The Graveyard Book

Silas is away a lot on mysterious business when Bod is 14. Miss Lupescu fills in for a time, and she and Bod eat at her flat and even go to a football game. Sometimes, though, Bod lacks a guardian altogether. Bod asks his mother why Silas didn’t kill the assassin when he first arrived at the graveyard. Mrs. Owens replies that Silas isn’t a monster, and that these things can be complicated. Bod asks for the name of the assassin. Reluctantly, she replies, “Jack.”

Scarlett Perkins, now 15, returns with her mother to live in town. Her parents have separated, and Scarlett is very upset about it and about living here where she has no friends that she can remember. After school, her bus doesn’t show on time, and she takes another, but instead of heading toward her apartment, it takes her up a hill. She disembarks near a pair of dismal iron gates.

She walks through the gates and begins to remember things. A man asks her to help hold down a sheet of paper on a gravestone while he rubs a crayon on it until an impression of the stone gets transferred to the paper. It begins to rain, and they take shelter in the chapel. The man, middle-aged and bespectacled, offers to give Scarlett a ride home. She’s reluctant, but he offers his phone so she can call her mother or the police or whomever. She accepts the ride home, where the man—he’s Jay Frost, a member of a local historical society—accepts Mrs. Perkins’s offer of tea. She later asks him to return for dinner on Saturday.

That night, Scarlett dreams of the graveyard. She sees a boy her age standing on the hill and calls out to him. He turns, and they recognize each other. He asks if she’s Dreamwalking. She answers that she thinks she’s merely dreaming. He says he saw her today in the graveyard with a man. He reminds her of their adventure in the crypt of the Indigo Man. All of it floods back, and she awakes.

Bod suddenly feels lonely. The ghostly friends he’s played with and learned from never change, but he’s maturing past them. He must stay in the graveyard when there’s no guardian, but seeing Scarlett reminds him how much he needs living people. He goes to the far corner of the graveyard to the forgotten crypt of the 18th-century poet Nehemiah Trot. Bod asks him if it’s wise to locate a girl he once knew who has returned to the town. Trot insists that he should, and to write love poems for her as well. He insists she’s just a friend, but Trot will hear nothing of it. He advises Bod to take the chance or risk gaining nothing.

At dusk, he finds Scarlett sitting on her old bench, reading. He Fades, but she sees him. She asks if she can hug him, he says yes, and she hugs him hard. She says now she knows he was real all the time and not an imaginary friend. She needs to leave, but she’ll return to see him again on the weekend.

Scarlett goes to Mr. Frost’s house, not far from the graveyard, and gets a ride home with him. The house he lives in is tall and narrow.

Meanwhile, deep beneath Krakow in Poland, below the tourist caves of the Dragon’s Den, lie more caves. Descending toward them are Silas, Lupescu the Hound of God, and Kandar, a winged mummy who holds a pig. The fourth, the Ifrit Haroun, was lost when, some distance higher up when he stepped between three mirrors and was swallowed up.

On Saturday morning, Scarlett and Bod walk among the graves while he tells her how his family was killed and how he came to live in the graveyard. She asks about his guardian, but he won’t say anything. Suddenly huffy, she returns to the chapel, where she helps Mr. Frost with the rubbings.

They break for lunch. Scarlett asks Frost how to do research on a murder, especially one that happened nearby. She says she’s asking for a friend. Mr. Frost looks stricken. He says such topics are a bit much for him, but he suggests the library, if not the Internet. He gives her a ride to the town library, where she searches through microfilm of newspaper stories from roughly 14 years ago. She finds only one mention of a crime that fits and the address is 33 Dunstan Road. That’s the place Mr. Frost has rented.

She calls Mr. Frost and tells him what she’s learned. He’s silent a moment, then offers, as a member of the local historical society, to see what he can do to dig up more information.

The dinner with Scarlett’s mother and Mr. Frost is a success. That night, she tries to dream of Bod, but instead dreams of Glasgow, searching with friends for a street but finding only dead ends.

Beneath Krakow, Lupescu and Kandar are both seriously injured. Lupescu tells Silas to leave her, but he encourages her to get back up, and her strength returns. She howls with rage and readies herself for the rest of the battle.

