Saving Elijah

I was petrified, Sam. I still am."
    "But why?"
    "You weren't petrified?"
    "Of course I was. But I didn't manufacture a ghost to comfort me."
    What did comfort you then, Sam? Your relentless optimism, your unrealistic sanguinity? "You think I'm making this up."
    He took a sip of his drink. "Making it up? No. I think you must believe what you're telling me. And I may have been petrified, but I'm not still petrified."
    "I haven't made this up, Sam. And I am still petrified."
    "Why didn't you come to me before? Then?"
    "I wasn't capable of coming to anyone with anything at the time. I could barely take my next breath. Anyway, you would have said the same thing you're saying now. That it's crazy. That I'd snapped under the emotional strain."
    "Dinah, I don't believe in such things." He sat down on the sofa again, took my hands in his. "Neither do you."
    I sat down next to him. "I never did before. Now I have no choice but to believe." I started to take a calming breath, then I got a whiff of it. The metallic smell, the odor of empty damp metal. "It's here, Sam. Right now."
    Sam's upper lip was raised at one side and quivering. It was as if he were trying, unsuccessfully, to keep his face from registering distaste, from showing any emotion at all.
    "I don't see anything."
    The demon laughed and mocked. "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?"
    "But you do," Sam said.
    "I don't see it right now, either."
    "But sometimes you do."
    "It comes to me in my dreams, in visions, it appears in our bedroom, in my office. It won't leave me alone. It kept telling me that Elijah was going to die. It said it could help me. It said it could show me how to escape the Angel of Death."
    "The what?"
    "They say that when a person dies they breathe their last breath when the Angel of Death drips a drop of poison from his sword into their mouth."
    He was up again. "Who says? Some Hassid with sidecurls? Some Christian fanatic? Who?"
    "It's an old, old tale. The ghost said he could help me save Elijah. Escape the angel. I made a deal with it, Sam."
    "For our son's life?" His eyes, oh, his eyes.
    "Yes."
    "Dinah, wait a minute. This is too much." He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked right into mine. "What was the deal?"
    "In return, I have to be with it."
    "What? What does that mean, Dinah?"
    "It means I have to let it inside of me."
    Sam's square jaw was clenched, like a fist. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
    "Dinah, that is disgusting."
    "It's not sexual, Sam."
    "What the hell is it?"
    "It enters by ... I mean, through ..." I stopped. How could I describe such a thing to him?
    "Well, whatever it is, Dinah, it's still disgusting. And it's also nuts. I'm going to bed."
    He had no idea how disgusting or nuts. Not even a clue.

twenty-three
    Morning, Mom. Morning, Elijah." Alex walked into the kitchen on a warm spring morning, wearing a black Megadeth T-shirt stamped with a cartoon of a huge skull. Inside its open mouth was a girl drawn with big cartoon breasts, wearing a few white lines intended to depict a skimpy bikini. Sam had left early for an out-of-town trip, leaving me to deal with the offensive sartorial display on my own, before my second cup of coffee, yet. Elijah was eating pancakes in his pajamas, swinging his feet back and forth under the table, face full of syrup.
    "Morning, Alex. What do you want for breakfast?"
    "No time." He opened the fridge, peered inside, then closed it.
    "Have some juice." We had this same conversation every day.
    "Okay."
    I handed him the juice. "I hate to say it, Alex, but that is one god-awful shirt."
    He downed a gulp. My fourteen-year-old seemed taller and more handsome every day, despite the attire. No wonder girls were constantly calling him, trying to be casual in their polite, earnest voices: "Hello, Mrs. Galligan, can I speak to Alex?"
    "I like this shirt," Alex said.
    "It ought to come with a rating. PG for Probably Gruesome. Or maybe DV. For Definitely Vulgar."
    "You're not going to tell me I can't wear it." Another gulp.
    "No, I'm not. But what is it about misogynist art that appeals to you?"
    "I don't even know what that means, Mom." He sat down next to Elijah and snatched a piece of pancake from his plate.
    Elijah giggled, reached for it just before it disappeared into Alex's mouth. "Hey!"
    "Mom's right, Alex." Kate came into the kitchen, dressed as usual in baggy jeans ripped practically front to back at both knees. "That shirt has got to go. Seriously."
    "I