A Cosmology of Monsters

by Shaun Hamill

  To Margaret’s surprise, the childless couple from next door showed up as well. Daniel and Janet Ransom had moved in a few weeks ago, and Margaret had invited them out of politeness. Daniel was the new drama teacher at the high school, and Janet taught ballet at a studio in town.

  “It’s so nice of you to come,” Margaret said to them, when she had a moment. “I didn’t imagine you’d have much interest.”

  “We won’t always be childless,” Janet said. “We thought it might be good to get the lay of the land, you know?” She was small and fine-boned like a bird and slender like a boy, her brown hair a tight bun at the back of her head. She looked the way Margaret had always imagined Kitty from Anna Karenina: a beautiful, delicate porcelain figurine. Margaret had never been skinny like this, and now, wider and heavier than ever before, she felt awkward and ugly next to Janet and her handsome husband.

  “Don’t believe her,” Daniel said. “She’s on the hunt for future clients.”

  Margaret laughed. Janet looked embarrassed.

  “I do have a few pamphlets for the studio, if you think Sydney or Eunice would be interested,” she said. She gave Daniel an ugly look.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “You sure have a lot of horror books,” he said, and gestured to the shelf against the near wall, stocked with Stephen King, Angela Carter, Peter Straub, Shirley Jackson, William Peter Blatty, Ira Levin, James Herbert, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tryon, and, of course, H. P. Lovecraft.

  “You should see what we have in storage,” Margaret said. They kept a unit at the U-Haul downtown full of boxes of old paperbacks, pulp magazines, and comic books. Harry had been loath to physically part with his beloved collection but agreed that they didn’t have space for the time being.

  “So, Margaret, what do you do?” Janet said.

  “I’m a stay-at-home mom,” Margaret said. “But now that the girls are getting older, I’m thinking about going back to school.” She’d been talking about reenrolling since 1969 but had never seemed to get around to it.

  “I don’t know if I could handle being home with kids all day,” Janet said. “I think I’d want to kill myself.”

  “Believe me, there are days,” Margaret said.

  It sounded less like a joke than she’d intended, and, when no one laughed, she excused herself to make the rounds. The other adults leaned on kitchen counters and sat at the dining room table, sipping from plastic cups, and pulling pizza from a stack of Domino’s boxes. The kids were all outside in the punishing August heat, playing in and around the rented bounce house in the yard. Harry sat outside, too, with Rick and Tim, ostensibly preventing any life-threatening mischief.

  Margaret paused at the glass door to look at Harry. He stared into the middle distance now, as Rick and Tim laughed on either side of him. His beer bottle dangled between the fingertips of his right hand. He’d remained withdrawn and silent even after he returned with the cake. Did he remember the sleepwalking? Was he feeling all right? This version of Harry was so unlike the man she was used to.

  He got up from the chair and started toward the glass door. Margaret waved to him and gave him a sympathetic smile. He seemed to stare straight through her. His movements were stiff and somewhat jerky, like he was sore from some great labor.

  At that same moment, Eunice bounded out of the bounce house, wearing the smile of every overwhelmed, happy birthday child, red hair flying behind her like a wave of summer flame. Harry didn’t see or hear her, and so when she threw herself onto his back, he had no chance to prepare. Margaret reached for the door handle as Harry lurched forward and dropped his beer. The bottle burst against the concrete patio, a little nova of green glass and foam.

  Eunice let go of him and dropped to the pavement as Harry righted himself. He rounded on her and grabbed her shoulders.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” His shout was muffled but still loud through the door.

  Tim, the bigger of Harry’s work friends, pulled a startled Eunice away. Rick grabbed Harry’s arm and started to speak in the low, calm voice of a man who’s had to break up a good many drunken fistfights. Harry jerked away and punched Rick square in the nose. Rick’s hands flew to his face and he stepped into the broken glass, grinding it under his sneakers.

  Margaret’s body finally unlocked. She yanked the door open, ran outside, and put herself between Rick and Harry. For an instant she thought she’d made the worst mistake of her life. Harry’s eyes were wild, panicked, and furious.

  She put up both hands, murmuring, “Hey. Hey. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  Harry licked his lips and rocked on his feet, breathing hard, fists clenched. Sweat rolled between Margaret’s shoulders and gathered near the base of her spine. Her flesh itched in the muggy air.

  “Harry,” she said, in her most soothing tone. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. You were just startled.”

  He blinked, and some essential piece clicked back into place. He became Harry again. He looked around, at the bounce house and its frightened inhabitants, at Rick in a patio chair with bloodstained fingers closed over his nose and mouth, at Tim patting a wailing Eunice on the back, and Sydney and her friends, gathered at the sliding glass door like zoo patrons.

  Margaret grabbed Harry by the arm and guided him inside for the second time that day, past the girls, down the hall and into the master bedroom.

  “Lie down,” she said.

  “I’m not tired,” he said.

  “I don’t care. You’ve lost your backyard privileges for today.” She slammed the door on her way out.

