The Sabbath

By Theresa Hollis

Linda Morton is not sure if she is having a living nightmare or just plain going crazy, first she is sure that there is a ghost in her house then when she begins to feel the presence of pure evil she decides to flee from it. But there are some things that you can not get away from, especially when you are the target of his lust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theresa Hollis
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301724239

Theresa Hollis

Theresa Hollis loves the occult and supernatural so it was only natural that her first book should reflect this. "The Sabbath" came about after Theresa visited Burra in South Australia and was fascinated by the local history of copper mining and the awful conditions that people were forced to live in, it set off a little bell buzzing in her brain, here was the start of something good (or evil in this case).Theresa started writing in her teens, but life, as usual, got in the way, it was not till many years later that she was able to finally write her first novel, which has had excellent reviews, so much so, that a sequel, 'Honour Thy Father' was born.Theresa was born in England and immigrated to Australia in 1951. She is divorced and now lives in the Riverina in New South Wales along with her much loved Jack Russell dog, called, yes you guessed it 'Jack' and a very magical cat named Miss Jasper.

Book preview

THE SABBATH

Theresa Hollis

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright @ 2012 Theresa Hollis

Revised edition 2015

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1478293316

Acknowledgements

With thanks to

Burra Visitors Centre,

Burra, South Australia

For their assistance.

To my mother, Elizabeth Constance Barrow

(Nee Archer)

For what might have been…

And these shall go away

Into everlasting punishment.

Matthew 25:46

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Linda Morton and it is one year ago today when my life changed forever. It was the day my husband Paul, who was a bright, energetic, lovely man, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 45.

My life seems to be before and after, before it was a whirl of fun and laughter and knowing that I had someone who loved me with all his heart and soul and who I loved equally.

After I seemed to exist in a vacuum, life goes on or so everyone says. But is it life or a form of death?

All the things we planned and the places we wanted to go, the children we never had and now never will have, these are all gone and I keep wondering why.

Why did Paul have to die so young, he was fit and healthy and so full of life, if there is a God he turned his back on us that day.

Time had not diminished my pain I still felt that part of me is missing and the fact that we had married late in life and were looking to our future makes it all the more bleaker.

I was thirty-two when I first met Paul, he was four years older.

We had both been concentrating on our respective careers and neither of us had given much of a thought to getting married.

Apart from the occasional date both of us had not found the person who we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. That is until we met at a charity dinner.

Paul stated sometime later that from the moment he first set eyes on me it was like a sledgehammer had hit him, he knew that I was the person that he wanted to marry.

I said the same thing, it was like two separate souls had finally come together and found their mate.

We were married two months later and had eight wonderful years together before Paul’s death.

Paul had worked in Corporate Finance whilst I worked in Merchant Banking ever since I left University.

If anyone has asked me I would have said it was my second greatest love and that nothing could ever make me leave it, yet today I have the strangest feeling that I can hear Paul telling me it was time to quit my job and move on, that there was a life still waiting for me.

I tried to shrug it off I had to get ready for work as today I had a multi-million company merger on the drawing board and it would need all of my concentration to pull this deal off.

It was certainly no time to have doubts about my career as that was all that kept me going.

As I left the house I thought about the life we had led prior to Paul’s death. We had both continued with our respective careers and had decided to stay in the city as it was the most convenient and logical answer.

I moved into Paul’s apartment but after nearly a year we decided that we needed a bigger place, one with a garden and space to move around in and plenty of space for the children we intended to have.

Paul always joked that he wanted his own football team as we had both been only children and as fate would have it both our respective parents were dead do a family was a high priority.

From then on most of our weekends were spent looking at houses around the area. It wasn’t until we had just about given up hope of ever finding what we wanted when the agent phoned to say that she thought she had found just the place we were looking for.

It was close to Kings Domain Park just off St. Kilda Road in Melbourne, which was close to both our offices, we arranged to view the house on Saturday afternoon at 4.00pm.

Come Saturday we met the agent out front of our apartment and she then drove us to view the house.

It was early Federation with a front veranda around three quarters of the house. The garden was a bit neglected but we were confident that with some TLC it would be beautiful.

The house had been vacant for about six months as the elderly owner had passed away some months prior to this but for some reason on one had made an offer on the house. Everyone the agent had brought through said that the house needs too much work or was too big or just did not ‘feel right’.

Even though the house on inspection appeared somewhat neglected, we could both see the potential. The agent showed us through the rest of the house which comprised three large bedrooms, a large lounge room with beautiful leadlight windows and an open fireplace with a magnificent dark wooden surround and mantel which had a small oval mirror inserted in the top section.

The bathroom was huge with a large old fashioned, claw foot bath along one wall with an old-fashioned brass shower over it. The old sink was sunk into what appeared to be a pine cupboard completed the bathroom.

