The Beginning of the End

It did not occur to the townsfolk that anything was wrong until several weeks after the Oxfords had been banished. One of the Rockefeller girls came down with a strange illness. A cold paleness came upon her face. She felt very nauseous and an uneasiness upon standing. The women in the town tended to her care, checking on her every night and trying their own home remedies to cure the poor girl. When nothing seemed to work, the townsfolk began to lose hope. The girl’s condition grew worse with each new day. She faded to a ghostly white as her hair and nails turned a deathly black. The people of Chilton didn’t know what to do. In denial, the father of the girl, James Rockefeller blamed the farmers in the town for the sickness of his daughter. He believed they gave him a bad batch of vegetables from last month's harvest. The farmer’s were appalled. How could the man blame them for this horrible incident. One elderly woman in the town claimed she had seen this once before and swore the illness to be the work of black magic. No one believed her. They assumed she was simply losing her mind in her elder age. The town slowly began to turn against the farmers. In a town where everyone relies on one another for survival, conflict was detrimental to the townsfolk. They needed each other to live, but until they came to an agreement, they had to do without. The peaceful atmosphere of Chilton was no more. Friends turned to bitter enemies, people no longer attended the weekly church session, and nobody gathered in the saloon. Chilton had become a shell of it’s former self. Everything was falling apart. The Oxford witch’s curse had only begun, and the town was already falling apart. The only thing holding Chilton together was the relationships among the townsfolk. And with the relationships quickly crumbling, the collapse of the small town of Chilton was not far behind.