"I'll get you my pretty, and you little dog too."

The Wizard of Oz

Interlude Two:

Grandpa

Sarah was glad to get away from the city for the weekend. Everyone there was so tense nowadays. She worked as an office assistant in an accounting firm, and the usual chat of gossip over the click of tabulated numbers was replaced by a paralyzing silence, interrupted only by the shuffle of papers and the occasional cough. There were so many disappearances – so many killings – and no pattern to them. If anyone had seen anything, no one was coming forward. Likely, no one who had seen anything had lived to tell the tale.

When she wasn't busy filing and sorting and taking phone calls, Sarah looked up theories on her computer about what was going on – if only in the hope of some tiny bit of reassurance. She found everything from aliens to Armageddon, but no reasonable explanation for what was happening. It was terrifying; the idea that you could be next.

Sarah had been taking turn about with her sister Glenn on the weekends, taking care of Grandpa. The stubborn old man lived in an old farmhouse miles away from the nearest town, with plenty of land; it had been in his family for generations, he said, and just because he was getting on in years didn't mean he was going to abandon it.

So, this weekend, Sarah would make sure that the fridge was stocked and the house was clean and that the trash wasn't piling up. As much as she complained about it, she really didn't mind helping take care of Grandpa. He was a character, that old man – he had nicknames for everybody, and whether or not they made any real sense didn't matter. Her given name might be Sarah, but Grandpa had always called her Dorothy. It seemed that now she couldn't so much as drive the road to his house without being washed by the memories of her happy childhood.

She remembered Fourth of July barbecues from her elementary school days, massive games of sardines throughout the old house. Recently she took great pleasure in brushing the dust from each of her late grandmother's collection of porcelain teddy bear statues, which Sarah had watched grow over so many years; even in Grandma's final days, when Sarah was in a freshman in college, she still wanted to go to the market and find "just one more."

Sarah pulled the car off the road when she came to the driveway. The gate was broken – had been broken for as long as she could remember. She had suggested, more than once, that Grandpa get someone out to fix it. He wouldn't budge. What was the use in fixing a gate that nobody had really bothered about in more than twenty years?

What was the use indeed, in getting him to change his mind?

She pulled up in front of the house, next to a rusting tractor, and stepped out, stopping for a moment to pay attention to the grand old structure before making her way inside.

But what was once a sprawling two-story ranch house was no more. Sarah braced herself against the car, feeling the pull of wheezing as an asthma attack came on. It was like a car wreck; she could not avert her eyes from the scene before her.

Holes in the wall, as if a stampede had come through. Pipes sticking out at odd angles, the entire upper floor collapsed, the front door beaten to a pulp on the crushed porch. The house looked like it had suffered an air strike. There was nothing left of it.

Sarah fumbled for her inhaler in her purse and leaned against the car hood, considering what could have caused this. A tornado? Perhaps, but she would surely have heard of any particularly damaging tornadoes to happen within the last week. And she didn't know her grandfather to be the type to experiment with explosives – she wasn't sure that it was the right type of damage anyway.

It took a moment to register the one important detail she had missed. Sarah forgot all about caution, and ran towards the house, dashing over broken boards and rushing between tossed furniture. This place was a disaster.

She turned her head right and left, seeing nothing, taking nothing in. Where was Grandpa? Why hadn't he called? Had he gotten caught in this calamity?

Sarah stepped forward, inching toward the living room. She couldn't remember a time in her life when she had walked through the front door and Grandpa had been anywhere else than watching old reruns in the living room.

The stuffing of the couch was strewn about the room, the coffee table split in two. The front bay window was shattered. The television was in pieces, as if it had been kicked around like a soccer ball. Sarah decided that there was no way her grandfather could be here, and turned to step back out into what had been the hallway.

It was then she noticed the pale hand protruding from underneath an overturned armchair, distinctive wedding band glinting in the sunlight. Sarah rushed to the chair and pulled it up as far as she could – she wasn't very strong.

"Grandpa! Grandpa! Can you hear me?"

Sarah dropped the chair as quickly as she'd raised it, clapping her hand over her mouth incase she puked. Her grandfather wasn't underneath that armchair.

Just his hand.

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