The Graveyard Book

“And what was that?” asked Bod.

“He lived,” said Frost. “I’m sure of it. But there wasn’t a manhunt. A missing toddler normally would be national news. But they, um, they must have squashed it somehow.”

“Who are they?” asked Bod.

“The same people who had the family killed.”

“Do you know any more than that?”

“Yes. Well, a little…” Frost trailed off. “I’m sorry. I’m. Look. Given what I found. It’s all too incredible.”

Scarlett was starting to feel frustrated. “What was? What did you find?”

Frost looked shamefaced. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Getting into keeping secrets. Not a good idea. Historians don’t bury things. We dig them up. Show people. Yes.” He stopped, hesitated, then he said, “I found a letter. Upstairs. It was hidden under a loose floorboard.” He turned to Bod. “Young man, would I be correct in assuming your, well, your interest in this business, this dreadful business, is personal?”

Bod nodded.

“I won’t ask any more,” said Mr. Frost, and he stood up. “Come on,” he said to Bod. “Not you, though,” to Scarlett, “not yet. I’ll show him. And if he says it’s all right, I’ll show you as well. Deal?”

“Deal,” said Scarlett.

“We won’t be long,” said Mr. Frost. “Come on, lad.”

Bod stood up, darted a concerned look at Scarlett. “It’s okay,” she said, and smiled at him as reassuringly as she could. “I’ll wait here for you.”

She watched their shadows as they walked out of the room and up the stairs. She felt nervous, but expectant. She wondered what Bod would learn, and was happy that he would learn it first. It was his story, after all. It was his right.

Out on the stairs, Mr. Frost led the way.

Bod looked around as he walked up toward the top of the house, but nothing seemed familiar. It all seemed strange.

“All the way to the very top,” said Mr. Frost. They went up another flight of stairs. He said, “I don’t—well, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but—um, you’re the boy, aren’t you?”

Bod said nothing.

“Here we are,” said Mr. Frost. He turned the key in the door at the top of the house, pushed it open, and they went inside.

The room was small, an attic room with a sloping ceiling. Thirteen years before, it had held a crib. It barely held the man and the boy.

“Stroke of luck, really,” said Mr. Frost. “Under my own nose, so to speak.” He crouched down, pulled back the threadbare carpet.

“So you know why my family were murdered?” asked Bod.

Mr. Frost said, “It’s all in here.” He reached down to a short length of floorboard and pushed at it until he was able to lever it out. “This would have been the baby’s room,” said Mr. Frost. “I’ll show you the…you know, the only thing we don’t know is just who did it. Nothing at all. We don’t have the tiniest clue.”

“We know he has dark hair,” said Bod, in the room that had once been his bedroom. “And we know that his name is Jack.”

Mr. Frost put his hand down into the empty space where the floorboard had been. “It’s been almost thirteen years,” he said. “And hair gets thin and goes gray, in thirteen years. But yes, that’s right. It’s Jack.”

He straightened up. The hand that had been in the hole in the floor was holding a large, sharp knife.

“Now,” said the man Jack. “Now, boy. Time to finish this.”

Bod stared at him. It was as if Mr. Frost had been a coat or a hat the man had been wearing, that he had now discarded. The affable exterior had gone.

The light glinted on the man’s spectacles, and on the blade of the knife.

A voice called up to them from further down the stairs—Scarlett’s. “Mr. Frost? There’s someone knocking at the front door. Should I get it?”

The man Jack only glanced away for a moment, but Bod knew that the moment was all he had, and he Faded, as completely, as utterly as he could. The man Jack looked back to where Bod had been, then stared around the room, puzzlement and rage competing on his face. He took a step further into the room, his head swinging from side to side like an old tiger scenting prey.

“You’re here somewhere,” growled the man Jack. “I can smell you!”

Behind him, the little door to the attic bedroom slammed closed, and as he swung around he heard the key turn in the lock.

The man Jack raised his voice. “It buys you moments, but it won’t stop me, boy,” he called through the locked door. Then added, simply, “We have unfinished business, you and I.”

Bod threw himself down the stairs, bouncing into the walls, almost tumbling headlong in his rush to reach Scarlett.

“Scarlett!” he said, when he saw her. “It’s him! Come on!”

“It’s who? What are you talking about?”

“Him! Frost. He’s Jack. He tried to kill me!”

A bang! from above as the man Jack kicked at the door.

“But.” Scarlett tried to make sense of what she was hearing, “But he’s nice.”

“No,” said Bod, grabbing her hand and pulling her down the stairs, into the hallway. “No, he’s not.”

Scarlett pulled open the front door.

“Ah. Good evening, young lady,” said the man at the door, looking down at her. “We are looking for Mr. Frost. I believe this is his neck of the woods.” He had silver-white hair, and he smelled of cologne.

“Are you friends of his?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” said a smaller man, standing just behind. He had a small black mustache and was the only one of the men to wear a hat.

“Certainly are,” said a third, a younger man, huge and Nordic blond.

“Every man Jack of us,” said the last of the men, wide and bull-like, with a massive head. His skin was brown.

“He. Mr. Frost. He had to go out,” she said.

“But his car’s here,” said the white-haired man, as the blond one said, “Who are you, anyway?”

“He’s a friend of my mum’s,” said Scarlett.

She could see Bod, now, on the other side of the group of men, gesturing frantically to her to leave the men and follow him.

She said, as breezily as she could, “He just popped out. Popped out for a newspaper. From the corner shop down there.” And she closed the door behind her, stepped around the men and began to walk away.

“Where are you going?” asked the man with the mustache.

“I’ve got a bus to catch,” she said. Scarlett walked up the hill towards the bus-stop and the graveyard, and did not, resolutely did not, look back.

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 ru

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.