On Sunday, Mr. Frost calls and tells Scarlett that he found out that a small boy escaped the murderer. He says her friend should visit him and “I’ll fill him in” (249). Scarlett meets with Bod, who climbs down to the Indigo Man crypt and asks the Sleer for advice. They say they don’t give advice, but when he asks them if he should venture out to find his original family’s killers, the Sleer replies, “Yes.”

He and Scarlett walk down to his murdered family’s old house, where Mr. Frost invites them in and serves tea. He says he found the answer upstairs under a floorboard. He offers to show it to Bod, and then, if Bod agrees, to show it to Scarlett. Frost and Bod walk upstairs, all the way to the attic, where Frost pulls out a knife and says, “Time to finish this” (255).

Scarlett shouts from downstairs that someone’s at the door. Frost glances away a moment and Bod disappears. The attic door slams and locks. Bod tumbles down the stairs and grabs Scarlett, telling her that Frost is the killer. They open the door to four men, neatly dressed—men who sat at Jack’s table at the Convocation—who say they’re here to visit their associate: “Every man Jack of us” (257).

Bod Fades past the men. From behind them, he waves frantically at Scarlett. She tells the men that Frost has stepped out for a moment. She edges past them and walks up the street toward the graveyard. Bod appears next to her, tells her to keep walking but not to run, and returns to investigate the men.

The four men discuss what to do, now that their organization has suffered sudden losses all over the world, including Krakow. The man with the mustache, Mr. Dandy, orders the bull-necked Mr. Tar to accompany him inside while the other two go after the girl. Mr. Dandy and Mr. Tar break inside and talk to man Jack. They call him “Jack Frost.” He says the boy got away again. Mr. Dandy isn’t pleased.

Scarlett reaches the gates. Bod appears and tells her to hold onto him. Reluctantly, she does, and they slip through the bars like smoke. Behind them, two of the men—they’re all named Jack—arrive and tell Scarlett to come out and she won’t be hurt. Bod urges her to run; they hurry away up the hill. One of the Jacks says he thinks he saw a boy, but he’s not sure. Another Jack gets over the fence and starts after Bod and Scarlett.

Bod asks the ghosts to keep him updated on the movements of the Jacks. He puts Scarlett into the Frobisher mausoleum above the Indigo Man crypt and tells her to hide at the bottom of the stairs if the men come for her. Then he leads one Jack across an old, ivy-covered section of the cemetery and tricks him into falling into a 20-foot-deep unfinished grave.

He hurries over to the old, decrepit grave that contains the entrance to the ghoul world. He sits on it and waits. Liza protests, but he says he wants the men to find him. Three Jacks hurry toward Bod and surround him. He asks why they want to kill him. They ask how he’s lived here all this time. Bod says he’ll tell if they do; the men decide Bod will soon be dead anyway, so they explain.

They’re members of an ancient organization called the Jacks of All Trades, which has obtained magic by killing people. The ancient Egyptians prophesied that a boy would be born “who would walk the borderland between the living and the dead” (271), and if that boy lived to adulthood, their brotherhood would be destroyed. Tonight, they’ll kill Bod, and Scarlett, too, to leave no witnesses.

Bod digs his fingers into the grass and shouts, “Skagh! Thegh! Khavagah!” (271). The grave swings open to reveal the ghoul world. Rushing toward him, two of the Jacks fall through and disappear. The third, Jack Dandy, catches himself, pulls a gun, and aims it at Bod. Bod points, Dandy looks, and Bod Fades. The gate shakes like an earthquake; Dandy grabs on but finally tumbles into the abyss. Bod utters the closing command and the ghoul-gate closes.

His knife in one hand, Jack Frost heads up the hill, searching for Scarlett. Jack’s sharp nose detects her scent, especially the perfume and her fear. He enters the Frobisher mausoleum where her scent is stronger. He knocks over the caskets, spilling their contents and she’s not in any of them. He searches the walls, finds the hole, calls out to Scarlett, and crawls through.

Using a tiny LED keyring for light, Scarlett descends the stairs to the Indigo Man’s crypt and waits. A short time later, a gloved hand covers her mouth. Frost warns her to keep silent. Bod comes down the stairs and Jack warns him not to try any of his magic, lest Scarlett get cut.

