User blog:Cloudmonkey/Book Talk: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The man Jack had nearly completed his job in the house on the hill. He and his razor-sharp knife had finished with the woman, man, and older sister. Only the baby remained, the easiest part of the task. Approaching the crib, he saw the moonlit shape of the boy, aimed the knife at his chest, then stopped. The shape was a teddy bear. The boy was gone.

While the man Jack was about his unpleasant task, the boy had woken and, bored, climbed from his crib, bumped down the stairs, and gone out through the door the man Jack had left open. He tottered up the hill and squeezed though the bars in the fence surrounding the graveyard.

Led by the boy's milky scent to the graveyard, the man Jack climbed the fence. There, at last, he saw the baby. Jack moved forward knife in hand, triumph in his eyes. A swirl of mist seemed to curl around the child, then the boy was no longer there, only mist and moonlight.

The boy was saved by the graveyard's residents. Mrs. Owens, a ghost over 200 years dead, hid the boy, while the mysterious Silas, not a ghost yet not alive, clouded the man Jack's mind and made him forget he had seen the boy in the graveyard.

Now the boy has a home. Mr. And Mrs. Owens, who never had children when they were alive, have adopted him. Silas has agreed to be his guardian and given him the name Nobody Owens, or Bod for short. The graveyard's community has agreed to allow Bod the Freedom of the Graveyard, allowing him to see in the dark, pass through crypt walls, and ignore the cold. Bod has found a place where he can grow up happy and protected, but one day he will have to return to the world of the living, where the man Jack will be waiting to finish his uncompleted job.