September 15th, 2017

I can honestly say I wasn't expecting that. Today at work Hal finally showed up at lunch to talk again like he'd been doing. He was looking nervous so I asked what was wrong. He got a little flustered at that, and then spent the next minute stumbling over his words. Long story short, he's asked me out. Mom and Dad won't let this simplistic story go.

The long story is that he wanted to talk. He wants to explain why he said what he had about people going missing and strange events happening. He asked if we could meet sometime over the weekend, and when I reminded him that I work through the weekend, he then suggested dinner after work.

Since this was during my lunch break, we didn't have a lot of time. He quickly pleaded the case that he needed someone to talk to, and since he had already almost spilled the beans to me, he might as well explain in full. He said he could give me a ride, that making plans now I could make sure people would know where I was just in case, and they could pick me up afterward if I didn't want him to take me home.

I deliberated, shortly, and finally let my curiosity get the better of me. So no, it is not a date. But tomorrow evening after work, Hal will be taking me to Annie's down around the corner.

He is cute though, the curly blond cotton swab.

That said, he also had printed out some articles from various papers around the area. He said I could look them up to confirm that the articles were genuine. Which I just finished doing. I even found a few more articles of my own. Missing persons, hikers, farmers, people who were out doing things mostly alone or in small groups. In one article only one of two people went missing. The not missing person doesn't know how they got separated, he just turned around and his buddy was gone. Tracking dogs brought to the spot he had last seen his friend only found the trail leading back the way they had come.

And as I look at the dates and locations, they do spread out slowly from the Denver area, or more specifically from Arapaho National Forest. It's only been maybe a week since Hal had first said anything, and there's only been seven instances reported. Some of those are from before, including articles about the missing hikers I was already aware of. But the most recent was yesterday out of Meadow Lake in New Mexico, a fisherman didn't come home.

People go missing all the time, and I don't know the statistics on that. I want to say this is normal, not that I want it to be normal. It's horrible for people to go missing at all, but it does happen. The question though is, does it happen like this? Is there really something going on? And if so, what?

That feeling that has been omnipresent since I woke up in the hospital is screaming at me. I have a feeling that I'm going to have trouble sleeping tonight.