Four of Blinky’s eyes performed a nodding gesture at ARRRGH!!!. The hairy beast squirreled a massive paw into her thick pelt and after some rustling around emerged with a battered old cardboard box. Gently she lowered it to our level. The box itself seemed irrelevant: it bore the stamps and stickers of a shipping company and it was addressed to a San Bernardino address. The top flap, though, was moving as if nudged by something inside. My feet felt cemented to the ground.

“Fine,” Tub sighed. “Tell Grandma I love her. Make up something nice about the cats, too.”

He psyched himself up with a few quick breaths, then threw open the flap and looked in.

“Oh, Jim.” His voice was monotone. “Jim, oh. Oh, oh, oh. Jim, Jim, Jim.”

I gritted my teeth and bent over the open flap.

Inside the box was a giant eyeball. The iris was the mixed colors of pea green and cantaloupe orange, the vitreous humor was a sickly yellow, and laced throughout was a grasping network of desperate red blood vessels. Not only was it the same size as Steve Jorgensen-Warner’s ill-famed basketball, but it made that infamous threat seem downright benign.

“The Eye of Malevolence,” Blinky said. “ARRRGH!!! ripped it from Gunmar the Black during the final confrontation in 1969. Let me assure you that the Eye is a bad thing that ought to be destroyed, in the off chance that is not self-evident. But pray give pause to your urges to squash it! The Eye serves a dark purpose. As owner of the accursed orb, ARRRGH!!! has the ability to use it to see what Gunmar sees. For decades, it was darkness, obscurity, despair. In recent weeks, however, the view has changed. And ARRRGH!!!—dear dutiful, selfless ARRRGH!!!—has been tasked with looking through the Eye far more frequently than advisable.”

“Glurrr­grrummm­fah­fru­mmm­ph, eh?” Tub said. “Fascinating!”

I apologized to Tub before giving him a quick recap.

“Okay, that’s actually pretty interesting,” Tub said. “Can we see it? Can you put on the eye right now?”

It was strange to see a being as large as ARRRGH!!! cower. Blinky’s eight eyes arranged themselves in sympathetic formation. But the hairy troll rolled her massive jaw and found the courage to throw back her shoulders until they were as big as the sails of a ship.

“Boy human. Favor ask. I do. For friend.”

We bent over the cardboard box in anticipation of the Eye’s removal. The pupil was blacker than black, an abyss so absolute that I felt my body tipping toward its promised oblivion. It had a salty seaside odor, strong enough to make me dizzy. Yet I wanted to inhale its pungent gases until I’d absorbed all of its sick power. I leaned closer, just inches away, fantasizing about what the Eye of Malevolence might feel like against my skin. Hot? Cool? Silky? Rubbery? I had to know.