The Graveyard Book

He retraced his steps, almost casually, caught her perfume again about fifty feet away, beside a small mausoleum with a closed metal gateway. He pulled on the gate and it swung wide.

Her scent was strong now. He could smell that she was afraid. He pulled down the coffins, one by one, from their shelves, and let them clatter onto the ground, shattering the old wood, spilling their contents onto the mausoleum floor. No, she was not hiding in any of those…

Then where?

He examined the wall. Solid. He went down on his hands and knees, pulled the last coffin out and reached back. His hand found an opening…

“Scarlett,” he called, trying to remember how he would have called her name when he was Mr. Frost, but he could not even find that part of himself any longer: he was the man Jack now, and that was all he was. On his hands and knees he crawled through the hole in the wall.

When Scarlett heard the crashing noise from above she made her way, carefully, down the steps, her left hand touching the wall, her right hand holding the little LED keyring, which cast just enough light to allow her to see where she was placing her feet. She made it to the bottom of the stone steps and edged back in the open chamber, her heart thumping.

She was scared: scared of nice Mr. Frost and his scarier friends; scared of this room and its memories; even, if she were honest, a little afraid of Bod. He was no longer a quiet boy with a mystery, a link to her childhood. He was something different, something not quite human.

She thought, I wonder what Mum’s thinking right now. She’ll be phoning Mr. Frost’s house over and over to find out when I’m going to get back. She thought, If I get out of this alive, I’m going to force her to get me a phone. It’s ridiculous. I’m the only person in my year who doesn’t have her own phone, practically.

She thought, I miss my mum.

She had not thought anyone human could move that silently through the dark, but a gloved hand closed upon her mouth, and a voice that was only barely recognizable as Mr. Frost’s said, without emotion, “Do anything clever—do anything at all—and I will cut your throat. Nod if you understand me.”

Scarlett nodded.

Bod saw the chaos on the floor of the Frobisher mausoleum, the fallen coffins with their contents scattered across over the aisle. There were many Frobishers and Frobyshers, and several Pettyfers, all in various states of upset and consternation.

“He is already down there,” said Ephraim.

“Thank you,” said Bod. He clambered through the hole into the inside of the hill, and he went down the stairs.

Bod saw as the dead see: he saw the steps, and he saw the chamber at the bottom. And when he got halfway down the steps, he saw the man Jack holding Scarlett. He had her arm twisted up behind her back, and a large, wicked, boning-knife at her neck.

The man Jack looked up in the darkness.

“Hello, boy,” he said.

Bod said nothing. He concentrated on his Fade, took another step.

“You think I can’t see you,” said the man Jack. “And you’re right. I can’t. Not really. But I can smell your fear. And I can hear you move and hear you breathe. And now that I know about your clever vanishing trick, I can feel you. Say something now. Say it so I can hear it, or I start to cut little pieces out of the young lady. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said Bod, his voice echoing in the chamber room. “I understand.”

“Good,” said Jack. “Now, come here. Let’s have a little chat.”

Bod began to walk down the steps. He concentrated on the Fear, on raising the level of panic in the room, of making the Terror something tangible….

“Stop that,” said the man Jack. “Whatever it is you’re doing. Don’t do it.”

Bod let it go.

“You think,” said Jack, “that you can do your little magics on me? Do you know what I am, boy?”

Bod said, “You’re a Jack. You killed my family. And you should have killed me.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. He said, “I should have killed you?”

“Oh yes. The old man said that if you let me grow to adulthood your Order would be destroyed. I did. You failed and you lost.”

“My order goes back before Babylon. Nothing can harm it.”

“They didn’t tell you, did they?” Bod was standing five paces from the man Jack. “Those four. They were the last of the Jacks. What was it…Krakow and Vancouver and Melbourne. All gone.”

Scarlett said, “Please, Bod. Make him let go of me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Bod, with a calm he did not feel. He said to Jack, “There’s no point in hurting her. There’s no point in killing me. Don’t you understand? There isn’t even an order of Jacks of All Trades. Not anymore.”

Jack nodded thoughtfully. “If this is true,” said Jack, “and if I am now a Jack-all-alone, then I have an excellent reason for killing you both.”

Bod said nothing.

“Pride,” said the man Jack. “Pride in my work. Pride in finishing what I began.” And then he said, “What are you doing?”

Bod’s hair prickled. He could feel a smoke-tendril presence twining through the room. He said, “It’s not me. It’s the Sleer. It guards the treasure that’s buried here.”

“Don’t lie.”