The graveyard book

Bod walked beside her. Even to Scarlett he seemed shadowy in the deepening dusk, like something that was almost not there, a shimmer of heat haze, a skittery leaf that for a moment had seemed to be a boy.

“Walk faster,” said Bod. “They’re all looking at you. But don’t run.”

“Who are they?” asked Scarlett, quietly.

“I don’t know,” said Bod. “But they all felt weird. Like they weren’t properly people. I want to go back and listen to them.”

“Of course they’re people,” said Scarlett, and she walked up the hill as fast as she could without actually running, no longer certain that Bod was by her side.

The four men stood at the door to number 33. “I don’t like this,” said the big man with the bull-neck.

“You don’t like this, Mr. Tar?” said the white-haired man. “None of us like it. All wrong. Everything’s going wrong.”

“Krakow’s gone. They aren’t answering. And after Melbourne and Vancouver…” said the man with the mustache. “For all we know, we four are all that’s left.”

“Quiet, please, Mr. Ketch,” said the white-haired man. “I’m thinking.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Mr. Ketch, and he patted his mustache with one gloved finger, looked up the hill and down again, and whistled through his teeth.

“I think…we should go after her,” said the bull-necked man, Mr. Tar.

“I think you people should listen to me,” said the white-haired man. “I said quiet. And what I meant was, quiet.”

“Sorry, Mr. Dandy,” said the blond man.

They were quiet.

In the silence, they could hear thumping sounds coming from high inside the house.

“I’m going in,” said Mr. Dandy. “Mr. Tar, you’re with me. Nimble and Ketch, get that girl. Bring her back.”

“Dead or alive?” asked Mr. Ketch, with a smug smile.

“Alive, you moron,” said Mr. Dandy. “I want to know what she knows.”

“Maybe she’s one of them,” said Mr. Tar. “The ones who done for us in Vancouver and Melbourne and—”

“Get her,” said Mr. Dandy. “Get her now.” The blond man and the hat-and-mustache hurried up the hill.

Mr. Dandy and Mr. Tar stood outside the door to number 33.

“Force it,” said Mr. Dandy.

Mr. Tar put his shoulder against the door and began to lean his weight on it. “It’s reinforced,” he said. “Protected.”

Mr. Dandy said, “Nothing one Jack can do that another can’t fix.” He pulled off his glove, put his hand against the door, muttered something in a language older than English. “Now try it,” he said.

Tar leaned against the door, grunted and pushed. This time the lock gave and the door swung open.

“Nicely done,” said Mr. Dandy.

There was a crashing noise from far above them, up at the top of the house.

The man Jack met them halfway down the stairs. Mr. Dandy grinned at him, without any humor but with perfect teeth. “Hello, Jack Frost,” he said. “I thought you had the boy.”

“I did,” said the man Jack. “He got away.”

“Again?” Jack Dandy’s smile grew wider and chillier and even more perfect. “Once is a mistake, Jack. Twice is a disaster.”

“We’ll get him,” said the man Jack. “This ends tonight.”

“It had better,” said Mr. Dandy.

“He’ll be in the graveyard,” said the man Jack. The three men hurried down the stairs.

The man Jack sniffed the air. He had the scent of the boy in his nostrils, a prickle at the nape of his neck. He felt like all this had happened years before. He paused, pulled on his long black coat, which had hung in the front hall, incongruous beside Mr. Frost’s tweed jacket and fawn mackintosh.

The front door was open to the street, and the daylight had almost gone. This time the man Jack knew exactly which way to go. He did not pause, but simply walked out of the house, and hurried up the hill towards the graveyard.

The graveyard gates were closed when Scarlett reached them. Scarlett pulled at them desperately, but the gates were padlocked for the night. And then Bod was beside her. “Do you know where the key is?” she asked.

“We don’t have time,” said Bod. He pushed close to the metal bars. “Put your arms around me.”

“You what?”

“Just put your arms around me and close your eyes.”

Scarlett stared at Bod, as if daring him to try something, then she held him tightly and screwed her eyes shut. “Okay.”

Bod leaned against the bars of the graveyard gates. They counted as part of the graveyard, and he hoped that his Freedom of the Graveyard might just, possibly, just this time, cover other people too. And then, like smoke, Bod slipped though the bars.

“You can open your eyes,” he said.

She did.

“How did you do that?”

“This is my home,” he said. “I can do things here.”

The sound of shoes slapping against the pavement, and two men were on the other side of the gates, rattling them, pulling at them.

“Hul-lo,” said Jack Ketch, with a twitch of his mustache, and he smiled at Scarlett through the bars like a rabbit with a secret. He had a black silk cord tied around his left forearm, and now he was tugging at it with his gloved right hand. He pulled it off his arm and into his hand, testing it, running it from hand to hand as if he was about to make a cat’s cradle. “Come on out, girlie. It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”