A Cosmology of Monsters

by Shaun Hamill

  14

  That night I stood at the edge of my roof and called softly into the night, “If you’re out there, I need you.”

  The summons worked. Moments later, the monster descended through the air until it floated before me.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “Come inside.”

  I climbed back into my bedroom, and the creature followed. It didn’t take its usual place on the bed, but remained next to the window, as though ready to take off.

  “I’ve missed you for the past couple of weeks,” I said. Something softened in its posture. “Where have you been?”

  It picked up the pad and pen from my desk and wrote DID YOU WANT SOMETHING?

  I noticed the creature’s refusal to share its whereabouts, but decided not to remark on it. “I don’t know if you keep up with the news,” I said, “but two kids have gone missing in the last several weeks. Everybody’s pretty freaked out about it around town—and my family is, too. But today it occurred to me that I have a best friend who can fly, and do magic. So I was thinking maybe you could help me, you know, find the kids. Bring them home.”

  The creature bent to the pad again and scribbled a single word with quick, decisive strokes:

  NO.

  “No?” I said. The creature had never refused me before. “Those kids need our help. Even if you’re mad at me, don’t you care about them?”

  It underlined its NO three times. Then wrote, ASK DONNA FOR HELP.

  “Donna?” I said. “Donna and I are done. I’m asking you.”

  My Friend regarded me for a moment, and for the first time in years, I felt uncomfortable with the intensity of its gaze, the heave of its shoulders as it breathed. Finally it sighed and wrote, WHAT CAN I DO?

  At my request, we flew to the closed Winn-Dixie where Maria Davis’s bicycle had been found. After circling the area overhead to make sure no police cars were keeping watch, we landed in the parking lot. It was lined with lampposts, but they’d either burned out or been turned off by whoever owned the property. The only light came from the street, some twenty yards from the storefront. The creature’s eyes glinted in the near dark as it gave me a questioning glance.

  “Let’s look around,” I said. “Shout if you find anything.”

  I turned on my flashlight and headed in one direction while the creature went in the other. The parking lot revealed by the sweeping arc of light was almost preternaturally clean, having already been combed over by an army of federal crime scene investigators. When I reached the edge of the concrete, I switched off my light and turned around to watch My Friend, bent forward and snuffling, nose close to the ground.

  I tried to imagine what it must have been like on the day Maria had been taken. Partially cloudy, the sun popping out every now and again between banks of clouds. The not-quite-taboo thrill of riding her bike across an empty lot, a wide expanse of concrete all to herself. Maybe a slight breeze lifting her hair behind her when she got going fast. The curiosity when a vehicle pulled into the lot and drove right up to her. Did she know the driver? Or was it a stranger? Was she talked into the car, or grabbed? When the kidnapper drove away, did his route take Maria past her house? Did she get a last glimpse?

  Across the lot, the creature was a dim, bulky outline and the sounds of its sniffing as it walked up and down the lot. But then the sounds abruptly stopped. My Friend had paused near the middle of the lot, facing me now.

  “What is it?” I said. “Do you have something?”

  It took a couple more sniffs of the ground. Then it looked at me and shook its head: No.

  “You don’t feel anything weird? No bad vibes in the air?”

  The creature cocked its head, then shook it again—No—and I knew what I should have known—should at least have suspected—weeks ago. The creature was lying to me.

  “Do you and my mother know each other?” I said.

  It made no response, but I thought I read a sort of surprise in the lessening of its shoulder hunch, a slight drawing back of the head.

  “That drawing I made of you for my costume at work,” I said. “When I showed it to her, she got weird about it. She’s seen you before, hasn’t she?”

  The creature shook its head.

  “Right after I showed her that picture, she started talking about Maria Davis. Why would a picture of you start her thinking about missing children?” I said. “Unless she somehow associates a picture of you with Sydney’s disappearance?”

  A growl started in its throat, and it turned away from me. The smart thing would have been to let it go, but I was angry now, fully feeling something for the first time in weeks, and ready to ride it out. I pursued the monster and shoved it. I caught it off guard, and it actually fell forward onto its knees.

  “You can fly!” I said, running to catch up. “You do magic! You somehow know how to find Batman toys, or which window at Donna’s house is hers. You go missing every time one of these kids goes missing. You know things. I know you know what happened to Sydney, and Maria, and Brandon. So stop lying and tell me!” I reached for the creature’s shoulder, and it slapped me away. This time, I fell over and landed on my ass.

  The creature bared its teeth at me and snarled, its eyes bright orange. Saliva dripped from between clenched teeth. I closed my eyes and held up my forearms, knowing it was a pitiful defense against slaughter and wondering why I had had to bring the creature here, so far from home, where I could have at least cried for help. I waited to die.

  And waited.

  When I opened my eyes, the creature had gone, leaving me alone in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere.

  15

  I walked to the closest gas station and called home from the pay phone. Mom looked livid when she pulled into the parking lot half an hour later, jaw set and nostrils flaring through the windshield of her car. She was still wearing her pajamas.

