Grandmother forbade me to walk near the abandoned house, but when she heard my explanation, the color drained from her face

That day, when my grandson was late returning home, I found something under the abandoned house that I no longer dared to call the neighbors.

It was a cold November evening. It was past four o’clock, and wet snow was falling in the yard. Matvei should have returned from school long ago, but the window of his room still looked dark. Soup had grown cold on the kitchen table, and his favorite tin spoon lay on top of it.

I stood by the window and watched the road.

“Nina, he still hasn’t come?” my neighbor Lidiya Stepanovna called to me from the fence.

“Not yet.”

“He probably went to the Karavchenko house. He is there every day. He is no longer like a child, but like a ghost.”

Those words pierced my heart. I put on my coat, wrapped a woolen scarf around my head, and took a flashlight. I put a small green plastic whistle into my pocket—the one Matvei had given me in his very first week.

“If you can’t see me, whistle, Grandma,” he had told me then. “I will always hear.”

And now I wanted him to hear me.

In the abandoned lane, mud stuck to my ankles. The fence of the Karavchenko house creaked in the wind, while dry poplar leaves stuck to my face. In the flashlight’s beam I first saw an old post, and then someone’s shadow.

“Matvei?” I called.

In reply, a hoarse dog’s bark sounded.

I looked under the veranda and my breath caught. There, behind an old barrel, Lokhmaty was lying on a scrap of cloth. Beside him Matvei was crouched, sorting through the dog’s wet fur with his hand. The boy’s hands were frozen.

“What are you doing here?!” My voice came out harsher than I wanted.

Matvei jumped up.

“Don’t be afraid, Grandma. He won’t hurt you.”

“I’m talking about you! You’re sitting here in this cold? Look at the veranda, it could collapse on your head!”

“I can’t leave him.”

“Who told you that you had to leave him?”

The boy wrapped his hand around the dog’s neck. In that movement I saw such fear, as though not I, but the whole world, was going to take this animal away from him.

“I couldn’t tell Mom either,” he said quietly.

“What couldn’t you tell her?”

Matvei lowered his head. But Lokhmaty suddenly raised his head and looked toward the darkened house. His ears tensed, and his tail pressed against the ground.

“He brought me out of there,” Matvei said. “On the first day. Then he told me that I wasn’t alone here.”

“Who told you?”

Instead of answering, the boy stared at the leather collar hanging around the dog’s neck. Until then I had noticed only the heavy, rusted buckle. Now I saw that something small and metal was hidden beneath it.

“My father left this,” Matvei said.

My blood ran cold.

My daughter Yulia had been saying for years that her husband no longer existed for us. Matvei’s father remembered neither his birthday nor ever mentioned his son’s name. But a ten-year-old child did not speak with such certainty without reason.

“What do you know about your father?” I barely asked.

For the first time Matvei looked straight at me.

“Mom told me he was dead. But this dog belonged to him.”

The wind rattled the veranda roof. Somewhere inside, a heavy object fell. Lokhmaty began a low, warning growl.

Matvei tightened his fingers around the collar’s buckle.

“Grandma, if we open this, we might find out why Dad left…”

His hand slowly moved toward the small metal lock…

His fingers touched the lock, but he immediately pulled them back.

“I can’t open it alone,” he whispered.

“Let’s go home first.”

“No. If we leave now, he will come again.”

“Who?”

Matvei looked at the window of the abandoned house.

“Someone was here yesterday. Lokhmaty growled, and the man slammed the door.”

My knees gave way. I bent down and carefully examined the dog’s collar. The small metal plate hidden inside the buckle did not look like an ordinary address tag.

“We’re going home,” I said sternly.

“Grandma…”

“The dog is coming with us too.”

When he heard this, something bright appeared in Matvei’s eyes for the first time.

I called the neighbor and asked her to notify the village police officer, but told her not to wait for anyone until we returned home. On the way, Matvei was completely silent. He only held Lokhmaty’s paw.

At home we laid the dog by the stove. I opened the buckle with a knife. Inside, there was a small waterproof paper and an unfamiliar address.

Matvei looked at the paper and turned pale.

“This is the address of our old city.”

“Who lives there?”

The boy moved his lips, but could not make a sound. Just then my phone rang. It was an unknown number.

“Mrs. Nina?” a man said. “If your grandson has Lokhmaty, know that he is not just a dog. Come to the address tomorrow morning. And don’t tell Yulia anything…”

The call ended.

For several seconds after the call ended, I could not say a word. Wood crackled in the stove, while Lokhmaty stood by the door and looked as if he could still hear that unfamiliar voice.

“Grandma, who was it?” Matvei asked me.

“We’re going to the city tomorrow.”

“We won’t tell Mom?”

“Not yet.”

In the morning, at eight o’clock, we arrived in the city by an old bus. The address belonged to a small workshop behind the railway. The same sign as on Lokhmaty’s collar plate was engraved on the rusty door.

A middle-aged woman opened the door for us. She held a cup of tea in her hand, and her fingers were trembling so much that water spilled.

“Are you Nina?” she asked me.

“Yes. This is my grandson.”

The woman looked at Matvei and lowered her eyes.

“I am Elena. Your son-in-law’s sister.”

Matvei froze at the door.

“Is my father alive?” he asked.

Elena placed the cup on the table.

“He is alive, but he is in the hospital. He has been lying there for two months.”

Blood rushed to my ears.

“Did Yulia know?”

“She knew that her brother was ill. But Pavel asked me not to call her. He said, ‘Yulia will no longer believe me.’”

“Why?”

Elena opened an old wooden drawer and took out sealed documents.

“Pavel did not abandon the family as everyone thought. He was crushed by debts because his partner took out loans in his name. When he decided to tell everything, he hid Yulia’s letters from her. And she thought that Pavel had disappeared.”

Matvei’s lips trembled.

“Where are the letters?”

Elena opened a blue box. Dozens of envelopes lay inside. All were addressed to Matvei. Some had the child’s birth date written on them, and on some there was only one sentence: ‘When you can, read it.’

I opened one of the letters. Pavel wrote that he sent money every month, but the money never reached Yulia’s account. His business partner Dato falsified documents and used everything for his own benefit. Pavel feared that Dato would sell the house too.

“Why is Lokhmaty here?” I asked.

Elena smiled bitterly.

“Pavel sent the dog to you. There was a key to the lock in the collar. I wanted the truth to reach you before Dato signed the last document.”

At that moment the hospital called me.

“Mrs. Nina, the patient Pavel Beridze is asking for you. He says that his son is with you.”

Matvei grabbed the phone.

“Dad?”

There was a long silence on the other side. Then a weak, hoarse voice sounded.

“Son… did Lokhmaty come to you?”

Matvei closed his eyes.

“He did.”

“Then we have no time left. Dato will go to your village this evening. He needs the key that was in the collar, because the main evidence remained in the basement of the house…”

Just then a message arrived on Elena’s phone. She read it, and the color drained from her face.

“Dato knows that you are here. He is already following us…”