Clouds River Valley

Chapter 2. Good Kids, Bad Kids

Some of the older citizens in Clouds River could still remember the story about the original owner of the orphanage. It was about 80 years ago; the owner was one of the very few people who first came to Clouds River Valley and decided to stay after he and other very few pals found something buried under the ground here that could turn into gold: Coal. He built the first coal mine only in a few months and it soon attracted more and more workers and their families to settle down in Clouds River, it soon became one of the most populated town within hundreds of miles, even the occasional fatal accident under the coal mine didn't stop more and more people coming to this town.

All of these started to have a change from one pit collapse accident one day, a dozen miners were trapped underground after the collapse, the mine owner stopped the production immediately and sent hundreds of people to help search those trapped miners, it was not until the 3rd day that they finally found the cold bodies of these miners. The rumor was all of these dead miners had their eyes and mouth wide open, none of them had nails anymore. About a month later, everything went back to normal, the coal mine was running like nothing has happened, people still talked about it but they started to add more and more their imagined stories to it, a few months later the whole accident turned out to be a legend that even people from out of state heard about it. Since then, it seemed like not so many people started to join the coal mine even though very few of the employed workers had left.

Until one day, that was about 3 months after the accident, the only son of the mine owner, a ten years boy, started to have very high fever, the fever lasted for almost a week before his body temperature finally went down to normal. But that was when the worst thing started to happen, he began to lose his mind, he would smile all the time and murmur something nobody could understand, there was one maid who caught him talking to himself and she told other maids that the boy was talking about some grownup men came to his room every night and asked him if he wanted to go down and play in the mine underground. One morning, a long and sharp scream from a maid woke the whole house up, what she saw was even worse than the accident 3 months ago: The son of the mine owner was dead and his body was laying in the back yard naked. Looking up from his body, it seemed like he fell from the top of the bell tower.

Since then, the mine owner and his wife started to get sick, the mine was running normally but their home started to fall apart. The maids and servants were leaving one after another, everyone was saying the ghosts of those miners from the accident were haunting the house. The only people left were the ones that had nowhere else to go. Soon after the death of their son, the mine owner ordered to build a door and block the staircase to the top of the tower, the door to the top was locked and he was the only one who had the key.

Just one year later, the big mansion only had four people left: the mine owner and his wife, a servant named Rick and a maid named Anna. One day, the mine owner's wife felt she would leave the world soon, she called her husband plus Rick and Anna to her bed, then she started to cry about how much she missed her son and she couldn't bear the pain anymore. She also asked her husband to promise her that he would modify the house and transfer the house to be an orphanage. She claimed those men who took away their son told her in her dream that this was the only way they would return her son to her. The mine owner promised without any hesitation. At that night, his wife passed away.

The mine owner only hanged in the house for a couple months before he passed away and returned with his wife and his son in the other world. Before he died, he tried to sell the mine, but no one would like to buy it, so he just shut it down and laid off all of the miners with decent pension. The modification of the house just started not too long ago when he passed away, since Rick and Anna were the only people, they could call a family, they took over the money from the mine owner. They could easily leave the town and start new life with the money they probably would never need to work. But Rick and Anna chose to stay and finish the project that hasn't been finished, and they never left Clouds River till they died.