The Graveyard Book

Six-year-old Bod learns that Silas will be away for a while, searching for important information. Bod feels abandoned and hates it. He finds some Victorian child-ghosts to play hide-and-seek with, but he still worries about Silas’s departure.

At the chapel, he’s introduced to Miss Lupescu, a fussy, disapproving, gray-haired lady who will be Bod’s guardian during Silas’s absence. He complains to the Owenses, who tell him that Silas will be back, that the lady will take good care of him, and not to worry. Back at the chapel, Miss Lupescu presents him, not with the packaged foods he’s used to, but with plastic containers of a strange beetroot-based vegetable soup and salad. He chokes down the soup but protests at the onion-beetroot-tomato salad with its thick, oozy dressing. She lets him off with two bites.

It’s near midnight in midsummer, and Miss Lupescu decides it’s time for lessons. Bod protests that he already has plenty of teachers. She asks him what he knows about ghouls; he says he avoids them. She asks him to recite the different types of people and he guesses the living, the dead, and cats.

She teaches him the many types of people: “day-folk and night-folk, there are ghouls and mist-walkers, there are the high hunters and the Hounds of God. Also, there are solitary types” (71). During the next several days, she keeps feeding him weird, slimy foods and teaching him things that don’t interest him, like how to call for help in every language. Again, he complains to the Owenses, but they side with Miss Lupescu.

He tries to play with the ghosts, but none will come out. A large, gray dog wanders the graveyard, and he tries to get it to play, but it keeps its distance. Sulking, he falls asleep near an old, faded crypt.

He awakes to see three very short beings staring down at him. They look like mummies and sound like pirates but introduce themselves as the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Honorable Archibald Fitzhugh, and the Duke of Westminster. They ask about him, and Bod bemoans his fate, with bad food and no friends. They invite him to join him at their place, where the food is excellent. He accepts. They open a door toss Bod further inside the crypt.

He falls through utter darkness, something he’s never experienced in the graveyard, then is caught and tossed back and forth by the three ghouls as they travel across a land of tombstones lit by a red sun colored like an “infected wound.” His hosts now wear old black suits worn backwards. Other, similar creatures appear. They’re introduced as the 33rd US president and the Emperor of China. All of them are ghouls; they tell Bod he’ll enjoy becoming one of them.

Bod says he’s not sure he wants to do that; the ghouls express surprise that anyone wouldn’t want to be as strong and powerful as they are. They scavenge, eat disgusting things, and live in a hilltop city, Ghulheim, up ahead across a desert. Ghulheim looks like a nightmarish mouth full of bad teeth.

As they travel swiftly across the desert toward Ghulheim, tossing him back and forth, Bod sees creatures in the sky and the ghouls call them night-gaunts. Bod remembers from Miss Lupescu’s lessons how to call for help in the language of these flyers. He calls out; one of them drops down to investigate, but the ghouls clamp their hands on Bod’s mouth, silencing him, and the night-gaunt flies away.

They stop along the road and make camp. They tell Bod that the process of turning him into a ghoul won’t hurt—at least, not much. Then he’ll get a name, like the others, such as the Emperor of China or Victor Hugo. Bod wants to escape, but he knows these creatures are too strong and fast for him.

The ghouls talk and sing about how wonderful and clever and powerful and fearless they are, but a distant howling sound makes them nervous. A few hours later, a couple of them suddenly disappear without warning. They quickly decamp and continue down the road toward their city.

Around midday, they stop, blocked by night-gaunts soaring up ahead. Another howl sounds nearby. The ghouls hurry forward, pitching stones at the night-gaunts. Bod gets stuffed into Victor Hugo’s rucksack. Bod finds a brass screw in the rucksack and uses it to punch holes through the fabric. He peers through them and sees that he and Victor Hugo are at the back of the line of ghouls. They’re climbing four-foot-tall steps up a cliffside toward the city; the steps must have been built for giants.

The howling gets closer, and something tears at the rucksack. Bod tumbles out and lands at the feet of a giant grey dog. The ghouls see this but decide to abandon the boy and run for their lives. Bod fears he’ll be eaten by the dog, and he jumps off the step to the next one down. He lands badly on his ankle. The dog chases after him and he tries to jump again but tumbles off the giant staircase into space.

