A Cosmology of Monsters

by Shaun Hamill

I started collecting my older sister Eunice’s suicide notes when I was seven years old.

there is no such thing as a happy ending. There are only good stopping places.”

My family is spectacularly bad at endings. We never handle them with grace. But we’re not great with beginnings, either.

the tales had a compelling sense of dark revelation, the gradual realization by the narrator that the comforting “real world” humans inhabited was in fact nothing but weak gauze ready to be pulled aside to reveal an abyss of terrors underneath.

The same basic concept as religion—the world is not the world—but twisted.

The constellations put Margaret in mind of Azathoth from Visions of Cthulhu, the vagina monster propelled through the heavens by tentacles.

Her mind wandered during prayer. She assumed everyone’s did, although you weren’t supposed to say so.

“Go in. You’ll see,” the woman said, her voice the sound of stones scraped together.

Their faces appear over the side of the bed, peering down at her with orange eyes. They coo and gurgle. They rock back and forth, gathering the momentum necessary to heave themselves forward, down to the floor. They’re coming to help, to pull the third baby out of her womb and into the world with their sharp little teeth.

Madness rides the star-wind…claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses…dripping death astride a Bacchanale of bats from night-black ruins of buried temples of Belial….Now,

Now, as the baying of that dead, fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings circles closer and closer, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnamable.

both she and Dad are smiling, and in their smiles I see none of the manic energy and false cheer described to me later. I see only my parents, happy. I see why they could have loved one another to begin with.

Human beings are small and insignificant in a big, scary universe, and in a horror story—be it a movie, a book, or a haunted house—we have to face that fact. But no matter how scary things get, no matter what the audience has to confront or endure, there’s always a happy ending. When the credits roll, or the reader closes the book, or when our guests walk out tonight, their lives will go on. Because they faced the dark, the sun will shine a little brighter tomorrow, and the real-life monsters won’t seem so bad. For a day, or an hour, or even a moment, life will be better.”

It’s ominous against the darkening sky, and a thrill of delight courses through her. It’s the haunted house she built with her father when she was ten years old—the last thing the family did together before Daddy got sick.

Grown-ups are always lying to Sydney. They tell her Santa Claus is real and monsters are fake, that they still love each other when they don’t, that they’re doing their best when it’s clear they don’t care. Here’s another falsehood to add to the pile.

In the old days, your left side was considered your sinister or bad side. Left-handedness used to indicate a moral failing. Teachers would smack you with a ruler if they caught you writing with your left hand. So it seems appropriate to me that the heart, the symbol of love, the organ supposedly driving the major decisions of our lives, beats on the left side of the body.

How did you get in? The walls here grow thin, ever more confused. There are doors where there used to be walls, and darkness blooms in place of light. The only way out is through, to the other side.

It has to be the answer. We can’t make new happiness past a certain point, but we can linger in past joy forever, perfectly captured with the rememberer’s eye. Remember me, Noah, tucking you into bed, kissing you good night. Remember the stories I told you. We will see each other again.