However, what caught my eye was the oval leadlight window over the bath it was outstanding!

The rays of the setting sun caught it and a myriad of colours flooded the room, it was spectacular I could see myself soaking in the bath and enjoying this beautiful sight.

The kitchen was the next room we looked at, and it turned out it had never been updated since the house was built. An old Aga stove took pride of place and was built into a brick chimney in the wall facing the outside of the house.

The tiles around the stove were still the original and with a b of renovation would no doubt come up looking wonderful.

The sink was the original cream porcelain which by today’s standard would be expensive to buy but best of all was that it was in truly good condition.

There were few cupboards, however the kitchen was huge and offered heaps of potential, and I could just imagine what it would be like with some renovation.

The house itself overall was in fairly good repair, the high twelve-foot ceiling were enhanced with beautiful pressed metal and decorated cornices.

The original light fittings were still there, all in all it was just the home we had been dreaming of.

We turned and smiled at each other we were both enraptured by the house.

The agent was going on about what could be done to improve the property and was pointing out the features of the house when Paul turned to her and asked about the price.

She looked blank at first, then said, Are you making an offer?

No Paul said. We are going to buy the place we both love the house it’s exactly what we were looking for and we want to settle as soon as possible.

The agent smiled and said, Yes, the house feels happy.

I looked at her, Yes that is exactly what I feel too, how amazing that you can feel it as well?

The agent said, This house has been waiting for just the right people to love it and bring it back to its former glory, I am so glad that it is you and I know you will both be very happy here.

We had gone back to the office with the agent and signed an agreement to purchase, she had then dropped us off at our apartment.

We had put the apartment up for sale the following week and it had sold within days, we could not believe our good fortune.

It seemed like a dream as the buyer of the apartment wanted to move in as soon as possible as he had just accepted a new job and the location was perfect for him.

We moved into the house just eight weeks later, it was like the house wanted us just as much as we wanted the house. Everything just seemed to fall into place for us.

From the day we moved into the house we both felt a sense of peace. Everything ran smoothly for us as all the renovations were completed on time and eighteen months after we first moved into the house everything was finished.

It looked amazing, whilst we wanted to keep he feel of the period we did not actually want to stick to the original colours so we had opted for a thick rich cream on the outside of the house with dark green trims, including the veranda posts.

On the inside we had the floor stripped and polished all through the house to a rich dark sheen.

The walls were painted a light blue up to the dado rail and then above them we painted the walls a turquoise blue. The ceilings and cornices were all painted an off white.

We had kept the Aga stove and the kitchen sink and worked around them with the result that the kitchen was once again the heart of the home.

It was warm and functional but at the same time had a classy new look with heaps of new pine cupboards, a modern wall oven and an island bench.

A sleek gas oven and cook top combined with dark granite bench tops in a shade of bluey/grey to compliment the pale blue walls it gave it just the right look.

An old pine table and chairs had been lovingly restored by Paul and took pride of place in the kitchen, both of us loved the kitchen best of all it really felt warm and welcoming.

In the bathroom we wanted to work with the colours of the stained-glass window which were mostly light and dark green, with some blue and red highlights.

We had the bat stripped back and painted cream inside and a dark green outside with gold claw feet. We also kept the sink as it was in the same cream colour that we had painted the bath.

The old cupboards were taken out and replaced with a marble top and open cupboards with baskets to hold towels and other essentials. A large gilt framed mirror was positioned over the sink.

The bathroom was the only room that we painted a different colour, we had the walls tiled up to the dado height with dark green tiles and the walls above this we painted a light green. The ceiling was painted cream.

We kept the old brass shower head and just had it cleaned up and put up a round brass shower rail with a dark green shower curtain.

On the floor we had small cream and tiles with a border of dark green.

Gold taps and towel rails gave the room an elegant old-fashioned look, and, as I predicted, it was heaven to soak in the bath, it reminded me of a forest glade, cool and welcoming in summer and warm and cozy in the winter.

The original lights were not in the best condition, so after we had the place rewired, we replaced all the lights with the modern equivalent.

Over time we acquired several beautiful antique pieces one of which was a magnificent Edwardian dresser which took pride of place in the lounge-room and served as a bar.

For our bedroom we had found an old brass bed and matching side tables. We also found two lamps shaped like lotus leaves but upside down, to go on each of the tables.

I had chosen a mineral green bedspread and curtains with bright yellow cushions on the bed it looked cool and restful.

I had also found an old armchair and had it covered in the same green and it stood in one corner along with a ‘smokers stand’ just the place to curl up and relax.

The whole house was bright and airy and felt ‘happy’.

