The Graveyard Book (26 page)

He looked up. The boy was there, looking down at him curiously.

“I’m going to let the gate close now,” he said. “I think if you keep holding onto that thing, it might close on you, and crush you, or it might just absorb you and make you into part of the gate. Don’t know. But I’m giving you a chance, more than you ever gave my family.”

A ragged judder. Mr. Dandy looked up into the boy’s grey eyes, and he swore. Then he said, “You can’t ever escape us. We’re the Jacks of All Trades. We’re everywhere. It’s not over.”

“It is for you,” said Bod. “The end of your people and all you stand for. Like your man in Egypt predicted. You didn’t kill me. You were everywhere. Now it’s all over.” Then Bod smiled. “That’s what Silas is doing, isn’t it? That’s where he is.”

Mr. Dandy’s face confirmed everything that Bod had suspected.

And what Mr. Dandy might have said to that, Bod would never know, because the man let go of the headstone and tumbled slowly down into the open ghoul-gate.

Bod said,
“Wegh Khârados.”

The ghoul-gate was a grave once again, nothing more.

Something was tugging at his sleeve. Fortinbras Bartleby looked up at him. “Bod! The man by the chapel. He’s going up the hill.”

The man Jack followed his nose. He had left the others, not least because the stink of Jack Dandy’s cologne made finding anything subtler impossible.

He could not find the boy by scent. Not here. The boy smelled like the graveyard. But the girl smelled like her mother’s house, like the dab of perfume she had touched to her neck before school that morning. She smelled like a victim too, like fear-sweat, thought Jack, like his quarry. And wherever she was, the boy would be too, sooner or later.

His hand closed around the handle of his knife and he walked up the hill. He was almost at the top of the hill when it occurred to him—a hunch he knew was a truth—that Jack Dandy and the rest of them were gone.
Good
, he thought.
There’s always room at the top
. The man Jack’s own rise through the Order had slowed and stopped after he had failed to kill all of the Dorian family. It was as if he had no longer been trusted.

Now, soon, everything would change.

At the top of the hill the man Jack lost the girl’s scent. He knew she was near.

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.”

Scarlett said, “He’s not lying. It’s true.”

Jack said, “True? Buried treasure? Don’t make me—”

THE SLEER GUARDS THE TREASURE FOR THE MASTER
.

“Who said that?” asked the man Jack, looking around.

“You heard it?” asked Bod, puzzled.

“I heard it,” said Jack. “Yes.”

Scarlett said, “I didn’t hear anything.”

The man Jack said, “What is this place, boy? Where are we?”

Before Bod could speak, the Sleer’s voice spoke, echoing through the chamber,
THIS IS THE PLACE OF THE TREASURE. THIS IS THE PLACE OF POWER. THIS IS WHERE THE SLEER GUARDS AND WAITS FOR ITS MASTER TO RETURN
.

Bod said, “Jack?”

The man Jack tilted his head on one side. He said, “It’s good to hear my name in your mouth, boy. If you’d used it before, I could have found you sooner.”

“Jack. What was my real name? What did my family call me?”

“Why should that matter to you now?”

Bod said, “The Sleer told me to find my name. What was it?”

Jack said, “Let me see. Was it Peter? Or Paul? Or Roderick—you look like a Roderick. Maybe you were a Stephen…” He was playing with the boy.

“You might as well tell me. You’re going to kill me anyway,” said Bod. Jack shrugged and nodded in the darkness, as if to say
obviousl
y.

“I want you to let the girl go,” said Bod. “Let Scarlett go.”

Jack peered into the darkness, then said, “That’s an altar stone, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“And a knife? And a cup? And a brooch?”

He was smiling now, in the darkness. Bod could see it on his face: a strange, delighted smile that seemed out of place on that face, a smile of discovery and of understanding. Scarlett couldn’t see anything but a blackness that sometimes erupted in flashes inside her eyeballs, but she could hear the delight in Jack’s voice.

The man Jack said, “So the Brotherhood is over and the Convocation is at an end. And yet, if there are no more Jacks of All Trades but me, what does it matter? There can be a new Brotherhood, more powerful than the last.”

POWER
, echoed the Sleer.

“This is perfect,” said the man Jack. “Look at us. We are in a place for which my people have hunted for thousands of years, with everything necessary for the ceremony waiting for us. It makes you believe in Providence, doesn’t it? Or in the massed prayers of all the Jacks who have gone before us, that at our lowest ebb, we are given this.”

Bod could feel the Sleer listening to Jack’s words, could feel a low susurrus of excitement building in the chamber.

The man Jack said, “I am going to put out my hand, boy. Scarlett, my knife is still at your throat—do not try to run when I let go of you. Boy, you will place the cup and the knife and the brooch in my hand.”

THE TREASURE OF THE SLEER
, whispered the triple voice.
IT ALWAYS COMES BACK. WE GUARD IT FOR THE MASTER
.

Bod bent down, took the objects from the altar stone, put them in Jack’s open gloved hand. Jack grinned.

“Scarlett. I am going to release you. When I take the knife away, I want you to lie, facedown, on the ground, with your hands behind your head. Move or try anything, and I will kill you painfully. Do you understand?”

She gulped. Her mouth was dry, but she took one shaky step forward. Her right arm, which had been twisted up to the small of her back, was now numb, and she felt only pins and needles in her shoulder. She lay down, her cheek resting on the packed earth.

We are dead
, she thought, and it was not even tinged with emotion. It felt as if she were watching something happening to other people, a surreal drama that had turned into a game of Murder in the Dark. She heard the noise of Jack taking hold of Bod…

Bod’s voice said, “Let her go.”

The man Jack’s voice: “If you do everything I say, I won’t kill her. I won’t even hurt her.”

“I don’t believe you. She can identify you.”

“No.” The adult voice seemed certain. “She can’t.” And then it said, “Ten thousand years, and the knife is still sharp…” The admiration in the voice was palpable. “Boy. Go and kneel on that altar stone. Hands behind your back. Now.”

IT HAS BEEN SO LONG
, said the Sleer, but all Scarlett heard was a slithering noise, as if of enormous coils winding around the chamber.

But the man Jack heard. “You want to know your name, boy, before I spill your blood on the stone?”

Bod felt the cold of the knife at his neck. And in that moment, Bod understood. Everything slowed. Everything came into focus. “I know my name,” he said. “I’m Nobody Owens. That’s who I am.” And, kneeling on the cold altar stone, it all seemed very simple.

“Sleer,” he said to the chamber. “Do you still want a master?”

THE SLEER GUARDS THE TREASURE UNTIL THE MASTER RETURNS
.

“Well,” said Bod, “haven’t you finally found the master you’ve been looking for?”

He could sense the Sleer writhing and expanding, hear a noise like the scratching of a thousand dead twigs, as if something huge and muscular were snaking its way around the inside of the chamber. And then, for the first time, Bod saw the Sleer. Afterwards, he was never able to describe what he had seen: something huge, yes; something with the body of an enormous snake, but with the head of a what…? There were three of them: three heads, three necks. The faces were dead, as if someone had constructed dolls from parts of the corpses of humans and of animals. The faces were covered in purple patterns, tattooed in swirls of indigo, turning the dead faces into strange, expressive monstrous things.

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 beginning of another. Good-bye, boy.” With one hand he lowered the knife to the boy’s throat. The other hand held the goblet.