  She made vague excuses about Harry not feeling well and promised an impending doctor visit that would answer their questions, all while guiding guests to the front door. Eunice gaped at the dissolution of her party, and fled to her room, face red and tear-streaked. Sydney sat on the couch, blank-faced, and watched a movie on TV while Margaret swept up the glass on the porch, threw away the paper plates, emptied the plastic cups, and carried all the trash out to the garage. She left the balloons and streamers up, although they looked out of place now, a false front on something ugly.

  She sat on the couch with Sydney and put an arm around her shoulders. Sydney remained stiff beside her and wouldn’t look away from the TV.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  Margaret let her go and got up to check on Eunice. She found her younger daughter in bed, turned toward the wall. She sat down and massaged Eunice’s back.

  “My party,” Eunice said, her voice thick.

  “I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry, but Daddy’s not feeling well, and I—” She stopped, not sure what to say. “I didn’t want Daddy to get anyone else sick if he’s contagious. He’s taking a nap right now. Why don’t you lie down for a little while and then we’ll finish your party tonight?”

  “What about my bounce house?”

  “I don’t see why we can’t keep it an extra day.” She would bully Harry into it if she had to. It was the least he could do. She kissed Eunice on the cheek and then went to the master bedroom.

  Harry was still in bed, staring at the ceiling. He rubbed his right hand, the knuckles swollen. Margaret shut the door and leaned back on it.

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “Crazy barely scratches the surface,” Margaret said.

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You were sleepwalking this morning. Do you remember that?”

  She could tell from his startled face that he’d had no idea. They’d been on the lookout for something like this for the entirety of their relationship. Because of his mother, Harry had been tested for schizophrenia multiple times, but had always received a clean bill of health. It was late for symptoms to emerge now, but not impossible. Margaret couldn’t shake the image of his face this morning—that dead-eyed, distant expression. Why
did it look so familiar?

  “Look—I don’t think anything else will happen,” he said. “It’s not—it’s not what you’re worried about. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that. If—if—something else does happen, I promise to see a doctor, okay?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Margaret, please. Let me try it my way first.”

  3

  They reconvened in the late afternoon to finish Eunice’s birthday party. Harry played with the girls in the bounce house while Margaret warmed up leftover pizza. She and Harry let the girls have their pizza and cake at the same time, with generous scoops of ice cream on the side. After dinner, they unleashed Eunice on the pile of gifts on the coffee table, and she tore into the shiny wrapping paper in a wide-eyed sugar rush. They sat in the living room, surrounded by new toys, games, and clothes, and watched a movie on TV. Margaret lay on the couch and Harry lay on the floor, the girls nestled into him on either side. From time to time, Margaret ran a hand through his hair, savoring the way it curled between her fingers.

  That night, after the girls went to bed happy and relieved, Harry and Margaret made love. The walls in the house were thin, so they had to move slowly and keep quiet. It gave Margaret time to study Harry’s face, to see the bedrock of gentleness and kindness reassert itself. His soft kisses seemed to insist that the afternoon had been a fluke, that everything was fine. And afterward, as they lay next to each other, sweaty and slick, he said the old words:

  “I love you until the end of time, and whatever comes after that.”

  It was a bit of doggerel he’d coined on their wedding night, such a dramatic proclamation that Margaret had laughed in his face. It had since become shorthand between them, part of the internal language of marriage, a phrase both ironic and sincere, something uttered with a roll of the eyes and a thump of the heart.

  “And whatever comes after that,” she agreed, and laid her head on his chest.

  4

  In the weeks following the party, Harry covered the insurance copay to get Rick’s nose fixed, signed Sydney up for ballet lessons at Janet Ransom’s studio, and bought Eunice a Commodore 64 computer and a stack of floppy disks to go with it.

  Margaret feigned excitement and chimed in with the girls’ delight when Harry delivered these gifts, but as soon as she and Harry were alone, getting ready for bed, she said, “I know you feel bad, and paying Rick’s medical bills is the stand-up thing to do, but I wish you hadn’t spent so much money on frivolous things for the girls.”

  Harry looked at her over his copy of The Dead Zone. “This is the kind of thing the girls will remember in twenty to thirty years. This is the stuff that makes a childhood.”

  “That computer was almost six hundred dollars,” she said, rubbing moisturizer into her hands. “That’s not even taking into account all the games you bought.”

  He dropped the book on his chest. “What do you want me to do? March into Eunice’s room and take the computer away?”

  “Please, no more big purchases. We still have Christmas to pay for.”

  She watched him work himself down from fury to calm. When had he gotten so angry? What was he so angry about? “You’re right. I should have talked to you about these things first.”

  But the next day, he was an hour late getting home from work, and when Margaret met him in the garage, she found the back of his station wagon full of lumber and bags from the hardware store.

  “What the hell is this?” she said.

  “I’m building a haunted house for Halloween,” he said.

