The Shabti by Megaera C. Lorenz; Phony Mediums, Egyptian Curses, and a Charming Gay Romance Makes a Chilling Historical Supernatural Horror
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Megaera C. Lorenz’s The Shabti has a lot going for it: An engaging historical setting, an inside look at the Spiritualists movement and the tricks that frauds pulled, a genuinely creepy supernatural threat, and a charming romantic gay couple that encounters these problems.
In the 1930’s, Dashiel Quicke was once a noted Spiritualist that many would pay top dollar to get his psychic impressions or communicate with deceased loved ones. He now spends his time exposing the hucksters and grifters of the Spiritualist Movement, revealing how they actually accomplished their tricks. During one of his lectures, he captures the interest of Professor Herman Goschalk, an Egyptologist and museum curator. Herman tells Dashiel that his museum is the center of some strange activity: footsteps, whispers, missing items, stuff being thrown around, bleeding walls, the usual. At first the situation seems easily explained by science or an overactive imagination but as Dashiel gets to know Herman and experiences more of these strange events, it becomes clear that they are being haunted by a real ghostly apparition, a ghost from Ancient Egypt who inflicts great pain, curses, and suffering against all it comes near. All of the flimflam tricks aren't going to save them when they are faced with the real thing.
From beginning to end, this is a book brilliantly charged with a sense of Historical Horror. Instead of going for big shocks and scares, The Shabti leisurely builds its pace by taking a straight line from events that are odd but could be explained to the cosmic horror in which the barriers between time and space and life and death must fade before that horror can be encountered and possibly defeated.
One of the ways that it accomplishes this fear is by giving us a protagonist who has seen the supernatural world from the inside and knows how people bend and use it to their advantage.
The most interesting moments early on in the book occur when Dashiel tells how Spiritualists operate. He describes how they hire spies in the queue to gather information then sneak into the mark’s house to take a valuable object to look like the “spirits” used “relocation” to appear in the medium’s hands. Information gathered by the spies, cold readings, and early special effects added to the performance to sway the audience. It's a pretty clever grift and a sweet scam that is easy to see why many are fooled, especially those who have lost loved ones or want proof of life after death.
That life also comes to weigh in on Dashiel as he admits to Herman that many former clients, particularly a sickly elderly woman, came to bad ends because of their trust in Dashiel and his former colleagues. His past also figuratively comes back to haunt him when a former partner and lover wants to reignite their relationship both on and off stage. It doesn't take much for the former Spiritualist to see the guilt and danger that a life of deceiving others would bring, and it is understandable why he would expose it. However, his skeptical nature and career of exposing the Spiritualist Movement is just as much a vulnerability as when he was an active participant in scamming others, when he faces real ghosts. He has to use the same procedures seriously to save Herman and himself that he once used deceptively to gain money.
The fraudulent style of Spiritualism puts Dashiel in a false sense of confidence when he is faced with the Egyptian Ghost. He could assume that bleeding walls are rust, creaking walls are a house settling, footsteps and whispers are signs of an overactive imagination. But after a while, those scientific rationales and previous charlatan history becomes moot when those small signs become large unrecognizable monsters and the whispers become shouts of the undead.
It's enough to make one doubt their beliefs and particularly their minds. There are many chapters where the supernatural encounters cause tremendous physical and psychological pain to Dashiel and Herman. They are shaken, disturbed, and quite often bedridden after facing the remnants of the Egyptian Ghost’s curse. It is a terrifying experience because of how it affects their bodies and minds and the only healing balm they have is each other.
Speaking of Dashiel and Herman, their relationship is a bright spot in this Horror Show of Ancient Terror. It is one of those relationships that begin organically with the two beginning to understand and relate to one another. Herman is confused and fascinated by Dashiel’s career as a Spiritualist and is on the fence between skepticism and belief. Dashiel gets arcane knowledge from Herman’s studies and while he explains Spiritualism and gives possibilities to Herman's encounters, he never ridicules him and likes talking with him.
A friendship grows between the two protagonists that in other works could have remained platonic but fortunately for them, it does not. Their romance begins unexpectedly just as the Reader might think, “Hmm, they would make a nice couple” a few pages before they actually kiss. Their love strengthens each other as Herman’s knowledge of Egyptology and Dashiel’s Spiritualism experience counter the Ghost's wrath.
This book is set in the 1930’s and it doesn't go into the legal and prejudicial ramifications and potential hardship that could occur if a romance between two men is made public. On the one hand, it does a mighty historical disservice in showing how courageous the two characters are just by being together. But on the other hand, it also proves to be a source of light and brightness in this dark disturbing supernatural world.
When the two men work together to fight the Egyptian Ghost alongside friends and Dashiel’s former colleagues, their love is the truest and most honest thing that counters the terror of the otherworldly darkness but also the deception and mind games that Dashiel was once proud to be a part of.
