Testament by Jose Nateras

Formats: Print, digital

Publisher: NineStar Press

Genre: Ghosts/Haunting, Psychological Horror

Audience: Adult/Mature

Diversity: Gay Main character and side characters, Bisexual side character, Hispanic/Latinx (Mexican) Main Character, Asian-American side character, Black side character

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL USA

Content Warnings: Gaslighting, Homophobia, Mental Illness, Racism, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

Gabe Espinosa, is trying to dig himself out of the darkness. Struggling with the emotional fallout of a breakup with his ex-boyfriend, Gabe returns to his job at The Rosebriar Room; the fine dining restaurant at the historic Sentinel Club Chicago Hotel. Already haunted by the ghosts of his severed relationship, he's drastically unprepared for the ghosts of The Sentinel Club to focus their attentions on him as well.

I received this product for free in return for providing an honest and unbiased review. I received no other compensation. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Once upon a time during a LGBTQ+ group therapy session, someone dropped one of those truth bombs that totally changed my perspective on things. “If you’re a minority in American you have trauma. You may not even be aware of it, but it’s there.” Holy. Shit. Suddenly the fact that I always felt stressed, anxious, and depressed made sense. I realized the headaches, stomach problems, chronic fatigue, and back and neck pain (for which I’d spent thousands of dollars seeing specialists only to be told they didn’t know what was wrong with me) were all due to minority stress. Well fuck.

Mind. Blown.

Testament is a horror story about trauma and minority stress, and the protagonist Gabe’s struggles were achingly familiar.  He worries about how to let new people know he’s gay in a way that feels natural, finding a boyfriend who doesn’t see him as “exotic” or call him “papi,” and working around a bunch of rich White people. And poor Gabe works in rich douche central, a swanky hotel that once functioned as a members-only men’s club called The Sentinel Club. As if working around so many White folk isn’t unnerving enough, the hotel also seems to be home to something supernatural and sinister. Something that has its attentions turned on Gabe.

**trigger warning: discussion of suicide and mental health**

Reeling from a suicide attempt after a bad breakup Gabe is not in the best place mentally. He’s incredibly hard on himself, constantly calling himself “worthless” and “pathetic.” He pushes people away assuming they don’t care and refuses to ask for help. As someone who has had their own battles with depression, this also felt achingly familiar. It was also incredibly well done. Writers tend to portray depression as someone staying in bed for days in a state of ennui and despair, unable to move and refusing to eat. But that kind of severe depressive episode is hardly commonplace. Most folks suffering from depression are still (at least partially) functional and go to great lengths to hide their illness in front of others, which is why it’s so difficult to recognize when someone’s actually depressed. Gabe gets dressed, goes to work and forces himself to smile and act like everything is fine while his brain screams insults at him and everything reminds him of his ex. 

**end of trigger warning **

What’s especially brilliant is how Nateras uses Gabe’s haunting to mimic his mental state. Gabe is trapped both by his past and the entity that latches on to him and follows him everywhere. It will seemingly disappear before suddenly and violently announcing its presence, much like his depression and PTSD. In fact, most of the horror in the story comes from Gabe wrestling with his inner demons rather than the outer ones. It’s not quite gothic fiction, but I’d definitely call it gothic-adjacent with its slow burn horror and tumultuous emotions. Of course, if you dislike the slower pace of gothic horror and its focus on the characters rather than the haunting, you may not enjoy Testament. Fortunately, it’s a quick read, so even if you get bored quickly like I do you’ll probably be fine. 

There’s a lot of discussion about the evils of privilege, power, and money. And they are evil. They corrupt and hurt those without. And while no, not all White people are evil, there’s no way of telling the good from the bad with a glance, and a lifetime of negative experiences sets off every alarm bell in my head. There’s nothing quite like the fear you experience when you realize you’re the only person of color in a sea of privileged White folk, even if they’re the “nice” liberal kind. Such situations immediately make me uncomfortable and anxious, even as a White-passing Black person. I jokingly call it that Get Out feeling. There’s a particular scene in the book I found especially frightening when Gabe gets on a subway car, discovers he’s the only non-White person there, and he’s surrounded by wealthy-looking men. It’s terrifying. Nateras knows it and uses the scene to make the book even scarier. He does it so well I want to shove Testament into White people’s faces and yell “See? This. This is how I feel all the time.”

