by Neil Gaiman
No one noticed the boy, not at first. No one even noticed that they hadn’t noticed him. He sat halfway back in class. He didn’t answer much, not unless he was directly asked a question, and even then his answers were short and forgettable, colorless: he faded, in mind and in memory.
“Do you think they’re religious, his family?” asked Mr. Kirby, in the teachers’ staff room. He was marking essays.
“Whose family?” asked Mrs. McKinnon.
“Owens in Eight B,” said Mr. Kirby.
“The tall spotty lad?”
“I don’t think so. Sort of medium height.”
Mrs. McKinnon shrugged. “What about him?”
“Handwrites everything,” said Mr. Kirby. “Lovely handwriting. What they used to call copperplate.”
“And that makes him religious because…?”
“He says they don’t have a computer.”
“And?”
“He doesn’t have a phone.”
“I don’t see why that makes him religious,” said Mrs. McKinnon, who had taken up crocheting when they had banned smoking in the staff room, and was sitting and crocheting a baby blanket for no one in particular.
Mr. Kirby shrugged. “He’s a smart lad,” he said. “There’s just stuff he doesn’t know. And in History he’ll throw in little made-up details, stuff not in the books…”
“What kind of stuff?”
Mr. Kirby finished marking Bod’s essay and put it down on the pile. Without something immediately in front of him the whole matter seemed vague and unimportant. “Stuff,” he said, and forgot about it. Just as he forgot to enter Bod’s name on the roll. Just as Bod’s name was not to be found on the school databases.
The boy was a model pupil, forgettable and easily forgotten, and he spent much of his spare time in the back of the English class where there were shelves of old paperbacks, and in the school library, a large room filled with books and old armchairs, where he read stories as enthusiastically as some children ate.
Even the other kids forgot about him. Not when he was sitting in front of them: they remembered him then. But when that Owens kid was out of sight he was out of mind. They didn’t think about him. They didn’t need to. If someone asked all the kids in Eight B to close their eyes and list the twenty-five boys and girls in the class, that Owens kid wouldn’t have been on the list. His presence was almost ghostly.
It was different if he was there, of course.
Nick Farthing was twelve, but he could pass—and did sometimes—for sixteen: a large boy with a crooked smile, and little imagination. He was practical, in a basic sort of way, an efficient shoplifter, and occasional thug who did not care about being liked as long as the other kids, all smaller, did what he said. Anyway, he had a friend. Her name was Maureen Quilling, but everyone called her Mo, and she was thin and had pale skin and pale yellow hair, watery blue eyes, and a sharp, inquisitive nose. Nick liked to shoplift, but Mo told him what to steal. Nick could hit and hurt and intimidate, but Mo pointed him at the people who needed to be intimidated. They were, as she told him sometimes, a perfect team.
They were sitting in the corner of the library splitting their take of the year sevens’ pocket money. They had eight or nine of the eleven-year-olds trained to hand over their pocket money every week.
“The Singh kid hasn’t coughed up yet,” said Mo. “You’ll have to find him.”
“Yeah,” said Nick, “he’ll pay.”
“What was it he nicked? A CD?”
Nick nodded.
“Just point out the error of his ways,” said Mo, who wanted to sound like the hard cases from the television.
“Easy,” said Nick. “We’re a good team.”
“Like Batman and Robin,” said Mo.
“More like Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde,” said somebody, who had been reading, unnoticed, in a window seat, and he got up and walked out of the room.
Paul Singh was sitting on a windowsill by the changing rooms, his hands deep in his pockets, thinking dark thoughts. He took one hand out of his pocket, opened it, looked at the handful of pound coins, shook his head, closed his hand around the coins once more.
“Is that what Nick and Mo are waiting for?” somebody asked, and Paul jumped, scattering money all over the floor.
The other boy helped him pick the coins up, handed them over. He was an older boy, and Paul thought he had seen him around before, but he could not be certain. Paul said, “Are you with them? Nick and Mo?”
The other boy shook his head. “Nope. I think that they are fairly repulsive.” He hesitated. Then he said, “Actually, I came to give you a bit of advice.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t pay them.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Because they aren’t blackmailing me?”
The boy looked at Paul and Paul looked away, ashamed.
“They hit you or threatened you until you shoplifted a CD for them. Then they told you that unless you handed over your pocket money to them, they’d tell on you. What did they do, film you doing it?”
Paul nodded.
“Just say no,” said the boy. “Don’t do it.”
“They’ll kill me. And they said…”
“Tell them that you think the police and school authorities could be a lot more interested in a couple of kids who are getting younger kids to steal for them and then forcing them to hand over their pocket money than they ever would be in one kid forced to steal a CD against his will. That if they touch you again, you’ll make the call to the police. And that you’ve written it all up, and if anything happens to you, anything at all, if you get a black eye or anything, your friends will automatically send it to the school authorities and the police.”
Paul said, “But. I can’t.”
“Then you’ll pay them your pocket money for the rest of your time in this school. And you’ll stay scared of them.”
Paul thought. “Why don’t I just tell the police anyway?” he asked.
