The Skeptic and the Monster

   The old lady had shown up a day ago, all smiles and nodding at the doorstep, leaning hard on her cane, telling her mother that there was “nothing on God’s Green Earth that she loved more than the sound of children’s laughter” and “I am firm with children, but fair, always fair,” and “I so love to teach the children to bake! Bake and knit!” which was what all old people said. That or something like it. But it was all crap, Ally thought. That’s what her Dad had called it when he saw a bunch of lies. Her mother didn’t like that kind of language, so she never said it aloud, but she heard it in her head, in her Dad’s voice. “This old lady is full of crap,” he said. She could see it from the first second the old lady waddled like a penguin through the screen door. This lady didn’t like the sound of children whatsoever. From what Ally could tell, this old lady was lying, and she didn’t really like anything at all.

         Ally knew when someone was lying to her. She always knew. From the first time her Father had tried to pull over the Santa Claus scam on her, she had realized that adults tried to fool their kids. Ally had been so hurt that her Dad had lied to her that she stayed in her room on Christmas Day and left all her gifts under the tree. He had crept into her room when she had fallen asleep and curled up next to her, smelling like the cold outdoors and pine cones. He said, “I’m sorry, Allybear, I’m so sorry that I lied. It’s what adults do.”

         “I don’t like it,” she had said. “I already know the truth. There is no Santa Claus. It’s you that puts the presents under the tree, and you write Santa’s name on the card. I knew you were lying and you still lied!”

         “Well,” he had said, looking at her with those big green Dad eyes, “I promise I will never ever lie to you again. And anything you wanted to know, I will answer you right now, and it will be the pure and clean truth of it. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

         She had taken him up on that opportunity. She asked him every question that had ever niggled at the back of her brain as sounding false. She had asked him about the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. Both fake. Those were easy ones that she had pretty much known already. She asked him about storks bringing babies, and that was false too. Turns out that mommies squeezed them out of their bellies, which didn’t sound true either, but he had crossed his heart, and no one lied when they crossed their heart. She had asked him how the baby got in there, and that was just confusing, and a bit gross. He had said she would have plenty of time to learn about that later, and not to worry about the details too much. She asked about God, and he said a lot of people have a lot of ideas about it, but no one really knows, but most everyone thinks they do. She asked about monsters, and Dad said, smiling, “No such thing as monsters, Allybear. Just really bad people. Bad apples, core to skin. There is absolutely, positively no evidence at all for monsters.”

         She loved that word, evidence. It was what she had been trying to say without knowing its name. Proof. “In order for something to be true,” her Dad had said, “there must be proof, evidence. For example. The Loch Ness Monster. People have said they have seen it in the water for years, but not one body has ever washed up on the beach, nor has anyone gotten a good picture of it that wasn't doctored, fake. No creature like the one they describe has ever been found, except for dinosaurs, and they died out millions of years ago. So, the lack of evidence means that people are probably mistaken or lying. Another example. If you were to eat all the cookies out of a jar, and then claim that you didn’t do it, there would be evidence against you, because the cookies were gone, your breath smelled like cookies, and you had cookie crumbs on your shirt. I could say then that there was enough evidence that you ate the cookies, even though I didn’t see you eat them. See? And the reason you never believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy was because your brain, your smart-as-hell-catch-every-little-detail brain had never found one shred of evidence that was believable enough for you to buy into the lie. Do you understand?”