Sadly not the worst date he's been on with a White guy

I could go on and on about how the book uses minority stress to create horror and how the haunting is a metaphor for privileged White men who hurt BIPOC, but it would get into spoiler territory and I really want you to read this book. So, I’ll end it here with a warning, beware of White gentleman’s clubs because you never know what kind of evil lurks there.

Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Formats: Print, digital, audio

Publisher: Agora

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Demon, Killer/Slasher, Myth and Folklore, Thriller

Audience: Y/A, Adult/Mature

Diversity: Bisexual main character, Puerto Rican main character and author, Latinx characters

Takes Place in: Chicago, IL, USA

Content Warnings: Alcohol Abuse, Child Death, Death, Forced Captivity, Gaslighting, Illness, Kidnapping, Mental Illness, Physical Abuse, Police Harassment, Suicide, Violence (Highlight to view)

Blurb:

This horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat, chills up the spine, thrill ride. ‪ When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister’s body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he’s looking for payment he’s owed from her. Lauren’s torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister’s murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects.

And I chiefly use my charm

On creatures that do people harm,

The mole and toad and newt and viper;

And people call me the Pied Piper.

-          The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin"by Augustin von Mörsperg, 1592

My dad was born and raised on the Southside Chicago and will tell anyone who will listen that his birthplace is the best city in the world. My wife, on the other hand, firmly believes Chicago is akin to LA in the ‘90s. When I did finally manage to lure her there with the promise of deep-dish pizza and the Museum of Science and Industry she did admit the Windy City was a pretty cool place and not at scary as she was expecting (even after we stumbled onto an illegal street race). Although the crime rate there is higher than the national average, Chicago is hardly the crime and drug filled dystopia my wife and other outsiders seem to believe it is. In fact, its violent crime rates are far lower than those of Anchorage, Wichita, and Milwaukee. The dangerous reputation may have come from Chicago’s fascinating history of crime, gangsters, and serial killers or even the many tragedies that have befallen the White City in the past. Modern-day boogiemen like the Lipstick Killer, John Wayne Gacy, the Ripper Crew, and Richard Speck all called Chicago their home. The Blue Beard-esque H. H. Holmes built his murder castle in Englewood. The city’s most notorious gangster, Al Capone, has morphed into something of a folk hero and tragedies like the Great Chicago Fire and the Haymarket affair have taken on almost a legendary status. Dark rumors surround the abandoned Edgewater Medical Center. Stories like these have shaped Chicago’s history and how it’s perceived by the rest of the country: a gothic city haunted by the past. But darkness and death aren’t all the city has to offer.

Fairy tales, at least the original versions and not the Disney-fied ones, are often a child’s first introduction to the world of horror. Beautiful and sinister stories full of threats of death and assault, mutilation, hungry wolves, and dark forests have been used to frighten children for generations. Fairy tales are beautiful roses and sharp thorns, poisonous treats, beauty and blood. They also share many of the same elements as gothic fiction. Sometime in the distant past, a helpless woman is placed in a dark and dangerous setting (now a castle instead of a forest), where she is threatened by supernatural forces until rescued by the hero. Orphans and peasant girls are made to suffer before finally coming into riches. Animals no longer speak, but still bring portents of doom. Nature is wild, dangerous, and unpredictable. Both have themes of revenge, isolation, rags to riches, abuse, and women who are under constant threat as the men in her life fight over her body. Bluebeard, and other versions of the Aarne–Thompson type 312 tale, are the perfect example of a gothic fairy tale. In the story a woman leaves her family to marry a mysterious stranger and goes to live in his isolated and lonely castle. But locked away in a castle is a dark and dangerous secret. The wife can go in any room, but one, which contains the bodies of the stranger’s previous, murdered wives.

In the original version of Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty, the step sisters cut off parts of their feet and birds pecked out their eyes, the mermaid's tongue was cut out and every step she took on land was agony, and Sleeping Beauty was raped and impregnated with twins by a married king while she slept.