  I hurried from the storefront and slumped into the passenger seat. I felt her gaze burning into me but stared forward.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What the hell were you doing out here? Alone?”

  “I snuck out to ride around with some friends and I got ditched,” I said.

  “What friends? Did Kyle do this?” It was strange how her parental concern seemed to emerge only when she was angry with me. I wish I could say that made her fury more pleasant, but that would be a lie. It still felt like shit.

  “No, Mom, it wasn’t Kyle,” I said. “Kyle’s with Donna tonight.” I didn’t know this for sure, but it seemed a safe bet. Since he was “sick,” maybe she’d brought him chicken soup and word of my blessing/indifference.

  “Kyle with Donna?” she said, her voice softening. I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at my lap. Let her work it out for herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. And then, almost to herself: “Your feelings were hurt so you went out and did something stupid.”

  “I wanted to see where Maria Davis went missing,” I said. It never hurt to put a little truth in. “I thought maybe I could find something the police missed and…” I trailed off and shrugged.

  “So stupid,” she said, the steel returning to her tone. “Christ, do you know how lucky you are to be in this car right now, instead of on the news, like your sister and the other two?”

  “I do,” I said. I thought I knew even better than she did. I risked eye contact, and saw real concern mixed with fury.

  “I should fire you,” she said. “Make you stay home and sit out the rest of the year at The Wandering Dark. It might be the only thing that could help you understand the gravity of what you did tonight. And if Sydney hadn’t disappeared right after she quit The Wandering Dark in 1989, that’s exactly what I would do. But I’d rather you be where I can ke
ep an eye on you. So here’s how it works: you’re grounded for the foreseeable future. You go to school, you go to work, and you come home. And that’s your whole life until I say otherwise.”

  After the night I’d had, I felt like I was getting off light. I nodded and tried to look contrite.

  16

  Grounded, without a girlfriend, on hiatus from my best friend, and in mortal terror of the monster, I spent a lot more time at home but still saw little of Eunice. She hid in her room, or dominated the family computer. She typed at a rapid clip for hours, and rarely seemed to pause for thought. Mom said we had to give her space, that Eunice would traverse the country of depression at her own pace, but it’s hard to live with a depressed person. The depression takes up physical space, swells and seeps under closed doors. It wafts between rooms like poison gas, settling over the house in a fog.

  In an act of self-preservation, I decided to try to cheer Eunice up. On the third day of my grounding, I knocked on her bedroom door after I got home from school. I didn’t receive an answer but walked in anyway. I found Eunice in bed, tangled in a mess of sheets. She’d pinned a blanket over the window, blocking most of the sunlight, and the room smelled of unwashed human flesh. Dirty laundry littered the floor, and dishes crusted with food were piled on the desk.

  I jostled her by the shoulder and startled her awake.

  “It’s okay,” I said, voice soft. “It’s me.”

  Her panicked intake of air came out as a long, annoyed sigh. She opened and closed her mouth with a smacking sound. Her lips curled in disgust at whatever she tasted.

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “About four,” I said.

  She groaned, stretched, and kicked a book off the bed. It landed on the floor open and facedown, pages askew. The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death. She lifted her head, seemed to find it too difficult, and dropped it back on the pillow.

  “I have the night off,” I said. “I’m grounded, but Mom probably wouldn’t mind if you rented us some movies.”

  “I’m not in the mood,” she said.

  “How about dinner?” I said. “I have money. We could order pizza.”

  “Invite Donna over.”

  “We broke up,” I said.

  She stared up at the ceiling. “Noah, take a hint. I want to be alone. You can’t expect me to suddenly be your best friend because you got dumped.”

  “That’s not how it is,” I said.

  “I get it,” she said. “Mom ignored you when you were small, so it was my job to feed you and love you and exclaim over your gold stars and art projects. But you’re not a little kid anymore, so how about you give me some fucking time to myself?”

  “This isn’t only about me,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I thought some time out of your room—out of your own head—would be good for you.”

  “I don’t get to leave this room,” she said. “I have a brain as big as Saturn, but I go to community college because of a chemical imbalance. I’m stuck in a conservative concrete hell, decaying inside and justifying my choices to a C-average narcissist with mommy issues. So please, hear me before you spout any more nonsense about my well-being: I’d be fucking fine if you would fuck off and leave me the fuck alone.”

  “Eunice.”

  “Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

  I started to leave the room, but found myself too angry. I turned back and said, “No, you go fuck yourself. I was just trying to help you get over that stupid Jesus bitch, you—” I looked for something to hurt her like she’d hurt me, and reached for the most vile, low-hanging fruit. “I hope Brin is right and you rot in Hell.”

  I slammed her door behind me, my whole body shaking. I could’ve killed someone. I wanted to kill someone. Instead, I stormed downstairs and snatched her car keys from the hook by the front door.

  I stole the car as quietly as I could. I didn’t peel out or blast the radio. The act of driving, still awkward and new, soothed my nerves. I moved through town without aim, traffic bleeding off as the sun set and rush hour ended. I drove back to the closed-down Winn-Dixie, where My Friend and I had had our last violent conversation.

