nestled in the apple flesh

Ethan had expected a worm: earthworm, corn earworm, cutworm, leech, caterpillar, trematode, one type of worm or another. Instead, nestled in the apple flesh, he found an eye. For an ugly instant, he thought the eye might be real. Then he saw that it was only a plastic orb with convincing details. Not an orb, actually, but a hemisphere. The back of the eye proved to be flat, with a button loop. Somewhere a half-blinded doll still smiled. When the stalker looked at the doll, perhaps he saw the famous object of his obsession likewise mutilated. Ethan was nearly as disturbed by this discovery as he might have been if he’d found a real eye in the red delicious. Under the eye, in the hollowed-out seed pocket, was a tightly folded slip of paper, slightly damp with absorbed juice. When he unfolded it, he saw typing, the first direct message in the six packages: THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION? Ethan was confused, all right. Whatever it meant, this threat—the eye in the apple—struck him as particularly vicious. Here the sender had made an angry if enigmatic statement, the symbolism of which must be correctly interpreted, and urgently. Chapter 2 BEYOND THE BEVELED GLASS, THE IRON-BLACK clouds that had masked the sky now hid themselves behind gray veils of trailing mist. The wind went elsewhere with its lamentations, and the sodden trees stood as still and solemn as witnesses to a funeral cortege. The gray day drifted into the eye of the storm, and from each of his three study windows, Ethan observed the mourning weather while meditating on the meaning of the apple in the context of the five bizarre items that had preceded it. Nature peered back at him through a milky cataract and, in sympathy with his inner vision, remained clouded.