Saving Elijah

Those few words are not enough for a life, not for my son's life.
    "He would have made it to twelve, Dinah. Just imagine that party. Carry the kid and roll his machines with him, put him in the beanbag with his machines, bend him in the middle, arrange him in a sitting-up pose, if you have the strength to move the steel-hard limbs, and light some candles. Happy Birthday, Elijah.
    "Think of it, Dinah. Your child's smell is the last thing you'd ever think about, but you think about it now. You know what it's like to live with its loss every day."
    Oh, my demon is right. I would be so grateful for a fleeting whiff, oh, my sweet little boy's smell, the smell of his hair, the back of his neck, behind his ear, his arm. Oh, if only I had kept his Tuddy instead of burying it with him in this ground. It will be a very long time before his smell disappears from that fuzzy turtle. Turtle fuzz isn't like flesh, it might still smell like Elijah, even though I am old myself now. If I had Tuddy now, I could have Elijah anytime I wanted. But Tuddy is in the ground beneath me, clutched in a corpse's arms.
    "You really are a selfish bitch, aren't you?" the demon says. "All this pretense of being a good person. The kid needs comfort from his Tuddy, and you would take that away from him?"
    "If he's dead he's with God," I say. "Surely God is enough comfort that he doesn't need his turtle, too. So I could have kept the turtle for my own consolation."
    The ghost makes a mocking, whistling sound that the wind carries away.
    "Please, I want the turtle," I say. "Can't we open Elijah's grave?"
    "Of course," the demon says.
    Shovel and shovel, a pile of dirt. It opens the vault, lifts the lid, tosses it aside as if the lid weighs nothing, and then we can see the casket within. It lifts this second, smaller lid. I close my eyes to the sight of decaying flesh. But then I grow bolder and withdraw the turtle from the blackened little hand and from under the arm, that Tuddy cloth that does not decay like flesh. And then I hold the turtle to my breast, and smell that smell, ignoring the other smells that cling to it now. Yes. Faint, but there. I can still smell my son. Now that I have Tuddy back, I'll be able to smell my son in  the turtle for a very long time until all trace of the smell finally vanishes. It is all I have left, and I whisper, "Elijah."
    "Ah," the demon says. "You would be quite mad with grief."
    I look it in the eye, or rather the two black beads that pretend to be eyes. "I am mad now."
    It places its outer membrane against my cheek, the cold seems to pass right through me. "It doesn't have to be this way, my Dinah. We can be together."
    "Please, please." I weep.
    "Go ahead, cry then. In the end, you will love me. And you will beg me to come to you. You will beg!"
    The demon not only wants to possess me, it wants me to desire possession.
    "Please. I cannot bear it again." No. I cannot. Not the metal hunger, the stinging wind, the eternal emptiness and wanting of release.
    The ghost demon pulls me to my feet. "Come, Dinah. You must find some small stones."
    "Stones?"
    "Your people's custom? An old Jewish custom. What's wrong with you, don't you even know that? They leave a permanent record of your visit. You must leave them every time you come."
    "But this isn't real," I say, my voice a gulp, a burp, in the whipping wind.
    The demon regards me with great solemnity. "It might be real, Dinah. Perhaps it is." It touches me with its glacial talons. It moves to me and presses itself against me again. I feel the cold beneath that flimsy nightgown.
    I withdraw, kneel down over the grave again, weep again. "My son. My son."
    "Oh, stop that whining," the demon intones. "How do I bear it anymore? Women lose children. Always have, always will. Everyone has tragedies. You think life is a party? When Seth was alive, he lost his mother. He was only ten."
    "Did it hurt you, when you lost your mother?"
    It makes a shrugging movement, and its eyes go all white, and it rises above me, floating for a moment, its form fading away. You can see right through it to the dancing leaves, to the stars and moon.
    "Nothing hurts me. I am a ghost," it whispers. "The stones, Dinah. You must leave the stones."
    "Why?"
    Back beside me again, just as it was, its teeth gleam in the moonlight. "Your ancestors piled stones on graves. To keep the spirits down, keep them from getting out and roaming the earth."
    "Like you? You roam the earth."
    "Like me." It kneels down