by Neil Gaiman
“Hello, boy,” he said.
Bod said nothing. He concentrated on his Fade, took another step.
“You think I can’t see you,” said the man Jack. “And you’re right. I can’t. Not really. But I can smell your fear. And I can hear you move and hear you breathe. And now that I know about your clever vanishing trick, I can feel you. Say something now. Say it so I can hear it, or I start to cut little pieces out of the young lady. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said Bod, his voice echoing in the chamber room. “I understand.”
“Good,” said Jack. “Now, come here. Let’s have a little chat.”
Bod began to walk down the steps. He concentrated on the Fear, on raising the level of panic in the room, of making the Terror something tangible….
“Stop that,” said the man Jack. “Whatever it is you’re doing. Don’t do it.”
Bod let it go.
“You think,” said Jack, “that you can do your little magics on me? Do you know what I am, boy?”
Bod said, “You’re a Jack. You killed my family. And you should have killed me.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. He said, “I should have killed you?”
“Oh yes. The old man said that if you let me grow to adulthood your Order would be destroyed. I did. You failed and you lost.”
“My order goes back before Babylon. Nothing can harm it.”
“They didn’t tell you, did they?” Bod was standing five paces from the man Jack. “Those four. They were the last of the Jacks. What was it…Krakow and Vancouver and Melbourne. All gone.”
Scarlett said, “Please, Bod. Make him let go of me.”
“Don’t worry,” said Bod, with a calm he did not feel. He said to Jack, “There’s no point in hurting her. There’s no point in killing me. Don’t you understand? There isn’t even an order of Jacks of All Trades. Not anymore.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully. “If this is true,” said Jack, “and if I am now a Jack-all-alone, then I have an excellent reason for killing you both.”
Bod said nothing.
“Pride,” said the man Jack. “Pride in my work. Pride in finishing what I began.” And then he said, “What are you doing?”
Bod’s hair prickled. He could feel a smoke-tendril presence twining through the room. He said, “It’s not me. It’s the Sleer. It guards the treasure that’s buried here.”
“Don’t lie.”
Scarlett said, “He’s not lying. It’s true.”
Jack said, “True? Buried treasure? Don’t make me—”
THE SLEER GUARDS THE TREASURE FOR THE MASTER.
“Who said that?” asked the man Jack, looking around.
“You heard it?” asked Bod, puzzled.
“I heard it,” said Jack. “Yes.”
Scarlett said, “I didn’t hear anything.”
The man Jack said, “What is this place, boy? Where are we?”
Before Bod could speak, the Sleer’s voice spoke, echoing through the chamber, THIS IS THE PLACE OF THE TREASURE. THIS IS THE PLACE OF POWER. THIS IS WHERE THE SLEER GUARDS AND WAITS FOR ITS MASTER TO RETURN.
Bod said, “Jack?”
The man Jack tilted his head on one side. He said, “It’s good to hear my name in your mouth, boy. If you’d used it before, I could have found you sooner.”
“Jack. What was my real name? What did my family call me?”
“Why should that matter to you now?”
Bod said, “The Sleer told me to find my name. What was it?”
Jack said, “Let me see. Was it Peter? Or Paul? Or Roderick—you look like a Roderick. Maybe you were a Stephen…” He was playing with the boy.
“You might as well tell me. You’re going to kill me anyway,” said Bod. Jack shrugged and nodded in the darkness, as if to say obviously.
“I want you to let the girl go,” said Bod. “Let Scarlett go.”
Jack peered into the darkness, then said, “That’s an altar stone, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“And a knife? And a cup? And a brooch?”
He was smiling now, in the darkness. Bod could see it on his face: a strange, delighted smile that seemed out of place on that face, a smile of discovery and of understanding. Scarlett couldn’t see anything but a blackness that sometimes erupted in flashes inside her eyeballs, but she could hear the delight in Jack’s voice.
The man Jack said, “So the Brotherhood is over and the Convocation is at an end. And yet, if there are no more Jacks of All Trades but me, what does it matter? There can be a new Brotherhood, more powerful than the last.”
