The Graveyard Book

“You will do as you are told, boy,” said Silas, a knot of velvet anger in the darkness.

“Or what?” said Bod, his cheeks burning. “What would you do to keep me here? Kill me?” And he turned on his heel and began to walk do

wn the path that led to the gates and out of the graveyard.

Silas began to call the boy back, then he stopped, and stood there in the night alone.

At the best of times his face was unreadable. Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined. Silas wrapped the shadows around him like a blanket, and stared after the way the boy had gone, and did not move to follow.

Nick Farthing was in his bed, asleep and dreaming of pirates on the sunny blue sea, when it all went wrong. One moment he was the captain of his own pirate ship—a happy place, crewed by obedient eleven-year-olds, except for the girls, who were all a year or two older than Nick and who looked especially pretty in their pirate costumes—and the next he was alone on the deck, and a huge, dark ship the size of an oil tanker, with ragged black sails and a skull for a figurehead, was crashing through the storm towards him.

And then, in the way of dreams, he was standing on the black deck of the new ship, and someone was looking down at him.

“You’re not afraid of me,” said the man standing over him.

Nick looked up. He was scared, in his dream, scared of this dead-faced man in pirate costume, his hand on the hilt of a cutlass.

“Do you think you’re a pirate, Nick?” asked his captor, and suddenly something about him seemed familiar to Nick.

“You’re that kid,” he said. “Bob Owens.”

“I,” said his captor, “am Nobody. And you need to change. Turn over a new leaf. Reform. All that. Or things will get very bad for you.”

“Bad how?”

“Bad in your head,” said the Pirate King, who was now only the boy from his class and they were in the school hall, not the deck of the pirate ship, although the storm had not abated and the floor of the hall pitched and rolled like a ship at sea.

“This is a dream,” Nick said.

“Of course it’s a dream,” said the other boy. “I would have to be some kind of monster to do this in real life.”

“What can you do to me in a dream?” asked Nick. He smiled. “I’m not afraid of you. You’ve still got my pencil in the back of your hand.” He pointed to the back of Bod’s hand, at the black mark the graphite point had made.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t have to be like this,” said the other boy. He tipped his head on one side as if he was listening to something. “They’re hungry,” he said.

“What are?” asked Nick.

“The things in the cellar. Or belowdecks. Depends whether this is a school or a ship, doesn’t it?”

Nick felt himself beginning to panic. “It isn’t…spiders…is it?” he said.

“It might be,” said the other boy. “You’ll find out, won’t you?”

Nick shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Please no.”

“Well,” said the other boy. “It’s all up to you, isn’t it? Change your ways or visit the cellar.”

The noise got louder—a scuttling sort of a scuffling noise, and while Nick Farthing had no idea what it was, he was utterly, completely certain that whatever it would turn out to be would be the most scary terrible thing he had ever—would ever—encounter…

He woke up screaming.

Bod heard the scream, a shout of terror, and felt the satisfaction of a job well done.

He was standing on the pavement outside Nick Farthing’s house, his face damp from the thick night mist. He was exhilarated and exhausted: he had felt barely in control of the Dreamwalk, had been all too aware that there was nothing else in the dream but Nick and himself, and that all Nick had been scared of was a noise.

But Bod was satisfied. The other boy would hesitate before tormenting smaller kids.