  I parked my car in the lot and stared out the windshield, trying again to picture what had happened, the monster snatching Maria Davis off the bike and secreting her away to—to where? And in broad daylight? Brandon Hawthorne had been taken at night, but not Maria. Did My Friend ever appear anywhere while the sun was out? I supposed it was proof of how little I really knew about the creature.

  The sun set, and, despite my inner anguish, I was getting hungry and nervous. I started the car and headed home, going a little under the speed limit, trying to think of what to say to my sister, how to take back the hateful thing I’d hurled at her. I was so preoccupied that, about two miles from the house, as I started a protected left turn, I didn’t see the other vehicle coming until light flooded my passenger side window and the world spun, a blur of concrete and streetlights.

  17

  I came to a crunching halt and sat with my hands on the wheel, breathing hard. Nothing hurt, but my body glinted and sparkled like water in sunlight. Glass. I was covered in broken glass. Through the cracked windshield I saw the other vehicle, a VW bus, also stopped, facing the wrong way into oncoming traffic. One of its headlights was smashed and the sliding panel door hung open.

  It took me three tries to unlatch my seat belt. When I opened my door, I tumbled onto the concrete but barely felt it. I stood on wobbly legs and staggered across to the bus. The driver was slumped over the wheel. The world spun. My head throbbed.

  “Are you okay?” I called.

  The figure at the wheel groaned and moved a little. The side door was open and the cab light inside was on, a soft, calming yellow. I paused in the middle of the street, happy for its reassuring warmth, but had to clamp my hands over my mouth and nose as a putrid, sickly-sweet stench rolled over me. I held my breath and squinted at the contents of the van: empty beer cans, fast-food trash, an overturned fire extinguisher, and, in the middle, a shiny black lump. A garbage bag—no, several garbage bags in a pile, containing misshapen, irregular cargo.

  Something grabbed my forearm and jerked me away. I found myself facing a tall, filthy, bearded man with greasy hair. He wore an assortment of mismatched thrift-store castoffs and smelled terrible. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead. I knew him from somewhere.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Are you okay?” I said. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Why were you looking in my vehicle?” he said. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I don’t—I’m not—I’m sorry,” I said. His stench made it hard to think straight. I couldn’t help glancing back at the open door.

  His hand tightened on my arm. “It’s none of your business,” he said again.

  As I started to look away, something shifted in the back of the van. One of the bags, prompted by some tiny, unseen shift of gravity, rolled forward, tipped out of the cab, and hit the street with a thick, heavy sound. The bag hadn’t been tied properly, so there was nothing to stop the pale thing from falling out and lying in sharp contrast to the black bag and gray pavement: a single small hand.

  He saw me see. I had enough time to register another glint, this one on serrated steel, but not enough time to do anything as it arced sideways through the air between us, strangely beautiful. I wondered why it had to be so lovely. Before I could come up with an answer, a great weight crashed into me, the world spun again, and I hit the pavement. I heard the knife clatter away.

  I sat up a little, feeling my body for wounds and finding none. A hooded figure crouched between me and the other man, blocking my view. It rose and revealed its full height. My Friend, a low growl in its throat. Its crimson robe seemed to float around it, no longer tethere
d by gravity.

  My assailant tilted his head as the creature approached, a look of dim thoughtfulness on his face. He opened his mouth, but before he said a word, something else plummeted from the sky and landed between the two of them. It looked like My Friend, but different, fur more gray than brown, a scar running up the side of its face. It wore a blue cloak rather than red.

  Mine wasn’t the only one. Here was another, meaner-looking monster. It growled and bared its fangs, protecting the filthy man. My Friend spread its arms and took a step back. The man shouted, “Not your business!” again, and the Gray Beast lunged forward with a roar. My Friend hit the ground and covered its head with its paws. The Gray Beast tripped over it, snarled its legs in the intermingling cloaks, and crashed in the street.

  My Friend rolled to its hands and knees as the Gray Beast did the same. The Gray Beast now crouched between My Friend and me. Both creatures seemed to realize the reversal at the same time, although the Gray Beast was quicker. It galloped at me on all fours and opened a gaping maw of swordlike teeth. The mouth seemed to open wider and wider, filling an expanse of space that ought not to have been possible, creating a starry sky of fangs.

  I scrambled backward with one arm up, moving too slowly. I closed my eyes. A gush of something wet hit my face and My Friend howled like a wounded dog. I opened my eyes to see its face next to mine, bright with pain and real fear. It had jammed its forearm between the Beast’s jaws. I was glazed in a layer of My Friend’s black blood.

  My Friend beat at the Gray Beast with a free arm, but its blows looked weak. I scrambled around behind the Beast, pulled myself to my feet, and heaved myself at its back. I wrapped my arms around its throat like a TV wrestler. It was like trying to choke a stovepipe. The Beast released its death-grip on My Friend and spun in a circle, swiping at me. I tried to wrap my legs around its middle, but couldn’t find purchase. Its claws grasped at me, first left, then right, and I couldn’t duck both arms at once. Its talons caught the left side of my face and dug in. I screamed as the sight in my left eye went red, then gray.