title: Fear of the Dark: Exorcising the Ghosts of Racism which Haunted My Family
author: Francis Megahy
description: Francis Megahy, who started out in life as a stand-up comedian, is a lifelong documentary film-maker and divides his time between London and the US. His work has always reflected his interest in social issues, and he wrote and directed more than forty documentaries, mostly for British television channels, winning awards for One Pair of Eyes, a comparison between the life of an Oxford-educated Indian journalist and that of a Indian textile workers in the North of England; Big Fish, Little Fish, a study of corporate mergers and takeovers; and What Shall We Tell the Children, a documentary about sex education, which is in the British National Film Archive. His Death of an Informer, which told the story of a British government cover-up and an IRA murder, which created the trend for dramatized documentaries, was so explosive that the British evening ITN News was moved to accommodate it. The Last Round, his documentary about the framing of New Jersey boxer, "Hurricane" Carter for murder, generated a million-plus signature petition to Jimmy Carter asking for his namesake's release. In 2003 and 2004 Megahy was a member of the Board of the Open Society Institute Documentary Fund in New York, which helped to create the House of Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival. His independent movie The Disappearance Of Kevin Johnson, an ironic fictional documentary about a Hollywood con-man, featuring Pierce Brosnan, James Coburn and Dudley Moore, was the opening film at the Slamdance Festival, was shown at the Sedona Festival [where it won the Audience Award], the Palm Beach, Boston and Scottsdale Festivals, where it also won the Audience Award. World rights were acquired by Sony Home Entertainment, and it received excellent reviews when it opened theatrically in London. Sight and Sound commented, Orson Welles would have grunted his approval. His 2011 documentary, The Best Government Money Can Buy, about the links between campaign contributions and Congressional votes, is available on Amazon. He has just completed a new film about the NGO, Global Witness.
zlib_text:   
  
  **Burn Marks**
  
  Sara Paretsky  
  
  **1**
  
   **Wake-up Call**
  
  My mother and I were trapped in her bedroom, the tiny upstairs room of our old
  house on Houston. Down below the dogs barked and snapped as they hunted us.
  Gabriella had fled the fascists of her native Italy but they tracked her all
  the way to South Chicago. The dog’s barking grew to an ear-splitting roar,
  drowning my mother’s screams.
  
  I sat up. It was three in the morning and someone was leaning on the doorbell.
  I was sweaty and trembling from the dream’s insistent realism.
  
  The urgent ringing recalled all the times in my childhood the phone or
  doorbell had roused my father to some police emergency. My mother and I would
  wait up for his return. She refused to admit her fear, although it stared at
  me through her fierce dark eyes, but would make sweet children’s coffee for me
  in the kitchen—a tablespoon of coffee mixed with milk and chocolate—and tell
  me wild Italian folktales that made my heart race.
  
  I pulled on a sweatshi