Saving Elijah

husband, Dinah," the ghost ordered.
    I did as he commanded, I was already well within his spell. Sam was sitting beside Elijah's bed, just staring blankly at him.
    "Prepare for the future I show you," the ghost said. "There will be a day when you get a call on the phone. 'Is this the mother of Alexander Galligan?'" A new voice emerged from deep within the ghost's throat. " 'Mrs. Galligan, this is Sergeant Dominetti, Bronx Police Department. We have your husband, Samuel Galligan, down at the station on a DWI. He's unable to drive, we'll be keeping him overnight. But we'd like you to come and pick up your son, who was in the car.'"
    DWI with my son in the car? "He isn't...?"
    "Oh, Alex will be not be hurt," the ghost said. "But you and Sam? You will not survive this together. It was a ludicrous marriage, anyway, a marriage built on deceit and betrayal. Remember?"

fifteen
    I sat beside Seth's body on the side of that lonely Virginia road for a long time. I didn't touch him, I was in shock. The smell of blood and death was everywhere. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing, and the wind whispering through the naked trees.
    Finally, just as the sun was beginning to set, a car came along and pulled over. A man wearing a business suit and dress coat got out. "My God, are you all right?"
    I nodded. I was sore and sticky with sweat, and bruised and scratched, but, amazingly, otherwise unharmed.
    "He's dead, isn't he?" He didn't go near the body. The pool of blood around Seth's head was immense.
    I nodded, and started to blubber. "We had an accident, he was going too fast, there was a truck, I thought there was a truck, maybe there wasn't. . ."
    Another car came along soon, followed by a squadron of police, then the paramedics, who covered the body with a sheet, and looked at my cuts and bruises.
    "You were wearing that?" One of the paramedics motioned to the helmet, which was still lying on the grass.
    I nodded.
    "Smart girl," he said, then looked at my hands and my lip again. "None of this looks too serious. But you really have to go to the hospital. You might have internal injuries."
    "Please, I just want to go home." Mostly I didn't want them to call my parents.
    They insisted I go, and they put me into the ambulance to take me to a local hospital, where a balding doctor who reminded me of my grandfather examined me, put a stitch in my lip, then called my parents, after all. I listened while he told them what had happened. He assured them I was okay, then handed the phone to me.
    Charlotte was hysterical, ready to drop everything and come.
    "Please, I'm fine. Julie will take care of me, I only have a few cuts and bruises. One stitch on my lip. Don't come."
    After the concern came the questions. "What were you doing on a motorcycle? Why were you going so fast? Don't you have any sense? Are you stupid?"
    I agreed with everything Charlotte said, including the part about being stupid, and managed to convince her that I'd learned some kind of a lesson and wouldn't do it again. When I hung up, the same policeman came in and questioned me again about the accident, then drove me back to campus. It was almost ten o'clock by the time we got to the dorm.
    Julie and Angela were sitting on Julie's bed, playing chess, the Beatles' "White Album" blasting on the stereo. As far as Julie was concerned, the "White Album" was the most important music ever composed. Listening to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was a religious experience for her.
    "Dinah! What happened?"
    I started to cry. Julie turned the stereo down and rushed over. She hugged me—gently. Angela got a cold compress, and Julie patted my face with it.
    Julie and I had argued about Seth that morning. I told her about the poem he'd sent, though I didn't let her read it. Poetry or not, she said, there was something seriously wrong with him.
    "He died, Jules. He died."
    She held me in her arms and tried to soothe me.
    Now, between sobs, I explained what had happened, while she sat with me on my bed.
    "Sounds to me like he was trying to kill you both, Dinah." She had her arm around me.
    "No, I don't believe that. Why would he do that?"
    "Because he was a sick son of a bitch."

    *    *    *

    The next day a D.C. policeman came to see me in my dorm room. He asked me how long I'd been seeing Seth Lucien, then said, "We checked with the university registrar. He was never registered in school here."
    "I don't understand," I said. "What about his classes?"
    "Did he go to