The Graveyard Book

“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.