The man who once sold houses now finds himself
selling lies. His name is Seán O’Rourke, and he
walks the cobbled lanes of Ballycullen with a
clipboard, a smile, and a past he won’t speak of.
The village is still reeling from the 1979 fire
that killed three children in the old
schoolhouse. No one talks about it. Not even the
priest.
Seán’s latest listing is a derelict cottage on
Clontarf Lane, its windows boarded, its garden
overgrown. The owner, an elderly widow, insists
the house is empty. But when Seán opens the door,
the air inside is thick with the scent of
burning straw. A child’s drawing hangs crooked
on the wall — a stick figure with a crown,
standing in front of a red house.
He ignores the chill in his bones. The
commission is good. He schedules a viewing for
the following week. The first visitor is a woman
in her fifties, her face familiar from old
photographs. She says she’s a relative, but Seán
knows better. Her eyes are too sharp, her voice
too quiet. She doesn’t ask about the fire. She
asks about the drawings.
That night, Seán finds a second drawing in the
attic — this one of a man in a black coat,
standing at the edge of the woods. The same man
appears in a third, older sketch, dated 1916.
The dates don’t match. The house wasn’t built
then. But the man is the same.
He starts asking questions. The priest says the
fire was an accident. The widow says she never
saw the children. The local historian, a retired
teacher, recalls a boy who vanished in 1979, a
boy who was never found. The town’s silence is a
rule. Breaking it costs something.
Seán’s phone rings at midnight. A voice says,
“You shouldn’t have opened that door.” He
doesn’t answer. The next morning, the cottage is
gone. The land is bare. No walls, no roof, just
a patch of earth where the house stood. The
widow is missing. The priest has resigned.
Seán returns to Dublin, but the town follows him.
He sees the man in the black coat in the corner
of his eye. He hears the child’s laughter in the
wind. He buys a new house, far from Ballycullen.
But the drawings find him. They appear in his
office, on his desk, in his notebook. The last
one shows him, standing at the edge of the woods,
holding a child’s hand.
He never sells another house. The commission
money is gone. The name Seán O’Rourke is never
spoken again. The village remains quiet. The
fire is never mentioned. But every autumn, a
child’s drawing appears in the schoolyard —
always the same, always unfinished.
