their shoulders all that time gradually lifted.
One morning Arseny was making breakfast in the kitchen. He fed his son pieces of fresh pancake with jam. Bogdan laughed, his cheeks smeared with sweet strawberry syrup, clapping his hands merrily. Arseny looked at him, and in his heart—wounded and weary—hope flickered for the first time in a long while.
“Tasty, son? Do you like Daddy’s pancakes?” he asked, smiling.
But the toddler suddenly stopped laughing. His gaze turned serious; he pointed a little finger toward the hallway, toward the nursery. Arseny froze, trying not to betray his inner panic. He gently took the small hand and drew his son close, hugging him tight. Bogdan didn’t resist. He simply laid his head on his father’s shoulder, his breathing calm and even.
Weeks turned into months. The apartment was filled with quiet and peace. No more standing at the wall, no more nighttime whispers, no more new scratches. On Bogdan’s second birthday, Arseny lit two small candles on the cake. He looked at his son’s radiant face, at his clear, bright eyes, and softly whispered—speaking to him, but really to himself:
“I don’t know what it was, son. I may never understand it. But I know one thing, and this knowledge is stronger than any fear: you are safe now. I will always be by your side.”
Bogdan clapped his hands happily, blowing out the candles, and Arseny, looking at him, made a vow to himself—to always, to the end of his days, listen not only to the words his child speaks, but also to what he keeps silent about. Because sometimes it is that silence, that soundless cry of the soul, that is the most important message in the world.