POWER, echoed the Sleer.
“This is perfect,” said the man Jack. “Look at us. We are in a place for which my people have hunted for thousands of years, with everything necessary for the ceremony waiting for us. It makes you believe in Providence, doesn’t it? Or in the massed prayers of all the Jacks who have gone before us, that at our lowest ebb, we are given this.”
Bod could feel the Sleer listening to Jack’s words, could feel a low susurrus of excitement building in the chamber.
The man Jack said, “I am going to put out my hand, boy. Scarlett, my knife is still at your throat—do not try to run when I let go of you. Boy, you will place the cup and the knife and the brooch in my hand.”
THE TREASURE OF THE SLEER, whispered the triple voice. IT ALWAYS COMES BACK. WE GUARD IT FOR THE MASTER.
Bod bent down, took the objects from the altar stone, put them in Jack’s open gloved hand. Jack grinned.
“Scarlett. I am going to release you. When I take the knife away, I want you to lie, facedown, on the ground, with your hands behind your head. Move or try anything, and I will kill you painfully. Do you understand?”
She gulped. Her mouth was dry, but she took one shaky step forward. Her right arm, which had been twisted up to the small of her back, was now numb, and she felt only pins and needles in her shoulder. She lay down, her cheek resting on the packed earth.
We are dead, she thought, and it was not even tinged with emotion. It felt as if she were watching something happening to other people, a surreal drama that had turned into a game of Murder in the Dark. She heard the noise of Jack taking hold of Bod…
Bod’s voice said, “Let her go.”
The man Jack’s voice: “If you do everything I say, I won’t kill her. I won’t even hurt her.”
“I don’t believe you. She can identify you.”
“No.” The adult voice seemed certain. “She can’t.” And then it said, “Ten thousand years, and the knife is still sharp…” The admiration in the voice was palpable. “Boy. Go and kneel on that altar stone. Hands behind your back. Now.”
IT HAS BEEN SO LONG, said the Sleer, but all Scarlett heard was a slithering noise, as if of enormous coils winding around the chamber.
But the man Jack heard. “You want to know your name, boy, before I spill your blood on the stone?”
Bod felt the cold of the knife at his neck. And in that moment, Bod understood. Everything slowed. Everything came into focus. “I know my name,” he said. “I’m Nobody Owens. That’s who I am.” And, kneeling on the cold altar stone, it all seemed very simple.
“Sleer,” he said to the chamber. “Do you still want a master?”
THE SLEER GUARDS THE TREASURE UNTIL THE MASTER RETURNS.
“Well,” said Bod, “haven’t you finally found the master you’ve been looking for?”
He could sense the Sleer writhing and expanding, hear a noise like the scratching of a thousand dead twigs, as if something huge and muscular were snaking its way around the inside of the chamber. And then, for the first time, Bod saw the Sleer. Afterwards, he was never able to describe what he had seen: something huge, yes; something with the body of an enormous snake, but with the head of a what…? There were three of them: three heads, three necks. The faces were dead, as if someone had constructed dolls from parts of the corpses of humans and of animals. The faces were covered in purple patterns, tattooed in swir
ls of indigo, turning the dead faces into strange, expressive monstrous things.
The faces of the Sleer nuzzled the air about Jack tentatively, as if they wanted to stroke or caress him.
“What’s happening?” said Jack. “What is it? What does it do?”
“It’s called the Sleer. It guards the place. It needs a master to tell it what to do,” said Bod.
Jack hefted the flint knife in his hand. “Beautiful,” he said to himself. And then, “Of course. It’s been waiting for me. And yes. Obviously, I am its new master.”
The Sleer encircled the interior of the chamber. MASTER? it said, like a dog who had waited patiently for too long. It said MASTER? again, as if testing the word to see how it tasted. And it tasted good, so it said one more time, with a sigh of delight and of longing, MASTER…
Jack looked down at Bod. “Thirteen years ago I missed you, and now, now we are reunited. The end of one order. The beginning of another. Good-bye, boy.” With one hand he lowered the knife to the boy’s throat. The other hand held the goblet.
