A short, short story constructed of letters, text, and suspense
by Jack Mauro
From the October 26, 2000 Metro Pulse Introduction to Jack Mauro's investigative piece 'Sinister Doings':
Whatever caused the hearts to stop beating in the eight-year-old Franklin twins and nine-year-old Phyllis Boss, on October 23, 1968, has never been determined. Nor has any single fact been uncovered to explain why these children were found, chocolate bars in their hands, sitting in seemingly random seats in the Tennessee Theatre, bearing no traces of coercion or violence whatsoever...
Jack Mauro's series is not intended to be read as police work; it is merely his attempt to explore a scenario that remains to this day completely cryptic.
From an e-mail by Jack Mauro to editor Adrienne Martini, October 30, '00:
...but thank you, sweetie. I'm glad the feedback's been strong. The Tennessee was back in full-swing business by '69, but I'm not sure my ass will be comfy in one of its seats any time soon. Creepy doesn't do justice to those specific chairs, to looking at the empty stage and wondering what those kids were brought to see. And by whom.
Wade Boss has agreed to talk to me (this is the slightly older cousin who was very, very silent during the whole '68 investigation). I guess there are advantages in years' passing; the reasons for silence are gone, or kids grow up and aren't afraid, or whatever. But Part Deux will still reach you in time for its biweekly appearance, I swear.
Oh—nearly forgot. I got my first 'fan' call, some woman weeping hysterically and rather pissed at me for writing about 'those poor innocent babies.'
—Jack
P.S. Did you know that the candy bars in their hands were half eaten? I find that very wild. The police and news reports never mention it, either. Boss threw that at me over the phone, for Christ's sake.
From an anonymous letter to Metro Pulse, in the November 2, '00 issue:
...maybe it's fashionable to exhume a nightmare, but you people are obscene. Children taken to an empty theater, given sweets, then literally scared to death...It's taken a long time for some of us to get beyond that tragedy. If you must pick on children, pick on the living...
E-mail from [email protected], November 9, '00:
Mr. Mauro;
I am very disappointed in the second part of your story. Those twins and my cousin weren't the little angels the press portrayed them to be. Far from it.
Do you imagine I shared that for no reason? Did you think I finally spoke to a reporter to gossip?
I sincerely hope you get on the right track for the conclusion to your series.
Yours, W Boss
From Mauro's e-mail to Adrienne Martini , November 11, '00:
...I know that time, tide and the MP typesetter waits for no man. I am dancing as fast as I can, Adrienne. I will try once more to track down the 'geezer' Boss referred to, the local old man the kids—according to Boss, anyway—hounded. No mention of this old man at the time of the tragedy, anywhere. Why does Boss harp on him so?
—Jack
P.S. Part III won't be late.
From an e-mail to Mauro from Wade Boss, November 12, '00:
...As for your persistent messages: as I told you, the old geezer is long gone. Dead, maybe, but no one knows. That's not the point. I told you when we talked how the kids abused and mocked him. Do you see? My cousin and the Franklin boys used to throw stones at that old man. They'd make him dance. Do you understand? I saw them do it the one time they invited me on one of their nasty downtown outings. I am stunned that you can't put this thing together in the only way that makes sense...
From Jack Mauro to Adrienne Martini, November 13, '00:
..I'm glad you think the conclusion is all right. I myself am not happy with it.
From Wade Boss to Jack Mauro, January 6, '01:
Mr. Mauro,
I did not contact you after your series 'Sinister Doings' ended because I saw no point to it. I am sorry for my earlier bad temper. You did the best job you could and it would be wrong for me to condemn you, especially when an entire town has been guilty of the same—bias? shortsightedness?—for over thirty years.
In regard to your question: no, I don't know what killed my cousin and her playmates. No one does. I believe, as do many others, then and now, that they were shown something on that stage that frightened the life out of them, but I can only guess at what that was.
I used to wonder: if they had been grown-ups, would there have been any question of them ending up where they did through someone else's power? If you saw a child with a half-eaten candy bar in her hand in a theater seat and she wasn't dead, would you think someone put her there against her will? I wouldn't.
I'll say one thing more. After it happened, I was especially nice to old men I passed on the street.
Good luck with your career.
Yours, Wade Boss
Jack Mauro's Spite Hall is available at B. Dalton. It's so good, it's scary.
October 25, 2001 * Vol. 11, No. 43
© 2001 Metro Pulse
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