“Can if you like.”
“I’ll try it your way first,” Paul said. He smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was a smile, right enough, his first in three weeks.
So Paul Singh explained to Nick Farthing just how and why he wouldn’t be paying him any longer, and walked away while Nick Farthing just stood and didn’t say anything, clenching and unclenching his fists. And the next day another five eleven-year-olds found Nick Farthing in the playground, and told him they wanted their money back, all the pocket money they’d handed over in the previous month, or they’d be going to the police, and now Nick Farthing was an extremely unhappy young man.
Mo said, “It was him. He started it. If it wasn’t for him…they’d never have thought of it on their own. He’s the one we have to teach a lesson. Then they’ll all behave.”
“Who?” said Nick.
“The one who’s always reading. The one from the library. Bob Owens. Him.”
Nick nodded slowly. Then he said, “Which one is he?”
“I’ll point him out to you,” said Mo.
Bod was used to being ignored, to existing in the shadows. When glances naturally slip from you, you become very aware of eyes upon you, of glances in your direction, of attention. And if you barely exist in people’s minds as another living person then being pointed to, being followed around…these things draw attention to themselves.
They followed him out of the school and up the road, past the corner newsagent, and across the railway bridge. He took his time, making certain that the two who were following him, a burly boy and a fair, sharp-faced girl, did not lose him, then he walked into the tiny churchyard at the end of the road, a miniature graveyard behind the local church and he waited beside the tomb of Roderick Persson and his wife Amabella, and also his second wife, Portunia, (They Sleep to Wake Again).
“You’re that kid,” said a girl’s voice. “Bob Owens. Well, you’re in really big trouble, Bob Owens.”
“It’s Bod, actually,” said Bod, and h
e looked at them. “With a D. And you’re Jekyll and Hyde.”
“It was you,” said the girl. “You got to the seventh formers.”
“So we’re going to teach you a lesson,” said Nick Farthing, and he smiled without humor.
“I quite like lessons,” said Bod. “If you paid more attention to yours, you wouldn’t have to blackmail younger kids for pocket money.”
Nick’s brow crinkled. Then he said, “You’re dead, Owens.”
Bod shook his head, and he gestured around him. “I’m not actually,” he said. “They are.”
“Who are?” said Mo.
“The people in this place,” said Bod. “Look. I brought you here to give you a choice—”
“You didn’t bring us here,” said Nick.
“You’re here,” said Bod. “I wanted you here. I came here. You followed me. Same thing.”
Mo looked around nervously. “You’ve got friends here?” she asked.
Bod said, “You’re missing the point, I’m afraid. You two need to stop this. Stop behaving like other people don’t matter. Stop hurting people.”
Mo grinned a sharp grin. “For heaven’s sake,” she said to Nick. “Hit him.”
“I gave you a chance,” said Bod. Nick swung a vicious fist at Bod, who was no longer there, and Nick’s fist slammed into the side of the gravestone.
“Where did he go?” said Mo. Nick was swearing and shaking his hand. She looked around the shadowy cemetery, puzzled. “He was here. You know he was.”
Nick had little imagination, and he was not about to start thinking now. “Maybe he ran away,” he said.
“He didn’t run,” said Mo. “He just wasn’t there anymore.” Mo had an imagination. The ideas were hers. It was twilight in a spooky churchyard, and the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling. “Something is really, really wrong,” said Mo. Then she said, in a higher-pitched panicky voice, “We have to get out of here.”
“I’m going to find that kid,” said Nick Farthing. “I’m going to beat the stuffing out of him.” Mo felt something unsettled in the pit of her stomach. The shadows seemed to move around them.
“Nick,” said Mo, “I’m scared.”
Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they’re scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too.
Nick didn’t say anything. He just ran, and Mo ran close on his heels. The streetlights were coming on as they ran back towards the world, turning the twilight into night, making the shadows into dark places in which anything could be happening.
They ran until they reached Nick’s house, and they went inside and turned on all the lights, and Mo called her mother and demanded, half crying, to be picked up and driven the short distance to her own house, because she wasn’t walking home that night.
Bod had watched them run with satisfaction.
“That was good, dear,” said someone behind him, a tall woman in white. “A nice Fade, first. Then the Fear.”
“Thank you,” said Bod. “I hadn’t even tried the Fear out on living people. I mean, I knew the theory, but. Well.”
“It worked a treat,” she said, cheerfully. “I’m Amabella Persson.”
“Bod. Nobody Owens.”
“The live boy? From the big graveyard on the hill? Really?”
“Um.” Bod hadn’t realized that anyone knew who he was beyond his own graveyard. Amabella was knocking on the side of the tomb. “Roddy? Portunia? Come and see who’s here!”
There were three of them there, then, and Amabella was introducing Bod and he was shaking hands and saying, “Charmed, I am sure,” because he could greet people politely over nine hundred years of changing manners.
“Master Owens here was frightening some children who doubtless deserved it,” Amabella was explaining.
“Good show,” said Roderick Persson. “Bounders guilty of reprehensible behavior, eh?”
