The Dead House

This is a tale both beautiful and terrifying as related by one of the main protagonists and narrator, Michael Simmons. Set mainly near the townland of Allihies, located at the western tip of Ireland's Beara Peninsula, the story, told in three parts and a final epilogue, centers around Mike and three women, Maggie, Alison and Liz, and the one dangerously fateful decision they make at Maggie's weekend housewarming get together. All four come from the Art world. Mike and Alison have successful careers as art dealers, he in London and she in Dublin. Liz, is a poet and personal friend of Maggie. Maggie, like a younger sister to Mike, is a talented artist who was Mike's discovery and has proved her talent over the years Mike has known her. However, Maggie has poor taste in men and her last abusive boyfriend beat her so badly that she had to be hospitalized. With her art career in a slump and making the final recovery from her beating, Maggie decides to take time for herself and wander the Irish countryside. It is during this time that she spies an isolated run down oceanside stone cottage sitting below a slope near Allihies. She immediately falls in love with the cottage and surrounding costal vistas and contacts a real estate agent in order to purchase and and repair the cottage. A word of warning from the agent is the first note of unease in this tale of haunting terror - “This place has been empty a long time. Too long to be natural, really. And people talk. It's lonely out here, the kind of place where it'd be too easy to glimpse things.” But Maggie seeing artistic inspiration in the area and a chance to be alone to make a recovery from her recent bout with violence, borrows money from Mike to buy and refurbish the cottage. With the repairs complete and during a warm summer weekend, Maggie invites Mike, Alison and Liz to come for a housewarming party. She also has plans as matchmaker to bring Alison and Mike together; a plan that is actually successful in that romance does bloom and Mike and Alison will eventually marry and have a little girl years later. After a wonderful weekend together traveling the countryside, it is on the last candlelit evening, with liquid spirits flowing, that the four, with Liz's urging, take part in something that will open them all up to things best left alone. Though never boring, O'Callaghan takes his time, using beautiful, descriptive prose to unwind this unsettling ghostly tale that also manages to include a love story.