But I take Mrs. For good or for evil—and I firmly believe that it is for good—Mrs. Owens and her husband have taken this child under their protection. It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. If you went off for a week, the boy could die. Then he came to a decision. If Mr. Owens will be his parents, I shall be his guardian. I shall remain here, and if I need to leave I shall ensure that someone takes my place, bringing the child food and looking after him.
A human child. A living child. I mean. I mean, I mean. This is a graveyard, not a nursery, blast it. Owens, and he looked down at the infant asleep in her arms. He raised an eyebrow. There are those out there who mean him harm. Suppose we pick a name for him, eh? We could call him Marcus. The man drank like a fish.
Owens broke in. Owens, firmly. It stared around it, taking in the faces of the dead, and the mist, and the moon. Then it looked at Silas. Its gaze did not flinch. It looked grave. The infant looked up at him and then, hungry or tired or simply missing his home, his family, his world, he screwed up his tiny face and began to cry.
Owens waited outside the funeral chapel. It had been decreed over forty years before that the building, in appearance a small church with a spire, was a listed building of historical interest. The town council had decided that it would cost too much to renovate it, a little chapel in an overgrown graveyard that had already become unfashionable, so they had padlocked it, and waited for it to fall down.
Ivy covered it, but it was solidly built, and it would not fall down this century. The child had fallen asleep in Mrs. She rocked it gently, sang to it an old song, one her mother had sung to her when she was a baby herself, back in the days when men had first started to wear powdered wigs. Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name and buried treasure… And Mrs. Owens sang all that before she discovered that she had forgotten how the song ended.
We can keep it in the crypt, eh? Owens walked inside, looking dubiously at the shelves, and at the old wooden pews tipped up against a wall. There were mildewed boxes of old parish records in one corner, and an open door that revealed a Victorian flush toilet and a basin, with only a cold tap, in the other. The infant opened his eyes and stared. Owens, eyeing the yellow and brown object suspiciously. A fruit, from the tropics. It toddled rapidly to Silas, grasped his trouser-leg and held on.
Silas passed it the banana. Owens watched the boy eat. Plenty of room in there for a little one. What he had not eaten was now smeared over himself. He beamed, messy and apple-cheeked. Not after what I promised his mama. And I do not plan to begin now.
My bones are here. His voice was drier than deserts, and he said it as if he were simply stating something unarguable. Owens did not argue. Up in the amphitheater on the side of the hill, the debate continued. That it was the Owenses who had got involved in this nonsense, rather than some flibbertigibbet johnny-come-latelies, counted for a lot, for the Owenses were respectable and respected.
But still, but still… A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy, and each of the dead had a voice, and an opinion as to whether the living child should be allowed to stay, and they were each determined to be heard, that night.
It was late autumn when the daybreak was long in coming. Although the sky was still dark, cars could now be heard starting up further down the hill, and as the living folk began to drive to work through the misty night-black morning, the graveyard folk talked about the child that had come to them, and what was to be done. Three hundred voices. Three hundred opinions. Nehemiah Trot, the poet, from the tumbled northwestern side of the graveyard, had begun to declaim his thoughts on the matter, although what they were no person listening could have said, when something happened; something to silence each opinionated mouth, something unprecedented in the history of that graveyard.
The pounding of its hooves could be heard before it was seen, along with the crashing it made as it pushed through the little bushes and thickets, through the brambles and the ivy and the gorse that had grown up on the side of the hill.
The size of a Shire horse it was, a full nineteen hands or more. It was a horse that could have carried a knight in full armor into combat, but all it carried on its naked back was a woman, clothed from head to foot in grey. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url.
If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to fantasy, young adult lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Owens, Mrs. Owens category: fantasy, young adult, fiction, horror, fantasy, paranormal, childrens Formats: ePUB Android , audible mp3, audiobook and kindle.
Hot The Sandman Vol. Great book, The Graveyard Book pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone.
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