Hagen is a pretty unassuming little town, to those who don’t know about its history. It looks like every postcard of small-town America, with mom-and-pop shops lining the streets, an old, beat-up Chevy sitting outside the hardware store, and fields where the cows are allowed to roam, getting fat on the well-watered grass. It’s part of the reason I even chose to move here in the first place. I’d been wanting some fresh air and I figured I needed a new start after my last breakup ended so poorly.
I moved into an old townhouse not far off from the main street. It was a nice neighborhood, with tall, shady trees and a creek that ran through the woods behind all the buildings. It’s not a big place, but since I’m only one person I figure I don’t really need all that much.
I work at the local library, both because it’s quiet and slow, so it gives me time to work on my novel. I’m by no means a Dostoyevsky or Fitzgerald, but I think my stories are at least interesting enough to grab people’s attention, at least someday. That is if I ever finish any of them. There’s a kid who comes in here quite often, we’ll call him Gregory, who seems to have a real interest in true crime.
One day, I decided to ask why he was so interested in the subject. And that’s when he told me that Hagen isn’t all that it appears to be.
I’m usually pretty skeptical of ghost stories and that kind of thing, but I listened to him, because he’s a harmless kid just trying to have some fun. What I discovered, however, made my blood run cold.
Apparently, every ten years for the past half a century, people mysteriously go missing on the anniversary of the town’s founding, never to be seen again, at least alive. Gregory said he’s so invested in the subject because that’s supposedly what happened to his grandfather about twenty years ago, a few years before Gregory was born.
“My grandma doesn’t talk about it much,” he told me. “I think she’s afraid to. But one way or another, I’m going to figure out the truth.”
Of course, I didn’t believe him at first. People his age like to tell all sorts of wild stories hoping that some idiot will believe them so they can get a good laugh out of it. But a little digging in the newspaper archives proved that Gregory was telling the truth. I felt a chill start to run up my spine as I read through article after article about people who’d gone missing, and how heartbroken their family members were. One story in particular caught my attention. It was the one about Gregory’s grandfather. Some of the details about it appeared a little off to me. While most of the people who’d vanished had been between the ages of twelve to twenty-five, Gregory’s grandpa was fifty-seven at the time he disappeared. Not only that, but for the past few weeks leading up to the Founder’s Day celebration, he’d apparently been going around town saying he knew he was behind all of the missing persons cases.