He pushed me in the direction of Jack and lowered his voice.

“They jabbered at me so crazy I thought I’d puke. I don’t know if they were asking if I wanted a juice box or if they were planning my dissection. I can’t understand them, Jim. Please try to remember that. It was like being trapped in a preschool. Except where the toddlers could eat you.”

Blinky sidled up next to me with those mysterious legs, his kilt of medals creating wind-chime music.

“Do not sodden your battle scarf with tears,” he said. “I fear your uncle was, shall we say, coarse when addressing your concerns? Understand that this rushed introduction is far from ideal. The ideal way, incidentally, according to customs in which I am fully literate, is through cuneiform tablet invitation to a midmorning tea complete with the competitive gobbling of succulent goat pudding and the call-and-response recitation of the ode to amity, ‘The Epic of Greinhart the Grinning,’ in which both you and your man-at-arms, and we, as well, would recite alternating stanzas in the voices of the Old World Elders. O-ho! How I would savor lending full vociferation to Stugnarb the Affectionate while you responded in the agreeable tones of Funkletta the Affable. Alas, we live in a time ill-suited for long-form poetry. For this reason and more, I beg that you forgive your uncle’s brusqueness. Since the very hour we brought him into our realm, his life has been hardship.”

“You’re the ones who stole him?”

“Technically, it was ARRRGH!!! who did the stealing.”

“Boy stole,” said ARRRGH!!!. “Boy sad. Sad boy.”

So it was all true. The legendary monster that had taken Uncle Jack in 1969 was not a figment of my father’s screwed-up imagination. That monster was real and she was right here, communicating with me, walking on all fours so as to fit through the tunnel, her long red tongue licking stray globs of peanut butter from her fur. Unexpectedly I felt anger rather than fear.

“You two have no idea what you did. To my Dad. To his whole family. To me, too—my life has gotten ruined right along with everyone else’s, you know.”

Several of Blinky’s eyes drooped so low they touched the stone floor.

“Many a long day have I spent undulating in regret rather than sleeping. Shall I admit to you a shameful truth? Indeed, I shall! The night we took Jack we were uncertain that we had claimed the correct child. In fact, we’d tried to take both brothers and failed in spectacular fashion. But Jack, frightened though he was at being taken from your remedial world and plunged into our advanced kingdom, would not permit us to go back and exchange him for your father. He said—and this I shall never forget, for it fills my seven cold bellies with warmth—‘Keep me. I’ll do what you ask. Just leave my little brother alone.’”