OUR TOWN

   

 

                    A specimen from the brain revealed that she suffered from CJD, characterized by the                            formation of sponge like holes in the brain tissue.

 

The episode begins at night on a county road in Dudley, Arkansas. George Kearns drives along the road and parks in a deserted area. Also inside the car with him is a woman named Paula Gray. George tells her that they could go to a motel, but she refuses and tells him that people would see them. When he tells her that no one will see them, she says it's a small town and gets out of the car. George suddenly has a seizure, but relaxes after taking a couple of pills. Paula then begins to run through some nearby woods and George weakly follows her. He stops and asks if they can just put the blanket down, but Paula continues running and he follows her, tripping and falling onto the ground. When George gets up, he can't find Paula and hears strange music nearby. Starting to walk again he trips and injures himself, becoming annoyed and getting up from the dirty ground angrily. When he looks around he finds himself surrounded by several bright lights that slowly move towards him. George hears something behind him and turns around. Standing behind him is a person wearing a wooden, painted tribal mask. He screams in terror as the person swings an axe at him......

At FBI headquarters, Mulder and Scully discuss George Kearns and Mulder says that he has been missing for ten weeks. Scully tells him that they are just being sent on a wild goose chase and that they are trying to undermine his hard work on the X Files. Mulder then mentions that on the same night he went missing, a woman saw strange lights on a highway, which Scully says the woman thought were foxfire spirits. They discuss the foxfire and Mulder then shows Scully a tape of a mental patient, Creighton Jones. Jones talks about 'fire demons' that took him away and mutters about not letting them kill him, laughing as he speaks about them. Mulder tells Scully that Jones was found in Dudley Arkansas.

Later, Mulder and Scully examine a large burned area in the middle of a field which has a witch's peg in it, which Mulder says is for warding off evil spirits. They are then joined by the local Sheriff, Aren, who tells them the fire was set by local youths. He tells them that Kearns cheated on his wife frequently and says that they are welcome to question her. Talking to Kearns' wife (Doris), they learn that Keanrs was about to file a report with the department of agriculture about the local chicken factory, Chaco Chicken. At the factory, Paula takes some pills and goes to work. Mulder and Scully speak with the manager, Jess Harold about Kearns and the report he was going to file. Jess tells them that George tried to shut the plant down a number of times. Meanwhile, Paula is working sees the severed head of George instead of a chicken and throws it to the floor. She runs away and her coworkers look at the chicken, confused. Jess tells Mulder and Scully that every chicken in the factory is inspected and that George was the only one who had a problem with them. Mulder sees a machine stirring organic material and Jess explains it is chicken feed made from bone and chicken tissue. Jess then leaves and as Mulder and Scully start talking, Paula goes crazy and holds Jess by the neck with a bone knife to his throat, threatening to kill him. Scully talks to Paula and she begins to calm down and lower the knife, but she is suddenly shot from behind by Aren, falling into the machine making the chicken feed and sinking into it face first.

Later Mulder and Scully speak with the doctor for Chaco Chicken and he tells them that Paula often complained of headaches and he gave her medication for it. Scully explains that it would be better if she performed an autopsy on Paula, but the doctor tells her that she will have to ask Mr. Chaco, as he was Paula's legal guardian. After an uncomfortable discussion, Chaco agrees to let Scully perform an autopsy on Paula as he wants to know what happened to her. After doing the autopsy Scully discovers that Paula suffered from a rare disease known as Creutzfeldt- Jacob, which causes dementia. Mulder also tells Scully that according to birth records, Paula was 47 years old as she was born in 1948. Later on Mulder and Scully are in the car when a truck full of chickens crashes. They discover that the driver had the same symptoms as Paula and also had the disease. They talk to Aren about George's disappearance and that his body could have been hidden somewhere, referring to the very dirty water in a lake. He asks Aren to have it dragged and the search team later finds a huge net filled with bones.

Scully later identifies Kearns from some of the bones and points out that they look polished, which she thinks is erosion from the water. Mulder doesn't agree and thinks it may have been caused by something else. Doris Kearns is later told that George's bones where in the net, and Aren tells her that he will take care of her kids. The doctor from Chaco Chicken, Randolph talks with Jess Harold and they discuss the bones. They say that they should talk to Mr. Chaco, but that he won't listen to them, and that he isn't doing anything about the matter with the bones. Jess tells Randolph that he will talk to Chaco as Chaco will listen to him. Mulder tells Scully that he thinks the erosion on the bones was because they have been cooked, and he tells her he thinks the people where eaten. Scully concludes that Paula got Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease by eating George. They then mention that they never determined her real age, and Mulder says that everyone in town might be lying about there age. They depart for the courthouse.

Meanwhile Jess talks with Chaco about how people have been getting sick and Chaco tells Jess that he will handle it. Doris then arrives and tells Chaco that she can't keep lying and how she helped with George's death. Chaco tells her to go home and to get some rest and she leaves, and he tells Jess that the only thing they should be worried about is the FBI. At the courthouse, Mulder and Scully discover that every birth record has been burned, and Mulder receives a call from Doris, who tells him that she needs to speak with him right away. She tells him that she is afraid for her life and that she is afraid Mr. Chaco will kill her. Scully leaves to go to her house while Mulder leaves to arrest Chaco. In her house, Doris screams as the light goes out and begins to lock the doors. Suddenly the figure with the painted wooden mask appears and attacks her with an axe. Arriving at Doris' house, Scully looks around in the dark and can't find Doris. Mulder arrives at Chaco's house and examines tribal masks littering the walls, also a picture of a tribe in New Guinea, 1944. The housekeeper tells Mulder that Chaco isn't available, and he asks her what is inside a large cabinet. She tells him she doesn't have a key and he breaks the lock off. Inside the cabinet are four human heads, including George Kearns'. He then receives a call from Scully, who explains to him that the power is out and that no-one is home. He then hears a sound of her phone hitting the floor and shouts for Scully, who doesn't answer. Scully is at Doris' house on the floor unconscious....

We then see a field at night, townspeople gathered around a large bonfire. Scully has tape on her mouth and her hands are tied with rope. Chaco arrives and asks the people who is behind all of this, telling them Doris was one of them. He argues with Jess Harold and says that they have become an abomination. Chaco suddenly gets a gun and aims it at Jess, but someone grabs him from behind. Townspeople then put him in a metal harness and he kneels down. The masked person then appears and Scully watches as Chaco is decapitated. Scully is then put in a harness and the person prepares to decapitate her as Mulder races to the field. As the axe is swung towards Scully, two gunshots ring out and the executer screams in pain, then falls to the floor dead. Jess sees Mulder and tries to shoot him as people scream and begin to run, but someone knocks him to the ground and he drops the gun. Mulder releases Scully and Mulder pulls the mask off the person with the axe, revealing it to be Sheriff Aren.

The episode ends with Scully saying in voiceover that 27 people in the town have come down with Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. She then describes that Chaco was in a plane that got shot down in 1944, and spent months with a cannibalistic tribe. She says that his remains have not been found to this date, and we see chickens eating the feed from the Chaco Chicken factory.....

 

Copyright(c) 2007 - 2025. All rights reserved

 

        

 

 

Episode no. Season 2
Episode 24
Directed by Rob Bowman
Written by Frank Spotnitz
Guest Stars John Milford
Gary Grubbs
Original Airdate May 12, 1995 (Fox)
Theme(s) Cannibalism. Ritualized killings.