The House Mark

A small glyph. A roof, four walls, and an X inside.

Where it shows up

On Ellis Road, lower on the telephone pole than the tin square, "about where a man's hand rides when he's walking by." Chalked, and chalked over again, until it had gone into the grain of the wood.

At Lucky's, under the coin slot of the payphone, scratched into the paint with a key or a nail.

Both times it sits low and at hand height, where a person passing would not have to stop.

What's on file

It is older than the sigil on the same roads. The pole carried the house first and the zero with the line through it later, and the house was already worn.

Wade Harlow once owned a box of papers from a dead man's estate sale in Joplin. It was a collection of the marks railroad drifters left on gateposts: which kitchen fed you, which house let the dog off the chain. He never read it. "I figured it was about houses."

Not on file

What it says. Who leaves it. Whether it warns, welcomes or counts. Whether the two found so far are the same hand.

Standing

Seen twice. If a third turns up, the file is wrong about how rare it is.

Source of record: Cleared. Revised 2026-10-19.