The solicitor returns to Ballycumber in 1922,
summoned by his father’s will. The estate is a
ruin, its fields overgrown with bracken and
thorn. He finds a ledger in the attic, its pages
brittle, ink faded. A name repeats: Cú
Chulainn’s Stone. The village elders refuse to
speak of it.
He walks the old boundary path, where the 1916
Rising once spilled blood. A child’s toy lies
halfburied in the mud—a tin soldier, rusted at
the joints. The locals call it the ghost’s gift,
left by the dead to mark the living.
At the pub, a woman with a scar across her cheek
pours him a pint. She speaks of a curse tied to
the land, a pact made during the Rising. The
lawyer’s greatgrandfather was part of it. The
stone, buried beneath the old church, was meant
to keep the fae from crossing into the human
world.
He digs beneath the altar on All Hallows’ Eve.
The earth shifts, and the stone emerges—black,
cold, humming. The air thickens. The pub lights
flicker. The woman with the scar appears, her
eyes milky. She says the stone is waking.
The villagers gather at the crossroads. They
demand he return it. He refuses. That night, the
stone pulses in his study. The walls bleed. The
lawyer’s reflection moves without him. He writes
a letter to his mother, asking for forgiveness.
By dawn, the village is silent. No one remembers
the stone. The lawyer vanishes. Only his coat
remains, hanging in the attic. The ledger is
gone. The fields are quiet. But in the dusk, the
child’s toy reappears, placed beside the
crossroads.