“Bod,” said Bod. “Not Boy. Bod.” He raised his voice. “Sleer,” he said. “What will you do with your new master?”
The Sleer sighed. WE WILL PROTECT HIM UNTIL THE END OF TIME. THE SLEER WILL HOLD HIM IN ITS COILS FOREVER AND NEVER LET HIM ENDURE THE DANGERS OF THE WORLD.
“Then protect him,” said Bod. “Now.”
“I am your master. You will obey me,” said the man Jack.
THE SLEER HAS WAITED SO LONG, said the triple voice of the Sleer, triumphantly. SO LONG A TIME. It began to loop its huge, lazy coils around the man Jack.
The man Jack dropped the goblet. Now he had a knife in each hand—a flint knife, and a knife with a black bone handle—and he said, “Get back! Keep away from me! Don’t get any closer!” He slashed out with the knife, as the Sleer twined about him, and in a huge crushing movement, engulfed the man Jack in its coils.
Bod ran over to Scarlett, and helped her up. “I want to see,” she said. “I want to see what’s happening.” She pulled out her LED light, and turned it on…
What Scarlett saw was not what Bod saw. She did not see the Sleer, and that was a mercy. She saw the man Jack, though. She saw the fear on his face, which made him look like Mr. Frost had once looked. In his terror he was once more the nice man who had driven her home. He was floating in the air, five, then ten feet above the ground, slashing wildly at the air with two knives, trying to stab something she could not see, in a display that was obviously having no effect.
Mr. Frost, the man Jack, whoever he was, was forced away from them, pulled back until he was spread-eagled, arms and legs wide and flailing, against the side of the chamber wall.
It seemed to Scarlett that Mr. Frost was being forced through the wall, pulled into the rock, was being swallowed up by it. Now there was nothing visible but a face. He was shouting wildly, desperately, shouting at Bod to call the thing off, to save him, please, please…and then the man’s face was pulled through the wall, and the voice was silenced.
Bod walked back to the altar stone. He picked up the stone knife, and the goblet, and the brooch, from the ground and he replaced them where they belonged. He left the black metal knife where it fell.
Scarlett said, “I thought you said the Sleer couldn’t hurt people. I thought all it could do was frighten us.”
“Yes,” said Bod. “But it wanted a master to protect. It told me so.”
Scarlett said, “You mean you knew. You knew that would happen…”
“Yes. I hoped it would.”
He helped her up the steps and out into the chaos of the Frobisher mausoleum. “I’ll need to clean this all up,” said Bod, casually. Scarlett tried not to look at the things on the floor.
They stepped out into the graveyard. Scarlett said, dully, once more, “You knew that would happen.”
This time Bod said nothing.
She looked at him as if unsure of what she was looking at. “So you knew. That the Sleer would take him. Was that why you hid me down there? Was it? What was I, then, bait?”
Bod said, “It wasn’t like that.” Then he said, “We’re still alive, aren’t we? And he won’t trouble us any longer.”
Scarlett could feel the anger and the rage welling up inside her. The fear had gone, and now all she was left with was the need to lash out, to shout. She fought the urge. “And what about those other men? Did you kill them too?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Then where are they?”
“One of them’s at the bottom of a deep grave, with a broken ankle. The other three are, well, they’re a long way away.”
“You didn’t kill them?”
“Of course not.” Bod said, “This is my home. Why would I want them hanging around here for the rest of time?” Then, “Look, it’s okay. I dealt with them.”
Scarlett took a step away from him. She said, “You aren’t a person. People don’t behave like you. You’re as bad as he was. You’re a monster.”
Bod felt the blood drain from his face. After everything he had been through that night, after everything that had happened, this was somehow the hardest thing to take. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t like that.”
Scarlett began to back away from Bod.
