THE SHADOW GROWS

by r

But it's too late now‹I've seen it with my own eyes, and I still can't shake the children screaming when the lights go out, weeping in their prison cells and wondering "what went wrong?"

As unsettling as a car crash and more gruesome than a serial killer's diary, Sinofsky and Berlinger's latest documentary, Revelations 2001, will keep you awake at night. I guarantee it. I can still hear the screaming of the children: both the living and the dead pleading with the shadow of something they can't possibly understand. Mystery festers in the open wound that is The Robinhood Hill murders revisited: three children slain, three children convicted—lights, camera, exploitation!

No "real" evidence, but prejudice and fear akin to the Salem witch trials allow these small-town youngsters to be victimized, made cheaper by the pound. The slain children are gone, of course, buried years ago after their souls escaped the brutality of a force we have no name for; no wicked face to help us understand the villain (for we need to comprehend the psycho, keep them, like all enemies, "close")—and so we point fingers at the living, even whisper, "There he goes", never knowing the answer, what the truth is.... AND THIS SCARES US EVEN MORE.

What's so terrifying is the ignorance. It's a part of the shadow that maims us, keeps us swinging in the dark. The local press are dangerous as they imitate their heroes that anchor the network prime-time news while the lawyers and the judge (as if he'd ever utter "OOPS") practice their intolerable agendas, not to mention the filmmakers adding to the terror-fest with tabloid TV sound effects and smoke. It's a great people's zoo of misfortune and injustice produced by the latest, greatest desensitizer, known as HBO.

But I did watch it, and on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

So I danced with all the darkness, just like those captured by the camera—I'm certainly no hero after all, even watched these children circling in the media whirlwind, praying they'd all find their way back home. "Oh, Aunty Em...this is getting way too scary," and now I'm looking at the witch's crystal ball; there I see another time when such atrocities stayed locked inside the local sheriff's dusty filing cabinet—for ever and for good. But it's too late now—I've seen it with my own eyes, and I still can't shake the children's screaming when the lights go out, weeping in their prison cells and wondering "What went wrong?"

Yeah—three boys are locked away forever while the clock keeps ticking toward execution by lethal injection... and the shadow boogies on. And you can even log-on to their website , see their photos, read their bios, even mouth the poetry that they've written, all from the safety of your console: ain't no boogie-man around.

So, when you've watched this documentary, when it's over, you can tell yourself it's far, far away now, the shadow can not touch you anymore. Ask yourself—as I have, over and over and over—is someone ever going to save them? Or do we simply let the shadow grow real big and fat, taking three more juicy children to stick upon his baneful bones?