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?”

         She had, and from then on, she did not believe anything unless she found that there was evidence for it. Her mother was driven to near insanity by the constant phrase, “prove it!” blurting from her lips at every opportunity. And the evidence for old people fibbing to young people was just too much not to see. They were all liars, these Grammas and Grampas, Moms and Dads, these Olds. She hated them for it. Her Mom lied to her all the time, but she had always seemed so sad that Ally had decided not to call her out on it. She thought, maybe, that Olds got so used to lying that they could lie to themselves and believe it. Even her Dad had lied to her one more time before he left for the hospital, left her. He had said after he fell down in the kitchen, “Everything will be alright, sweetheart. Everything would be alright,” and she had believed him.

         But things were not alright, not at all. She and Mom were alone now, and Mom cried all the time and other Olds stopped by and patted Ally on the back and told her that everything was fine and they smiled, but that smile was only a peeling of the lips back from their teeth to show them. It wasn’t a real smile. Just a pretend one to try and make Mom and her feel better. That’s what this old lady was doing now. Except hers wasn’t sad. When she peeled back her lips, they looked like a snarling dog. When the old lady smiled, all Ally saw was a monster.

         She begged her Mother not to hire her, saying that this particular Old was, in all likelihood, the monster that Dad never knew about, but she had no interest in listening to her daughter “prattle on.” She waved Ally off, saying, “I can’t afford to be too picky, Ally. We need money, and that means I need to work at nights, too. Mrs. Kuyper is a nice lady. I don’t know where you get these ideas from. You’ll be fine, just be good when she’s watching you and I’m sure you won’t have any problems. I’ll be back in the morning.”

         The problems started not ten minutes after her mother left the first night.

         The door had closed, the Old’s tree-bark hand shutting it behind her Mother as she waved at her from the entrance. That face, that sagging and crooked face dulled as the lock clicked, and she said, “Now, young lady, I am going to sit in this chair and knit, and you are going to sit in that chair across from me and read this children’s Bible I brought you, okay? And if you’re very good, an Angel just might come to you tonight and visit you, and kiss you on the lips and bless you! How does that sound?”

         “It sounds like a bunch of crap,” Ally said, before she could stop herself.

         The change in her face was instantaneous. One minute, she was dull and passive, the next, a sour, dead mask of flesh wagged at her as it spoke in hushed tones, “Blasphemer! Little girls like you and your mouths! You will do as I say, young missy, or there’ll be hell to pay. You understand me?” Her voice lowered to a hiss then, and that tree-bark withered old hand reached out for her, a claw in the air, “There’ll be hell to pay.”

         So Ally had read the Bible, listening to the click-clack of the knitting needles over the sound of the Old’s dumb music playing on the radio and the constant, low mumbling of the Old as she spoke her prayers over and over. She had went to church with Mom a bunch of times after Dad had left, but she had never really picked up one of the books there and perused it. Mostly she just listened to the Priest babble on and on about the same things over and over, and stood and sat, stood and sat, kneeled and sat, stood and sat. She thought people must go there because they wanted to be bored, but she had no idea why anyone would want that. Mom said she went there to talk to Dad, but Ally never heard or saw him. There was no evidence he was there, she had told her Mother, but her Mom waved her hand and didn’t look at her. She was glad she had never picked up the Bible, even the kid’s one, because all it had were a bunch of pictures in it of people in robes in the desert and Jesus was always smiling, even though Mom said he knew that someday soon he was going to die. She said he died for our sins, but when Ally said that he had come back so it must not have counted, her mother just said, “Aghh, you are too much like your father. Don’t question, Ally, just believe.” All in all, the book was deadly boring, but Ally read it all the way through, though she had skimmed through a couple of pages that had a lot of words on it.

         “Done,” she had exclaimed, closing the book with a thwap on her lap. It had grown dark out that night, a cloudy day that threatened to be a starless night, what Mom had called a “coon night” because the raccoons would always get into the trash when it was really dark. She had stared then into the wet, pink-rimmed eyes of the Old then, saying, “I think I’m going to go to bed.”

         The voice of the Old was like a crackling fire, “I do not think so, little sinner. Sit. Sit until I tell you to move.”

         Ally raised her eyebrows and said, “I’m not a sinner! I’m just a girl, and I’ve done nothing wrong.”

