My grandmother was standing in the doorway.

I didn’t respond then.
Not because I agreed, but simply because at that moment the words seemed rude, inappropriate, like a loud noise in a room where the lights had just gone out.

I placed a cup of tea in front of her. The steam rose slowly, like the breathing of a living creature, and for a moment it seemed to me that it was the only thing there that still moved naturally, effortlessly.

Grandma took the cup in both hands. Her fingers were still shaking, but no longer from the cold, but from a deeply hidden inner tension. She didn’t look at me. She stopped staring at a specific point, as if her gaze was now turned inward, toward a place only she could reach.

“It won’t be long,” he added, almost whispering. “You won’t even notice…”

I noticed it.
Right away.

Not her suitcases leaning against the wall. Not the smell of someone else’s cold, brought into the house. But the way the silence itself had changed. It had become denser, heavier, as if invisible threads had stretched between the objects and every movement now required an effort not to disturb them.

We barely spoke that day.
I suggested she lie down and rest, and showed her the room, which had once been a cross between a storage room and a guest room. She thanked me overly politely, the way strangers thank you, not like the ones who held your hand when you were learning to walk.

When the door closed behind him, I was left alone in the kitchen and suddenly a strange thought struck me:
it seemed to me that it wasn’t a person who had appeared in the apartment, but some sort of event that hadn’t yet completely concluded.

The days passed slowly, like water under ice.
On the surface, everything was as usual: work, phone calls, messages.
Inside, however, something wasn’t right.

Grandma was… comfortable.
Too comfortable.

She rarely asked for help. She moved silently around the apartment, almost noiselessly, as if afraid of leaving a trace. She ate little. She spoke even less. Sometimes I noticed her sitting for long periods by the window, without turning on the light, staring out into the courtyard as if trying to remember something rather than see it.

One day I asked her what she was thinking about.

She smiled, that same smile that once meant warm secrecy, but now looked like a carefully folded napkin.

– Well, that’s how it is… I think.

– What do you think?

He didn’t answer immediately. He ran a finger along the windowsill, as if checking for dust.

“Days,” he said finally.

And for some reason, that word stuck with me.
Not “time.” Not “weeks.”
Days.
As if they were something finite. Accountable.

After a few days, I started to notice the details.

He never completely unpacked the suitcases.
One contained carefully folded, almost new clothes. The second contained old notebooks, photographs, and envelopes. I didn’t open them, but every time I passed them, I felt a strange attraction, not for their contents, but for their very presence.

As if they were not things, but evidence.

What? I couldn’t formulate it.

Sometimes, at night, I’d wake up to the sensation of someone moving around the apartment. Not loud, almost imperceptible. But with a rhythm that left no doubt: it wasn’t a random noise.

I got up, walked out into the hallway, and saw a streak of light coming from under his door.

One day I knocked.

Silence.

Then – his voice, calm, even:

– Are you awake?

— I heard footsteps.

Break.

“It’s me,” he said. “It’s a habit.”

– Which?

Another pause. A longer one.

— Make sure everyone is at home.

I didn’t ask anything else.
But that night I stayed awake for a long time, thinking about how, at his age, habits don’t arise out of nowhere. They linger. Like traces of distant events.

Exactly two weeks later, in the morning a scream was heard coming from under the windows.

Harsh. Irritating. Unbearably familiar.

I looked out the window and saw them immediately.