The dog cries, “Oh, Bod!” in Miss Lupescu’s voice. Something wraps around Bod as he falls; a night-gaunt has caught him. It’s large with a brown, bald head, and eyes like polished glass. They land on the desert floor. Bod falls, betrayed by his bad ankle. The great bird folds its leathery wings and waits.

The grey dog, Miss Lupescu, bounds up to them. She tells Bod that the night-gaunts already have saved him three times. The first was when Bod called for help in their language and they informed her; the second happened when two ghouls at the campfire decided to kill Bod, let him rot, and eat him later, but they were quietly eliminated by the night-gaunts. The third was the rescue just now.

Miss Lupescu and the night-gaunt get the injured Bod up on her back. She quickly teaches Bod how to say thank-you and good-bye in the night-gaunt language. He repeats it to the night-gaunt, who says the same and flies away.

Miss Lupescu bounds off across the desert. She explains that she’s a “Hound of God” (95), and that she’s taking Bod out of the ghoul world through one of the Gates of Hell. They arrive at a beehive-shaped building next to a tiny spring. Miss Lupescu and Bod both drink from it. When he looks up, Bod sees the Milky Way and knows he’s back on Earth. Miss Lupescu promises to teach him the constellations. She carries him back to the graveyard, where once again she’s a middle-aged woman, and hands him off to the Owenses. Relieved to be home, Bod quickly falls asleep.

The next day, ghostly Doctor Trefusis pronounces Bod’s ankle injury a sprain. Miss Lupescu brings Bod an ankle bandage, and Josiah Worthington loans him the ebony cane buried with him in his coffin. Bod retrieves from under a stone one of Miss Lupescu’s homework assignments, a list he’d simply set aside. At the top was “The Hounds of God” (96), and an explanation that they’re werewolves who pursue evildoers. Bod memorizes the entire list. At the chapel, he finds Miss Lupescu, who, smiling, shares with him a meat pie and chips.

At month’s end, Silas returns. His right arm is stiff. He brings Bod a gift, a model of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. At midnight, they all sit at the top of the hill. Bod says he learned a lot while Silas was away. Silas says he heard about their adventure and worried. Bod looks at Miss Lupescu and assures Silas that he was quite safe the whole time. Miss Lupescu smiles and offers to return next summer for more lessons. Bod says he’d like that.

A witch lies buried at the edge of the graveyard. Bod is warned not to go there; when he’s eight, he does so anyway. He asks Silas about that corner of the cemetery, and Silas explains that some of the land is unconsecrated ground, a “Potter’s Field” for criminals, those who died by suicide, and witches who are forbidden the sanctity of last rites.

Bod visits Mr. Pennyworth at his crypt, who tests him on his ability to fade into the shadows. Bod tries to do so, but Pennyworth is unimpressed. Instead, they review Elements and Humors. Then it’s time for Grammar and Composition with spinster ghost Letitia Barrows. Bod asks her about the witch, but she warns him against visiting that part of the cemetery: “They aren’t our sort of people” (106).

After lessons, Bod sneaks between the slats of the fence and sits under an apple tree. He gazes across Potter’s Field and wonders about the witch. Hungry, he looks up, searching for an apple—he’s already eaten most of them—and finds one high in the branches. He climbs up and nearly grabs it, but the branch he’s on breaks and he falls. By luck, he lands on a compost heap and merely twists his leg. An older, plain-faced teenage girl appears, checks his leg with cool hands, and says he’s lucky.

She died the victim of a witch hunt, drowned and burned, then buried here without a headstone. She is a witch, and she cursed her persecutors before she died. Shortly after, they all perished of plague. She asks if he’ll bring her a gravestone to mark her spot. His heart goes out to her, and he decides he’ll find one for her. He begins to plan.

A few days later, Mr. Pennyworth despairs at Bod’s continuing lack of progress in fading, saying that the boy has become more obvious rather than less. He asks Miss Borrows how much a headstone might cost and she guesses a lot more than the 15 guineas of her day. He has a couple of pounds in found money, but it won’t be enough.

