Neil Gaiman Young Readers' Collection Page 33

  Nothing was said. Just a silence in reply, that echoed of dust and loneliness.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Bod said, honestly. “I think I can find out about who killed my family. Who wanted to kill me. It means leaving the graveyard, though.”

  The Sleer said nothing. Smoke-tendrils twined slowly around the inside of the chamber.

  “I’m not frightened of dying,” said Bod. “It’s just, so many people I care for have spent so much time keeping me safe, teaching me, protecting me.”

  Again, silence.

  Then he said, “I have to do this on my own.”

  YES.

  “That’s all, then. Sorry I bothered you.”

  It whispered into Bod’s head, then, in a voice that was a sleek insinuating glide, THE SLEER WAS SET TO GUARD THE TREASURE UNTIL OUR MASTER RETURNED. ARE YOU OUR MASTER?

  “No,” said Bod.

  And then, with a hopeful whine, WILL YOU BE OUR MASTER?

  “I’m afraid not.”

  IF YOU WERE OUR MASTER, WE COULD HOLD YOU IN OUR COILS FOREVER. IF YOU WERE OUR MASTER, WE WOULD KEEP YOU SAFE AND PROTECT YOU UNTIL THE END OF TIME AND NEVER LET YOU ENDURE THE DANGERS OF THE WORLD.

  “I am not your master.”

  NO.

  Bod felt the Sleer writhing through his mind. It said, THEN FIND YOUR NAME. And his mind was empty, and the room was empty, and Bod was alone.

  Bod walked back up the stairs carefully yet quickly. He had come to a decision and needed to act fast, while the decision still burned in his mind.

  Scarlett was waiting for him on the bench by the chapel. “Well?” she said.

  “I’ll do it. Come on,” he said, and side by side they walked the path down to the graveyard gates.

  Number 33 was a tall house, spindly-thin, in the middle of a terraced row. It was red-brick and unmemorable. Bod looked at it uncertainly, wondering why it did not seem familiar, or special. It was only a house, like any other. There was a small concreted space in front of it that wasn’t a garden, a green Mini parked on the street. The front door had once been painted a bright blue, but had been dimmed by time and the sun.

  “Well?” said Scarlett.

  Bod knocked on the door. There was nothing, then a clatter of feet on the stairs from inside, and the door opened to reveal an entryway and stairs. Framed in the doorway was a bespectacled man with receding grey hair, who blinked at them, then stuck out his hand at Bod, and smiled nervously, and said, “You must be Miss Perkins’s mysterious friend. Good to meet you.”

  “This is Bod,” said Scarlett.

  “Bob?”

  “Bod. With a D,” she said. “Bod, this is Mr. Frost.”

  Bod and Frost shook hands. “Kettle’s on,” said Mr. Frost. “What say we swap information over a cuppa?”

  They followed him up the steps to a kitchen, where he poured three mugs of tea, then led them into a small sitting room. “The house just keeps going up,” he said. “The toilet’s on the next floor up, and my office, then bedrooms above that. Keeps you fit, all the stairs.”

  They sat on a large, extremely purple sofa (“It was already here when I came”), and they sipped their tea.

  Scarlett had worried that Mr. Frost would ask Bod lots of questions, but he didn’t. He just seemed excited, as if he had identified the lost gravestone of someone famous and desperately wanted to tell the world. He kept moving impatiently in his chair, as if he had something enormous to impart to them and not blurting it out immediately was a physical strain.

  Scarlett said, “So what did you find out?”

  Mr. Frost said, “Well, you were right. I mean, this was the house where those people were killed. And it…I think the crime was…well, not exactly hushed up, but forgotten about, let go…by the authorities.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Scarlett. “Murders don’t get swept under the carpet.”

  “This one was,” said Frost. He drained his tea. “There are people out there who have influence. It’s the only explanation for that, and for what happened to the youngest child…”

  “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 running, no longer certain that Bod was by her side.

  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.

  “I’m going in,” said Mr. Dandy. “Mr. Tar, you’re with me. Nimble and Ketch, get that girl. Bring her back.”

  “Dead or alive?” asked Mr. Ketch, with a smug smile.

  “Alive, you moron,” said Mr. Dandy. “I want to know what she knows.”

  “Maybe she’s one of them,” said Mr. Tar. “The ones who done for us in Vancouver and Melbourne and—”

  “Get her,” said Mr. Dandy. “Get her now.” The blond man and the hat-and-mustache hurried up the hill.

  Mr. Dandy and Mr. Tar stood outside the door to number 33.

  “Force it,” said Mr. Dandy.

