Saving Elijah

leaves fall, Mommy?" Elijah asked me.
    "Because in the fall they die, so new leaves can grow in the spring," I told him.
    "Like the worms when they wake up?" he said, with a bit of a smile.
    I kissed him. "Yes. Just like that," I said.
    Every moment that Elijah wasn't in school, I spent with him. I kissed him as often as he would let me, smelled him, bathed him, dressed him, tried to commit the feel of his skin and his smell to memory.
    If Sam thought I was hovering again, he didn't mention it.

    *    *    *

    October turned into November, and one night Sam and I were in Elijah's bedroom, Sam on the bed, Elijah in the rocking chair on my lap, Tuddy on his. Kate and Alex were both in their bedrooms; I could feel the pulse of Nine Inch Nails all through the house, even here. I was reading one of Elijah's favorite books to him, Goodnight Moon, and Sam was listening.
    When I finished, Elijah spread his arms out and shouted, "Goodnight noises everywhere!"
    We laughed. I was about to suggest that we look through the very battered Creatures of the Deep, but I was cut off.
    "EVERYWHERE." Sibilant, a whisper.
    The demon materialized on top of Elijah's hand-painted chest of drawers, bubble-gum-pink skin and muddy boots. Back to its selling disguise. It'd been a long time since I'd seen that. I realized, in fact, that it had been two months since I'd seen the demon at all, in any form.
    "Dinah?" Sam was searching the room with his eyes.
    I nodded, put my finger to my lips. "Shhh."
    Elijah slipped off my lap and marched over to the bureau.
    "Come away, Elijah!" Sam said.
    "Wait, Sam," I said. "He's all right." I knew he was.
    Elijah didn't come away. He stood right in front of the bureau, looking up at the demon. "You don't scare me. I see you."
    "No one sees me unless I say they do."
    "I do," Elijah said, then glanced back at me. "Don't I, Mommy?"
    The air rippled backward, inward. Then the demon inhaled what seemed to be breath and shielded its face with a hand. The air quivered and I saw a claw.
    Elijah turned his back on it and looked at me. "We know how to make it to go away, Mommy."
    "Dinah, what is going on?"
    "Wait, Sam. How, Elijah?"
    "You know."
    And I realized I did.
    Elijah started to hum the tune, then to sing it:

    So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea

    I sang along with him, and the song filled me with strength and courage.
    We sang another verse, and the ghost's black leather jacket rotted and dropped away, and the pink skin stretched and bloated out like a balloon, then fell off, until there was nothing but bone, and then even that crumbled like dust.
    The demon appeared again as a woman with white, pointy sunglasses, then a woman with a stained dress and eyes so clear they seemed transparent. We sang and each of those rotted away. The demon came back again, as white and luminous as the moon. We sang and sang, and only then did I begin to see through that inert moonlike light, into the stinging, buzzing vortex of insects, the wasps.
    We sang another verse together and there was a whizzing sound in the room, and then another, and another. They were too tiny to see, these micro-missiles escaping from a maelstrom; you could only sense the great speed of them, as each wasp bolted from the whole, one by one by one. With each wasp that fled, the demon shrank and paled and dissolved more and more, part by part. First the claws, then the arms, then the torso and neck, then the head, bit by bit like sugar in water, until the demon was nothing but air, until it was nothing. And the wasps had scattered to the four winds.
    "Boo!" said Elijah.

    *    *    *

    The following Monday morning, the school nurse telephoned.
    "Mrs. Galligan? You asked me to call you if we saw anything unusual. Nora Lerman just came to get me. She says they were having their snack a few minutes ago and suddenly Elijah just kind of froze. He's all right now, but—"
    "Froze?"
    "That's what she said. He sat there at the table with the other kids, staring ahead, not moving but his jaw was clenched, and his fists. She kept saying his name, but he didn't seem to hear. Then he just kind of came back to himself and started eating his peanut butter crackers as if nothing had happened."
    I closed my eyes and realized they were wet. "How long did it last?"
    "Maybe three minutes."
    "Did she ask him if he remembered anything about it?"
    "I did—she brought