For the first time in years, Bod climbs down the long underground stairway to the tomb of the Indigo Man. The Sleer once again hisses its strange, threatening presence, but Bod defies it, steals the brooch, and returns upstairs. The rising sun reveals a dark-red stone in the brooch’s center, held in place by a metal clasp shaped like talons and crawly things. Bod hurries to Potter’s Field, finds Liza grumpily getting ready for sleep, and asks her what she wants on her gravestone. She requests only an E for Elizabeth and an H for Hempstock.

Bod aims to visit the city, but his usual garb, a gray sheet, won’t do. From the cemetery’s abandoned gardener’s shed, he grabs an old pair of jeans and a jacket, puts them on, and rolls up the legs and sleeves. He walks down to the graveyard’s main gate, takes a deep breath, and steps out onto the street.

He wanders into a small shop in Old Town. The place buys and sells antiques and junk, sometimes for pawn. The owner, Abanazer Bolger, sees Bod in his oversized clothes, long hair, and serious face and thinks him one of the oddest-looking children he’s ever seen. He tells Bod he doesn’t buy from kids—they’ve usually stolen the items they sell—but, when Bod shows him the brooch, he changes his mind and brings Bod to his storeroom, where he sits at a desk and performs a thorough inspection of it. Bolger realizes it’s priceless but insists to Bod that it’s worthless. He grills Bod about where he got it. Bod admits it was from a grave but says no more. Bolger tells him to wait there, locks the door behind him, and calls a partner, telling him, “Paydirt.”

Trapped in the room, Bod searches for a weapon to throw at Bolger when he returns. He finds a small jar of paint and a large glass paperweight and pockets them. He’s busy regretting his predicament when Liza appears and asks what he’s doing away from the graveyard. He won’t tell but instead asks how she can leave her place of interment. She says those rules only apply to people buried on hallowed ground. She asks why he doesn’t simply slip through the wall and escape; he says he can only do that in the graveyard. Liza declares that she doesn’t like the shop owner and wants to investigate him. She disappears.

Bolger polishes the brooch, which shows silver beneath the clasp’s tarnish. His partner, Tom Hustings, shows up, a large, scary man to whom Bolger shows the brooch. He also shows him a calling card with the name Jack printed on it and tells Tom that the man who gave it to him is searching for an unusual boy who today would be the age of the kid he’s got locked up. They argue whether to get the boy to show them where he found the treasure or simply turn him in to Jack for the reward.

Liza, watching, grows bored and returns to the locked back room, where Bod is straining, trying to Fade. She asks again why he left the graveyard. He confesses that it was to buy her a headstone. Grateful, she informs him that Fading only works for ghosts, then places her hand on his forehead, intones magic verses, and causes him to disappear.

Hastings and Bolger unlock the office but can’t find Bod. They move through the room, searching. Bod remembers Pennyworth’s advice and stands completely still. Liza, invisible, giggles, then makes a whistling sound that causes the room lights to fail. The men leave the room and re-lock the door.

They argue again about Bod and about which of them is the rightful owner of the brooch. Bolger returns to the storeroom. He rummages through the desk, pulls out a whisky bottle and a small vial of something black, then adds a few drops from the vial to the whisky. He walks out, and Bod and Liza hear him offering a drink to Hustings. Shortly, the large man accuses Bolger of poisoning him. There’s a brief, noisy scuffle, then silence.

Bod peers through the keyhole: The key is still in the lock. He finds a page of newspaper, slides it under the door beneath the key, then takes a thin paintbrush and pushes its handle through the keyhole against the key until it falls onto the newspaper page. He pulls the paper back under the door and retrieves the key.

They unlock the storeroom, step out, and find the two men lying on the floor, unconscious. Next to them is the brooch. Bod retrieves it. Liza points out Jack’s calling card—the back has handwritten notes made years ago by Bolger—but Bod doesn’t want to touch it. Liza insists, because its purpose is to harm him. Bod finally agrees to give it to Silas, but he refuses to read it.

At that moment, 200 miles away, Jack awakens and sniffs the air. To him, something “smells tasty.”

Through rain and lightning, Bod hurries home. On the way, he meets Silas, who’s angry with him for leaving the graveyard. Silas enfolds Bod and whisks him back to the cemetery. Bod tells him that Liza helped him and Silas grunts with interest. At the chapel, Bod gives Silas the Jack card; Silas reads both sides. The boy tells him what happened. Silas tells Bod he’s in trouble, but that the Owenses will decide his penance.