         “You have!” The Old barked, making Ally jump, “You all have. You are all sinners, and you all must pay. In due time, little sinner, I will see that payment given. That’s why I am here, child. I was sent by God for that very purpose. All in due time. For now, shut your mouth and sit until I say otherwise.”

         So Ally had sat. No books, no T.V., no Nintendo DS, just the feel of the couch on her bum and the constant click-click of the knitting needles. She sat for what felt like days, constantly shifting around in the chair to keep her back and bum from going numb with ache. Every now and then, the Old would peek above her spectacles, giving her a malicious stare if she was making too much noise. It quieted her. She was afraid of the Old. That stare reminded her of David Deede, the mutant-large kid down the road who harassed kids at the bus stop before school. He’d storm up onto the bus line and say in his plugged-nose voice, “You gotta pay da fee to get on da bus, kid,” and he’d laugh, pulling off their shirt or sometimes even their pants. If the kids fought, he’d hurt them. Bad. He had broken Kevin Barner’s head by stomping on it when he fell down, his nose and eyes a bloody mess, and he never even felt bad afterward. He just stared at Kevin laying there quiet, a sly grin on his face. Ally had avoided him for the most part, though he had torn her backpack once pulling her down. She had run home that morning faster than she ever had. David was no one to mess with.

         Neither was the Old. She had that David Deede stare.But it was worse with the Old. David was just a “bad apple”. The Old, her stare was inhuman. Unnatural.

         It was hours before the Old told her it was okay for her to go to bed. It was just as well, because the constant clicking of those knitting needles was threatening to drive Ally mad. It was all she could do to get away from her, scrambling up the stairs and slamming the door to her room shut with a bang. Getting under the covers, eyes peeking out from a crack between Scooby Doo sheets that her Dad had bought her, she watched the door. Watched and watched and swore this was false, but there she was, prisoner to a monster, mother nowhere in sight. Her Dad could never have known. He had sworn! He had crossed his heart! He must not have known there were monsters. He would have told her had he known. Her eyes locked on the sliver of light from the hall under the door, waiting for the shadow, just knowing that the door would soon be clawed open. But it never happened. She drifted, eyes betraying her. I have to stay awake, she thought. Stay up and watch. But before she knew it, she was deep in slumber.

         She was not too sure when it happened, whether it was seconds after she fell asleep of hours, but at some point during the coon night, she had awakened to a firm, if cracked voice, “Ally.” She jumped, sitting up and rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hands. “Mom?” she asked. Her vision was still off, the light from the hall temporarily blinding her. There was shadow hunched in the doorway. Her open doorway. Her heart dropped when she saw the huddled form of the Old, her silhouette black against the hallway light. The lady was mumbling to herself, a low creaking noise that sounded like dry, crinkling paper. Ally couldn’t hear it at first, but as the Old waddled forward on her cane, words formed out of that crackling throat. “Time for payment, my little sinner! Little whore! Brat! Harlot! I will make you pay, by God. I will make you understand God’s will, little slut. I will bring God’s vengeance! I will burn you in God’s light!”

         She could not move. She had wanted to run, to punch the Old in her fat round belly and run, but nothing would work. None of her muscles would work! She was a monster, Ally thought. A real monster, and she was in my house! Tree-bark hands writhed in one another in anticipation, looking as if they had almost sprouted claws in the darkness. She couldn’t even blink, just a frozen lump laying there, not breathing, watching as the Old crept closer, closer. Wrinkled claws lashed out and grabbed her roughly by her hair. Ally whimpered and burst into tears.

         The Old said, “I will show you God’s light, little sinner!” The smell of garlic and onions wafted out between her jack-o-lantern teeth, and she had moved in so close to Ally that she thought the Old might bite her. Heat emanated from that mouth like she had swallowed Hell. Even in the darkness, Ally could see her dead, pink-ringed eyes stabbing at her, “Pretty little sinner. Sweet little whore. All sinners pay, Ally. All of them. Some go to Hell, and if some are especially, almost remarkably unlucky, some go to me. But, don’t worry, I will scour the sin from you if I have to tear the flesh from your bones with my teeth to do it.”

         A gnarled pink hand flashed through the shadows into Ally’s face then, and the world exploded with light and pain, then darkness.