She took one step, two steps, and was about to flee, to turn and run madly, desperately away through the moonlit graveyard, when a tall man in black velvet put a hand on her arm, and said, “I am afraid you do Bod an injustice. But you will undoubtedly be happier if you remember none of this. So let us walk together, you and I, and discuss what has happened to you over the last few days, and what it might be wise for you to remember, and what it might be better for you to forget.”
Bod said, “Silas. You can’t. You can’t make her forget me.”
“It will be safest that way,” said Silas, simply. “For her, if not for all of us.”
“Don’t—don’t I get a say in this?” asked Scarlett.
Silas said nothing. Bod took a step towards Scarlett, said, “Look, it’s over. I know it was hard. But. We did it. You and me. We beat them.”
Her head was shaking gently, as if she was denying everything she saw, everything she was experiencing.
She looked up at Silas, and said only, “I want to go home. Please?”
Silas nodded. He walked, with the girl, down the path that would eventually lead them both out of the graveyard. Bod stared at Scarlett as she walked away, hoping that she would turn and look back, that she would smile or just look at him without fear in her eyes. But Scarlett did not turn. She simply walked away.
Bod went back into the mausoleum. He had to do something, so he began to pick up the fallen coffins, to remove the debris, and to replace the tangle of tumbled bones into the coffins, disappointed to discover that none of the many Frobishers and Frobyshers and Pettyfers gathered around to watch seemed to be quite certain whose bones belonged in which container.
A man brought Scarlett home. Later, Scarlett’s mother could not remember quite what he had told her, although disappointingly, she had learned that that nice Jay Frost had unavoidably been forced to leave town.
The man talked with them, in the kitchen, about their lives and their dreams, and by the end of the conversation Scarlett’s mother had somehow decided that they would be returning to Glasgow: Scarlett would be happy to be near her father, and to see her old friends again.
Silas left the girl and her mother talking in the kitchen, discussing the challenges of moving back to Scotland, with Noona promising to buy Scarlett a phone of her own. They barely remembered that Silas had ever been there, which was the way he liked it.
Silas returned to the graveyard and found Bod sitting in the amphitheater by the obelisk, his face set.
“How is she?”
“I took her memories,” said Silas. “They will return to Glasgow. She has friends there.”
“How could you make her forget me?”
Silas said, “People want to forget th
e impossible. It makes their world safer.”
Bod said, “I liked her.”
“I’m sorry.”
Bod tried to smile, but he could not find a smile inside himself. “The men…they spoke about trouble they were having in Krakow and Melbourne and Vancouver. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“I was not alone,” said Silas.
“Miss Lupescu?” said Bod. Then, seeing the expression on his guardian’s face, “Is she all right?”
Silas shook his head, and for a moment his face was terrible for Bod to behold. “She fought bravely. She fought for you, Bod.”
Bod said, “The Sleer has the man Jack. Three of the others went through the ghoul-gate. There’s one injured but still alive at the bottom of the Carstairs grave.”
Silas said, “He is the last of the Jacks. I will need to talk to him, then, before sunrise.”
The wind that blew across the graveyard was cold, but neither the man nor the boy seemed to feel it.
Bod said, “She was scared of me.”
“Yes.”
“But why? I saved her life. I’m not a bad person. And I’m just like her. I’m alive too.” Then he said, “How did Miss Lupescu fall?”
“Bravely,” said Silas. “In battle. Protecting others.”
Bod’s eyes were dark. “You could have brought her back here. Buried her here. Then I could have talked to her.”
Silas said, “That was not an option.”
Bod felt his eyes stinging. He said, “She used to call me Nimini. No one will ever call me that again.”
Silas said, “Shall we go and get food for you?”
“We? You want me to come with you? Out of the graveyard?”
Silas said, “No one is trying to kill you. Not right now. There are a lot of things they are not going to be doing, not any longer. So, yes. What would you like to eat?”
Bod thought about saying that he wasn’t hungry, but that simply was not true. He felt a little sick, and a little lightheaded, and he was starving. “Pizza?” he suggested.
They walked through the graveyard, down to the gates. As Bod walked, he saw the inhabitants of the graveyard, but they let the boy and his guardian pass among them without a word. They only watched.