Bod hikes up the hill through the rain to the Frobisher crypt, climbs down the long staircase to the Indigo Man’s burial chamber, and replaces the brooch. The Sleer hisses with satisfaction.

Mr. Owens administers to Bod a very old-fashioned spanking, but “the look of worry on Mrs. Owens’s face had hurt Bod worse” (142). He returns the jeans to the gardener’s shed but keeps the coat for its pockets. He borrows a scythe, walks to Potter’s Field, and slashes the nettles from Liza’s grave. With the paint jar from his pocket, he inscribes “E.H.” and “we don’t forget” on the glass paperweight and places it on the grave (143). As he leaves, he hears a pert, “Not bad,” but he sees no one.

It starts on a cold winter night: Bod’s mother, Mrs. Owens, irritably shoos him from the tomb while she cleans the place and sings a ditty that ends, “Come to dance the Macabray” (145). Outside, Mother Slaughter seems cranky, and she, too, sings about the Macabray. At the Bartleby crypt, the extended family tidies up. Fortinbras Bartleby, a boy ghost, explains that tomorrow night is special, then returns to polishing his coffin. Louisa Bartleby sings about the Macabray.

At the chapel, Silas enters with a bag of clothes for Bod: sweater, jeans, underwear, and green sneakers. Silas says that, since Bod is 10, it’s high time he learned how to wear human clothes instead of his grey sheet wrap. Regular clothing will help him blend in with other people when the time comes. Bod dons the clothes; the shoelaces give him some trouble.

Bod asks Silas if he knows what the Macabray is; Silas says it’s a dance done by both the living and the dead, but he’s neither and can’t dance it. Bod suddenly worries that Silas might someday leave him, or that, when he grows up, he’ll have to leave the graveyard. Silas says simply, “Everything in its season” (150).

Bod climbs up to the ivy-covered Egyptian crypts. Today, they’re enhanced by little flowers that emit a strong perfume. He hears people coming and Fades into the ivy. The town mayoress and two men arrive and begin clipping flower clumps, filling four baskets with them. The mayoress thinks their activity is silly, but the two men assure her that the winter bloom is the first in 80 years, and tradition dictates that she give a flower to everyone in Old Town.

Night falls, and Bod walks about, searching for someone to talk to, but all the ghosts have disappeared. Bod hears music and he walks into Old Town, where everyone wears a flower and sways to the music, whose source he can’t place. He wanders over to the town square: It’s filled with people. At midnight, the ghosts, marching in ranks, appear and walk into the park, where they dance with the townsfolk to the enticing music. Somehow, everyone knows the steps.

Liza takes Bod’s hand, and they dance. She sings, “Step and turn, and walk and stay, Now we dance the Macabray” (159). Bod feels fiercely joyful. Fortinbras Bartleby dances with him. He notices Mr. Bolger dancing with a ghost. Soon everyone is doing a line dance. Again, he’s next to Liza, and he asks where the music comes from. She doesn’t know and she says it’s just always this way.

The Lady on the Grey rides in atop her giant horse. She dismounts and curtseys and everyone curtseys back. The dancing continues, and everyone dances and stomps to the wonderful music. Bod notices Silas standing in the shadows. He calls out to his guardian, but Silas backs away and disappears.

For the final dance, Bod finds himself dancing with the Lady on the Grey. He asks if he can ride on her horse, and she promises him that he will one day. The clock again strikes midnight, and suddenly Bod feels exhausted, as if they’ve been dancing for 24 hours straight. The ghosts vanish, and the people shuffle away from the park as if half asleep. The square is covered in white flowers.

The next evening, Bod wants to talk about the dance, but none of the ghosts will acknowledge that it even happened. Silas explains that some things are mysteries not to be mentioned, and that even he barely remembers the dance.

In a hotel convention room, men in black suits sit at tables and finish their desserts. A cheerful man on a platform describes recent good deeds performed by the organization—taking poor children to exotic vacations, for example, or purchasing hospital equipment.

The man Jack sits at a front table, where he whispers with a silver-haired man, Mr. Dandy, who chastises him for failing to finish the job of killing that family 10 years ago. The man Jack insists he has leads, and he thinks they’re connected to the problem in San Francisco four years ago. Mr. Dandy says “Time’s a-ticking” (173).