Town of Gold: Chapter 1

III. 1919

The beginning of a new year, it should be like a fresh start; a clean slate if you will. However, 1919 was only getting worse and worse, even more so than the previous year. The normal in the town of Bodie, becomes the paranormal...

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February, 1919

Charlie visits the hospital, where all victims of the Fisher illness have been escorted due to the return of the illness. Katherine, Jennifer, and Isaac lie in beds, coughing continuously and occasionally passing out. Charlie first visits Jennifer, who is barely alive at this point and on life support, and tries to find out more about how she got this illness. 

"Hey Jennifer, how are you feeling?" Charlie asks.

"I'm dying sir, I don't feel too good. The doctors said I only have weeks to live." Jennifer replied softly. 

"Oh I'm sorry to hear that. You will be missed. Anyway I came by to ask: Do you remember anything else about the night you were kidnapped and brought to Henry's house?"

Jennifer looks up and scratches her head for a bit and looks back at Charlie with wide eyes. 

"I... I remember being in the dark. He came in while I was tied up and - and injected me with something. I don't know what it was though. He did that every hour and it was painful." Jennifer struggled to say this as she was tearing up.

"Okay, Jennifer thank you for your info. I will track him down and try to get an antidote to try to save you and the others."

"Good luck sir."

Charlie then walks over to the next room, where Katherine is laying down. He asks her the same question and gets the same answer as Jennifer, just worded differently. The same happened when Charlie asked Isaac. 

Charlie then leaves the hospital to go to a meeting with the town leaders. As Charlie reaches the library, he hears an explosion and quickly ducks and turns around only to see the hospital in flames. "Oh no." He said under his breath and ran away down the road to the town hall.

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May, 1919

"Mr. Bodie, before the hospital burned down, the victims of the Fisher illness told me that they were injected with something while being tied up, but they didn't know where this was." Charlie announced in the next town hall meeting.

"Yes, but exactly, we don't know where this place is. How will we find Fisher, he's always moving around so how could we be sure if they were all in one place or different houses?" John II said back.

"I mean, we could always check the Fisher mansion, as a start. If nothing's there then we just move on outside the city to find Fisher." 

"Alright. Check there as soon as I get a few people together to go with you." 

"Yes Mr. Bodie."

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The next day, Charlie walks by the mine on his way to his office, but sees that no one is there except a few miners waiting around for someone. Charlie questions this and heads to the mine instead.

"Hey guys, where's Jack?" Charlie asked them.

"We don't know. We showed up to work and Jack wasn't here to open up the gates down there. Have you seen him anywhere?" One of the miners replied.

"No, no I haven't seen him. But now I will be on the lookout for him. I just fear that, worst case scenario, he was kidnapped by Henry Fisher and injected with the Fisher illness too. Well have a nice day you guys, you can go home now day's over." Charlie walked away as the miners packed up their stuff and headed home. 

Charlie goes into his office and makes the report for Jack and makes the poster and send that to the printing press to copy and post around the town. 

Meanwhile, John II is writing letters to nearby towns and the citizens of Bodie, notifying everyone of the decrease in gold production, and how it is running out more quickly now. John estimates it will run out in the 1940's sometime. John also writes that a hospital needs to be rebuilt and that no further development should occur because nothing can fix the crash that will come in the 1940's.

Back in Charlie's office, a citizen comes in to report sightings of a ghostly figure that says things to them every night. The majority of the people claimed to hear things such as, "Madman" and "Fisher" After hearing the same story countless times, Charlie closed up his office for the night and sat in the office alone with the light of a few candles, he thought about the case of the sightings for at least an hour until he figured out a theory of his own. 

"What if the voices and ghosts are just ghosts of the victims of the hospital fire, or even the Fisher illness...?" He thought to himself. After making this theory, he went home and fell asleep almost instantly because of his long day. 

An hour later a loud three knocks woke Charlie up at midnight. He slowly walked, as he put a shirt on, to the door and opened it... 

Nothing was there.

Charlie was confused, but before he could think, another knock happened from the back door. However, this time when he went towards the door, every candle went out and he saw a figure standing in front of him, 10 feet away. Charlie rubs his eyes in disbelief but it was still there. He yelled at the figure, "Go away! You're not real. You're fake, you're just fake." 

After yelling, the figure ran towards Charlie, causing him to close his eyes and drop to the floor, for protection but screamed in pain as he felt something sharp in his left arm. He laid on the floor for a few more minutes breathing heavily and grabbing his left shoulder. He turned to look at it and saw a big gash in his arm, bleeding a lot all over him and his floor. 

Charlie got up and rushed to his bathroom and put a cloth over his arm and tied it tight. He ran to the nurse's office and had them stitch up the gash and he finally was able to sleep with no disruption. 

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August, 1919

Charlie continuously searched for Jack, but still shaken from the ghost encounter months ago. By the end of the month, Charlie gave up on trying to find Jack and wanted to search for Henry instead. People still continued to question Charlie about his ghost encounter to this day, but he mostly refused to talk about it. 

One day, someone asked him who he thought the ghost was. That struck Charlie hard. He had never thought of that...

Who would hurt him? Not the victims of the fire, not John I, not Katrina, not Henry because he's alive...

"Oh no." He said under his breath. "It's Arnold. Arnold Fisher."