A strange sensation flows through the crypt. Bod assures Jack it’s not his doing. The Sleer speaks. Bod and Jack can hear it, but Scarlett can’t. It says it guards a place of power and awaits the return of its master. Jack smiles: He says this is something his organization has searched for for thousands of years. The altar and its brooch, knife, and cup are where Jack can revitalize his organization.

He orders Bod to give him the alter items, then he commands Scarlett to lie on the ground face-down. Finally, he tells Bod to kneel on the altar stone. Bod does so, then has a realization. He calls out to the Sleer, telling them their master is here. He sees a giant snake with three heads, their faces dead but painted in indigo patterns. It seems excited, glad at last to have its master. Jack proclaims himself the master. It promises to protect the master from the world and begins to wrap itself around Jack. Frost struggles, slashing at it with both knives.

Scarlett switches on her LED light, but all she sees is Jack, ten feet in the air, flailing, then slowly disappearing into the stone wall. He shouts for help until only his face shows. Then it, too, disappears into the wall.

Bod and Scarlett climb out of the crypt. Outside, Scarlett decides Bod used her as bait to trap Jack. She demands to know if he killed the other Jacks. Bod replies that he didn’t, that one is trapped in a deep grave with a broken ankle and the others are far away. She backs away from him, saying he’s a monster like Jack Frost.

Silas appears. He suggests she needs to forget all of this. Bod protests, but Scarlett asks to be taken home. She and Silas walk away down the path. He takes her home, gets her mother to decide to return to Glasgow, and leaves them, their memories of their time here fading away. Bod is upset to lose Scarlett, but Silas tells him that people don’t want to think about impossible things they’ve seen. Silas adds that Miss Lupescu died in battle to protect Bod.

Now that Bod’s safe, Silas takes him to a pizza restaurant, where he shows the boy how to order from a menu. Bod is ravenous; he eats the pizza with gusto while Silas merely moves his salad around on the plate. Silas explains that his many trips abroad were part of an effort by himself, Lupescu, and others—the Honor Guard—to root out and finish off the Jacks of All Trades.

Bod asks if Silas will leave now that his work is done. Silas replies that Bod is not yet quite fully grown. There’s a bit more to do.

During the next several months, Bod spends time at the grave of Alonso Jones, a 19th-century world traveler with wonderful tales of the places he’s seen. One day, though, he can’t find Alonso, and he can’t move through the stone to enter his crypt. He sees no one until Mother Slaughter, who asks him to pick some wildflowers for her grave. He does so and places them on her headstone, so weathered that nowadays it only reads “LAUGH.” Mother Slaughter says she’s grateful that Bod came to live at the graveyard, and she wishes him well.

At the Owens tomb, his parents greet him formally, and Mr. Owens says that Bod is as good a son as they ever could have wished for. He turns to Mrs. Owens, but she’s gone, and then, so is Mr. Owens. He walks down to the chapel and sits on the bench in the warm summer night. Liza appears—it’s the first time since the night of the Jacks of All Trades—and asks if he’ll miss her. He says of course, but why—and she lean down and kisses him lightly on the cheek and then on the corner of his mouth. She says she, too, will miss him, “Always.”

He unlocks the chapel and walks inside. Silas greets him. Tonight, he says it’s especially dark inside, and Silas sighs sadly and lights candles. Silas announces that he’ll leave soon for his true homeland, where problems loom. Bod asks about his guardianship, and Silas says Bod is old enough to take care of himself, and that he must leave the graveyard and have a life beyond its borders.

Bod asks about the Honour Guard. Silas says its purpose is to protect the borderlands, the edges of things. He says he once committed horrible, monstrous acts, but he changed, and that it was an honor to have served as Bod’s guardian.

They walk downstairs to the chapel crypt, where Silas presents Bod with a suitcase filled with necessities, a passport, and a wallet with enough money to get a good start in life. They shake hands formally and Silas says goodbye.

Bod turns and walks out and down to the gates. The pedestrian gate is open; next to it stands Mrs. Owens, tears in her eyes. “Hullo, Mother,” he says. She asks what he’ll do now; he says he’ll travel the world, have adventures, and meet people. She sings to him the song she sang when he was a toddler:

“Sleep my little babby-oh

Sleep until you waken

When you wake you’ll see the world

If I’m not mistaken…” (306)

He leans down to hug her, but she’s gone. He walks down the street, “towards the living people, and the city, and the dawn” (307).