The facts. On May 5th, 1993, in West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight-year-old boys were murdered and their bodies dumped in a stream. About a month later, three teenagers - Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. - were arrested for the crimes. Echols is now on Death Row for allegedly masterminding the crime, while the other two-thirds of the so-called West Memphis Three are in for life.
Which would be all well and good, if the victims were guilty. But The Last Pentacle of the Sun came to be because of the belief on the part of many that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley are guilty of nothing more than being "different" in a conservative community that does not celebrate diversity. Different, in this case, translates to having a penchant for dressing in black, listening to heavy metal and reading dark literature, among other things.
Editors Anderson and Savory enticed a number of high profile names from the field of dark letters to contribute to the anthology. Among the best known are Peter Straub, who offers a brief two-part vignette that bookends the collection, and Clive Barker, who contributes a number of black and white drawings.
Other well-known contributors with a horror/dark fantasy pedigree include Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite. They team up on "Night Story 1973," in which the elderly Deliverance reads Winnie the Pooh to Ghost, her six-year-old grandson, while a storm rages and something lurks out there. A fairly standard premise, but itŐs lifted out of the realm of the mundane by the skill of the telling and the unexpected ending.
In Bentley Little's "We Find Things Old," a prop finder for movie production companies runs across a doll-like thing and uses it in a movie. The doll makes the rounds of various productions, whose stars develop a nasty habit of doing away with themselves. All in all, a fairly standard cursed thingamajig story. Elizabeth Massie's "Pisspot Bay," a much better effort, is a simply told, harrowing and rather relevant story of a false accusation and a young boy broken by the police.
Simon Logan also turns in a worthwhile effort with "You Have to Know This," a ghostly yarn of a cop pressured into framing someone for a murder. Michael Marano's "Changeling" is another very effective tale, this one about a young boy dealing with the dual tensions of a demon under the bed and a decidedly strained family life.
In "Homecoming," John Phelan's protagonist reminisces about two childhood friends, one who is killed and another who is lynched for the murder. Another strong effort, it proceeds in fairly straightforward fashion until the twist ending. "The Afterlives of SweetDeath," by Adam Roberts, doesn't fare quite so well. The story gets off to a good start, as a virtual reality salesman is selling some sort of death experience to a customer, but turns into a rather tedious exercise in moralizing and philosophizing.
"All Sliding to One Side," but Paul Tremblay, is an interesting short about a man annoyed by another driver and the resultant wild ride his thought processes take. Gerard Houarner's "The Three Strangers" reads like a Twilight Zone episode as three mysterious young men enter a small town seething with hate and violence and something unusual happens.
"Fucking Justice," by James Morrow, is an ambitious slice of historical fantasy/fiction in which the title is interpreted quite literally. A little bit on the hokey side, but well told. Scott Nicholson turns in one of the shortest - and arguably one of the best - stories of the bunch. "Carnival Knowledge" is a brief snippet that looks at life from the viewpoint of a caged carnival geek.
Gary Braunbeck's "From the Books of Alice Redfearn: A Didactic Parable" is another high point. In this story, a witch's spirit is imprisoned in a tree, which, hundreds of years later, is turned into paper andÉwell, you can read the rest.
Among the nonfiction pieces are essays by writers better known for their horror fiction. Brian Hodge recalls a horrific real-life murder in his community when he was growing up. David Niall Wilson and Adam Greene team up to recall what it was like being the high school pariah. Mike Oliveri covers similar territory in "How to Spot A Serial Killer" and muses - of the West Memphis Three - that "it could have been me."
Other noteworthy nonfiction contributions come from Philip Jenkins, whose "Weird Tales: The Story of a Delusion," blames the hysteria surrounding supposed Satanic rituals and cults on a certain influential fiction magazine. Wiccan Peg Aloi is on hand to explain that Wicca and witchcraft have little or nothing to do with the lurid cinematic portrayals in movies like Rosemary's Baby or The Omen.
Other high profile contributors include comedian Margaret Cho, who offers "Letter," an impassioned plea in favor of justice. Documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky have produced a pair of films about the West Memphis Three and are planning on doing a third. The filmmakers are best known these days for their documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. One of the subjects of that film, James Hetfield, contributes the lyrics of the appropriately titled "...And Justice For All" to the cause.
The Last Pentacle of the Sun succeeds on two fronts. First, in focusing additional scrutiny on a case that - if appearances are to be believed - is yet another failing on the part of those charged with protecting our lives, limbs and liberties. Second, and perhaps not quite so importantly, the book succeeds as a readable and thought-provoking collection of fiction, nonfiction and artwork.
William I. Lengeman III is an Arizona-based freelance journalist, humorist and fiction writer. More info at http://wileng.home.mindspring.com/.
© William I. Lengeman III
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