Chris Sharpe

The Curse of Ezekiel Chris Sharpe

The Curse of Ezekiel

"Trauma always attaches itself to trauma."

In the dark and dusty garret of Oak Cottage Zoe Fowler first encounters the soft, haunting voice of, Hannah, calling for her lost love. And so, by way of Zoe's traumatised psyche, the forgotten story of Hannah and her family begins to unfold. This includes her deaf-mute brother, her bullying father, and the tyrannical figure Ezekiel Pomfrey, the punishing puritanical priest of St Catherine's Church, way back in the seventeen-hundreds, and of course the enigmatic, Adam. All of which are locked into the distant memory of time by an ancient biblical curse. Linked by an old wooden rocking chair, the trauma of Hannah's tragic life and the mystery of Adam attaches itself to Zoe's own sad, trauma. Only the understanding character of Dotty Vinke, with her mischievous smile and startling blue eyes, comes to the aid of a troubled Zoe. With her hypnotic influence, Dotty allows Zoe to delve back into the past to uncover long locked away memories, both hers and Hannah's, all ready and waiting to be freed.

The Curse of Ezekiel is a spellbinding tale of grief, Phantoms, and religious obsession with a built-in ambiguity designed to keep the reader's attention. The story cleverly maneuvers itself between the unsettling outer limits of the supernatural and the spiritualistic, until at last the waiting is over.