The Graveyard Book

The faces of the Sleer nuzzled the air about Jack tentatively, as if they wanted to stroke or caress him.

“What’s happening?” said Jack. “What is it? What does it do?”

“It’s called the Sleer. It guards the place. It needs a master to tell it what to do,” said Bod.

Jack hefted the flint knife in his hand. “Beautiful,” he said to himself. And then, “Of course. It’s been waiting for me. And yes. Obviously, I am its new master.”

The Sleer encircled the interior of the chamber. MASTER? it said, like a dog who had waited patiently for too long. It said MASTER? again, as if testing the word to see how it tasted. And it tasted good, so it said one more time, with a sigh of delight and of longing, MASTER…

Jack looked down at Bod. “Thirteen years ago I missed you, and now, now we are reunited. The end of one order. The begi

“Bod,” said Bod. “Not Boy. Bod.” He raised his voice. “Sleer,” he said. “What will you do with your new master?”

The Sleer sighed. WE WILL PROTECT HIM UNTIL THE END OF TIME. THE SLEER WILL HOLD HIM IN ITS COILS FOREVER AND NEVER LET HIM ENDURE THE DANGERS OF THE WORLD.

“Then protect him,” said Bod. “Now.”

“I am your master. You will obey me,” said the man Jack.

THE SLEER HAS WAITED SO LONG, said the triple voice of the Sleer, triumphantly. SO LONG A TIME. It began to loop its huge, lazy coils around the man Jack.

The man Jack dropped the goblet. Now he had a knife in each hand—a flint knife, and a knife with a black bone handle—and he said, “Get back! Keep away from me! Don’t get any closer!” He slashed out with the knife, as the Sleer twined about him, and in a huge crushing movement, engulfed the man Jack in its coils.

Bod ran over to Scarlett, and helped her up. “I want to see,” she said. “I want to see what’s happening.” She pulled out her LED light, and turned it on…

What Scarlett saw was not what Bod saw. She did not see the Sleer, and that was a mercy. She saw the man Jack, though. She saw the fear on his face, which made him look like Mr. Frost had once looked. In his terror he was once more the nice man who had driven her home. He was floating in the air, five, then ten feet above the ground, slashing wildly at the air with two knives, trying to stab something she could not see, in a display that was obviously having no effect.

Mr. Frost, the man Jack, whoever he was, was forced away from them, pulled back until he was spread-eagled, arms and legs wide and flailing, against the side of the chamber wall.

It seemed to Scarlett that Mr. Frost was being forced through the wall, pulled into the rock, was being swallowed up by it. Now there was nothing visible but a face. He was shouting wildly, desperately, shouting at Bod to call the thing off, to save him, please, please…and then the man’s face was pulled through the wall, and the voice was silenced.

Bod walked back to the altar stone. He picked up the stone knife, and the goblet, and the brooch, from the ground and he replaced them where they belonged. He left the black metal knife where it fell.

Scarlett said, “I thought you said the Sleer couldn’t hurt people. I thought all it could do was frighten us.”

“Yes,” said Bod. “But it wanted a master to protect. It told me so.”

Scarlett said, “You mean you knew. You knew that would happen…”

“Yes. I hoped it would.”

He helped her up the steps and out into the chaos of the Frobisher mausoleum. “I’ll need to clean this all up,” said Bod, casually. Scarlett tried not to look at the things on the floor.

They stepped out into the graveyard. Scarlett said, dully, once more, “You knew that would happen.”

This time Bod said nothing.

She looked at him as if unsure of what she was looking at. “So you knew. That the Sleer would take him. Was that why you hid me down there? Was it? What was I, then, bait?”

Bod said, “It wasn’t like that.” Then he said, “We’re still alive, aren’t we? And he won’t trouble us any longer.”

Scarlett could feel the anger and the rage welling up inside her. The fear had gone, and now all she was left with was the need to lash out, to shout. She fought the urge. “And what about those other men? Did you kill them too?”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Then where are they?”

“One of them’s at the bottom of a deep grave, with a broken ankle. The other three are, well, they’re a long way away.”

“You didn’t kill them?”

“Of course not.” Bod said, “This is my home. Why would I want them hanging around here for the rest of time?” Then, “Look, it’s okay. I dealt with them.”

Scarlett took a step away from him. She said, “You aren’t a person. People don’t behave like you. You’re as bad as he was. You’re a monster.”

Bod felt the blood drain from his face. After everything he had been through that night, after everything that had happened, this was somehow the hardest thing to take. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t like that.”

Scarlett began to back away from Bod.

She took one step, two steps, and was about to flee, to turn and run madly, desperately away through the moonlit graveyard, when a tall man in black velvet put a hand on her arm, and said, “I am afraid you do Bod an injustice. But you will undoubtedly be happier if you remember none of this. So let us walk together, you and I, and discuss what has happened to you over the last few days, and what it might be wise for you to remember, and what it might be better for you to forget.”

Bod said, “Silas. You can’t. You can’t make her forget me.”

“It will be safest that way,” said Silas, simply. “For her, if not for all of us.”

“Don’t—don’t I get a say in this?” asked Scarlett.

Silas said nothing. Bod took a step towards Scarlett, said, “Look, it’s over. I know it was hard. But. We did it. You and me. We beat them.”

Her head was shaking gently, as if she was denying everything she saw, everything she was experiencing.

She looked up at Silas, and said only, “I want to go home. Please?”

Silas nodded. He walked, with the girl, down the path that would eventually lead them both out of the graveyard. Bod stared at Scarlett as she walked away, hoping that she would turn and look back, that she would smile or just look at him without fear in her eyes. But Scarlett did not turn. She simply walked away.

Bod went back into the mausoleum. He had to do something, so he began to pick up the fallen coffins, to remove the debris, and to replace the tangle of tumbled bones into the coffins, disappointed to discover that none of the many Frobishers and Frobyshers and Pettyfers gathered around to watch seemed to be quite certain whose bones belonged in which container.

A man brought Scarlett home. Later, Scarlett’s mother could not remember quite what he had told her, although disappointingly, she had learned that that nice Jay Frost had unavoidably been forced to leave town.

The man talked with them, in the kitchen, about their lives and their dreams, and by the end of the conversation Scarlett’s mother had somehow decided that they would be returning to Glasgow: Scarlett would be happy to be near her father, and to see her old friends again.

Silas left the girl and her mother talking in the kitchen, discussing the challenges of moving back to Scotland, with Noona promising to buy Scarlett a phone of her own. They barely remembered that Silas had ever been there, which was the way he liked it.

Silas returned to the graveyard and found Bod sitting in the amphitheater by the obelisk, his face set.

“How is she?”

“I took her memories,” said Silas. “They will return to Glasgow. She has friends there.”

“How could you make her forget me?”

Silas said, “People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.”