“They were bullies,” said Bod. “Making kids hand over their pocket money. Stuff like that.”
“A Frightening is certainly a good beginning,” said Portunia Persson, who was a stout woman, much older than Amabella. “And what have you planned if it does not work?”
“I hadn’t really thought—” Bod began, but Amabella interrupted.
“I should suggest that Dreamwalking might be the most efficient remedy. You can Dreamwalk, can you not?”
“I’m not sure,” said Bod. “Mister Pennyworth showed me how, but I haven’t really—well, there’s things I only really know in theory, and—”
Portunia Persson said, “Dreamwalking is all very well, but might I suggest a good Visitation? That’s the only language that these people understand.”
“Oh,” said Amabella. “A Visitation? Portunia my dear, I don’t really think so–-”
“No, you don’t. Luckily, one of us thinks.”
“I have to be getting home,” said Bod, hastily. “They’ll be worrying about me.”
“Of course,” said the Persson family, and “Lovely to meet you,” and “A very good evening to you, young man.” Amabella Persson and Portunia Persson glared at each other. Roderick Persson said, “If you’ll forgive me asking, but your guardian. He is well?”
“Silas? Yes, he’s fine.”
“Give him our regards. I’m afraid a small churchyard like this, well, we’re never going to meet an actual member of the Honour Guard. Still. It’s good to know that they’re there.”
“Good night,” said Bod, who had no idea what the man was talking about, but filed it away for later. “I’ll tell him.”
He picked up his bag of schoolbooks, and he walked home, taking comfort in the shadows.
Going to school with the living did not excuse Bod from his lessons with the dead. The nights were long, and sometimes Bod would apologize and crawl to bed exhausted before midnight. Mostly, he just kept going.
Mr. Pennyworth had little to complain of these days. Bod studied hard, and asked questions. Tonight Bod asked about Hauntings, getting more and more specific, which exasperated Mr. Pennyworth, who had never gone in for that sort of thing himself.
“How exactly do I make a cold spot in the air?” he asked, and “I think I’ve got Fear down, but how do I take it up all the way to Terror?” and Mr. Pennyworth sighed and hurrumphed and did his best to explain, and it was gone four in the morning before they were done.
Bod was tired at school the next day. The first class was History—a subject Bod mostly enjoyed, although he often had to resist the urge to say that it hadn’t happened like that, not according to people who had been there anyway—but this morning Bod was fighting to stay awake.
He was doing all he could do to concentrate on the lesson, so he was not paying attention to much else going on around him. He was thinking about King Charles the First, and about his parents, of Mr. and Mrs. Owens and of the other family, the one he could not remember, when there was a knock on the door. The class and Mr. Kirby all looked to see who was there (it was a year seven, who had been sent to borrow a textbook). And as they turned, Bod felt something stab in the back of his hand. He did not cry out. He just looked up.
Nick Farthing grinned down at him, a sharpened pencil in his fist. “I’m not afraid of you,” whispered Nick Farthing. Bod looked at the back of his hand. A small drop of blood welled up where the point of the pencil had punctured it.
Mo Quilling passed Bod in the corridor that afternoon, her eyes so wide he could see the whites all around them.
“You’re weird,” she said. “You don’t have any friends.”
“I didn’t come here for friends,” said Bod truthfully. “I came here to learn.”
Mo’s nose twitched. “Do you know how weird that is?” She asked. “Nobody comes to school to learn. I mean, you come because you have to.”
Bod shrugged.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said. “Whatever trick you did yesterday. You didn’t scare me.”
“Okay,�
� said Bod, and he walked on down the corridor.
He wondered if he had made a mistake, getting involved. He had made a mis-step in judgment, that was for certain. Mo and Nick had begun to talk about him, probably the year sevens had as well. Other kids were looking at him, pointing him out to each other. He was becoming a presence, rather than an absence, and that made him uncomfortable. Silas had warned him to keep a low profile, told him to go through school partly Faded, but everything was changing.
He talked to his guardian that evening, told him the whole story. He was not expecting Silas’s reaction.
“I cannot believe,” said Silas, “that you could have been so…so stupid. Everything I told you about remaining just this side of invisibility. And now you’ve become the talk of the school?”
“Well, what did you want me to do?”
“Not this,” said Silas. “It’s not like the olden times. They can keep track of you, Bod. They can find you.” Silas’s unmoving exterior was like the hard crust of rock over molten lava. Bod knew how angry Silas was only because he knew Silas. He seemed to be fighting his anger, controlling it.
Bod swallowed.
“What should I do?” he said, simply.
“Don’t go back,” said Silas. “This school business was an experiment. Let us simply acknowledge that it was not a successful one.”
Bod said nothing. Then he said, “It’s not just the learning stuff. It’s the other stuff. Do you know how nice it is to be in a room filled with people and for all of them to be breathing?”
“It’s not something in which I’ve ever taken pleasure,” said Silas. “So. You don’t go back to school tomorrow.”
“I’m not running away. Not from Mo or Nick or school. I’d leave here first.”
“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 down 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.