The Graveyard Book

Late at night, an assassin with a knife enters a tall, narrow house at night. He murders a father, mother, and daughter, then heads for the attic to kill the toddler. But the child isn’t in his crib.

The 18-month-old boy awoke to a noise downstairs, climbed out of his crib, skittered down the stairs on his diapered rear—the diaper fell off at the bottom step—then wandered outside and up the road, past shops and houses, to the graveyard at the top of the hill.

In the attic, the man Jack sniffs the air and senses the “milky smell” and “baby shampoo” of the boy. He follows the odors out the door and up the street to the graveyard.

The cemetery is locked. Two ghosts, Mr. and Mrs. Owens, residents of the graveyard and dead 250 years, find the boy standing just inside the graveyard fence, having squeezed through its narrow slats. Mrs. Owens strokes the baby’s head, but Mr. Owens suggests she leave it to humans.

The man Jack arrives at the gate but can’t open it, so he clambers over the wall.

Three more ghosts appear. One, a woman, cries out to the Owenses: “My baby! He is trying to harm my baby!” (15). Mrs. Owens chats quietly with the mother ghost, then she and her husband agree to care for the child. Mrs. Owens gathers up the child, and all of them disappear into a swirl of mist just as the man Jack steps forward to kill the toddler.

A tall, dark-clad stranger appears and asks what the man Jack is doing in the graveyard in the middle of the night. The man Jack replies that he heard the cry of a baby and entered to help. The tall stranger, the caretaker, says it was probably a fox or some other animal. He escorts the man Jack to the gate, opens it, and lets him out, suggesting that the man Jack needn’t remember any of this; the man Jack promptly forgets it and walks back down the street, searching for the infant.

The tall man walks up the hill to the very top, where an obelisk marks the grave of the cemetery’s founder, the baronet Josiah Worthington. The baronet knew the Owenses when they all were alive, and now he argues with them that their idea of raising a live foundling is ridiculous. Mr. Owens says it’s their duty to care for the child. Worthington retorts that their duty is to the 10,000 souls in the graveyard, and that they must return the child at once.

Caius Pompeius, buried 2,000 years ago during the Roman age, agrees and wonders how they’ll feed the lad. Mrs. Owens says she can take care of him: “Look: I’m holding him, aren’t I?” (22) Tiny Mother Slaughter, wearing her burial bonnet, agrees with Pompeius and points out that there’s no place in the graveyard for the child to live. Mrs. Owens retorts that they’ve given sanctuary to an outsider before.

At this, the tall man steps forward—Silas—and agrees that he has benefited from their sanctuary. He suggests that the child be raised by the entire graveyard community, that he can obtain food from outside, and that they can shelter the toddler in the chapel crypt. He offers to be the child’s guardian.

The ghosts wonder about the child’s name. Betsy doesn’t know it, and Silas points out that the boy’s old name might alert those who wish him ill. Several residents suggest names of people they knew who they believe looked like the boy, but Mrs. Owens cuts them short: “He looks like nobody but himself” (25). They decide on Nobody Owens. At this, Nobody awakens, gazes at Silas, looks at Josiah, and begins to cry. Mrs. Owens sings to him old nursery songs and walks off to await the group’s decision.

Silas appears with a box of food, and he and Mrs. Owens take Nobody into the chapel. Long neglected and run-down, it will nonetheless be part of Nobody’s living arrangements. Silas peels a banana, and the boy promptly eats it, getting banana all over him.

At Josiah’s obelisk, 300 of the most prominent ghosts take turns arguing about what should be done with the boy. Hours pass. As dawn creeps into the late-autumn sky, a giant grey-white horse, ridden by a lady clad all in shimmery grey—whom all people meet when they die, and whom all ghosts revere—rides up the hill and stops at the obelisk. She’s the Lady on the Grey. She says, “The dead should have charity” (30) and gallops off into the sky.

The issue is decided: Nobody Owens will be reared by the graveyard. Mrs. Owens learns the news and takes Nobody to the Owens tomb, his new home. Silas walks down to the boy’s old house, examines the three bodies, and returns to the graveyard for his daytime sleep, his mind filled with “unpleasant possibilities.”

The man Jack, frustrated by his failure to complete the long-planned killings, decides not to inform his employers, the Convocation. As emergency vehicles arrive at the murdered family’s house, he turns up his collar and walks away. There’ll be plenty of time to find the boy and finish the job.