The Graveyard Book

Everyone knows there’s a witch buried on the edge of the graveyard. Eight-year-old Bod isn’t allowed to go near that area; according to Mrs. Owens, it’s dangerously damp down there. Since Bod is an obedient child, he often stands and looks out at the wasteland beyond the graveyard fence, but he never ventures closer. He knows Mrs. Owens’s story isn’t the whole story, so he seeks out Silas and asks what’s down there. Silas says it’s unconsecrated ground, or ground that hasn’t been blessed. He explains that here in England, people bless the ground around churches and leave unconsecrated ground—like Potter’s Field—for people who died by suicide or who were criminals. Bod asks if the people buried there are bad people, but Silas says no one is particularly evil. He reminds Bod that laws used to be very harsh, and there are always people who think killing themselves will fix things.

Silas notes that on the whole, committing suicide doesn’t actually fix anything. When Bod asks about the witch, Silas says there are “suicides, criminals, and witches” in Potter’s Field and then sends Bod off for lessons. Bod is late meeting Mr. Pennyworth, who’s in a terrible mood. Mr. Pennyworth announces that today, they’ll work on Bod’s Fading. Reluctantly, Bod tries to Fade. Nothing happens, so Mr. Pennyworth scolds him. Bod imagines himself fading into the wall of the mausoleum, but he can’t. When Mr. Pennyworth’s lesson is over, Bod goes to Miss Borrows for grammar and composition lessons. Bod asks about the witch, but Miss Borrows tells Bod to not walk on the unconsecrated ground—the people there “aren’t our sort of people.”

Since Bod is curious but obedient, he climbs his favorite apple tree that hangs over the fence instead of walking into Potter’s Field. He sits and looks down on the Potter’s Field and wonders if the witch is old and ugly. When his stomach rumbles, Bod notices a single apple on the tree. As he reaches for it, the branch breaks. Bod comes to in the gardener’s compost heap. A voice tells Bod to hush and inspects his leg. The voice deems Bod’s leg sprained. When Bod looks up, he sees the speaker is the ghost of a teen girl. She’s heard of Bod. When Bod asks if she was a suicide or a thief, the girl says she didn’t steal anything. Bod tells her that supposedly, there’s a witch here.

The girl says there is—she was drowned, burned, and buried without a headstone. Bod is impressed. The witch sits down with Bod and says that they came for her at dawn. Everyone in the village testified against her, and one woman accused her of seducing a village boy with witchcraft. They drowned her, believing that if she were a witch she’d survive. The girl said she died, which disappoints Bod. But the girl assures Bod that she’s definitely a witch—after the villagers fished her out of the pond, she cursed them and then died. When she says she doesn’t have a headstone, she looks wistful. Bod asks what happened to her accusers. The girl says that a week after her death, a carpet arrived from London, carrying the plague. Everyone who watched her execution succumbed and was buried in a mass grave.

As Bod stands and gingerly tests his injured leg, he asks if the girl was a witch before she cursed everyone. She snaps that it didn’t take witchcraft to woo the boy. Bod thinks this doesn’t answer the question but stays silent. He asks the girl’s name. Reluctantly, she introduces herself as Liza Hempstock. Liza sadly says she doesn’t have a headstone. Bod heads back into the graveyard and vows to find Liza a headstone. He decides to keep his quest to himself and spends days plotting. Bod is so distracted that Mr. Pennyworth snarls that Bod’s Fading is getting even worse. Since Bod is thinking about shops where living people buy headstones, he barely listens. Later, he asks Miss Borrows how money works and what headstones cost. Bod has some money, but not enough to buy a headstone.

Bod decides to visit the Indigo Man’s tomb. He climbs down the steps into the stone chamber. The Sleer coils around the room, but Bod isn’t afraid. He informs the Sleer that he’s going to take something away and asks if this is the Sleer’s grave. Cryptically, the Sleer says that the “master” left them here to guard the treasures until the master returns. Bod can feel the Sleer trying to scare him, so he picks up the brooch from the stone slab. The Sleer hisses that “it comes back” as Bod climbs out of the tomb. Once he’s outside, Bod inspects the brooch. The stone is huge and red and seems to pull at Bod’s soul. It’s set in black metal worked into a three-headed, snakelike creature. Bod wonders if it’s what the Sleer looks like.

Bod races down to Potter’s Field and calls for Liza. When she appears, Bod asks her what she wants on her headstone. She says she’d like an “E” and an “H,” but she doesn’t care about dates. The sun rises, and she disappears. Bod knows he’ll need real clothes to leave the graveyard. Not wanting to alert Silas to his plans, Bod changes into the gardening jeans and workman’s jacket that are stored in the gardener’s hut. He feels very fancy in his too-big clothes and walks out the main graveyard gate.

Abanazer Bolger runs an antiques shop in the Old Town. He trades over the counter for some things, but much of his business happens in the back room. Though Abanazer sees lots of odd people in his line of work, Bod is the strangest person he’s ever seen. As a general rule, Abanazer doesn’t buy from kids. But when Bod pulls out the brooch, Abanazer is shocked. It’s snakestone, and Abanazer accuses Bod of stealing it from a museum. Bod threatens to take his business elsewhere, so Abanazer smiles and invites Bod to have cookies and chat. They enter a windowless back room and Abanazer offers Bod a cookie.