         Ally had awakened to the click-clack of metal on metal, lying face-first on the kitchen floor, almost in the spot where Dad had been when he said that “everything would be alright.” She almost laughed. This was the furthest possible distance from alright that she could possibly be! She opened her eyes, almost crying out when she realized that one had completely swollen shut. Her face was wet and slippery with blood, and a stinging pain filled her face like a giant sneeze that would just not come. The Old sat in a chair at the kitchen table above her, but from the angle that she was laying on the floor, she could see nothing of her. It sounded like the click-clack of metal knitting needles, but she could see those sitting across from the table on the kitchen counter.

         The Old mumbled to herself, some unintelligible babble that poured out of her mouth like vomit. The kitchen itself was hot like Thanksgiving Day, when all the burners and the oven had been running for hours. The stench of garlic and onions was overwhelming in here, as well as a smell that reminded Ally of upturned earth. There were flies in the house buzzing around her head. For a quick second, Ally thought she might be dead, because she had seen flies swarming on dead squirrels in the road when she went on bike rides, and she panicked.

         Ally stood all at once, mustering her strength, running across the kitchen and pressing her back and hands against the counter, facing the Old directly. She was a mound of flesh sitting in that chair, hunched over the table, her elbows propping up her heavy, sagging head. Her gray sweater pulsed and heaved with her ragged breath, the air uneven and wet coming out of her. The flash of a long knife drew itself over the blade sharpener, the Old’s tree-bark hands awkwardly moving them back and forth across one another, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack. She looked up from her work unsurprised at Ally, and smiled for the first time. Really smiled. Ally started crying again.

         The Old said in an almost formal voice, “You have sinned, Ally. I have been sent here by God himself to cleanse you of that sin.”

         Ally spoke, “I am not a sinner, OLD! I’m a good girl, and I don’t need to be… I don’t need to be cleansed.”

         The Old stood all at once, pointing the flashing blade at Ally, “Ahhh, but you do! Your father, he’s gone, right? Do you believe that he is in Heaven? He is not. He burns, now. He burns forever, screaming and pleading for God. But God gave him his chance, and he failed. I can save you, Ally. Come to me, and I will bring you Salvation!” Her hand reached out again, the knife sharpener still grasped around the thumb and forefinger. “Come to me, little sweet sinner. Come and be clean!”

         Ally screamed, “NO!”

         The Old moved closer, saying, “I am an agent of God! I am one of his blessed angels!”

         Ally said, “Get away from me, monster!”

         That’s when Ally saw it. It hit her all at once. The cane the Old used to shamble around on. And on the table where she had been sitting, three separate pill vials. Her dad’s voice sounded in her head again, almost like he was there, “No such thing as monsters, Allybear. Just really bad people. Bad apples, core to skin.” Monsters don’t need canes. Monsters don’t need medication. In fact, there was no evidence this lady was a monster at all. The evidence said she was just some creepy old lady. She was no angel sent by God, or even a demon. She was just a bad apple.

         Ally pressed herself against the counter as if she could push through it and end up outside. She shook her head, saying, “No! You’re no monster. You’re just no good! Core to skin, a bad apple!” Her hand brushed against the knitting needle behind her on the kitchen counter and she grasped it tight, so tight that she thought she’d break it.

         The Old smiled at that and shook her head sympathetically, her face baring a grin, her brown and crooked teeth slick with saliva. “Come to me, sweetness.” She raised the knife over her head, moving the tip to point toward Ally. “There is, quite simply, no hope, Ally. No hope. I’m sorry, but you are already dead." The Old cackled, almost to herself, "I guess you were right after all, I guess I am a monster!” The Old lunged, the knife whistled through the air at her.

         Ally screamed and jabbed the knitting needle up as hard as she could, jamming it straight into the pink-lined eye of the Old.

         The Old reeled back, her mouth agape in what looked like a growing yawn. She dropped knife and sharpener, grasping the knitting needle with both hands as if to pull it out. Her mouth open and closed wordlessly, slather flailing about the lips as she shook her head, her tongue wagging between her cheeks. She fell hard, and was almost instantly silent then, except for the slow and bubbled escape of her final breath.

         Ally stood above the body, alone in the coon night, the other knitting needle held out before her, point directed at the bleeding mound on the floor. Ally dropped it after a minute, sighing, and saying aloud to no one but herself, now, “I don’t believe in monsters.”