Cynthia Pelayo draws on the city’s history to create her gothic urban fairy tale, Children of Chicago. The city stands in for the dark forest, a vaguely supernatural setting where unwary children disappear and gang members prowl the street like big bad wolves. The book follows recently orphaned Lauren Medina, a deeply troubled police detective hunting a serial killer known only as The Pied Piper-- a shadowy boogeyman who preys on children then vanishes into the night. It’s rumored he can be summoned by burning a black candle and speaking a spell in front of a mirror. Throughout the story, Lauren is unstable and brimming over with barely-contained emotion, a staple of any good Gothic tale, as she wrestles with her missing memories of her sister’s death. Lauren breaks the typical female fairy tale mold where women were relegated to witches, wise women, virginal damsels, and evil stepmothers. She’s not exactly evil, but she isn’t pure and heroic either, instead she’s but a rare example of a female Byronic hero intentionally written to be tragic, unlikeable, morally gray, and hiding a dark past, much like the heroes found in gothic horror. In fact, few of the women in the story fall into any of the aforementioned roles. Stepmothers aren’t necessarily evil, even if their angry stepdaughters perceive them as such. Damsels in distress may possess more agency than they seem to, and villainous women can also be victims. I genuinely enjoyed seeing a female character (who wasn’t intended to be liked) embrace her darkness and struggle with her morality. Just as much horror came from Lauren’s psychological trauma and instability as it did from the threat of the supernatural.

While Lauren initially came across as “the young female cop with a dark past and something to prove” trope (aka Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs), it soon became clear that unlike Clarice Starling, we’re not necessarily supposed to root for her. And unlike every maverick detective in an ‘80s buddy-cop comedy, Lauren’s flagrant disregard for the rules in order to get her guy aren’t justified, but instead dangerous and unjust. Though, much like police in the real world, she’s able to get away with it. I appreciate that Pelayo avoided turning her crime drama into “copaganda” by making Lauren a protagonist, but not a hero. I admit I used to enjoy shows like Brooklyn 99, Lucifer, and Law & Order SVU (yes, I’m old) even though I recognized how incredibly problematic they were. But ever since 2020 I’ve more or less lost my taste for any media that portrays a corrupt system as a heroic force for good, justified in flouting the law. It no longer feels like harmless fantasy when you realize how many people actually believe that cop shows reflect real life and officers only target “bad guys” as oppose to anyone they don’t like (mostly BIPOC, the poor, and the mentally ill). So, reading a crime story where the police weren’t heroes was a relief. In fact, Lauren’s only redeeming quality is that she has a soft spot for troubled teens, ever since the mysterious death of her own sister.

Brimming with references to Chicago’s history, it’s clear that Pelayo loves her home while still recognizing its flaws. In fact, the novel feels just as much a crime story as it does a guide to the dark and fantastical parts of the Windy City. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and it shows in her writing. Throughout Children of Chicago Pelayo references the original, dark versions of famous and not-so famous fairytales, from Cinderella to the Singing Bone, adding to her own story’s dark atmosphere balancing on the edge of reality and fantasy. Pelayo’s novel is full of missing mothers, an unjust society where the most vulnerable suffer, magic mirrors, plenty of gore, spells, and a moral message. But overall, it’s a subversion of the classic fairy tale formula where the good are rewarded, the evil are punished, and morality is clearly defined. In Children of Chicago the “heroes” are neither pure-hearted nor moral, evil escapes justice while the innocent suffer, and no one is getting a happy ending.

It’s unfortunate that the darkest parts of Chicago’s history have shaped so much of its reputation when the Windy City has so much to offer. As my wife soon discovered on her first visit, the city is full or art, beauty, and wonder. Pelayo doesn’t just show the city’s dark side, she shows its magic as well. “Fairy tales are in our blood as Chicagoans” one of the books characters explains. Walt Disney, L. Frank Baum, Ray Bradbury, and Gwnedolyn Brooks were all inspired by the city to create their own fairy tales. Colleen Moore created her famous Fairy Castle and donated it to The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Children gathered pennies to create the Rock-a-Bye Lady from Eugene Field’s poem. The haunting beauty of the SheddAquarium feels like you’ve stepped into another world. The city even has a secret Little Mermaid inspired bar! It’s this beauty, contrasted with the allure of danger, that makes Chicago as wonderous as any fairytale.

Photos of Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle from the Museum of Science and Industry. Pictured here are the library (top), exterior (left) and great hall (right).