Somehow today, standing in the kitchen brought it all back, so many memories of all the joy and laughter we had shared over the years in our beautiful house. I had to suppress a wave of emotion which brought me close to tears.

How Paul had loved the house, his greatest pleasure was working in the garden on weekends alongside me. Between us we had transformed it back to what we believed it would have looked like in the early 1900’s. A beautiful mixture of old-world charm and sweet-smelling flowers combined with today’s native plants and trees plus water saving features.

I remembered how much we loved sitting on the back veranda which had been extended to form a large entertaining area combining an outside kitchen with a state of the art bbq and an elegant cane table and chairs.

This became our favourite spot to relax after work, Paul called it his ‘sanity’ time of day when all the cares of the world could go hang themselves and there was just us and nothing else existed.

Well no matter what life must go on so giving myself a mental shake I grabbed my car keys and handbag and headed out the door.

CHAPTER TWO

The drive to work was a total blank, I parked the car and got into the lift. As I entered the lift I suddenly had a distinct feeling of walking into a wall of dense thick cloying clouds.

I felt a wave of nausea envelope me and had to take several deep breaths to stop myself from being sick.

When I reached my floor I went directly to the lady’s room and bent over the toilet, the feeling had passed but I still felt warm and slightly giddy so I went to the hand basin and let the cold water run over my wrists for a few minutes.

Turning the tap off I looked at myself in the mirror, my face looked distinctly pale and my normally glossy ash blonde hair seemed somewhat lifeless and dull.

My green eyes also seemed to lack their usual sparkle and seemed for a moment to be almost black.

As I dried my hands and took a deep breath I looked up into the mirror once again.

With a shock I saw a woman standing behind me, she had long black hair and appeared to be wearing strange old-fashioned clothes, a dark long gown of some sort.

I turned quickly but there was no one there, the toilet doors were all open and she could not possibly have gone out the door so quick.

Hell am I losing my mind, so that I am now seeing things that are not there!

I quickly left the toilet and walked down the corridor to my office. As I got there my secretary Marg Summers was just sorting the mail.

Marg looked up and smiled then looked slightly worried.

You don’t look too good are you ok?

Actually, I felt a bit sick when I got into the lift but I feel a lot better now, perhaps you could get me a cup of tea, I just feel like something hot.

Sure, but if you feel ill again just let me know.

With that she put the mail on my desk and went off to make the tea.

I looked at the letters and decided that they could wait till later. I took out the file on the merger which had taken three months of gut-wrenching hard work to get to this stage and today was the fruition of all that hard work.

The other party was finally satisfied with the result and they were coming in to sign the contracts today.

Marg had put in a lot of extra hours to help me achieve the outcome and I made a mental note to send her a thank you gift for all her hard work.

Just then Marg returned with my cup of tea, thanking her I looked at my watch, I had about half an hour until the meeting was due to start.

I picked up the folder on the desk and quickly glanced through it, all seemed to be in order as I dialed my business partner Richard Bryant.

He answered on the second ring, Richard, Linda here, are you ready to score another deal?

Sure, all in order do you want me to come to your office and go over any last-minute details?

No I’m sure that we have everything down pat see you in the conference room shortly.

Ok, by the way I will be the one doing a jig on the table.

I laughed, Just make sure it is after the deal is done.

As I hung up the phone I experienced another bout of dizziness, I put my head back against the chair and took deep breaths to try and overcome the feeling of nausea that accompanied the dizziness.

What the hell was the matter with me, maybe I had picked up some bug, whatever it was I had to get over it quickly. After a few minutes I felt a bit better, taking another deep breath I gathered up the papers and left the office heading down to the conference room.

Upon entering the conference room I noticed that apart from Richard, Sam Watson the CEO of the company, along with Doug Jones the company lawyer was also present.

I smiled at Sam and Doug just then the door to the outer office opened and the representatives from the other parties entered the room.

After introductions everyone got down to business, Richard outlined our company’s plans for the merger and briefly discussed a few salient points then he handed the deal over to me.

As I stood up a wave of nausea hit me, putting one hand on the desk I steadied myself and started the presentation. About halfway through I suddenly felt the room start to spin and the nausea hit me with full force.

Turning to Richard I asked him to continue with the presentation as I felt too ill to go on.

Richard took one look at me and asked if I needed any help, I shook my head and stumbled out of the room to the ladies’ toilet where I was violently ill.

A few minutes later Marg same in, Linda are you ok, Richard buzzed me and said you were ill and could I check on you. Do you need a doctor?

I managed to reply that I was ok and did not want a doctor whilst at the same time feeling absolutely rotten.

I’m sorry Marg I must have picked up some sort of bug it just came on so sudden this morning just as I got to work, maybe I have been working too hard and am run-down.

Marg looked at