His eyes were huge in his head. Bod realized it was because he had circles drawn around them in purple, making his face look like an owl’s.
“Who are you?” asked Bod. He squeezed Scarlett’s hand as he said it.
The Indigo Man did not seem to have heard the question. He looked at them fiercely.
“Leave this place!” he said in words that Bod heard in his head, words that were also a gutteral growl.
“Is he going to hurt us?” asked Scarlett.
“I don’t think so,” said Bod. Then, to the Indigo Man, he said, as he had been taught, “I have the Freedom of the Graveyard and I may walk where I choose.”
There was no reaction to this by the Indigo Man, which puzzled Bod even more because even the most irritable inhabitants of the graveyard had been calmed by this statement. Bod said, “Scarlett, can you see him?”
“Of course I can see him. He’s a big scary tattooey man and he wants to kill us. Bod, make him go away!”
Bod looked at the remains of the gentleman in the brown coat. There was a lamp beside him, broken on the rocky floor. “He ran away,” said Bod aloud. “He ran because he was scared. And he slipped or he tripped on the stairs and he fell off.”
“Who did?”
“The man on the floor.”
Scarlett sounded irritated now, as well as puzzled and scared. “What man on the floor? It’s too dark. The only man I can see is the tattooey man.”
And then, as if to make quite sure that they knew that he was there, the Indigo Man threw back his head and let out a series of yodeling screams, a full-throated ululation that made Scarlett grip Bod’s hand so tightly that her fingernails pressed into his flesh.
Bod was no longer scared, though.
“I’m sorry I said they were imaginary,” said Scarlett. “I believe now. They’re real.”
The Indigo Man raised something over his head. It looked like a sharp stone blade. “All who invade this place will die!” he shouted, in his gutteral speech. Bod thought about the man whose hair had turned white after he had discovered the chamber, how he would never return to the graveyard or speak of what he had seen.
“No,” said Bod. “I think you’re right. I think this one is.”
“Is what?”
“Imaginary.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Scarlett. “I can see it.”
“Yes,” said Bod. “And you can’t see dead people.” He looked around the chamber. “You can stop now,” he said. “We know it’s not real.”
“I will feast on your liver!” screamed the Indigo Man.
“No, you won’t,” said Scarlett, with a huge sigh. “Bod’s right.”
Then she said, “I think maybe it’s a scarecrow.”
“What’s a scarecrow?” asked Bod.
“It’s a thing farmers put in fields to scare crows.”
“Why would they do that?” Bod quite liked crows. He thought they were funny, and he liked the way they helped to keep the graveyard tidy.
“I don’t know exactly. I’ll ask Mummy. But I saw one from a train and I asked what it was. Crows think it’s a real person. It’s just a made-up thing, that looks like a person, but it’s not. It’s just to scare the crows away.”
Bod looked around the chamber. He said, “Whoever you are, it isn’t working. It doesn’t scare us. We know it isn’t real. Just stop.”
The Indigo Man stopped. It walked over to the rock slab and it lay down on it. Then it was gone.