Abanazer inspects the brooch again. He thinks it’s priceless, but he tells Bod it’s almost worthless. Before they can strike a deal, though, Abanazer says he needs to know where Bod got it. Bod stays silent for a few minutes, but then says he got it out of a grave. Seeing the look of greed on Abanazer’s face, Bod stops talking and refuses to say where he found the brooch. When Abanazer realizes that there are no parents waiting for Bod, he locks Bod in the storeroom. Out in the shop, Abanazer hears the bell ring. Nobody is in the shop, though, so Abanazer locks the door. It begins to storm outside as Abanazer calls a man named Tom.

Bod feels foolish and wonders what Silas would say. He looks for a way out and digs through the desk drawers. When he finds paint pots, he pockets them—he could throw them in the man’s face. Liza whispers in Bod’s ear and asks what he’s doing. She’s unimpressed when he won’t say and tells Bod to slip through the wall. Bod explains that he can’t; the Freedom of the Graveyard only lets him do that in the graveyard. He asks Liza why she can be out during the day, unlike the other ghosts, and she sniffs that she doesn’t have to follow the graveyard’s rules since she’s buried in unconsecrated ground. Liza goes into the shop area to watch Abanazer.

Feeling as though someone is watching him, Abanazer looks around suspiciously. He already regrets calling Tom Hustings, and he regrets that he’ll have to sell the brooch. He wants it more the longer he looks at it. As Abanazer thinks about Bod, he reluctantly pulls out a black-edged card with “Jack” handwritten in the middle. Abanazer’s own handwritten directions for how to contact Jack are on the back. When Tom arrives, Abanazer lets him in and brandishes the brooch, explaining that it’s from a pagan barrow grave. Tom says it might be worth it to go about this deal legally; a museum would pay and name the exhibit after him and Abanazer. Abanazer, though, says he knows people who will pay more.

Then, Abanazer says he has a different kind of treasure: he knows someone looking for a particular boy, and he thinks he has the boy. The boy found the brooch. At this, Tom points out that they won’t find the rest of the treasure if they turn the boy in. Bored of listening to the men argue, Liza returns to Bod. She finds him with his fists clenched and his face scrunched up. He explains he’s trying to Fade and then picks up a glass paperweight. Bod says he could just hit Abanazer with it and run. Liza says there’s another man now and asks why Bod is here at all. In a small voice, Bod says he was trying to get Liza a headstone. Liza says this is the first nice thing anyone’s done for her in centuries. She puts a spell on Bod so he can Fade.

When Tom opens the door a moment later, he can’t see Bod. Abanazer pokes his head in and decides Bod is hiding. Now invisible, Bod holds still as the men search the room. Liza giggles, which the men are able to hear. Then, she blows her lips together and the lights go out. The men leave the office and lock it behind them. Out in the shop, Abanazer discovers that Tom put the brooch in his pocket. They argue over who owns the brooch and if they should tell Jack about the boy. Abanazer returns to the office for whiskey and puts several drops from a black bottle in the whiskey. Bod hears Abanazer pour Tom a drink and Tom accuse Abanazer of poisoning it. After a crash, everything goes quiet.

Liza says she and Bod should slip out. Bod notices the key is still in the keyhole, so he pokes it out onto a piece of paper slid under the door. When he slides the paper—and the key—back into the office and unlocks the door, Liza is impressed. Out in the store, she and Bod find Abanazer and Tom both knocked out. Bod pockets the brooch and Liza tells Bod to take the card too. The card disturbs Bod, so he suggests they burn it. Liza gasps and forces Bod to take it, if only to give to Silas. Bod puts it into an envelope. Two hundred miles away, Jack wakes up. He knows something is happening.

Bod hurries toward the graveyard. It’s early evening now and Silas suddenly appears in front of Bod. Silas says he’s disappointed but envelops Bod in his cloak. As they travel back to the graveyard, Bod says he knew that Silas would save him. He mentions Liza’s help, too. When they arrive at the chapel, Bod gives Silas the card and shares everything that happened to him. When Bod asks if he’s in trouble, Silas says that Mr. Owens and Mrs. Owens will punish Bod. He then disappears to dispose of the card. Bod runs up to the barrow grave and returns the brooch. The Sleer says, “it always comes back.”

Bod runs through the graveyard, his bottom stinging—the Owenses died long before it was decided that parents shouldn’t beat children, so Mr. Owens spanked Bod as his punishment. Bod slips into the Potter’s Field, but Liza doesn’t answer his calls. He pulls the glass paperweight out of his pocket. Then, Bod pulls out the paint and paintbrush and carefully paints “E.H.” and “we don’t forget” on it. He puts it down where he thinks Liza’s head would be. As Bod runs back to the graveyard, he hears Liza’s voice say, “not bad.”