  Mr. Tar put his shoulder against the door and began to lean his weight on it. “It’s reinforced,” he said. “Protected.”

  Mr. Dandy said, “Nothing one Jack can do that another can’t fix.” He pulled off his glove, put his hand against the door, muttered something in a language older than English. “Now try it,” he said.

  Tar leaned against the door, grunted and pushed. This time the lock gave and the door swung open.

  “Nicely done,” said Mr. Dandy.

  There was a crashing noise from far above them, up at the top of the house.

  The man Jack met them halfway down the stairs. Mr. Dandy grinned at him, without any humor but with perfect teeth. “Hello, Jack Frost,” he said. “I thought you had the boy.”

  “I did,” said the man Jack. “He got away.”

  “Again?” Jack Dandy’s smile grew wider and chillier and even more perfect. “Once is a mistake, Jack. Twice is a disaster.”

  “We’ll get him,” said the man Jack. “This ends tonight.”

  “It had better,” said Mr. Dandy.

  “He’ll be in the graveyard,” said the man Jack. The three men hurried down the stairs.

  The man Jack sniffed the air. He had the scent of the boy in his nostrils, a prickle at the nape of his neck. He felt like all this had happened years before. He paused, pulled on his long black coat, which had hung in the front hall, incongruous beside Mr. Frost’s tweed jacket and fawn mackintosh.

  The front door was open to the street, and the daylight had almost gone. This time the man Jack knew exactly which way to go. He did not pause, but simply walked out of the house, and hurried up the hill towards the graveyard.

  The graveyard gates were closed when Scarlett reached them. Scarlett pulled at them desperately, but the gates were padlocked for the night. And then Bod was beside her. “Do you know where the key is?” she asked.

  “We don’t have time,” said Bod. He pushed close to the metal bars. “Put your arms around me.”

  “You what?”

  “Just put your arms around me and close your eyes.”

  Scarlett stared at Bod, as if daring him to try something, then she held him tightly and screwed her eyes shut. “Okay.”

  Bod leaned against the bars of the graveyard gates. They counted as part of the graveyard, and he hoped that his Freedom of the Graveyard might just, possibly, just this time, cover other people too. And then, like smoke, Bod slipped through the bars.

  “You can open your eyes,” he said.

  She did.

  “How did you do that?”

  “This is my home,” he said. “I can do things here.”

  The sound of shoes slapping against the pavement, and two men were on the other side of the gates, rattling them, pulling at them.

  “Hul-lo,” said Jack Ketch, with a twitch of his mustache, and he smiled at Scarlett through the bars like a rabbit with a secret. He had a black silk cord tied around his left forearm, and now
he was tugging at it with his gloved right hand. He pulled it off his arm and into his hand, testing it, running it from hand to hand as if he was about to make a cat’s cradle. “Come on out, girlie. It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  “We just need you to answer some questions,” said the big blond man, Mr. Nimble. “We’re on official business.” (He lied. There was nothing official about the Jacks of All Trades, although there had been Jacks in governments and in police forces and in other places besides.)

  “Run!” said Bod to Scarlett, pulling at her hand. She ran.

  “Did you see that?” said the Jack they called Ketch.

  “What?”

  “I saw somebody with her. A boy.”

  “The boy?” asked the Jack called Nimble.

  “How would I know? Here. Give me a hand up.” The bigger man put his hands out, linked them to make a step, and Jack Ketch’s black-clad foot went into it. Lifted up, he scrambled onto the top of the gates and jumped down to the drive, landing on all fours like a frog. He stood up, said, “Find another way in. I’m going after them.” And he sprinted off up the winding path that led into the graveyard.

  Scarlett said, “Just tell me what we’re doing.” Bod was walking fast through the twilit graveyard, but he was not running, not yet.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I think that man wanted to kill me. Did you see how he was playing with that black cord?”

  “I’m sure he does. That man Jack—your Mister Frost—he was going to kill me. He’s got a knife.”

  “He’s not my Mister Frost. Well, I suppose he is, sort of. Sorry. Where are we going?”

  “First we put you somewhere safe. Then I deal with them.”

  All around Bod, the inhabitants of the graveyard were waking and gathering, worried and alarmed.

  “Bod?” said Caius Pompeius. “What is happening?”

  “Bad people,” said Bod. “Can our lot keep an eye on them? Let me know where they are at all times. We have to hide Scarlett. Any ideas?”

  “The chapel crypt?” said Thackeray Porringer.

  “First place they’ll look.”

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Scarlett, staring at Bod as if he had gone mad.