  Although Halloween was Harry’s favorite holiday, and he always celebrated with the girls, as far as Margaret knew, he’d never gone to another haunted house since their trip to Spooky House in 1968. To say Margaret was surprised by the proclamation would be an understatement.

  “We agreed,” she said.

  “This is awesome,” Sydney said. She pushed past Margaret into the garage, opened the back of the car, and began to unload it.

  “Sydney, stop it,” Margaret said. “Daddy’s taking all of this back to the store.”

  Sydney stopped halfway between the car and the door into the house, a plastic bag in her arms. She looked at Harry.

  “I’m not taking it back to the store, sweetheart,” he said to Sydney. “It’s okay.”

  “Girls, go to your rooms,” Margaret said.

  They ducked their heads and hurried out of the garage.

  Margaret pointed at the lumber in the station wagon. “We agreed, no more big purchases,” she said.

  After a moment, he extended his hand. “Come outside with me.”

  She let him lead her through the house and into the yard. The grass poked at her bare ankles as they walked. He stopped in the center and turned a slow circle, pulling her around in his orbit.

  “What do you see?” he said.

  “It’s time for you to mow,” she said.

  “I keep waiting for fall to start and kill the grass, but it keeps not happening.”

  The knot of frustration in her chest loosened a little. “You’re the one who wanted to move to Texas.”

  “No, Texas is where I found the job,” he said. “But tell me—what else do you see?”

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and reopened them. She studied the yard, a large, flat, slightly sloping square of grassy earth, bounded on three sides by a tall wooden fence. A small concrete patio sat right outside the back door, with the grill, a table, and a few plastic chairs arranged on it. A water hose lay coiled in the grass, still attached to the faucet protruding from the brick wall of the house. She realized that she and Harry were standing exactly where she’d found him sleepwalking a couple of weeks ago.

  She didn’t say this to Harry. Instead, she said, “I see an average yard.”

  “I get it,” he said. “That’s how I felt until the day of Eunice’s party. But then, sitting on the porch, staring at the bounce house, something flipped in my head, and I saw all of this as the foundation of something else. Something grand. And now I can’t get it out of my head.” He touched his temple and winced. “It’s like this dull ache that never goes away.”

  “Is that why you lost your mind and started screaming and hitting people?”

  “I’m not sure.” He dropped his hand and frowned. “But whether it is or not, I have to admit that something’s missing. It’s nothing to do with you, or the girls,” he hastened to add, and reached for her hand again. The gesture felt perfunctory, automatic. “No, it’s like—I get up every day, put on the shirt and tie, go fight through traffic to an office where I spend most of my waking hours, and then I come home too exhausted to do anything but watch TV for a little while and fall asleep. And sometimes I think that, best-case scenario, this is all I have to look forward to until I retire, when I’ll be too old and broken to do anything but waste the last few years of my existence in front of the TV and waiting for the mail and hoping for a call or visit from one of my grown children. And then I’ll die, and that’s that.”

  “Some people would consider that a pretty successful life,” Margaret said.

  “Would you?”

  She almost lied and told him yes, it would be a great life, and he should shut up about it. But most of the anger had ebbed off, and that cold sensation in her middle was too powerful to ignore.

  “You know me better than that. I had a chance at a safe, ‘successful’ life, and I chose you. I wanted the adventure.”

  “You’re smarter than me,” he said. “I saved so much money for school, but then I majored in engineering. I wanted to prove that I could take care of you, that we wouldn’t be poor. I should have been brave, like you.”

  A haunted house. Margaret associated haunted houses with that wolflike creature she’d seen right at the end of Spooky House—the one with orange eyes and a red cloak, that
had pointed at her as though singling her out, right before Harry tossed her down the slide. The creature she’d seen outside Pierce Lombard’s car window right before she hallucinated a plague of bugs bursting from his forehead. She’d never discussed either of these things with Harry. Nor had she ever told him about the dreams of howling and wolves and strange babies. Now didn’t seem the time to bring those things up.

  “So tell me,” she said, strengthening her grip on his hand. “How does building a haunted house in the yard change anything?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But it feels important. Like if I do it, I’ll understand the next thing.”

  She turned his face toward her. “I’ll make you a deal. You want to build something and be irresponsible. I want something in return.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not happy, either,” she said. She took a deep breath and then said what had been rankling her since her first conversation with Janet Ransom. “I want to finish my degree. I can’t do that unless we don’t have to worry about money. That means you have to have a job, Harry, even if it’s one you hate. So here’s the deal: you can build this thing, but you have to keep putting on the tie and fighting through traffic until I graduate and find a job. Can you do that?”

  Something flickered across his face, difficult to read in the failing light. “I think so,” he said, and she suddenly realized why his sleepwalking face had looked so familiar. It was the exact same face he’d made at Spooky House, the night Margaret had seen the thing in the red cloak. The expression that seemed to indicate a complete vacancy behind the eyes.

  5

  She let Harry retrieve the girls and give them the news in the living room while she warmed up his meat loaf in the kitchen.