​     Gramps ran upstairs to his daughter's bedroom. The door was closed. Gramps assumed she was changing clothes.

     Gramps knocked. "Abby..."

​     "Daddy, I'm in the middle of..."

     "Abby!"

​     She opened the door while zipping up her jeans. The look on her face said, "This better be good."

     "Who else is here?" Gramps asked. "Besides you and me. Who else is in this house?" 

​     Abby's attitude changed immediately. She knew when her father was serious. Now she was all business. "I'm sure Skip's in his room. I saw Alison and Brian go out on the patio..."

​     "Cathy?"​

     "I have no idea where Cathy is."

​     "Cathy!" Gramps yelled. Alison and her boyfriend Brian came in from the back yard patio.​

​     "Something really weird's happening outside right now," Alison said. "People are surrounding our house. I mean, like a lot of people."

     "Cathy!"

​     "What? What?" Cathy yelled from wherever she was. Gramps heard a toilet flush. Then, here came Cathy. "What?"

​     "Security on," Gramps told his house. Steel barriers slid down or up or over every door and window in the place. And just in time, too. The people in the yard began to pound on all four sides of the house. Some people pulled out their weapons to shoot at the house.

​     "I was just told they want to kill us," Gramps said. "And, I'm sorry, but all other explanations are going to have to wait until later. For now, the most important thing for us to know is that they are not really people. They are far worse. They murdered the people they replaced. The children you see? The real children were murdered, but first their personalities, everything that made them who they were, was stolen from them. They are abominations. Show them no mercy. They do not deserve it.

​     "Go get Skip," Abby told Allison. The tone of her voice said, if we're going into this, we're going into it as a single unit, as a family.

​     As one.

​                                               CONTINUE

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